Alcohol got there first.
Work backward from that, and Dish readers can figure out why Prop 19 didn't pass. It may be that simple to say, but that complex to understand (as to why that matters and why it is meaningful and, perhaps, both rationally and a-rationally defensible)
Monday, November 8, 2010
The Philosphy of Cannibus Geist
Commonsense Cowardice
It would come as a surprise to the majority of the military's servicemembers and to a large majority of Americans that the repeal of DADT is "controversial". Civilian and military polls now confirm this. 57 votes in the Senate confirm this.
Yet, we continue to hear 'commonsense wisdom', which really translates more like cowardice, lack of leadership.
One of the most common is "we are at war, now is no time to repeal DADT".
First, the opposite is true.
Leadership conquers confusion, focuses effort. There is nothing like the urgency of mission to bring clarity and focus to the task-at-hand, to separate the critical from the incidental, the urgent from the indulgent. It's precisely at times of intense effort, that clarity on an issue like DADT is plain: you don't care if the medic who just helped evac you is gay, you don't have time to worry about differences, you must focus on task, when the day is long and hot and everyone is depending on you. And, if you fall out of line, there is someone there, with a mission objective in hand, to nudge you back, firmly or otherwise.
Second, perhaps Senator Levin can review all that the military have done in our Afghan and Iraq adventures and explain the "commonsense" that they can't handle repeal of a policy, which is a shrug for the average GI.
Think about just half of what we've done in terms of logistics and projecting power halfway around the world, into hostile, volatile, and harsh areas. It really is incredible what our military has done. No, really, stop and make a list: food, people, equipment, fuel, training, drones, provincial reconstruction teams, solider-ambassadors ...
But, somehow, not expelling gay soldiers is going to bring that amazing machine to its knees or somehow be the task at the margin that it cannot handle.
Don't mistake 'commonsense' objections for the smokescreen cowardice they are.
Scope and Size of Lame Duck Makes Dems Look Amateurish
Can you believe the size and scope of all this?
Senate Democrats Lay Foundation for Party Split in 2012
The yet fully arranged tealeaves are dangling that the Senate Democrats have no stomach for a fight.
They appear to be "conflicted" over the Bush tax cuts, when this issue, as it stands now, actually plays into the hands of their Party and their President, given how the GOP-Teapublicans are so overextended and that overextension is fresh in the minds of voters.
Word today that they are giving up on employment non-discrimination. If they don't fight this fight, then there are people who are going to be looking for a party re-set, just like the teabaggers did.
Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and John McCain of Arizona, the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, are in talks on stripping the proposed repeal [of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"] and other controversial provisions from a broader defense bill, leaving the repeal with no legislative vehicle to carry it.
-WSJ online
-WSJ online
Senate Democrats better wake up. Cheney will have been right that Obama was a GOP godsend, if they Senate loses the base of the party. That doesn't mean no compromise. But it does mean one can't just walk away from the right fights, and hope that everyone comes around in the better economy of 2012. It ain't gonna work that way. There are sharp pens on the Left...
Thought for the Day
Offhand note to Center for American Progress:
It's not progressive to attack credit unions with new taxes.
How can that be progressive? What am I missing? If nothing, then this just looks like "compromised in advance".
The New GOP-Tea Extremism: Rand Paul's Stomp Continues
From his quiver of far-out ideas, he's brought up the Balanced Budget Amendment, again.
Think of the millions of unemployed we'd have if we had a balanced budget amendment during this past crisis. Can you imagine how the sharks would have had their knives out for U.S. securities, knowing that the "full faith and credit" of the U.S. government was capped, so that we were hiking taxes (or cutting spending) into a vicious cycle of economic contraction? We'd probably have no auto industry in the U.S., except by what is run by the lavishly spending rest-of-world. USA business-cycle-amplifier bonds for sale! Get 'em while they are hot!
What's more, for a group who don't believe in regulation, isn't a Constitutional Amendment the ultimate in "regulation"? One can only think back to 2001, when Robert Rubin and the rest of the brain trust decided that there could be no "rule" for when and by how much to cut taxes, because (as best I recall), his view was that people would just game the rules. Coming from Wall Street, one imagines some authority behind such a view.
Note:
The Huffington Post editors did not pick up that Rand Paul assertion that the average income for Federal Employees is $120,000 is inaccurate, more hype and hyperbole than fact, because it's so far off from the truth, which is about a 11% difference in average pay ($7K). Nor does he mention that the Federal government collects taxes at a higher rate on higher salaried employees, even Federal ones.
GOP-Teapubicans: "Hype you can believe in"?
The weekend was full of GOP-tea news. – Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX): Perry said that, when it came to the stimulus, “this was pretty simple for us…We can take care of ourselves.” But he used $2 billion in Build America Bonds for highway improvements and another $182 million for “public improvements.” – Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS): “A lot of this is just crazy,” Barbour said of the stimulus. “I’m better off not to get it.” But that didn’t stop him from using $98 million in Build America Bonds for recreational facility improvements. – Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN): “It hasn’t worked,” Daniels said of the stimulus. “You have to be a blind zealot to say that this thing has done any good.” The Indiana Financial Authority issued $192 million in Build America Bonds, while the Indiana Bond Bank issued another $54 million. – Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA): Jindal has called the Recovery Act “a nearly trillion-dollar stimulus that has not stimulated.” Louisiana has issued $181 million in Build America Bonds for highway improvements.
As for GOP-Tea's Eric Cantor, it appears that the party of "No" has become the party of "we won't tell you, even if you ask". He was not alone.
But he was not the worst - truly, watching the Teapublican idea machine of today would cause even William F. Buckley, Jr. to recoil.
With the GOP-Tea so overextended in promises, the only question remained whether the Democrats would circle the wagons - to shoot at themselves. (So far, a few indications favor it, sadly).
Kossack QOTD: New GOP-Tea slogan: "Mr. Thumb, Meet Mr. Scale."
My favorite, of course, if Bobby Jindal, who has presided over LA "Mankiw moment" (they cut taxes, then faced enormous shortfalls).
American "Family Values" Head Fake
This is what happens when a Nation's security really does depend on making sure you have the best and the brightest and when it is exclusion that disrupts the unit more than inclusion:
In February of that year [1993], things began to change. The Knesset held its first hearing on gays in the military, where Uzi Even, the chairman of Tel Aviv University’s chemistry department, testified that he had been fired from his top secret position in Israel’s nuclear facilities because he was openly living with a man. The fact that he was dismissed after 15 years of service created a national outcry and inspired Prime Minister Yizhak Rabin to rethink the policy. Within three months, then-IDF chief of staff Ehud Barak signed the command banning military discrimination based on sexual orientation into law. [...]
-Wonk Room
-Wonk Room
The gay "grassroots" should fight in the lame duck.
Outsourcing action to "lobby groups" is a waste. Whenever they sense a losing fight, lobby groups fall silent and "run".
Sunday, November 7, 2010
The New GOP-Tea Extremism: Michelle Bachman, Talk To The Hand
For their own issues, certain envious "homoSEXuals" are eying new technology, designed to make it easier to talk to GOP-Teapublicans.
Hands free. Batteries not included. Any age. Not responsible if Teapublicans violate or change narrative at a moment's notice.
(h/t Slog)
The Week in Review
While Christine O'Donnell provided sport, it was Marco Rubio who was dancing with the stars, with diamonds:
True, some of this might be scaled by the size of the state / media market, but even so Rubio got nearly as much as everyone else combined.
Chart: Angle Buck O'Donnell Rubio Toomey Paul Lee Johnson Miller
Out-of-state (red) and in-state (blue) dollars to GOP-Tea extremists:
via Maddow Blog
The Week in Review
All the real stuff in the country is going down on Oprah.
Some of these stories and the suggestion of their prevalence are heart-rending.
With ruptured trust on this scale, rips in the social fabric, one just has to heap that much more scorn on the cheap moralizing of "Family Values" groups who think the real threats to society are from gay couples.
The Week in Review
Ted Sorensen.
Words and the occasions to use them are so cheap now, in comparison, it seems to have cheapened them.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Thought for the Day
How could Senate Democrats have the upperhand in the brinkmanship with the GOP over Bush tax cuts? (Not that they are willing, but that's a separate failure in the Party...).
Three words: the estate tax
Of course, one has to bet that this fails:
If their goal is to recapture the Presidency, then the rational course for them is to regard the American economy in the same way that General Sherman regarded the Confederate economy. They should aim at destruction and ruin. The lesson here is not peculiar to the Republicans. In a divided government in which the other party holds the presidency, the American people are functional masochists: they will reward you with office if you beat them. Hard.
Actually, I think the truth of this is the opposite. In a game of brinkmanship, well played, it is always the Chief Executive that wins. He's the one that the people rally around. Sad, but true.
Someone needs to tell the Democratic leadership that, if they don't hang together, they surely will hang separately. Why, Krauthammer is already talking about an "operational majority" in the Senate for the GOP-tea.
Obama and Trade Policy
I don't know what Obama is going to "announce" as part of his Asian trip, in relation to trade.
However, the time is ripe for him to also fulfill his campaign talk about Cuba, subject only to how many things he can do at once. No point waiting on events.
There is a rank ideology that drives the Right on Cuba. If the Democrats have any political skill, they might take the opportunity to crack that nut and, thereby, take another tool out of the hands of the rightwing.
The case for a realistic foreign policy toward Cuba trade in the face of economic necessity is waiting with open lips to be made, perhaps by you, Mr. President.
It's hard for me to read the tealeaves, but I think Florida politics could handle it, right now, too.
(And highlighting with action political leadership differences is not 'scoring political points' - it's making the case to voters why you think you are more fit to govern than the next guy, especially on questions of true import, unlike the Terri Schiavo spectacle).
Minority View
DEMOCRATS IN ALL THREE HOUSES SHOULD PRESS IMMIGRATION REFORM PROPOSALS
The "bleed them slowly" issue is healthcare, with a dash of 'government waste' investigation, if one believes that the TEA-GOP can get legs on that issue, outside of the courts.
But I would suggest that the Democrats, having the advantage on that, ought to press the issue of immigration reform.
Why? Because, having abjectly politicized the issue, the GOP now have no interest in "solving" a problem that they can use again and again to get people to vote against their economic interests, always their raison d'etre. (Sometimes I don't think Rachel Maddow gets that raison d'etre, thinking that other things really do matter and are not noise...).
So, the GOP is happy to leave the issue unsolved, so they can trot out "dangerous brown people" for as many elections to come as possible.
How should the Democrats do it? Two ways (at least). They should make it into an economic issue, because it is one. This will reinforce the pragmatism of the Democratic party. It's also an Obama strength. They could find a way to make it into a Left-Right issue, both by suggesting that it is fear of new voters, not "principle" or criminals, that drives GOP opposition and perhaps in some other ways, too.
The Strangest Thing - The Limits of Empathetic Understanding
Why is this?
For some reason I have no problem "understanding" how someone born into wealth could nevertheless become a champagne liberal ("I never pretend to be one of the people, just to be for the people").
However, it's hard to "understand" the opposite.
How is it that people can come from hard or humble or "middle" class upbringing, yet become hard right, even ideologically rabid hard right? (I mean, apart from the misled religious hard-right.)
Supreme Court Justice Thomas comes to mind. He included in his life story a reference to his difficult formative years, with "there but for the grace of God go I"; but his ideological judicial opinions/philosophy is so contrary to that, it seems. Alito has a touch of it, in his hyper-rationalized world that seems out of sink with what one might expect given his background. Marco Rubio who embraces Arizona's show-your-papers law as "just" and not some ploy that doesn't solve anything. Boehner, this week, talking about how he worked every odd job he could find on the way up, now adamant about putting a tax-cut for the super-wealthy on the "national ATM" ...
Understanding the Joe-the-Plumber is perhaps easier.
How badly are the Teapublicans overextended?
Why only late-night comedians can see the truth more than millionaire Democratic Senators, I'll never know:
"Republicans won big on election day. They say their two big priorities are cutting taxes and reducing the debt. Which is sort of like wanting to lose weight and win 'Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest.'"
---Jimmy Kimmel
---Jimmy Kimmel
You don't get too many political lay-ups, Mr. President. Don't fail to take the shot.
Now is the time, too, when all the campaign slogans are fresh in people's minds. Now. Yes, now, not kick the can down the road, two years.
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