One Flew Over the GOP's Nest

Back in April, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone magazine wrote an article called The Class Clowns, where he talked about the current state of the Republican party:

Following the Republican Party of late has been a movingly depressing experience, sort of like watching Old Yeller die — if Old Yeller were a worm-infested feral bitch who spent the past eight years biting children at bus stops and shitting in neighborhood swimming pools. As a useful force in American politics, the Republicans have been dead for a while now. But in the seven months since Sarah Palin's nomination, they have taken on an intriguing new role: providing much-needed comic relief during dark times, serving as the unofficial rodeo clowns of the Financial Crisis Era.

I recommend looking for it (the excerpt from the Rolling Stone site is nice, but get a back issue of the April 30, 2009 Rolling Stone for the full beauty of his words - it's got the Kings of Leon on the cover, if that helps). But I'm starting to wonder whether Taibbi went far enough. The current Republican party is littered, not merely with class clowns and ass-clowns, but with the actively insane. Even Taibbi pointed out, for example:

The real prize for nutty Red-baiting went to Rep. Michele Bachmann, a drooling dunce of a Minnesota soccer mom who is now a serious contender for the title of dumbest person ever to sit in the House of Representatives. When the Chinese recently proposed creating a new system for international reserves, Bachmann - who founded a charter school that banned the movie Aladdin for promoting witchcraft - sponsored a bill establishing the dollar as the official US currency for ever and ever, despite the fact that no one anywhere was talking about doing anything to the dollar. It was like calling for an end to aid to Turkey because we eat them on Thanksgiving anyway.

And Ms Bachmann certainly hasn't found a hidden stash of sanity since then: she's gone on record saying that the new energy bill is "tyranny" because "the federal government will virtually have control over every aspect of lives for the American people."

And now she's saying that she will break the law and not send in her census form, and she urges every other American to do the same; see, she explains, in the 1940s, "that’s how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps." Which shows that she is simultaneously ignorant on history, how the census works, and the fact that aluminum foil won't protect her from the evil mind-control rays.

This isn't the first time that Michele Bachmann has brought up the specter of internment camps, incidentally - the last time, she said that the AmeriCorps program was going to become "re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums."

(Are we starting to notice a theme in Ms Bachmann's lunacy? She's apparently fallen into the 1984/Big-Brother-themed brand of insanity, which, I understand, can barely be controlled by lithium and electroshock therapy. Perhaps it's become time for Michele to be fitted for a straight-jacket before she stabs herself in the eye with a pencil - I once helped arrest a 6'2" screaming crackhead who was trying to smash his head through a car window, and he was making about as much sense as Ms Bachman has been lately.)

Even the right-wing talking heads on TV and radio are crazier than ever these days: one of the most popular, Glenn Beck, is also a direct philosophical descendent of those late-night radio talk shows where the UFO's were taking over the world, mind-control devices were being implanted in our goldfish, and we were being monitored from secret moon-bases where eighth-dimensional hive-minds were injecting radioactive isotopes into our movie-theater speakers.

Paranoid psychosis seems to be the only defining characteristic of the GOP these days. And the fact that ranting delusional maniacs are being mainstreamed into "normal" society (if such a thing exists) is leading America down an ugly path where wide-eyed gun-wielding killers shoot up churches for not believing exactly the same way they do. Whether it's Scott Roeder killing abortion providers, or Jim Adkisson killing people just for being liberal, this is an ugly, evil side to right-wing politics that needs to be stamped out.

Back in April, when the Department of Homeland Security came out with a report on right-wing extremists, members of the right-wing wouldn't stop screaming about how "Obama's claiming all right-wingers are evil!"

And, as I pointed out elsewhere:

So let's go back to the report. Derided by the right, what exactly did it say?

— (U//LES) DHS/I&A has concluded that white supremacist lone wolves pose the most significant domestic terrorist threat because of their low profile and autonomy—separate from any formalized group—which hampers warning efforts.

— (U//FOUO) Similarly, recent state and municipal law enforcement reporting has warned of the dangers of rightwing extremists embracing the tactics of "leaderless resistance" and of lone wolves carrying out acts of violence.

— (U//FOUO) Arrests in the past several years of radical militia members in Alabama, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania on firearms, explosives, and other related violations indicates the emergence of small, well-armed extremist groups in some rural areas.

Now, if this report was wrong, please explain James Von Brunn. And Scott Roeder. And James Adkisson. And Richard Poplawski.

For that matter, please explain the rise of right-wing violence across the country. There's nothing particularly new about it, but why are we seeing this increase?

Here's the thing. If you have Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh talking about these blatantly stupid lies, like "DHS reeducation camps" or "Obama is a Muslim/communist/socialist/anti-american/selling us out to the terrorists," and any one of the thousands of brain-dead chuckleheads who've been feeding off the lies of the Bush Administration (as filtered through the mouth of Karl Rove), and now believe that Obama is the anti-Christ, sent to earth to bring down "the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the earth," do you think that maybe this same chucklehead might be incited to violence? Maybe?

Now, I want to be clear. I'm not saying that the Freedom of Speech of the media talking heads should be diminished. They are welcome to have these nut-job views if they want them. But at a certain point, their national platform should be removed, in the interest of public safety; if they're inciting violence, I'm pretty sure that's a crime. For example, let's look at Ann Coulter's column from this week (since we're talking about the batshit-insane, and she epitomizes that description):

I wouldn't kill an abortionist myself, but I wouldn't want to impose my moral values on others. No one is for shooting abortionists. But how will criminalizing men making difficult, often tragic, decisions be an effective means of achieving the goal of reducing the shootings of abortionists?

Following the moral precepts of liberals, I believe the correct position is: If you don't believe in shooting abortionists, then don't shoot one.

Now, let's put logic like that into the hands of somebody who is both batshit insane and owns a gun.

See, what the Republican party has now given us is the single best argument for Universal Health Care. If we had decent health care for every American, perhaps a few of these people could be placed on antipsychotics (or in the worst cases, locked up), just to prevent them from harming themselves and others.

Now Eric's mad at me, too (apparently part 3 in a three-part series)

Geez, you go away for a week, you come back, and look what's happened to the place.

Not here. Over at the descriptively-named Pathetically Incorrect. Odd how fitting that name is, considering how often he is, you see...

My short relationship with Eric is chronicled here. We debated for a while, and then last week, he banned me from his blog. I mean, I could post some responses anyway - Diogenes does, and he was "banned" four or five times over the course of a week. But many of his comments get yanked, and I don't think it's worth the effort, really.

See, E-man reprinted a column by Ted Nugent, which I made fun of last week. And this apparently annoyed Eric. Because he then wrote a response entitled "An Open Letter To Bill From Eric About Ted..."

(Which means I could have titled this "An Open Letter To Eric About An Open Letter To Bill From Eric About Ted..." - yeah, I thought about that. For ten seconds or so. Gave up on it pretty quickly.)

You can read it yourself, if you'd like. But it has some fascinating formatting problems, and is currently in black on red - kind of hard on the eyes (the background and header picture changes about once a week or so - everybody needs a hobby, I guess). But in essence, he was upset because I was picking on Ted Nugent.

Did I make fun of Ted? Well, yeah. But he's a millionaire rock guy, so he can probably take it.

Do I use "strong words?" Well, yes. I always do. But when the Nuge is talking about "(the Democratic leadership's) ongoing program to bankrupt the entire nation," or that Democrats are "compromising our values, beliefs, and ideals," I think I'm justified in firing back.

But why would Eric get all cranky about me "demeaning and humiliating" Ted Nugent? The man does that all by himself. The last time I posted a link to a video of Ted and quoted his own words, Eric refused to post it: he apparently thought it was obscene.

Ted Nugent was arrested once for firing a flaming arrow into his audience. He doesn't need my help making a fool out of himself. For example, in this column of his that I made fun of.

And I wasn't even complete: I could have gone on for paragraphs more, pointing out one by one the stupidities and lies he was quoting. But I'd used up the humor and was in danger of going into pedantry. Thought I'd avoid that.

But all things considered, I think that I should respond to Mr Graff. (And actually, it might be helpful to try to read the original at this stage. But I'll try to summarize his points, in case you don't have the stomach for it.)

Dear Eric,

When I said "I only wish that the conservatives had control of the Republican party. Sadly, the neocons, religious lunatics and the inbred have taken it over. I had respect for the Republican party once, but lately they're just sad and outdated," you responded with:

If that were true, they never in a million years would have nominated John McCain to represent them as their president... The Republicans may be searching for a leader, but McCain was not it because many of them voted for Obama because the base was ignored.

And then McCain nominated a former beauty queen with a trailer-trash soap opera family as his running mate, as a sop to the religious right and a sad attempt to lure women to his side. Because the wimmenfolk will vote for anything with a vajayjay, right?

(I'll be happy to point out the numerous inadequacies of Ms Palin, but that's a column all to itself. Let me just say that I'll be thrilled and excited if the woman runs in 2012. It'll throw the GOP even further into the dustbin of obscurity.)

They nominated Michael Steele as leader in an effort to hide the fact that most racists are Republicans (if they support either major party, that is), but then the GOP strips him of power, and even tries to take away his access to their money.

So who's the real leader of the GOP? You get to choose between Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh. Nice. Like I said, neocons, religious lunatics and the inbred.

How does Bill know Ted surrounds himself with the unemployed?

Ah, ah, ah, Eman. I said he surrounded himself with musicians. A group with, as I further said, a ridiculously high unemployment rate (at least in music - hence the need for day jobs). I should know, my wife is an operatically-trained soprano. For that matter, you should know - don't you have some musical outreach going?

Yeah Bill, like YOU pay for your music downloads.

Actually, I don't download much, but when I do, I have an ITunes account for that. You really don't know me as well as you think you do.

First Bill says Ted hangs around with the unemployed, then he calls Ted rich.

Well, he is. He's a musician who "made it." And he hangs out with other musicians. What, exactly, are you arguing here?

The country is in trouble because the stimulus package stimulated nothing,

* sigh *

And we needed a stimulus package because why, again? Perhaps because the country was already in trouble?

And by the way, only a small percentage of the stimulus money has been spent so far. So your point makes no sense on two levels.

Government increased payrolls by thousands.

And those are jobs, right? Isn't that good?

Government employees pay no federal taxes Bill. That means less people paying taxes and those people who do pay, pay more.

What? Where do you even get that? I'd say "urban myth," but it's not one I've ever heard.

OK, I spent 21 years in the military. Paying taxes. I then did a year with the DOE. Paying taxes. Every year, the president's tax records are released to the public. So, at what point are you saying that government employees don't pay taxes? (The military, in combat zones only, are the only exceptions to this.)

OK, let's try this. Timothy Geithner, before he was nominated as Treasury Secretary, worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. You know that's a government job, right? And then he got in trouble for using Turbotax to do his income tax, right? Why would he need Turbotax at all if he didn't pay taxes?

It's like I said. Sometimes, the things that you think you know turn out to be horribly wrong.

WOE!!! OK ..STOP RIGHT THERE!!! Business people aren’t giving out jobs because they have to cut back because of huge tax increases on business.

Woe, indeed. Your argument makes me very sad.

December 2008, if you'll recall, was before Obama was elected. For the past twelve months, the national unemployment rate had increased 2.3%. Even the government was calling it a recession back then.

So if the phenomenal growth in their taxes is the reason businesses aren't hiring now, why weren't they hiring then? Or could this just be a continuing trend, and you're trying to conflate two unrelated points?

Don’t be sorry Bill, we understand your public education on economics impairs your ability to think rationally.

You like to run down "public education" a lot, Eric. Did you notice which one of us has facts to back up our points here? And spells things right? Your private (or possibly home-based) education isn't doing you any favors here, my friend.

What business is it or yours or the governments what a business makes or does or pays it’s employees? What you want is SOCIALIZOM so you and the president can dictate what we make. It’s WAR on PROSPERITY!!!

Well, aside from figuring out tax levels and things, "pays it’s employees?" Really? Do you even know what socialism (that's how it's spelled, by the way) is? Look at China. Describe their government. Consider the concept of "sweat shops."

And now wander into Walmart and look at the tags on most of what's sold there. Note the profusion of "Made in China."

The Chinese own us, Eman. Body and soul. A good part of that is because Bush borrowed more from foreign countries than all previous 42 presidents combined. Added together, Japan and China hold 47% of US public debt.

My public education tells me that's a bad thing, Eric.

And by the way, can you please explain how you can have a "war on prosperity" during a depression? The defining aspect of a depression (or even a recession) is the overall lack of prosperity.

AGAIN Bill sees a need to be snide and obtuse. Equate to liberal minds.

Do you see the humor in being snide and obtuse when you're talking about me being snide and obtuse?

Bill, the French get 80% of their power from nuclear. How has that damaged anything at anytime in your lifetime?

Oy. Chernobyl. Three Mile Island. Here, look it up yourself.

Technologies today make storage of spent nuclear fuel safe and effective. Or are you still thinking from the 70’s???

"Storage." Please note that word. What happens when we run out of places to store it? Do we just build new places? You're like some guy driving down the road throwing your trash out the window. "Oh, it's fine. The state hires people to pick that up."

Let me just quote a physician on this.

Plutonium, the most significant element in nuclear waste, is so carcinogenic that hypothetically half a kilo evenly distributed could cause cancer in everyone on Earth.

Lasting for half a million years, it enters the body through the lungs where it is known to cause cancer. It mimics iron in the body, migrating to bones, where it can induce bone cancer or leukemia, and to the liver, where it can cause primary liver cancer. It crosses the placenta into the embryo and, like the drug thalidomide, causes gross birth deformities.

Finally, plutonium has a predilection for the testicles, where it induces genetic mutations in the sperm of humans and other animals that are passed on from generation to generation.

Where do we put the garbage, Eric? Will that storage site always remain secure? (Does "Love Canal" mean anything to you?) And that's only one of the many problems with nuclear power.

I'm not entirely opposed to nuclear power, but I see the problems. Do you?

if we did drill (offshore), the supply would explode and Bill overlooks this because of convenience, and lack of common sense.

Again, you make me sad. Aside from the facts I quoted (and you even reprint), now it's you oversimplifying. Here. read this. Consider the bigger picture.

Then you quote me saying "I thought you (Ted Nugent) were a big supporter of conservation? What happened to that?" And you follow that up with:

No, you thought wrong Bill, Ted is a drug free rocker. Has been all his life. And he is a hunter, big time hunter. A Big game hunter.

Yup. Correct.

Ted Nugent on conservation.

When the Canadian provinces were drained for increased agricultural production, it was the hunters, the waterfowl hunters that saw the destruction of nesting habitat and came to the aid of Ducks Unlimited and Delta Waterfowl. These are hunting organizations. And I can name the Rocky Mountain Elk foundation, Pheasants Forever, Quail Unlimited, National Wild Turkey Federation. We [hunters] stop the bulldozer boogie. We put value on wild ground. Because not only does the wild ground produce more ducks, of which we only shoot a minor percentage, but that ultimately is going to be where our quality air, soil and water will come. As a hunter, fisherman and trapper, I am proud to join this honorable community in taking credit for that.

But back to you.

Michigan... Everyone’s moved out of the place. No jobs, no money, all because of a LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC GOVENOR AND LEGISLATURE!! This would bring jobs to a job-starved state!!

Wait. Let me think. Michigan... Detroit... joblessness... I'm sure those things are related somehow...

Come on, Eric, grow up! Don't try to link "socialism" and Obama bailing out the car companies, and then ignore the very real problems that happen when those car companies fail.

No Bill, (the Founding Fathers are) not Gods, they are the ones who sacrificed their lives, their money, their families and everything they had for Freedom, the very thing you and Obama want to regulate. Not me, not now, not ever. Ted would back me on that... They knew people like you would come along and destroy the very fabric of our freedoms. Ted knows too.

Really? Here's some concepts I want you to look up. Habeus corpus, Freedom of Speech, and the relationship between illegal search and seizure and government wiretapping without a warrant. Now, look up what happened to those concepts over the last eight years. (And those are just three off the top of my head. Don't get me started...)

And then explain what the hell you mean by "you and Obama want to regulate." Because it's really sounding like you're off your medication again.

We got into crime, and you said:

Where concealed carry is the law, crime is down. Way down. Look up TEXAS!!

Really? Because according to the Census Bureau, Texas ranks higher than average in crime overall. Or, to put that in simple terms for you, Texas ranks as the 15th most dangerous state to live, when you consider violent crimes only. (In case you're curious, South Carolina is the most dangerous, and Maine is the least.)

See, the facts don't back up this "common knowledge" you keep relying on. (Or is this more of those "private/home education" problems?)

But then you get into some weird territory, Eric. Just before you ban me from your blog.

bill likes to put links in every other line he types. Yeah Bill, now I know I've debated someone who believes everything he sees on the internet.

No, I don't believe everything I see on the Internet. Nor do I believe everything I read in the library. But like the man said, the truth is out there. You should consider looking for it. Did you notice that many of my links in this post are to government websites? There are these things we call "facts." I like to base my opinions on them. Unlike you, who likes to pull non-facts out of your ass and pretend that the crap that adheres to them is chocolate.

Think, my good man. Find out where reality lies, and then form an opinion. Because right now, you're just making my points for me.

The man confuses me. After all, he invited me to debate on his site. And then he bans me for doing so?

I'd think about that, but it makes my brain hurt.

An open letter to Ted Nugent

Dear Ted Nugent,

You know, my new debating buddy showed me a column that you wrote, and it's the perfect example of the fact that, just because you're an expert in one thing, it doesn't follow that you're an expert in everything.

Ted, you've always played some serious guitar. I'll give you that much - you are awe-inspiring on the strings. But you are not, however, a particularly deep thinker, and this column is proof of that.

Let's start with the title. I mean, you have a perfectly good bumper-sticker slogan, but you rush to explain what you means in the first six words people are going to see, instead of letting the rest of the column explain it.

The Party of 'Know,' Not 'No.'

You should have cut that off after the first four words, Ted. Let me draw you an analogy. (Oh, sorry: an "analogy" is where you compare two things and show where they're a lot alike. I'll try not to use too many of them educated words on you.)

This is like when you're playing along on a guitar solo, and you realize that you repeated a phrase one time too many. If you repeat something too often, it gets redundant... sorry. It gets "boring." (No, really - that word had nine whole letters. I'm sorry. I'll try to do better.)

But the title, which is just... well, Ted, it's like writing lyrics. Sometimes they just don't work. But then we get into your actual column, and I'm afraid that things only get worse.

In an effort to deflect criticism of (the Democratic leadership's) ongoing program to bankrupt the entire nation

OK, Ted, right off the bat you get it wrong. The Democrats are trying to fix everything that Bush and company screwed up over the last eight years. (I mean, you do know that it was Bush who started this whole bank nationalization/bailout thing, right?)

Let the guitar boy help the spelling-challenged Democrats understand what the bedrock of the Republican Party -- conservatives -- instinctively know.

Well, Ted. Sorry, I only wish that the conservatives had control of the Republican party. Sadly, the neocons, religious lunatics and the inbred have taken it over. I had respect for the Republican party once, but lately they're just sad and outdated. And very, very wrong. Much like your column.

Sometimes, the things that you think you know turn out to be horribly wrong. People used to think that the world was flat. As it turns out (I'm not sure you're aware of this), they were wrong.

You hang out with musicians, Ted; you're used to the people around you having a ridiculously high unemployment rate. For the rest of the country, that isn't considered a good thing.

So let's see what else you messed up on.

We know that stimulating the economy and getting America growing again begins with tax cuts across the board, including payroll, corporate and individual taxes.

Look, Ted, I know that you're rich. And I know that you miss your tax cuts. But you're really going to have to pay a little bit. The country is in trouble, and it needs your help. I thought you loved this country. Why do you want it to fail?

I'm sorry. Things aren't like they were back when Bush was in office. (We already covered the fact that Bush was the major force screwing all this up, right?)

We know that prosperity can not be brought about by taxing, borrowing and spending trillions of dollars.

OK, here's another new word for you - "oversimplification." You're taking a big problem, and trying to sum it up in less than twenty words.

The sad part is, to explain this to you, I've got to do the same thing. So try this: poor people need jobs. The business people aren't giving them out. The government has work it needs done. So the government gives them jobs. This helps the poor people out. And now the government needs to get the business people to start hiring, too.

Again, I'm sorry - I know this is confusing for you. It's a big problem. It takes a big plan, not small words.

We know the economic producers cannot be punished without also punishing the working class.

Wow. By that philosophy, business people can do whatever they want and never face any consequences. Of course, I guess that you don't produce much of anything except music, so maybe you don't understand business, either.

(Oh, how is that whole "music" thing going for you? Did anybody buy that album you did two years ago? Even with the help of your Damn Yankees friends?)

We know that GM and Chrysler will ultimately fail because they are now being run by the federal government and the labor unions.

You really don't know the difference between "stockholder" and "management," do you? Wow, you don't know jack-shit about business.

We know energy independence includes drilling off-shore and building many new nuclear power plants...

"...because completely destroying the environment will make everything better!"

Christ, Nuge. I know reading is hard, but the information is out there. Instead of just spouting off, you could actually look around. Best estimates tell us that even if we drilled on every inch of coastline, it would work out to one percent of daily consumption, and wouldn't kick in for ten years. It wouldn't do much of anything for us.

I thought you were a big supporter of conservation? What happened to that?

And nuclear power? Well, studies by the people actually building them tell us that building a new nuclear power plant costs more per kilowatt hour produced than any other type of power plant. Weird, isn't it?

I mean, there's other reasons, but I'm trying to keep this simple for you.

And let's ignore that we don't know what do do with the nuclear waste we already have lying around. Oh, wait! You have all that land in Michigan, and probably some other land! You should volunteer to store it for us!

No, huh?

We know that bailing out failing businesses with tax dollars is not what our founding fathers had in mind

Why do overwrought Republicans keep bringing up the Founding Fathers as if they were gods or something? It's true. The Founding Fathers didn't think of that. Of course, for that matter, using the internet, mass production, and the concept of a "global economy" were also not figured into their equations.

Do you really think that a pre-industrial society is the best source for economic advice? See, that's something else you missed out on in school, Nuge. It was called "history."

We know that more gun control laws will not reduce violence but will instead create more victims. We know that more guns equal less crime.

Hey, that's right! And since the United States has more guns than any other industrialized country, we must have less crime!

Actually, not so much. The overall US crime rate is pretty much the same as in other, similar countries, except for violent crimes: our homicide rate is three to five times higher than anybody else's. So really, guns haven't reduced crime, and the fact that they're easy to get has killed a lot of people. Where's the upside here?

And you keep going! I've already written more than you did, and I'm only halfway through. I mean, my god, Ted! How can you stand to be so wrong on every subject? Is the ADHD really that much of a problem at your age?

Tell you what, Teddy. You stick with playing the guitar, and leave the deep thinking to the people who can actually do some of it, OK?

Here we go again

I might, or might not, have joined a very small debating circle this week. We'll see how it goes.

In the course of putting together last week's post, I used my typical research method, of wandering around in the conservative blogs and seeing how they react to my points. It's effective - perhaps they have some information I haven't seen yet, or a different viewpoint which might shine a light on the subject in a new way.

(I'll admit, it doesn't happen often: the disadvantage of getting all your information from Fox News and World Net Daily is that they tend to try to argue from a very small pool of data, much of it wrong.)

And so I found myself on a site calling itself Pathetically Incorrect. Now, Eric (the guy who runs it) seems to believe he has a web-stalker named Diogenes, who is "rude and unable to stay on subject." To be honest, I didn't see that - Diogenes didn't add a lot to the discussion, but at least he was trying. Maybe there's a history there. Or maybe Eric sees his comments differently than I do.

Eric, who posts under the name Eman (no relation, as far as I can tell, to the Eighties superhero), seemed interested in the fact that I was willing to confront him with facts instead of insults, and offered to debate me. Initially on the subject of cars, in which I have little more than a passing interest.

(Heh, heh... get it? Passing? Cars? ...oh, never mind...)

It went OK, I thought. He presented his side, I presented mine, and he offered a second one. I suggested the murder of George Tiller (you know, the abortionist from Kansas). And he even let Diogenes post again. Which was nice of Eric, since he'd just banned Diogenes in the previous post.

And that's when things went horribly awry. For some reason, Eric thought I called him an extremist. (Perhaps because I compared the pro-life movement to the Taliban. Could that have been it? Him being pro-life and all?)

I'm still in there plugging away. Don't know if Eric will want to come out and play any more, though.

Pronounced "sew-toe-my-YOR"

What are we hearing about Judge Sonia Sotomayor now that she's been nominated to the Supreme Court?

"She's a terrible judge! She has a 60% reversal rate!"

"She's racist! She belongs to la Raza, a racist Hispanic group!"

"She's a Hispanic woman!"

Really, that last one is being used as a talking point against her (at least it has the dubious benefit of being true). Apparently, the fact that she is both Hispanic and female, at the same time, is proof positive that her selection was due to Affirmative Action. (Because, after all, there's no way that a Hispanic female could possibly be qualified otherwise, is there?)

"She has a 60% reversal rate!" You know, I love how that number is being bandied about by unhinged right-wingers. But since only 5 cases have gone to the Supreme Court, it's strange that it's even expressed in percentages, which are only useful when discussing significantly more than 5 of anything.

And, weirdly enough, since the reversal rate of the Supreme Court of the United States (or as some of us like to call it, SCOTUS) actually runs about 75%, doesn't that mean that she's doing better than average? Come on, folks! If you're going to play with numbers, at least stick to the ones you understand.

As for her "wise Latina woman" quote, let's look at this thing we call "context." It's used in legal circles sometimes, so it's almost related to the meta-subject here. But in a more specific way, it relates to Judge Sotomayor's statement, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Wow. That sounds almost like she's answering a question, doesn't it? In fact, she was specifically discussing the importance of judicial diversity in determining race and sex discrimination cases. Which is what the panel discussion was about.

And if you think about it, a woman who could have been a target of discrimination might have a more accurate view of it than, say, some fat complacent white man with limited opportunity to be discriminated against.

But really, why does this matter? The right wing didn't go up in flames when John Yoo (the author of the terror memos) wrote the following about Justice Clarence Thomas:

As his memoir shows, Justice Thomas's views were forged in the crucible of a truly authentic American story. This is a black man with a much greater range of personal experience than most of the upper-class liberals who take potshots at him. A man like this on the Court is the very definition of the healthy diversity his detractors pretend to support.

Ooh, look at that. John Yoo is a radical liberal!

More to the point, let's look at the confirmation hearing for little Sammy Alito. For some reason, the GOP didn't feel that they should oppose a conservative judge based on the following exchange.

U.S. SENATOR TOM COBURN (R-OK): Can you comment just about Sam Alito, and what he cares about, and let us see a little bit of your heart and what's important to you in life?

ALITO: Senator, I tried to in my opening statement, I tried to provide a little picture of who I am as a human being and how my background and my experiences have shaped me and brought me to this point.

I don't come from an affluent background or a privileged background. My parents were both quite poor when they were growing up.

And I know about their experiences and I didn't experience those things. I don't take credit for anything that they did or anything that they overcame.

But I think that children learn a lot from their parents and they learn from what the parents say. But I think they learn a lot more from what the parents do and from what they take from the stories of their parents lives.

And that's why I went into that in my opening statement. Because when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position.

For some reason, the same arguments, made by a white conservative, don't elicit the same reaction from the GOP. It's strange, isn't it?

SO they move on to their next meaningless talking point. "She's racist! She belongs to la Raza!"

The National Council of La Raza (NCRL), despite all the blatherings of that pinheaded moron Tom Tancredo, is not "a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses." They're a support group, fighting poverty and discrimination in the Hispanic community. (You can read about them here, if you want.) But in summary, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo put it like this:

For those who aren't familiar with it, La Raza is basically a Latino equivalent of B'nai Brith or the NAACP. Garden variety and uncontroversial unless you thinks it's a public safety issue if more than a handful of Mexicans or Puerto Ricans get together in one place at the same time.

And I love this "racist" talk - let's look at the sources.

There's that useless gasbag Tom Tancredo, who built an entire presidential campaign on attacking Hispanics (frequently suggesting that every illegal immigrant is a criminal - "They need to be found before it is too late. They're coming here to kill you, and you, and me, and my grandchildren"); he even sang "Dixie" with the white supremacist group "League of the South."

Ann Coulter, who likes to point out that "Slavery... is the only African institution America has ever adopted," and who once wrote an article on immigration with the fascinating title "Bush's America: Roach Motel."

Rush Limbaugh - does everybody remember him saying that Donovan McNabb was overrated because he was black? Or Michelle Wie, the best 16-year-old golfer in the world" "(It's) a marketing tool they're using to build her to up to a level much greater than her actual accomplishments." (I mean, come on! A black or an Asian, actually good at sports?)

Glenn Beck, who links illegal immigrants to everything that's ever gone wrong with the country, probably to include the shooting of Lincoln.

Newt Gingrich, who wants us to believe that the "war here at home" against illegal immigrants is "even more deadly than the war in Iraq and Afghanistan")

Pat Buchanan - oh, come on! Pat is America's second most famous racist, right after David Duke.

(Oh, and notice how I did that: not only did I give specific examples of these people's racism, but for the most part, it's specifically the racism that NCLR is set up to fight.)

And before you say that these statements are all opposing illegal immigration, let's remember Pat Buchanan on the subject:

(They) are not assimilated into America. Many Hispanics, as a matter of fact, you know what culture they are assimilating to? — the rap culture, the crime culture, anti-cops, all the rest of it.

As I mentioned above, the NCLR is a support group. And the difference between a hate group and a support group is pretty obvious to most of us.

Hate groups like the KKK focuses on the loss of power by the white race because of all these brown people and "mongrel races." They use violence to promote their ends, and tend to break a lot of laws: as I'm sure you're aware, thousands of blacks have been killed, and hundreds of thousands attacked, injured or intimidated by the Klan since their inception after the Civil War.

Support groups like the NCLR are completely unrelated. The closest similarity that can be drawn has to do with the fact that they're fighting poverty and discrimination against a specific ethnic group. But, since that particular group does, in fact, suffer discrimination (for example, look at the specific examples up above), they have every right (and perhaps even the obligation) to do so.

They don't use violence to achieve their aims, they use financial assistance, education and mutual support.

(And, incidentally, you can ignore that whole "Reconquista!" argument - that's a conspiracy theory made up by noted lying gasbag Michelle Malkin.)

But in the end, all this talk is just the end result of continued GOP obstruction. It didn't matter who Obama chose as Supreme Court nominee, the GOP had already said that they were going to oppose whoever was chosen.

The new Republican Party motto: "We don't care about the country, just our political agenda."

"Newt"? Those are reptilian, right?

You know, it's strange. Nancy Pelosi is taking a lot of heat from the GOP lately, because of questions regarding when she knew what regarding the torture of our prisoners.

All these unhinged right-wingers are calling on Nancy Pelosi to resign, but nobody wants there to be a commission to establish the truth (or lack thereof) to the torture charges. Did America torture? Were Bush and Cheney complicit in ordering torture? How many laws were broken, and how many people need to go to jail?

Personally, I really don't care whether Pelosi resigns or not. I just want a bipartisan commission to look into the charges and find out the truth. (You remember, "the whole truth and nothing but the truth.") Once we know that, if it turns out that Pelosi was complicit, she can face the same charges as the rest of them.

Now, why would the CIA lie about briefing her? But then again, the same question goes for Pelosi. One of them did a bad thing and doesn't want to admit it. Either Pelosi lied and was briefed, or Leon Panetta lied and she wasn't.

Or maybe, just maybe, the truth lies somewhere between.

On the other hand (or maybe on the third hand - I've lost count), the CIA is one of the groups who would probably be complicit if a full torture investigation were to take place. So maybe they're a little more motivated to lie, if you think about it.

The CIA is claiming to have records of having briefed Nancy Pelosi, which she is disputing. Unfortunately, as there's ample evidence that the CIA records are riddled with errors, perhaps those same records aren't the best evidence that she was told anything (as Emptywheel, over on Firedoglake amply demonstrates - for that matter, Professor Goodman from Johns Hopkins, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, lists several examples of the CIA lying to Congress throughout the latter half of the 20th Century).

And as time goes on, more and more people are coming forward to question the CIA's record keeping. Congressman David Obey revealed that the CIA memos name an appropriations committee aide as present at one briefing, when the aide recalls being told he was not cleared to stay there. So Obey is joining Jay Rockefeller and Bob Graham in questioning the accuracy of the CIA memos. Even newly-minted Democrat Arlen Specter is almost (but not quite) coming out and saying that maybe the CIA needs to double-check their records.

For example, according to the CIA, Congressman Porter Goss got a briefing on March 8, 2005, even though he was not only no longer a congressman at the time, he was the director of the CIA. Now, if they can't even get the simple details like who's their boss straight, maybe there's some problems in the CIA records over there.

One of the chief people coming forward to say "She's lying! She needs to resign!" is Newt Gingrich. (Really? Mr "Family Values"? The guy who served his wife with divorce papers while she was lying in the hospital recovering from cancer? Yup, there's the perfect role model for the GOP.)

Part of the reason Newt lost his position as Speaker was that the American people began to see what a petty, small-minded man he was, with his fixation on bringing down Clinton and his 1995 "government shutdown" - as Tom Delay explained it in his biography No Retreat, No Surrender: One American's Fight, "He told a room full of reporters that he forced the shutdown because Clinton had rudely made him and Bob Dole sit at the back of Air Force One." (Three years later, he paid $300,000 in ethics sanctions, including claiming tax-exempt status for a college course run for political purposes.)

Does it seem like I'm bringing up unrelated parts of Newt's past, kind of an ad hominem attack? (That means "attacking the messenger, not the message." See there? I'm being educational again!) Well, he seems to be holding Nancy Pelosi up to some unreasonably high standard of behavior - it would be nice if he could live up to any part of it. If you're going to make personal attacks, you open yourself up for exactly the same treatment.

And it has to be a personal attack, too. Good old Newtie can't be as angry about Pelosi attacking the honesty of the CIA as he claims. Because he did exactly the same thing last year.

Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for February 2008: the National Intelligence Estimate had just come out, and the CIA had explained that there was no good reason to spend a few trillion dollars and several hundred American lives to invade Iran. Our boy Newt felt that he had to go on stage in front of Conservative Political Action Conference (or CPAC) make the following statement:

We have a large proportion of the Intelligence community deeply committed to defeating the policies of President Bush. The fact that he is the elected Commander in Chief of the American people, the fact that the laws have been passed by the elected legislators of the American people, seems to be no matter to this bureaucratic elite, which arrogates to itself the right to do things that are stunningly destructive.

The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran can only be understood as a bureaucratic coup d’état, deliberately designed to undermine the policies of the United States, on behalf of some weird goal.

Now, why is it that Nancy Pelosi can't suggest that, as the evidence is beginning to show, the CIA's record keeping could use some help, but Newton Leroy McPherson Gingrich is allowed to say that the CIA is trying to overthrow the President?

Is it possible that this is just some empty political rhetoric from a well-educated, morally-deficient, puffy-featured empty suit? Could that be what's going on?

But that's where the entire GOP is slipping away from reality. You can't say "Pelosi KNEW! She's GUILTY!" without admitting "OK, Bush and Cheney broke the law and need to go to jail." Somebody really needs to pick a position here.

Overstaying his welcome

You know, it's a strange thing. Dick Cheney, during his period in the Vice Presidency, was almost a cipher: his name became synonymous with the term "undisclosed location." But suddenly, now that he's no longer a public figure, the man is everywhere. For some reason, he decided to make the rounds of the talk shows, saying ignorant crap like the policies of the Obama administration "will in fact raise the risk to the American people" (apparently ignoring that it was the administration that he copiloted that made the American people hated in every corner of the globe). Cheney felt the need to peddle his particular brand of fecal matter on Face the Nation, on Sean Hannity, on every show willing to book him.

Now, why would he do that?

Well, it's simple. While "undisclosed location" is two words, the best synonym for Cheney is "complicit." He and Bush, working together, authorized the torture of prisoners by people acting at the behest of the American government. They decided that the best way to combat terrorists was to use the tactics of a petty dictator. And Dick Cheney knows that if he can't cloud the water and raise false arguments on the subject, he has a good chance of going to jail. (He's already had to cancel any travel plans to Spain, after all, where they're investigating the whole mess - unlike other countries like the USA, for example.)

Of course, his argument, "it doesn't matter what we did - we protected America!" ignores a number of factors. It ignores the fact that you can't prove a negative: would America have been attacked if Bush and Cheney didn't disregard every moral guideline developed back to the Bible that they both claim to revere?

It ignores the fact that attacks on American soil by foreign agents are few and far between. Before 9-11, you had to go back to the World Trade Center bombing of 1993.

It ignores the Americans killed in foreign countries (including almost 4300 American military members in Iraq - gee, I'll bet their families feel safer).

It completely ignores the anthrax attacks, against American citizens and on American soil that the Bush Administration was never able to solve.

And it ignores one simple question: if the only way to preserve the American Way of Life is to completely destroy every moral value that America has ever held, is it really worth it?

And the people who are listening to this pompous, fatuous, fat-headed former Vice President - the people who believe that Dick Cheney, who would collapse in seconds if he was ever subjected to even the mildest forms of abuse that he authorized and still supports - every one of these people is ignoring one important, overwhelming fact. A simple thing that puts the current statements of our boy Dick into a slightly different light.

Dick Cheney is a liar.

He's practically pathological about it. He started lying when he got into office, and he's continued ever since.

(OK, that statement is probably unfair: I suspect that he was a liar long before he got into office, but that's the period that's important to us, so let's run with it.)

Dick Cheney consistently and continually lied to the American people that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which they were willing and able to use on Americans. He also actively attempted to press a non-existent connection between the 9-11 hijackers and Iraq.

He manipulated intelligence reports, he shredded documents, and he gave millions of dollars in no-bid contracts to his former company, Halliburton; he simultaneously claimed that he had no connection to Halliburton, despite the fact that he was getting millions of dollars in severance payments from them every year for the first five years of his vice presidency. (Gee, I wonder if that would give him a reason to ensure that their profits stayed up?)

And Dick Cheney would not only lie, he would even lie about his lies. Correspondent Gloria Borger interviewed him on CNBC's Capitol Report on June 17, 2004, and asked about a claim he had made, saying that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had a meeting in Prague in April 2001 with an Iraqi agent. "You have said in the past that it was 'pretty well confirmed'."

Cheney was firm in his answer. "No, I never said that. I never said that. Absolutely not."

Unfortunately, she was quoting him from a Meet The Press interview from 2001, when he'd been speaking with Tim Russert (in an interview that even appeared on the White House website at the time).

Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that's been pretty well confirmed, that (Atta) did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.

Later in that same interview, Cheney admitted that the report from the 9-11 Commission had concluded that there was no relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, but said that he, Dick Cheney, disagreed with the report. So Borger asked the obvious question.

"Do you know some things that the commission does not know?"

"Probably."

(Logically, the 9/11 Commission asked him to present this information to them. He didn't. And finally, after months of stonewalling, they released a fairly terse statement on the subject. "The 9-11 Commission believes it has access to the same information the vice president has seen regarding contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq prior to the 9-11 attacks.")

During the 2004 presidential campaign, Cheney stood up onstage with John Edwards, and made at least six blatant lies that he never had to answer for or explain.

The mistreatment of prisoners has long been one of Cheney's favorite subjects to stretch the truth about. One of the most fascinatingly strained examples of tortured logic from Mr. Cheney occurred in 2005, when the human rights group Amnesty International had the unmitigated gall to complain about the All-American torture of Guantanamo detainees. Cheney's response was unique.

Occasionally there are allegations of mistreatment. But if you trace those back, in nearly every case, it turns out to come from somebody who has been inside and been released back to their home country and now are peddling lies about how they were treated.

Let's break down that statement.

1. ...it turns out to come from somebody who has been inside... Who else would complain?

2. ...and been released back to their home country... And they were released for a reason, too, Dickie. Those are the people who the government was unable to make a case in front of a judge and continue to hold them. (Maybe because they were... I don't know, I'm just guessing here... maybe they were innocent?)

3. ...and are now peddling lies about how they were treated. "Lies," Dick? Aside from the fact that no member of the Bush administration seemed to understand that the concept of "lying" might actually be a bad thing, why would innocent people, released back to their home country, need to lie? Because "they hate America"? And why would they hate America? Maybe because we threw them into prison, abused them, and never gave them any hope of release? Gee, imagine that…

Does anybody remember Dickie going on Larry King Live in June of 2005? You remember, when he said that he felt that Iraq was "in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

Sure, everybody remembers that. But nobody remembers him, four months later, contradicting himself, saying that "Like other great duties in history, it will require decades of patient effort." ("Decades?" That's a long throe.)

Which brings us around to the most important question: if Dick Cheney is unable to talk without lying, why are people still listening to him? And why has the supposed "liberal media" given him a place where he can spread these lies?

So, who am I pissing off this week?

You know, I like to think that I'm a nice guy. A cheerful, cultured, man about town (you should hear me sing the chorus of "Puttin' on the Ritz." I mean, Fred Astaire has nothing to worry about - even Taco wouldn't be frightened. But I give Peter Boyle a run for his money). But I seem to be gradually annoying more and more people around the country. (I'll do everybody a favor and not reprint the various exchanges; anything you want to see, you can click on the link. It's fun - try it!)

About two weeks ago, the big news stories involved Obama shaking hands with Hugo Chavez, and those Fox News-sponsored "tea parties." Well, I left a few comments in various places, and the responses were mixed: In a lot of cases, people wouldn't even try to respond. And then I've got one lady who apparently fashions herself the world's Mommy or something, who sent me the following note:

while i publish comments that are in disagreement, I do not publish those that are sarcastic or treat me as if I were intellectually inferior

As a former radical leftist I am all too familiar with the way your comment reads. I now understand that intelligent people can disagree and treat each other with respect.

Conservatives are not stupid. I have an IQ of 150+ and a BA in Philosophy.

Grow up. realize that intelligent people can disagree and learn to treat others with respect.

barbara

And she refused to publish my response. Kind of what I expect, although I don't usually get a personal note telling me why she isn't supporting that whole First Amendment thing.

On the other hand, she also runs a blog called Mommy, Teach Me (although, from what I've seen, I wouldn't want her teaching capitalization or punctuation). But it has the somewhat disturbing title on the front page of "Why send your child to preschool to fall in love with a teacher?"

Consider that for a moment. What is that saying about her relationship with her kids? Is it just me, or is something just a little... wrong in that?

Oh, and then there's a group of guys who consider themselves Curmudgeonly + Skeptical, who did try to engage me a little bit, but now they close off comments in every thread where I say "hi" - it seems I'm not welcome there, either. (I wonder why? Could Rodger be angry because I called him a conspiracy theorist? Or a racist? Or is it just that they can't handle the fact that a former military guy disagrees with them on just about every level? I just don't get it - could it be my deodorant?)

I rarely just give up on an argument, but once in a while it just isn't worth the headache. They make specious arguments, and pull up textbook examples of logical fallacies. I'm not clear that they really think about what they're writing - they just keep arguing for the sake of arguing. (Kind of like me, only I like to think that I have a point.)

(OK, sometimes I do...)

(...really, I've been known to...)

Anyway, as far as I can tell, the point was that marriage can only be considered to be for procreation. Period. That's it, end of story. There is no other reason to get married, and therefore no gays can get married. (I wasn't clear on this going in, but we got around to it eventually.) Of course, they refused to admit that the logic starts to break down at that point. Straight couples who can't or won't have children (medical reasons, age, their own choice - whatever the reason) must then have their marriages invalidated, yes? Well, apparently not - the only reason to get married is to have children, but you're allowed to get married even if you can't have children. Unless you're gay.

(One guy honestly tried to argue that gay marriage had to be banned because it discriminated against straights, while at another point the argument seemed to be that a gay marriage exposed the couple as gay, advertising their status to the world. And, lest we forget, "we've never had gay marriage, thus we cannot in the future." Or some crap like that. It just became ridiculous and I gave up on them.)

And this week, I found new subjects to irritate people. The Right Wing decided that expanded hate crimes protection meant that priests were going to be locked up in droves if they spoke out against homosexuality. Now, a blogger who thinks that The Night Cometh felt that just reprinting an article from that bastion of journalistic integrity, WorldNetDaily, was enough. And when I say "enough," I mean that he refused, not just to answer, but even to print my response.

Definition of irony: Complaining that your free speech is being stifled, as you're preventing other people from talking. (At least this P.O.'ed Patriot was willing to talk about it.)

I'm having a nice chat with an apparent Russian, too, who seems to think that the swine flu is going to topple the US government. (You see, all pigs are created equal, but some are more equal than others...)

I've also got a fairly wide-ranging discussion going on here involving religion, Miss America, feminism, and apparently whatever pops into people's minds.

The big news, though, was Arlen Specter changing political affiliation from Republican to Democrat. Now, while Dena Leichnitz, who fancies herself Black'n'Right got a little pissy with me on the subject, she seems to have tapered off into sullen silence. (To be honest, she doesn't use the apostrophes, but I think that Blacknright just looks silly without them, so I overruled her.)

A blogger who types On Freedom's Wings actually thought that I should be nicer because she's a lady! (Now, I'm not clear about that whole patriarchal, gender-discrimination thing, but do you lose your standing as a protected species when you refer to the 79-year-old senator as "Arlen Sphincter"?)

David Drake apparently got tired of trying to defend his idiocy, and now refuses to post my responses. (Looking at the web address for his blog, I'm a little curious why he originally called himself "Mrs. Satan" - just not curious enough to ride the Wayback Machine and find out.)

So I feel reasonably confident when I point out that the Far Right is just as unhinged and self-deluded as ever.

If Texas Secedes, Can They Take Bush With Them?

I was born in Texas, and many of my relatives are still there, so I like to think that I can speak for the culture, even though I'd much rather be castrated with a hammer than ever move back. There's a very ugly, small-minded fringe element that's taken entirely too much power in that god-forsaken state.

The Governor of Texas, Rick Perry (christened by the great philosopher M. Ivins as "Governor Goodhair") whipped a crowd of teabaggers into a frenzy last week by saying that Texas should secede. (And Chuck Norris, who's apparently starting to believe all the jokes, said that he may run for President of Texas.)

We should probably ignore the fact that talk like this feeds into the insane mindset of certain fringe elements of the population (apparently "fringe elements" everywhere but in Texas, anyway). And when I say "fringe elements," I'm referring to groups like the Republic of Texas, a bunch of armed extremists known for kidnapping random strangers and hosting armed standoffs with the police (you know, cheese and crackers, boxed wine, and the occasional exchange of hostages).

However, what Perry was talking about with his secession speech is a long-standing myth down there: that Texas has always had the right to secede, ever since we joined the country (not "we were annexed" or "we asked to join," but "we did it under our own volition, and they couldn't have stopped us if they'd tried").

The whole thing feeds into the myth of self-determination, that Walker-Texas-Ranger/Lone-Wolf-McQuade thing that Texas tries to propagate about themselves. Self-important idiots, really, swaggering around in their carefully-shined cowboy boots and crisp, clean white hats. Screw 'em.

(And incidentally, if Texas is such a cornerstone of self-righteous individualism, then why did Governor Perry, upon being told that Mexico might have a swine flu problem, demand that the CDC send Texas 37,430 doses of Tamiflu? I mean, if Texas doesn't need the rest of the United States, shouldn't they be willing to deal with this problem on their own?)

The alternative myth to Tex-cession is "Texas has the right to split into five states," a myth which at least has the advantage of being closer to reality. (It's still bullshit, but at least it'll make flowers grow, right?)

So let's look at these myths. First of all, the "secession" argument usually goes like this:

Our ultimate defense against the federal government is the right of secession. Yes, most people assume that the Civil War settled that. But superior force proves nothing. If there was a right of secession before that war, it should be just as valid now. It wasn't negated because Northern munitions factories were more efficient than Southern ones.

Among the Founding Fathers there was no doubt. The United States had just seceded from the British Empire, exercising the right of the people to "alter or abolish" - by force, if necessary - a despotic government. The Declaration of Independence is the most famous act of secession in our history, though modern rhetoric makes "secession" sound somehow different from, and more sinister than, claiming independence.

The original 13 states formed a "Confederation," under which each state retained its "sovereignty, freedom, and independence." The Constitution didn't change this; each sovereign state was free to reject the Constitution. The new powers of the federal government were "granted" and "delegated" by the states, which implies that the states were prior and superior to the federal government.

Which sounds great. Of course, that whole argument ignores the fact that the writer is referencing the Articles of Confederation, which were replaced by the Constitution, because the founders realized that they needed a Federation, not a Confederation.

As for the "five states" question, that feeds into the myth of self-determination, too. But the truth is Texas can be carved into five states.

The way it works is, in the Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas to the United States, which was approved by Congress on March 1, 1845, it stated :

New States of convenient size not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas and having sufficient population, may, hereafter by the consent of said State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the Federal Constitution...

Now, to add to that, you have Article IV, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, where it says:

New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.

Texans love that crap. They think it proves something. Of course, it ignores the fact that the whole thing is a joint process, not something Texas can force on everybody else: "no new states shall be formed or erected... without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress."

Also, did you notice those ellipses at the end of the Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas? That's because it goes into something that they don't want to talk about. Not only could Texas get split up if it proved to big and unwieldy to govern itself, but there was a second reason for the subdivision of the Lone Star State.

and such states as may be formed out of the territory lying south of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, commonly known as the Missouri Compromise Line, shall be admitted into the Union, with or without slavery, as the people of each State, asking admission shall desire; and in such State or States as shall be formed out of said territory, north of said Missouri Compromise Line, slavery, or involuntary servitude (except for crime) shall be prohibited.

Yes, the right of Texans to keep slaves was part of the reason that they wanted to be able to split themselves into a cluster of smaller small-minded states. Oh, and by the way, if you look at a map, very little (possibly nothing) of what currently makes up Texas was due to be a free state.

(It's not clear whether "Fuck Texas" is the unofficial battle cry of the Oklahoma Sooners, but it's the only thing I've seen to recommend the Dustbowl State, for that matter.)

If Texans were to get truly up in arms, and the fringe elements were to try to secede, I think it would be a fascinating experiment, for the year or two it would last before they completely collapsed under the weight of their own stupidity. Admittedly, it would suck to be gay or non-white in the "Republic of Texas," and I'm not sure that the mis-educated kids would ever recover, but at least the rest of America could get to see the nightmare that unfettered far-right fringe elements would lead us to.

In fact, overall, it would suck to be a Texan (even more than it does now). But it would be a fascinating experiment.

Balls to the wall

Now, here I was, working on a tremendously hilarious post about the teabaggers across the country: it was going to be epic, using knee-slappers like "low-hanging fruit" and multiple variations of "ball" and "dangle." (You'll be relieved to know that I'd abandoned the phrase "getting to the crotch of the matter" early in development. Even I felt like I was reaching for that one...)

(Must... resist... temptation... to use the phrase "reach-around"...)

Unfortunately, life got in the way. My wife's last weekend in Sullivan and Gilbert butted up against her departure for a week on the road with Opera Unlimited (literally straight from the closing curtain to the highway, without time to take off her stage makeup); we're continuing with the big installation of Electronic Medical Records at work; and, of course, there's always Fallout 3.

(Yo, Bethesda Softworks! Can we get a release date on that next downloadable update? We're all waiting for the new level cap out here...)

Anyway, that whole sack of fun came and went, and most of the world moved on to other things. Except, of course, for the false outrage from the right, who wanted you to feel absolutely incensed that the Mainstream Media couldn't resist the easy jokes on the subject (unlike, say, us responsible bloggers...)

Which led a guy named "Mustang Bobby" to opine at Shakespeare's Sister (and apparently at Bark Bark Woof Woof):

Who Ordered the Petard?

Scott at Powerline is incensed that the folks at CNN and MSNBC were all giggle-snorting over the Tea Party rallies unfortunate choice of the verb "teabagging."

The star hosts of CNN and MSNBC news shows have notoriously derided the tea party demonstrations around the country with reference to the practice of teabagging (which I had never heard of before they brought it up). As John noted, both networks' "journalists" used the rallies as an occasion for childish sexual innuendoes -- in the case of MSNBC, the same obscene teabag "joke" was repeated 51 times in a 13-minute segment.

The Media Research Center detailed the teabagging references in an informative press release. The Huffington Post noted the references as well as more "jokes" in the same vein (including a video of Cooper's jape, over which David Gergen cluelessly chortles).

While sitting in for Keith Olbermann on April 15, MSNBC's David Shuster packed the teabagging puns into his report on the protests. Shuster is like a juvenile student who has commandeered the loudspeaker system at his high school to commit the prank of a lifetime. Maybe it was just a case of Olbermann's writers feeding Shuster the same good stuff they usually give to Olbermann.

Andrew Sullivan is giddy; he seems to think the phenomenon is a big ball of fun.

Well, of course you know why, Scott asserts. It's because Anderson Cooper is "widely reputed" to be gay, and -- gasp! -- Andrew Sullivan and Rachel Maddow are "of course public homosexuals." (Public homosexuals? I'm pretty sure they're homosexuals in private, too.) Scott doesn't say anything about David Shuster's sexual orientation, but he was just sitting in for Keith Olbermann, and you know how he is with that perfect hair, the trendy glasses, and those suits....

So it's all a big gay conspiracy. We queers somehow coerced these ignorant patsies into using the term "teabagging" -- including Scott, who claims he never heard of it -- just so they would come up with all these rallies so all of our gay correspondents could then make fun of them on national TV. It was all a part of the Radical Homosexual Agenda, Item 13, paragraph 2: "Trick the straights into making complete fools of themselves by using gay code words in public (see Lexicon in the Appendix)."

I'm sorry, but when you set yourself up as the Party of Fiscal and Moral Responsibility and then don't even bother to check with the nearest teenager -- straight or gay -- as to whether or not it might pass the laugh test, you deserve all the derision and mockery you get. Getting all huffy and pearl-clutching about being hoisted on your own petard makes you look even more like a clueless dork. And if what I've heard from one of my commenters at Bark Bark Woof Woof is true, the organizers of the rallies actually knew what "teabagging" meant and went ahead with it anyway.

But the term was chosen intentionally - generally it became an in-joke among the protestors which caught on quite easily (because let's face it, it's not really a very in-joke as everyone knows what it means) but it did have the effect of finally getting coverage in the mainstream media, because the protests had been oddly ignored in favor of much smaller protests against things like AIG.

Scott ends his tantrum by demanding that all those snotty queers apologize to the good citizens who are Google and Wikipedia-deprived, and he wants CNN and MSNBC to do something.

There is not only something funny going on here, there is a story here. These supposed journalists and their networks (or publisher, in Sullivan's case) have rather seriously insulted the citizens who colorfully took to the streets to air respectable views in a most civil fashion. If they had any decency, Cooper et al. would apologize for their vile reference to sexual practices in the context of ordinary citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.

Oh, so Scott thinks the people took to the streets to "air respectable views in a most civil fashion," does he? Like the posters with the signs calling President Obama "Chairman Maobama" and labeling him as Hitler, or making pointed references to his race? If that's "respectable," then why are they getting all upset about sly references to teabagging? Oh.... because it's gay.

Well, the folks at Powerline will get their chance to set the record straight, so to speak. I hear they're planning a huge series of anti-tax rallies over the Fourth of July weekend. And in keeping with the summertime theme, they're going to be festivals celebrating water sports.

Oh, and incidentally (just to prove that I'm educational and stuff), let me make two very important points.

1. The actual act of "teabagging" only involves the scrotal sack being placed in the mouth of the drunken, snoring frat boy. The shaft is not involved. (It's important to get these things right, folks.)

2. A "petard" (from the title) was an early shaped charge: a metal box of gunpowder with a fuse, set on a stick. The guy using it would run up, brace the stick on the ground or in a shallow trench, and run away; then the petard would blow up, hopefully breaching the gate. Of course, they'd do this with the fuse (or "match") already burning, and if the fuse went too fast, it would blow up before it was set, and the engineer placing it would be "hoisted on his own petard." (And etymologically, the word petard comes from the Middle French word for "fart.")

See? Educational.

Obama's Bow; Republican Arrows

OK, so the latest evidence of the impotent right-wing idiots trying to generate false outrage over Obama is in.

There's very little controversy over this one, as far as I'm concerned. I look at the video, and it's fairly obvious that Obama takes the Saudi king's hand and bows as he shakes it. He's trying to be a diplomat (and, judging by the results, succeeding), and he greets the Saudi king with respect. My question, of course, is "what's wrong with that?"

Well, first off, the Moonie Times had a slavering, bit-chewing editorial that read:

Barack takes a bow

In a shocking display of fealty to a foreign potentate, President Obama bowed to Saudi King Abdullah at the Group of 20 summit in London last week.

Mr. Obama later said in Strasbourg, France, "We have to change our behavior in showing the Muslim world greater respect." Symbolism is important in world affairs. By bending over to show greater respect to Islam, the U.S. president belittled the power and independence of the United States.

The bow was an extraordinary protocol violation. Such an act is a traditional obeisance befitting a king's subjects, not his peer. There is no precedent for U.S. presidents bowing to Saudi or any other royals. Former President Franklin D. Roosevelt shook hands with Saudi King Abdulaziz in February 1945. Granted, Mr. Roosevelt was wheelchair-bound, but former President Dwight D. Eisenhower shook hands when he first met King Saud in January 1957. Mr. Obama's bow to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques does not help his image with those who believe he is secretly a Muslim, and why he chose to bow only to the Saudi King and not to any other royals remains unexplained.

Now, if you think about it, it makes sense that Obama would be polite to King Abdullah. I mean, the part of our economy that Bush didn’t sell to the Chinese, he sold to the Saudis. Obama probably didn’t want to be rude to our new landlord.

But really, I don't see a bow as showing fealty. It's a bow, f'Christ's sake! He bent at the waist. He didn't go to one knee, or kiss the man's ring or anything. I mean, after eight years of the Cowboy President talking with his mouth full and groping the German Chancellor, I realize that diplomacy and politeness have fallen by the wayside, but what does it hurt to make the man feel good about himself. It doesn't mean you have to fellate him, or even give him a damned thing that he wants. Hell, we're already throwing millions into alternate energy research, which, if it works, will cut the Saudi income enormously. Why shouldn't we talk nice to the man?

This whole situation was made worse when the White House spokesperson, , Robert Gibbs, back in America, apparently not up on the situation and not having a planned answer, tried to say that it wasn't a bow. The unhinged wingnuts jumped all over that as evidence that "and now Obama is lying about what he did!"

(Here's a clue, guys. Yeah, I'd say that Gibbs lied, in that he really didn't know what happened and just denied it in a knee-jerk "assume the best" reaction. But here's how you tell them apart: Obama is the slim black man; Gibbs is the puffy white guy. They aren't linked at the hip.)

But the right wing doesn't want to see it that way. Their end of the blogosphere was awash with people screaming things like "I don’t know bout you, but when did we bow to ANYONE. I’m a free man that will stand on my two feet until someone cuts them off or breaks them. What an embarrassment to us!" (You can practically see the spittle flying off the screen. I'm surprised he didn't type that in all-caps, or in red or something.)

One popular subset of these rants tried to link Obama's bow to King Abdullah with the long-debunked rumor that Obama's college tuition was paid for by a Saudi prince.

So I felt I should engage some of these hydrocephalic lunatics, and see if I could interject a little reality in their screeds. (As you can probably guess, for the most part, I failed.)

Rather than one extended sermon, which they wouldn't read anyway, I broke my concepts into bite-sized chunks for easy reading. I had three basic templates, which I'd cut-and-paste, then tailor to fit the individual blog. The first one was relatively simple:

Give me a break.

Bush kisses King Abdullah, and then walks hand-in-hand with him through the flowers. Bush showed more obeisance to the King than any previous President ever did. This is just unhinged wingnuts trying to manufacture outrage again.

If you want to check out Abdullah's obedient vassal, go here.

If (ok, when) they'd argue, it was usually with something to the effect that "I replied with this:

Bowing always means exactly the same in every culture. Unless it doesn't.

"Bowing to other human beings is frowned upon in Muslim cultures as all human beings are considered equal and bowing is only supposed to be done to God in Islam."

Oh, my God!!! Obama was insulting the King!

Wasn't it Freud that said "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"? Maybe Obama was just bowing in an attempt to be polite.

Because it's not like he looked like he was being somebody's bitch or anything.

And finally, in a particularly useful response if I'm accused of being something horrific like a "leftist," I had the following:

Let's see what Fox News has to say about this.

But protocol experts told FOX News that no rule exists on presidents bowing.

"To my knowledge, there is no rule at all," said Lloyd Hand who was chief of protocol for President Lyndon Johnson. "Protocol is 95 percent common sense judgment and 5 percent specific rules and that has nothing to do with bowing."

Hand said he doesn't believe Obama's stoop qualifies as a bow.

"American protocol favors the extension of warm gracious hospitality and I put what he did in that context," he said.

But, hey, you keep right on trying to make something important out of a small gesture of diplomatic civility.

That last one was especially useful in answering the one guy who informed me that he wasn't impressed by the "lefty media" I provided. (Youtube is "leftist"? Who knew?)

(In case you're curious, the other conversations not mentioned elsewhere in this post can be found here, here, here and here.)

The reaction was mixed of course. Some of them tried to argue; some just sat in sullen silence. My favorite, though, was actually a blog that refused to print my response. This one had the fascinating blog title of "Loose Lips." Not real loose, though: only four posts in the last year; this guy makes my posting rate look prolific. He was so off the rails that I would have thought it was a joke if I'd come across it without having read the rest of these screeds.

This one is for all you people who are convinced that our president is Black...(and he's not).

President Obama is caught bowing to the Saudi King during a visit to Saudia Arabia. Fist off, the visit was kept secret, then when it was discovered, it was covered up by saying it's purpose was soley to visit the troops. Then why is he visiting with the king?
Secondly, a bow in Saudia Arabia is done only from persons of lesser status, or not worthy of the king...so why is Obama bowing? He is president of the United States..that is comparable to King of Saudia Arabia...He shouldn't be bowing...but in Muslim beliefs, it is disrespectful to not bow to a king or noble.
And you thought you voted a black president...Americans got caught up in color and not facts...we voted in a Muslim...
He swore in on the Quran for gosh sakes..and he is supposted to be this devout chrisian...explain that!
And now he's bowing to Saudi Kings, promising middle eastern countries that we will never be at war with them and bashing America and our government during the visit to Great Britian...America, What have we done?

Let's ignore little facts like, well, Barack Obama is rather noticeably black, and, as I pointed out, it's actually considered rude to bow to a Muslim. We'll also ignore the blatant misrepresentations of what he said, the misspellings and the fascinating punctuation style. I think that the best part of this post was the title, something I pointed out to him in my ignored response. His brilliant title, unchanged as of this writing:

Obama Finally admits to his Muslin Heritage

Which also explains why this guy thinks our president isn't black. Apparently, Obama's father wasn't Kenyan; he was a piece of cloth.

Taking the hat off the little man

There are two extremes in the circumcision debate - the ardent religious person who believes that a circumcision is a symbol of submission to G-d, and it's also a metaphor for Man's purpose to make the world a better place; and the equally ardent human rights proponent, who sees circumcision as an unnecessary, barbaric sexual mutilation of innocent children.

I had initially thought to begin by saying that there are two schools of thought on the matter, but there are a thousand shades of gray between the black and white ends of the penile spectrum: there's the devout Jew who understands the danger of elective surgery, even a surgery as minor as this; there's the man who is himself circumcised, who doesn't understand (and is often incurious to know) what would be entailed in raising a child with an intact foreskin; there is the person who doesn't find the penis looming large in his thoughts, and who just doesn't care one way or another.

Well, there are some additional factors to consider on the subject. First, you should remember that any surgery has risks (and some risks are worse than others).

(On that subject, our pediatricians were recently told by the Patient Advocate that they needed to be more "understanding" of people's beliefs: she'd received a complaint from one set of parents, who felt that the pediatrician was trying to talk them out of circumcising their son. As none of the doctors had done so, the general consensus was that the parents were reacting badly to the doctor explaining the possible risks involved with the procedure - something that the doctors are required by law to explain.)

But as it turns out, studies are now saying that circumcision protects against the human papillomavirus (HPV), herpes, genital warts, and, according to the latest studies out of Africa, it may even make you around 50% less likely to become infected with AIDS.

(On the opposing side to that argument, of course, is the fact that you can also effectively protect your newborn from trench foot by chopping off his toes. A cost-benefit analysis gets a little tricky on this subject.)

Personally, I like this take on the subject, courtesy of one M. LeBlanc, writing on a blog calling itself Bitch PhD:

I immediately expect an outcry from every righteous, god-fearing person in the country, and all their Republican leaders, that we halt circumcision of male infants immediately. We simply can not encourage young boys, teenagers and men, to be promiscuous sluts by reducing the likelihood that they will get infected as a result of having that sex.

I expect a ban on circumcision from Congress, and a special restriction on anesthesia by the FDA that it can not be used in a circumcision. I expect mandatory counseling for all parents-to-be on the dangers of circumcising young boys lest they grow up to think that they can have sex without consequences. I expect a mandatory 24-hour waiting period before any circumcision. I expect South Dakota and Texas to immediately introduce legislation against late-term circumcision. Even if you wisely didn't have your infant son circumcised, you can not have him get the surgery at a later date lest he become a slutty whore.

The chastity and purity of our young boys is already threatened enough, what with the FDA considering approving the HPV vaccine for boys, too. Who will think of the rowdy Davids and Johns and Jeremies and their precious sanctity as vessels of God's special plan for sexuality?

But anyway, aside from any possible health benefits, what reason remains for circumcision? To be honest, all I can come up with are Tradition and Religion.

Now, tradition is easy to do away with. There's an old (and possibly overused) definition of tradition as "the art of making the same mistake over and over." But if someone really finds the argument "well, it was good enough for my father, and his father before him..." to be compelling, you probably can't argue with them. The inbreeding has spread too deep.

The "religion" argument is a little harder to get around, though. Many (but not all) of our Hebrew friends find circumcision to be an important part of their culture: it was a mark that set Jews apart from the other cultures around them, and, after all, it was commanded by God.

No, really. It's right there in the Bible. Genesis 17:10-14 (NIV - in fact, all the rest of the Bible quotes will be from the New International Version [NIV]).

Then God said to Abraham, "As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring. Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."

That seems pretty straightforward. Why, then, are the Christians not required to chop the head off the one-eyed serpent?

To be honest, that's where you get into some strange theological ground. First, obviously, the term "the people of Abraham" refers to the Jewish people. And apparently, the Christians don't want to be descended from the people blessed by God. They want to come from the bastards, reprobates and sinners from those other kingdoms.

But in fact, Jesus specifically told people that He wasn't there to change the Hebrew laws. In Matthew 5:17-18, He came right out and said "Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled."

Of course, later in Matthew (15:11), he contradicted himself, by saying that you don't have to follow the kosher dietary laws. So apparently, there are neither jots nor tittles in food. Who knew?

But that's just the food rules. Jesus liked a good pork chop, but he never said that you should ignore the rest of the rules that God laid down for mankind. It wasn't until later, after he'd been nailed to a tree, that his followers decided to play fast and loose with the penis.

In Acts 15, Paul argues against Gentiles being required to get snipped. And Paul, if you remember, never met Jesus — he claimed to have talked to the ghost of Jesus, but never met him while Jesus was alive (Acts 9). So he came into it late, and like most born-agains, he became all Christainier-than-thou.

Technically, what actually happened was this:

Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: "Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved." This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. (Acts 15:1-2)

Then they start talking, and Peter argued "why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear?" (15:10), and James read them some Scripture (Scripture that, oddly enough, never made it into the Old Testament) and said that "we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God." (15:19)

But ironically, Peter didn't talk about the penis. What he then listed off, as the rules that non-Jewish Christians should follow, doesn't mention the hatless willy at all.

"Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath." (15:20-21)

And the elders dutifully wrote this all down and mailed it off, again not talking about chopping the chicken: "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell." (15:28-29)

The rest of them didn't seem to care about the cock. The only person who spent a a lot of time ruminating on the man-root was Paul:

"Yet not even Titus, who was with me, was compelled to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek. This matter arose because some false brothers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you." (Galatians 2:3-5)

Later in that same book, Paul wrote:

if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law... For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. (Galatians 5:2-3, 6)

And, you know, the more you read the New Testament, the more that you get the feeling that Paul was a self-important dick (so to speak). He was all about telling people what to do — the Elders hadn't even mentioned the cock, but here Paul is, going on and on about it. He was fixated on the penis: 1 Corinthians, several times in Romans, Phillipians, over and over. He just couldn't get other men's hard, throbbing rods out of his mind.

It was Paul, not Jesus, who decided on the phallic rules; apparently, the penis was very important to him. His basic rule was, if you had already been circumcised, stay that way; if not, don't take a knife and start carving the wood.

Of course, if you're following Jesus, and Jesus was a Jew and a descendant of Abraham, shouldn't you then try to follow the same rules as He did? After all, Jesus was circumcised (in Luke 2:21-39, if you're interested). And you want to be like Jesus, right?

In fact, Jesus never really mentions circumcision at all - except one time, in John 7:21-24. But that was more in context with telling people that they should be more flexible. (Basically, He explained how you have to circumcise a baby even if it's on the Sabbath, when you aren't supposed to do work. So some things are OK on the Sabbath - like healing the sick. In fact, He was arguing that the people shouldn't kill Him. It's rough, being the Christ...)

Overall, you have to decide whether you're a Christian or a Paulian, I guess. And if you're a Christian, then maybe God really does want to protect you from STD's, and that's why circumcision helps with that.

So, what have we learned today? Well, really, one of two things. Either God wants you to have sex, but He also wants you to whittle away at your willy.

Or, possibly, we've learned that eventually, every religion just turns into people making up rules to do what they want to do - like Paul, who wanted to have a choice in flavors of cock.

Basically (I know, this is a revolutionary idea), you should make up your own mind. But remember, ripping off the foreskin may provide a little protection from some STD's. But a condom provides a lot of protection against most of them.

Your choice.