Personal Musings category archive

and still in one piece.

I was wondering today, was the Current Federal Administrator not allowed to play with Army men when he was younger?

Is that what’s behind all this playing with others’ lives for a lie?

A little enforced vacation from blogging this week. I’m juggling three projects, one of them winding down and two of them starting up. My cold has, in the way of this bug, settled into a cough that doesn’t want to go away. Something had to give, and what gave was what doesn’t put food on the table. . . .

So, who missed me? One person I can name (I won’t, to protect the innocent). Otherwise, my little vacation had, I am sure, no effect on the blogosphere, or, for that matter, on anything else.

So, what have I missed? Not much.

The economy has spun a few more rounds down the toilet, thanks the the NeoCon delusion that making the rich richer does anything other than, well, make the rich richer.

It’s no longer a question of recession or not. Now it’s how deep and how long. Workers’ pink slips stacked ever higher in March as jittery employers slashed 80,000 jobs, the most in five years, and the national unemployment rate climbed to 5.1 percent. Job losses are nearing the staggering level of a quarter-million this year in just three months.

The Current Federal Administration continues to fail in its effort to spin silk from its sow’s ear in Iraq, while the so-called Iraqi “government” (which, remember, hardly exists outside the Green Zone) demonstrated its toothlessness.

President Bush won’t shift course (in Iraq–ed.) before his term ends. Troops will draw down some, but not below pre-surge levels, and our military will remain overextended. The possibility of shaping a different Iraq policy won’t emerge until a new president is elected.

Meantime, the realities on the ground were brutally laid bare over the last two weeks by the fighting in Basra: Iraq’s security situation is better than in its darkest days, but remains fragile. The hope has dimmed that improved security will enable Iraqi factions to reconcile, and the Iraqi army is far from ready for prime time.

At the same time, the Current Federal Administrator continued to demonstrate its allegiance to special effects in touting a “missile defense shield” that has everything going for it except the Laws of Physics:

President Bush’s national security adviser says the U.S. and Russia can leave the missile defense issue to their successors after failing to reach agreement in their last meeting together as presidents.

But I’m back . . . .

A while ago, I linked this post from Phillybits concerning a rightwing teacher’s spreading wingnut poison in public school.

Now comes another chapter in the story:

The state Human Relations Commission is investigating a complaint from an Indian River School District parent who said her 10-year-old daughter’s teacher told her class she would not vote for Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama because he is Muslim.

In a letter to the editor, the girl’s two older sisters — who described themselves as American Muslim kids who love their country — said the teacher told the fifth-grade class that she is a Republican and that Obama “believes in different things and is scary.”

Obama, a Christian, has been trying to dispel myths about his religion across the country.

What his camp calls “smear e-mails” have circulated nationally for months claiming the Illinois senator is Muslim. His campaign Web site notes Obama’s response in a January debate on MSNBC: “In the Internet age, there are going to be lies that are spread all over the place. I have been victimized by these lies. Fortunately, the American people are, I think, smarter than folks give them credit for.”

The Indian River teacher’s remarks allegedly occurred prior to a mock Feb. 5 Super Tuesday primary vote at Lord Baltimore Elementary School.

This is what separation of church and state is about. It is not right to have an agent of the state (that is, a public school teacher) attempting to influence political choices.

Well, we could stop there, couldn’t we? But let’s finish the thought:

It is not right to have an agent of the state (that is, a public school teacher) attempting to influence political choices to further a particular religious point of view.

Even if it weren’t–as in this case–based on a lie.

A while ago, I said that Mike Huckabee had a singular trait amongst the pretenders for the throne of King George the Wurst.

I said that he was a sincere and honest candidate (no wonder he’s out of the Republican race) as much as I disagreed with him in many ways and on many levels.

He has now weighed in on the Barack Obama/Rev. Wright thing in a way that will, no doubt, make it impossible for him to ever get another vote in a Republican primary. Ever.

And one other thing I think we’ve got to remember: As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say, “That’s a terrible statement,” I grew up in a very segregated South, and I think that you have to cut some slack. And I’m going to be probably the only conservative in America who’s going to say something like this, but I’m just telling you: We’ve got to cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told, “You have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can’t sit out there with everyone else. There’s a separate waiting room in the doctor’s office. Here’s where you sit on the bus.” And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had a more, more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

Via Susie.

The Republican smear machine cranks up:

Those still wondering if the GOP would again use gays and gay marriage as their signature issue need not spend another moment contemplating the question. After watching the video, it should be abundantly clear that race will be the crown jewel in the GOP’s armada. Should Obama be the Democratic nominee, I expect the meme to mimic a GOP favorite used to assail gays…the militant homosexual agenda.

In Obama’s case, this effective meme will be modified to portray him as secretly promoting “the militant black agenda”…one that denigrates patriotism and seeks to install a Marxist inspired version of socialism. Take a moment to do a Google search with the term “Obama Socialist Marxist agenda”. If that doesn’t convince you, Google “Obama Marxist Posters” and you’ll note the efforts to connect Obama to Che Guevara.

Of course, the reason they resort to these tactics is that the truth about them–phony wars, crippling budget deficits, selling out the nation to benefit the rich, corruption that would make Harding blush–loses votes.

From time to time in this space, I have spoken of race and racism.

As a Southern boy, I grew up surrounded by racists and racism. I grew up with persons who referred to their farm hands as “my people” (and they meant it with full paternalistic overtones). And that was amongst the kinder references.

Granted, the outward manifestations of racism weren’t as bad in my part of the world as they were in some parts of the South. Black folks were not expected, for example, to step into the street to allow white folks to pass on the sidewalk.

They were just expected to give way, without actually stepping into the gutter.

I know all the code words of the racist.

And when the racists come up with new code words, I recognize them by some kind of subliminal instinct. Because I’ve lived in that life, thank you very much.

I know what it is like to be complimented by the old black cleaning lady (the same lady who took care of me while my brother was being born 14 years earlier and whose grandson was my earliest playmate, aside from my brother, and who was as kind to me as ever anyone I knew) as being special because, for God’s sake, I let her ride in the front seat of the car with me, rather than making her ride in the back seat.

Ride in the front seat.

I never thought to let her do otherwise, for heaven’s sake, because, thank God, my parents taught me to be equally polite to everyone, even those who had the handicap (I speak from the view of those times, not from the view of today) of being “colored.”

Sheesh.

I watched the racists switch from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, as the Democratic Party stopped playing the race card, even as the Republican Party played it with glee.

And with the run of Senator Obama for the nomination of the Democratic Party for president, boy, have the racist code words started to echo off the wall.

And they have echoed, I am sad to say, not just from the usual suspects (here and here, for example), but also from members of the Democratic Party itself. Who should know better, for heaven’s sake.

The legacy of institutionalized, legislated racism in this country did not disappear when our elected representatives incongruously assembled passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

It was two years after the passage of that bill when one–one!–black student entered my all-white high school. It was the next year when seven–seven!–more black students entered my high school. And this in an area where 65% of the student population was and is black.

And I still remember how worked up my Latin teacher was when, in a local newspaper article, my name was transposed with that of one of my fellow black students in a photo of the track team. I didn’t care, but she was ready to die on my behalf and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t mortified.

Gasp.

Gunnar Myrdal famously concluded that the “Negro problem” in America is a “white man’s problem.”

And so correct he was. And nothing that has happened in the sixty years since his pronouncement has impeached his conclusion in any way.

It is time to stop ignoring this history, time to stop pretending that the 1960’s civil rights and voting rights laws fixed everything, time to stop with the damned code words.

And time to stop wondering why minority people get offended when representatives of the white majority say rude, offensive, disgusting things.

To my fellow white folks, I say, “Grow up, already.”

It is time to realize that, even though the concept of race is, frankly, bullshit by any scientific measure, it is a great big elephant, no, there’s got to be a better word, elephants are bad gorilla in the room that no one is willing to deal with except through code words and innuendo. And that the institutionalized racism of chattel slavery, the institutionalized racism of Jim Crow laws that I grew up under, the institutionalized de facto segregation of Yankee cities that exists till this day (just watch a random Law and Order episode if you think the effects don’t linger–the show would not be so believable if it did not seem real) still poison our society.

So come now the racists, making a big fuss about some remarks by Senator Obama’s pastor.

I’ve mentioned before that, as far as I have observed, what weds Protestants to their churches is most likely the congregation (though certain pastors, like, for example, Ted Haggard, seem to have a magnetism all their own).

Pastors come, pastors go, I’ve never had a pastor in any church I attended with whom I agreed on everything.

I know that my father would not have left the little Baptist church in which he was raised and which he attended for 82 years because one of the pastors offended him; he would have soldiered on, because pastors come and pastors go.

But now come the racists attacking Senator Obama because of selected comments of the pastor of his church.

Give me a goddamned break from the racists for once please.

And just pay attention to what matters.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina – or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

(snip)

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a big furor about a report on American religious leanings. Radio Times devoted an hour to it. From the website:

America’s changing religious landscape. We talk with GREG SMITH one of the principal authors of the latest “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey” by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Some of the trends it found include: Protestants are becoming a minority, Catholicism is becoming heavily Hispanic, and more people are saying they’re not affiliated with any religion.

(To hear the show, go to the website and search for the February 28, 2008, show or listen here.)

On top of that, the local rag–not the one I subscribe to, because I want a paper with more than five minutes of content; the other one–had a story today about persons looking for compatible churches.

There are certainly big changes in the religious make-up of the United States, big changes driven by demographic changes.

Nevertheless, I believe that the much of the fuss was overdone. Much was said about members of Protestant denominations changing from one denomination to another. That is really No Big Deal.

I was raised a Southern Baptist. Leaving aside that the Sourthern Baptist Convention has, in recent years, abandoned one of its core tenets (freedom of religion) and fallen into the hands of the Pharisees, when I was looking for a new church in this part of the world, I really didn’t care what denomination it might be. The doctrinal differences among the main line Protestant denominations are really very very minor.

What I looked for was a congregation in which I could feel comfortable. The congregation I found happened to be Methodist.

The fact that Methodists believe in infant baptism and Baptists believe in baptism of the believer upon profession of faith really is not a deal breaker. (Since infants are incapable of professing faith, infant baptism, is, well, how should I put this? scripturally insupportable.)

Baptists also believe in priesthood of the believer, which means I can attend this Methodist church and discount those tenets of Methodism which, as a good Baptist, I find not to have a solid theological basis.

Here’s my point.

It’s really no big deal when Protestants move between denominations. It’s not worth making up trends and theories. Such movement is likely to have more to do with the atmosphere of the local congregation than it is to have to do with doctrinal disagreements, since, frankly, most Protestants don’t know much of anything about doctrine (If they did, the Donald Wildmons of the world would never get traction, but that’s another story). That’s just the way it is.

It’s a little bigger deal when Protestants become Catholics or Ukrainian Orthodox or vice versa, but only a little bigger. It’s still the same tent.

As far as I am concerned, the findings of the report in question were grossly overbown.

A while ago, I explained how conservatism is morally and intellectually bankrupt, pointing out that, when conservative policies fail, conservatives claim that X (the policy-maker waving their flag) must not be a “true conservative” and therefore must be responsible for the failure.

Comes now a true believer to demonstrate a corollary to that postulate (not a theory, a postulate, that is, a fundamental truth from which flows the remainder of reasoning):

When conservative polices fail, it is not because they were wrong, well, from the git-go, but because they were betrayed by Bad People who, ergo, must not be “true conservatives.”

Douglas Feith, one of the architects of the of the War in Iraq, has delivered himself of a mighty tome in which, according to news reports, he blames everyone except Donald Rumsfeld and, natch, himself, for the debacle in Iraqcle.

These people never made a mistake for which they took responsibility.

In the world of conservative ideology, the failure of their polices is always someone else’s fault, because they are always right; they are never wrong.

Just ask them.

Douglas J. Feith, in a massive score-settling work, portrays an intelligence community and a State Department that repeatedly undermined plans he developed as undersecretary of defense for policy and conspired to undercut President Bush’s policies.

Among the disclosures made by Feith in “War and Decision,” scheduled for release next month by HarperCollins, is Bush’s declaration, at a Dec. 18, 2002, National Security Council meeting, that “war is inevitable.” The statement came weeks before U.N. weapons inspectors reported their initial findings on Iraq and months before Bush delivered an ultimatum to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Feith, who says he took notes at the meeting, registered it as a “momentous comment.”

Although he acknowledges “serious errors” in intelligence, policy and operational plans surrounding the invasion, Feith blames them on others outside the Pentagon and notes that “even the best planning” cannot avoid all problems in wartime. While he says the decision to invade was correct, he judges that the task of creating a viable and stable Iraqi government was poorly executed and remains “grimly incomplete.”

Contemporary conservatism is not an ideology. It’s a circle of jerks.

(For the NASCAR challenged, Darlington is a race track.)

I was listening to yesterday’s Talk of the Nation, which had its regular Wednesday “Political Junkie” feature.

One of the callers asked an interesting question.

She pointed out that, in the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, supporters of the Clinton campaign have brought up race three times.

Supporters of the Obama campaign have not brought it up (except in response to comments from the other side).

Her question was (paraphrased, because I’m not going to listen to the entire podcast over again once more redundantly just to get an exact quote), “What does that tell you?”

Well, indeed, what does that tell you?

Leave the poor working girl alone, for heaven’s sakes.

I would say he fit right in. After all, one is known by the company one keeps.

But, you know, every dollar the NRCC lost is another dollar they cannot devote to further undermining the Constitution of the United States of America and to making the rich, richer and the poor, poorer.

The fellow should have a nice future at KBR.

National Republican Congressional Committee officials acknowledged publicly today that they have found discrepancies in their books of more than a million dollars and evidence that the NRCC’s former treasurer, Christopher Ward, made “several hundred thousand dollars” worth of unauthorized wire transfers out of the committee that appear to have ended up in Ward’s own bank accounts.

The NRCC launched an internal probe and contacted the FBI in January after learning that Ward “apparently fabricated and submitted 2006 financial statements to the NRCC’s bank,” according to a memo issued by the committee today. Some details of the probe have been reported previously, but today’s memo and press briefing by a lawyer retained by the committee marked the fullest public accounting so far of the unfolding scandal.

Some persons who either do not know or who choose to lie about the history of the United States of America are fond of saying that the United States was founded as a Christian nation.

It was not. The only excuse for making such a comment is ignorance. The only reason for making such a comment, knowing that it is false, is perfidy.

Check out this interview with Steven Waldman, founder of Beliefnet, who has recently written a book on America’s religious history.

No, I’m not going to comment on Elliot Spitzer’s problems. (He’s not the first, won’t be the last, but at least it wasn’t in a restroom with a strange guy or a Senate page.)

Today, though, I listened to yesterday’s Talk of the Nation (I love my mp3 player), which had an excellent episode on “Why do rich smart powerful people do such stupid things”?

It’s worth a listen, particularly the segment with Peter Sagal. From the website:

When he’s not hosting Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me, NPR’s weekly news quiz show, Peter Sagal is likely at a casino, a swingers club or visiting a porn-movie set. All investigative research, of course, for his recent book, The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (and How to Do Them).

Sagal wanted to get a perspective on the indulgences of others and report back to the rest of us.

In light of Monday’s surprising allegations that New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was involved in a prosecution ring, Sagal weighs in on the correlation between power and vice.

“It goes back in history that powerful people get to break sexual rules,” Sagal says — those in power are “immune from the sexual rules that bind down the poor rest of us.”

Addendum, Later That Same Evening:

I said I wasn’t going to comment on Spitzer directly.

But am going to point you to Jon Swift, who comments incisively and lengthily (and, when you consider what those two words mean, to combine them in one essay is, actually, a heck of an accomplishment):

Excerpt:

While I cannot deny the glee I feel that a holier-than-thou Democrat who is supporting Hillary Clinton has been hoist on his own petard, I cannot in good conscience say that Spitzer should resign, while Vitter, whose seat would be filled with a Democrat if he quit, should not. I am not a hypocrite when it comes to hypocrisy.

If I weren’t old, I wouldn’t have seen this article:

Bernice Todd’s Choctaw family roots are sunk deep in the soil of Oklahoma, a state whose very name is Choctaw for “red people.” But in the middle of a debilitating battle with cancer, Todd, a 39-year-old who cleans homes at a trailer park and baby-sits for a living, lost her state Medicaid health care coverage because, although she’s a Native American, she could not prove she is a U.S. citizen.

While Todd’s case is rich in irony, she is one of tens of thousands of Americans who are falling victim to a new federal rule—aimed at keeping illegal immigrants off the Medicaid rolls—requiring that recipients prove their citizenship and identity with documents many don’t have.

(snip)

“This rule was the answer to a problem that really doesn’t exist,” says Donna Cohen Ross, an analyst with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, a nonpartisan research organization.

In fact, the year the rule was passed, Mark McClellan, then the administrator for CMS, said that a report by the CMS inspector general did “not find particular problems regarding false allegations of citizenship, nor are we aware of any.” Most states agreed with that assessment.

This would seem pretty typical of the Republic Party. Claiming that it is protecting American citizens, it solves a problem that doesn’t exist, thereby damaging American citizens. It also is able to throw a bone to those amongst its constituency who don’t like brown people by raising, then tilting at the windmill of fraudulent Medicaid enrollments.

(Haven’t they figured out that the last thing a sane illegal immigrant is likely to do is to join a government program, for heaven’s sake?)

It’s sort of like their phony voter fraud campaign. (Election fraud historically has not occurred at the polling place; it’s occurred at the counting place).

Hell, what about the War in Iraq–claiming to protect Americans, the Republic Party has (failed to) solve a problem that didn’t exist, created a whole slew, maybe two or three slews, of problems that didn’t exist before, all the while causing the death, injury, and displacement of hundreds of thousands of persons.

The Republic Party is clearly not fit to govern.

As I have pointed out previously, the collapse of the housing market, which seems to be leading to the collapse of every other market, was not a result of some natural business cycle. (I did hear an economist–I forget who–say recently that the market has two phases: Fear and Greed. Fear is in control now.)

The bursting of the dot com bubble a few years ago might be seen as some type of natural economic phenomenon, in sense the people were buying any stock to do with the Internet, in the assumption that people would do stuff over the Internet, well, simply because they could, regardless of whether it made any sense to do whatever it was on line.

In contrast, the current phenomenon is a direct result of the failure of duly appointed regulators to, well, regulate, thereby allowing Greed to overcome good business sense on the part of just about everyone.

And why did they not regulate? Because NeoCons worship wealth and assume that those with $700 suits, who have someone else to carry their Blackberries for them, are inherently virtuous, and therefore will make moral decisions.

Sadly, it ain’t so.

The headline number in the monthly jobs report from the U.S. Labor Department tells a grim tale – 63,000 jobs lost nationwide in a month, the most in five years.

But the situation is much worse than that.

The number of jobs shed by the private sector – the main driver of the economy – was 101,000, reflecting three straight months of losses in nongovernment jobs.

“That’s how you know we’re in a recession, for God’s sake,” said Eileen Appelbaum of Philadelphia, a labor economist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

Addendum, Later That Same Evening:

FBI.

Dan Froomkin reports:

Bush’s current tally (of vacation days–ed.) represents a little more than a third of his presidency. And that’s not counting the 39 days that Knoller says he spent in whole or in part at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Me. All in all, Knoller says, Bush has made 134 separate visits to Camp David, 70 to Crawford and 10 to Kennebunkport in a little over seven years.

Damn, think of how much damage he would have done if he’d stayed on the job the whole time.

Sheesh!

Too long. They should have stopped with the first two words.

What Duncan likes to refer to as the Big Shitpile has gone to graduate school and earned a Ph. D. (Pile It Higher and Deeper), as shown by a bunch of stories in the local rag:

One:

In the latest signs of the U.S. economy’s weakness, reports yesterday showed sharp declines in housing prices but higher costs for almost everything else.

And there was a third dose of bad news, prompted mostly by the slump in housing and rising inflation: Consumer confidence fell to the lowest point since just before the Iraq war began.

Yesterday’s reports raised the threat of a return of “stagflation,” the economic curse of the 1970s, in which economic growth stagnates at the same time that inflation continues racing ahead.

Two:

The United States is on the brink of experiencing a toxic economic mix not seen in three decades: Prices are speeding upward at the fastest pace in a quarter-century even though the economy is losing steam.

Economists call the disease “stagflation,” and they are worried it might be coming back.

Already, paychecks are not stretching as far as they did just a year ago. Jobs are harder to find, threatening to set off a vicious cycle that could make things even worse.

The economy nearly stalled in the final three months of last year and probably is barely growing or even shrinking now. That is the “stagnation” part of the ailment.

Typically, that slowdown would keep prices in check – the second part of the diagnosis. Instead, prices are climbing higher.

Once the twin evils of stagflation take hold, it can be hard to break the grip. Consumers, stung by rising prices and shriveling wages, cut their spending. Businesses, also socked by rising costs and declining demand from customers, clamp down on their hiring and capital investment.

That would be a nightmare scenario for Wall Street investors, businesses, politicians, and most everyone else. They are already looking to the Federal Reserve for help, but the Fed’s job is complicated by the dual nature of the problem.

Three (not that I can get too worked up over the misfortunes of Toll Brothers, who are responsible for some of the ugliest houses I’ve ever seen):

Toll Bros. Inc. today reported a first-quarter loss as revenue fell 23 percent from the same period a year earlier, reflecting worsening conditions in most of the Horsham-based builder’s markets around the country.

Total revenues for the three months that ended Jan. 31 were $842.9 million, compared with $1.09 billion a year ago. The first-quarter backlog of unsold homes was 42 percent lower, however, at $2.40 billion, compared with $4.15 billion, the company said.

So, what does original sin have to do with all this? Fraudulent sales techniques, stupid consumer decisions, stupid business decisions–none of them seem particularly original.

It seems to be a verse in the NeoCon Bible that all regulation is bad and that, somehow, Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market will resolve all problems and lead to nirvana. Instead, we are closer to Valhalla.

During the course of the last eight years, the Bushies have hamstrung the EPA, OSHA, the FDA, the SEC and any other agency charged with ensuring that businesses comport themselves with integrity.

And we know the results. Just look at the recents successes of the FDA.

Meat recalls. Spinach recalls. Drug recalls.

I won’t even bother to look up stuff for the other agencies. Just one word: Enron.

As I have mentioned before, one of the traits of wingnut thought seems to be the belief that wealth indicates virture. (And the corollary: that poverty indicates sin. That’s why those in economic need don’t deserve health care.)

There is, of course, a fallacy in this reasoning. Hell, there is a fallacy in the whole NeoCon Weltanschauungen, but that’s another story.

And that fallacy is ignoring original sin, or, more properly, imagining that the wealthy are somehow exempt therefrom and will therefore, in following the dictates of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” act with integrety.

Some do, of course. Warren Buffet and George Soros come to mind.

But others do not.

Society needs to deal with them, to protect the common good and the good of the common.

The instrument society has for dealing with them (and for building roads and for defending the nation and for putting the bad guys behind bars and for doing lots of other things) is called (gasp!) Government.

Government is not some evil thrust upon us from outside, as the Club for Greed would have us believe (I have to say, I agree completely with Mr. Huckabee on the characterization of that organization).

Government is the only instrument we have to protect ourselves, as a citzenry, from those who would defraud and delude us.

Government is a necessity for life in a civilized world.

And those who, in order to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, thwart its legitimate function to promote the general welfare betray the public trust.

Fortunately, they are easy to identify. They call themselves “Movement Conservatives.”

(Warning: I violate one of my rules in this post: The rule of not using more than one rhetorical question in a row.)

I got another one of those stupid RNC “surveys” today.

I’ve mentioned them before. I’ve already answered the questions, sealed it up in the business-reply envelope, and will be sending it off tomorrow. (At least they will have to pay the incoming postage; according to the USPS, it will cost them $1.11 to receive the letter. That’s $1.11 they will not be apply to apply to further subverting the Constitution of the United States of America.)

The questions in the “survey” were in the usual style:

Do you favor the forces of truth, justice, and the American way, or do you favor evil librul Democrats?

Yes

No

No opinion

One of the questions, though, caught my eye.

It was something like

Do you favor Republican plans for a balanced budget as opposed to [blah blah blah]?

I could ask myself only, “What the hell planet are these people living on?”

How the heck can they seriously put a question like that on this “survey”? Have they no consciousness of what they have done to the Federal budget during their failed stewardship of the engine of governance?

Or do they seriously believe that their adherents are only listening to what they say, while ignoring what they do?

Or do they figure that their adherents are just too stupid for words?

Also posted on Kos.

It is indeed totally strange that, somehow, the security of the United States of America depends on protecting corporations who broke the law from liability for their acts.

Corporations that obeyed the existing FISA law in implementing wiretapping and eavesdropping were already protected from liability, because, holy moly, they were obeying a law.

The issue here is protecting those who broke the law.

But, given that the Current Federal Administrator contemns the rule of law, we should not be surprised that he chooses to protect the lawless.