These are the sensible, repected voices of the right?

You know those recurring dreams where vaguely disturbing things happen to you and it always turns out the same; you fall off a cliff but never hit the ground or you suddenly remember that you signed up for Philosophy 200 back in September and it’s now December and you haven’t been to any of the classes because you forgot all about it?  I thought about this over the weekend after reading a couple of republican hack syndicated columnists jabbering on about how we’re all going to die because of the awful, terrible negro, Obama.   

Charles Krauthammer and Victor Davis Hanson share an aura of credibility and respectability because they are rumored to have some kind of academic credentials, thus rendering their otherwise inane and repetitious Obama-badgering to be the voice of the loyal opposition.   I, however, have drilled deeply into their Cave of Half-Remembered Treachery and am here to tell you the truth.   Both of these guys are making a tidy living being professional Obama-haters and undiscerning shills for every right-wing interest group from the NRA to Chevron to the Daughters of the American Revolution to the Elks club down on the corner.  So as a public service I am once again going to take my trusty lance to their army of straw men and try to get the smell of red herring out of the house before the company comes over. 

Krauthammer’s latest thinly disguised propaganda piece uses the pretense of dissecting the choice of Chuck Hagel for Defense Secretary to flog Obama for not hewing to the neo-con vision of American exceptionalism, a grand-sounding euphemism for global imperialism and genuflection to Israel specifically.   He cites three areas where Obama is reverting to his true Obama-ness; military spending, Israel and Iran – sort of a holy trinity of the sacrosanct to the Bill Krystol  / Richard Perle church of world domination.   Citing the 600 billion in automatic, across-the-board defense cuts to be implemented by the sequester, he fails to recognize John Boner being hoisted on his own petard and makes it sound as if that’s Obama’s number, a number which, if implemented, would leave our military tragically neutered and wandering the world stage like a 20 year old hump-back gelding.   His basic criticism – boiled down – is that Obama wants a smaller military, a grim and ominous development for USO bars from Okinawa to Dusseldorf.  But really Chuck – virtually everyone not obsessed with some kind of weird Julius Caesar complex understands that after winding down two wars, the military should be smaller.

Our problem with our belligerent little brother Israel is a vexing one politically.  There are so many Israeli constituencies, from hallucinating evangelicals to the George Patton-wannabe chicken hawks who lay in bed at night with erections thinking about the 7^th Armored Division charging across Kordestan hell-bent for Tehran and the obstinate 17^th century monks huddled in the Grand Mosque plotting our demise.  This is just stupid, as has been American policy towards Israel and Iran for the last 25 years.   Unless you want to sanction bombing them back to the Bronze Age, they aren’t going anywhere.  You’d think we might come to understand that putting a gun to their head isn’t going to accomplish anything but every time an American president whispers the word “negotiate” these guys start foaming at the mouth.  They apparently never got over their personal Peacock, the Shah, being ignominiously kicked out and are determined to make up for it, turning what under other circumstances might just be another Middle Eastern country suspicious of us for our knee-jerk support for Israel into a scary nuclear monster trying to destroy us.  I know lots of Iranian people and generally find them to be friendly but tough negotiators who like “things” just like we do and like the Chinese do and like most people do.  Turning them into cartoonish and mysterious haters of the Great Satan is counter- productive.

I’m personally ambivalent about Israel – I can sympathize with 60 years of jittery nerves, bus-bombings, and widespread hatred from their neighbors.  But I also know that if every time my neighbor’s kid lost a ball in my yard I took a high-powered rifle and shot out their windows I probably wouldn’t get much sleep at night either.   And they need to stop building god damned apartment buildings.

But for my money Krauthammer’s most damning position is his exaltation of the little war criminal, Henry Kissinger, to some kind of semi-deity and Middle Eastern savant.  Never mind that the little bastard sits in his New York City brownstone with security armed to the teeth and is afraid to venture much past Massachusetts for fear of being Pinochet’d into his own damp jail cell.  The little prick probably dreams of extraordinary rendition at night – rotting in some stinking prison in Outer Nowhere is too good for him.   But he’s Krauthammer’s idea of a statesman.

In his latest column for the San Jose Mercury, Victor Davis Hanson – and by the way; it’s a sure sign that someone is a blowhard if they use three names when surely two will do – regurgitates his usual litany of republican talking points, augmented nicely by a veneer of doom and foreboding.  I wanted to punch him but I’ll just hit these one by one instead.

The central premise is that the idea of some kind of gun control is creating panic akin to that which would occur is one of those big-ass spaceships were hovering over New York or Los Angeles, so just-plain-folks are flocking to gun stores, arming themselves to the teeth and checking their supply of Twinkies in the basement for fear the faceless bureaucrats of the ATF will soon be going door-to-door to seize Grandpa’s 12 gauge.  As paranoid fantasies go, this is a good one – some addled gun owners seem to have this as their recurring dream.   He then goes on the blame violent video games and the depraved glitterati of Hollywood for making Adam Lanza go nuts and kill 26 people.  He neglects to mention that Lanza’s mother was the source of the weapon in question and misses the irony of her buying it for self defense purposes.  Vic, if she did have Grandpa’s 12 gauge for protection, young Adam would likely never perpetrated his nightmarish crime and we might not be having this conversation.  Some simple safety measures, eh?  Like maybe a trigger lock or a gun safe and Adam is still in his room playing World of Warcraft and listening to German death metal.

He segues into a rant about health insurance and higher taxes on income over 400k, bemoaning the fact that these valiant embodiments of American bootstrap success are being punished – made hapless victims – and the government is, by implication, going to give their hard earned money to the shiftless among us.  In a particularly obvious falsehood, he sympathizes with those who have been playing fair and buying insurance and who now must subsidize, “many who could, but chose not to buy health insurance”, somehow obfuscating the fact that making those people pay for their insurance or health care one way or another is the very essence of Obama-care.

He ends on this cheery note; “No wonder the fear that a growing government will infringe on such traditional freedoms is stampeding millions of panicky Americans in all directions.”  Of course this is insulting in several ways, the most egregious being the implication that Americans are as stupid as cockroaches, something that – I’m afraid – he and the rest of the right wing intelligencia truly believe down to their souls…or whatever it is that occupies the space where there should be a soul.

My recurring dream is the clamor and screeching of these relentless voices spewing misinformation and outright lies to advance their agenda, cloaked in faux patriotism, racism and contempt for those whose striving hasn’t resulted in “success”.   It’s one thing to want a smaller government – I certainly do.  It’s something else to take that very traditional American ideal and twist it into hatred and fear and treason.  Listening to some of the over-heated rhetoric coming from the sputtering and bug-eyed republican members of the House of Representatives, I am frankly surprised that they haven’t been hauled off by the secret service for a sweaty conversation in some dusty warehouse in Maryland.  To have these ostensibly respected members of the conservative media fomenting this kind of hyperventilating nonsense is regrettable.  I think tonight I’ll take an Ambien and see what happens…

Belly flopping off the fiscal cliff; or how I lost the capacity for rational thought

The laundry list of right wing complaints post fiscal cliff has been amusing to observe – all of the big gun conservative commentators have weighed in on the madness sure to follow what, in their minds was an ill-advised decision to let common sense prevail and maintain some semblance of dignity in the congress.  Now they are in hot pursuit of the Deficit / Liberal / Obama boogie-man with torches held high, in full throat, giving us a good excuse to once again examine and break down the reasons for their concern.  There are many such voices in the media these days but I will try to stick to those who I am pretty confident are not hallucinating regularly but whose partisan freak-flag is flying high just the same.

Victor Davis Hanson, eminent Hoover Institution historian and right-wing hack, published an article recently titled  “2012: Call it the year when dreams died” an ominous sounding rehash of everything wrong in the world and why it is all the fault of Obama or other liberal impulses, all of which have suspicious origins and will surely doom us left unchecked by the wise men of the right – like himself.    And while thumbing through a laundry list of left-wing folly, dismissing legitimate concerns about - as he derisively calls them - “the most vulnerable”, (as if they don’t really exist and are just a figment of deluded liberals’ imaginations), perpetuating the wild-eyed right-wing conspiracy fantasy about Benghazi and justifying the paranoid Brown-shirts leading the NRA, he compares Obama to Nixon in a wild swing and a miss attempt to further demonize him.  Never mind that Hanson probably voted for Nixon both times  he ran - he tries to make the logically questionable case that  the two were equally venal and criminal and worthy of contempt.  This is - of course - laughable in its entirety.  Obama is nothing more than a 1974-vintage moderate republican who only looks like a bug-eyed frothing spawn of Fidel Castro when compared to dangerous lunatics who have seized control of the modern republican party.  

He goes on to somehow equate Obama’s re-election with the crash of the Greek economy, the election of Mohamed Morsi in Egypt, the overblown, sputtering fireworks being launched to great and emotional fanfare in North Korea and Kim Slutashian carrying Kanye's love child.  Right, Vince – of course this all makes sense in your twisted world view.  Now climb back up into Hoover Tower and try to lie down for a while with a wet cloth over your forehead and when you wake up, there will be armed guards outside the kindergarten class room where your grandchildren are reading My Pet Goat in honor of the man most responsible for the  current and much ballyhooed “trillion dollar deficits” and Quetin Tarrentino will have seen the light and entered the seminary.

My local paper is full of letters and articles from sputtering right-wingers expressing bitter disappointment, particularly now that John Boner has finally acquiesced and cut a deal “to avert the dreaded fiscal cliff”, a phrase so ubiquitous as be rendered meaningless – the brittle-haired local news readers staring glassy-eyed at the camera could read it over and over and keep a straight face but that’s because they don’t seem to care much about what it is they’re reading.  For most other sentient beings the phrase is met with either a yawn or a roll of the eyes.  Memo to news producers everywhere; endless repetition of hyperbole turns it into just more verbal Fruit Loops for the hungry maw of 21^st century information consumer.  It – by turns – scares us or bores us but it doesn’t seem to motivate the knuckleheads in Washington.

For example, here is a letter suggesting that the deal was “typical Obama; punish the successful and reward the nonperformers”, as if this sums up Obama’s political strategy in one incoherent blast of thinly disguised racism. 

Here’s another lamenting that the “liberal media”, (could that include me???), has successfully cast republicans as “racists, homophobes, sexists, and gun-nuts”, a fairly accurate description as far as I can tell, at least in as much as the most vocal and influential voices on the party are concerned.  If you don’t like being portrayed that way, ask yourself how these clowns get elected?   This correspondent, who is the president of something called, “The Conservative Forum of Silicon Valley”, goes on to blame the media for the fact that the unprincipled representatives he presumably supports, ”betrayed their core beliefs” by voting for a deal with no spending cuts, evidently not paying enough attention to the hated media to notice that the spending cuts are yet to come and are being negotiated as this is written.  I know that the word "negotiation" is not in the republican lexicon anymore, which explains how fuming hatred trumps reasoned political dialogue once again.

The sad fact is that this imaginary crisis and its intellectual companion, raising the debt ceiling, does nothing more than distract the country from the real work of reform that most reasonable observers agree needs to occur.  If I am Obama now and see that the fired up tea party rabble are demanding dollar-for-dollar cuts to match the increase in the debt ceiling, I would propose line items cuts to a defense budget so bloated as to embarrass Jabba the Hut.  Here’s a news flash to the Three Corner Hat crowd; defense takes up over 50% of the federal budget.  Anyone serious about cutting need only take a hard look at the defense budget and the savings start leaping off the page.  Instead Paul Ryan and his ilk fuel their post-puberty obsession with Ayn Rand by suggesting the “nonperformers” be cast aside to fend for themselves so that the deserving can go and join the generals choking down turkey legs, warm stout and Cuban cigars.  

Instead of arguing about how long to extend unemployment benefits, take an aircraft-carrier’s worth of money and go build a bridge somewhere.  Reform the tax code so people and corporations aren’t rewarding for lying through their teeth and maybe you could lower some rates.   Stop wallowing in the institutional stupidity that seems to have spread through Washington like a cholera epidemic and try to form rational thought above the level of a four year old playing with an empty cardboard box.   Instead of screaming “No!!!” hysterically  every time Obama or the democrats suggest voting for something completely non-partisan and innocuous, like the Violence Against Women act, come out from under the covers, look around and see that the world is changing and if you insist of staying there in bed, sucking your thumbs and pouting, you will eventually be no more relevant to the current political process in this country than Henry Kissinger.    

Holiday Disfunction on Capitol Hill...

For the last few days I have been thinking about the increasingly strange place of the public restroom in modern life.   After all, in a 21^st century heretofore characterized by people wandering around relentlessly focused on the tiny screen of their personal devices – cocooned in pixilated armor that shuts out everyone around them – it is worth considering the public restroom, where we engage in a semi-ritualistic and vaguely unsettling communal excretory function in a dizzying variety of settings, from the lobby restroom of the Fairmont Hotel to the ballpark to the skeeviest gas station restroom along the interstate.  Really; what else is there that’s like that? 

 But no; due to the ongoing toxic cock fight in our nation’s capitol, that profoundly important academic exploration will have to wait.  Instead we’re compelled to offer our opinion and commentary on the dramatic and largely imaginary impending confrontation with the dreaded “fiscal cliff”.    The combination of a snappy nickname with months of breathless hyperbole has everyone on edge; consumer confidence numbers were down over 6 points, which is a pretty significant drop, especially considering that most other economic indicators have been positive since the election.  The media has found this to be nearly irresistible – empty headed and vacuous as they are - and so the cable news shows are filled with quasi-experts of every stripe yammering away and offering their opinion, all accomplishing nothing other than to increase national anxiety. 

The one good thing to come of it is the further unmasking of the republican party, exposing them as the clueless band of obstructionist traitors they seem to have become.   Has there been one good idea to come from the right over this issue?  Is there any indication that they might pursue a different solution than that which they have been mumbling and nattering about for the better part of a year?  Do they pay attention to anything other than the marching orders delivered to them from the corporate bag-men and plutocrats controlling their agenda? 

I have been listening to John Boner for two years and he has had literally nothing of substance to say since the 2010 mid-terms.  For him to stand up in front of a forest of microphones and try to claim that they’re the ones doing all of the compromising and making all of the practical and substantive proposals and Obama is the one responsible for the impasse is laughably predictable because he totally lost control of his bug-eyed, frothing, tea-party infested mob who fervently believe that bringing the government to its knees is their holy and patriotic duty.  And if a few unwashed foreigners, old people and shiftless minorities have to suffer because of it, all the better.

For their part, the democrats continue to trot out two of the most demonstrably ineffective “leaders” in the House and Senate in modern history.  Harry Reid looks like a slightly addled and sleepy assistant professor of 16^th century Slavic languages, like he needs to be dusted off and pointed to the podium on the Senate floor where he gets all worked and says “Gosh darn it” and spouts other such inflammatory rhetoric while being completely ignored by 90% of his colleagues, who would rather play cribbage for cigarettes than listen to his jabbering.

 In the House they depend on Nancy Pelosi, possibly the most polarizing figure in an entire congress of loony, hallucinating reactionaries and partisan hacks.  Everyone hates her, probably even her own staff, and her effectiveness was amply demonstrated during the first half of Obama’s first term when she alienated virtually everyone in the country with her cartoonish liberalism and icy bitchiness.   Even Obama probably doesn’t want to take her calls.

In this muddle of self-interest, corruption and treacherous partisanship is it any wonder that nothing happens?   At some point Obama has looked around and said, “One more round of phone calls and that’s it – we can go off the god damn cliff for all I care anymore”.  

If the tea party rabble wants to bring down the government, Thelma and Louise-ing it off the fiscal cliff seems like a good start so why does anyone expect that any kind of deal can be struck that includes them?   Boner needs to man-up, tell them to kiss his ass, and make a deal.  Seventy-five percent of the country wants a deal that includes some cuts and some tax increases.  What is he afraid of – his legacy?  As it stands, his legacy is that he was a hyper partisan but fundamentally ineffective speaker who, when the country needed him most, ignored what was right to score cheap political points that ended up gaining him nothing.  Wow – how’s that sound for the old tombstone, Johnny?   

 If I was you I might think about doing something drastic and outside the box, like getting together with your soul-brother Mitch McConnell and inviting the little fuehrer, Grover Norquist, along with you.  Drop some ruffies in his scotch and leave him tied to the capitol flagpole with his pants around his ankles as a warning to the delusional tea party knuckleheads that they need to get in line and follow your lead.  That’s what leaders do, Johnny – they lead.  If it takes well reasoned convincing or a public flogging, your job is to cut a deal and move on, not to throw up your hands and head for St. Kitts for the holidays.

Where are the statesmen on The Hill – nodding off over Courvoisier and Cubans down at the club, waiting for someone to tell them to go back and get in their chairs?  How hard can it be?   Have these people ever negotiated anything?   Geez – it’s pathetic.

I’ll bet they have really cool restrooms though…

Institutional Stupidity and the Rise of the American Asshole

Institutional stupidity is the tendency for organizations to compartmentalize functions such that no one person or group is fully in control of the output of the organization nor does any one person or group completely understand how the organization works.  Instead each of these parts performs its task according to a set of process rules which – because they are isolated from the whole – are likely to be less efficient as a result.  Indeed, these isolated functionaries are more likely to inadvertently work at cross purposes to the most effective function of the enterprise.

The finest example of institutional stupidity is ubiquitous, on display all around us every day – automobile traffic.  Why do I say this is an example of institutional stupidity?   Think back to the last time you had to go to the DMV for a driving test.  Think about the questions; how far behind the car in front of you should you be when approaching a school bus on the side of the road with its lights flashing?  How many feet should you be from an intersection where you are making a turn before turning on your indicator?  This is an overwhelmingly technical approach to teaching people how to drive that completely ignores the most critical aspect of the art of driving.  It has no philosophical component – it doesn’t address things like common courtesy, cooperation, the big picture.  Instead it focuses on the almost useless minutia and technically “correct” way to drive without teaching the skill of driving.  Why is this?

When it comes to driving, the emphasis on tiny details results in millions of people who can operate a car semi-successfully but who are shitty and dangerous drivers and a menace on the roads; assholes, in other words – completely unconcerned about others, selfish and inconsiderate, as if they are the only car on the road.  Now multiply by 10 million. 

It is because, like so many modern bureaucracies, it is more important to them to follow procedures established by faceless superiors than to actually teach people how to drive.  I call this “window-washing syndrome” – the typical organizational focus on process to the detriment of accomplishing the ostensible goals in the most efficient manner.  In other words, emphasizing the washing of the window in tedious detail while neglecting the goal of actually getting it clean. 

Many mid-level management positions have been eliminated in the 21^st century wired world of commerce after being recognized for the useless drag on innovation and success that they are, bogged down in ass-covering and following procedure and letting the work of the enterprise suffer as a result.   How many times have you sincerely asked someone with whom you are forced to interact and negotiate, “Why do we have to do it this way?” only to be told, “Because we have to do it according to the guidelines” or some equally brain-dead explanation?   Not only is this thoughtless and lazy, it leaves the interpretation of these guidelines to drones and apparatchiks who may not be best able to provide one that is correct.

This fetish with process is rampant and is the single most common characteristic of organizations from Cub Scout troops to giant corporations.   The result is institutional paralysis and stasis if they’re lucky or an orgy of bad decisions if they’re allowed to run free.  The American car industry was, until recently, a fine example of this trickle down stupidity.  Hummers for the general public?  Really?  What were they thinking?  If decisions come about as a result of the Holy Process, then they are unquestioned by anyone and foisted on the public, often with great fanfare.  Where is the intellectual QA?  Absent, because nobody can be trusted to take one look at it and say, “Oh my god, no!”

We’ve just witnessed this at the University of California, an institution with a long and storied tradition of higher learning and one doubtless populated by professors worthy of the various Nobels and Pulitzers gathering dust in their offices but one also run by state bureaucrats plagued by the disease of institutional stupidity.  They have a university-wide logo, dripping with tradition, albeit, somewhat cluttered by modern standards of marketing design, what with the Latin, the candle, an open text book and so on.  So someone gets the brilliant idea to simplify it – a euphemism for dumbing it down – to an amorphous blob of blue and yellow which was met by nearly universal derision.  It was summarily withdrawn in a matter of days and the person or persons responsible for the decision are now hiding under their beds, confused and sucking their thumbs while the regents write the obscenely large check to the marketing design group who designed it. 

Schools are also fertile breeding grounds for institutional stupidity, where teachers – for whatever reason – teach their students how to pass tests rather than how to learn; how to get to the next level without learning much of anything useful on the journey.  Thus we have high schools churning out waves of ignorant, illiterate graduates, all of whom feel that they not only have to go to college, but that they are entitled to do so.  College professors then discover them sitting mute and glassy-eyed in the back rows of classrooms across the country getting “C’s” if the curve is distorted enough or failing miserably if it isn’t. 

Somehow four or five or six years later they emerge with a diploma, dumb as a bag of hammers, and they’re now proliferating into low level jobs in retail and customer service or, if the know someone, at the DMV where this cycle of inbred stupidity flourishes all over again.  They can’t think – all they can do is go down a list and check off those things they’re supposed to do until it’s time to go home and they can get in their cars, crank up their Rhianna CDs and drive home like assholes. 

Why are the people who wait on us in stores and businesses everywhere so terrible at their jobs?  Because they’re stupid.  And deep down they know they’re stupid; they watch Jeopardy and can’t answer a single question.  Knowing that they’re stupid and lots of people are smarter than them pisses them off.  At the same time they feel they deserve better or are too good for the job because – after all – they graduated from college.  They are intellectually lazy, arrogant, dismissive and contentious – assholes, in other words.  Voila!  The cycle is complete. 

Perhaps it’s because of the economic chaos of the last five or six years, but it also seems that everyone is really, really angry.  I was in line the other day when the local post office opened – there was a queue of maybe ten people waiting.  The door was opened by a grey-haired Filipino guy who took his place behind the counter and started waiting on us.  After five minutes another guy in line started muttering darkly, then louder and louder until he was yelling at this poor civil servant – himself a long-term captive in a fortress of organizational dysfunction – who tried to explain that he couldn’t call anyone to help him at the counter, as he was the only counter-person there.  But the angry, entitled guy wouldn’t hear it, and continued to demand that he get someone up there to help him.  A couple of times he could see someone moving around in the back and he yelled at them to get out front and “wait on us”.   Clearly, this guy was an asshole – a self-important nihilist slamming his way around the world with no thought other than what’s important to him.  Humility?  Too threatening.

In August I had a – thankfully – negative biopsy.   I have insurance with a major provider and, other than waiting somewhat anxiously to find out the deductible damage, I figured the professionals at the insurance company and the hospital would take care of the details.  Three and a half months later it is still as tangled as a plate of spaghetti.  I got a letter from the insurance company telling me they were trying to get the hospital to provide documentation that the procedure wasn’t for a “pre-existing condition”.   I thought that was odd given that it was a biopsy – by definition that seemed to eliminate the possibility of it being pre-existing.   When I asked the sweetly drawling customer service rep about that she said, “We’re not sayin’ it is – we’re just askin’ if it is.”  Ah, well that clears it up then, doesn’t it?  And when I asked her why they had to go through this exercise, she said, “Well sir, that’s just what we have to do.”  Is there a tiny spark of intellect in there anywhere?  I didn’t detect one.  

In organizations, they say, shit rolls downhill, meaning the top of the house makes a decision or approves a change and it proliferates down the food chain to the lowest level employees.  But it becomes like that parlor game – I think it’s called Chinese Whispering or something – where each person whispers the same thing to the person next to them in turn and everyone laughs when what comes out at the end is nothing like what goes in at the beginning.  Ha!  That makes for a fun drinking game but is less amusing when applied to corporate governance and organizational behavior.  Shit not only rolls down hill; it gets stinkier and stinkier as it gets closer to the bottom until those charged with implementation are holding their noses and vomiting in the street. 

Rigid adherence to process has evolved in some less-than innovative organizations until it entirely pre-empts thinking.  People not used to thinking regularly, then, can’t be trusted to think for themselves, take responsibility, or make decisions and so more box-checking processes evolve until no one understands why anything is being done anymore – they’re all just doing it and going home.  

We wouldn’t presume to offer a prescription for this daunting problem, as the drones are firmly entrenched with no sign of relinquishing their mindless hold on the cultural and business institutions all around us – or even recognizing that this crushing stupidity is a menace to American civilization as we know it.  Instead, now that we’ve got our blood pressure under control, we are inclined to instead pass along the ubiquitous advice of the English when faced with intractable difficulties; keep calm and carry on.   And don’t let on that you know anything is wrong.    

Cliffhanger Blues, or how I learned to stop cooperating and destroy the country…

In the old Roadrunner cartoons, Wiley Coyote never did learn his lesson about reckless behavior around precipitous drops, railroad tunnels or dangerously balanced giant boulders.  He was constantly crushed, flattened, trampled and blown-up as a result of his idiotic, simple-minded persistence toward accomplishing one goal; to kill the Roadrunner.  Sound familiar?

As the media resounds with ominous warnings and sincere and earnest sounding attempts to warn us all of the looming catastrophe, republicans are acting as if they won the recent election and hold all the cards in what is supposed to be an honest and transparent negotiation over cutting the deficit.  Never mind that the deficit is an enormous, steaming pile of hokum, a fantastic boogey-man dreamed up by conservative intelligencia terrified at the prospect of a nation not ruled by them and their fat-cat, mostly white, mostly rich brethren to frighten the ignorant about a danger that doesn’t really exist.  Robert Reich, a very bright guy, has been attempting to make the point that the so-called fiscal cliff is nothing but a republican obsession that completely misses the point and he hasn’t gotten much traction.   

It’s not the fixation with the deficit itself that is so repugnant; that’s just another in a long line of mistaken priorities and take-your-eye-off-the-ball-isms that have characterized the republican right for the last forty years – a highly developed aptitude for consistently being on the wrong side of history, whether it’s foreign policy and over-hyped danger from sinister enemies like an about-to-collapse Russia in the Eighties, the Sandinistas and Saddam Hussein right on through to gay marriage and the war on drugs.   It’s the nature of conservatives to want to keep things the way they are most comfortable – like it's Alabama in 1961.

Now, rather than engaging in an honest effort to heal the country and solve some problems, they are simply reverting to their historical talking points – tax breaks for “job creators”, an end of regulation to allow unfettered exploitation of resources, the destruction of unions and the general maintenance of a royalist oligarchy inhabited by…well, them.  

One lesson they seemed to have learned from the election, at least temporarily, is that the dependence on angry social conservatives to carry their flag only succeeded in having that banner planted on a tiny little irrelevant corner of the country where nobody gives a shit.  They have adopted at least the appearance of regret over all of the hatred they so recently were encouraging and are making friendly noises about immigration reform and changing their misogynistic positions on women’s issues, if for no other reason than self preservation as a viable political institution.  I find it damning that they are – in 2012 – adapting to a reality that has been in place for at least twenty-five years but again, that’s the nature of conservatism.   I would have expected that anyone proposing that women get raped because they were asking for it somehow would have been tarred and feathered and run out of the party long ago – it makes these concessions sound to me like a liberalization of convenience, but that remains to be seen. 

Today the news was full of reports of John Boner’s deep disappointment with the Obama administration’s latest proposal for resolving the issues that he and his boneheaded colleagues packed in dynamite and lit the fuse on 6 months ago, thinking that Obama was dead in the water and their nominee was going to be a shoe-in.  They were never serious about any negotiation over their big, bad deficit – it was a party drunk of the fermented tea of a truck load of hopped-up freshmen representatives bent on changing the world to fit their peculiar vision.  Now that they have been repudiated in a landslide election debacle, they don’t have any intelligent plan.  Their plan consists of “you give us everything we want or you aren’t serious about solving the country’s problems” rhetoric and constant pleas for the president to engage in honest negotiation, as if they’re waiting patiently for him to finish his breakfast and get down to business.  From what I can see, all their talk about “accepting revenue increases” comes down to stripping the middle class of their only tax break – the mortgage interest deduction – and some cockamamie gibberish about limiting charitable deductions for the rich – a completely tone-deaf and comical idea that would accomplish very little except to demonize the poor and underprivileged and deprive them of even their current pathetic lot in life.  Nice idea...

Meanwhile, Romney has lunch with Obama today, and the mind reels with comic possibilities over that one.  Then Mitt went down to Capitol Hill to drop in on his android-like running mate, the intellectual core of the party, a man who can reach across the aisle, a man who specialized in bald-faced lying during the campaign and was lucky to hold onto his seat in the house, Paul “Lyin’ Ryan.  They were supposed to be meeting so that Romney and he could discuss substantive issues related to the deficit impasse but I say they sat awkwardly in fat leather chairs for 15 minutes sipping gin and then quickly hit the hand sanitizer hoping never to see each other again.  It’s not like there were ever any reports of them bonding on the campaign bus. 

And finally we have the spectacle of Mitch McConnell, the single most treacherously partisan human in the congress, yammering on about the seriousness of the situation and doing back-flips to avoid any increase in tax rates for his chosen constituency – the .1%.   He wants no part of Obama’s own ideas for solving the make believe crisis – he wants him to propose “solutions” that republicans can accept – in other words, to do what he wants him to do.  It’s preposterous but the guy is relentless and has absolutely no shame – he should be tried for treason as soon as possible.

Going back to Mr. Reich, he is correct in stating that the whole narrative around the “looming fiscal cliff” is a bunch of nonsense and that we should take advantage of historically low rates, borrow even more money and get people working again – that’s the only thing that is going to jump start the economy – not some arm-wrestling contest over an esoteric notion like the deficit that, if Faux News would just shut up about it, no one would care about.   

Obama has all the cards, though, and if he just stays firm, maybe we can avoid driving the economy back into a recession by doing precisely the wrong thing at the wrong time.   Play the ace of trumps, Barack…

"Honey; I thought you said that god damn dog went to the pound" - post election barking

As we shift from the election season to the Christmas season, your favorite Labrador is ready to go back to work after a long stretch of self-congratulation after Obama was able to fend off the forces of evil, tedious right wing lies, distortion, obfuscation and various attempts to change the subject and Mitt and Ann Romney’s patrician cluelessness.  Of course, we have a few thoughts about the stormy and nerve-racking thirty day period from mid-October to mid-November before we move on to other pressing business.

After Obama’s somnambulant stagger through the first debate there were nervous moments amongst the progressive portion of the electorate as a punch-drunk Romney seemed to have landed some wild and flailing blows, enough to stagger Obama, as if he came to the stark realization that – yeah, remarkably, I can still fuck this up if I’m not careful.  Right wing knuckleheads in the media went into full frothing overdrive, gleefully rubbing their hands together over the prospect of 10 million illegal immigrants spontaneously self deporting like the German army leaving Russia in 1944 – the tattered remnants of a massive attempted takeover leaving in a trail of downcast and disoriented farm workers, bus boys, gardeners and nannies trudging south to the morose strumming of a mariachi band.  The Obama ground game had to go nuclear.

Thanks to Romney’s penchant for self-destructive jabbering and Paul Ryan’s douche-baggieness, Obama was able to right himself with no small amount of help from Super-storm Sandy’s long, lingering onslaught up the east coast.  In retrospect, Romney was the weakest republican candidate since…well, since the last one.  John McCain and Sarah Palin were arguably the worst ticket for national office, ever, but it’s widely understood now that the republicans didn’t want to win in 2008 so they let an addled McCain pick whoever he wanted while Dick Morris and Karl Rove laughed their asses off over 20 year-old scotch.   They all knew that the economy was a complete disaster so they made the political calculation that they should retreat to fight another day, surrendering 2008 and pointing to this election, thinking that  their subsequent strategy of opposing Obama at every turn insured that he wouldn’t get any traction and by 2012 would be presiding over an economy coughing and wheezing like a tubercular, alcoholic Ratso Rizzo.

In the end nothing worked like these geniuses planned; their treasonous colleagues in congress humped Obama’s leg and pissed on his shoes for the better part of two years and while there was plenty of anti-Barack sentiment among some segments of the electorate – particularly the closeted KKK voters yearning for the lost America that never really existed – all this dishonorable little strategy succeeded in doing was to make everyone to the left of Mitch McConnell really, really angry.  How’s that taste, Karl?  Personally I am still hoping that somehow the Justice Department can pin something on you and the treacherous gang of criminals who pay you and make you somebody’s prison bitch like you so richly deserve.   “Squeal like a pig, boy…”  Ahem…uh, sorry.

So anyway, there was plenty of fun to be had in the aftermath of the election as sputtering right-wing media whores from coast to coast took turns having apoplexy on camera as they tried to explain away an almost 100 electoral vote spanking.  Their pathetic attempts to “broaden the base” and be more inclusive were almost as insulting to the targeted demographics as Mitt’s own royalist condescension.  Their stumbling attempts to try to talk about attracting Hispanics to the republican party were so unnatural and awkward they might as well have said, “We need to get more negroes to vote for us – let’s buy some barbeque.”  The fact that Hispanics would, given half a chance, probably be sympathetic to the republican platform in terms of social issues makes their inability to transcend their own racism and say something coherent to them all the more laughable. 

The post-mortem regarding women, young people, gays – Mitt’s 47% - was just as sadly hilarious.  To attract more women they want to simply recruit more women business types to appeal to pocketbook issues.   And while that might be a good idea, you might want to cull your ranks of the kind of misogynistic morons whose ideas about biology have all the sophistication of a witch-doctor.   As Tina Fey so brilliantly put it, “If I have to listen to one more grey-faced man with a $2 haircut explain to me what rape is, I’m going to lose my mind!”  Maybe having Ann Romney yammering on about how hard her and Mitt’s life has been wasn’t the best way to attract women votes either.   She is definitely not the “I’m every woman” that poor Whitney Houston was singing about.

Finally, and perhaps most damning of all, was the avalanche of lies that surrounded the entire republican campaign.  Sure, Obama and the democrats put a favorable spin on things, to their advantage – that’s understood.  But the republican’s whole campaign was built on a foundation of lies, fever dreams, and hallucinations to such an extent that even the stalwart republican mouthpieces in the media were clearly embarrassed to try to defend the shit that was routinely coming out in Romney/Ryan TV ads and stump speeches.  

Now as Obama settles in for a second term and the whole happy gang of them wrestle with the ominous sounding “fiscal cliff”, all we’re left with is the specter of George Will’s smirking, sarcastic, contemptuous ramblings, denying climate change and generally harassing Obama and the democrats from behind the cherry trees lining the Potomac.   It’s sad and pathetic, really.  There is serious work to do in this country – everyone knows that and acknowledges it.  If the republicans want to save themselves as a viable political entity they need to tell Grover Norquist to go fuck himself, roll up their sleeves and make some deals.  Obama wants a legacy as much as any normal human – just like John Boner.  But at this point all Boner has for a legacy is two and a half years of stubborn obstruction and mealy-mouth finger pointing and he needs to understand that all that’s going to get him is a place in infamy as the most corrupt, inept and useless speaker in the history of congress.  How about it, John?  Do you think you can find some adults down there among the old, fat-cat, white men on your side of the aisle in time for us to get this thing moving again?  We all sure as hell hope so.

The Future of Dissent, Obstruction and Treason...a post-election speculation

The frantic flailing around for a message from the Romney camp has been comical to watch but it is accompanied by more sinister and disturbing events as well that aren’t nearly as funny.   As the poll numbers continue to swing in Obama’s favor and Romney’s climb to the presidency seems more and more far-fetched, the reactionary forces of divisiveness are making a feverish, last ditch effort to save him and are fighting like a terrified poodle thrown into the middle of a lake.   

The usual nitwits in the right wing media are bloviating at full blast in a brazen attempt at mass obfuscation.   If they raise the decibel level high enough maybe everyone will just cover their ears and, by doing so, miss the incoherent and hysterical nonsense coming out of Romney’s mouth.   I have to admit, watching bony-assed blonde skank Ann Colter on The View trying to tell Whoopi Goldberg what black people think was hilarious.   But Colter and Rush Blowhard and Hannity and Beck are clowns whose circus – unfortunately – will never pack up and leave town in a trail of elephant shit and big shoes.

So while reasonable conservative voices like David Brooks and George Will and even William Kristol – and I can’t believe I’m saying that – seem resigned to Mitt’s implosion and ultimate drowning, tea party congressional operatives and Brown Shirt governors intent on voter suppression in the name of fighting imaginary voter fraud are working harder than ever to rally the mob to the White House gates with torches blazing and pitchforks held high.   The hatred and frustration are palpable. 

I listen to Brooks on NPR today and when asked to characterize the state of the race, he gave a verbal shrug of his shoulders and said, basically, Romney’s fucked it up beyond all measure and the only thing left to do is get into the betting pool and guess how many electoral votes he’s going to get. 

Romney's obstructionist colleagues in the congress – before taking recess until after the election – tossed a procedural stink bomb from the balcony beforehand, killing a veteran’s jobs bill that was fully funded and drafted by republicans as well as democrats.   Anything to deny Obama a victory, even if they look like treasonous chicken hawks in the process.  They had no explanation and their particular constituency probably doesn’t require one or maybe couldn’t understand it if it was provided.   They see everything through the lens of Obama-hate and pissing on his shoes trumps even taking care of kids damaged by ridiculous misadventures in imperial dick measuring contests like Bush’s war with Saddam Hussein.  So sad; a puffed up Texas frat boy starting a war of honor with a third rate Stalin wanna-be that ends tragically – if predictably – for hundreds of thousands and the shameless republican heroes in congress then deny our soldiers a hand up to rejoin the job market.   Maybe these middle aged white men don’t think of returning veterans – many of whom are minorities – as worthy of a hand.  Or maybe they’re brainwashed into thinking there is some cockamamie Ayn Rand-ian principle at stake – as if the soldiers haven’t proven themselve self reliant enough at this point.

VP choice and prince regent in waiting, Paul Ryan is also creating as much distance as he dares to, privately complaining bitterly about the disorganization and lack of a focused message put forth by Romney’s advisors.   Hey Paul; this is what happens when naked ambition meets the cartoonish reality that is the current republican party and maybe – since you’ve been a part of it for 14 years – you should have had some inkling that hubris and a bucket of preposterous lies could be overcome by the simple incompetence of the dullard you chose as a nominee.

So the question becomes, what happens November 7^th in the aftermath of a Romney loss – potentially, a blowout loss?   Is it reasonable to assume the ignorant and disenchanted citizens of the far right are going to capitulate and move forward in a spirit of patriotic cooperation?   Are the delusional religious fanatics suddenly going to reconsider a more secular path in life and have compassion and empathy for those whose lives are far different from theirs?   Are the greed heads and corporate whores going to see the light of altruism, close their accounts in the Caymans and work in soup kitchens on the weekends?  Somehow I don’t think so.   In fact, there is an ominously grim vibe lurking under the babble of excited voices in these last 30 days before the election. 

It wasn’t so long ago that the misguided white Hitler youth Timothy McVeigh parked a truck full of ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel in front of the federal building in Oklahoma City and delivered a terrifying wake up call to the country.  Tragically, some people are still asleep. 

It’s easy to understand how the ignorant become the fearful become the haters and eventually become the bombers.  They see no options.  And the right wing fear mongers who are making a living being paranoid, hyperventilating blowhards aren’t going to stop; not while they’re still being paid a fortune for vomiting incendiary gibberish over the public airwaves. 

 I enjoy target shooting; I have several old WW II vintage rifles and enjoy shooting them much like someone would enjoy taking a 48 Ford coupe out for a drive once in a while.  And during trips to the gun range I often encounter people – always men – who scare the shit out of me, who look as if they don’t leave their room much and who can be seen methodically unpacking semi-automatic .223’s or enormous hand guns worthy of Dirty Harry.  Watching them shoot, there is no sense of joy or even enjoyment – only a kind of grim determination that’s deeply unsettling.

I don’t know how much of the bitterness and hatred that seems to flow easily from the far right is hyperbole, an isolated group of people whose rants are taken out of context or blown out of proportion.  But I do think the political climate is fractured and a game changing Obama victory might be the last straw for some.  If that happens the tea party voices who have spent the last four years encouraging sedition will have to answer to everyone else at last.