Personal Musings category archive

As I have pointed out before, when conservative policies fail, conservatives blame everything except, well, their policies. From Paul Krugman:

The fault, however, lies not in Republicans’ stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.

If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well, it was just following the advice of leading conservative think tanks: after the 2000 election the Heritage Foundation specifically urged the new team to “make appointments based on loyalty first and expertise second.”

Contempt for expertise, in turn, rested on contempt for government in general. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” declared Ronald Reagan. “Government is the problem.” So why worry about governing well?

There’s more at the link.

Conservatism is a failed and bankrupt ideology deserving the dustbin of history.

No doubt its adherents will continue to attempt to torment us with it.

Truth is their weakness, self-delusion is their strength.

Addendum:

Not directly related, but what Digby said.

I sure hope 40 cheese straws constitutes a balanced supper.

(Aside: The recipe is wussified. If you want to try it, remember to quadruple the cayenne and add some Frank’s Red Hot, then sprinkle the straws with cayenne before they go in the oven. Oh, yeah, and use a metal cookie press with the squiggly mold. A plastic cookie press won’t take the strain.)

I hear the groaner down by Fox Point.

Criswell predicts that the Bernie Madoff case will be the foundation of a Law and Order episode by March.

One of the benefits of having grown-up kids is quiet Christmas mornings.

One of the detriments of having grown-up kids is quiet Christmas mornings.

I cannot wait until I can remove the Backwards Bush Clock from my sidebar.

Over there —————————->

It’s been there for three miserable, disgusting, frustrating, perverted, lawless years.

It occurs to me that, when removal time comes, the clock may be gone, but Bush will still be backwards.

Shakespeare wrote for the ages.

And he summed up the Current Federal Administration:

The evil that men do lives after them . . .

If you hold the remote control backwards, you get the reciprocal of the desired station.

In reacting to Duncan’s comment about this kerfluffle over Christmas displays in the Washington State capitol building, Mithras points out that

The Washington State case involves the state opening up a space for speech by private actors. Once it does that, it must not discriminate on the basis of viewpoint. So, if it takes religious messages, then it must take messages from all religions (or those who oppose religion). That’s different from the government speaking. In the case of private speech on public property, “nativity scenes and crosses” are fine, iff all other religious displays are permitted, too. Olympia just found out what it means to do that.

Part of the hubbub involved a local atheist group wanting to place something in the display area, followed by requests from hell-and-brimstone Christianists, Seinfeldian “Festivus” celebrants, Flying Spaghetti Monster devotees, you name the creed–serious or surreal–its adherents wanted to get in on the action.

As I have pointed out on numerous occasions in this space, the purpose of the religion clause in the First Amendment was to prevent the state or its agents from dictating, either overtly or covertly, religious beliefs or doctrine to the populace, not to restrict the ability of citizens acting personally to exercise or discuss their faiths or lack thereof.

More below the fold

. . . this whole who-shot-john over Rick Warren is to governance.

And forests have lots of trees and other stuff. Little trees, big trees, rotten trees, saplings, underbrush, poison ivy, snakes, bugs, and bears (and, given the bears, no Colberts).

One of the annoying habits amongst us lefties is a tendency to get all worked up over not much of anything and forget the larger goal. It’s like those churches which split over minor stuff, like what kind of candles shall be on the altar, and forget that altar candles are peripheral even to peripheries.

Knock it off, already.

Addendum:

Some food for thought.

Also posted, with slight edits, at the Great Orange Satan.

I suggest “Bushboroughs.”

If I hear one more bozo in any form of media refer to the scandal of the day as “the perfect storm,” I think I shall be ill.

Richard Blair sort of sums it up:

Many months ago, I wrote something like: “This is the military’s war. It isn’t America’s war.” (and the military’s families–ed.) George Bush never asked anyone, other than the troops and their families, to sacrifice anything in the pursuit of his (and Cheney and Exxon’s) war for oil. A few companies made billions on the war.

I guess the expense of hundreds of thousands of brown skinned people, half a planet away, was just the cost of Bush doing business. He has no regrets. Neither do most Americans.

As a nation, we have allowed our nation to sin.

Addendum, after Breakfast:

Brendan has more.

Read it.

On the basis of what?

Duncan asks, in response to this post on TPM:

If members of Congress can’t get outraged when they’re lied to, I’m kinda starting to wonder why I should bother getting outraged on their behalf.

I think that no deed whatsoever that the Current Federal Administration does, no matter how venal, duplicitous, or deceptive, can surprise anyone any more.

Without surprise, it is difficult to muster outrage.

We’re just numb.

Elevated from the comments:

Tired of the countless lies, knowing for as long as they are there, it won’t change. No matter how low we go as a civilization, they can still go lower. No matter how bad what they do is, they can still do worse.

I would say tired.

No argument here.

(Link added at the beginning of paragraph four below.)

As much as I loathe Republicanism, I have known many Republicans and conservatives over the years whom I have liked and and respected. They were persons of integrity, even though I may have disagreed with them.

But, frankly, today’s Republicans have spun off into some kind of parallel universe disconnected from any sort of reality.

Today’s Republicans or, at least, those who carry their standard just suck.

They have nothing left (the rest of us have nothing left either, thanks to their policies) other than name-calling and lies.

I extend my sympathies to the few remaining Republicans of integrity. And I have a question.

How the hell can you stand the company you keep?

I have it on good authority from within the center of an Illinois state government office yesterday that there was non-partisan rejoicing on the part of state workers and professional staff.

The exact sentence was, “. . . you’d think it was Bastille Day.”

Apparently, Blago was an equal-opportunity alienator.

Republican Economic Theory: Making nothing out of something.

Republican Political Tactics: Making something out of nothing.

It’s difficult for me to see this as a feminist-type issue.

I know a little bit about frat-boy type behavior (one reason I was never interested in joining a frat–why pay dues to get drunk?).

I can see the same thing happening had a male candidate been the subject.

But some persons do see it thus.

It looks to me more like a stupidity-out-of-control-type issue.

If you don’t want absolutely everyone to be able to see something, don’t show it to absolutely everyone.

H/T Karen for the link.

Christiane Amanpour on Fresh Air:

“Objectivity means reporting the truth.

“It doesn’t mean causing a false equivalence or saying ‘on the one hand this, on the other hand that,’ it doesn’t mean equating victim with aggressor. If we do that, we’re accomplices.”