I Think This Says It All

What the Hell is Wrong With THESE People

The face of evil...

The Westboro Baptist "Church" is one of the most sociopathic institutions I can possibly think of.

For those of you not familiar with their special blend of insane, Westboro runs around protesting at funerals and other usually solemn events.

Fred Phelps, the batshit* insane founder of Westboro, began his vicious brand of religious quackery with the notable slogan "God Hates Fags".  The signs his batshit* insane followers carry include such slogans as "Thank God for 9/11", "Thank God for IEDs" (usually at military funerals), "You're Going To Hell", "Fags Doom Nations" and "God Hates America".

You know, exactly like Jesus.

Now, some of my favorite moments have been the counterprotests against Westboro.  At the San Diego ComicCon they got especially creative.  When Elizabeth Edwards was buried, counterprotestors created a "Line of Love" to gently push the haters back.

Why do I bring this up?

Because Westboro Baptist "Church" is planning on showing up at Christina Green's funeral.

If they had decided to picket Judge Roll's funeral I would have been horrified.

But a 9 year old girl?

What do you even say?

At least it has brought a measure of bipartisanship to the Arizona legislature, as they work to find a way to keep these evil, sociopathic clowns away from a family grieving a horrific loss.

*I am trying to cut down on profanity, but you try writing about the Westboro Baptist "Church" without cursing.

Some Good News

Michelle Malkin on the attack!

Professional criminal Tom Delay got a three year prison sentence.

Before anyone accuses me of being just like Sharon Angle and her calls to "second amendment remedies" let me point out the difference.

Tom Delay was tried in a court of law and the verdict was rendered by a jury of his peers, at which point he was sentenced in a manner commensurate with his crimes.

Some lunatic walked up behind Gabby Gifford and shot her in the back of the head.

They are not the same.

As Edroso points out, the same right wingnuts that have published the addresses of political opponents and accused Democrats of islamofacisocialism and being enemies of the American people who must be stopped AT ALL COSTS are basically whining that THEY are the ones who are suffering from all these calls to tone down the rhetoric.

To quote the Bard, "Methinks thou doth protest too much."

Here's another idea: stop using violent language and imagery to score political points.

UPDATE: And the "both sides do it" nonsense should end by reading this.

Sick

This seemed better...

I'm sick.

No, literally.  I mean I'm sick about what happened in Tucson, but I'm also just miserably sick.  And I hear we're going to get a foot of snow on Wednesday.

I remember the other day watching Thing One and Thing Two playing joyfully in the yard with our dog.  And they weren't trying to maim or even dominate each other.  Just two boys running around with a dog.  I had no grading over my head, my work was caught up.

I felt good.

I'm such a sucker.

In another somewhat sad note, Dick Winters, the inspirational officer in Band of Brothers, died.  He was 92.  I say somewhat sad, because when you parachute into Normandy, assume the command of your company because the CO dies, win the DSC in an action that changes the course of the Utah beach landings, parachute into Holland, hold the line at Bastogne, liberate a concentration camp and seize Berchtesgaden, and THEN go on to a happy and successful life that stretches decades... What a run.

I watched The Pacific, but what separated that miniseries from Band of Brothers was there was no Dick Winters, no eminently human, humble man to focus the story on.

He always said he wasn't a hero, and with all due respect, he was wrong about that.

Watch this, the first guy speaking is Winters.

And this...

 And lastly, this

An Interesting Point

Daniel Webster during a different time in American politics.

Tom Levenson over at Balloon Juice says that Palin and her ilk are not trying to have a debate, they are trying to gain power.

I think that's the key to understanding some of the modern GOP.  Both Democrats and the media are assuming we are having a debate about policy and governance.  Debates are orderly and are based on marshaling evidence and using it cogently to win your point.

Sarah Palin has no use for facts or argument.  People who talk about end of life planning as death panels have no use of the rules of parliamentary debate.

There is an end: power, the means are irrelevant.  So in the end, if you wind up using violent language and violent imagery and that unleashes the violence already present in a young mentally ill loner, well, hell, it's not my fault.

And since evidence made no difference with Obama's birth certificate, death panels and tax rates, why should it make any difference now?

Updates

Christina Green, the nine year old girl shot and killed yesterday was the granddaughter of baseball manager Dallas Green and the daughter of the Dodgers director of east coast scouting.  For some reason, that seems odd to me, that she should have any attachment to celebrity.

Representative Gifford is apparently responding to stimulus, but those reports are a bit fuzzy.

Meet one of the heroes of the moment.  Daniel Hernandez.  The fact that he's hispanic in Arizona should not be surprising, the fact that commentators at the Yahoo story are decrying the "liberal media bias" for saying that a legitimate hero who is hispanic should be their lead story... Well, that's the America some people live in.
(UPDATE: And he's gay, too.  Watch for heads to explode.)

Finally, there is a lot of talk about not jumping to conclusions.  Loughner's clearly nuts, so we shouldn't politicize something that's the act of a madmen.  As James Fallows points out, you shoot a politician, it's political.

Of course, there is this.  And this from Andrew Sullivan.

And in that vein, what TBogg said.

I Don't Really Know What To Say

No cute picture right now.

If the shooter is the same Loughner as posted this crap in YouTube, then he's clearly a deranged nut job.  But his rhetoric is the same as some of the people on the right and not just the fringe either.  I am emphatically NOT saying that Loughner is representative of the Tea Party.  I AM saying he's an inevitable product of it.

He's a mentally deranged person with access to firearms.  And my guess, from his rhetoric, that he's imbibed some of the Tea Party rhetoric, especially the anti-government anger that especially typifies Arizona.

This is what happens when political arguments become imbued with the language of revolutions and violence.  Sarah Palin didn't shoot Gabby Giffords, she just put out a flier with Giffords in literal crosshairs.

I imagine many Republicans see themselves as simply playing political hardball with their extreme rhetoric, but once you start saying the Democrats are literally going to kill Grannie... How big a jump is it to protecting Grannie with weapons?  I saw this movie the last time a Democrat held the White House, and it sucked then, too.  My hope is that the post 9/11 police state will protect us from another Timothy McVeigh, but we all know that people have been sending mailbombs this week, don't we?  We know this is a problem, right?

As the days pass, my guess is that outside of the Internet and a few commentators on MSNBC, few journalists will call the various voices in the Right to task for this.

But for now, I hope that Congresswoman Giffords and all the other wounded heal quickly and fully.

And in church tomorrow I will pray for the parents of the ten year old child who died today.  My heart breaks thinking about it.

But I don't think I will bring myself to pray for Jared Loughner, mentally ill though he might be.  I know I'm supposed to.  I just don't think I have it in me right now.

A ten year old kid....

Update: The little girl was 9 years old.  And she was born exactly one day before our son.  She loved baseball and was elected to her student council recently.

She loved ballet.

Let It Snow...

Our new doguin, Heffley.

Yesterday at 5:45, we got the robocall from the Superintendent of schools saying anticipated snow from noon to 4pm meant... NO SCHOOL!!!  Yay!  Or Not.

Luckily, Thing One was unprepared for a spelling test, so he can safely spend the whole weekend getting unprepared for it.

Naturally, there was no snow until 3pm.  Even in my "What the hell is happening?" frame of mind at 5:45am, I knew as soon as I heard the announcement, that the snow would hold off, and they could have at least had a half day.

Since Beloved Queen of the Universe and Perfect Spouse Ever In The History Of Everything and I both work at a boarding school and have no snow days, we have to find a way to monitor the Things so they don't wind up in the ER.  Still, we have it easy, because we live near work and can easily hand off the children between classes.  I can't imagine what it's like for families who don't have that luxury.  Snow days are awesome for kids, a scramble for working parents.

Once the snow arrived, it really arrived.  From 3-7pm, we got about six inches of snow.  Beautiful, light powdery snow.  Beloved Queen of the Universe and Perfect Spouse Ever In The History Of Everything decided to take the Things to market to spend the Tooth Fairy's recent deposits under the pillow.  They got stuck several times on hills in the quickly accumulating snows.  It is worth mentioning that they were not on side streets when this happened but major thoroughfares.

In our town - I'm getting to the point finally - we have trouble passing the school budget (which must be passed by referendum) every damned year.  It is disheartening, because we've found the teachers to be very good in our school system.

As we enter what appears to be a more sustained recovery, we are already seeing private sector job growth that looks healthy.  Not healthy enough maybe, but healthy.  It is government jobs at the state and local level that are really struggling (along with construction).

As state and local governments - hamstrung by balanced budget necessities - continue to slash spending, we shall see more people become fed up with their local government.  Snow days when there is no snow, followed by actual snow and not enough plows on the road.  Ask Bloomberg about the latter.

The average dipshit voter in our town (average age of citizen: 40, average age of budget voter: 110) doesn't care that teachers don't determine snow days or that they have to worry about early snow more than no snow.  The average dipshit voter doesn't care that Public Works has a smaller budget to work with to keep the roads plowed, so they wait until the last minute to send them out.

No, the average dipshit voter only knows that they want the schools to be perfect and the streets flake free, they just don't want to pay for them.  And when they gut spending, they get a government that doesn't function the way they want.  So they hate their government, and gut it some more.

I wonder if Reaganism didn't begin a death spiral in American governance.

And in conclusion, my favorite poem:

SNOW DAY


Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.

In a while I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and I will shake a laden branch,
sending a cold shower down on us both.

But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.
I will make a pot of tea
and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,
as glad as anyone to hear the news

that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,
the Ding-Dong School, closed,
the All Aboard Children's School, closed,
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along with -- some will be delighted to hear --

the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School,
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and -- clap your hands -- the Peanuts Play School.

So this is where the children hide all day,
These are the nests where they letter and draw,
where they put on their bright miniature jackets,
all darting and climbing and sliding,
all but the few girls whispering by the fence.

And now I am listening hard
in the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,
what riot is afoot,
which small queen is about to be brought down. 

Billy Collins 

The Individual Mandate

Warning: Exposure to ObamaCare can lead to convulsions and levitating canines.

If any part of ACA will be overturned, it will be the part where people are required to buy health insurance, the way they buy car insurance.

It's not very popular, because it's fairly invasive and sounds draconian.  The arguments for requiring people to have health insurance is that when you ban denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, people will simply go around un-insured until they get diabeetus (as Wilford Brimley would put it).  Then and only then will they sign up for health insurance.

I wonder if that isn't a miscalculation based on economic theory rather than psychology.

Economic theory posits that we always make the most rational decisions possible that maximize the benefits to ourselves.  We always buy the product that is the perfect value of cost and quality for our needs.  In that sense Economic Man would not waste money on health insurance, when He would not need it.

But I think that's a simplistic reading of human nature.  I mean does anyone really make decisions like that?  It assumes that people won't want health insurance for the sake of having, you know, insurance.  I don't imagine I'm going to get the "diabeetus" anytime soon, but I like going to the doctor and not having to pay through the nose for it.  Co-pays are a hassle, paying the full cost is more so.

Life insurance might be a better comparison.  I have no plans to die soon, unless Palin gets elected, but I have life insurance, because...who knows?

Life insurance is not a logical product; you're betting on your own demise.  But I also don't mind putting aside a few bucks a month to insure that my family doesn't lose the house if my head explodes from accidental exposure to Fox News.

If ACA makes health insurance more affordable, more efficient and more accessible - and what we're seeing from the tax credits for small business is very encouraging and working better than expected - then I think we'll see major decreases in the uninsured.  Probably unmarried people in their late 20s and early 30s will go without voluntarily, but I imagine most people will take advantage of health insurance if given the option.

So, if the GOP kills the mandate, I think ACA will still survive and improve our national health delivery.

Not that THAT'S very hard.

The Constitution

And toss in the 18th Amendment while you're at it.

Take a minute and read this.

It's a Conservative Constitution and it's pretty funny.

Today, the House read the Constitution.  Reading is FUNdamental, kids!

They opted to read the current Constitution.  The one without slavery or the indirect election of Senators.  You may remember that some Tea Party candidates were upset with the latter amendment.  Stupid people and their stupid elections.

So, we got to skip the 3/5ths compromise and Prohibition and state legislatures electing Senators.

Which is fine.  The Constitution that they read today is the Constitution we live under.  We don't live under a Constitution that recognizes the legality of slavery.

Here's where the inevitable hypocrisy slips in.

The GOP and especially the Tea Party faction within it are advocates of original intent.  To see what this means, read the link above.  Basically, original intent means that we must live under the Constitution that Moses and Baby Jesus wrote in Philadelphia in 1787.  None of that John Marshall-Earl Warren crap!  Just the pure, original, clear as mud Constitution for us, thank you!

To read the current, amended Constitution is to acknowledge - as any fool should - that the Constitution is a living document.  Madison was hopeful it would last 50 years before needing to be replaced.  Instead, his political (and one time legal) adversary, John Marshall found a way to make the Constitution elastic.  And by making it elastic, he allowed it to stretch to cover the new, growing, changing America.

Certainly, there were times when crises necessitated a change.  The Civil War and Emancipation required three amendments (one, the all important Fourteenth arose in response to the 1857 Dred Scott decision as much as anything).  The Gilded Age and its transgressions required the 16th-19th Amendments, which gave us direct election of Senators, an income tax, Prohibition (wheeee!) and women suffrage.

But for the most part, the Constitution has changed with the times via the Courts - and the Courts deferring to the legislative and executive branches.

By accepting an amended Constitution today, the GOP tacitly acknowledges that original intent is a charade.

But don't worry.  No one will call them on it, or worry about the hypocrisy when they ask why Madison, Washington, Mason and Morris didn't write down that Nancy Pelosi could pass a health care reform bill.

Because there literally is no hypocrisy that the GOP has to worry about.  It is the sea they swim in.

Crazies...

"How crazy is the Tea Party?"  

"How crazy do you want us to be?"

Here is Bruce Bartlett, former Bush and Reagan official, saying something true.

The Tea Party is crazy.  And therefore the GOP is infected with crazy.

And we might all be doomed.

http://www.salon.com/news/debt_ceiling/index.html?story=/tech/htww/2011/01/05/bruce_bartlett_on_tea_party_monumental_insanity

It is basically an exegesis on what happens if the Michelle Bachmanns of the world keep us from raising the debt ceiling.

And So It Begins....

John Boehner reaches for the Speaker's gavel.

Well, the 112th Congress is starting.  And I am already sick of their shit.

Basically, the House is going to spend the next two years doing three things.

First, they will engage in various efforts to sabotage the ACA health care reform.  Much of this will be largely symbolic, because repeal won't pass the Senate or the Presidential veto pen.  It is basic political theater, melodramatic readings of the Constitution, which will then be used as a napkin to wipe up the drool seeping from the lips of mouth breathing teatards.

Second, they will investigate.  And investigate.  And investigate.  Now, maybe there is something to investigate out there.  Salazar doesn't strike me as the purest of public servants, for instance.  But there is no whiff of scandal from the executive branch to this point.  The pseudo scandals of the Clinton era at least had some basis in fact.  Castle Grande really existed.  This is a far cry from the birth certificate nonsense we see today.

Third, they will fundraise.  Cantor and Boehner have already set a very relaxed work week and work year.  Congress will spend less time legislating than previously.

None of this is remotely surprising.  The GOP does not believe in government.  And given the way they govern, it is understandable why they believe that.

So, they will attempt to undermine ACA before it even really takes effect.  Of course, they will leave certain parts in place that are popular, like keeping kids on parent's plans until they are 25 or prohibiting insurance denial because of pre-existing conditions.  Which is fine, but what they WILL undo will remove the cost containment aspects of ACA from the bill.

I saw an interesting post over at Ezra Klein's place about how real income has been stagnant - no kidding - but real compensation has actually risen.  Because compensation includes health care costs.

So the rising cost of health care has done two things: busted the federal budget and busted the family budget.

The GOP's response to the first real effort to fix these problems?  Overturn it.  Without letting it get a chance to work.  The more ACA gets attacked from the Right, the more I anticipate it will start to look good.

The investigations will likely lead nowhere.  When Dan Burton first started probing into Travelgate and Vince Foster's suicide, there was little alternative to the traditional media's "Well, one side says Vince Foster committed suicide, but some say Hillary killed him with her lesbian lover, Janet Reno.  Opinions differ."  Now, you can count on some push back when Issa goes after Michelle's vegetable garden.

Some enterprising Internet scribe should keep a running tally of the amount of money the GOP wastes investigating non-scandals and convert those into dialysis sessions or MRIs.

And the relaxed work week will not go unnoticed either.

I share the opinion of Daniel Larison that the GOP returned to power too quickly.  They have not learned their lesson.  They won the House because of two main reasons:

First, the electorate was more conservative than it was in 2006 and 2008.  The Daily Kos view is that Obama voters were dispirited over not getting a public option.  Maybe.  More likely is that outrage is much better at getting people to the polls.  Democrats were more outraged in 2006 and 2008, Republicans were more outraged in 2010.

Second, people were upset at the state of the economy and what they perceived as the lack of government action on their behalf.  The single unanswerable bumpersticker of the last two years was: "Where's MY bailout."

This is what created Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor.

Their response?  Re-fight HCR from the Right, which is NOT a majority position and will re-outrage Democrats.  Attack Obama over ticky-tack shit like the made up cost of his trip to India which will re-outrage Democrats.

And what they will NOT do is address the economic insecurity of the American people.

If the Democrats are smart - and we know that is very much in dispute - Harry Reid should see how many bills he can get through on mortgage reform and unemployment insurance, so that they can die in the House.

Finally, the real question about the 112th Congress is how insane they will be.  The greatest insanity being floated right now is refusing to raise the debt ceiling.

Obama - not a flunky, certainly not a bloviating Senator - should begin educating the populace RIGHT NOW about the dangers of playing chicken with the debt ceiling.  Failure to raise the debt ceiling will make 2008 look like the good old days.  The financial world will grind to a halt.  Unemployment will skyrocket even higher.  The Great Recession becomes the Great Depression.

Obama has been pretty piss-poor about shaping the narrative ahead of events.  He cannot cede the narrative to Michelle Bachmann and Jim DeMint.

Clinton was less personally popular than Obama at comparable points in their administration.  Obama retains more credibility than anyone in Congress among the public at large.  He needs to use that to insure that the GOP doesn't Katrina the whole damned country, and he needs to accept the arrows of GOP investigations like a martyr, with each piercing he should ask, "Is that the best you've got?"

My guess is that it won't take long for those fabled "independent voters" to remember why they tired of the GOP in the first place.

Update: Saw this cross posting at Kos:

Your Wednesday Morning Takedown

A health care reform we can all get behind...

After a week off to celebrate Kwanzmas, we return with this gem:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/10/12/health-care-suits-separating-law-from-spin/68675/

In it, we see a constitutional law perfesser use his fancy book learning to flay the lawsuits (and their plaintiffs) that seek to overturn the ACA HCR bill.

A bit long but worth it.

Helping the Poor

I have a hunch I'll be re-using this photo a lot...

Ezra Klein links to a NY Times piece here on a program that helps alleviate poverty.

The program works like this: poor families in places like Brazil and Mexico are given cash payments if they do things like go to the doctor and keep their kids in school.  If you graduate high school on time, you get a one time payment of a few hundred dollars.

This obviously has the advantage of putting money in the hands of the desperately poor people in places like Brazil and Mexico.  It's not a TON of money, a few hundred bucks a month, but it can often double the income of a family.  (And interestingly, the money is given to Mom, not Dad, to make sure it goes to the family.  I guess Angela's Ashes was translated in Portuguese.)

The second advantage is that it promotes the health and education of its citizenry.  A few simple vaccinations can make a HUGE difference in a place like Rio or Oaxaca.  But the effect of education is even more profound.

This type of program has been tried in 40 countries around the world.  The program in Mexico is described in the article as the most studied social program in the world.

And it works.  Money goes to whom it's supposed to go to and the people's lives improve.  The state benefits.

Sadly, because Ronald Reagan was genial, we live in a country where the state trying to do ANYTHING creates a right wing freak out.

I'll be writing soon about the GOP's efforts to repeal HCR, but imagine the shitstorm that would hit if Obama proposed a program to pay families a little extra cash if their kids did well in school?  As it is, they are going to spend the next two years engaged in stupid human tricks to repeal the first chance in our nation's history to insure that every American can go see a doctor.

As I said in the previous post, one of the parties actively wants government to fail and will go to great lengths to prove it.

Even if it means human suffering and national decline.

Goo Goos

The Census Figure in an easy to read pie chart.

So, the US Census came in under budget.

$1.6 Billion under budget.

Apparently the census was well run and those godawful ads with Ed Begley, Jr. actually got people to send in their forms.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

It matters that the people running the government believe that government can work.  If you believe - as Republicans do - that government is "the problem" you will run government in such a way that it confirms your beliefs.  Look at the Interior Department under Bush just as an example.  Or the Justice Department.  Or the Agriculture Department. Or FEMA.  Or... you get the idea.

It would be nice if we realized as a people that one party is actively rooting for government to fail.