;)
Tuesday
Oct012013
The Commentariat -- Oct. 2, 2013
David Jackson of USA Today: "President Obama has shortened a trip to Asia because of the government shutdown, telling the leaders of Malaysia and the Philippines he will not be traveling to those countries. Obama is still scheduled to leave Saturday night for a pair of Asian economic summits in Indonesia and Brunei -- at least for now." ...
... Pete Kasperowicz of the Hill: "The House on Tuesday night rejected three appropriations resolutions that would have funded the District of Columbia, veterans programs and national parks, after House Republicans set them up in a way that required Democratic support for passage.... Republicans brought up the resolutions under a suspension of House rules, which required a two-thirds majority vote." ...
... Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "To many Senate Republicans, the House conservatives' position has become mystifying. In a meeting of Senate Republicans, Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee rose to ask how the party would respond if it controlled the White House and the Senate and a Democratic House insisted it would not finance the government unless Washington rolled back laws hampering unions." ...
... Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "House leaders are presenting to their rank and file a plan to bring to the floor spending bills to fund veterans' programs, the National Park Service and federally funded services in Washington.... But that plan, like all the others that House Republicans have sent to the Senate, appears dead-on-arrival. 'Ted Cruz is going to pick his favorite federal agencies to open? Come on,' said Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate.... Among the [Congressional] rank and file, more and more Republicans are saying they believe they have no cards left to play." ...
... The Orange Man Has Two Faces. John Bresnahan of Politico: "... House Speaker John Boehner stood on the House floor Monday and called on his colleagues to vote for a bill banning a 'so-called exemption' that lawmakers and staffers receive for their health insurance.... Boehner ... [was] seeking to prohibit members of Congress and Capitol Hill aides from getting thousands of dollars in subsidies for their health insurance as they join Obamacare-mandated insurance exchanges. Yet behind-the-scenes, Boehner and his aides worked for months with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and others, to save these very same, long-standing subsidies, according to documents and e-mails provided to Politico." Boehner & his aides went to extraordinary lengths to cover up the Speaker's involvement in obtaining the subsidies. ...
... Ed Kilgore: " This isn't just a embarrassing disclosure for Boehner, though it is that. It's more evidence, if you need any, that the sudden claim of House Republicans that they're just offering some ideas that the two parties should compromise on, and that Democrats have mysteriously decided to shut the government down instead of negotiating, is a complete crock." ...
... CW: AND this should -- but won't -- be the nail in the coffin of claims that Republicans are fiscal conservatives. Jeanna Smialek & Ian Katz of Bloomberg News: "A partial shutdown of the federal government will cost the U.S. at least $300 million a day in lost economic output at the start, according to IHS Inc. While that is a small fraction of the country's $15.7 trillion economy, the daily impact of a shutdown is likely to accelerate if it continues as it depresses confidence and spending by businesses and consumers." The report doesn't touch on the cost to taxpayers of shutting down, then gearing up agencies -- not just a matter of turning off the light switch at the stroke of midnight October 1, then turning it back on whenever Republicans choose to allow the government to function again. ...
... Ezra Klein interviews Robert Costa of the National Review to try to get a perspective of what's going on in the minds of Boehner & the Crazy Caucus. Pretty illuminating (assuming you can use words like "illuminating" in a graf that features the dim bulbs in the House GOP): Costa: "What we're seeing is the collapse of institutional Republican power." ...
... Jonathan Bernstein: "If in fact 175 House Republicans were actually eager to end this thing without a shutdown, and Boehner refused to bring it to the floor because he feared that the 30-60 would cost him his job, then the responsibility lies mainly with him.... But I just don't believe it.... The Speaker is elected by Republicans to do what they want -- and as far as I'm concerned he's probably doing just that.... The main responsibility here is the bulk of the Republican conference. Not the guy acting on their behalf." ...
... CW: Bernstein makes a plausible case, but I still think Boehner is callng the shots. According to some reporting, when a group of about 25 of the Less-Crazy Caucus decided to vote against Plan C or D or whatever Monday night, Boehner went back & talked all but two of them out of it. He said he knew what he was doing, & the Less-Crazies went along with him. They're conservatives, you know. They don't like to go out on a limb. This bit of evidence suggests that Boehner is a leader in fact as well as in name. He is leading these malleable guys around by the nose. I could be wrong. ...
... James Downie of the Washington Post: "Ted Cruz and Co. refuse to leave the shop until they've stamped their feet and screamed as much as possible. All this would be bad enough if a shutdown was the biggest harm that these spoiled brats and their far-right enablers could inflict on the country. But it is looking ever more likely that Republicans ... will make ending the shutdown part of the debt-ceiling negotiations, thus threatening what President Obama accurately described as an 'economic shutdown' as well. In other words, having lost at the ballot box and in the courts, Republicans will take our economy hostage to undercut the law of the land." ...
Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events. -- Abraham Lincoln, to Southerners, February 1860
One faction, of one party, in one house of Congress, in one branch of government, shut down major parts of the government -- all because they didn't like one law.... As long as I am President, I will not give in to reckless demands by some in the Republican Party to deny affordable health insurance to millions of hardworking Americans. -- Barack Obama, October 1, 2013
And I laughed when people compared Obama to Lincoln. In fact, both of them have had to fight a civil war. Actually, the same civil war. As two Reality Chex contributors suggested in yesterday's Comments, the supposed ObamaCare fight-to-the-death is all wrapped up in the same shroud of racism that brought us the War of Northern Aggression. -- Constant Weader
... ** Update. Joan Walsh of Salon gets it exactly right: "You'll read lots of explanations for the dysfunction, but the simple truth is this: It's the culmination of 50 years of evolving yet consistent Republican strategy to depict government as the enemy, an oppressor that works primarily as the protector of and provider for African-Americans, to the detriment of everyone else. The fact that everything came apart under our first African-American president wasn't an accident, it was probably inevitable." ...
... Lemmings! Henry Farrell, in the Monkey Cage, on why House Republicans may not back down. ...
... Republicans Own the Shutdown. Steve Benen: "... we will hear many congressional Republicans and many in the political media suggest Democrats bear some or all of the responsibility for this fiasco. For those who care about reality in the slightest, anyone making such an argument deserves to be laughed at. The detail to keep in mind is that most GOP lawmakers aren't bothering with the pretense. They know that Republicans shut down the government -- and they're proud of it." Benen cites some proud remarks from the Crazy Kids. ...
... "Mission Accomplished: The Tea Party Shutdown." E. J. Dionne: "... no one talks more about the Constitution than the tea party. Before the Civil War, John C. Calhoun and a variety of nullifiers and future secessionists spoke incessantly about the Constitution, too. We know where that led." Thanks to Barbarossa for the link. ...
Nero blamed the Christians, the President's blaming the Republicans. -- Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas)
Evidently, comparing Obama to Hitler is now outre even among Republicans. But it is fine to compare him to a despot (often accused of being the Antichrist) who ordered the persecution & killing of Christians in retaliation for supposedly setting a massive fire. (I wrote to Poe & asked him to apologize to President Obama immediately; I'm sure he will.) Also great: compare yourself & your co-conspirators to Christian martyrs. One difference: the Christians were most likely innocent of burning down Rome; Republicans are openly gleeful about burning down Washington. -- Constant Weader
... A Reality Chek from Charles Pierce (this is something Nancy Pelosi alluded to Monday): "... this whole debate begins generally in a context of previous Democratic capitulations. Far from an equal footing, the Democrats find themselves in the ludicrous position of defending previous Republican victories for current Republican attacks." ...
... Catherine Thompson of TPM: "A planned Ku Klux Klan gathering in Gettysburg, Pa. was canceled due to the government shutdown, Philadelphia's WCAU reported Tuesday." ...
... As Charles Pierce writes, "The shutdown has had one positive consequence." In the same post, Pierce includes this language, "... the Greatest Generation (tm. Brokaw Treacle Enterprises)." CW: This alone is reason enough to love Pierce. ...
... Here's President Obama speaking yesterday about the shutdown & the rollout of the ACA:
... The White House Website now boasts this statement: "Due to Congress's failure to pass legislation to fund the government, the information on this web site may not be up to date. Some submissions may not be processed, and we may not be able to respond to your inquiries. Information about government operating status and resumption of normal operations is available at USA.GOV." ...
... Since John Boehner became Speaker of the House, "there has not been a single significant piece of legislation enacted into law":
... Rebecca Leber of Think Progress: "The government shut down because a small group of Republicans, led by Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX), insist on linking continued funding to repealing, defunding, or delaying Obamacare. Even many prominent Republicans acknowledge that.... But some in the media still insist on pushing that false equivalence narrative that 'both sides are to blame.'" Leber reproduces "a few of the most egregious examples." ...
... Ed Kilgore: "Maybe such headlines reflect laziness and ignorance rather than silent partisanship, but they are more effective instruments for the GOP position than the fieriest Ted Cruz speech." ...
... CW: Zeke Miller & Alex Rogers of Time continue the both-sides-do-it tradition today: "On Day One of the shutdown, Republicans and Democrats agreed on one thing: their party was right. Politicians cheered party solidarity Tuesday, while acknowledging the damage they are causing by their inability to reach agreement. 'Democratic unity is as strong as ever,' boasted Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon. 'And that is a great thing, because it means that there's hope. The bad news about today is, of course, that many innocent people were hurt.' 'It's an enormous victory,' said an aide to Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), who was instrumental in crafting the Republican party's plan to tie defunding the Affordable Care Act to the government spending bill. 'It's unfortunate that it has resulted in a temporary government shutdown, but it's an enormous victory in that we have for the first time in more than a year...been talking about Obamacare in a very substantive way.'" ...
... CW: Look here, clueless, nonpartisan "journalist" people, the situation is pretty simple if even Tom Friedman can grasp it: "What is at stake in this government shutdown forced by a radical Tea Party minority is nothing less than the principle upon which our democracy is based: majority rule. President Obama must not give into this hostage taking -- not just because Obamacare is at stake, but because the future of how we govern ourselves is at stake.... President Obama is not defending health care. He's defending the health of our democracy. Every American who cherishes that should stand with him." ...
... CW: I was sure, what the world falling down around us and her erstwhile O'Bambi having inconveniently mutated into a stand-up guy, that MoDo would write about the swell shoes pacing the runways during Fashion Week. Instead she roused herself to imagine John Boehner's Bad Day.Maybe she shoulda stuck to shoes.
Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times: "As Pope Francis convened a closed meeting on Tuesday with eight cardinals he appointed to overhaul the Vatican, he used his second revealing interview in two weeks to make a barbed indictment of the failings of the Roman Catholic Church, calling it overly clerical and insular, interested in temporal power and often led by 'narcissists.'"
News Lede
New York Times: "Tom Clancy, whose complex, adrenaline-fueled military novels spawned a new genre of thrillers and made him one of the world's best-known and best-selling authors, died on Tuesday in Baltimore. He was 66."
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Reader Comments (24)
My beloved but wrong headed tea bagging brother, just got furloughed.
How Ironic.
mae finch
Anyone who wants to bite my head off for this opinion is welcomed to it but I am holding EVERY republican and everyone who votes for them responsible for this fiasco. I am getting tired of seeing references to some, a few, a minority, teabaggers, and all the other terms and phrases used in the media to imply that not all repugs are sociopathic bad guys. ALL of them are at the very least enablers of this destruction of our government and our way of life. It is their dogma and worldview that they and their interests take priority over the rest of us. They are the entitled ones, the deserving ones, the righteous ones, the rest of us be damned.
You are oh so right Marie, our very democracy is at stake. We have to win this one.
In thinking about John Boehner's "stinking thinking," I go back to what I have learned from recovering alcoholics. In AA, it is said: "Alcoholics do not have relationships-- they take hostages." IMHO, John Boehner is a serious alcoholic, and calling him a "sloppy drunk," reduces his pathology to something less dangerous! I do believe that his brain is quite pickled, and his thinking truly is stinking. Furthermore, I think he cannot help himself. When under pressure, he drinks more. And becomes less coherent. That's addiction.
In the addiction model, alcoholism is viewed as a disease not of "drinking," but of "thinking." Alcoholics are paranoid, controlling , and unable to take responsibility for the effect of their actions on others. I think there are more than a few congresspeople (and, to be fair, senators) who suffer from this disease, which has a cure, but deny it affects them. Denial, of course, is the hallmark of the addiction. So too bad. And unfunny.
I agree totally with Tommy. To me, there is no daylight between "reasonable" Republicans like Susan Collins (my senator) who nonetheless vote the party line and the most strident Tea Party rep.
Also, to Kate's point: Alcoholics (I'm sober 30 years) do the most damage when they are enabled. Against sage advice (ours, Pierce's, Maddow's, Olbermann's, etc.), the President has chosen in the past to negotiate with these folks; why should they expect that sufficient pressure wouldn't cause him to cave again?
When the enabler finally stands up and says, "Enough," the alcoholic is enraged. It isn't necessary that his expectations and demands be reasonable; after all, up until that moment they have been met. That's enough. So, during this interregnum, there will be hell for all of us to pay. However, this dreadful period is necessary, and the enabler should remind him or herself that it would never have come to this had it not been for all those little past concessions that seemed so harmless at the time.
@Mae, does your brother see the irony? Does he see that he is responsible for his own furlough because of his support of the Crazies?
I think the shutdown should have no exclusions ~ every agency, including the military, air traffic controllers and, most definitely, the members of congress, should be furloughed. That means no MOC receives a paycheck.
@Mushiba: couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, Congress can't even refuse to pay itself, despite that "No Budget No Pay" bill the House passed earlier this year. Congressional pay is protected by the 27th Amendment: "No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened."
Marie
Quoted in a WaPo article on DC this morning: " 'Public anger at the federal government is as high as at any point since the Pew Research Center begain asking the question in 1997,' Pew said Monday."
The radicals of the conservative religion are accomplishing their goal of sapping the public's belief that the federal government is an instrumentality of their self-governance, and is rather an alien, imposed structure that they cannot trust. While each day of the continuing confrontation shows the error of the House Republicans, and the damage they do to the country, the process also feeds the intolerance of the people for the government that THEY, THE PEOPLE, OWN. It is a declared goal of the conservatives to weaken the government, and they are advancing that goal.
Government of, by and for the people is getting a smeared reputation, but the hard right is like the pigs in the aphorism "Don't wrestle with pigs -- you all get muddy but the pig likes it."
How can you have a functioning democracy when a critical mass of people are too stupid to know when they are hurting themselves?
@Tommy Bones: Let's add the complicit mainstream media with its both-sides-do-it, he-said/she-said "nonpartisan" approach to "journalism." They legitimize the crazies in a way that the crazies themselves cannot legitimize themselves. A contributor mentioned the other day that David Gregory actually asked Ted Cruz some hard questions. That doesn't mean that Gregory has reformed & is going to start practicing journalism; it means that the Village People have decided Ted Cruz is not One of Them. For Tea Partiers, Gregory's hard questions simply solidify their belief that the MSM has a "liberal bias."
I don't mind that the Sunday shows have wingers as guests -- the better to out them. But they invite wingers as "experts" week after week for their "round-table" discussions. Before CNN gave him a regular gig (for shame), the Newt -- who is now reportedly cheering on the shutdown, perhaps so he won't be the only Asshole Speaker in recent history -- was a regular guest contributor on both ABC's & NBC's morning shows. As Krugman has pointed out, when he appears on the Sunday shows, it's usually he against everybody else, because the so-called liberals these shows book are compliant Village People. Krugman of course can hold his own, but to folks in the Heartland watching a true representative of Brainland arguing against Official Nonsense Economics, Krugman must appear to be a crazed loner, so he must be wrong. And P.S., Judy Woodruff of PBS is the worst.
Given this dynamic, it's hard to blame ordinary Americans who catch a bit of news at 6:30 or read a brief Time story while waiting for the dentist for not knowing which side has it right. These Americans rely -- not unreasonably -- on the "experts" in the media to sift & winnow the news, & the MSM have almost uniformly let them down.
Marie
"They know that playing around with the debt ceiling later this month would be a profoundly un-patriotic act." How about treasonous? From an E. J. Dionne column in WaPo.: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/10/01/mission-accomplished-the-tea-party-shutdown/.
Back in 1957, Chrysler ran a series of ads with the tag line "Suddenly, it's 1960." As Marie has pointed out, with us, "Suddenly, it's 1860."
" And P.S., Judy Woodruff of PBS is the worst." Oh, Marie, if you were to join the mister and me while we watch Judy on the TEEVEE you'd see and hear two people having apoplectic fits over this woman, although the mister is much harder on her than I.
As early as 1944, a writer named John McCarten wrote in "The American Mercury"–––"It may not be his fault but it is surely his misfortune that the worst elements on the political right including its most blatant lunatic fringe, are whooping it up for MacArthur [General]." MacArthur was the darling of the far right who encouraged them to believe he shared their views that the New Deal signaled the end of Western civilization. And this antidote by Eisenhower brings to mind another pompous ass, our Sam I am guy in the senate: When asked by a woman if he had ever met MacArthur, Ike said, "Not only have I met him, Ma'am, I studied dramatics under him for five years in Washington and for four years in the Philippines."
Another figure from the past who sprinkled the seeds of little government as possible was the multi-mixer inventor Ray Kroc who bought McDonald's franchise early on. He was vehement about how children, not the government were to take care of their parents and grandparents as they got older. He, too, harbored a bitter grudge against FDR because of Social Security. He finally bought out McDonalds and continued his diatribe against "government handouts."
And then, the seeds finally reached the White House when we finally got a president* that told us government was the problem, not the solution and said "The scariest thing you encounter is when someone says, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."
Put Ayn Rand in this trough and we gots what we gots.
By the way, Chris Mathews has written a book entitled "Tip and the Kipper" which I imagine is a sentimental look back at how things REALLY worked so well back in those days. Chris has a tenancy to get all mushy when it comes to certain historical myths. Tip O'Neil was probably one of the most effective Speakers of the House and knew exactly how to handle Reagan whom he was fond of but did not respect. The fact that both were Irish and could bond with blarney and beer worked beautifully. Today we are stuck with the head of a House that is run by that lunatic fringe that John McGarten was talking about back in 1944. Seeds sown, weeds take over.
Been waiting for more reactions and comments ever since I spotted the news blurb about the recent Anita Perry interview. Hmmmm, I thinking... things must be rather tense at the Perry dinner table these days. Then today, Charlie Pierce delivered splendid takedown to Gov. Goodhair..." The problem, Rick, is not that you stick the wrong word in the wrong place, it's that you stick your head up your ass, a talent you demonstrated later ...(more re ACA)" Wonder if we'll ever hear from Anita again. Of course, I remember when Barbara Bush came out pro-choice way back when, and her 'beloved outspokenness' suddenly vanished.
Read more: Rick Perry Abortion Loose Talk - The Piehole. Why Does It Open So Wide? - Esquire
P.S. as I scrolled down today's comments here, I was quite impressed with the response to Tommy Bones...Yeah, yeah, nodding my head in accord as I read. Spot on. Well put, CW!
@Jack Mahoney: Bill Nemitz, a writer for the Portland Press has a great column today. (I think Charles Pierce mentioned a similar view of Maine's SC the other day, something, something 'Pillar of Jello")
http://www.pressherald.com/news/Nemitz__Sen__Collins_hardly_a_profile_in_courage_in_federal_stalemate.html ..."Sen. Collins hardly a profile in courage during shutdown stalemate"
Me, I don't know who will run against her next time, but the person would have to be totally outrageously bad so as not to vote for...since I am fed up with wishy-washy Collins.
The unstable teabaggers running us into the latest Republican ditch (although this is more like a chasm) are programmed by an intransigent and irrational ideology. The dangers of ideological fanaticism require no additional publicity, but what's driving this group, and the vast majority of teabagging louts supporting the latest treason, is more personal than ideology.
It is, in large part, what Joan Walsh is talking about (and most of us out here have been saying for some time), racially motivated animus toward the president. Ronald Reagan made it okay to openly discriminate against, tell jokes about, mock, and create policy against minorities in this country.
It's the Reagan acolytes who were sending around pictures of the White House with a watermelon patch on the front lawn (is there a hoarier symbol of out and out racism? Oh, well, unless you want to throw in the comparison of African Americans to apes and gorillas, which Reagan loving baggers have also used as a very public display of racial hatred), who have kept the birther bullshit going, who have questioned the legality of the president's ability to hold office. Reagan made it okay to be a racist pig. And to take your racism for a walk out of the shadows.
And the present Republican Party has taken that permission slip and been running up and down the halls of the Capitol for decades spray painting the walls with racist slurs. Not only is it okay, it's become chic, in a disgusting and reprehensible way, to be a reactionary racist slug, to see if you can outdo the other slugs in repellent, nauseating insults to the TWICE elected president of the United States. Racism, and personal hatred of this president are by far the driving forces behind the closure of government. Sure they hate government, but they hate Obama even more.
Right-wingers despised FDR for putting a stop to bankers' ability to roll the dice with depositors money and for helping poor people. But as much as they hated him (and still do), it wasn't nearly as public and toxic as the very special contempt reserved for Barack Obama.
An emotion surpassed only by love, hatred eviscerates rationality, causes the holders of this corroding passion to reject even those qualities and decisions that would most benefit them most. They are possessed. But as Socrates said, (I'm paraphrasing) hatred comes from the deepest desires. I shudder to think of deepest teabagger desires. I feel slimy just wondering about them. Plato, in his depiction of the death of Socrates, uses the word "misology" to describe those whose hatred of reasonableness was powerful enough to condemn the old man. The misology of the GOP is more pronounced and far more pernicious.
But in their hatred they have achieved exactly what they hoped would never happen:
They have helped make the president look, well, presidential.
And in turn have revealed themselves as, at heart, pestilential.
So the Republican Shutdown will continue. There is no rational reason to want to hold the entire country hostage over a law designed to help make life better for people. I mean, it's fucking insane on the face of it, isn't it?
No rational reason, perhaps, but there is a reason.
They hate Barack Obama with every stinking breath they take and they will be god damned before they see this despised black man succeed at anything. They would condemn the whole country, their children, their children's children, before allowing him to claim the tiniest victory.
And why the press isn't commenting on THAT is beyond shameful.
@Mushiba,
Brother would never admit (to me) his party's crazies caused his personal blow back.
Long ago we agreed to disagree and do not discuss politics.
mae finch
In addition to all those urges and motives we have seen written of in the past few days, can it also be possible that the crazies are hoping for impeachment fodder? Sure. The situation is chaotic, and will get more so as the debt ceiling date approaches. There will be mistakes made in some agencies, where they perform acts or spend funds that were not technically legal in the absence of appropriations. Darrel Issa & Co. will start another witch-hunt to find culpability up the chain of command, seeking a bill against the President. The term "high crimes and misdemeanors" will be defined down to "any non-trivial error."
The President just cancelled part of his pending Asia trip, and may scrub the remainder. In 1995 President Clinton cancelled his trip to the APEC Leaders' meeting in Asia, to deal with the first government shutdown that year. He had no real work to fill the schedule hole. Much of the WH paid staff was furloughed, and unpaid interns took up some of the slack for chores around the Oval Office. Monica Lewinsky delivered pizza.
You can bet that there are House GOPpers hoping against hope that all the chaos will turn up SOMETHING they can impeach him for.
PD,
I haven't read the Chris Matthews' book but I've heard his somewhat befogged recollections before and it seems that he too often channels his very own Thomas Bowdler when he should be thinking and writing without the blinders. What we don't need is another gauzy hagiography of the dear old Gipper. Reagan is personally responsible for much of the worst of what's happened to this country since he was falling asleep in staff meetings, dreaming of Brylcream and commies and white picket fences and darkies and women who knew their place.
Matthews has been hawking this Damon and Pythias thing for some time and all it really does is burnish his credentials as one more media type who attributes both failures and successes in American politics to both sides.
To continue the classical allusions, the Reagan administration was a fucking Pandora's Box of really, really bad shit for this country.
Write a book about that and how the ol' Gipper has helped poison the beer of everyone who wanted to sit next to him in a bar, and maybe I'll read it.
Ted Cruz exposed in another fabrication otherwise known as a bullshit story:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/28/1242168/-Ted-Cruz-Lie-Exposed-By-Student-He-Used-To-Attack-Obamacare-VIDEO?detail=email
On another front, I'm kinda digging what this new pope has been saying. I do have a nagging suspicion that one of these days he'll come out with an encyclical entitled "Sorry dudes, I've just been fucking with you".
Or maybe he'll be like the Steve Martin character on the old SNL, Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber, who would dream of progressive ways out of the dark past only to reject them at the end:
"Perhaps I've been wrong to blindly follow the medical traditions and superstitions of past centuries. Maybe we barbers should test these assumptions analytically, through experimentation and a "scientific method". Maybe this scientific method could be extended to other fields of learning: the natural sciences, art, architecture, navigation. Perhaps I could lead the way to a new age, an age of rebirth, a Renaissance!........Naaaaaahhh!"
But so far it's worlds away from what we're used to. How did Ratzinger's Nazis ever pick this guy, anyway? Another organization that does half-assed background checks.
@ Akhilleus: Wow right back atya for your first post today.
The right have been very successful in getting people to go along with the idea that to point out someone's racism is, in and of itself, a racist act. They call it "playing the race card," and apparently it's a shameful thing to do.
But it's blatantly obvious that the hatred so many hold for Obama - the sheer, visceral hatred - is not based in opposition to particular policies. Let's be honest; what has he done that any of his immediate predecessors wouldn't have? The ACA is a Heritage Foundation idea, for cryin' out loud.
No, the particular brand of hatred reserved for Obama is not based on his policies, it's not to be rationalized in the same way hatred for Franklin Roosevelt had a semi-rational basis. It has to be something else, and we all know what that something else is: the furious lashing out of an unthinking beast in its death throes.
Racism is dying in America not because it wants to, but because it has to. We are becoming increasingly diverse and increasingly urban. We will get along better with one another simply because we have no alternative. The racists lash out ever more furiously because they see the end as well as we do. The election of Obama was an absolute sign that, although their death may not yet be nigh, it is most certainly assured. The process is long and it is arduous, but as the good Doctor told us, the arc of history, though long, turns toward justice. And the vitriol, the bile with which the racists react to Obama gives me hope that we are beyond the apogee.
Have been thinking about bullshit. As PD Pepe noted above, there's a lot of it going around, so much of it that the category invites further analysis.
In another connection the other day, I came up with the outline of a bullshit scale, ranging from the thin gruel of implied but unstated assumptions like the racial animus that motivates so much of the Right's irrationality to the out and out lies like the one the article PD referenced exposes.
The lies are one thing; because they are a matter of fact, they can be controverted, even persuasively for those (few?) who live in a fact-based world. The implications are harder to counter. Because they are only implied, when brought to the surface, they can always be denied by the "but I didn't mean THAT" or "it was just a joke" defense. It's a cowardly but often effective technique. I watched my students use for years.
But what makes it extremely hard to neutralize all the bullshit, that at both extremes and everything in between like the little lies and partial truths, is that so much of what people say these days is bathed in bullshit broth. Lying is so common, the broth permeates everything. We live in a culture that clearly does not value truth. In fact, it devalues it. There is a Gresham's Law of language in operation: when the bad drives out the good, bullshit triumphs over truth, again and again.
Has it always been so? I don't think so, but I could be wrong. Maybe I'm just remembering a childhood when lying brought punishment. But maybe punishment was meted out only to children, even then. I do remember being bothered that adults sometimes shaded the truth and seemed to escape with their lives.
I also remember "Thou shalt not lie," intoned as a commandment, to be taken seriously, and I did. But maybe I got the commandment wrong. Maybe it was really "Thou shalt not believe a lie," which today would certainly be a more useful bit of advice.
Ken,
I think you're on to something here.
Back in days of yore when lying was met with opprobrium and punishment, it was a source of shame. One of the ten commandments rules against lying. It's illegal to do in a court of law (but like high-sticking in the NHL, a successful charge of perjury is rare) and libel is, or used to be, considered a serious breach of the social contract.
The fact is that few of these things matter any more. There is no consequence for lying. This is, in part, why so many in the media get away with it day in and day out. They lie outright, they make shit up, they mislead, dissemble, equivocate, and did I mention lie outright?
The worst of them may not be those who do the actual fabrication, like GOP pols and wingnut pundits, but the members of the media who simply regurgitate said lies on command. No fact checking, no investigation, no sense of probity in play. Just a sense of amoral "what can I do to make myself important today?" Hey, if what they report turns out to be a big fat pants-on-fire lie, what does it matter? There's always tomorrow. Who gets fired today for lying? Or for passing on the lie?
People do, however, pay a price for telling the truth (see, Rather, Dan, Bush desertion report). Besides, fact checking and actual reporting are too damn hard. Not everyone is a Charlie Savage because it's hard work. You have to know what you're doing (also you have to be able to write well and develop a convincing, fact supported argument, skills too many media hacks have never bothered to cultivate).
Have we, as a society, as a culture, decided that consequences for lying are too old fashioned? A huge part of George Washington's mythos was his truth telling. But another George found truth telling too inconvenient. You want to bomb someone but don't have the evidence? Make it up. No one will care. Today, too many revel in the fact that their lies and schemes have brought them success without inconvenient repercussions, and confounded the enemy, who happen, in almost every instance, to be the American people.
Akhilleus. Your last post. Precisely. The media plays to the gnat size attention span of the public which craves constant sensationalism. Because, really, you have to search pretty hard for the alternatives. There are no ratings bumps for having a moral compass. If your end game is money and power, we are living in a perfect world of lovely juicy fruit for the taking.
@Noodge. I have often thought we are witnessing the death of a particularly despicable group defined by mindset and (mostly) race. The process is especially vicious and is being fomented and prolonged by the media. However, neither those who see themselves moving toward extinction nor the media can control demographics. Demographics will win the day. I suppose it feels especially slow because we are in the midst of a huge historical shift.
Re: Why it doesn't work. When I was a boy my dad bought me a book with the title, "The Way Things Work"; in it were explanations of various types of machinery, systems and inventions that drive our world. From steam engines to nuclear power (we're still boiling water) the commonality for success is parts of a whole working together.
Everyday I read the articles that appear in the RC followed by the comments from my fellow readers and everyday I get depressed and frustrated by the events and the reactions to those events.
My entire working live is given over to making things work. That, in a nutshell, is what my job entails. Make it work, inch here, inch there, cut this, add that; from a thought, to paper, from paper to nails, from nails to finish. Make it work.
In my frustration and depression about the toxic political atmosphere I wonder why it isn't working. Today the answer came to me.
There is a group, a segment, a cause, a party, that simply; doesn't fucking want it to work. They are not out to change the system, they are out to destroy the system. Call them what you will, I keep coming back to boy scouts at summer camp that gain control of the camp and proceed to trash the place. Willful destruction caused by smart little shits that did not get spanked enough at home. Willful little shits that always got what they wanted. Willful little shits that never had to share or sacrifice ever. Willful little shits that say, "fuck you" but it comes out as, "I'm sorry." Willful little shits that understand human nature but rather than reining in greed and selfishness give those human traits free run. Willful little shits that hide behind a false facade of religion and family.
That is why it won't work. That is why we are where we are today.
How to make it work? After all, I am all about making it work. I think the answer lies in exposing the willful little shits for what they are. Make Obamacares a success, force a success, from the inter-cities to the empty towns make national health work and you will slowly see the foundations of sand erode away from the willful little shits. My scepticism won't change but my depression would lift.
JJG: exactly correct. They don't want the government to work because it proves the lie to their policies. What people especially dislike is that the Authoritarians posing as Libertarians are channeling their inner Dick Cheney: you have to be dark and evil to beat them. They set off such a toxic stink-bomb of behavior that nobody in their right mind wants to come in the room to fix things.
Like a client of mine once who couldn't smell the urine of her dozen cats, the Repubs have stunk up the place so bad that normal folks with a relatively fixed life span don't want to spend their precious time engaging in a mess in an environment that makes them gag. We need to hold our noses and make them fix it. And if we have to become more like them to do it, we can promise ourselves a good dance at the revolution when we finish. Because no way do Boehner, McConnell, and Cruz throw a better party than my liberal friends.