How do we find middle ground?

We are so deeply polarized as a people.  How do we re-establish relationship with those who think it's okay to imprison children, who are afraid of Muslims, and who think that poor people are taking their hard-earned cash.  (It's not clear how illegal migrants can simultaneously be taking all those farm jobs that people want, and sitting around on welfare rolls for which they aren't eligible.)

Let's take same sex marriage as an example.  As the Evangelical leaders fulminate about Chik-fil-A deciding to stop donating to the anti-gay groups, how do we honestly come to a middle ground?

if someone tells me that they do not approve of my marriage to another woman, and/or that they approve of legal discrimination, I experience that as deeply painful, personal, and dehumanizing. I understand that they equally deeply feel that my marriage is wrong and against their own values.  But I'm not telling them that THEY can't marry.  I'm not directly interfering in THEIR lives. 

How do you find a resolution between those viewpoints, beyond acknowledging they both exist? 

There's a difference between using your viewpoint to exclude other people from participation, and choosing to exclude yourself. It's the live and let live doctrine. if you don't like same sex marriage, don't enter into a same sex marriage. But don't impose your attitude on others who disagree.

There really isn't a compromise between the view that gay people shouldn't marry, and that gay peopleshould have full civil rights.

Okay, generally, if someone doesn't want to "participate" in a same sex marriage (vendor),well I don't think I'd want them anyway. But follow it to the extreme expressed in Washington State during the marriage battles a few years back:

""What are rural gays supposed to do if the only gas station or grocery store for miles won't sell them gas and food?" The staffer, who refused to identify himself, reportedly told Castro that if such a scenario were to unfold, "gay people can just grow their own food." [Needless to say, the bill did not pass....and the staffer backtracked.]" 

And in the current climate, hate crimes and threats against the LGBT community are rising.

How do I find a middle ground with a person who thinks I shouldn't exist?

Values, Accountability, and women

The world is all topsy-turvy, with serial sexual harassers who assault young girls elected to high office, while gropers grimly hang on. Politics is a mess and there are no values left in its practitioners. At least the media has been cleaning house, with the latest being NBC news host Matt Lauer.

I do not watch television, so I am only dimly aware of who he is. Apparently, he liked to sleep with women not his wife, and exposed himself to his staff, gave them inappropriate gifts, and tried to have sex with them. And like Charlie Rose before him, he had power and authority and he got away with it. (What is it with talk show hosts and sex?)

But one thing that struck me was that the guy earns $25 MILLION for a combination of fluff interviews and reading the news. One twitter account I saw suggested that $25m is enough to put 5 reporters in each of our statehouses and pay them and give them benefits. I am a fairly well paid professional and there's no way in an entire lifetime of work that I would come anywhere near $25M.

And what does it say about our culture that we pay a sex-mad newsreader $25M while people who do the actual job of journalism, or cancer research, or teaching, struggle to stay in the middle class. (And they won't, if the GOP tax plan passes).

Meanwhile, today there was an article published in the Federalist arguing that it doesn't matter what Moore did, because ABORTION.

Really, it all cycles back to abortion, which is an outcome of female sexuality and that is why it must be controlled.  Because women should be shamed if they are pregnant out of wedlock, because women's bodies must be policed.  Because men feel they have the right to power over women.  Because a woman's job is babies. It's not surprising that ThinkProgress found evidence that Roy Moore co-authored a law course that included arguments against women holding elected office.

 From Salon, a few weeks ago:

And make no mistake: It's patriarchy, not morality, that is the animating force behind the Christian right that has elevated Moore. Evangelicals may talk a big game about chastity, but their overwhelming support for Donald Trump is a reminder that "chastity" is just the cover story for the true agenda, which is bringing women firmly under the control of men. Men's unchaste behavior isn't really considered a problem, even when it's criminal. It's female bodies and female sexuality the Christian right is interested in controlling — and dating young girls in no way conflicts with that goal. If anything, as the above examples show, locking them down young is considered a handy way to achieve these patriarchal objectives.

I salute the women who have come forward against these powerful men, but nothing's going to change.  The Democrats lost a moment when Franken and Conyers refused to resign (Franken's seat in MN would remain safely D), so the GOP can point at them and say "everyone does it".  Alabama evangelicals are even more likely to vote for Moore after these allegations.  The President remains in office, and get prepared to say hello to Senator Moore.  The darkness is upon us.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

---

The Second Coming, W. B. Yeats.

You're not from around here, are you?

Do you live near your hometown?  I grew up in California's greater Bay Area, which is now a tech mecca but in those days wasn't yet.   I left for grad school Back East, and then lived for a while in the UK.  I was lucky that I eventually got a position the same time zone as my parents.  But I live hundreds of miles away from the town I grew up in, in another major metro center full of people like me, who are mostly white and Asian professionals from somewhere else.

I'm not unusual;  Americans are very mobile, particularly those in technical fields.  And this feeds in to our current political state.  Vox reports that this has an effect that is magnified in smaller, less metro communities.

Those who stayed in their hometown tend to be less educated, less wealthy, and less hopeful. 

They tend to be less open to other cultures and less open to immigrants. 

Ultimately, they tend to be more likely to support Donald Trump.

The article drills down into the data, and finds that stayers were typically those who had fewer opportunities.  The high flying, academically inclined kid was encouraged to leave.  The football player who was tracked into trades, not so much.

In a very literal sense, this is a split between people who have seen the broad and eclectic world with their own two eyes and taken advantage of diverse geographies — and those who have not. These experiences, or lack thereof, shape our outlooks, outcomes, and attitudes. 

For some, that's a choice. For others, it's the product of the way we sort people in this country.

Chris Ladd runs with these data to identify another outcome of transience.

Winning in this economy means shedding attachment to place, community, and older notions of rootedness and becoming instead a global consumer. Citizenship is expensive, time-consuming, and frankly boring. People with any prospect of success in this economy can seldom afford to waste time and energy on local politics or local institutions. ...

He warns,

Democracy in the American model cannot survive this kind of transient, consumer-driven engagement. An electorate that knows every move of presidential politics while unable to identify a single city councilman is living in the upside down. A citizenry disengaged from and disinterested in local politics cannot possibly create competent political outcomes at the most distant level.

What are the alternatives?  The pseudo democracies of Singapore and China, ruled by technocrats and corporations, where votes are largely symbolic, but the institutions run the trains on time.

He concludes,

No practical remedy is apparent. You cannot merely goad people into caring about things that lack any relevance to their lives. A transient population cannot be inspired to care about the boring minutia of local government. If people don’t feel a stake, they aren’t going to be competent decision-makers. But, what if your ability to vote in a presidential election was conditional on showing that you voted in the last city or county election?

Read the whole thing.

What would Mother say?

The news is depressing, the country spiraling towards disaster.  I find it difficult to focus on work, obsessively reading the news.  Each day brings a new insult.  A disturbed man kills in the name of ISIS, and in a day there are calls to suspend the rule of law, and one Senator cites a religious war.  A disturbed man kills five times as many, but we are told not to "politicize" his crime.  What's different?

But as we watch the Mueller investigation lurch forward, nd we hear of money laundering and greed, and while the Press Secretary spins and spins, and the lies accumulate even more.

 I don't know about you, but I am a late-boomer generationally, and my parents  believed that everyone should have a fair chance, and that we all were in this together.  They identified as Republicans in those days, because Dad was a small businessman and that's what the GOP was.  They weren't anti-government social conservatives. And their dinner parties featured people from across the political spectrum, even if they were largely socially the same (educated, white, professional class). Dad would give up part of his salary to be sure that the business stayed afloat.  Most significantly, they  raised me to tell the truth, to consider others, to behave with decency, not to take more than my share.

It's this last bit I don't understand.  The demonization of others, the lies, the snark, and the greed, the driving, vile greed.....none of this was in how I was raised.  Were Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Mike Pence, Lindsay Graham, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Paul Manafort raised so differently?  Because they lie with abandon, and their driving force appears to be greed seasoned with white supremacy.

And this is not how I grew up.

John Pavlovitz writes:

My kids are scared right now. They’re not sure the world makes any sense. They’re wondering why it seems as though the bullies and the bad people have the run of the house. They’re feeling like honest, compassionate, loving people are now an endangered species. 

I don’t lie to them. I tell then I see it all and that it frightens me too—but I let them know that I do still believe the story we’ve told them. I still believe that goodness is the best path, regardless of how many take the path or the hazards we face along the way. I still believe that the treasure of the bully and the braggart is a fool’s gold that will not endure and will eventually prove worthless.... 

Most of all I remind them of the undeniable, indescribable goodness I see in them, and let them know that as long as I have breath I’ll walk with them, and that together we’ll keep writing the best story we can and trust that is enough.

May you who wonder if goodness matters—be greatly encouraged that it does.

Voting rights tragedy

Apparently the state of North Carolina is vying with Mississippi and Texas for most regressive and backward in the country.  Think Progress:

Just days after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, North Carolina is moving forward with a host of bills to roll back voting rights. Republican lawmakers are accelerating a new agenda to eliminate early voting, Sunday voting hours, and same-day registration provisions. GOP leaders also vowed to move quickly to pass a controversial voter ID law that would make it much harder for minorities, seniors, students, and low-income voters to cast their ballots.

Yes, because nothing says "Democracy" quite as much as telling Americans they can't vote.  It's no coincidence that this accompanies new intransigence on the right.  Rather than admitting that changing demographics behoove them to enlarge their outreach, they've now decided that the REAL problem is that there are hard-right White Christians for whom the Republicans are not yet conservative enough.

So, according to this idea, not only do Republicans not want blacks or young people voting, they sure as heck don't want the Hispanics getting immigration reform and voting.

No, the problem isn't the minorities:  they aren't wanted (and have to be repressed) so that disaffected whites come home.

They call them the Missing White Voters.  

The new argument sees immigration reform at best as a divisive distraction from the GOP’s real problem of countering “white flight” from the polls. At worst, they view it as an electoral apocalypse, a seventh seal behind which lies an unbroken line of future Democratic presidents....

You can hear the “missing whites” thesis everywhere once you start looking for it. Hannity cited York’s piece in his column opposing the “Gang of Eight” bill. Social conservative leader Phyllis Schlafly recently told a radio host that “the people the Republicans should reach out to are the white votes, the white voters who didn’t vote in the last election and there are millions of them.”
....
[But] even if Republicans boost white turnout, a bunch of the gains will go to running up the score in Southern states they already win or to improving their margin in Northern states they don’t contest. 

This is the “demographic death spiral” Sen. Graham is so worried about. And pro-reform Republicans are growing panicked as the new revisionism on Mitt Romney’s loss takes hold. Karl Rove, whose Crossroads group is spending millions promoting immigration reform, confronted his critics head on in the Wall Street Journal last month in an op-ed titled “More White Votes Won’t Save The GOP.” Graham and fellow immigration co-sponsor John McCain aren’t just warning of a 2016 loss anymore, they’ve taken to publicly guaranteeing one if their immigration bill fails. 

“[If] we don’t pass immigration reform, if we don’t get it off the table in a reasonable, practical way,” Graham said on Meet The Press last month, “it doesn’t matter who you run in 2016.”

Hence, it becomes ever more important to keep the other guy's supporters from voting.

Immigration reform derailed?

We all know by now that the Republican Party has a problem with a demographically varied America.  Their supporters are overwhelmingly older white Christians, and that's not what America looks like.  Following an abysmal performance amongst Hispanics in the election last year,   the issue du jour is immigration reform.

This is an issue on which we have to tip our hat to the Roman Catholic hierarchy.  Many bishops have been outspoken advocates for a sane immigration policy.

Until now.

You see, amongst the estimated 11million who may be affected and supported by immigration reform, there are a small number of trans-national same sex couples.  And we don't want to have THEM included, do we?  Oh, no.

AP reported a few months ago

The immigrant-built American church, known for advocating a broad welcome for migrants and refugees, could end up opposing reform because it would recognize same-sex partners. 

....Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the bishops, would say only that recognition of gay couples in the president's reform proposals "jeopardizes passage of the bill."

So, With no mention of gay couples, many of whom face the choice of living apart or living in exile,  a lobbying effort has begun.

Now, as gay activists lobby for inclusion in what may become the most sweeping immigration reforms in decades, even sympathetic lawmakers fear granting their wish could derail bipartisan momentum coalescing behind the bill.... 

Heterosexual couples can sponsor their foreign-born spouses for green cards with ease, but no such option exists for binational same-sex partners. Advocates estimate as many as 36,000 such couples currently live in the country, with countless more living abroad because one partner cannot obtain a visa.

Jonathan Rauch in today's Daily Beast states the obvious:  this isn't about marriage, it's about animus.

In many years of advocating gay marriage, I’ve often said there were legitimate, non-bigoted reasons to be against it. I tried to distinguish people who opposed changing marriage, per se, from people who opposed helping gays. When I was asked how to tell the difference, I said that if someone opposes domestic-partnership laws, openly gay military service, and partner immigration, you can be pretty sure that this person’s goal is to use the law to hurt gay Americans.

Gay people are now serving openly in the military, but the other two moral yardsticks still apply. Especially immigration. Even from a conservative point of view—in fact, especiallyfrom a conservative point of view—it makes no sense to distort and disrupt gay families by depriving binational couples of the tools they need to care for each other. It makes even less sense to do that while providing aspiring newcomers with the tools they need to work, providing businesses with the tools they need to hire, and providing children who grew up in America with the opportunity to live as Americans. Unless your policy goal is to distort and disrupt gay families.

That's it--they are inspired by a goal to hurt us. Because none of them can point to any actual harm done to anyone else by gay couples marrying.  Not a thing.  (Aside:  it amuses me that they bleat on about "children deserve a mother and a father" as though married gay couples will suddenly rampage through the suburbs to steal the children of straight people, like a rainbow-hued Pied Piper.)

As support for marriage equality continues to grow across the board, and a majority of Americans support it, the rhetoric of those opposed to equality has ratcheted into the hysterical.  Their statements aren't anything to do with marriage.  There's no discussion of civil unions (which, while not acceptable, at least offer a fig leaf towards respect).  It's purely anti-gay, with lies and slander.  And moderate Americans increasingly realize that such language does not describe the gay people they know or the relationships that they witness.  That is why, eventually, the opponents will lose.

As far as immigration reform goes, the Supreme Court may have an effect here.  It is possible that even without specific inclusion of LGBT couples in the current bill, if DOMA clause 3 falls, they may be eligible anyway.

But meanwhile, supporters of immigration reform are very angry against those selfish gays. Because it's all THEIR fault, for being selfish.  

My anger is directed at the gay rights lobby. They are not being asked to abandon their cause or sacrifice their dignity. They are being asked for a bit of patience. Anyone can look at polling on the issue of same sex marriage and conclude that the issue will become a non-issue within a matter of years. There will be front door federal recognition of same sex marriage within my lifetime. I do not doubt it. 

Yes, but the problem is, it might not be in THEIR lifetime.   Why isn't their any blame apportioned to the craven Congressmen who would cave on this issue?  Or the insupportable bias of the Bishops?  Why is it always the fault of the gays, who are "too impatient"?  Some people are always so ready to put a cross on someone else's back.

It's always useful to remember this:

Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

That would be Martin Luther King.

How the sequester contributes to the decline of American Christianity

The sequester is a failure of ethics, from people who claim precisely the opposite. From the Washington Post op/ed:

Imagine you are taking a Christian ethics class, and as your professor I give you this multiple-choice question on a quiz: ‘Which is more ethical: A) turn away cancer patients from needed chemotherapy treatment, or B) decrease airport delays for the flying public?’.... 

Now, Congress has seen fit to repeal just part of the sequester, the part that affects them, long lines at airports, and their wealthier constituents who fly a lot. But they chose to leave unaddressed the truly morally repugnant results of the sequester such as denying chemotherapy to Medicare patients at some cancer clinics.
....
Repealing the small part of sequestration that affected Congress itself and the donor class, while letting cancer patients go without chemotherapy, seniors go without meals on wheels, pregnant mothers go without nutritional assistance, and children get kicked out of Head Start programs, is a new low in our debased public morality.

Let's remember that the stallwart supporters of the sequester are card-carrying "Christians". And yet, some wonder what the fastest growing religious group is "nones".  My heavens, it's a wonder people aren't running screaming away from what they see as American Christianity.

Derek Penwall:

It strikes me that much of what drives this unenthusiastic response to religion, at least in the case of Christianity, centers on the apparent (at least to observers) unwillingness of Christians to live like Jesus. The "Nones" have heard endlessly about Christianity and how everybody would be better off if the world would just believe the stuff Christians believe...

So, here's the thing: Christians can't just believe stuff. People want an answer to the question: "So what?" They want to know what turns on these much-discussed beliefs, what difference these beliefs make in our lives. Do they help us care for the poor, feed the hungry, clothe the naked or welcome the outcast? Or do these beliefs merely represent a golden barrier that offer protection against blame? 

In short, people who've lost interest in Christianity might just like to see Christians for whom believing "this stuff" is merely the first step to actually living it out.
...
Think about this for a minute, though: What if part of the reason the "Nones" are so underwhelmed by organized religion isn't because they don't find Jesus interesting, but because it appears to them thatChristians don't find him sufficiently interesting enough to take seriously? 

That's what ought to give Christians nightmares.

And the Tea Party asks, when did I see you, Lord?

From ProPublica

As the Main Stream Media turns itself into circles over every detail about Boston, they seem to have ignored an act of, well, corporate terrorism that killed 14 and leveled a substantial part of an entire town:  the tragedy in West, Texas.  From the NY Times:

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress passed a law requiring plants that use or store explosives or high-risk chemicals to file reports with the Homeland Security Department so it can increase security at such facilities. That requirement includes any plant with more than 400 pounds of ammonium nitrate, but a Homeland Security official said that West Fertilizer had not filed such a report, even though it had 1,350 times that amount. The plant is not on the department’s list of 4,000 facilities with high-risk chemicals, and one official said it might have been placed on that list if it had filed a report....

OSHA officials, meanwhile, acknowledged that they had last inspected the plant 28 years ago. Agency officials said the plant did not fall into its priority categories based on prior inspections, a lack of worker complaints and because it was not classified as high risk by the E.P.A.

Paul Orum, a consultant on chemical safety, said a major shortcoming in the system of regulating chemical plants is the reliance on self-reporting. If a company like West Fertilizer fails to file a required report or misreports the risks it faces, it is often hard for agencies, with their budgetary constraints and overstretched staffs, to catch such errors. In its 2011 Risk Management Plan filed with the E.P.A., West Fertilizer did not check the box saying the plant might face a risk of fire or explosion.

But the Tea Party has no problem with this. After all, we don't want to do anything to inhibit the "rights" of a faceless corporation to make as much money as possible--and send it to Congress to grease the wheels.  As pointed out by Robert Reich,

When regressives have wanted to repeal a law, they reduce or eliminate funding to enforce it -- not only OSHA, but the Securities and Exchange Commission (which lacks funding to enforce the new Dodd-Frank law and other securities regulations), and the Affordable Care Act (which lacks funding even to implement it). It's also a regressive means of demonstrating the government's alleged incompetence, since Washington is incapable of doing what it is supposed to do because it lacks the personnel to implement and enforce the law.

The anti-government "regressives", as Reich has dubbed them, also substantially overlap with the Christian right.  They wrap themselves in the flag and carry a cross while blaming the poor for being poor.  Here's an excellent essay on their fundamental hypocrisy

I guess because I'm a philosophical Christian rather than a theological one, I may have a different slant on this, but I find it particularly reprehensible and hypocritical when people who claim to be religious don't simply fail to satisfy one of the basic tenets of their professed belief system but actively denigrate it.

And if I ever become famous enough to merit it, I hereby give cartoonists permission to draw me at the Pearly Gates, with a bunch of these heartless "Christians" approaching, saying to St. Peter, "No, no, wait a minute. I wanna watch this."

Because I want to be there when they say, "When did we see you hungry, Lord, and yet told you it was your own damn fault and gave you a kick in the ass?"

Compassion, charity and empathy with the less fortunate are keys to every major organized religion. Every one. Without exception.

I don't know the Greek or the Aramaic or whatever, but, however it is translated, it comes down to the fact that God gives us ample opportunities to behave with decency, that he puts before us example after example, and that, if you believe all this stuff, he's not going to accept "I didn't see it" as an excuse.

And if it is okay for people to live next to a fertilizer plant, if it is okay for them to work two jobs and still not be able to clothe and feed and house their families, if it is okay for them to be without health care, if it is okay for them to be isolated, malnourished and alone in their old age, then it should also be okay for the middleclass to live that way, and for the wealthy.

But, of course, we never saw it, Lord.

Not our fault.

Not our responsibility.

(H/T co-blogger Ann).

The Sequester kills: a note from the Reservation

Our good friend the Rev Margaret Watson, who serves on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota,  has posted a heart-felt letter to Congress on her blog. 

The "Sequester" cuts have cut to the bone here on the Reservation. ...they have received no monies since the beginning of March. They are coming to my door asking for heating fuel, food, clothes, diapers. Children are at risk. There are no Tribal programs that can assist these folks, they are mostly disabled, elderly with grandchildren in the home, or are desperate for work.... 

I cannot afford to feed all the people who come to my door asking for help. I have emptied my own freezer, my own cupboard in order to help these desperate folks.
....
In the last six months, I have done 40 funerals --six infants, two teen suicides, and many, many folks under the age 40.

And food, shelter and heat are not the only problems here --the Indian Health Services were also part of the Sequester cuts. And the cuts are affecting the Head Start programs.... 

Have you all become so twisted up in your political lives that you have forgotten the people you have been called to serve?

Go, read the whole thing.  Weep for the suffering people, in the heartland of the "greatest country", at the hands of  Congress.  Share this story widely (this should go viral, people). Send it to your Congress members.  And send  prayers and maybe some material help towards  the Cheyenne River Episcopal Mission in South Dakota.

Cheyenne River Episcopal Mission
c/o Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota
500 S. Main Avenue
Sioux Falls, SD 57104-6814

The Sequester Bites (Updated)

I laughed and laughed when the REpublicans complained that cuts to air traffic controllers and flight delays, due to the FAA cuts under the sequester, were "political". Fleet week in NYC has been cancelled. I'm scrambling to try to fund my laboratory. Did they really believe that their draconian cuts would be arranged as to not inconvenience them?

  The Editorial Board in the NY Times:

As it happens, the sequester law is clear in requiring the F.A.A. and most other agencies to cut their programs by an even amount. That law was foisted on the public after Republicans demanded spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling in 2011. Since then, the party has rejected every offer to replace the sequester with a more sensible mix of cuts and revenue increases. Mr. Boehner is so proud of that strategy that he recently congratulated his party for sticking with the sequester and standing up to the president’s demands for tax increases.

But drastic cuts in spending carry a heavy price. Republicans certainly don’t want voters they care about — including business travelers and those who can afford to fly on vacation — to feel it. They continue to claim that the $85 billion in this year’s sequester can be covered by eliminating waste, fraud, consultants, and the inevitable grant to some obscure science or art project. And, of course, to programs for the poor.

You don’t see any Republican hashtags blaming the president for cutting housing vouchers to 140,000 low-income families, which has begun. ...There aren’t any angry tweets about the 70,000 Head Start slots about to be eliminated.... Or about the cuts to Vista, which is hurting the program that performs antipoverty work in many states. Or the 11 percent cut in unemployment benefits for millions of jobless workers.

The voiceless people who are the most affected by these cuts can’t afford high-priced lobbyists to get them an exception to the sequester, the way that the agriculture lobby was able to fend off a furlough to meat inspectors, which might have disrupted beef and poultry operations. And what was cut in order to keep those inspectors on the job? About $25 million from a program to provide free school breakfasts.

This makes me sick.  So yeah, bring it on.  Maybe when there's a plane crash, or a few too many big shots get stuck on the tarmac for 4 hours...maybe THEN there will be some force against the loons in Congress.

Meanwhile, Robert Reich sums it up on Facebook: (my paragraphing)

I'm old enough to remember when there were liberal Republicans who joined with liberal Democrats to do what the nation needed, such as enacting the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, Medicare and Medicaid, and the Environmental Protection Act. 

But the Grand Old Party threw out its liberals and then kicked out its moderates, and is now the party of xenophobes, homophobes, mysogynists, and reactionaries -- who cling to their so-called right to own assault guns but don't give a hoot about the rights of Americans accused of crimes to have lawyers and criminal trials, who are so concerned about fetuses they deny women rights over their own bodies but don't give a damn about babies without adequate nourishment or health care, who refuse equal marriage rights but consider corporations people under the First Amendment, who don't want to close tax loopholes for the very rich but are eager to cut housing vouchers and Head Start for the poor, and who call themselves patriots and wrap themselves in the American flag but don't care enough about the well-being of their fellow Americans to want to finance good schools and adequate heath care for all.

Or as we commented previously, have no compunction about throwing the Constitution out the window when someone mentions the word "Muslim".

With the REpublicans, there is no "there" there.  Michael Tomasky calls them the "immovable party of Nays", and Jonathan Bernstein points out that they are entirely reactionary, and not even pretending to set policy:

Over the last couple of decades, majority parties in the House of Representatives have taken to reserving the very first bill numbers for their party’s agenda. Normally, bills are just numbered in order, when they are introduced: H.R. 637 is usually the bill introduced just after H.R. 636 and just before H.R. 638. But that’s just custom, and at some point a new custom evolved to save H.R. 1 through H.R. 5, and then through H.R. 10, for important party agenda bills. 

Which leads to the embarrassing fact that no one seems to have noticed about this year’s House Republicans. Over 100 days into the current Congress, their agenda is … almost completely empty.

This is no way to govern a country.

Update: GOP And The Sequester: Disingenuous, Naive & Misinformed

It's also amusing because what's happened this week with the FAA has happened before in 1995 and 1996 during the two government shutdowns. Anyone who lived through it will tell you that there was almost instant surprise, shock and anger about the national parks being closed because few realized it would actually happen or believed it when they were warned. 

There are, however, three differences between what's already happened this week and what happened 18 years ago. 

The first is that the White House actually had more discretion in 95-96 than it has today. President Clinton had the authority to exempt critical programs -- like FAA -- from the shutdown. By contract, President Obama has no such power when it comes to the sequester. 

The second is the people who have been affected. In 1995 and 1996 it was campers, hikers and RVers. This week it primarily was salespeople, Wall Streeters and business travelers.
The third is that there was a more or less instant cure for the shutdowns in 95-96 because the problem could be stopped quickly by passing a continuing resolution and reopening the government. This time, the debate will be far harder because the decision has a number of nuances. Are the funds taken from somewhere else to keep the planes flying on time? Should other government services be similarly rescued? Would it be better just to spend more and increase the deficit to restore these services? Will supporters of the other programs that might be cut to pay for FAA et al allow that to happen? 

In the meantime, it's impossible not to see this week's congressional GOP complaints about the sequester either completely disingenuous, incredibly naive or totally uninformed. Of course it's also possible that all three apply at the same time.

On guns and cowardice; the failure of the US Senate

The bipartisan gun control bill, with its minimal constraints and requirement for background checks, fell short in the Senate yesterday. Oh, a majority of senators supported it. But they weren't allowed to vote on it, because of the complex Senate procedures and the filibuster, which allows a minority to control that chamber. Essentially, every vote requires a super-majority now-- a point worth making and remaking, as our dysfunctional government grinds so many of us to pieces.

 This refusal to compromise is thanks to the Republicans, which is why the Senate is impotent and unable to govern. As it happens, several craven Democrats also refused to support the call to end debate. There's enough ignominy to go around.

This, despite the fact that a strong majority of Americans think there should be background checks.  But the NRA thinks that the mentally ill and the criminal should have a right to guns.  (It also thinks that explosives, such as those used in the Boston bombing, should be chemically anonymous.  Because the right to bear arms apparently includes the right to anonymously blow up children and other civilians.)

From Spydersden

 Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who is the minority leader, gloated at the failure. Gloated at the faces of parents and families of gun victims. Laughed at them. (McConnell is the one on the right. Toby Turtle is the one on the left.  I'd rather have the Turtle in the Senate.)

President Obama blasted the lies of the gun-worshippers, who invoke black helicopters and death panels and (gasp!) National Registries!  Even though none of that was in the bill.  And this worship of the 2nd amendment to carry guns, prevent licensing, is a fraud.

For well over two centuries the Supreme Court never decided that the Amendment granted a constitutional right to individuals to bear arms. The widely held notion that such a right existed was a myth fabricated by the NRA for its own self interest and for the corporate profits of gun manufacturers. This fabrication altered the mindset of most Americans to accept fictional Second Amendment rights that permitted the proliferation of all manner and kind of dangerous weapons. We became a gun culture run rampant. The gun manufacturers reaped enormous profits as gun sales soared. In 2011 industry wide gun sales were $4.3 billion.

It's all about profit, you see.  Money, from an industry that is based on killing people.

But the best response is a passionate op/ed in the NY Times from former AZ Representative Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head by a disturbed man who murdered several other people.

SENATORS say they fear the N.R.A. and the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a hail of bullets.... 

.. We know what we’re going to hear: vague platitudes like “tough vote” and “complicated issue.” I was elected six times to represent southern Arizona, in the State Legislature and then in Congress. I know what a complicated issue is; I know what it feels like to take a tough vote. This was neither. These senators made their decision based on political fear and on cold calculations about the money of special interests like the National Rifle Association, which in the last election cycle spent around $25 million on contributions, lobbying and outside spending. 

Speaking is physically difficult for me. But my feelings are clear: I’m furious. I will not rest until we have righted the wrong these senators have done, and until we have changed our laws so we can look parents in the face and say: We are trying to keep your children safe. We cannot allow the status quo — desperately protected by the gun lobby so that they can make more money by spreading fear and misinformation — to go on. 

...They looked at these most benign and practical of solutions, offered by moderates from each party, and then they looked over their shoulder at the powerful, shadowy gun lobby — and brought shame on themselves and our government itself by choosing to do nothing. 

They will try to hide their decision behind grand talk, behind willfully false accounts of what the bill might have done — trust me, I know how politicians talk when they want to distract you — but their decision was based on a misplaced sense of self-interest.... 

This defeat is only the latest chapter of what I’ve always known would be a long, hard haul. Our democracy’s history is littered with names we neither remember nor celebrate — people who stood in the way of progress while protecting the powerful. On Wednesday, a number of senators voted to join that list. 

What has happened to us?

In Davis, CA, university police stepped into a circle of students who were sitting in passive civil disobedience and began pepper spraying them. The police were not threatened, but committing an act of deliberate violence. Some reports have said that as students covered their eyes and mouths with clothing, the police pulled that clothing away and sprayed the chemical directly into their throats.

Look at this photograph, of the calm policeman who walked down the line, spraying each student, and then walked back and continued spraying.  As one would spray bugs in the house.  Utter and total disdain.

  James Fallows:

Watch that first minute and think how we'd react if we saw it coming from some riot-control unit in China, or in Syria. The calm of the officer who walks up and in a leisurely way pepper-sprays unarmed and passive people right in the face? We'd think: this is what happens when authority is unaccountable and has lost any sense of human connection to a subject population. That's what I think here.

At least 50 years ago, they didn't have pepperspray. Then, they used firehoses.

This is America?

Scalzi on 'Obama Speechifying'

Author/blogger John Scalzi does the word-ninja thing on last night's speech by Sen. Obama for the Democratic Nat'l. Convention in Denver Broncos' stadium:

I think probably the most important thing Obama did was remind people of this: “We are better than these last eight years.” Jesus Christ amen to that. What a horrible political era it has been,nor are we out of it, since in November there may still be voters under the impression that the best way to deal with a political party that boosted a malignant cancer of the Constitution into the White House is to reward it with another four years of executive power. John McCain should lose the White House on his own merits, or lack thereof; he’s the lesser of the two candidates this year. But more than that, the Republican Party deserves punishment because of Bush, and exile until it gets its head straight again. The GOP needs to atone, people.

Read the whole thing in Obama Speechifying.

Saying What the Amendment Actually Does

The San Jose Mercury News reports that:

As it now stands, California’s November ballot will introduce Proposition 8 with these words: “Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry.” On Tuesday, proponents of the proposition went to court to change that “inflammatory” language, saying it will unfairly influence voters to reject the measure.

Author and blogger John Scalzi responds with:

Well, you know. When the result of your proposed constitutional amendment is to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry, a right which they currently enjoy, it doesn’t get much more accurate than to describe it doing just that. Personally, I would have labeled it “The Marriage Nullification Amendment,” since that’s precisely what the amendment will do to thousands of entirely legal marriages in California, but I suspect the folks backing this proposition would like that even less.

Watch Scalzi lay the keen & well-written smack down at No Fair! You’re Saying What the Amendment Does!.

Accused Shooter Hated "Liberals, Gays"

From the Knoxville News Sentinel:

The shotgun-wielding suspect in Sunday’s mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was motivated by a hatred of “the liberal movement,” and he planned to shoot until police shot him, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling P. Owen IV said this morning.

Jim D. Adkisson, 58, of Powell wrote a four-page letter in which he stated his “hatred of the liberal movement,” Owen said. “Liberals in general, as well as gays.”

The CNN report is here.

UPDATE: Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity on accused shooter's reading list.

Adkisson targeted the church, Still wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, "because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."

Adkisson told Still that "he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office."

Our own Eileen blogs on this as well.

Church and State

From the Washington Post:

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Obama's Faith-Based Reform By E. J. Dionne Jr. 7/4/08
Barack Obama keeps trying to end the wars over culture and religion, and good for him. The 1960s are so 40 years ago. But Obama's opponents, as well as some of his friends, won't let him do it.......

The outline Obama offered Tuesday suggests that he wants to learn from President Bush's failures in this area, not simply reject an idea because it has Bush's name on it.

And give Obama points for acknowledging how hard it is to find the right balance between avoiding excessive entanglement of government with religion on the one hand and respecting the identity of religious charities on the other. "Some of these questions are difficult," he said in an interview, "and I don't have them all worked out." ......

Bush's effort was plagued by a liberal-conservative battle over hiring discrimination within faith-based programs, particularly on the question of sexual orientation. Obama would keep the religious exemption from federal civil rights laws for congregations but apply them to specific programs sponsored by the congregations that accepted federal money. There is no federal law against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. But there are some local laws, and Obama says that religious groups taking federal funds would have to abide by these......

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How close should church be to state? Can faith-based partnerships with the government ever work, or should there be a bright line between them?

Discuss.