My Other Problem

…with Sarah Palin supporters: my sense is that they support her, but don’t know why.  She plays the “hopey changey” card, but has nothing specific to offer herself.  So she’s left with supporters like these:

Sarah Palin. Again.

Sarah Palin drove me nuts twice this week:

1. Her “how’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya?” commentary at the Frickin’ Teabagger Convention ™ was classic Palin: dismissive, and yet offering no better solution.  Other, that is, than the one written on her hand like a middle-schooler.  I’m not making it up: on the palm of her hand, just like you used to do before you grew up, she had scribbled Energy, Cut Taxes (notably, “Budget” was scribbled out and taxes replaced it), and Lift American Spirit.  Sort of awesome, I think, that she has to remind herself of her own core principles.  This will forevermore be referred to as the Palin Palm Pilot.
   

   The Palin Palm Pilot

2. On her regular Fox program, she was asked what she thought of Obama’s chances for re-election.  Channeling Pat Buchanan, she worried that Obama might “play the war card” with Iran.  This just infuriates me.  Only neocons can think of the invasion of Iran, which is a sovereign nation that: (a) has not been shown to harbor terrorism; (b) has not threatened the United States; and (c) has (despite its bellicose rhetoric) never started a war in all its history, as a political card to be played.

I cannot tell you how frightened I would be if in 2012 we elected the Sarah Palin, who would then be the first U.S. president that I guarantee is nowhere near as smart as anyone in my family.

Remember When We Talked About Strawmen?

Remember how I said that we should watch out for people who invent false dichotomies, us vs. them scenarios that don’t even exist?

Then I ran across this from a Facebook friend.  As their Facebook status, they had posted:

“ATTENTION PLEASE: Posting the color of your bra made the news but will this? It’s time to show the world that more of us SUPPORT our Troops than not. If you support our Troops then please post this on your status and leave it there for one hour. And if you don’t stand behind our Troops, then please feel free to STAND IN FRONT OF THEM”

Serious question: Who doesn’t support our troops?  Who?

We’ll admit that there is such a thing in this country as a genuine enemy.  Sure.  But among normal folks:  This suggests that there are people out there, not who do not support the WAR, but rather who wish harm upon our TROOPS.  And worse than that: the suggestion is that there are LOTS of them.  That we need to establish, in fact, that a majority of our citizens don’t wish harm upon young people put in a tough spot.  As if the answer to the question, “Do you support our troops?” is not obvious at all.

Because all of us who would rather have seen us not go to Iraq, and who would like now to bring troops home (but who believe that as long as we’re there we should provide the troops with everything they need to succeed and, moreover, to stay alive), are not supporting them, don’cha know.  (I think I just described every single Democrat I know.)

Bet I could find a whole lot of troops who’d disagree with him about that…

If the Federal Government Were a Business

Washington would be hilarious to watch if it weren’t such a serious matter.  The White House and Congress act as though it is well nigh impossible to fix what ails us, at least in terms of the federal budget.

But it’s not.

Look, I’m a businessman.  What I do for a living is turn around technology businesses.  I come in to a company that’s ailing, I make some changes to fix it, and then we’re on track.  It looks from the outside sometimes like magic!

It’s not magic, though.  It’s just that I’m not afraid to do what everyone knew we had to do, but just couldn’t get themselves to do.  Slash that department that isn’t doing anything?  No problem.  Fire that sales guy who doesn’t sell very much?  Done.  Invest more in marketing, to make selling our product easier?  I can do that.  Take the big risk that we virtually know will work, but it’s scary?  I’m your guy.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a turnaround guy in the government right now?

It’s not hard at all to see how we got here, and what the sacred cows are.  We got here for reasons that are much simpler than you have been led to believe:

• Probably because President Clinton ran a surplus, the Bush administration and Congress passed a series of tax cuts.  This was a perfectly reasonable idea, but then when we began to run a deficit again, they continued to cut taxes.  This is a truly unfortunate current theme in the GOP: tax cuts solve everything, and you don’t have to cut spending in conjunction with your revenue cuts.  It’s the budget made of rainbows and unicorn glitter!
• President Obama recently pointed out a simple truth that people have not gotten their heads around: when Congress passed the prescription drug program a few years ago, they managed to tie the fastest-growing segment of the population (the elderly) to the fastest-rising cost structure in America (prescription drugs).  I’ve tried to think of an analogy, and failed.  And I think I’ve failed because it’s such an incredibly stupid thing to do, that no one ever does it.
• With the exception of a portion of the Vietnam War, never before in American history have we engaged in an outright war without raising taxes to pay for that war. So nice, we did it twice.
• The economy fell apart, largely because we rolled back protections that had been in place since the Great Depression — the protections that were put in place in order to prevent Great Depressions, don’cha know.  Grrrr…  And this hurt the revenue (tax) side of the equation, as people made less and therefore paid less in taxes to the government.

You don’t have to be a brilliant economist to predict catastrophe from the actions above — all you need, I think, is to be able to add and subtract.  How big a problem did this create?  Try this on for size: for all of the grousing about the size of the stimulus package and Obama’s profligate spending, decisions attributable to Barack Obama account for a mere 10% of the deficit.  The rest comes primarily from the brilliant moves above.

What’s most interesting, I think, about the whole pass-new-programs-and-start-wars-without-paying-for-them attitude that seems to permeate Washington these days, is this: it hides from the American people (at least for a while) the consequences of the decisions that we’re making.  Let’s take the wars, for example: when we went to Afghanistan, the American people (including me) were solidly behind President Bush.  But how solidly behind him would they have been if he had said, “We’re going to Afghanistan to rout out bin Laden, and we’re going to raise taxes x% to pay for that effort?”

I’m going to guess that we’d have gone ahead and supported him on that.  I know I would have.

But now we go into Iraq.  And President Bush says, “Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.  Here is a bunch of sort of iffy-looking evidence.  I want to go get him, too, and I’m going to raise taxes another y% to pay for that.”

Know what I think?  I think a whole bunch of us would have said, “Hold on there, cap’n.  Wait just a second here.  Can I see those pictures of “aluminum tubes” again?”

And that would have been a very good thing.  And it would have been, you know, American.  Democratic and all that.

I think it’s the same thing with healthcare.  You want to know why there is a whole segment of America that isn’t interested in controlling healthcare costs?  Because they’re not paying for it, that’s why.  You know who is?  Folks like me.  My business will pay almost 22% more for healthcare coverage for my employees than we paid last year.  22%!!  IN ONE YEAR!!  Believe me, if you were paying for all of this out of your own pocket, you’d be screaming bloody murder and begging your congressman to fix it.  But instead we pass a huge prescription drug bill and shield you from even knowing that costs are rising as fast as they are.  We have a healthcare bill in congress right now that is really just more of this dreamland fantasy that we don’t have to control costs.

So, what would I do, if I were CEO of America?

• Get a healthcare bill passed that deals with cost first.
• Cut back on defense spending.  I’ve talked about this before.
• For Social Security: phase in an increase in the retirement age.
• Also for Social Security: cut back on some of the benefits.  (Why, you ask?  Because Social Security and Defense are huge parts of the budget, so small cuts can make a big difference.)
• Take a look at middle-class entitlements, like the mortgage interest deduction.  It’s not standard in most countries, and it doesn’t so much encourage home ownership as it encourages Americans to take on more home.  (Home ownership in the U.S. is actually lower than it is in Canada and the U.K., which don’t have the deduction.)  Other programs would get a similar look.
• Raise taxes.  Despite our whining, we still have lower taxes than most first-world countries.  And — duh — we’re running a gigantic deficit, which is either going to get fixed, or it’s going to affect our credit rating with the rest of the world.

There you go.  That, my friends, is a program that is 100% certain to bring down the deficit, is entirely do-able, would actually raise our quality of life — and will never happen in all the time between now and the point where the sun is a cold, dead speck.

Go figure.

Why Bipartisan Progress is Impossible

All of the Republican trash-talking about President Obama is now costing Congress its opportunity to accomplish anything, really, in a bipartisan way.  Sense and judgment has been officially replaced with nonsense and partisan bickering.  And it’s their own fault, really: because of the GOP talking points (and, maybe even more accurately, their talking heads), they have successfully convinced their base of a whole bunch of outright bulls***.  According to a recent Research 2000 poll:

• 63% of (self-identified) Republicans believe that President Obama is a socialist, and another 16% are “not sure.”  Only 21% say that he isn’t.
• 57% say either that President Obama “wants the terrorists to win,” or are not sure whether he does or doesn’t.  (Wants the terrorists to win!  I am not even making that up!)
• 31% of those polled say that Obama (who, let us point out once again, had a mother who was white) is “a racist who hates white people.”  36% aren’t sure, and only 33% say that he isn’t.
• 36% say that he wasn’t born in the U.S., and another 22% aren’t sure.
• 76% either believe that ACORN stole the last election, or aren’t sure whether they did or didn’t.  (HAHAHAHAHA!  Omigosh!)
• Love this one: 23% say that their state should secede from the union.  Another 19% say maybe.  (Which makes it so awesome when you lecture me on patriotism!)
• And finally: 39% of those polled say that Obama should be impeached.  (Which raises the question: FOR WHAT???)
• Moreover: this poll only included self-identified Republicans, which means it does not include teabagger independents.  So maybe it’s even worse than this.

I hope it goes without saying that every single point above is utter and complete nonsense, and if you believe any of it then it you are an idiot.  You are welcome to disagree with me and with President Obama on a whole bunch of topics.  Really, you are.

What you are not welcome to do, without being considered an irredeemable troglodyte by me, is think that Obama is a Nigerian socialist who hates white people and wants the terrorists to win, and who is only president because of ACORN.  Nope.  Sorry.  Put on the dunce cap.

Soooo… nice job, guys.  You made this bed.  Good luck sleeping in it.

**********************

Couple of other shockers in the poll, just so you know.  (These blew me away):

• When asked whether openly gay men or women should be allowed to teach in public schools (Note: not “get married.”  Not even “serve in the military.”  Just plain old “teach math” or something), only 8% responded “Yes.”  EIGHT MEASLY PERCENT.
• 77% believe that public schools should teach creationism.
• When asked if marriages are equal partnerships, 24% answered “no” or “not sure.”
• 31% believe that contraception should be outlawed.  Which makes sense if you realize that 34% believe that the birth control pill is abortion.

Obama Hits the Nail on the Head About Rhetoric

President Obama’s conversation today with the GOP Caucus was actually some of his best work.  Because (finally!) he called out the Republicans on the nastiness and the disingenuousness of their rhetoric.

In a nutshell, Obama said something like this:  ”Look, you know as well as I do that I’m not some wild-eyed communist seeking to destroy America.  But as long as that’s the way you characterize me to your constituents, you sort of back yourself into a corner as far as any kind of bipartisan anything.  I mean, after you say all the things you’ve said, how do you explain it to your base if you actually agree with me about anything?”

Exactly.

Glenn Beck Compares Obama to Hugo Chavez…

…because Glenn Beck is an idiot.

That’s all there is to say, really.

What, Exactly, Does Founder Inspiration Mean?

A lot of the “teabagger” movement is founded on a single principle, proposed by Cleon Skousen back in the day and by Glenn Beck today, that the Founding Fathers of this nation were “inspired by God.”  Let me throw my hat in the ring and say: I firmly believe this to be true.  My church, the Mormons, believe that the founders were inspired.  Many other churches do, along with millions of Americans of all stripes.

Where I think we get lost (and believe me when I tell you: the teabagger movement is lost) is this: we don’t say what we mean by founder inspiration.  Let me here, then, suggest a few things for everyone, liberal or conservative, teabagger or tree-hugger, to consider:

• To suggest that the Founding Fathers were inspired is not the same thing as saying that they were infallible.  This is made self-evident in a simple fact: many of them were slave-owners, including (notably) George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.  You’d have to be a little…well, “off”… to believe that God wanted humans to enslave their brothers and sisters, which suggests a bit of rust in the infallibility armor of the founders.  This is not, of course, to suggest that they were not amazing men: it is only to suggest that they held opinions that were their own sometimes, and did not in every uttering represent the infallible word of God.
• The inspired genius of the Founding Fathers was in the unprecedented republic they established and in the system they put forth, and not in the specific laws they proposed.  With John Adams in office and many of our Founders still serving in the houses of Congress, those houses enacted (in the face of a potential war with France) the Alien and Sedition Acts.  Adams signed them into law between June 18 and July 14, 1798.  These laws were a direct repudiation of important sections of the constitution (as, indeed, pointed out at the time by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison).  The point is: like us, the Founders of this country could occasionally overstep their bounds, and they were capable of outright nonsense.  While the system of government established in our founding documents is inspired (and inspiring), the Founding Fathers were exceptional, but fallible, men.
• The opinions of the Founding Fathers neither can, nor should, provide us with much in terms of guidance for today’s issues.  What would the founders have done with gay marriage or abortion?  What actions, if any, would they have taken to ward off a possible depression?  How would they have handled a terrorist threat?  The only question among the above on which we really have any clue is the last (as they actually faced something similar in the Barbary Pirates, and chose to go meet them where they were and roust them out).  The others were simply not a feature of their lives, at least not very publicly, and — this is key — all they left us for clues is the Constitution itself.  Our founding document is amazing primarily in its flexibility for solving problems, its ability to bend itself to the people’s will when necessary.

It’s really, really important, I think, to distinguish between men who were inspired (to set up a system of government a certain way, but who were ultimately as flawed as you and I) and prophets (men whose every utterance is a golden nugget to be savored).  The founders were absolutely the former.

Acknowledgment of this will put us in a different, and better position: we are the masters of our own destiny.  We choose what is right for us.  The Constitution is the thing to be reverenced, and not the framers of it.

And here this liberal will acknowledge some agreement with (some, and only some of) the teabaggers: the Constitution, it seems to me, absolutely puts more power in the hands of states than we currently see.  I am absolutely supportive of a stronger states’ rights agenda.

Where we will separate, though, is also a constitutional matter: Folks, folks, folks… we have a duly elected president (I’m speaking to those of you smart enough not to fall for the idiots who claim otherwise), and he has every right to act in his office — just like the last guy.  When the last guy did things I truly hated, I expressed my opinion but never threatened him or questioned his legitimacy (even though there was a much stronger reason to do that!).  I simply worked to win the next election.

Which is what you should do.  Stop crying and bellyaching and find your next candidate, and put him or her up there trying to win fair and square.

No Kidding, I’m Really Asking

I am, of course, distressed at my party’s loss in Massachusetts.  As I noted yesterday: I worry that it portends disaster for the country.

And I have an honest question: Do Democrats lose because they’re unwilling to lie?

I’m totally serious.  Republican candidates and leadership (no, I’m not talking about my neighbors down the street, or other rank-and-file Republicans) are absolutely lying to us on a number of topics, and it’s inarguable at this point that it works.  Let’s list some common talking points that are simply not true, and what is more, I believe that Republican leaders know that they’re not true (how could you not?), and yet state them all day long anyway:

1. The media has a liberal bias.  Nonsense.  I totally buy, to be fair, that Hollywood and the entertainment media has a liberal bias.  Absolutely.  Comedians and faux-news shows like Jon Stewart (especially) and (to a lesser extent) Stephen Colbert?  Yes.  But regular, mainline news outlets?  Nope.  Sorry.  They crucified Bill Clinton just as savagely as they tore apart George Bush.
2. Republicans are fiscal conservatives, and liberals are profligate free-spenders.  The biggest lie around.  I could go into all the stats, but let’s just net it out to this: George Bush inherited a surplus.  ’Nuf said.
3. The war in Iraq was somehow related to terrorism.  Afghanistan?  Yes.  For a while there.  Iraq?  Nope.  As reported in the book “Game Change,” this ridiculousness was apparently believed by Sarah Frickin’ Palin!  I mean, wow, right?
4. To be Republican is to be a patriot; to be a Democrat is to hate America.  Seriously, how did this ever take root with anyone?  When did “I disagree with you on matters of policy,” or even “I disagree with you on how to interpret pieces of the Constitution” become tantamount to treason?  And you want to accuse me of being totalitarian?  Sheesh.
5. There were no terrorist attacks during the Bush administration.  I’m a little ticked off about this one, which was — get this — actually stated recently by Rudolph Giuliani, of all people.  This is really the reason why I’m willing to call these “lies” and not “misstatements.”  Does anyone think that Rudolph Giuliani is confused about who was President when the 9/11 attacks occurred?  Anyone?  Anyone?  (Cue birds chirping.)  Also: Giuliani made this insane statement in response to the Christmas Underwear Bomber attempt.  Which was, aside from the article of clothing in question, almost an exact copy of the “Shoe Bomber” incident.  Think he forgot that, too?  I don’t.  I think he went on television and stated an absolutely untrue thing with full knowledge that he was doing so.
6. Democrats are (variously) socialist, communist, fascist, totalitarian, etc.  See my earlier post on this topic, wherein I posit that the people who drop this accusation actually don’t know what those words mean.  So maybe this is a misstatement, and not an actual lie.  It’s the political version of buzzword bingo: pick a word that connotes “bad,” and apply it.  Voila!
7. All of our energy problems would be solved if those pesky tree-huggers would just let us drill.  Let’s see… where to start?  There’s so much…  Okay.  (a) U.S. oil refineries are operating at full capacity today.  This is in part because oil companies, in the 80s and 90s, began closing refineries.  (The quick-minded will note that drilling oil without having the capacity to refine it is pointless.)  This was not because tree-huggers were forcing closures; it was because we had an oversupply of refining capacity.  Oil companies, for reasons either evil (wanting to drive prices up by limiting supply) or understandable (oversupply = too much cost to bear = close the factory), closed over half of America’s refineries in the past 30 years.  And now, with profits at an all-time high, why build more when you can more easily just blame hippies?  They’re expensive, and they take 13 years, on average, to start paying back.  (I mean the factories, and not the hippies.)  Easier to let Republicans cast aspersions on environmentalists.
8. We’re the ones who’ll keep you safe.  If you listen to nothing else I ever say, listen at least to this: the greatest national security mistake in the history of the republic was the invasion of Iraq.  We stuck a stick in a hornet’s nest and stirred, and now we have enemies everywhere.  Can President Obama keep us safe?  No.  Could President Romney / Huckabee / Palin / whomever?  No.  This, I’m afraid, has now become our generation’s cross to bear.

Et cetera.  There are more, of course, but I’m out of time.  I just wonder how you can beat an opponent who simply doesn’t care if they’re telling the truth or not.