NEON GODS

Is America Exceptional? What makes you think so?

It's been a week since I've posted anything here.  Well, I did write one a few days ago but my computer ate it before I could get it posted and I was so pissed I gave up for the day.

I have spent the whole month of August in total awe of how quickly we are circling the toilet bowl.  While millions of Americans are still out of work our politicians in Washington are fighting to see who can cut the most jobs in the months and years ahead.  At a time when we desperately need government to find a way to infuse the economy with money to jump start demand, we're starving the beast.  At a time when we desperately need exceptional FDR-type leadership, we are offered a choice betwen a milquitoast and one of a dozen clowns.

Let me riff on something Doghouse Riley wrote Friday in a post entitled "With Luck, The Capitalists Will Innovate A New Knot To Hang Themselves With,"

IF there was anything to American Exceptionalism--other than the fact that we dominate a hemisphere, and came out of two European global wars physically unscathed and economically better off than when we went in--wouldn't it show up in our politics? Wouldn't we have the wisest counsel, the fullest debate, the most [talented, brilliant politicians]?

Would we have [Rick Perry as the leading Republican candidate for President]?

We lead the world in stand-up comedy, popular music, and number of things we think we lead the world in.

We invented free, public, and sorta-universal-if-you-squinted-some education, simultaneously with the idea that academic truth was amenable to first-century superstition and the willful hallucinations of Texas school boards. The salient feature of our history is that we took every bit of our Land from its original owners by invasion, by force, and by swindle, the latter just for practice, and we imported, then bred, human beings to tend our crops, serve our meals, and wash our feet, as our property. While we thanked God. It took a bloody and incompetent struggle to end it, and after twenty years of moderately trying to make small amends we gave up and told white Southerners it was really okay with us if everybody pretended they'd won.

Ugh!  The truth hurts, but try telling this to the small-dick patriots chanting We're Number One!  America Rules!  Suck on this Muslims!

If America really was exceptional (in the way we would like to believe), then Rick Perry, and his fellow clowns like Bachmann, Huckabee, Palin, Cain, etc. would be consigned to fringe status and only noticed as fodder for late night TV comedians. 

Let's start with climate change.

Climate change may be the greatest threat human civilization has ever faced. We don't know for sure, but there's a good chance that if we allow this process to go unchecked, or accelerate the change through expanded use of fossil fuels, warming may actually topple 11,000 years of progress. At the very least, it looks to cost untold lives and unimaginable fortunes as desertification overtakes farmland, oceans invade both land and freshwater environments, storms ramp up to previously unwitnessed ferocity, and millions (if not billions) of people are forced to pick up and move. It's a problem of daunting, almost unimaginable scale. ...

Here's Perry response to a question about climate change.

"I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change. I don’t think, from my perspective, that I want America to be engaged in spending that much money on still a scientific theory that has not been proven, and from my perspective, is more and more being put into question."

When Perry says that "a substantial number of scientists have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects," that's just a staggering claim. It's an attempt to write the charges leveled during the laughable "climate gate," into the history books, despite the fact that all of those accusations have been prove[d] over, and over, and over to be insubstantial. Even those politicians who voiced similar statements during the heat of the moment when the accusations were first leveled have some excuse. They jumped the gun. They failed to wait until the charges could be checked out. ...

That's not true for Perry. The charges have long been tested and found wanting. The scientists involved have been universally vindicated.

Perry doesn't let that slow him. He levels a blanket charge, one that includes not one name or a single example of wrongdoing. He follows this up with an equally odd statement, that there's been a steady stream of scientists newly-awakened to the idea that man-made climate change is not happening.

And so on.  Mark Sumner angrily shreds Rick Perry's answer and shows that Perry is nothing more than one of those Americans who prefers fairy tales to reality.

Need more?  Let's move on to evolution.  PZ Myers points us to Richard Dawkin's rant about the "ignorance of Rick Perry specifically and the Republican party generally."

There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office. What is unusual about today's Republican party...is this: In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today's Republican Party 'in spite of' is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.

Any other organization -- a big corporation, say, or a university, or a learned society - -when seeking a new leader, will go to immense trouble over the choice. The CVs of candidates and their portfolios of relevant experience are meticulously scrutinized, their publications are read by a learned committee, references are taken up and scrupulously discussed, the candidates are subjected to rigorous interviews and vetting procedures. Mistakes are still made, but not through lack of serious effort.

The population of the United States is more than 300 million and it includes some of the best and brightest that the human species has to offer, probably more so than any other country in the world. There is surely something wrong with a system for choosing a leader when, given a pool of such talent and a process that occupies more than a year and consumes billions of dollars, what rises to the top of the heap is George W Bush. Or when the likes of Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin can be mentioned as even remote possibilities.

A politician's attitude to evolution is perhaps not directly important in itself. It can have unfortunate consequences on education and science policy but, compared to Perry's and the Tea Party's pronouncements on other topics such as economics, taxation, history and sexual politics, their ignorance of evolutionary science might be overlooked. Except that a politician's attitude to evolution, however peripheral it might seem, is a surprisingly apposite litmus test of more general inadequacy. This is because unlike, say, string theory where scientific opinion is genuinely divided, there is about the fact of evolution no doubt at all. Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well. Evolution is not some recondite backwater of science, ignorance of which would be pardonable. It is the stunningly simple but elegant explanation of our very existence and the existence of every living creature on the planet. Thanks to Darwin, we now understand why we are here and why we are the way we are. You cannot be ignorant of evolution and be a cultivated and adequate citizen of today.

Dawkins provides one of the most articulate and convincing arguments for the Republican party being comprised of ignorant dolts that I've read in a long time.

Dawkins points out that among America's 330 million plus population we have some of the brightest people in the world.  So why does our media treat ignorant dolts like Perry like reasonable, qualified candidates to lead one of the most important countries in the world?  Is America exceptional?  Hard to believe isn't it?

--Trakker

If you don't know anything about a subject, don't write an editorial about it in the WSJ!

First, it is important to understand the Stephen Moore is a member of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board.  Their EDITORIAL BOARD.  So I assume he graduated from high school and might even have a college degree, after all, Michele Bachmann has more than one of those and look at the kind of stuff she says...

Anyway, he has written an editorial in the WSJ excoriating Democrats, the Obama administration, and Keynesian economists in particular, and it is probably the stupidest editorial to ever run in a major newspaper.  In fact it manages to confirm one of my biggest fears: that the right really is composed of the shallowest dregs of our society.

It's also embarrassing because most of us know that while we may be knowledgeable about some things, we don't know shit about a whole lot of other stuff and when conversation turns to things we know nothing about, what do you do?  We SHUT UP and listen.  I don't know squat about jai-alia, oncology, string theory, and Ruby on Rails, so expressing an opinion about those topics in a conversation would only expose my ignorance.  But it's increasingly evident that today's conservatives know no such restraint.  They assume they are knowledgeable about everything, and that they are also always right.  Don't believe me?  Read the comments section at WaPost (example of an idiot-magnet article) - or read Moore's editorial.

[White House Press Secretary Jay]  Carney explained that unemployment insurance "is one of the most direct ways to infuse money into the economy because people who are unemployed and obviously aren't earning a paycheck are going to spend the money that they get . . . and that creates growth and income for businesses that then lead them to making decisions about jobs—more hiring."

That's a perfect Keynesian answer, and also perfectly nonsensical. What the White House is telling us is that the more unemployed people we can pay for not working, the more people will work. Only someone with a Ph.D. in economics from an elite university would believe this.

Groan. Do you see Stephen Moore's insultingly transparent gimmick here?  Jay Carney is talking about giving money to workers who are not working because there are no jobs for them, but Stephen Moore pretends Carney and the Obama administration wants workers to quit their jobs so we can give them money to spur the economy.   Such a tactic is dishonest, but I see it a lot from righties these days.  And if you don't know why money paid to the poor and unemployed is especially important to the economy, you need to sit down and think it through, it's really very elementary.

Other looniness from Moore:

"The multiplier theory only works if you believe there's a fairy passing out free dollars",  "...the "invisible hand" of the free enterprise system, first explained in 1776 by Adam Smith, got tossed aside for the new "macroeconomics," a witchcraft that began to flourish in the 1930s...", "Macroeconomics was nothing more than a dismissal of the rules of economics", "Consumers lined up for blocks to buy things in empty stores in communist Russia, but that never sparked production [yeah, he equates the dysfunctional economy of the Soviet Union to our free market economy], "All economic problems are about removing impediments to supply, not demand", and "So here we are, three years of mostly impotent stimulus experiments and the economy still hobbled."

I wish I had time to debunk or rebut each of these claims, but - again - anyone with common sense should be able to see through them pretty quickly.  For help, check out Keynesian economics at Wikipedia.

-- Trakker

 

Pardon me while I join your screaming

While the Republicans are freaking out that President Obama is GOING ON VACATION, let's take a peek at the House of Representative's calendar which is controlled by the Republicans.

You probably assume the white dates indicate when the House is in session and the buff dates are vacation days, right?  After all American workers generally work more days than days off (in August for example, there are 23 work days and 8 days off).  You would be wrong.  Just the opposite.  Yes, even as our economy teeters on the brink of disaster because of Congressional inaction, the House is - gone for the month! 

In fact for the months of August and September the house will be in session just 12 of the 45 work days in these two months.  The House will not be in session again until September 7. 

Be sure to take note of the politician's name on this official House calendar.

Republicans have two goals, 1-damage the economy enough to defeat Obama in 2012 and 2- "starve the beast."  Neither of those have anything to do with creating jobs or restoring America to it's former position of world leader. 

I suspect Kevin Drum writing at Mother Jones speaks for all of us:

Watching the world slide slowly back into recession without a fight, even though we know perfectly well how to prevent it, is just depressing beyond words. Our descendents will view the grasping politicians and cowardly bankers responsible for this about as uncomprehendingly as we now view the world leaders who cavalierly allowed World War I to unfold even though they could have stopped it at any time.

That is all. I just wanted to get this off my chest yet again.

--Trakker

The establishment has lost all control of their party

Time to discover a new blog: Bats Right/Throws Left written by "Doghouse" Riley.  I like his wit. I like his irreverence. I like that he's a Hoosier, and I like him because he has two cats, Stinky and Larry.  Doghouse has been blogging for awhile but I just found his blog recently.  Let's take a peek at a recent post,

Could we just say it, please? This ... [is] what's really wrong with the Republican party. They don't like Romney, who couldn't be more Pro-Bidness if he shit tax exemptions, because he gives off the odor of a man who might try to do something Big while in office to get himself a statue. And they don't like Palin and the Palinettes, because they know these people are fucking loons. That is, they know that a strict application of so-called Republican principles would sink everyone who couldn't move offshore. But, of course, in order to keep going since Reagan they've had to insist that every colossal failure has come about because their principles weren't applied strictly enough. They're stuck in mid-extreme, and nobody wants to yell "Fire!" Or "Shit!", which would be closer to the truth. They can't decide if it's better to lose now, or later.

... For the fucking life of me: the Plutocrat party cannot win on its own, and it cannot govern or remain popular when it manages to sneak in. Not to mention that reading Ayn Rand is now the mark of its intellectuals. Why are you not making common cause with the moderate 'conservative' in the White House? The goddam Democratic party is yours for the taking, and there's little risk Barack Obama is going to do anything in the next five years. The Other Party refused to stomp a mudhole in your snake handlers' cult. Suck it up and do it yourselves.

Exactly.  The establishment has lost control of the Republican party and they are scared shitless because the tea party keeps dragging their party farther and farther to the right, past "conservative," past "far right," past "fringe right," past "loony right," past "nihilistic right," and are now entering the realm of "We just make shit up because our supporters will believe anything we say!" 

The establishment doesn't know what to do.  They must have found themselves in a fit of ecstasy when Obama offered them everything they wanted (the "Grand Bargain") with almost no strings attached, and then watched in horror as the tea party refused to accept it.  

More good points: 1) if the tea party got into power and got their way, the economy and the country would fail.  2) Whenever the Republicans get in power and their programs fail, they insist it's because the Democrats somehow managed to dilute their programs. 3) Now the the Democratic party has given in to the the establishment on almost everything important, why not just take over the party?

--Trakker

How crazy do you have to be to get the MSM to treat you like a clown?

Just a quick observation.

In today's "we report, you decide" news environment, there is no such thing as a statement by a major Republican that is so crazy that the MSM will judge to be too crazy to report seriously.  The Republicans have caught onto this and are moving the country so far right so quickly that we now have a major Republican Presidential candidate who not long ago actually suggested that his state should consider seceding from the United States!  Why is this guy considered worthy of respect by the MSM?  And this same guy has just implied that he loves America more than President Obama.

Not only that, but at the same time Rick Perry has warned that if Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke dares implement a new qualitative easing program (where the Fed buys government bonds to inject more money into the economy) he will consider it treason and that the people in Texas would react to that in an ugly way.  

“If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what you all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas,”

In fact the real implication here is that if the Obama administration does ANYTHING to help our economy before the next election, it would be an act of treason because it would harm the Republicans chances to defeat Obama and the Democrats in 2012. 

If Perry is saying things like this and still being taken seriously by the MSM, imagine what kind of red meat he'll be throwing out there by primary time with the MSM reporting it seriously?  (I'm betting that by primary time Perry will declare any unemployed American who refuses to take any job offered, even if it's minimum wage, will be declared a traitor and jailed, or worse.  "How dare those slackers expect that hard-working Americans fund their extended vacations at taxpayer expense?"!).

--Trakker

What's behind the tea party's rage?

Things have been kind of tough for us liberals lately, haven't they?  The right has been  pecking away at a lot of the progressive programs and regulations and environmental victories we've won over the years, and they've done a pretty damn good job of demonizing us at the same time.  However, with the advent of the tea party they have gone from being extremely annoying to outright nihilistic, even to the point where many were advocating that America default on our debt payments and bring down the government!  Wow!!

How about a little perspective.

I'm 66 years old and in my lifetime liberals have had a lot of successes and have made a HUGE difference in America.  When I was a kid Jim Crow laws were enforced in the south, now we have a black President. When I was a kid women were stuck in the home, or could work as nurses or teachers, little else.  Now women are CEOs, scientists, and run for President.  Today abortion is legal, gay marriage is fast becoming acceptable, interracial marriage is not even controversial anymore.  And for every major liberal win, the conservatives have been getting more and more pissed off about how the country is going to hell!!!  

Put yourself in their place.  How would you feel if our side kept losing year after year after year?  And not small losses either, but huge monumental losses such as complete equality for blacks and women, and the acceptance of gay marriage by a slim majority.  These and other major progressive improvements have been huge, humiliating losses for conservatives and hard core bigots over the years.

But now they believe they have FINALLY managed to get the upper hand, and By God they're going to punish us liberals and Democrats, even if it means destroying our country, because chaos and anarchy is better than seeing blacks elected president and gays getting married, and having lawyers tell them they can't force kids in school to pray to their God.

This is all about pent up anger and frustration, and those on the right, especially in flyover country, somehow believe that 90% of the country thinks like they do, and in 2012 they are going to finally wipe out the left once and for all!

They don't realize that the pendulum is beginning to swing back our way and is just about to smack them in the head and squash them flat.  You can bet the farm on that!

--Trakker

When you try to stick it to the poor, they eventually rebel

ENGLAND: RIOTS SPREADING DAILY

This is not how people in civilized, democratic societies are supposed to get their leaders to listen to their voices, but - well - it can be pretty damn effective, and the United States and the Democratic Party better pay close attention to what is going on in England.  From a WaPost editorial today:

"...the rampaging youths in London have aimed at stealing televisions and clothes and setting cars and buildings on fire. Arab protest leaders speak with Jeffersonian passion of building a new democratic order, while the British rioters’ ideology seemed to be summed up by two young women who told the BBC that they meant to show the police and “the rich” that “we can do whatever we want.” ...

The common factors include high unemployment, resentment toward a prosperous and seemingly impenetrable upper class, and hatred of the police. In Britain’s case, as in some Arab countries, the trouble is further fueled by racial and ethnic tensions."

Earlier news reports have explained that Great Britain's conservative government has embarked on a massive austerity program that hits the poor especially hard (sound familiar?).  Now, you may hate the poor, you may rant and rave about how the poor should take advantage of our public schools, study hard, get a job, and become good citizens like the rest of us (you know, like all those politicians who keep getting caught doing bad things, and the Bernie Madoffs, and all those white collar, highly educated bankers who wrecked our economy), but it will do no good.  There will always be an underclass in every society.  You can either accept it and work hard to give them hope and a better life at great monetary cost to society, or you can try to grind them down with your boot heal, in which case they will eventually rebel and burn your cities down because they have so much less to lose than you do and they know it.

The U.S. is headed in the second direction.  Republicans assume that if you make life hard enough on the poor they will wise up, reluctantly get jobs and join the rest of us.  That's mean and stupid.  There are no jobs for the underclass in America.  McDonalds? Pizza Hut?  Are you serious?  You can survive living with your parents with jobs like that, but those jobs go nowhere and everyone knows it. 

I'm surprised we haven't seen the kind of riots England is experiencing yet, but you can bet they're on the horizon and we might even find former middle class Americans joining in.  EVERYONE in America knows our government is run by the wealthy, for the benefit of the wealthy only.  Over 60% of Americans say creating jobs should be the government's #1 priority right now.  Have you seen ANY serious attempts by the Republicans or Democrats to put large numbers of people back to work?  Hell NO! 

I blame the Democrats the most.  Their number 1 goal is to hang onto their jobs and get re-elected by pandering and kowtowing to the corporate-run right.  At some point I hope liberals and progressives will leave the party in disgust and start a new movement.   We cannot be part of this cowardly, ineffective political party and look at ourselves in the mirror.

--Trakker

 

"...[Republicans] believe that our side is illegitimate..."

Digby, writing in early 2010 but reposting it today:

We are polarized because we believe different things about what America stands for. We define ourselves differently. We have different values. It's not the first time. In fact it's defines American politics.

The problem is that the other side believes that our side is illegitimate and they have no obligation to abide by the government's decisions if they are not in charge. And I continue to be surprised that after a bogus impeachment, an election decided by a partisan Supreme Court decision and a shocking war of choice, the Democrats failed to realize that Republican party no longer believed it needed to abide by the traditions and norms that had been holding together whatever fragile truce existed. This undemocratic streak has been around among the conservatives to some degree or another forever, but it rises up strongly now and then --- and it's been evident since the early 90s that we are now in one of those times when they have become tyrannical fanatics.

I bolded the key point she makes.  This is the root of our problem in America today, the right fervently believes their political religion is the ONLY valid way to heaven (a perfect country).  I call their political beliefs a religion, because like all religions facts have no meaning to them.  Facts bounce off them because they just know they are right, case closed.   And this kind of certainty appeals to a frightened and confused electorate, so watch out for 2012!

--Trakker

The further decline of America

I just checked the latest Associated Press news feed on my Kindle and here are some of the headlines:

Police: 8 shot to death in Ohio, including 11 year old child

San Diego officer shot; armed suspect killed

Police: 4 found fatally shot in Maryland home

Of the 12 news articles, three headlines report the deaths of 13 people by firearms.

This goes on day after day and yet there is nothing our society can do to reduce this carnage because the NRA, and their notoriously energized and paranoid members, go ballistic every time we try to place some controls on gun ownership.  This is just another manifestation of how the right is turning America into a violent, hateful, banana republic.

Forty-four police officers have been shot to death so far this year, a 16% increase over last year.

--Trakker

What does the Democratic Party stand for?

David Atkins highlights two reactions to the S&P downgrade, one from a Republican and one from this Democratic administration:

“It happened on your watch, Mr. President,” Representative Michele Bachmann said, drawing applause at an afternoon rally in Iowa. “You were AWOL. You were missing in action.”

The White House blamed Washington’s polarized political climate for the downgrade. “We must do better to make clear our nation’s will, capacity and commitment to work together to tackle our major fiscal and economic challenges,” the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said in a statement.

Atkins responds:

That is simply awful. Bachmann's rhetoric is as emotional, crisp, understandable and clear as it insanely misguided. It is a strong message with a clear point. The Administration's messaging is confusing, lacks all emotional clarity, and is redolent of weakness. Not once in the Administration's response to the S&P downgrade did they mention the word "Republican." There is no fight left in the Administration, no driving narrative, no emotional core on which to hang one's hat except a continued and desperate clutch at the brass ring of "compromise." Whatever that means.

If these are really the messaging positions going into 2012, progressives might as well ignore the presidential election and focus on winning local races instead.

Then Atkins points us to Drew Weston to reinforce the blandness of Obama and his administration:

Like most Americans, at this point, I have no idea what Barack Obama — and by extension the party he leads — believes on virtually any issue. The president tells us he prefers a “balanced” approach to deficit reduction, one that weds “revenue enhancements” (a weak way of describing popular taxes on the rich and big corporations that are evading them) with “entitlement cuts” (an equally poor choice of words that implies that people who’ve worked their whole lives are looking for handouts). But the law he just signed includes only the cuts. This pattern of presenting inconsistent positions with no apparent recognition of their incoherence is another hallmark of this president’s storytelling. He announces in a speech on energy and climate change that we need to expand offshore oil drilling and coal production — two methods of obtaining fuels that contribute to the extreme weather Americans are now seeing. ... [emphasis mine]

The real conundrum is why the president seems so compelled to take both sides of every issue, encouraging voters to project whatever they want on him, and hoping they won’t realize which hand is holding the rabbit. That a large section of the country views him as a socialist while many in his own party are concluding that he does not share their values speaks volumes...

Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted "present" (instead of "yea" or "nay") 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues.

In 2008 this country needed new leadership, competent leadership.  We took a chance on an inspiring, charismatic, but inexperienced politician who happened to be a person of color, which gave his election an almost storybook flavor.   But like George Bush before him, Barack Obama has turned out to be all hat and no cattle.  So what do we do now?

--Trakker