NEON GODS

Cruelty is also the enemy of the good

Oh man, this is so good!  From Charles Pierce yesterday...

Yes, I know, you campaign in poetry and you govern in prose. But there are all kinds of prose. A feed catalogue is prose, but so is Moby-Dick. Calvin Coolidge spoke in prose, but so did FDR. And, of course, we must never make the perfect the enemy of the good. But you know what else is the enemy of good? Timidity is the enemy of the good. Cruelty is the enemy of the good, and so are selfishness, bigotry, and ignorance. Why perfection is the only enemy of the good that ever seems worth fighting is a good question with which to launch the new year.

Spot on!  But wait, there's more:

There are now 146 million Americans who are ranked as "low-income" or "poor." Somebody really should do something about that. How we treat them in our politics is going to be the ultimate test of our moral credibility as a nation. Do we treat this situation as the national disgrace that it is, and commit ourselves as a nation to eliminating it? Or do we turn away from them, blame them for the malaise we feel in our lives, and drink deeply again from the supply-side, trickle-down snake oil? Do we look at the president — a Democratic president — and scream that this is no longer tolerable to us as a people? Or do we nod sagely and deplore the lack of civility and bipartisan cooperation in our government and hope that cooler heads will prevail, that the great national purpose of our age is to deprive ourselves further of what was supposed to be the promise of the country in the vague and futile hope that somehow, somewhere, things will get better down the line?

The moral act is to scream.

Our biggest problem is not the lack of civility in Washington, it's the fact that one political party wants to drag the country back to the 19th century when counties had poorhouses and poor people often gave up their children to orphanages rather than see them starve.

As this will be my last post of the year I want to wish everyone the best for 2012.  Maybe things will get better...

--Trakker

Those who reject facts should be ridiculed.

As 2011 draws to a close it has become painfully obvious that many on the right are breathtakingly ignorant. They love to complain about how our "government schools" have failed today's young people and yet after reading the words of their politicians and their comments in places like washingtonpost.com it appears they reject facts, science and knowledge altogether.  So I thought I would put together a primer for those on the right to help them in 2012.

Facts:

+ Barack Obama was born in the United States and is a citizen of this country.

+ The Earth is billions of years old and man evolved from lesser species.

+ Atheism is not a religion.  Humans are atheists at birth.  Religions must be chosen. Atheists either never choose a religion or reject a religion that was once chosen.  Choosing to be religious is a right, but not a requirement to be a citizen of the United States. 

+ The Earth's climate is warming at a rapid rate and nearly 100% of the climate experts agree this is human-caused and bad for the planet.

+ The United States is not, and never was, a "Christian" nation.

+ Children can pray in school.  The only restriction is that schools and teachers cannot lead the prayers or encourage them.

+ American citizens can celebrate Christmas in their homes, at their businesses, and in their places of worship.  Federal, state and local governments cannot pick one religion over all others to celebrate.

+ Astrology cannot predict the future.

+ The word "socialist" has a specific meaning.  It is not a bad word, like slut, to be used as a slur against people you don't like.

+ President Obama is not a socialist (and few liberals would consider him a liberal).

+ Capitalism is amoral.  It is an economic system whose only purpose is to make business owners rich.  Capitalists and corporations do not "create jobs" or voluntarily provide worker benefits unless it enhances their bottom line. 

+ The primary definition of the word theory is this: "a coherent group of tested general propositions, commonly regarded as correct, that can be used as principles of explanation and prediction for a class of phenomena."  So yes, when we speak of the theory of evolution we are talking about something that is commonly regarded as fact.  Sadly, the word theory is now often used as a synonym for idea or personal opinion, but educated people know what theory really means and accept it.

Everyone has a right to their opinion, but not to facts.  The above are facts and anyone who disputes them should be soundly ridiculed.  One of the major failings of our MSM today is their willingness to accept whatever the right says as fact.  Maybe that will change in 2012 (and maybe pigs will fly).

--Trakker

Why should anyone give a damn about the Iowa Republican caucus?

Okay, I'm officially sick of Iowa.  Politically that is all we've been hearing for the past month, who's ahead in Iowa's Republican Caucus to be held next week.  SO FUCKING WHAT?  It's frickin' IOWA, a largely rural state of 3 million people that is 96% white (next up is New Hampshire, another rural state that is 94% white. Are there no African Americans in today's political America?).

The press keeps emphasising how smart Iowans are and how seriously they take politics.  Bullshit.  Have you heard what the Republican candidates have been saying to the Republican caucus goers?  Anyone with an IQ over 80 would throw these people out of the state!  Rick Perry said the other night that as President he would ignore a Supreme Court decision overturning personhood at conception.  These candidates are loons, Iowan Republicans are loons. 

Why should I care who they prefer as their candidate other than to keep me awake at night shivering at the thought of one of those becoming our President?

--Trakker

GOP: more like the old Soviet Union every day

The Republican Party sounds more and more like the old Soviet Union every day.

I just saw this tiny article in the WaPost local section today: everyone who wants to vote in Virginia's Republican primary March 6 MUST sign a pledge to support the Republican nominee for President!

In order to cast their ballots in the GOP nominating contest, Virginians will have to sign a form that says, “I, the undersigned, pledge that I intend to support the nominee of the Republican Party for president,” according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, which first reported the move.

On Wednesday, the state Board of Elections approved the pledge form, as well as signs that will hang in polling places advising voters of the state party’s policy.

I hope even Republicans find this insulting and walk away in disgust.  What can e expect next, one must pledge to vote Republican to get a driver's license in Virginia??

--Trakker

Romney: "...vacant replicant of American plutocracy..."

Whew, Charles P. Pierce is back writing on Esquire's Politics blog after a brief break.  I must be perfectly honest with my readers here, Pierce's writing is precisely the kind of cutting snark I thought I would be writing when I started Neon Gods. Unfortunately I lacked one thing: talent.  Charley's got it and I love reading him. This morning he begins by profiling the "new" Mitt Romney...

Comes now this pure piece of manufactured product, this vacant replicant of American plutocracy, to lecture a country in the middle of a fragile recovery from an economic disaster brought on by the other soulless replicants on the topics of our vanishing work ethic, and the great moral cleansing power of onrushing poverty...

[Romney] is really the only true class warrior in the race. He's counting on prejudice and ignorance because he is running in the Republican primaries and that's the coin of the realm. But he's also counting on the desperate dreams of desperate people who want to believe that there is a big bag of money out there that's going to the Wrong People, and that, if someone would only re-direct it, their lives would be better. Well, there is a big bag of money out there, and it is indeed going to the Wrong People, and those would be the people in whose company Willard Romney has spent his entire, cosseted, entitled existence.  [emphasis added]

To win the Republican nomination Romney has had to take positions and say things that are bound to come back to bite him if he is the GOP nominee, IF the Democrats and Obama have the guts to defend those who get "entitlements" as responsible, hard working Americans who have earned those government checks.

--Trakker

 

Republicans win even when they lose

Hooo boy, you gotta' love someone who starts a post off like this...

There are a number of reasons why I am giving only muted golf-claps to the White House's strategy on this whole payroll-tax cut debacle that is ruining John McCain's Christmas down in D. C. (Jesus, John, just shut up, okay? You look like a fool.)...

This is Charles Pierce writing on Esquire's blog.  Pierce doesn't muddle his posts with a bunch of niceties (or spell-check), he just blasts away at stupidity.  We need more like him.  Here's a bit more from the post above:

This is now merely a fight over optics, and the Democrats seem to be winning it. Good for them. It's been a long time since we could say that. But the fact is that the whole debate is still being fought out on the ground defined by the Republicans. That's been the case since the millionnaire surtax was jettisoned. That was the real game-changer. It would have demonstrated conclusively that people had been listening to what folks had been yelling in the street throughout the fall. The people who got fat in the casino that nearly broke the country would have to kick in so that the country's tattered middle-class, which had been suffering through the economy created by the casino's crimes, would get a break. For the first time in a long while, the government would have provided a different, more economically just, answer to the question, "Which side are you on?" The 1 percent would be made to give something back to the 99 percent. Once that provision was abandoned, what was left was a run-of-the-mill spending bill and the same tired debate we've been having for two years.

The point is, by now the Republicans have already won much of what they set out to get in return for extending the payroll tax cut.  They just want more, that's all - and they usually get it.  This time maybe not, but if the payroll tax doesn't get passed the economy in this election year will suffer and so will (presumably) Obama, and in addition the Republicans protected the very wealthy one again. Sigh...

--Trakker

An overdue angry rant...

The closer I look at the Republican Party, the more they remind me of a bunch of spoiled adolescents who think the world revolves around them. They are incapable of any deep thought and they mistake fairy tales for reality, e.g., Atlas Shrugged. They assume anyone who is not like them is a lesser form of human (e.g., Barack Obama), and they have no problem beating up on them.  
 
Look at their attitude toward the unemployed. WTF are those still unemployed to do when their benefits run out? Get a job? What job? If there were appropriate jobs available they wouldn't be unemployed would they? The adolescent bratty Republicans don't care, it's not their problem. They are their brother's keeper only as long as they don't have to pay anything to help them. Oh yes, and McDonald's is always hiring so all you unemployed engineers and architects, quit whining and go flip burgers (and lose your house and live in your car but don't whine to the Republicans because they are all watching the movie Braveheart for the 70th time and dreaming of mooning all the bleeding heart liberals again). 
 
Republicans live in an adolescent dream world, a world of simple answers to complex problems, too lazy or stupid or frightened to actually research and study issues with open minds. It's so much easier to let Fox News tell them what to believe and who to hate today.

I'm so disgusted with the audacity of the House Republicans who are once again playing games with people's lives and then trying to blame it all on the President and the Senate.  This column by an outraged Dana Milbank describes just how immature these House Republicans have become.  In any other developed country they would be laughed out of office.  Only in America is there a cable news network devoted to encouraging stupid, self-defeating behavior in our politicians.

--Trakker

Lindsey Graham: "It is something out of the Stalinist Era,..." He was obviously speaking of the Republican Party.

Yes, I'm on a roll today.  Third post of the day and it's only noon!  But don't worry I have some real work to do today and I've got to start soon.  

More from the inimitable Charles P. Pierce at Esquire:

Bravo to Jim Fallows at The Atlantic — and to Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic — for pointing out that the shenanigans that the Republicans in the Senate are playing concerning the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is really nothing more than "nullification," the legislative equivalent of the doctrine first promulgated by John C. Calhoun, and which led, ultimately, to the Civil War. ...

Bear in mind, this is not about congressional obstructionism. That's another issue for another day,...

This is more serious by an order of magnitude. The Republicans had their chance to beat back the law that created the CFPB. They had more than their chance. There were committee meetings and committee votes in both Houses. There was lengthy, free, and open debate. There was a vote on the law, and it passed by a clear majority, and the president signed it. That's the ballgame. You don't like it? Win a couple of elections and pass a law eliminating it.

What you don't get to do is pretend that the law doesn't exist, even while you scream about how terrible it is. Orrin Hatch went batshit over it on CNN the other day. The latest is that prince of frauds, Lindsey Graham, who represents the home office of nullification, South Carolina:

"It is something out of the Stalinist Era," the South Carolina Republican said Sunday, defending his GOP colleagues' efforts last week to block President Barack Obama's nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Oh, for the love of god, just stop it, okay? A law passed that you don't like, and that will cripple the ability of the people who own your ass to rob people with fine print, and you'll do anything you can to make sure they can keep doing it because you're essentially a 'ho. That's what's going on here. All the people in South Carolina who are currently getting gouged by the credit-card companies will have some place to take their complaint, and you think we're all being dragged off to Lubyanka in an ox-cart. Get over yourself and do your damn job. And that means abide by the terms by which you swore to abide:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

The Constitution says that laws passed by Congress become the law of the land, whether Lindsey Graham likes them or not, and no matter how many bank CEOs find them inconvenient.

Like I've mentioned here a few times, we are in the midst of a civil war that only one side can win and the stakes are big: the very future of this country.  The Republicans know it's just a matter of time before the older white angry bigots die out, and the wealthy realize that more and more of the 99% are beginning to catch on that we are being fleeced, so these people are trying their damnedest to win the war as quickly as possible, by any means available.  This coming election is crucial so expect some real fireworks between now and next November (and expect all hell to break loose if the Republicans lose big).

--Trakker

Kneecapped in New Hampshire!

Watch this video to the end.  It may surprise you.  It surprised me...and had me yelling "YES! YES!" at the end.

 

--Trakker

A camera that can image one trillion frames per second.

This camera is so fast it can photograph the movement of a beam of light!  I'm linking to the Balloon Juice post about it because Levenson's commentary is good.

What struck me about this project from MIT is that no one involved seems to have a typical American name.  The two project leaders on the video have obvious accents.  This is of little interest or consequence, but 50 years ago that wouldn't have been the case. 

50 years ago most leading edge technology was (white) American-led, with maybe some Europeans involved.  Having grown up in the era, most Americans assumed whites were the most intelligent people in the world and were destined to always be the ones leading the way on all major new discoveries.  Now we realize with delight that the rest of the world is pretty damn smart too.  However, I suspect many older whites may find this threatening, especially those who believe their white skin alone makes them superior to the vast majority of the world that has darker skin.

--Trakker