Il Papa

I've read the remarks from Pope Francis to Congress.

What has been most striking about Francis has been most simply this: He has placed morality rather than rules at the center of the Catholic Church.  Reading his remarks, he does talk about dogma or restrictions.  He speaks eloquently about our moral responsibilities to each other.  He lays out a clear case for why we should be our brother's and sister's keeper.

Booman made an argument a few days ago that progressives should be wary about allying themselves with this Pope, because the next one could be much more anathema to causes that liberals believe in.  This is laudable if you think anyone pays a price for being mildly hypocritical in American politics.  But it misses this key point about Francis.  What he is arguing is not a doctrine but a morality based in love of one another.

In the early part of his speech, he repeatedly notes the necessity of community in building strong individuals.  As someone once said, "It takes a village."  And when Hillary wrote that, or when Obama said, "You didn't build that" in reference to roads and schools and institutions, both were articulating a creed that focused on the "pluribus" and not the "unum."  The modern GOP, infused as it is with the spirit of Ayn Rand, simply doesn't care about the "us", it cares about the "me."  It's appeal to is harp upon the differences - Mexicans, gays, blacks - that can tear our country apart.

In so many ways, America is a fragile nation.  We have attempted to include so many different cultures - indigenous and imported - and so many different of visions of what America should be, that it might not take too much to tear us apart.  Aren't we in fact, tearing each other apart verbally?

The policy examples that Francis focused on were striking.  He did not explicitly mention abortion, despite the fact that this would have earned him applause from the Right.  Instead, he tackled the death penalty, immigration reform, poverty and climate change.  If he implicitly criticized gay marriage and abortion in his remarks on family, he also implicitly endorsed the Iran nuclear deal.  If the speech was partisan, it was partisan in the direction of the Left of American politics and must have been discomfiting as hell to those who would further wealth inequality, deny climate change, build a wall on the Mexican border and apologize for the extreme discrepancies in the number of African Americans who die by the hands of the police.

Pope Francis just gave Bernie Sanders' inaugural address.

What A Moment It Might Have Been

Vox plays a subtle Slate-type game by anointing Martin Shkreli a hero for being a truly world class asshole.  Shkreli is such a perfect, world class asshole that he becomes impossible for anyone to defend.  A failed hedge fund guy who's trying to turn a buck to cover losses off an AIDS drug?  What, he couldn't make a buck off illegal organ harvesting of puppies?

The assumption is that Shkreli's perfect odiousness will galvanize Congress into action...Stop laughing.  Look, that's the argument!  Stop laughing!  I didn't make it, I'm just...

Yeah, Congress won't do jack.  However, it has become a potential issue for Democrats to pound on.

I'm Not One To Defend Jeb!, But...

This really is stupid.

If anything this is not an example of him being...Trumpish.  This is Andover and Yale peeking through the pork rinds.

People Are Fearful and Stupid

There as a great line in Fear the Walking Dead last Sunday.  The character had grown up in death squad era El Salvador and told a story about them.  He then says the following (I'm paraphrasing):

"My father said, 'Don't hate these men.  People aren't evil. They do evil things because they are afraid.'  And I knew then that my father was a fool, because he thought there was a difference."

Most of the stupid and evil things that Americans do, like supporting Donald Trump or thinking Muslim kids deserve to be arrested for building clocks, is based on being afraid.  And so much of being afraid is tied to ignorance and stupidity.  From a caveman who freaks out during an eclipse to a Roman mariner who feared dragons and the edge of the earth to an elderly housewife who thinks the local mosque is a terrorist training camp, so much of the evil that we do to ourselves is based on being stupid and ignorant.

This is never more true than our discussions of crime.

The simple truth is that crime is falling and has been falling for some time.  As the Vox piece demonstrates it's not just perceptions of crime that is warped.  We think there are more teen pregnancies, when they are actually declining.  We think ISIS is growing when it's actually shrinking.  We think the budget deficit is increasing, when it's getting smaller.

In a climate of mass ignorance, it's no surprise that people like Donald Trump or Ben Carson have some political appeal.  How could they not?  They are feeding our irrational fears, which simply make those fears grow larger and stronger.  Trump in particular is so mind-boggingly vague about his plans that it's comical.  "I'm going to get a better deal." is pretty much his entire answer on foreign policy.  But his supporters don't care about policy, they care that Trump A) validates their fears and B) promises to end them.

He's not a presidential candidate, he's a bedtime story.

Needless to say, as someone whose adult life has been spent trying to learn and teach about how the world actually works, this is all very depressing.  But I'm hopeful that a message of pants-wetting cowardice is not the road to the White House.

0 For One

Scott Walker was my early pick to win the GOP nomination. 

Maybe I have some sort of jinx power. 

I believe Jeb Bush will win the GOP nomination. 

Did Not Know

Turns out Ben Carson is part of a slightly millennial sect of Christianity.  This might explain his confusion over whether the Bible or the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the land.

A large part of being a Democrat this cycle is worrying that the GOP might cough up some candidate who might actually win. I'm less certain that Ben Carson fills that criteria.

Well, This Could Be Embarrassing...

Under Carly Fiorina, Hewlett-Packard sold millions of dollars of equipment to Iran in violation of the spirit of the sanctions.

They used an offshore subsidiary to carry out the deals so it would appear to comply with the sanctions, but this is just Enron-type crap.

Printer ink isn't going to make Iran a global power, but the hypocrisy of her position on sanctions now is pretty galling.  It won't make a difference in the GOP primary, but it could hurt her should she get the nomination.

Fact Free Zone

The clear winner of the GOP debate on Wednesday was Carly Fiorina.  She has done the most via this debate performance to elevate her status from the first Kiddie Table Debate to being the potential Not Trump.

She had two strong moments.  One was her response to Trump's comment about her face, but I have to grade that one on a curve.  She had to know it was coming up and only a poorly run, meagerly thought-out campaign would fail to see this issue coming and have a response in the can.  A poorly run, meagerly thought-out campaign like Jeb! Bush's, I guess.

The other was her description of the Planned Parenthood abortion video.  Which was - unsurprisingly - a bald faced lie.  These forays into the Fact Free Zone were common throughout the debate.  Donald Trump's entire campaign is a refutation of the idea that facts and policies are the centerpiece of a presidential contest.  The words coming out of his mouth are almost as nonsensical as a Sarah Palin word-salad.  "I will get along with Putin and get a better deal."  WTF?  That is your GOP frontrunner?

Jeb! Bush said "My brother kept America safe."  Which is the gold star winner for chutzpah.  Bush kept America safe as long as you don't count the worst terrorist attack in our country's history, a deadly anthrax attack, arguably the worst foreign policy decision in our history that left more Americans dead than 9/11 and an American city left to drown.

And Jeb!'s line got his biggest applause.

The GOP primary is an unfettered descent into factual inaccuracy.  "Democrats killed the economy."  Unemployment is lower now than it ever was under Reagan.  "The Iran deal insures that Iran will get a nuclear weapon."  Just the opposite.  "The Iran deal allows Iran to conduct their own inspections."  No, it doesn't.  "We have to act now to stop inflation."  Inflation is practically non-existent.  "ISIS is a mortal threat."  Not to the United States it isn't.

Perhaps the greatest indicator of how bonkers, off-the-rails the GOP has become is this poll.  One of Fiorina's applause lines was "Name one accomplishment of Hillary Clinton."  How about her role in creating S-CHIP?  Her role in writing the Lily Ledbetter Law?  Working on getting veteran's benefits for National Guard troops?  Negotiating the Copenhagen agreement?  Sanctions on Iran?  Making gender equality a focal point of American foreign policy, especially in South Asia? Negotiating the cease fire in Gaza?  The START II treaty? Authoring the Pediatric Research Act?

Name an accomplishment from the "deepest and most talented field of GOP presidential contenders in years" that can match that.  In particular, name a governing accomplishment of the top three polling GOP candidates?  There isn't a single one, because none of them have held a position in government their entire life.  The Unholy Triumvirate of Trump, Carson and Fiorina have less experience in government than your average city councilman.  And the fifth place candidate - Ted Cruz - has made his name by pretty much trying to burn the Senate to the ground.

"Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, but at least it's an ethos."

The current state of the GOP presidential race is surprising the DC punditeriat.  But it shouldn't.  There has been a steady decline in the belief in the GOP electorate of the legitimacy of governance in general.  They have become a party of thinly-veiled anarchists.

Their embrace of the Four Horseman of the Governmental Apocalypse - Fiorina, Trump, Carson and Cruz - shouldn't surprise anyone.  The debate devoid of facts and long on style is a natural off shoot of the Fox News phenomenon.

Right now, the only hope for the GOP establishment is Marco Rubio.  But remember, the anti-government vote is getting over 60%.

I Know The Bar Is Low, But...

Reality TV star Bristol Palin has said that Barack Obama should stay out of the case involving the Texas boy Ahmed Mohamed.  Here's what the spawn of Caribou Barbie had to tweet:

This is the kind of stuff Obama needs to STAY out of. This encourages more racial strife that is already going on with the “Black Lives Matter” crowd and encourages victimhood.

The police made a mistake, clearly.

But why put more people against them? Why egg it on? Childish games like this from our president have divided our country… even more today than when he was elected.

Uh, WTF?

The teachers and police were fucking idiots and did something that was frankly, clearly racist.  They refused to apologize.  The rationale given by the police, by the way, is a perfect example of CopThink.  "The suspect refused to admit it was anything other than a clock, so we had to arrest him."

It was a fucking clock!  What should have said it was?

But in Palinland, when there is a miscarriage of justice against a brown person, it's terribly "divisive" to point this out.  Thank God, Jake Tapper didn't ask the America's Eleven Racist Grandparents what they thought of Black Lives Matter last night.  It could have been REALLY ugly.

Also, the idea that the President of the United States, MIT and Lord knows how many other people have reached out to this kid is not "divisive."  It is in fact trying to impress upon this young man that not everyone is a racist-assed Texas cop who thinks the Muslim kid has to be a terrorist.

What Obama and others are doing is reaching out to a kid who was traumatized by this event and letting him know that not everyone is a racist douchecanoe.

But in Right Wing Grievance Land, it is THIS that is divisive.  It is THIS that causes "racial strife."  And "victimhood"?  Obama and others are trying to make sure precisely that this kid does NOT see himself as a victim of a society that will never really accept him because he's Muslim, but that everyone from JPL engineers to Google to Mark Zuckerberg to the President of these United States has reached out to this kid.

Yet, Palin and the RW Grievance movement have focused on Obama.  Why is that?  Could it be that every time someone (a person of color or not) points out the vibrant remnants of Jim Crow and institutional racism in America, it makes that Holder of Grievance uncomfortable?

Does it Bristol?  Does it make you uncomfortable when the black president with the Muslim name reaches out to the 14 year old Muslim boy?  Does it make you uncomfortable when people note how often unarmed blacks are shot by the police?

Imagine, if you can, what it must be like to BE those families on the receiving end of that racism.  How uncomfortable would you be then?

ADDED: If you don't think America is still a deeply racist place, consider this.

Clown Car 2.0

So, I've read the transcripts, perused the early commentary - not that it's going to be accurate in Bizarro Primary 2016 - and come to an interesting conclusion.

I think Walker and Bush - the two guys I thought would duke it out for the nomination - are toast.  Neither one is ready to flourish in a multi-candidate field.  The Donald has figured out how to set himself apart.  Carly Fiorina did as well.  Carson is the Trump/Anti-Trump, the outsider who isn't a flaming asshole.  But the regular political skills that Walker, Bush and Rubio have polished over their careers are simply not what gets GOP voters' attention in 2016.

Walker should drop out soon.  Or at least the Kochs should gently push the pearl-handled revolver to him across the mahogany table.  He's not a good candidate and whatever qualities he brings, others bring more of them.

Bush can likely stick around and hope that as the field is winnowed, his star will ascend.  I doubt it.

The question is: What would a Fiorina-Clinton race look like?  I think Fiorina is a tremendously poor candidate based on her biography.  But the flaws in her bio are unlikely to be exploited by the GOP field.  She as a horrific chief executive that earned the hatred and animosity of everyone around her, laid off thousands and escaped with a golden parachute worth $40,000,000.  Gender is removed from the table as a disqualifying factor, which I think helps Clinton more than Fiorina.  And Fiorina's presence in the race makes Hillary look like Bernie.

But I can see the Final Four right now as being Trump, Fiorina, Carson and Rubio.

Chew on that for a moment, GOP establishment.

The New New Left

Matthew Yglesias chronicles the somewhat surprising rise of left wing politics in the English speaking world.  While he offers the obligatory "Sanders probably won't win" the fact is that it is no longer possible to argue that Sanders CAN'T win.

He notes that a lot of this is about generational change.  If you were of age in the '60s and '70s, your view towards social change and economic leftism, is probably pretty bleak.  You became Alex Keaton in the '80s and cheered on Reagan and Thatcher.

Arthur Schlesinger argued that American history works in cycles of reform movements and conservatism.  From 1932-1980, America was broadly in a period of reform.  Even Nixon didn't stand in the way of ascendant liberalism on issues like the environment or wage and price controls.

But the if the period from 1980-2008 was a period of conservative retrenchment, the question remains whether Americans are ready to fully embrace a reform agenda.  The rise of Sanders and Trump don't have much in common, beyond a certain jaundiced view of party apparatchiks by the activist bases of both parties.

And even if Sanders or Trump or Carson wins the nomination, is it possible that any of them can win a national election?

When it comes to Sanders the question becomes: Is he a figure like James Weaver or even William Jennings Bryan?  Is he a John the Baptist figure signalling the advent of a new age?  Or is he a figure like Teddy Roosevelt who can vault from relative obscurity to the White House in a few short years and usher in a new era of reform?

Stay tuned.

Hillary Feels The Bern

Bernie Sanders would normally be THE political story of Summer 2015, were it not for the Circus Freak Show residing under Donald Trump's combover.

I honestly don't know what to make of Sanders as a candidate.  As more economically liberal, I'm generally supportive of his platform; I love that he's articulating ideas that need more oxygen in American politics.

Yay for Bernie!

But I remain unconvinced that he can win a general election against a competent Republican candidate.  I'm not sure the Republicans HAVE a competent candidate, but one shouldn't leave these things to chance.

Jonathan Allen notes that Hillary is preemptively moving to the center, because her attempts to neutralize Warren and Sanders hasn't worked.  If you like the Warren-Sanders economic plan, you're not going to support Sanders-Lite (as Allen phrases it).  And, most importantly, Clinton is a moderate.

Of course, there are no such things as "moderates."  Typically, we give the name "moderate" to people who hold varying ideological positions and therefore do not fit easily into a Left/Right dichotomy.  Clinton is probably closer to the Sanders economically than many would assume, but she is more hawkish and more likely to embrace trade deals.  Maybe those are deal breakers in the 2016 Democratic primary.

But Clinton suffers from the fact that she is the first credible female presidential candidate, AND she represents a form of political dynasty.  Clinton has spent her adult life in the political blender.  She is very careful about the whirling blades beneath her. Too careful, perhaps.

But whereas Trump's outlandish statements - that would ordinarily be campaign-killing gaffes - actually improve his poll standings, any Clinton mistake is mulled over like an obscure Talmudic passage.  And there is a presumption of dishonesty in Clinton that really looks more like a surfeit of caution to me.  A lot of this comes from an unusual hostile relationship between the Press and Clinton.

Being more authentically moderate is a fascinating tack for Clinton to take.  I think she will lose New Hampshire, so she really needs to win Iowa, because I think she will clean up in more racially heterogeneous states, including South Carolina.

But it is not impossible for Bernie Sanders to win the nomination.  And up until recently, I assumed that it was.

This is a weird election and not a single ballot has even been cast yet.

This

Matthew Yglesias cuts to the heart of why I could not give two farts about the email "scandal".

The formative experience of my political life was the 2000 presidential campaign, in which the media mercilessly persecuted Al Gore over a series of trivial exaggerations and now-forgotten pseudo-scandals while giving George W. Bush a pass on the fact that the central premises of his economic agenda were lies.

We can include the Clinton impeachment in this, too.  Or Whitewater.

What Hillary Clinton did was legal and done by several other people who have held Cabinet posts.  But it's a "style" issue rather than a policy issue.  And most media doesn't do policy because most Americans can't understand policy.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Christ Died For Your Sins....What A Sucker.

“The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of theleast of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. - Matthew 25:40

"Screw those poor drowning Syrian kids." - Ben Carson 9/13

Having recently declared my fear of a Carson candidacy, it is worth noting his response to the Syrian refugee crisis.

He hits a nice Trumpian note about "political correctness."  But to understand the perniciousness of political correctness, it's better to read Jon Chait's epic screeds on the subject.  PC is about putting a trigger warning on Hamlet or shutting up a heterosexual white male who might have something to say about transgender rights.

Admitting Syrian refugees is not an issue of PC.  It's a humanitarian issue.  It's a crisis that has its roots in the Bush-Cheney experiment in the neighboring country of Iraq.  We have some culpability here.

But mostly, think about what this says about the state of modern Christian fundamentalism - Christianism, as opposed to Islamism.

Those that would make America a "Christian Nation" - and Carson is definitely one of those - are not practicing the Christianity of Matthew.  Blessed are the peacemakers?  Fat chance.  This about a Christian identity that unites a certain conservative, authoritarian type in America.  It's about rolling back rights and stifling dissent.  It's about living in Kim Davis' world, where her faith gets to determine what other people do, because she's a certain, correct type of Christian.

It's not political correctness, it's religious correctness.  And it's corrosive and anathema to everything men like Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and Hamilton believed in.

A guess I can end with Sinclair Lewis:

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

Sanders

This piece about why Sanders isn't resonating with black voters seems to miss a central truth.  Sanders is running on policies.  But for most voters, personality matters a great deal.  And Sanders is a prickly old grouch.

If you're a motivated, plugged in economic leftist, you are reading his policy proposals and gushing.

But the actual guy?

I don't think he will wear well in the debates.