Age of reason

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The Democrats' problem is that reason only works with a narrow demographic these days. We didn't always have a culture of bullshit, but we do now. Republicans believe they're entitled to their own facts, whatever they make up on the spot to avoid having to deal with actual reality. The radical right-wing media feeds this irrational belief constantly. That's its purpose - keeping the ignoramuses fooled, with their willing, even eager, participation.

Goddamn America

Republicans in Congress didn't say, "Goddamn America." They acted on it.

The Republican Party prefers to damage America if it can damage a Democratic President at the same time. This was so for Bill Clinton and is even moreso for Barack Obama.

Testify, brother, I mean, cousin

Why is it that American big media is so thin on brutal truth-telling such as this?

The US Republican race is dominated by ignorance, lies and scandals. The current crop of candidates have shown such a basic lack of knowledge that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein. The Grand Old Party is ruining the entire country's reputation.

...

What a nice club that is. A club of liars, cheaters, adulterers, exaggerators, hypocrites and ignoramuses. "A starting point for a chronicle of American decline," was how David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, described the current Republican race.

Remnick, even, is late to the party. The starting point of the chronicle of our decline was the Republican scandal-mongering response to Bill Clinton's election in 1992.

Update (12/5): Is help on the way for the redoubtable Paul Krugman? Thomas Edsall joins the growing chorus of those of us sick and tired of Republican lies:

Struggling to justify a recent television spot that reached new heights of deception, a top operative in Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign put it plainly, while insisting on anonymity:

“First of all, ads are propaganda by definition. We are in the persuasion business, the propaganda business…. Ads are agitprop…. Ads are about hyperbole, they are about editing. It’s ludicrous for them to say that an ad is taking something out of context…. All ads do that. They are manipulative pieces of persuasive art.”

Care to revise your statement? Want to change your bullshit story?

Wonder if anyone on Fox will claim that it's not the phone hacking, it's the cover-up that matters.

In Mr. Goodman’s letter, dated March 2, 2007, Mr. Goodman challenged his dismissal, saying that his actions “were carried out with the full knowledge and support” of other senior journalists. He also said another senior journalist arranged for payments to a private investigator who carried out the hacking.

Mr. Goodman also asserted in his letter that the practice of phone hacking was “widely discussed in the daily editorial conference” at the newspaper until “explicit reference to it was banned by the editor.”

Mr. Watson said the committee had seen two versions of the letter, one more heavily redacted than the other. One version sent to the committee by News International, the British newspaper subsidiary of the Murdoch family’s News Corporation, had been redacted to black out references to “editorial conference” and “the editor.”

The News of the World had long insisted that the phone hacking was restricted to Mr. Goodman, a single rogue reporter.

Look, News Corp. and all its properties lie early and often. I wonder just how Clintonesque they'll become in their denials that they've perjured themselves before Parliament.

“We have written to Andy Coulson to ask him whether he would like to amend his previous evidence,” Mr. Watson said. “Clearly if Clive Goodman’s account is accurate, it shows the evidence he gave us was at best misleading and probably deceptive.”

What's really odd: no investigative follow-through on this side of the Atlantic.

More patriotic than Newt

Newt Gingrich (R-cheating for the flag) did two wives wrong because of his overwhelming boner for America.  He was working hard and long cheek to cheek with other (younger) women, and he needed sex relief.  Right there in the Speaker's office.  If Bill Clinton could get some in the Oval Office...

John Ensign (R-much better looking than Harry Reid) had to go him one better and have an affair with a close friend's wife.  That personal sacrifice shows just how much Ensign loves America.  He was willing to wreck four lives at once and maybe get his own mother indicted for perjury for her involvement in paying hush money.

Top that, Gingrich!  Isn't it about time you found someone to cheat with on Callista?  She has to be expecting it.

What sweet young wingnut sycophant will be the next last refuge of a scoundrel?

Bigotry, core Republican value

President Barack Obama (D-tepid centrism except in support of the imperial Presidency) has inspired incredibly frenzied outpourings of anger and hate.  Bill Clinton (D-tepid centrism except about sex) inspired what for its time was similarly frenzied.

The frenzy of delegitimizing the 1992 election worked so well for Republicans that there was no way they'd abjure it this time around.  Sure enough, given the sharp limits on the intelligence, memory, and discernment of bullshit from reality of the American electorate, it worked again in 2010 for the GOP.  Now it will take many Republican electoral failures of much greater depth than 2006 and 2008 to convince them not to be petulant 2-year-olds again every time they lose.

Any Democrat who won the Presidency in 2008 would have faced the refusal of Republicans to accept the legitimacy of the election - no matter how comfortable the margin, and remember that Obama completely kicked John McCain's butt from sea to shining sea.

Hillary Clinton, whom many would now retrospectively elect, would have been trashed again.  Doesn't anyone remember what the wingnuts said about conspiracies to murder, distribute drugs, and corruptly enrich herself?  Wingnuts right in the middle of the GOP.  How could anyone forget their politics of personal destruction?

In the alternate universe where she did get elected, people are wishing that fresh young Illinois Senator had gotten the nod instead.  He has such a sweet personality and such a message of non-partisan comity that surely no one, not even a Republican Party built from the ground up on the model of Lee Atwater's scorched earth politics (with a secret handshake in honor of the failed potential of Joe McCarthy), not even that Republican Party could have put him through the vicious attacks they've put Hillary through.  Yeah, don't call me Shirley.

There's one difference between the way Barack has been calumnied and the way Hillary would have been.  That difference is the birther movement.



Sure, Republicans would have found sex-related ways to attack her, as they did when she was the wrong kind of wife to Bill - no cookie-baking, no juicy divorce suit from the woman scorned, no willing smiling silent deference to men.  They would have attacked her for menses and hot flashes at the same time.  It would have been ugly.

But the birther movement is about Obama being the wrong color.  He's brown, and he has foreign heritage that's not European and not Christian.  How could he possibly be American?  He's not from the right tribe.

No, it's not only race that matters in the Republican platform of bigotry.  They assert religious correctness too.  Catholics (finally!) are o.k. now.  All Irish may apply.  But no Muslims.  They might bring their religious values to the public square, and that means they'll try to enact scary-a, I mean, sharia.

The framers of the Constitution had this to say in Article VI of the Constitution:

[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Republicans, even rabbit front-runner Mitt Romney, are happy to promise a religious test as long as it appeals to their bigoted party (as proven by its birtherism):

Republicans don't love religious liberty; they love religious liberty for people who think as they do.

Again, one party in American politics is tepid, easily bullied, and often won't stand up for its own views.  The other is actively evil and opposed to the founding ideas of our nation.  So of course the Republicans project their own opposition to liberal democracy, as framed 225 years ago, onto the Democrats, and the Democrats fail to call them the scurrilous, opportunistic, authoritarian liars they are.

Bondage and DOMAnation

DOMA is bad law.  It was bad law when Bill Clinton pandered to the Dick Morris crowd and signed it.  If marriage needs defense from gays and lesbians, it's only because it's been damaged by a long series of trailer trash.  Cheating and divorce does make a hell of a country song, however, proving again that it's an ill wind that blows nobody good.

Eric Cantor (R-coiffed to look reasonable without actually being reasonable) is "taken aback" at President Barack Obama's order to the Justice Department to stop arguing for DOMA in court.  Gee willickers!

On the other hand, there is something odd about the government of laws deciding to leave a duly, if venally, passed law to fend for itself.  It's not as though it can hire its own lawyer.  After all, the President and his Cabinet swore (Art. II, sec. 1):

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

I'm sure wingnuts everywhere are spitting at their screens to demand Obama's impeachment.  (Uh-huh.)  Even Newt Gingrich, in his continuing campaign to get out in front of the knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing mob of teabaggers...

Two thoughts to consider:

• Clearly, the Constitution comes before a law.
• It's much more honest to step away from backing a law.  That allows those who do believe in it to defend it and those who don't to avoid the temptation to mount a vacuous fake defense.

No doubt that last would be the Republican Teapublican approach in similar circumstances.

Update (3/6):  Turns out Republican Justice Departments have abandoned appellate defense of federal laws, so I've fixed my claim that they would instead mount a fake defense.

Bill about Monica, Duhbya about cocaine

On day 1216, an incredibly smarmy, lying asshole...

Note which two of these liars committed a crime - and which party they belonged to.

(h/t Jed Lewison on DailyKos)

Don't we get at least four years?

Click image for full Rob Rogers/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette cartoon.

You lie!

Surprise, surprise, surprise! You'd have to be a gomer not to know that Karl Rove is leading a bunch of deep-pocketed Republican shills to lie, cheat, and steal Congress - oh, and to buy it. But with the media AWOL, there are plenty of gomers:

[T]he sheer scale and dimension of dishonesty and distortion coming from the conservative side of this debate is a very big part of the story. And it's largely going untold.

This is why Democrats have been foolish since at least the political maiming of Bill Clinton not to attack Republican credibility at every turn. We need to man up from the bullshit Washington politesse and call a lie a lie - even if we share the cloakroom with the liar. They're not polite to us. Civility that's not a two-way street is not civil.

The truth matters, and we haven't been strong enough in exacting a stiff price from Republicans who are full of shit. Which to a first approximation is every one of them in any position of power.

(h/t Joan McCarter on DailyKos)

Elephant always forgets

Is it senility or willful forgetting?

Ronald Reagan said that his tax cuts would reduce deficits, then presided over a near-tripling of federal debt. When Bill Clinton raised taxes on top incomes, conservatives predicted economic disaster; what actually followed was an economic boom and a remarkable swing from budget deficit to surplus. Then the Bush tax cuts came along, helping turn that surplus into a persistent deficit, even before the crash.

The evidence suggests that Republicans don't care about the size of the economy. They care about income inequality. Unlike Democrats, Republicans favor more inequality.

That way, their wealthy friends can feel yet greater self-esteem than already oozes out of their pores.

No take-backsies

Teabaggers want to recall Democratic U.S. Senators to force them from office. This is patently unconstitutional. The 17th Amendment (which enacted direct popular election of Senators) says in part:

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote.

Not "six years, as long as the loonies don't want to change the rules in mid-term". Not "six years ... or whatever, dude". Not "six years for conservatives but less for anyone with even a whiff of stinky liberalism".

Six years.

Article I, section 5 of the Constitution adds:

Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, ....

Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.

Nope, still no provision for a bunch of ignoramuses throwing a Senator out early.

Even though a state appeals court in New Jersey has pretended that there's some legal doubt on this issue about the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution over the New Jersey Constitution, there is no such doubt.

This effort is not really about recalling Robert Menendez. It's about exacting the price from Menendez of suffering incessant attacks. At the end, he'll win, but meanwhile his attention and efforts will be diverted away from governing, away from living better, away from preparing to run for re-election. He'll get tired, his contributors will get tired at the additional burden of contributing to his legal defense fund, and being a legislator will seem less and less like a good idea.

This was exactly the strategy of attack agains Bill Clinton when he was President.

Oh, I said there was no doubt that recalling a Senator is unconstitutional, but there is in fact one doubt. The U.S. Supreme Court has proven its willingness to intervene in politics on the side of Republicans (if you're Rip Van Winkle, Bush v. Gore). There's no guarantee that this court would have any more conscience than that court did in 2000.

Then, it could be us liberals carrying torches and pitchforks, as we should have nine years ago.

Never out of date

Even though in 1996 Bill Clinton triangulated drastic welfare reform to the delight of Republicans, attacks on shiftless lazy leeches stray dawgs are far too appealing to Republicans and their ignoramus constituents to ever let go of them.

And damn if America doesn't spend trillions of dollars a year on foreign aid when we can't even pay our own bills at home...

There are people who believe both these canards.

Journalistic follow-through on Visorgate

There are hundreds of substantive stories the press could cover. Mostly, journalists give them no attention at all. At best, they're one and done.

What do reporters (on TV, especially) get to the bottom of? Stupid, idiotic reactions to non-stories that any ignorant celebrity-watcher can relate to. I hope this mild reaction from John McCain to Visorgate puts an end to that particular waste of everyone's time.

"Oh, it's fine. Sarah said she wanted to be a little bit incognito," McCain said when asked about the incident on "Fox News Sunday. "I don't blame her. I understand that."

I don't care that Sarah Palin's explanation of why she did it is the most obvious bullshit since ... the last time she opened her mouth.

But have no fear, there will be other inconsequential stories. Hey, the press asked Bill Clinton whether he wore boxers or briefs (what, no commando option!?). Think of the multiple choice questions they could ask Palin. Thong? That would get all the conservative men back to fantasy - if they ever left.

Update (12/22): Joan Walsh points me to Salon's review of the bullshit stories that give journalists good wood for their tabloids.

An infection of evil

... and everyone has at least a touch of it.

We have to find the truth. At that point, I hope we'll demand punishment of the perpetrators, whose identities are already obvious, at least in outline.

It's amazing that Bill Clinton lost his law license for a lie under oath in response to a contrived definition of sex, yet Jay Bybee, to name one, who wrote memos laying the bullshit groundwork for a considered policy of torture, is a federal judge.

Bullshit from the left

This is really unusual. I'm a big fan of Joe Conason, but he goes off the rails with this:

But it was obvious that Clinton would not have participated in such a public encounter, witnessed by scores of people at the Putin party, unless the White House and the State Department had approved in advance.

Obvious that the Big Dog has enough impulse control to take direction from the Obama White House? Uh, Joe, possible, maybe, but not obvious.

B-bu-but Obama hasn't changed my diaper

A large number of the people who voted not to change a thing about the disastrous way the Republicans have run America into the ground now go onto comments sections and whine that Obama is not changing anything.

First, they were mad because he was supposedly going to bring socialism. Now, they're mad because he hasn't brought socialism.

First, they were mad because he had defeated Hillary, for whom they suddenly found great weeping reservoirs of affection they had never known they had in the 1990s. Now, they're mad that he keeps appointing old Clinton hands to his administration.

Give the guy a break. He's only been President for about two and a half months. Snort, chuckle, tee-hee.

Personally, I'd like to hope that this post would make them mad, but I realize that it's beyond my power to make them mad, since that's what they've always been and always will be.

Bullshit fricassee

Ed Henry loves the bullshit story out of 2001 that Clinton staffers vandalized their keyboards.  He loves it so much that even though it has been debunked as a Bushist slander, he just can't help but repeat it in a way that flatters Duhbya.

If I ran CNN, I would fire his lazy, no-account ass for putting out this story.

If you want to know what's wrong with American media, this complete inability to give up a favorite story even if it is a lie would have to be close to the worst.

Republicans sold out to Iran

If this potentially lethal technology leakage had happened under a Democratic administration, the Republicans in Congress, on the Sunday talk shows, and on hate radio would be frothing with rage over it. The media would dutifully echo the wingnut noise machine with "some have questions."

How do I know this? Remember Bill Clinton and China?

Waaay worse than Clinton fatigue

Here's your hat, what's your hurry, doesn't begin to cover America's wish that it could call the bouncers over to the bar and have Duhbya tossed out of Martini's into the snow. How wonderful our lives would be if he'd never been born! Well, maybe not, but still, don't let the door whack you in the ass.

Twenty-five days till Inauguration Day.