Wish I'd said it first...

I try not to go to the same well too often, but this was too lovely to pass up; more from Chas. Pierce, in this case on the House of Representatives as currently constituted:

"In 2010, the voters, in their infinite wisdom, visited upon the country the biggest bunch of fantasts, paranoids, and general whackaloons since the last time Glenn Beck dined alone."

Like the man or hate him, you just can't be indifferent to the quality of the man's invective.

Gas! Gas! Gas!

My particular contempt for the pack of gussied-up ninnies, professional grifters, idle rich, and crony-capitalist-whores who are in the running for this year's GOP presidential nomination will come as no surprise to you who are familiar with this blog.

But I should note that my contempt is to some degree bipartisan. While the Republican streetwalkers are more than willing to perform whatever degrading tricks their corporate masters demand of them, their whoring is more shameless only by degree, and by the extent to which they attempt to turn the rest of their fellow Americans out compared to their Blue counterparts. The U.S. political system is awash with cash, stuffed to the eyes with jack, bloated and poisoned with lucre, and the Democrats have proved more than willing to ride on the gravy train with their less circumspect GOP counterparts.

But one particular nasty trick belongs to the Republicans and the Republicans alone; the bizarre insistence that "government is the problem", which helps insure public contempt for all governance, good and bad, as well as helping facilitate bad government (which is, in fact, a problem).

Because leaving aside whether government is or isn't a problem, absent the government - municipal, state, federal - what's left?

No, Mister Paul, it's not some sort of free-market individualist libertarian paradise; this is 21st Century North America, not fucking Fantasy Island.

No, what's left is private organizations.

And the wealthiest, best organized, and consequently most powerful organizations are commercial enterprises; businesses, corporations, call them what you will. From the local grocery chain to the regional branch of Multinational, Inc., these are the last tall men standing when the government goes bye-bye.

My problem with the GOP is that their message is simply; trust them. Love them. They are GOOD.

But...why would any sane person do that?

Corporations are just people in groups. Republicans are notorious for not trusting people in groups unless they all wear the same clothes (and we'll get to that in a moment). People in groups are, as my father the Master Chief was fond of saying, as smart as the IQ of the smartest guy in the group divided by the number of people in it and as honest as the least honest guy with the skills to dip your wallet.

Here's a good example. Pacific Gas and Electric

"...(cut) back on pipeline-replacement projects and maintenance, laying off workers, using cheaper but less effective inspection techniques and trimming other pipeline costs, saved upward of 6 percent of the money designated for pipeline safety, maintenance and operations programs...(and) spent $56 million annually on an incentive plan for executives and "non-employee directors."

And in 2010 a massive pipeline explosion in San Bruno, CA, killed eight people and destroyed over three dozen homes.

Now here's the thing; I don't blame PG&E.

That's right. They were just doing what a private company is supposed to do; making a profit. They shaved the edges of safety, hoping to squeeze a little extra profit here and there, and they guessed wrong, and the poor suckers in San Bruno paid for it.

But the "market" isn't designed to reward safety. Or anything but pure profit.

Which is why the human race has always found, whenever it has tried pure, raw, unrestricted, unregulated profit, that the goons, thugs, grifters, and thieves always come out of the walls. Because forming a cartel and fixing prices is always easier and more profitable than working hard to provide good service at low cost. Because stealing is always quicker and richer than trying to figure the market and the customer and the materials and work out the right price for the goods.

The GOP is right in this; when it comes to making and selling stuff, government often IS a problem. Governments just don't work quickly and subtly enough to respond to private demands - they can't; when your fuckups can cause the sort of irretrievable damage that government fuckups can, it pays to be slow and careful.

But the GOP is wrong, dead wrong, idiotically and criminally wrong in their insistence that private business is NEVER a problem. Especially today, when the business selling you things may be half a world away, far out of reach of your puny strength and invulnerable long after they have detonated your street and killed your kids.

No matter whether it's spilling petroleum into deep waters, leveling mountaintops, selling tainted meat, or blowing up your street; the private malefactors need a counterweight to keep them in fear of injuring or stealing from you.

That is the government's job, and they should be encouraged and empowered to do it. And anyone who tells you differently - Democrat or Republican - is trying to put you in the position so that someone who is paying his bills is in another position, and one that enables him to fuck you over if he so chooses.And the good people of San Bruno - those who remain - can tell you exactly what's wrong with that.

In Case I Wasn't Clear

Here, from Matt Taibbi, is a little chart showing the top donors to the current GOP frontrunner as well as the the last two presidential victors:So now...is it all that surprising to understand how, regardless of who gets elected, we seem to be governed with the intention to comfort the comfortable and, well, afflict the afflicted?

In all honesty things WOULD have been worse under a President McCain. But it's a difference is degree, and right now for those of us not in the two-yacht family the boat seems to be foundering - slower than we'd have gone down with Captain Crashboom and the Half-baked Alaska at the helm, but, still - the ocean looks damn cold, and awful deep, and the prospect of a steamship on the horizon looks awful dim.

An Open Letter to SEN Wyden

My dear Senator;

I'm dreadfully afraid to hear that you appear to have been drinking heavily. At least, I hope that is the reason your name appeared in the Oregonian coupled with SEN Ryan in some sort of scheme to "reform" Medicare.

Because if you ARE compos mentis I find this hard to explain. We elected you based on what we understood as your liberal principles, which include a belief that one cardinal purpose for which governments are instituted among Men is to aid those who are in difficulty. Which is, still, the principle behind such programs as Medicare.

Now given that SEN Ryan has made much of his belief that government has no such brief, and that his so-called "plan" consisted of a thinly-veiled attempt to "reform" Medicare into largesse for private insurers, I find it appalling that I find your name, a name I respected as a doughty fighter for liberal values, lending respectability to the latest Ryan scheme. If not inspired by ethanol I hope, at least, that you are attempting to infiltrate the enemy camp in order to dynamite their supplies. Given the extent to which the GOP and SEN Ryan have gone over to the raze-the-New-Deal-social-contract I can find no other rational explanation for the news of this arrangement.

Sent in hopes that with the dawn sobriety and a cold drink of water will find you abjuring the Gilded Age fantasies of SEN Ryan and a return to the bedrock principles of liberalism that have served our country so well since the days of FDR.

Yours concernedly,

John L. Lawes

Update 12/16: (Basilbeast has corrected my error: the GOP fathead-in-question is a Congressman, so I was incorrect in not identifying him as "REP" Ryan. I leave the original missive as I sent it, however, and can only suspect that the amount of drink I had taken upon reading of my Senator's betrayal affected my own judgment.)

Update 12/17: Krugman, predictably, says the same thing only better.

Punic War

Ceterum censeo GOP esse delendam.

Understand that, unlike Cato, I say this not in hate but in sorrow.

I WAS the GOP once. Like my father before me, I was a "social liberal and fiscal conservative", something that was later called an "Eisenhower" or "Rockefeller" Republican (and even later a "Republican In Name Only") but was then just called a "Republican".

Like my father, like those other "Republicans", I loved the myth of "traditional America", the fictional Rockwell America of front porches and small towns, of gritty cities and steel mills, of Boy Scouts marching on the Fourth, of the Four Freedoms, of the idea of a nation that offered itself not to a race, or a creed, or a language, or a "culture" but to an idea, the idea of "liberty and justice for all", of laws instead of men, of equality of opportunity for anyone who wanted it. An America whose strength was for protection, not conquest or intimidation. That looked at itself in terms of social and collective rights, and individual responsibilities.

An America that held onto the best of its past, but still looked forward in anticipation. That accepted its past, and all the wrongs and evils that it did, but still saw in itself the promise, the promise of a saner, more just, more rational, more united tomorrow. An America that didn't really yet exist, but lived in the hearts of those who wanted it to.

And I also loved the idea that this America let you alone to sit in the shade of your own fig tree. That allowed you to swing your fist each way free, so long as it didn't stray within arm's length of my nose. That let you love whom you pleased, work (or not) where and when you pleased (so long as you accepted the Grasshopper's Bargain and didn't whine if you froze that winter after lounging through the long summer days), that let - no, demanded - that you act the adult; gather your information, gain your wisdom, assess your options, make your choices, and live with the results. And that this America would either stand aside and let you make those choices, or actively support you in making them - against the meddling of those who would treat you like a fool or a child and try an either make them for you, or deny you even the choice.

Now, understand; I know that this America was a myth.

That the "real" America was often just a nation like any other, full of fools and knaves, founded on the extermination of the original residents of the continent with a healthy dose of chattel slavery. That the promises detailed above were as often ignored, and even willfully violated, as respected. That real American conservatism in it's Republican form was often no more than ignorance, prejudice, Know-Nothingism, small-town bigotry and Kiwanis insularity. That after its origins as the Party of Liberty just before the Civil War the Republican Party later became, and - especially after the Crash of 1929 - was often little more than, the Party of Privilege, demanding obedience to the notions of wealth, power, and the rule of the "rich, the well-born, and the able".

But like my father, I believed that there was these lies could be formed into a truth, and give virtue to the "conservative values"; caution, tradition, uncompromising honesty, civic virtue, personal integrity and responsibility. That compassion for others was founded on stern discipline for oneself. That being part of a social contract imposed duties, rather than rights. Indeed, that the rights sprang FROM the duties. That personal matters were personal and the business of the individual, but that every individual had the public duty, even the smallest and weakest of us were called upon to contribute our widow's mite. That to great power, and great wealth, came the greatest responsibilities.

This is what I thought were Republicans.

Once.

I can pinpoint almost to the year when I began to see this change; when the Southern Democrats, the old slavers, the race-baiters, the Jim Crow lovers of the Lost Cause became Republicans and brought their vile poison into the GOP.

And this was after the Party of Lincoln had fought an exhausting war against the small-town bigots of Taft, the lovers of fascism, the isolationists, the Rotarians who wanted to discard everything BUT the Rockwellian myths. When Ike refused to throw out the New Deal, when those of us on the Right who accepted that that cunning old aristocrat FDR had made the best Deal for our country in trading the wealth of a few for the betterment of the many...in abandoning the Gilded Age John-D.-Rockefeller Republicanism of "the-public-be-damned"...we became what I saw as a genuine American conservative party.

But like all Americans, the Second Civil War - the Civil RIGHTS War - forced us to choose.

And we chose wrong.

We chose first the principled scoundrel Goldwater, who then gave way to the unprincipled scoundrel Nixon. The culmination was the idiot Reagan, whose utter cluelessness and preference for the myth over the truth helped knock down the doors that the New Deal had nailed shut; the doors that contained the malefactors of great wealth and the scum of inherited privilege. Reagan, whose intellectual heirs - if they may be dignified with the term - began frantically beavering away at returning the nation to October 23, 1929.

On the way the Party picked up even more loathsome baggage; the Christopathic bigots of the unreconstructed Great Awakening, the moral nannies looking for motes in others' eyes, the bullying morons demanding that everyone around them defer to their willful ignorance, the rapacious corporate remoras (who, admittedly, had always been ours but who went from gobbling up the scraps to directing the target of the shark's teeth), the hucksters and imperialist fools and grifters that remembered that you can fool some of the people all of the time.

And that's where we are today.

Look at the Republican presidential prospects for the coming year. Look at what the state of the Party has done to them, or, rather, what they have done to themselves to make themselves acceptable to the sort of people who are now considered "Republicans".

Consider this woman, who is now the ideal to which these "Republicans" are told to aspire, and the degree to which this requires adherents of the GOP to believe three incompatible things before breakfast.

Consider the unhinged rantings of the people who speak for the Party, people who treat lies like currency, to spend whenever they desire something; Limbaugh, the "Majority Maker" himself; Beck, Coulter, Malkin, Savage, McArdle, Brooks, Krauthammer...has there ever in history been such a licensed pack of meretricious and shortsighted meeching fools, charlatans, buffoons, and scoundrels?

And as yet there is no voice from the ranks to call these unprincipled liars to book. No one to insist that reason trumps conviction, and that sense should rule sensibility. No one, in short, who represents me.

But there is worse.

Simply by existing, this congeries of stuffed barneys forces the entire political discussion away from sensible accommodation in pursuit of the ridiculous phantasms that constitute the modern GOP's "agenda". The oligarchs that in fact largely provide that agenda may be excused; they are rapacious and honest about it. It is the honest idiots that comprise most of the Party that are inexcusable, and their ignorance and credulity are combining to prevent even the simplest and most compassable of solutions to the problems the United States faces, and will face, in the 21st Century. Their impenetrable conjunction of pride, greed, stupidity, anger, and foolery is making this nation ungovernable; they cannot govern when they are elected, and when rejected, conspire to prevent others from governing.

There is no other solution.

The GOP must be destroyed.

A Nation of Men

Noted in passing: today is the "60th day" since the formal announcement that U.S. armed forces were involved in the civil war in Libya. Other than a handful of GOP senators neither the Congress nor the White House appears to be concerned about missing the deadline for a Congressional approval of the escapade required under 50 U.S.C. 1541-1548.

The U.S. right has always scorned the "War Powers Resolution". Now the circle is complete, and the U.S. "left" (whatever there is of it represented in the corridors of power) shows its disregard that the People in Congress have any business interfering in foreign military policy.

What was that? A nation of laws?

Whereever did you hear THAT nonsense..?

Nacht und Nebel

I have up to this point refrained from posting anything much regarding the "secret sacred wars" that the Bush, and now, the Obama Administrations have been conducting as part of their "Global War on Terror".

Partly because I don't really see what more needs to be said; lots of people in the blogosphere as well as conventional media have hammered away on this pernicious combination of secrecy, executive power, and "war" that go a long way to realizing Judge Jeffries' and the Court of Star Chamber ideal of guilt and execution without the bother and tedium of trial.

And partly, frankly, because of the very secrecy of the damn thing. At least with the conventional wars we're fighting in central Asia and elsewhere We the People have some vague notion of the purpose (at least the stated purpose), means, methods, approximate progress, and costs. With this stuff...who the hell knows? Which is obviously the point, since we can't get upset about the foolish waste of time, money, and human lives of some nonsensical secret program if we don't know enough about it to know whether it IS a waste of time, money, and lives.

But the Obama "Justice" Department's latest step is just too ridiculous to pass.

"The Obama administration urged a federal judge early Saturday to dismiss a lawsuit over its targeting of a U.S. citizen for killing overseas, saying that the case would reveal state secrets."

So what the Obama DoJ is saying, in effect, is:

1. We get to decide if you are a "threat" without showing you or anyone else the evidence and your U.S. citizenship is no defense, i.e. you have no due process of law with regard to the charge.
2. We get to decide what to do about that, up to and including assassinating you. Again, we need not show any evidence of why you need to die, so you have no recourse there, either.
3. And if you or your proxies have the temerity to challenge us in court, we will simply refuse to meet you there, citing State Secrets.

Three strikes, you''re out.Or dead, as the case may be.

This is insane.

The Constitution expressly forbids the U.S. government to take life or liberty "without due process of law" and this is supposed to be a government of laws, not of men.

Why, why, WHY are we not rioting in the streets about this?

If this is not tyranny, what is it then?

Underworld: Rise of the Weasels

Now here's a depressing thought:

"When I've asked Hill staff and elected officials about this, I've gotten an interesting answer: Think about what you need to do to become a politician, they say. Rise up in your local party leadership. Raise a lot of money. Get yourself quoted in the media. Campaign effectively. You don't really need to know that much about policy. And so a lot of elected officials simply don't know much about policy. Even if they wanted to become known as problem solvers and thinkers, they don't have the chops for it, and the pace of modern campaigning means they never have time to develop those chops, either. It's a depressing thought."

Yes, it is, Ezra.

We're seeing it here in Oregon, where our governor's race, among others, couldn't be more depressing. A retreaded former Democratic governor who proved only marginally effective when previously in office against the usual GOP gormless bumper-sticker who represents the triumph of belief in magic over actual thinking. Neither one can be forced to make any sort of statement that strays close to fiscal or political reality.

Both pronounce the usual crap about "prosperity", "freedom", "responsibility", and "integrity" without ever explaining how they'll restore First World public services to the state without reworking the Skinnerbox that is the Oregon tax code or unraveling the mystery that is the state government.

Hmmm. I wonder...how could it be that our "leaders" have evolved into this sort of moronic, testicle-less, money-grubbing, mealy-mouthed rodent?Could it be that we prefer to be told these glittering lies than face the hard, ugly truths?

Gee. That's a depressing thought, too.

Happy 234th...

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

My country may have had better times and worse, some dark days and shame. Our history and our present reality may fall far short of perfection, and far away from our hopes and intentions.

But the promise of the United States is one of the most hopeful of any nation anywhere. It is that promise that has brought so many so far to make their homes here, as my own forebears did. May we remember that promise, and work to be worthy of the People, and the Nation, that we have declared ourselves to be.

"We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."C'mon. You knew I couldn't remain completely straight-faced about the occasion.

Besides, he DID quarter large bodies of armed troops among us. Fucker.

The strong do what they can...(Israel-Palestine edition)

The latest "controversy" over Israel appears to concern some remarks made by Helen Thomas about the Israel-Palestine conflict. The McClatchy article quotes her as saying:

"Any comments on Israel," an offscreen voice asks Thomas.
“Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine,” Thomas says.
“Where should they go?” the offscreen voice asks.
She responds that they should go home to Germany, Poland or the United States."

Thomes has been forced to resign as a reporter for the Hearst service (a delightful bit of hypocrisy, given the Hearst papers historic tradition of lying about foreign affairs). She has also been forced to issue the usual boilerplate statment of contrition:

"I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon."

Her sudden disgrace is now so complete that even utterly demolished media whores like Judith Miller can take swings at her, ringing in with her American version of Schindler's Law*: "At least she offered Jews some options other than Auschwitz."OK.

You all know my opinions about Israel in general and our role in its creation in particular. And, in this case, I'm getting a little pissed off about this slagging off on Thomas. She had an opinion and expressed it. That's pretty much the essence of "freedom of speech", one of the fundamental principles of this country. Speaking freely doesn't mean you're senile, it doesn't mean you should retire. Even less does it mean that the U.S. government should apologize for the opinion (Gibbs, the White House flack, had to make sure that We the People know that Obama loves him some Zion: "...those remarks...do not reflect, certainly, the opinion of, I assume, most of the people in here and certainly not of the administration.") Jesus wept, are we THAT spineless and timid?It would appear so.

Thomas' is not a popular opinion here in the U.S., where we've spent pretty much the whole 60 years since Truman's day trying to pretend that the entire business that ended up with a Jewish state on the eastern Med wasn't the result of a bunch of dirty deeds done dirt cheap by the imperialist Brits and ratified by a bunch of Americans all guilt-ridden about the Holocaust.

But to wish the Israeli Jews gone, to wish the entire enterprise of Israel undone, is certainly no more "offensive and reprehensible", no less muttonheaded, than the notion widely expressed in Israel and by Israel-lovers all over the world that the Arab residents of the former Ottoman provinces of Palestine should just "get over it", take their lickings, forget their past and just accept that a bunch of European Jews and their descendants get their and their father's and grandfather's land and all their stuff.I don't have a solution to the problem of Israel. I don't think there IS a solution; two groups of people want the exact same place. But frankly I wish the starting point of this issue wasn't a damn job-lot of head-wagging about how senile and messed up Helen Thomas is because she says straight up how you or I would feel if a bunch of foreigners had invaded our land in our grandparent's day, kicked us out and told us to suck it up and get over it.

We're grownups and need to start acting like it. We live in a world of polities; nations, states, provinces, tribes. Within those groups there are "rights" and "wrongs", laws and agreements that regulate what we can do to each other.

But between polities there are only the collision of values, morals and relative strengths. In a perfect world these would be just and fair. In our real world, the "bad guys" win as often as not.The Normans weren't "better" or "more worthy" than the Saxons, the Europeans than the Aztecs or Shawnee or Inuit, just technically, tactically, or politically more capable.

We need to stop pretending that the people we "like" are always good, decent, just, right and deserving. Just because Israel is a western democracy doesn't mean that its existence is an unmitigated good to everyone, or that its actions are always good and right. If we believe this, or refuse to listen to anyone who tells us differently, or base our actions on that belief, then we are fools and we will act in foolish ways based on our foolery as often as not.

The Israelis - down to the 10th generation - have, and will have, exactly the same "right" to the place that we white folks have to the U.S. We took it from the original owners and keep it by force. So did they. It makes us, and them, strong.It doesn't make us, or them, "right".

Or the Native Americans - or Helen Thomas restating the opinions of the original owners of Palestine - offensive, or reprehensible, or illegitimate, or foolish, or wrong for not liking that.

*(Schindler's Law: "As any discussion on Israel grows longer, the probability of equating dislike of the ideal of, the fact of, or the actions of Israel with the kind of murderous anti-Semitism that resulted in the Nazi extermination camps approaches 1."

Corollary to Schindler's Law: "Once such an observation is made, the discussion is finished and whoever mentioned Nazis, death camps, or the Holocaust has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.")