;)
The Commentariat -- Oct. 19, 2013
The President's Weekly Address:
Adam Clymer of the New York Times: "Thomas S. Foley, a courtly congressman from Washington State who as speaker of the House sought to still the chamber's rising tide of partisan combat before it swept the Democratic majority, and Mr. Foley himself, out of office in 1994, died on Friday at his home in Washington, D.C. He was 84." CW: In case you are hazy on what a horrible excuse for a human being Newt Gingrich is, read Speaker Foley's obituary.
AP: "Republican Rep. Bill Young, Florida's longest-serving member of Congress and a defense hawk who was influential on military spending during his 43 years in Washington, died Friday. He was 82." Andrew Meacham writes the Tampa Bay Times' obituary. ...
... Fox "News"'s oracle Gretchen Carlson reported Rep. Young's death yesterday, which was uncanny, inasmuch as Young was still living.
Julia Preston & Ashley Parker of the New York Times: Democrats want to press immigration reform legislation, but it all depends upon whether House Speaker John Boehner thinks President Obama hurt the widdle feewings of crazed hostage-takers.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times: "Americans for Prosperity has spent millions in states around the country, including Arkansas, Florida, Ohio, Louisiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania," and Virginia to undermine the Affordable Care Act by lobbying against the Medicaid expansion in these states.
Maggie Haberman & Anna Palmer of Politico: Republican donors are sick of Republicans. ...
... Michael Bender & Kathleen Hunter of Bloomberg News: "A battle for control of the Republican Party has erupted as an emboldened Tea Party moved to oust senators who voted to reopen the government while business groups mobilized to defeat allies of the small-government movement."
Charlie Savage of the New York Times: " The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court released a new legal opinion on Friday that reauthorized the once-secret National Security Agency program that keeps records of every American's phone calls. The opinion also sought to plug a hole in a similar ruling made public last month."
Friday afternoon, President Obama announced his nomination of Jeh Johnson as Secretary of Homeland Security:
Heart of Darkness, Ctd. From the Mind of Dick to "Homeland" Script. AP: "Former Vice President Dick Cheney says he once feared that terrorists could use the electrical device that had been implanted near his heart to kill him and had his doctor disable its wireless function.... Years later, Cheney watched an episode of the Showtime series 'Homeland' in which such a scenario was part of the plot."
Local News
California Really Is a "Laboratory of Democracy." Adam Nagourney of the New York Times: Virulent partisanship is on the wane in California. "Lawmakers came into office this year representing districts whoselines were drawn by a nonpartisan commission, rather than under the more calculating eye of political leaders. This is the first Legislature chosen under an election system where the top two finishers in a nonpartisan primary run against each other, regardless of party affiliations, an effort to prod candidates to appeal to a wider ideological swath of the electorate. And California voters approved last year an initiative to ease stringent term limits, which had produced a statehouse filled with inexperienced legislators looking over the horizon to the next election. Lawmakers can now serve 12 years in either the Assembly or the Senate."
Gail Collins: "These days, when you say 'Texas' in the context of heavy-breathing Republican extremism, everybody immediately thinks of Senator Ted Cruz. Which is really unfair when there are so many other members of the state delegation trying to do their part." ...
... Wait, Wait, Gail. You Left Out the Candidates for Lt. Gov.! "Scenes from a Broken Republican Party." In Texas, GOP candidates for lieutenant governor are arguing the merits of repealing the 17th Amendment, which provides for the popular election of U.S. senators. As Jonathan Bernstein writes in theWashington Post, the prominence of this ridiculous "issue" is symptomatic of what's wrong with the Republican party. Thanks to James S. for the link. CW: I'd wouldn't mind if Texas would repeal the whole Constitution & secede. ...
... Manny Fernandez of the New York Times: Texas Republicans still love Ted Cruz. "He's a fighter." "Texas is not America." Etc.
Elizabeth Chuck & Pete Williams of NBC News: "Same-sex marriages will begin Monday in New Jersey after the state Supreme Court ruled Friday that the state must begin granting same-sex marriage licenses, a rebuff to Gov. Chris Christie." ...
... Chris Geidner of BuzzFeed: "Before Senator-elect Cory Booker comes to Washington, he plans to start the ball rolling on marriage equality in New Jersey by marrying several same-sex couples at 12:01 a.m. Monday, Oct. 21...."
Share Article
Reader Comments (16)
Do you think it is just a coincidence that Texas excels at lousy education and has a super special state of delusion? When I hear about this type of behavior it brings me back to a question I have thought about many times. How could those Germans have supported the Nazi party? Blame the Jews, blame the government. Different target, but the same game.
Re: Heart of Darkness, Ctd.: Dick Cheney, among other things, is a yellow-bellied coward. Loves wars, as long as someone else is in harm's way. After all, he had "other priorites than military service." Priority one was apparently keeping his ass from getting shot. I despise several public figures, but none more than Dick Cheney--Mr. Undisclosed Location.
I should also mention that the driving force in Texas delusion is the fact that in a few years Cinco de Mayo will be the largest most popular holiday.
@Marvin Schwalb: I think it has something to do with institutional expectations. When I got back to Florida, I found that the lawn guy had not showed up for weeks even tho I had paid him. That didn't make me mad at humanity or even mad at the lawn guy. He was just someone who let me down.
Yesterday I went to pick up my mail at the USPS. When I left here, I had carefully put a hold on my mail & to make sure I'd filled out the form right, I had the clerk check it. But when I went to pick up my mail, the clerk (a different one) told me they had tossed and/or returned to sender all of my mail -- which included thousands of dollars in checks I need to live on plus some packages, the contents of which I paid for & probably won't get back. They said it was a "new rule." There was another woman there who also was trying to pick up her mail, & they told her they couldn't find it so they must have returned it. They were not apologetic. They were downright smug that they had messed up her life & mine. It wasn't that they didn't care -- they seemed to like screwing their "customers." They told me if I didn't quit bellyaching about it, they would revoke my home delivery privileges -- that I didn't have a "right" to receive mail. In addition, they said they would call the cops on me for complaining because I was upsetting other customers.
Am I angry? Yes, livid. I don't want to live in a country where the bureaucrats who run an essential service can deny me that service on a whim. Those nasty postal employees probably aren't any worse or better than my lawn guy, but I'm mad at "the government" even tho the POD is not technically a government service. Is this rational? I doubt it.
The difference may be I have alternatives to dealing with lawn guy's disappearance -- mow the lawn myself (no working lawnmower makes this difficult, but I can get a working lawnmower) or hire somebody else. There's not much alternative to the Post Office, so the bureaucrats have left me impotent. I cannot conduct normal business because they have made it impossible.
I expect people to let me down; I don't expect institutions to let me down -- at least not in the long run.
I think what has happened to those Texans & what happened to the German people in the 1930s is that they -- like me now -- are mad because essential institutions let them down. Texas government is lousy & has been for a long time. Taxes are low because the state provides no services & lately has gone out of its way to prevent the federal government (health care) & charitable institutions (Planned Parenthood) from providing necessary services. The German economy was in the tank for a decade before the Germans voted in the Nazis. The general institutional structure didn't work. So people get mad at "the government." (That Germans also scapegoated Jews is not surprising, either. It's just like Southern whites scapegoating blacks. Stereotyping & scapegoating increase exponentially when people are under stress. At the same time, politicians are ready, willing & able to deflect anger at themselves onto some other group -- Obama is a Muslim.)
That's not rational, but I speak from yesterday's experience -- it's real; it's heartfelt; it's potent. And, yeah, quasi-delusional. (I don't have anybody to scapegoat -- just postal employees.)
Marie
Marvin & Marie: does this mean that Texas, in a sustained economic downturn (like the rise of alternative energy sources) will have its institutions begin Nazi-like purges of the vulnerable and weak and non-Christian? At the same time, the few huge bureaucracies and businesses like Exxon, Dell, Seven Eleven and Southern Baptists will then thrive like I.G. Farben, Catholics and BASF in Nazi Germany.
As a counselor I know would say, it is quite possible you are globalizing a smaller problem into a huge global event. Where I live the postal service people are super nice, well paid with respect to the local wage level and the daily gathering of people at the post office is the center of this small community.
The authoritarian Republican party hate the USPS because they are organized labor who consistently support Democrats. The Repubs also realize that if they could seize the reigns of power of the USPS, it would be quite the coup. The centralized reigns of power of the USPS in DC would radiate out throughout the nation. All that doesn't help Marie today. As I might say to myself: it might be time to reread Viktor Frankl's "Man's search for Meaning" to realize that the only thing I can control in this life is my own attitude. And I won't let the bastards get me down. That doesn't help Marie today. I wish I could offer you more encouragement and assistance. I can only say this: at least the USPS isn't open Sundays, so they can't fuck up your day tomorrow. Cheers!
Marie, your right, when we have lousy service from a company, we can go elsewhere (my wife just canceled a deal with Home Depot because of lousy service). When it comes to government, no choice, just frustration. The problem is that the government employes are human beings, so we get to see it all, good and bad. But in the end, to a large extent, the lives we have today are dependent in a positive way on government. I just wrote a comment to the local paper noting that other commenters and politicians constantly complain that the government gets too deep in their lives. I asked the paper if it would do a study to see how many seriously conservative NJ residents refused Sandy aid and how many opposed to the ACA are refusing Medicare. Yes the government is far from perfect, feel free to occasionally be pissed, but using it as an excuse to do evil is a fundamental attack on democracy.
I find Marie's postal service experience outrageous. There must be something she can do about this besides sue them for negligence (which she didn't say she would). The matter of losing/misplacing thousands of dollars is serious stuff plus the clerk's attitude threatening to revoke her home delivery service is illegal I would think.
My husband has been going through terrible times with the IRS due to their revoking of our Historical Society tax status which has been tax exempt since its conception in the fifties. Joe is their treasurer and neglected to register on time they say (they changed this date and did not inform us) therefore they took away the exemption which means we would have to shell out $800 to register again. Joe spent countless hours on the phone to these IRS workers without results. He finally contacted our friend, the Speaker of the House, in Ct. who hooked us up with Rosa Deloro's right hand man and it looks as if things will be solved. Example of little people getting screwed while ....well, you know. If I were Marie, I'd contact my state representative, but then it's Florida and I wonder if that would do any good.
The German problem began because of Weimar's weakness after WW1––its political system fragile and at the brink of breaking. When Hitler came to power it was the core of his cultural revolution to purge the German spirit of alien influence such as: communism, Marxism, Socialism, Liberalism, pacifism, conservatism, artistic experimentation, sexual freedom, etc. All these ascribed to Jews, despite massive evidence to the contrary. So when Marvin wonders how the Germans could support the Nazi party it pays to remember that many of those Germans were Jews and many of those and other Germans despised what was happening in their country and many left because of it.
@Marie: We used to live in Newt's district, so we got to see up close what a despicable excuse for a human being he is. I guess he must have some redeeming qualites, but they're well hidden. He's the one who started our current partisan gridlock. I said that I despise Dick (what an appropriate name) Cheney, but Newt almost as much.
Barbarossa,
Full agreement on Cheney the Coward. But his paranoia about a defribillator implanted to protect his heart rhythms brought to mind bits of several things I've been reading. I've been working my way through the history plays and recently finished Richard III whose overweening ambition and precipitous descent into paranoia are highly reminiscent of Cheney's own pathology.
Not to mention egotism: "I am the most powerful enemy of Islam in the world. They all fear my power and they will stop at nothing to try to kill me." However, unlike Richard, who, despite physical infirmity takes to the field of battle without hesitation, Cheney remained in his little hidey hole while sending others to fight and die. Fat chance anyone could get near him with anything, never mind some nefarious, mythical electrical impulse weapon. And the fact that a fictional TV show makes use of a similar plot device doesn't mean Cheney was right all along. By that logic New York City can rely on the Avengers to help them out next time aliens invade. Paranoia is no friend of logic.
The other writer I've been reading is Aristotle who, in The Politics, describes a tyrant as a ruler who acts according to his own needs and desires with little regard for the safety of the state.
Sound like Cheney?
Oh, and from the Ironic, I'nit? Department, the Post story in Marie's link that dispenses the Cheney Paranoia anecdote relates that Dickless has co-authored a book with his cardiologist entitled "Heart". Pretty funny coming from a guy with no heart at all. Maybe next he'll write a book called "Balls". Bush's new book "Brains" is due out any day now.
PD Pepe, I agree with your assessment of German history so let me extend it to Texas (and other States as well).
When Ted Cruz came to power it was the core of his cultural revolution to purge the Texas spirit of alien influence such as: socialism, Mexicans, liberalism, communism, pacifism, sexual freedom, etc. And many of the Texans are Mexicans and many Texans are against the Republican party but the bottom line is never forget:
First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.
Let's hope that the Texans who don't agree stand up and do something that can change the whole deal, VOTE.
And one more little piece to show my current frustration with America. In the NJ Senate election, Booker got 55% of the vote. However, early pols showed a much larger lead. The problem, in part, very low voter turnout, particularly among Democrats. Yes, the Tea Party is more driven, helped by hate. But think about someone who is opposed to Sandy aid getting 44% of the vote in NJ.
@ Akhilleus: From an essay on Tyrants: Ian Buruma
"Before speculating on the future shape of dictatorships, I would like to return to the past, not only to reflect on the nature of great dictators themselves, but on something that to me is more interesting, namely our fatal attraction to them. What is it about them that is so alluring, and allows them to destroy the lives of millions? why, to be more concrete, did so many Poles cry in the street when Stalin dies, even though he had done nothing but but harm? Why do Chinese taxi drivers still have images of Chairman Mao in their cars, even though he killed tens of millions? If only we knew that, we might have a better chance of seeing what might be in store for us, before it is too late."
Marie, I suggest you take up your post office complaint with your regional USPS office. The regional office for the Manatee-Sarasota area is at the Sarasota airport; I don't know where yours would be, but likely at or near an airport. I doubt if USPS wants pissed off customers; it has more than enough other problems.
@citizen624: No, I don't think Texans are going to turn into Nazis, but certainly some of the supporters of Ted Cruz highlighted in the NYT article linked above harbor irrational grudges against "illegals" &, say, "Muslims." When Cruz's supporters say they admire him because he's "a fighter," what do they think he's fighting against? -- well, most prominently, affordable health insurance for "those people." When they talk about government overreach, sometimes they mean the EPA, & sometimes they mean food stamps for "those people." No, that's hardly Kristallnacht & death camps (which many Germans later claimed they knew nothing about), but the sentiment is similar: "our people (who are superior)" would be better off if "those people" weren't around. Think of Mitt Romney's "moochers." Mitt won Texas.
Yeah, I'm being irrational & "globalizing" a small problem. Like most people, I have a lot on my plate, & not being able to receive mail was not one I anticipated. Moreover, it most certainly exacerbates the difficulty of emptying the rest of my plate.
BTW, the pay grades must be pretty low where you live. According to this Houston Chron article, postal clerks start at only $25,657/year. Letter carriers earn nearly twice as much.
@P.D. Pepe: No, I wouldn't expect much help from my Congresscritter, one of the teabaggers who voted against re-opening the government. He'd probably tell me to use a private service (FedEx or whatever). Your husband's problem with the IRS is quite analogous to mine: the agency to whom one must appeal is the one that secretly changed the rules in the middle of the game. I'm glad he got some help working it out.
@James Singer: Thanks very much for the tip. I didn't know the USPS had regional offices. I'll find mine & contact them Monday.
@Akhilleus: Thanks for the chuckle. I'm going to look for Bush's book "Brains" in my local independent bookstore.
@Marvin Schwalb: I agree that "the lives we have ... are dependent in a positive way on government." As someone who supports government programs, I may feel more let down than others when a quasi-government program so callously & colossally fails me. Perhaps if I were a teabagger, I'd take this incident as one more confirmation that government is the problem (thanks, Ronnie).
Since the NSA photographs all of the mail we get, maybe I should write to them & ask for snapshots of my mail! At least then I'd know who tried to contact me.
Marie
PD,
Thanks for the Buruma quote. A NYRB article?
I think part of the attraction, for many who feel themselves powerless and disenfranchised, is an authoritarian leader who will "make it all better".
Authoritarianism's first goal is exactly what happened in Germany, as you recount, the purging of "the others". This is also what many teabaggers desire, suppression of alternate world views, abolition of regulations and rules they don't like, and finally, cathartic purification through expulsion or, as in other times and places, extermination.
Buruma's question is a good one and I don't have an easy answer for it, but we all know the power of authoritarians.
Authoritarianism, especially when attached to religion is especially vicious. Traditional religion was not a part of Stalinism but it was replaced by statism. The other major defining characteristic of the authoritarian is intolerance, something teabaggers have in spades. The psychological warping that goes along with the authoritarian mindset offers a partial answer to the question "What's the matter with Kansas", which asks why people vote against their best interests. It has to do with what they consider their best interests and in many cases, it may be that sticking it to the "others", the disbelivers, the infidels, whether they be liberals, women's rights activists, gays, academics, union members, whatever, is a much more powerful attractor than economic security and human rights.
After all, in an authoritarian paradigm, rights can be sacrificed to punish the others and any economic problems can easily be blamed on them as well.
Tyrants don't all come with giant statues and huge murals of their faces painted on the sides of buildings. Some come dressed in blue suits and dispense their poison through the TV.
@Akhilleus: Thank you for your reply to my comment yesterday. I don't blame Democrats and Republicans equally for the debacle of the last few months. The blame on the left I would attribute almost entirely to Obama and his practice of throwing raw meat to the mob, from Shirley Sherrod to the first debt ceiling negotiation. After a while the mob develops expectations. On the right I blame the teaparty for stupidity and the Republican party for the incompetence which cedes power to that minority. Pissing on the Republicans is a waste of time; pig wrestling. The debt ceiling is raised for another 4 months. Budget negotiations begin. Democrats must negotiate with Republicans. It is going to be difficult enough without the whipping up even more rancor by insulting the Republicans. At least the government side is led by Patty Murray who was in favor of calling the Republican bluff in the first DC negotiations. She won't roll over for Ryan. I think it more productive to encourage those Republicans who voted for the debt ceiling extension to develop an independence of action from the teaparty and to encourage others to join them. If you feel that getting down in the pig sty with the teaparty is more satisfying, go for it. Pardon me for thinking that everyone in that sty is an *.