March, 2010 archive
A Dog Bites When Backed into a Corner, Even When It Backs Itself into the Corner 0
The Booman analyses Republican opposition to health care reform. A nugget:
Calling your own analysts’ plans ‘socialist’ and a ‘monstrosity’ is dishonest. And it strikes me as a real problem that the Republicans have poisoned their own base’s minds about the nature of the health care reforms. They can’t walk this back now and govern responsibly without being seen as sell-outs and commie-appeasers.
A quibble. I’m not sure that any party has a “permanent base.”
Add Another Star to the Stars and Bars 0
One of Attorneys General suing to nullify the health care bill is from the State of Washington.
He didn’t tell the governor before he filed suit. She is not happy.
She is most decidedly not happy.
Via John Cole.
QOTD 0
James Madison foresaw, among other things, the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, and the Glorious and Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq. From the Quotemaster:
Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged against provisions against danger, real or pretended from abroad.
What Tristero Said 0
An excerpt:
Foul epithets? Teabaggers carrying guns to rallies? Members of Congress finding excuses to justify terrorism against government offices? Don’t Democrats get it? That’s what the rightwing fanatics hellbent on wrecking this country were doing when they were being polite. That’s their idea of civility. The gloves have just come off. After all, they got nothing to lose.
Case in point.
Falling ACORN 1
The end of ACORN, slain by a lie.
The rightwing feared and destroyed ACORN because ACORN helped the helpless.
What Makes the Teabags Steep? 0
StevenD proposes an answer. They whole thing is worth a read. A nugget:
House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) received racist faxes Monday in the wake of Sunday’s House vote approving health care reform legislation.
Clyburn, a veteran of the civil rights movement, told Keith Olbermann Monday that faxes sent to his office had racist images including a noose. “If you look at some of the faxes that I got today, racial slurs, nooses on gallows, and I’m telling you, some very vicious language. This stuff is not all that isolated. It’s pretty widespread. I hope it’s not too deep.”
Don Hamson argues in the Philadelphia Inquirer that the Teabaggers are not conservative. That may be true in some linguistic sense, but it’s irrelevant.
Teabaggers think they are conservative. Persons who call themselves conservative have bankrolled them. Other conservatives consider them conservative. Persons who campaign as conservative campaign for their votes.
Persons who want to call themselves “conservative,” but are repulsed by Teabagging, may try to kick the Teabaggers out of the conservative bed, but they can’t.
They birthed the Teabaggers. They nurtured them. They groomed them and lusted after their fealty.
Now, they are stuck with them.
I Get Mail 2
From one of my two or three regular readers in reaction to this (by the way, the emailer is hardly a leftie):
You know, call me slow on the uptake, but this just hit me.
Liberals will call for all members of BushCo to be tried as war criminals, as they should be. But I’ve yet to see anyone call for Bush to receive a bullet between the eyes.
It’s only the conservatives & rednecks who would see Obama be killed. Or see someone spit on. Or someone else called horrible names.
But they claim to represent the majority of Americans. I bet that if the majority of Americans were polled, they would see things differently.
Aside: I don’t think I’ll take that bet. I think the majority of Americans do not consider throwing bricks through office windows and threatening children optimal ways of petitioning one’s elected representatives incongruously assembled.
I have wondered about this myself: the calls for hatred and violence from the right seem frequent; those from the left, so rare that I cannot think of one off the top of my head.
I haven’t addressed it, because, back in my younger days when I was marching in protests, I heard a lot of pretty horrible things come from the mouths of anti-war activists. I wondered whether writing about it would be a pot-kettle-black kind of thing.
These days are different, of course. Back then, to get a platform, you had to get noticed by the press. Now anyone can set up a blog or a social networking account and have a uncensored megaphone. (Getting noticed may be something else altogether.)
As I think of it, though, I don’t recall anyone who was remotely a mainstream opponent of the Viet Namese War who would have even thought of calling for the assassination of a public figure; the protesters wanted less killing, not more. Even the looniest loons, the ones who thought bombing stuff was a means of protesting bombings, tried to bomb buildings when they were empty.
I don’t think anyone shouted “baby killer” (then an anti-war slur, rather than an anti-abortion one) or “You lie” from the floor of Congress back in those days.
The reservoir of hatred on the political right in this country disturbs one.
The Republican Party’s actions not only to appeal to but also to foment the hatred disgusts one.
Irrational Exuberance 0
Reports of the wreckage of the Republican Party, such as this one from Andrew Sullivan, are no doubt premature.
Nevertheless, it is difficult not to take some pleasure in the discomfiture of the Party of Privilege. Dick Polman recalls some history while predicting:
In the comments to that post, Gee1971 reacts with bafflement (I don’t usually read comments because there’s not enough time, but Polman does attract some interesting ones):
Did Something happen last night? I turned off the TV and sat with my most special loved ones enjoying our last moments together as The End approached. I was stunned when I opened my eyes this morning and St. Peter was not standing before me.
S*P*I*E*S 0
The Philadelphia Inquirer has a long story about the history of the Lower Merion School District laptop spying case. The district was able to remotely and secretly turn on the webcams in the Mac laptops they gave to students; the district claims that they used the power solely to track computers reported stolen. Some parents and students question this claim.
When I activate the webcam on my laptop, a light comes on. According to Klaatu’s March 15 podcast, those Macs do not show when the camera is turned on.
One quotation sums up why many feel queasy about the school district’s power:
“If you’re controlling someone’s machine,” he said, “you don’t want them to know what you’re doing.”
I have not yet met a power that someone wasn’t tempted to abuse.
Health Care Bill 0
The Booman summarizes my reaction so I don’t have to:
The post I linked to is the first of several thoughtful analyses of this weekend’s events in Congress. You can start with it, then work your way upblog.
Those folks who thought that President Obama couldn’t or wouldn’t play political hardball might should reconsider.
There’s a Reason It’s Called “the Lost Cause” 2
But the South shall uprise again:
Pardon me. I fear my breakfast will uprise.
Jeffersonians 0
Thomas Jefferson was a good man, even as he was a man of his times, as we are a men and women of our times.
He struggled with the idea of slavery, and he lost the struggle, not being able to deal with its ultimate evil.
But he was moral enough to struggle with it–something many of his (and our) contemporaries refused to do–and to reveal those struggles in writing, even as he was unable rise above his times.
And now Thomas Jefferson no longer exists in Texas.
Blue Commonweath sums it up.
