Keep your God in your pants.

Oh come on, at this point you really can't get away with telling us the Christian right doesn't have more perverts and hypocrites lecturing us about morals than the general population and don't pretend that turbo-charged Christianism isn't a way to get around the morals nearly everyone was born with.  A cynic might be tempted to suggest that getting around common decency and respect for life and freedom itself has been central to religion, public and private.

" Popular Michigan contemporary Christian radio DJ fired after arrest on child sex charges"

Blared a headline on Raw Story yesterday.  Ho hum. Now you may be tempted to start in with the "most Christians" argument, but don't bother. It's not my intent to smear most Christians unless they're the ones who look the other way or argue that because most Christians aren't child sex traffickers, bigots and perverts or hypocrites who make a living excoriating behavior they indulge in, you can't condemn preachers, colleges or their moral or financial exploitations.  Hell, there's even a Christian parable condemning such rock throwing dirt bags, not that normal people with a normal sense of right and wrong need such primitive tales.  Child prostitution?  What a quandary - perhaps we should ask what Jesus would do or take Bible classes because the law is too vague and you can't trust the unbelievers.

I'm not often in churches and so the fact that I've heard an alarming number of "God loves sinners"sermons is disturbing.  Could it be that churches are offered as a hiding place for rapists, for haters, for criminals under the assumption that Christianity will make them better people or at least help them avoid punishment, secular and divine?  Could it be suspected that the main purpose of the religious posing and bad music is to cloak the hate, the prejudice and bigotry and self righteousness and sometimes the nastier things like child prostitution and rape?  It would be hard to show that church attendance or loud Gospel quoting has any salutary effect on morals and harder to claim that being involved with the Christian Media or a Christian College hints that someone is not a moral monster.

And if you're tempted to call me prejudiced, I admit it, I am -- the same way I'm prejudiced, I'm prepared to assume that after all this time, the e-mail from a Nigerian princess who wants to send me ten million bucks is any more sincere than the "Christain DJ" who pays to have sex with little boys and if all these Christian Nation, Christian morals blowhards have their way, we won't have a secular government to lock them up.

We're a little more honest -- honestly.

Emotional reasoning: we all do it.  Liberals and conservatives all have our pet pieties and our ways of protecting them against facts.  I don't need to summarize my posts about right wing hypocrisy and self-contradictory arguments or the tendency to invent scenarios independent of statistics or facts or logic.  You've heard it from me for years. It's not true that half the country pays no taxes and "Obama is giving them all our money," but they'll string you up from a light pole or drag you behind a truck for contradicting their beliefs.  They're delusional.

But, as I said, everyone does it. Liberals will jump all over drone attacks while ignoring the fact that it's the least likely way to produce unwanted casualties, while ignoring the fact that no war does not involve civilian casualties, that we are fighting a war against non-uniformed civilians and we insist that our drone strikes in Pakistan are a violation of their sovereignty even though they gave us permission to do so because many of us are invested in the notion of American imperialism.  We make the evidence fit the conviction even when there is no evidence and a few selected facts are proof.

They on the other hand will tell you condoms don't work, rape doesn't cause pregnancy, vaccination against HPV will make you daughter promiscuous.  They'll insist that advertisements showing a woman in a car with a pig promote bestiality (I'm not joking,) that same sex marriage destroys heterosexual marriage and there is a plot to turn kids gay. America is a Christian Nation, the constitution doesn't separate church and State and the Founders were pious Christians we are told.  Roosevelt caused the Depression.  Obama's 'policies' are bankrupting us. The media are saturated with "creation science" lies and other fictions on a daily basis and worse on Sunday. You know it all too well.

I find it depressing.  I find myself looking for reasons to tell myself that maybe I and the folks I agree with most of the time are human, with all the self delusion and fact twisting that involves, but we're still better than the the people I blame for most of our backwardness and our pursuit of bankruptcy in the name of prosperity: the American Right. I mean, we have to be better, right?

I think encouragement is at hand.  A study described in Salon.com, appearing in in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, claims that

 "when it comes to evaluating facts that are relevant to our deep-seated morals or beliefs, we don’t act like scientists. Rather, we act like lawyers, contorting the evidence to support our moral argument."

But they're much worse.  OK, we knew Trayvon Marton was murdered for being black before we knew the facts. We may still not know them, but we're still certain.  We knew that the "stand your ground" legislation justified it when it certainly did not in any way and we knew Zimmerman was a homicidal racist because it was in line with our deep seated convictions about guns and gun laws and racists. We constructed a scenario that made what we knew fit the puzzle and in a way that justified our Liberal faith.

But Conservatives, says the study, score higher on a trait called the need for cognitive closure, they are more uncomfortable with uncertainty and need to hold strong convictions -- to be certain that Liberals.  We can't have some abortions and not others -- it's good or evil and nothing in between. An egg has to be a "baby" else we can't be sure when it becomes fully human.  

This asymmetrical need for certainty despite the facts between Right and Left is of course debatable and is being debated amongst psychologists and yet it seems obvious to me -- because, no doubt, it fits my deep seated convictions about the righteousness of my opinions -- and that's why I'm sticking with it!  We're better than they are.

Campaign logic

Argumentum ad ignorentiam: "appeal to ignorance" (where "ignorance" stands for: "lack of evidence to the contrary") Argument from ignorance may be used as a rationalization by a person who realizes that he has no reason for holding the belief that he does.

Argumentum ad Obaminem: special case of above or appeal to ignorance (where "ignorance" stands for: " all evidence to the contrary") May be used as a rationalization for libel or slander or accusation without evidence or most commonly: strongly contrary to all evidence or logic. An argument from authority in the absence of authority. Used frequently by Republican propagandists.

Argumentum ad Republican: A special pleading. It's only radical when Liberals like it or conversely: that argument doesn't apply to Republicans.

________________________

Forget the Superbowl commercials or the half-time show. Forget football. The most entertaining event of Superbowl Sunday was Newt Gingrich trying to convince his audience that Barack Obama is at war with the Catholic Church. Parroting the sentiment that a secular government refusing to bow to ecclesiastical pressure as the secular constitution demands, is a declaration of war, Newt, Gingrich, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, Sunday, said the decision represented

“a radical Obama administration imposing secular rules on religion.”

Well I hate to bring it up, lest anyone esteem me to be needlessly argumentative, but all religious people and their organizations have always been subject to the secular law of the land and by constitutional law, none of us can be held to any religious restrictions, taboos or responsibilities by the government. You see, that's why we don't have laws about blasphemy and punishment for heretics. That's why we're not held to the Biblical command against eating Cheeseburgers or chitterlings or watching football on Sunday - or divorce which of course Newt knows as well -- just as we know by all evidence that Newt is the consummate opportunist and a veritable prince of duplicity.

Yes, of course people are very protective of their beliefs and rituals and practices and in our country as well as in most of the civilized world, they are allowed to be and protected in that right but that's only because there are no official religious laws and no special protection for church policies that do not comply with our secular laws and our rights and our protection from faith-based tyranny. Newt is following in the muddy footprints of those who continually argue against the religious neutrality and secular nature of our Republic in spite of all evidence and despite the law itself.

Please forgive me for stating the obvious and writing as if for a child, but we're talking about Newt Gingrich here and I may be talking to some who do indeed think the government should indeed take such a dim view of our personal liberty as to allow clergymen to deny us birth control or having music on Sunday or divorce or living where and with whom we please. In many places they did after all get away with that for years.

We're talking about Newt Gingrich here who, after playing with several religions in his effort to bed many women including his own high school teacher, presumes not only to speak for but to dictate Church dogma to Roman Catholics who in very large part do not agree with it.

"Every time you turn around secular government is closing in on and shrinking the rights of religious America,”

Said Newt -- who has turned around about 200 years too late. The right of "Religious America" to be the law of the land by diktat was eliminated by the first Amendment, if the rage against such tyranny by the Founding Fathers wasn't already enough to put a stop to it.

In fact, 98% -- nearly all American Catholic women who have sex have used "forbidden" birth control methods and a solid majority think the Church policy is wrong. I don't think they're going to back this flim-flam Lothario who while indulging in it himself, tried to impeach a president for extra-marital fellatio in any bid to have Washington embargo the local drug store in the name of religious "freedom." Not any more than they would have the government outlaw the kind of bed hopping, marital leapfrogging Gingrich is noted for even if they frown on it. Don't we wonder why Newt thinks Catholics are so damn stupid that they won't notice he's arguing both sides of the question?

Organized religion is about many things, but personal choice and freedom of thought has never been thought of highly, to say the least, by any of them. To have to explain to someone with a Doctorate and a writer of history books, something a slow schoolboy should know, that professed belief or membership in some religious group does not convey legal authority in the US is laughable, but of course Newt knows it. He knows a principle and constitutional law that's been around since our beginning isn't radical and it isn't about Obama. He knows he's a lair even if he doesn't know he's a disgrace. I think the voters know too.

Gimme that old slime and religion

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

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


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

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

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

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

Martin tells us she was asked by Byron York:

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

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

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

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

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

Huckabee on the carpet

British comedian Ricky Gervais recently put together a short TV comedy series, Idiots Abroad; seven episodes indulging his obvious schadenfreude by making his "friend" and reputed moron Carl Pilkington miserable despite having been being sent to visit some wonderful places. It had the effect of annoying me since Pilkington, who isn't quite the idiot Gervais says he is, seems rather to be a nice and decent sort of fellow and deserved better treatment, even if that would undermine the premise of the show.

I don't feel quite the same way about Likable Mike Huckabee, affable and avuncular and sincere though he may seem. It's as hard to feel sympathy for one whose idiocy seems more purposeful and politically founded than genetic, although that may be a factor too. I'm not just talking about his shameless promotion of Bronze age ignorance and mythology and the snickering denigration of science. I'm not just talking about promoting the invasion of Libya and thus cementing the authority of Qaddafi, making us appear imperialistic and escalating the debt and putting a strain on our military capability. I'm talking abut his attempt to enlist a far more scurrilous bit of political mythology than "creation science" to promote his grotesque candidacy by telling us our president grew up in Africa and so really doesn't either understand us or have our interests at heart.

It's not just the racism. I'm used to racism. It's that the possibility of his candidacy rests on building and arming an insurgency of idiots who neither know or care about reality. It's like inviting the Klan to use your back yard for a rally and claiming you're above that sort of thing yourself.

It's not that he's black, you see -- it's just that you can't trust someone with the troubling attribute of being dark skinned. Smiling Mike surely knows that Barack Obama lived in Indonesia as a small boy but wasn't born in and didn't live in any part of Africa. He knows he was born in the USA as surely as Bruce Springsteen was and Mike Huckabee was and grew up in the American Midwest and was raised by his white relatives. So if he does know that and chooses none the less to have you believe otherwise, he's a liar willing to use lies to get elected. If he doesn't know that, he's an idiot to the degree that he shouldn't be given a more responsible or well paid position than a men's room attendant.

Huckabee shouldn't be trusted with leading a Boy Scout troop, much less the United States. He represents, despite his smiling, self-effacing sincerity, the lower skirt of the intellectual as well as the moral decency bell curve, no matter how you measure it.

Yes, professional fixer and HuckPAC Executive Director J. Hogan Gidley says Huckabee "simply misspoke" during his book tour, which is as convincing as saying the dog didn't crap on the carpet, but simply misshit. It only means he's not toilet trained, can't be trusted and we surely don't want him on the expensive rug in the oval office.

Numbers don't lie

But people sure as hell do and they often use numbers when they do it.

I was a regular fan of the Doonesbury comic strip during the Bush years because I wasn't any kind of fan of George Bush and because the strip didn't hesitate to mock the kind of presidential buffoonery I perceived; but I've never been an uncritical fan. When Gary Trudeau based a Sunday strip about financial industry corruption on "money lenders in the Temple" I let him know that I've yet to find a Bible story that mentioned such a thing, money changing and money lending being quite different things. We call Trudeau a liberal for some reason, but citing medieval anti-Semitic calumnies to make some partisan point isn't liberal or conservative, it's dishonest.

More recently Doonesbury gave us another cynical bit about how the deaths of 3000 people some 9 years ago prompted the largest increase in federal government size and authority, yet the 237,000 shooting deaths over the same period caused us to "weaken" our gun laws, I was too annoyed to bother e-mailing him. Why? Because it's numerically appealing but factually false. It's another example of putting the same picture in a different frame and claiming it's a different landscape. That's not a liberal or conservative thing, it's an honesty thing and no political party is free from such things whether or not one side is more heavily reliant on it. Let me explain.

We didn't weaken our gun laws actually. We let a ban that banned nothing and had no effect whatsoever on the number of "banned" items legally sold or on shooting deaths, expire on schedule. We finally allowed people to defend their homes against armed invaders without fear of being called a murderer. To call that "weakening" is to call any change weakening, just as the NRA seems to call any change "strengthening." The point careful avoided and upon which Trudeau none the less attempts to rest his case, is that gun related crime has not increased during this period.

But again, look at the picture itself. The attack on New York and Washington wasn't a chronic situation; it was a sudden and very large increase in terrorism. Shooting deaths in the US are, on the other hand, a very chronic condition, but none the less, they are not increasing and over a period of decades have been decreasing. If it were the other way around, Trudeau might have had a valid point, but as changes in the law did not actually produce an increase, he does not make a valid point and he's simply reacting without reflection or any care for accuracy. That might be called lying and covering it up with cynicism, if one were to be direct about it.

Grinding our same old axe on every opportunity that comes along: that's just the sort of thing I so often accuse conservatives of doing, but a lie is a lie, no matter who tells it, isn't it?

Yes, we Liberals have our pet shibboleths too. We have our intransigent attitudes and our faith based delusions and we suffer for it because our opposite numbers are well aware of every windmill we point our lances at and what hypocrites we are and how foolish we have been.

Take the fuss about the bloodbath that would surely occur if we got rid of the National Speed Limit. Did we apologize when it not only didn't happen, but the death rate went down? No we did not and we're not likely to be any more humble when we have to face the fact that the "shoot the Avon Lady" law did not prompt the shooting of any Avon ladies, but did however stop quite a number of lethal home invasions. When our predictions and dire warnings prove false, as they so often do, we owe it to ourselves to admit it. We owe it to ourselves to question ourselves and our most dearly held ideas.

Hypocrisy. It's defending ideas that don't work. It's pretending they do work or would work if everyone believed, whether it's trickle-down economics or bans on foreign made firearms made to look military or comical speed limits or bombing people into freedom or insisting tax cuts raise government revenue. It's everywhere and we don't get to be cynical about the other guy without passing the same test we apply to him.

6 dead in Tucson

Went out to dinner last night -- a little tiki hut place on the Fort Pierce inlet -- and everybody was glued to the TV wondering if the Saints could pull off an upset. A loud place but not a word anywhere about the blood still waiting to be cleaned up in Tucson. Not a word.

It's all been so predictable that it feels hardly worth posting about it. We're already listening to the "rush to judgment" rhetoric because after all, the guy could be a lone nut, whether or not that mysterious accomplice is apprehended. So why call it political at all? Maybe the guy just didn't like blonds or children or supermarket crowds. So why blame the Republicans for their daily "kill the traitors" passion play. I mean it was all protected speech anyway. (damn good thing we don't have hate speech laws like the Socialists.)

I mean all that hoopla about how it was the government who killed those people in Waco, not the messianic impostor / child molester and none of that rhetoric had anything to do with Tim McVeigh and associates murdering 168 people in the Murrah building. Hell no, it was the fertilizer that blew up the building and fertilizer control was the real issue, not rebel militias and hate spewing mass media.

The guy who murdered McKinley was all hopped up on Emma Goldman's anarchistic bombast. She told us that he was "president of the money kings and trust magnates." She told us that Czolgosz was a modern day Brutus, killer of tyrants ( sound familiar?) but it's better to blame the Ivor Johnson company. Hey, you don't grind the axe you wish you had, you grind the one you brought.

The protected speech of Taft supporters that spurred the certified nutjob Schrank to shoot the "tyrant" Teddy Roosevelt? Not their fault. We already know about the Tyrant Lincoln. But hey, Obama was a "tyrant" to reform health care, even just a little. and as the stateswoman Michelle Bachmann says, we have to be "armed and dangerous" because that tyrant is the most corrupt president in history. Armed and dangerous. Don't retreat, reload. Next time the guns will be loaded. Here they are - the ones with the cross hairs on them -- take a stand, take them back, but it's not our damned fault that someone was nuts enough to do what we told them to do!

My God, why hast thou forsaken me?

And I mean, why mention that we find it far too Stalinesque to provide mental health services and mandatory commitment to people who are basically only shirkers and malingerers? This just proves they don't deserve it! Besides if we can judge people insane, dangerous and incompetent we might have to enforce those laws that keep guns from them and that would be tyranny. You know what we do to tyrants, right?

And of course we need to make a quarter billion firearms disappear by waving more magic legislation because 60 years of ever tightening regulation has done so much good and never mind that it would take more door kickings and home invasions without probable cause than Hitler ever envisioned to accomplish such a Herculean task. Let's go after box cutters and bottles of mouthwash and shampoo and let's ban mosques so no one can attack us. Let's do like we do with marijuana: just trot out the old rhetoric and blame the same old suspects and keep on doing what doesn't work. Pull the string on the America doll and hear that old scratchy and fatuous voice: Ban, ban, ban, ban, ban and let's not be namby-pamby socialists and discuss the causes of things.

No, we have no proof that the shooter was motivated by the vicious and endless call to violence, so why mention all those Ann Coulter references to killing congressmen and judges? ask the Republican first responders. Want to stop people from murdering doctors? Why take away the chemicals you can make explosives with and take away nails and glass and batteries and canvas backpacks and it will stop, right? Don't blame the "abortion is murder" profiteers. Don't blame biblical gay bashers, blame pick-up trucks. Truks drag gay teens to death, not bigots.

And after all, some liberal somewhere must once have said something we can twist into a false equivalence. I remember one minor league academic who claimed that "heads should roll at Newscorp" was just such a call for ritual murder by this liberal, commie, socialist, sociopath. I guess it's all been my fault all along.

No, all that mess in Africa would never have happened if we banned machetes in Rwanda and that's what they should have done. Never mind the incessant voices chanting "kill the Tutsi cockroaches." Take away the sharp objects and say goodbye to murderous intent. We'll all live in peace.

"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the Capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

said Sheriff Dupnik of Pima County. The damned liberal commie rat. But let's do nothing about that murderous rhetoric or the roaming madmen stirred to mayhem. It's the ACLU, it's the Liberal Media, it's Keith Olbermann -- it's the Satanic Obamanator who wants to give your hard earned money to the 'Negroes' and illegal wetback leprosy spreading drug addled rapists and other unworthies. No, the "conservatives" the loyal opposition didn't expect anyone to actually take the calls to violence seriously and the Constitution protects us when we lie and libel and paint targets on people - and we're strict constitutionalists, you know.

It's nobodies fault, really, now let's get a good night's sleep and get back to talking about the Saints-Seahawks game last night. A sad night for N'awlins.

Pillars of wisdom

It seems to me that there are two kinds of Americans these days: the uninformed and the misinformed although one has to allow for considerable interbreeding. Is this more true than it used to be or are they just more self assured now that we have multi-billion dollar industries devoted to supporting both mental conditions?

At any rate, it's increasingly customary in the world of blogging in these latter days, to suffer unrestrained and personal attacks in proportion to how well one backs up one's thesis with facts and figures and of course the fury is loudest when one of the fragile pillars of the Republican temple are leaned upon. So let's have another go at it and see what happens. Having been subjected to the unending right wing Jeremiad about the massive public debt and the question of who bears responsibility for it, I thought it interesting to show what the U.S. Office of Management and Budget can tell us about where we are now.


First and most obvious of all is that we're nowhere near the level of debt we had by the end of WW II, although that may be as expected, but that debt fell sharply and almost uninterruptedly until Ronald Reagan established forever the two regnant principles of Republican policy: Debt doesn't matter and tax cuts pay for themselves by creating businesses and jobs. Looking above, it's hard to see the evidence. High marginal taxes of nearly three times as high as today's were in effect as the debt fell, Debt began to rise sharply in response to Reagan's tax cuts and what the chart fails to display is that unemployment during the Teflon years rose to 9.6%, essentially the current levels we have today. Neither does it show that no new private sector jobs were added during the years of the Bush II tax cuts.

Again, what you don't see is how expensive the S&L collapse under Bush I was or how quiet was the Right about Bush's bailout of an industry that collapsed largely because of deregulation. Uninformed? Misinformed or just hypocritical?

We can see elsewhere however, that during the Clinton years, characterized by hysterical outrage at the "confiscatory" tax structure of the Democrats, employment soared and the debt sank, not to resume it's climb until the Commander Guy outdid even Reagan in illustrating that, no, tax cuts don't pay for themselves, don't create jobs and do as they did in the 1920's precipitate bubbles, busts and recessions.

So, I'm waiting for the slurs about my parentage, defective IQ and the rest of the typical projectiles, or at least the catechism of unsupportable maxims we've heard from every Republican since the debt began to climb, but it's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Thanks but no thanks, and I'll take it, but I didn't.

Got another e-mail this morning about how the Supreme Court is "quietly reviewing" those claims that Obama wasn't born in Hawaii. "This may have some discrepancies" but it's "still interesting." says the serial offender who forwarded it to me.

Is it time to leave the country? Because we have no real way of returning America to a body of informed and rational citizens. Still, as a lover of understated humor, I have to enjoy the way a libelous fabrication "may have some discrepancies," including the discrepancy of not having any basis in fact. It does seem to me that the flat Earth some on the right believe in is floating on a huge sea of malicious lies and has an atmosphere of pure hypocrisy.

Take Senator John Ensign, Senator from the Silver State and one of those dedicated public servants who thinks we can change our "reckless spending" by curbing Federal earmarks, which constitute a rather tiny fraction of what the government actually spends or as I see it; whittling at the whiskers and calling it a close shave. But that's just the basic background hypocrisy of the GOP. Ensign has his own to account for, because while railing at "Obamacare" and promising to undo the health care reform bill we elected a president to promote, he's out there actively soliciting - and getting - a million taxpayer dollars from that Affordable Care Act he so despises to spend on health care in his state. Perhaps there's a discrepancy there somewhere too, but it's still interesting.

Is this another "thanks but no thanks" moment for Republicans? I mean one where you take the money and say you didn't and blame the other party while you pose as a cost cutter? Maybe, I can call it the Palin Precedent, maybe it's better to call them liars and greedy little power hungry bastards.

Oh and please spare me an example of where some Democrat did the same thing. That's not the point and it isn't the Democrats trying to assert dogmatic policies that have failed each and every time to bring prosperity and have each and every time produced recessions -- as if we could keep repeating the past until it becomes a better future. The question of whether to leave the country is the point and that question is fast becoming moot because the country is leaving us.

The biggest problam facing America today. . . .

. . . is pornography. Well at least it has been according to orators at several Republican national conventions in recent memory. It's possible that such things are motivated by a Christian analogue of another right wing obsession: Sharia law, and it's possible that it was a smokescreen to divert attention from other core policies like borrowing on the promise of self funding tax cuts. One thing is clear, Politicians tend to be a randy lot, but Conservative males love porn the way they love money and women: they want it all for themselves.

Remember Ken Starr who wanted to make it a crime to use the word "breast" on the Internet but spent millions and wrote endless words, even on the Internet, about Bill Clinton's penis, Monica Lewinsky's cigar and related subjects? Yes, I know, Democrats like porn too and cheat on their wives and are hypocrites and all that as I'm sure someone will assure me to obscure the fact that they haven't been on a moral crusade for those nebulous but normative "family values" for decades. I've had all the contrived and deceptive equivalences I need for now, thank you.

Which brings me to Clarance Thomas. It was the equivalent of a lynching, said he when accusations were leveled by another conservative that he'd offered her a Coke with pubic hair on it, even though she had little reason to lie and had complained to the FBI only in private. Anita Hill was branded a Liberal, although she wasn't and isn't, in a fashion far more evocative of a lynching than the sworn testimony against Justice Thomas. It seems now that Lillian McEwen, a former girlfriend of the distinguished Justice says he was "obsessed with porn," and often made inappropriate sexual comments about and unwanted advances toward women in his office and she's kept quiet until now. She confirms, for instance, that he asked women about their breast size when at work.

McEwan was, in fact, given as a character witness by Thomas, to show that he had a regular relationship and wasn't the rude, sex-obsessed, predatory little creep he was alleged to be by more than one accuser. Too bad she wasn't called to testify under oath because, as we read in the Washington Post: in her soon to be published memoir, she confirms our suspicions.

Perhaps it was knowledge that the book contained such damning information that prompted his wife's odd early morning call to Anita Hill, but I don't think she need fear that he'll lose his job or reputation when the accusation of LIBERAL still carries the power that the accusation of WITCH used to have in centuries past. We're stuck with an overgrown adolescent and liar on the highest court. We may all have his pubic hair in all the wrong places and we don't have a hell of a lot of choice but to drink from the can.

Spy in the sky

You expect the smaller government gospel in Texas and Texans will tell you that the damned government should stay out of private matters like dragging gay men to death behind pickup trucks, instituting safety standards for drilling rigs and demanding proper accounting practices from Bush beloved companies like Enron, but there's an alternate logic in Texas; one that has no problem with the government spying on us with unmanned drones. Following us down the road recording our movements and our speed and our destinations, peeking into our back yards. The largest of these things are as big as airliners and the smallest, I'm told, can fly right into your window. Some are remotely operated, some are almost autonomous. They can see in the dark, they know when you're sleeping; they know when you're awake -- well, maybe not, but they know if you've been good or bad.

Of course there's support for patrolling the borders with these machines, which are much cheaper to operate and aren't dangerous to the operators, but they pose a collision hazard to civil aviation and the FAA, pushed by manufacturers, fear-mongering politicians and the government, has been trying to balance the need for aviation safety with the lust for more government surveillance. Texas officials, including Gov. Rick Perry, Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, and Rep. Henry Cuellar, are so hot to employ drones on the border and who knows where else that they're trying to twist the President's arm. Cornyn, for instance is blocking a Senate confirmation vote on Michael Huerta, Obama's nominee for the No. 2 FAA job, until he gets his way.

Of course there are legitimate uses for drones, but there are legitimate dangers, not all of which concern collisions and the urge to deploy more eyes in the sky; the insistence that we can and must trust the government with another spy tool seems to make liars out of the people making careers out of telling us we can't trust anyone but them.

Premeditated violence

So whether you agree with me or not that Israel's attempt to enforce the blockade of Gaza by boarding a ship which refused normal inspection procedures and the attempt at self defense of the IDF Navy when attacked, was not the outrage it was meant to look like, do you agree that it's all Obama's fault? Sure it was says John Bomb-Bomb McCain. If Obama hadn't insisted that Israel freeze it's West Bank settlement construction, this wouldn't have happened. (insert WTF here!)

Michael Savage tells us that Obama "pressured" Israel into it without offering any of the evidence one would desire to back it up.

"As far as I know, it was Obama's administration that told them how to do this attack. It was probably one of America's peace-loving generals, who knows which one of them did it."

The use of probably by a Fox News member of course is as good as proof to the willfully Foxed, as is "as far as I know." Probably means 'definitively' to the Savage audience. Only a Liberal would question it. Only a Liberal would wonder why "peace loving" should be the equivalent of stupid, duplicitous and incompetent -- if not treasonous.

Of course knees are jerking in the Liberal camp as well, as Dennis Kucinich has written to President Obama suggesting that the country needs to "redefine its relationship with Israel" in the wake of the Gaza flotilla "raid." I'd ask him his opinion on redefining the US Coast Guard's daily practice of stopping and boarding ships with armed gunboats and armed inspectors as "raids." I'd ask him if an attack on the Coast Guard by a vessel refusing to stop and be inspected in wartime or peacetime, would be supported by him or excused by him because we're certainly doing it now in the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Caribbean. I'd ask him whether our entire drug interdiction and human smuggling interdiction policies are " reckless, pre-meditated violence waged against innocent people." I'd try to do it without calling him an idiot and a hypocrite, but I doubt I could manage.

So if you still feel this was "premeditated violence" even when the violence occurred only after the "peaceful passengers" tried to kill the inspectors, ask yourself what the US should do if a flotilla from Iran attempted to enter Iraq with an unspecified, un-inspected cargo and brutally attacked our Navy when our Navy attempted to examine that cargo and passenger list.

Ditat Deus

God enriches: it's the state motto of Arizona. To some it surely suggests that the rich are the chosen of God and the poor and struggling? Your papers please.

My hypocrisy alarm has burned itself to a cinder over the last few days simply from the stench coming from our self-styled Libertarian friends from Arizona who have just given far more power to the State government than the Constitution allows and reduced constitutional protection from the power of law enforcement provided by that constitution -- a step away from Libertarian principles that even the notorious Glenn Beck balks at.

Anyway, if God has enriched Arizona in any way, the government of that stolen state has done a great deal to cheapen its claim to being a part of a free country and to impoverish its moral status as well. Perhaps taking a clue from the Texas school board's redaction of American history, Arizona has decided that no courses taught in its schools may give students the impression that they belong to a persecuted minority.

That's right, the Navaho have always had it easy, no one ever gave a black man a hard time and the state itself was never taken by force. It's now official.

Joe the Dumber

Senator Joe Lieberman is a cheap, pandering whore without a principle in his head and without much concern for history. Instead of being able to come up with some means to combat and prevent acts of terrorism, he's still looking for ways to make a criminal organization into a superpower complete with Army, Navy, Air Force and probably nuclear missiles. Any one working for a foreign terrorist organization should be stripped of his rights as a citizen. He doesn't bother to clarify whether that's before or after a fair trial, but I suspect the whole idea of a fair trial is anathema to his sort of Neanderthal conservatism. What an idiotic response to a failed truck bomb: attack the cornerstone of American liberty.

I wonder if he stops to contemplate how the Jews of Europe were suddenly deemed by the German government as being agents of a hostile foreign power and stripped of citizenship -- allowing the confiscation of their property and their exile to death camps.

No, someone willing to kill hundreds of people at random in Times Square is going to be deterred by a subsequent withdrawal of his citizenship? The shade of Mohammad Atta is laughing in Hell. What about domestic terrorist/murderer Tim McVeigh? Oh, that's OK, he wasn't working for foreigners.

What does Lieberman hope to accomplish other than to give hope to the barbarian Right that we can do as we like to anyone who isn't a citizen? God only gave rights to Americans, you see.

Whether he doesn't bother to or doesn't have the brain power to dismiss that worthless gesture of idiot rage is something not worth speculating on, but it's obvious that Joe Lieberman is all about Joe Lieberman trying to get attention by once again trying to rattle the cage of the ignorati instead of adding anything worthwhile to an important effort.

Drop that Chalupa, Pedro

When those cold war movies I grew up on wanted to let you know the scene was not in the land of the free, we were furnished with Angst ridden scenes where the protagonist was asked for his papers by someone in a leather trench coat on some dark street corner. Maybe his accent was showing, the cut of his clothes -- maybe it was just routine, but we were all grateful that back here, in "freedom" we could go about our business without worry and the government was on our side.

The strangest thing about Arizona's new knee jerk immigration law is that Arizona is the spiritual home of small-government libertarianism and the feeling that Government is a necessary evil; perhaps more evil than necessary. They don't want the government telling them when and where or if they can keep and bear and conceal weapons, what they can eat, smoke or drink or what they can do on their property. They don't trust public education or public radio and they sure as hell don't want to pay for them. I suspect they'd raise holy hell if the police were to stop them at random looking for contraband or illegal weapons or even a drivers license, yet they're apparently quite happy to demand that anyone "suspicious" in that state must keep proof of citizenship on their person at all times, display such proof to any cop that feels like demanding it, or face serious consequences. Of course, if you're white, you're probably all right, so never mind.

To any unbiased observer this alone would more than hint of a police state and unconstitutional government interference in private life.

Sure, if the Arizona police were perfect human beings there would be little concern, but they're far from that. Still, those self-styled Libertarians seem quite happy to give unprecedented and perhaps unconstitutional power to Law enforcement to stop people and demand papers. It's pretty hard to maintain the pose of strict constitutional limits on government when the power reserved for the judicial branch is given to a cop on the beat. The various issues surrounding protecting citizens from government powers of search and seizure were a cornerstone of our rebellion against British rule -- as I shouldn't have to remind anyone.

Dare I speculate that the Libertarian label might, for a great many people, sometimes be only the phony ID that authoritarianism carries?

Evidently fear of aliens overrides high principle and what Arizona really wants is a government that cuts a swath through the law to root out what they want rooted out -- and the Constitution be damned. What they want is a government that lays it's fingers heavily on people they don't like and lays completely off anything that stands between them and whatever they please. Sorry cowboy; when you add in the racist element, this situational Libertarianism is too much like Fascism to make it worth trying to find a difference.

Land of the prison, home of the coward.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who, me?

O that ye would altogether hold your peace! and it should be your wisdom.

-Job 13:5-

California state Senator Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) is very concerned about the "gay agenda" and he's been a fierce opponent of same sex marriage and a "family values" blowhard for a long time. Although many don't agree with my feeling that such obsession is a cover up, examples keep emerging with regularity and it's hard even to list the most humorous ones. Senator Ashburn was recently arrested for drunk driving in downtown Sacramento early Wednesday morning. There's no particular surprise there and I imagine many other patrons leaving the gay bar "Faces" in the wee hours had had a bit too much to drink. He was given a field sobriety test and promptly taken off to jail. I don't know what happened to his "unidentified male companion."

Perhaps it will be less of a surprise to hear that Angelo Balducci, a "Gentleman of His Holiness," was caught on a police wiretap negotiating for the services of male prostitutes with a Vatican Chorister. No official comments have yet been published.

The pattern emerged a long time ago, even before Wide Stance Larry tapped his toes in Minneapolis and whether you do or don't agree with me, I'm going to bet that more often than not, the biggest and most assertive opponents of gay rights and fantasy fabricators are dealing with difficult inner longings. Perhaps after all, if you'll forgive my radical libertarianism, the best way to hide them and to avoid suspicion is to simply leave gay people alone?

Hopey Changey

Can you believe there's a website called teleprompterpresident.com? The local trailer parks echo with teleprompter jokes, there are more teleprompter jokes clogging up blog comments than there are clumps of fat in Rush Limbaugh's arteries and that chattering little chipmunk Palin just can't let go of that chewy chestnut. I wonder was Abe Lincoln only a charismatic guy with some scrap paper? Yes, he was to be sure, but not only and the Small Government Conservatives slandered and murdered him anyway.

But of course the mini-skirt Moose Mom doesn't know, and doesn't care that you might know that the first time the electric note cards were used was at the 1952 Republican Convention by former President Herbert Hoover. It was the first one ever televised of course and he did it again in 1956. Whether he was charismatic or not I will leave to you and to Sarah Snickers, but Eisenhower used one from 1952 and virtually every other president, candidate and TV talking head pundit has used one too at various levels of charisma.

That's right, George W. Bush used a Teleprompter, there he is in the picture, although I'm told "that's different" by the snarksters and flim-flam bloggers and if you remember the TV Debates, Bush even wore some kind of device worn on his back. So it's hard to know what Governor Barbie had in mind, but it's clear she doesn't feel threatened by anyone who knows more than she does -- which is most of us -- because like most irresponsible pseudo-conservative snarko-terrorists, she's always surrounded by the like-mindless who think she's a genius.

Maybe if George had used one more often or had been able to read along with the moving words, he wouldn't have given us such delights as "the childrens is learning" but we'd be so much poorer without such things as part of our culture, or whatever remains of one.

So, yes The president is a charismatic man, which of course is required for political success in the age of Television, but that's a bit like saying he's a man who wears shoes. Compared to the most educated of recent Republican candidates he's a bit more than Charismatic and of course note cards or not , when he speaks he says something -- and in respectable English as well.

But when one really can't be described as anything more than political junk food, and that's the kindest thing I can say about Sarah Palin the human Twinkie; when you're a tasteless confection of sugar, oil and starch with no ability to do anyone any good, the best you can do is just what she does. Well never mind about the hope and change -- you're hopeless and intransigent. You abandoned Alaska leaving them with record debt and some incoherent story, but it was all about a better offer, wasn't it? So isn't that all you are -- a mendacious mediocrity and charismatic candidate for What Not To Wear -- with notes scribbled on your palm?

So hows that wiggly giggly thing working out for ya, Sarah?

Through the Looking Glass

No offense intended to the Buddhists out there, but the middle path is often the road to hell. While I'm as apt to ask why we can't just get along as any other exhausted and beat up person, I'm not about to attempt it with the people who tell me that it's OK to launch into hysterical fugues of hyperbole about leading Democrats and things they never said or did, but insist that reacting to it in any way but submissive whimpering is nastiness or name-calling and a justification for further libel, slander, bigotry and threats.

I'm disgusted enough to dream about my own gun-toting tea party when citing established facts or exposing blatant lies of the previous administration are described as being just as bad as the furious lies about death panels, birth certificates and Presidential Marxism. Citing massive evidence for global warming is just as bad as comparing Democrats to Communists. Detailed studies showing that certain economic policies produce recessions, that markets self-regulate only within certain limits is just as bad as incitement to murder the President's family, as accusing him of murdering his grandmother and planning to murder yours. It seems to escape a great number of trolls that calling a thief a thief is not the same as accusing an honest man of stealing. Truth matters, facts matter and nothing but weeds grow in the space between facts and lies.

Is retaliation really the equivalent of unprovoked aggression, is self-defense? I don't think so. Is there a reasonable middle ground in an unreasonable attack against reason? I don't think so. Where after all can a middle ground exist between lies and truth; between insane accusations of Marxism or Fascism or extending Medicare being just like Pol Pot or Leon Trotsky? And where does the accusation of being the most, far-left radical Liberal ever to sit in the Senate intersect with the actual Obama who so far seems far too conservative for the people who voted for change?

Are we really the "party of hate" for "picking on" poor Rush for engaging in unprovoked and dishonest slander or trying to defend against him? Is there really any relationship between the label Liberal and the attempt to identify it with irrational hate, beyond the wish of an unscrupulous aggressor to distract us from discussing truth and responsibility?

No, the shadow world, the bizarre country between whatever the truth is and the worn out, beat up used car the Republican apologists are trying to sell is down some rabbit hole somewhere. Some twilight zone where all the terrible things we said about Nixon were untrue and just political, but none the less Obama, by beginning to denounce some of the lies told about him is "building an enemies list" just like Nixon. Nixon wasn't a bad guy they say; it was all political, but Obama is a bad guy for being like him -- even when he isn't. I told you this was a strange land.

Old Nixonian Lamar Alexander suggests that the administration might, like Nixon adviser and Watergate felon Chuck Colson, be planning to "use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies." So what advice is Lamar giving here? Obama should, he suggests, stop blaming the banks, should stop chastising the insurance companies, stop taking advice from advisers Congress hasn't approved ( remember when Bush asserted his right to do so and our non-right to know who they were or what they said?) and stop "calling out" members of congress who disagree with his policies. That's like "street brawling." Calling a lie a lie? That's the equivalent of Nixon's plan to use the IRS to "go after the Jews." That's just like burglary, Arson and obstruction of Justice!

Not.

Curiouser and curiouser, this path between truth and fiction and somewhere Lewis Carroll is watching this through a looking glass.

The dogs do bark

"This is not some kind of radical right-wing group,”

said Senator Jim DeMint, to the Times today.

Sure it is, although to DeMint the definition of radical right might be a bit idiosyncratic. Thousands Rally in Capitol reads the headline although the picture shows at most a couple of hundred white, middle aged people carrying all sorts of signs ranging from the inexplicable to the ridiculous. A huge photo of Nancy Pelosi with a thought bubble saying "Nazis" has the word Astroturf!!! under it. Another claiming that

"Jesus Christ is the messiah and not Obama"

is there to reinforce the idiotic idea that Obama supporters think he's chosen of God and perhaps to help us forget the glaring fact that Bush was widely portrayed as God's right hand.

"Just say no to Chicago Style Politics"

brays another, doubtless setting off thousands of WTF alarms in the Windy City - often referred to as the city that works.

"Obama's nuts, that's why he's involved with ACORN"

reflects the inexplicable obsession with that organization the less mentally organized Republicans seem possessed of.

"Trade freedom for security. . . you will have neither"

says a large sign approximating a Ben Franklin quote that would have been very much appropriate for the previous administration: so appropriate to the gang who gave us the Patriot Act, ignored the law and told us blowing up Iraq was necessary to preserve "our freedoms."

In fact, the fact that not only were these marionettes not in display in Washington a year ago but also that the Bush administration routinely bussed protesters out to remote and fenced-in enclosures while Bill O'Reilly called them "loonies" certainly speaks better for Obama and worse for Republicans than anything else. It certainly doesn't speak well of the silly people, the stupid people, the petty people who see these choreographed parades as anything but bought and payed for advertising: bought and payed for with our country's future.