The politics of cynicism

In the breathtaking aftermath of the UK Brexit decision, we learn that the proponents of the departure of the UK from the EU, principally Nigel Farage of the odious UKIP party, and the gadfly Tory Boris Johnson, really didn't expect to win.

They have no plans.

They are backtracking on what they promised (more money for the National Health!  No immigrants!)

The whole campaign was a cynical exercise in lies and mis-statements, intended to inflame the right wing of the party and gain them power.  They didn't expect to actually have to DO anything, like drag the UK out of the EU (and potentially shatter the UK).  Indeed, Johnson as a journalist has a long record of telling lies.  (Does that remind you of anyone?)

The media treated pronouncements on both side as equally sober, because the UK media like the US  is not about journalism, but about false equivalence that makes a horse race.  (Rupert Murdoch has much to answer for).

And now that the referendum has passed, the truth is revealed (though it was known all the time).  And Boris Johnson's plans to be PM are over.

Similarly, the far right in this country has cynically manipulated the electorate to believe that Obama is a crazed commie liberal Muslim and we are going to hell in a handbasket because of environmentalists and homosexuals.  They have merrily blown up any concept of sober governance and compromise purely for power and leverage.

So much for the best of the country and the governed.  It's all a game, scoring points.

The Conservative Establishment in the UK tried to call the right wing's bluff by calling for a Brexit referendum, and now they are careening into economic unknown.   The Prime Minister has resigned and who knows what is next.

The Republican Establishment in the US thought the could control their right wing, but lo and behold, DJ Trump is now their candidate, on an explicitly racist platform.  Now, as they move into the general election, the Elites are trying to figure out how they can manage this disaster.  And the mediatainment industry loves it.

In neither case is anyone actually interested in the well-being of the country.

The peasants are revolting and the big cats are still trying to make it to their advantage. It is sobering and not a little frightening.

The Immigration Debate, the Executive Order, and the Other

Charles Blow in the NY Times:

Don’t let yourself get lost in the weeds. Don’t allow yourself to believe that opposition to President Obama’s executive actions on immigration is only about that issue, the president’s tactics, or his lack of obsequiousness to his detractors. 

This hostility and animosity toward this president is, in fact, larger than this president. This is about systems of power and the power of symbols. Particularly, it is about preserving traditional power and destroying emerging symbols that threaten that power.

....

This president is simply the embodiment of the threat, as far as his detractors are concerned, whether they are willing or able to articulate it as such. There is no denying the insinuations in such language: a fear of subjugation by people like this president, an “other” person, predisposed to lawlessness. ....

From this worldview, liberalism isn’t simply an alternate political sensibility, but a rot, an irreparable ruination, a violation of the laws of the land as the founding fathers (most of whom owned slaves at some point) envisioned, but also of the laws of nature, which they see as being directed by God. There are so many examples of this: opposition to L.G.B.T. rights, to the science undergirding climate change and efforts to arrest that change, and to allowing women a full range of reproductive options. 

Make no mistake: This debate is not just about this president, this executive order or immigration. This is about the fear that makes the face flush when people stare into a future in which traditional power — their power — is eroded, and about their desperate, by-any-means determination to deny that future.

No good news in politics

The Republicans took over the Senate far more easily than polls suggested they would. I do blame the Democrats for running away from the record and from the President, and I blame the President, for being too cool and distant.

The idea that this was a wave of some sort is clearly not true;  this was a typical realignment of the Congress in a mid-term election.  It is also clearly not true that the Republicans have repudiated the tea-partiers and put the adults back in charge;  as Charles Pierce writes,

Let us dispense with some conventional wisdom before it petrifies. First of all, the president's basic unpopularity was unquestionably a factor, but not anywhere near as much of a factor as was the reluctance of the Democratic party -- from the president on down -- to embrace the actual successes that the administration has achieved. The economy is, in fact, improving. It is the responsibility of the president and his party that we have the paradoxical polling that indicates that the elements of the Affordable Care Act are popular, while "Obamacare" is not.....The senatorial candidates who lost were senators who ran away from the administration.... 

Second, it was a great night for voter-suppression, which has been central to the Republican response to the fact that the president has been elected twice....It's going to take days to sort out the overall effect of these laws on the general electorate, even if anyone cares to do so, which I've come to doubt, because the Supreme Court created a new normal when John Roberts gutted the Voting Rights Act and declared the day of jubilee, and the people in the country who are not those inconvenienced by these laws, and who are not those against whose franchise these laws were directly aimed, seem perfectly content with this situation. 

Last, and I hate to break this to Tom Brokaw, and to Kasie Hunt, who talked about how the Republicans know they have to "govern," but this election couldn't have been less of a repudiation of the Tea Party. As the cable shows signed off last night, it was dawning even on the most conventional pundits that the Republicans had not elected an escadrille of Republican archangels to descend upon Capitol Hill. It was more like a murder of angry crows. .....Several of these people -- most notably, Sasse and Ernst -- won Republican primaries specifically as Tea Partiers, defeating establishment candidates. The Republicans did not defeat the Tea Party. The Tea Party's ideas animated what happened on Tuesday night. What the Republicans managed to do was to teach the Tea Party to wear shoes, mind its language, and use the proper knife while amputating the social safety net. They did nothing except send the Tea Party to finishing school.

The really depressing thing is that it's not clear how any of this will change in 2016.  And it is also clear that the Dems seem out of ideas, unable to compelling speak a compelling vision.  And Hilary sure as heck doesn't have one--because a vision requires a debate and discussion, not a coronation of someone representing the Corporate Wing of the Democratic party.

It's going to be a long few years.

Hot Air

I've had little to say for the last few days, because it all seems same-old same old.  I've been feeling burdened and burned out by work and by politics.

Marriage equality has had a booming month so far, with 32 states now having equal marriage rights.  Appeals are flying but the Supreme Court seems content to stay out of it unless and until there is a conflict between circuits.  Fundamentalists are throwing hissy fits and demanding the right to discriminate against LGBT people on the grounds of religious freedom. To which the answer is, if an adherent of a white-supremicist church (and there are such) demanding the "right" to discriminate against a black person in the civil realm, would we allow it?  How about a refusal to serve a Muslim woman in a head scarf?  But I've gone on about this at length elsewhere and I haven't the energy to do it again.

The Republicans (or the right-wing fanatics who have taken over the Republican party) scarcely even pretend any more to support democracy, but admit that they want to prevent Democratic constituencies from voting.  They  continue providing money and power to the Koch brothers, the fossil fuel industry, the military-industrial complex, and the big banks.  And the climate is continuing its dangerous change. It's hard to conclude anything than that we are screwed.

The Roman Catholic Synod on the family backtracked on making overtures to respect LGBT people, let alone welcome them. The conservatives are smirking at their slap-back of Pope Francis.  And yet, the transparency in the final document and the votes on each paragraph are such that it appears there is a more closely divided church, between conservatives by-the-book happy to lay crosses on other people's shoulders, and progressives of more pastoral instincts.  Polls show a surging majority of young American Catholics support gay rights and marriage equality.  At least arch-conservative Raymond Cardinal Burke, known for his love of garments liturgical, has suffered another demotion.

In the Episcopal Church, there's been the agonizing slow-motion crash at General Theological Seminary in New York.  I don't know much about seminaries, but I know a lot about secular academe, where the faculty have been demoted to a minor managerial role as the institutions become increasingly corporatized.   At GTS, it  bears all the hallmarks of heavy-handed institutional leadership, a hot-house atmosphere with a weakened faculty making dramatic ultimatums, and a board digging in its heels.  One would somehow have hoped that a seminary would do better,  both the faculty and the board.

And the Northern White Rhino species is down to 6 individuals, guaranteeing they will go extinct.

Stupid humans.

Sanctuary

You may have seen the news reports this week of a band of tea-partiers in Murietta, CA, who were outraged that the Border Patrol was sending several buses of immigrant children to be processed at a facility there.  The mere presence of the children is an affront to Real Amuricans.

Not just immigrant children.  Refugee children, who had endured an almost incomprehensible journey away from unimaginably violent states.   Terrified while white racists screamed and shouted at them. USA.  USA.  Sure, that's what we stand for--xenophobia and lack of compassion.  Real Christian values.

Oh, I know the arguments.  They are here illegally.  We can't solve the world's problems.  Freeloaders.  Deport them.  Except.... we are the richest country in the world.  We built it on the backs of hard-working immigrants. Every white American is an immigrant.  We could save these children.

This op/ed in the Dallas News lays it out. 

Exactly 75 years and one month ago the St. Louis, a German trans-Atlantic liner carrying 938 Jewish refugees, was turned away from the United States, forced to return to Europe. U.S. law didn’t allow them sanctuary. 

Today we are preparing to send 45,000 children back to Central American countries controlled by drug cartels that routinely torture, rape and kill children who refuse to work for them. So routinely, so often are children menaced that their families sent them away, alone, across thousands of miles on just the slimmest of hopes that they might be safe. U.S. law doesn’t allow them sanctuary. 

The St. Louis is famous now as a failure of compassion that haunts American history. It is so easy to imagine the despair of those passengers, forced to return to countries that would soon be overrun by the Nazis. It is difficult to imagine an America that would be so cruel and insensible to the terror of others. President Franklin Roosevelt is still held accountable for his failure to respond. 

And now we have President Barack Obama promising to send the children back. We have an America demanding that he do so, and in fact, blaming his administration for not securing the borders more tightly so that those desperate Central American families would have had no hope at all that their children might find sanctuary. 

But, in fact, the border is secured. The children are in custody. They will be turned back. . ...

Our hearts are not touched by these children. We want the law enforced. This is our country. Ours. And we don’t have to share it. Not now. Not 75 years ago. 

We haven’t changed at all. 

Why? It’s simple, really. A matter of us and them. Yes, these are children whom we’ll send back to be raped, maimed and killed. But they aren’t our children. Our children are precious. 

These children. They simply aren’t. Not to us.

Shame, for shame, America.

Episcopal Relief and Development is helping here. 

The cult of ignorance

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." Isaac Asimov

There's a joke that facts have a well-known liberal bias.  That's because so much of conservative politics is so anti-intellectual.  Global warming is a scam, invented by grasping scientists to pad their research accounts.  Women who have abortions will get breast cancer.  Children of gay couples fail to thrive. Medical researchers are hiding cancer cures to make more money with treatment.  There are all false claims that aren't as far from the mainstream as we would like.  The Tea Party in particular, but hte REpublican party overall, is deeply suspicious of intellectuals.

And it's costing us.

The fundamental reason that countries in places like East Asia present such a significant challenge to the U.S. politically and economically is not because they have a lot of people or big militaries, or seem to be willing to grow their economic and political might without concern for issues like damage to the environment (China). The problem is that these countries have core cultural values that are more akin to a cult of intelligence and education than a cult of ignorance and anti-intellectualism. In Japan, for example, teachers are held in high esteem and normally viewed as among the most important members of a community. I have never run across the type of suspicion and even disdain for the work of teachers that occurs in the U.S. Teachers in Japan typically are paid significantly more than their peers in the U.S. The profession of teaching is one that is seen as being of central value in Japanese society and those who choose that profession are well compensated in terms of salary, pension, and respect for their knowledge and their efforts on behalf of children. 

.... in general Japanese value education, value the work of intellectuals, and see a well-educated public with a basic common knowledge in areas of scientific fact, math, history, literature, etc. as being an essential foundation to a successful democracy. 

Americans need to recognize that if the cult of ignorance continues, it will become increasingly difficult to compete politically and economically with countries that highly value intelligence and learning. Nowhere is this more problematic in the U.S. than among a growing number of elected officials who are products of that cult of ignorance and who, thus, are not equipped to compete with their international peers. Why is this a problem of national security? Because a population and its leadership need to have the knowledge and intellectual skills necessary to analyze world affairs in an intelligent and sophisticated way and to elect intelligent, capable representatives. The problem is not really with our educational system; it is with our educational culture. Americans need to remember the words of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote to Charles Yancey on January 6, 1816: "if a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was & never will be."

Be careful what you wish for: the Religious Right and the Nones

God and Caesar in America (my emphasis)

The best evidence indicates that this dramatic generational shift is primarily in reaction to the religious right. Politically moderate and progressive Americans have a general allergy to the mingling of religion and party politics. And millennials are even more sensitive to it, partly because many of them are liberal (especially on the touchstone issue of gay rights) and partly because they have only known a world in which religion and the right are intertwined. To them, "religion" means "Republican," "intolerant," and "homophobic." Since those traits do not represent their views, they do not see themselves -- or wish to be seen by their peers -- as religious.

Our data support this theory. By tracking individuals for five years, between 2006 and 2011, we found that Democrats and progressives were much more likely to become nones than were Republicans. The religious defections were concentrated specifically among those Americans who reported the greatest discomfort with religion-infused politics, regardless of their own partisan loyalties. In effect, Americans (especially young Americans) who might otherwise attend religious services are saying, "Well, if religion is just about conservative politics, then I'm outta here."

These data point to a rich irony about the emergence of the religious right. Its founders intended to bolster religion's place in the public square. In a sense, they have succeeded. Yet at the same time, in a classic demonstration of the danger of unintended consequences, the movement has pushed a growing share of the population to opt out of religion altogether.

On the Christian Right's opposition to healthcare

"Evangelical" does not mean the same thing in other parts of the world that it means in the US.  Here, Evanglicals are entwined deeply with the right wing of the Republican party.  This leads them to behave in ways that their fellow Evanglicals abroad simply cannot fathom.  Like oppose healthcare for the poor.  English Evangelical NT Wright has scolded the Americans for this, which has led to many electrons going back and forth.

And it's not just NT Wright.

Michael Bird writes on Patheos,

I want to challenge my American evangelicals friends to consider whether your views of healthcare are truly biblical, and to consider whether you have been blinded by a culture of hyper-individualism, economic rationalism, placing faith in market forces. Because to outsiders the anti-Obamacare thing looks like “civil religion,” a syncretistic concoction of Christian teaching, Republican partisanship, capitalistic-worship, and  social darwinianism with its mantra of the survival of the fittest. Let me add that much quoted phrases like “God helps those who help themselves” and “Don’t tread on me” are not found in Scripture. Do you know what is found in Scripture, “love justice” and “do kindness” (Mic 6:8), “remember the poor” (Gal 2:10), “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise” (Luke 3:11), and words I recently read in 2 Corinthians just yesterday, “At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality, as it is written: ‘The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little’” (2 Cor 8:14-15; Exod 16:18).

Hungry veterans

The gleefully nihilistic House of Representatives, or at least the Tea Party members in the driver's seat,will bang their swords and spout jingoistic support for the military and guns all they like. And of course, they will push back on government aid to the "undeserving poor" who "don't work hard enough", which they couch in the worst sort of mock-Christian justification.

And then there's this:

Republicans will salute America's veterans Monday, while simultaneously trying to deny them benefits. In addition to reducing housing aid, and denying health care to vets, the GOP is also trying to remove thousands of vets from the food stamp program, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

At least 900,000 veterans rely on SNAP. The House Republican version of the farm bill, the five-year piece of legislation that funds nutrition and agriculture provisions, would slash funding for the food stamps program by nearly $40 billion and boot 2.8 million people off the program next year. That includes 170,000 veterans, who would be removed through a provision in the bill that would eliminate food stamps eligibility for non-elderly jobless adults who can't find work or an opening in a job training program.

Because nothing says "thank you for your service" like  making you go hungry.

Will the South succeed (in destroying the Union) ?

From Salon, a provocative suggestion that the South needs to go.

If you imagine there’s anything even remotely new about the current movement to cripple the government, well, bless your heart....

In fact, it’s the same old obstructionist strategy that’s been pursued by traitorous Southerners in government since long before Robert E. Lee’s doomed charge at Gettysburg. It’s part of the same soiled fabric that stretches from John C. Calhoun and South Carolina’s 1832 Ordinance of Nullification—an argument that essentially said that if a state didn’t like a federal law it could simply ignore it—all the way to the Newt Gingrich-led government shutdown and de facto second paralysis brought about by his presidential impeachment campaign of the 1990s. With stops along the way to roll back Reconstruction, stop black kids from entering white schools, dismember the Voting Rights Act, etc., etc.

The south is disproportionately represented in the Suicide Caucus.

In a piece published earlier this month beneath the headline “32 Republicans Who Caused the Government Shutdown,” The Atlantic tallied up the hardliners who have bent the country into going along with their insidious shutdown. Of the 32 it counted...20 come from Southern states. ... That’s why although we were all supposed to act shocked and appalled when a Confederate flag showed up in front of the White House during a Tea Party protest last week, nobody actually was.

And this strategy is truly harming the US on the global stage.

Obama blamed the shutdown for canceling appearances at sessions where global leaders gather to figure out who’s going to play makeweight in world affairs in coming years and who’s going to sit on the sidelines. 

In the international press, the dominant theme that emerged from the APEC meetings was how Obama’s absence amounted to rolling out the red carpet for China and Russia. Taking the unaccustomed role of dominant players at the event, America’s primary global rivals wasted no opportunity to chisel away at American influence, all while giddily sound-biting about the United States’ torrential loss of financial and political authority in the world’s most robust economic region. 

If the anger and narcissism of an influential part of the U.S. government was preventing it from seeing the big picture—no need for the shaky U.S. dollar to continue on as the world’s standard currency when by comparison the Chinese yuan looks Rushmore-esque in its rock-solid reliability—then let’s get on with cutting deals with the superpowers who actually seem both super and powerful. Or at least who have an idea about how to handle their business....

So our influence wanes, along with our infrastructure.  IN the US, we are un-paving roads, slashing research, and denying climate change, trying to run back to 1862, while in other parts of the world, the 21st century is well on its way.

So you might wonder, did the South succeed, when it didn't secede?  There's a lot of anger building at the Tea Party south, the evangelical south, the south that takes more federal dollars than it gives, the south that seems to be dragging us into the past.  Or is that just a cover for our lingering racism, kleptomaniac plutocrats, and greedy wall street junkies?

These people do not live in the same country I do

There's an interesting study out (PDF) that carried out focus groups of different groups of self-identified Republicans and found out they have lots of disagreements. From a summary:

While moderate Republicans want their leaders to seek what they call “middle ground,” they form only one quarter of today’s Republican voters. The most conservative factions in the party — evangelicals and Tea Party adherents — now comprise more than half of Republican partisans. These folks do not worry that Republican leaders’ intransigence has led to this kind of shutdown politics in Washington. Instead, they worry that current Republican leaders are too compromising:

The right wing (Tea Party and Evangeicals) absolutely despise President Obama. The words they most often use for him are "liar" and they are "scared". The study note that no one made overtly racial comments in the focus groups, but nevertheless race is an underlying factor. (Andrew Sullivan has argued that this lashing out as their world is dying)

They have an acute sense that they are white in a country that is becoming increasingly “minority,” and their party is getting whooped by a Democratic Party that uses big government programs that benefit mostly minorities, create dependency and a new electoral majority. Barack Obama and Obamacare is a racial flashpoint for many Evangelical and Tea Party voters.

The study has quotes from individuals. Here's one, describing his home.

It’s a little bubble. So everybody – it’s like a Lake Wobegon. Everybody is above average. Everybody is happy. Everybody is white. Everybody is middle class, whether or not they really are. Everybody looks that way. Everybody goes to the same pool. Everybody goes – there’s one library, one post office. Very homogenous. (Evangelical man, Roanoke)

Their America does not look like mine. I live on the West Coast. In California, whites are no longer in the majority.  The streets are full of people of all colors.  That's not to say race isn't a problem--of course it is. We haven't solved it.  But we aren't hidden from it.   I'm not threatened by hearing the soft murmur of Spanish on the bus, like these people are, or the quick bilingual switches of the Latino/a students.

 It's not surprising, if you think about how segregated the Evangelicals are, that the gays are a particular ignition for them.  Because they don't know any gays and they really hate but even more fear us.

The fact that it is so prominent, that's day to day. Like…that stupid song on 96.1… It's on every five minutes. The “I can't change” song. It's on constantly. It's song promot-ing gay and lesbian rights and all that stuff. But it's so prominent. It's every 10 minutes. (Evangelical woman, Colorado Springs) (presumably she means this )

Overall,

They believe there is a dominant culture that has marginalized them ideologically, linguistically, and culturally. They believe that their views are unacceptable outside of their small circles of like-minded friends and family. They are also very conscious that they are viewed as rednecks by the liberal elite.

But how do you cross the divide when they literally want to wall themselves off, and fear the changes around them?

And the study shows that  Tea Party republicans aren't willing to die on the social issues of the Evangelicals.

Shutdown: On Privilege and Dominionists. Or privileged dominionists.

How is a rump like the suicide caucus able to to wreak all this havoc?  It's because they don't face consequences for what they do. 

They don't face consequences for taking these hardline positions. When you hear members talk candidly about their biggest victory, it wasn’t winning the House in 2010. It was winning the state legislatures in 2010 because they were able to redraw their districts so they had many more conservative voters. The members get heat from the press but they don't get heat from back home.

Because of this, it is not clear that there is an easy out to this.  They are true believers, and John Boehner's main motivation appears to be that he likes the privilege of being Speaker.  (Aside:  I was at an Event last year at a posh SoCal resort -- I was one of the minions sitting in the back by the kitchen -- when all the Big Shots in the front stood up and started glad-handing someone.  It was Boehner, who happened to be at the resort for some other reason and had come in to say "hi".  (He's not very tall, and he is disturbingly tan.  I could almost hear his epithelials whispering "melanoma!  melanoma!")  The Big Shots all fell over themselves trying to shake his hand.  Buncha rich Republicans.)

This is yet another example of the importance of mid-term elections, and another reason to be angry with the young folks and the Democrats who can't be bothered to vote in them.  It's the same thing as happened on Colorado:  two state senators who supported sensible gun measures were recalled this summer because the NRA supporters could be bothered to come out and vote.

Meanwhile, much has been made of freshman TX Senator Ted Cruz, a Princeton graduate and Harvard-educated lawyer, who is gleefully leading the charge over the cliff.  Despite an education in two bastions of liberal higher education, Cruz isn't just conservative, but firmly aligns with the Tea Party wing of the Republicans, and considers Harvard law school to be a haven for communists.  He's also notably arrogant and there are rumors he is behind the scenes manipulating the House. 

Cruz's father is a Cuban immigrant in Texas, and a fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist preacher.  The HuffPo has a detailed examination of Cruz pere's Christian Dominionist views.  Could these have colored his son?

The theological ethos of Rafael Cruz's vision is in Christian dominionism; he talks about preaching a "message of dominion" that all Christians have received an "anointing as kings."....

Cruz shares that two types of people were anointed in the Old Testament, kings and priests: 

Priests were anointed primarily to minister the glory of God. They were anointed to pray for the people, to offer sacrifices, to care for the temple, to be God's representatives before the people... Kings were anointed to take dominion. Kings were anointed to go to war, win the war, and bring the spoils of war to priests so the work of the kingdom of God could be accomplished. The king needed the blessing of the priest in order to be successful in battle... The priest also needed for the king to be successful in battle because the priest needed the spoils of war in order to repair the temple, in order to carry out the ministry that God had entrusted him.

.....The seamless move that Cruz makes without any justification is to say that because kings and priests were anointed in the Old Testament, that means there are two kinds of Christians today: kings and priests. Forget about the body of Christ and all the spiritual gifts identified in 1 Corinthians 12. Forget Jesus' exhortation in Mark 10 not to be like the Gentile princes but to be servants instead of kings. ... 

So to pull all this logic together, God anoints priests to work in the church directly and kings to go out into the marketplace to conquer, plunder, and bring back the spoils to the church. The reason governmental regulation has to disappear from the marketplace is to make it completely available to the plunder of Christian "kings" who will accomplish the "end time transfer of wealth." Then "God's bankers" will usher in the "coming of the messiah." The government is being shut down so that God's bankers can bring Jesus back.

And here's the thing. When you get a lot of people together in a megachurch, you can do some pretty impressive things with your mission projects. You can feed thousands of people and host ESL classes and job training programs and medical clinics. And I imagine that seeing your accomplishments could give you the hubris of thinking we don't need a government at all to make our society run; our church can be the new government.

Be afraid.

The vandals strike

So, the government has come to a halt.  Hundreds of thousands of employees are furloughed.  Offices are closed.

(Via JoeMyGod)

Why?  Because Speaker John Boehner refuses to bring a "clean" bill to fund the government up to a vote, because it won't be supported by a majority of his own caucus.

Over on Facebook, I broke my usual rule and posted something on a politician's FB page, pointing out that the ACA was passed through Congress, signed, and upheld by the courts, and it's time to get over it.  An angry response was that it passed "illegally".

How do you pass a law "illegally"?  These people really are. not. rational.  So far, people know who to blame.

A new Quinnipiac poll finds that American voters oppose Congress shutting down the federal government to block implementation of Obamacare, 72% to 22%. Voters also oppose blocking an increase in the nation's debt ceiling as a way to stop Obamacare, 64% to 27%."

 And Ezra Klein:

1) This is all about stopping a law that increases taxes on rich people and reduces subsidies to private insurers in Medicare in order to help low-income Americans buy health insurance. That's it. That's why the Republican Party might shut down the government and default on the debt. 

2) The "continuing resolution" only funds the government for six weeks. So even if all goes well Monday night we'll be doing this again in November. 

3) Republicans are now discussing a "one-week CR," which would mean we'd be doing this again in seven days -- and we'd be that much closer to the debt ceiling. 

....6) Boehner isn't really in control of his House conference, and he has no idea how to get out of this. 

And this from Charles Pierce:

But there has never been in a single Congress -- or, more precisely, in a single House of the Congress --a more lethal combination of political ambition, political stupidity, and political vainglory than exists in this one, which has arranged to shut down the federal government because it disapproves of a law passed by a previous Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court, a law that does nothing more than extend the possibility of health insurance to the millions of Americans who do not presently have it, a law based on a proposal from a conservative think-tank and taken out on the test track in Massachusetts by a Republican governor who also happens to have been the party's 2012 nominee for president of the United States. That is why the government of the United States is, in large measure, closed this morning.....

What is there to be done? The first and most important thing is to recognize how we came to this pass. Both sides did not do this. Both sides are not to blame. There is no compromise to be had here that will leave the current structure of the government intact.

But don't expect change.

With the vandals tucked away in safe, gerrymandered districts, and their control over state governments probably unshaken by events in Washington, there will be no great wave election that sweeps them out of power. I do not see profound political consequences for enough of them to change the character of a Congress gone delusional. The only real consequences will be felt by the millions of people affected by what this Congress has forced upon the nation, which was the whole point all along.

Congress is being dominated by a rump of nihilistic vandals.  And it's not clear that the clear heads know how to defeat them.

Really?  Does the age of America end like this?

Update:  a fiery response from Senator Elizabeth Warren:  Republican “threats may continue, but they are not working, and they will never work. Because this is democracy, and in a democracy, hostage tactics are the last resort for those who can’t win their fights through elections, can’t win their fights in Congress, can’t win their fights for the presidency, and can’t win their fights in the courts. For this right-wing minority, hostage-taking is all they have left — a last gasp of those who cannot cope with the realities of our democracy.”

The suicide caucus

A minority of Republicans are attempting to pass Mitt Romney's entire platform as a quid pro quo for not driving the country over a cliff in regard to the debt limit. Although Speaker Boehner could probably get the House to pass a sensible debt ceiling measure, he won't do it if he doesn't have a majority of his caucus and has to rely on the Democrats (the so-called Hastart Rule, a purely arbitrary political ideal). Somehow, this wily, experienced politician is being held hostage by the "suicide caucus" of his own party.

Ryan Lizza: 

The ability of eighty members of the House of Representatives to push the Republican Party into a strategic course that is condemned by the party’s top strategists is a historical oddity. ....

These eighty members represent just eighteen per cent of the House and just a third of the two hundred and thirty-three House Republicans. They were elected with fourteen and a half million of the hundred and eighteen million votes cast in House elections last November, or twelve per cent of the total. In all, they represent fifty-eight million constituents. That may sound like a lot, but it’s just eighteen per cent of the population....

...these eighty members represent an America where the population is getting whiter, where there are few major cities, where Obama lost the last election in a landslide, and where the Republican Party is becoming more dominant and more popular. Meanwhile, in national politics, each of these trends is actually reversed.

...In previous eras, ideologically extreme minorities could be controlled by party leadership. What’s new about the current House of Representatives is that party discipline has broken down on the Republican side. On the most important policy questions, ones that most affect the national brand of the party, Boehner has lost his ability to control his caucus, and an ideological faction, aided by outside interest groups, can now set the national agenda.

On empathy and community

There's a neat article from NPR, discussing different research studies that come to the same conclusion:  as people become wealthier, they become less generous.  And part of this is that they become disconnected from community.  They become hoarders of gold, selfish, and individualized.

This is not new.  Indeed, the more wealthy you are, the more likely you are to behave unethically.  And yes, some of those Wall Street tycoons really ARE psychopath

Do you remember during the election when Mitt Romney was nailed for his disdain towards the 47%?  We talked about that here.  And about the disdain of the Tea Folk for the poor.  Once you see people as "them", rather than "us", that's inevitable.

And it is certainly not Christian.  Whose foodstamps would Jesus cut?

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.

The Decline and Fall

Over the last year, it has become apparent to anyone with a brain that our democratic republic is in considerable danger. The lunatic fringe has taken over the Republican party-- a mishmash of Ayn Randism, Christianist social policies, and hyperbole. Unaccountably, working people keep voting for these Republicans -- who represent the moneyed classes, and who actively work to deny the franchise to anyone not white and Republican. With a Congress of millionaires who enrich themselves shamelessly at the public trough, is there any surprise that Corporations are people too?

Now we've learned that the bank bailout was much bigger than we thought. While people lose their homes, bank executives and their stockholders live high on your dollar.

The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret....The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.

Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse

.

Now we see that the Republicans have no objection to raising taxes as long as it's on working people:

Every blessed once in a great while, all artifice is stripped away, rhetoric collapses under the weight of its own absurdity, and we get to see things as they really are. Such will be the case later this week when the Senate tries to vote on extending the payroll-tax holiday. The Republicans will oppose it—that is to say, the Republicans will support a tax increase on working Americans. And why? Because the Democrats want to pay for it with a small surtax on the very top earners. So the choice couldn’t be more direct: which is more important, giving the middle class a tax cut or protecting those who make more than $1 million a year? Republicans are making it clear.

Now we see a suicidal path that sacrifices the basic American economic bargain:

For most of the last century, the basic bargain at the heart of the American economy was that employers paid their workers enough to buy what American employers were selling.

...New data from the Commerce Department shows employee pay is now down to the smallest share of the economy since the government began collecting wage and salary data in 1929.

Meanwhile, corporate profits now constitute the largest share of the economy since 1929.

...Corporations don't need more money. They have so much money right now they don't even know what to do with all of it. They're even buying back their own shares of stock. This is a bonanza for CEOs whose pay is tied to stock prices and it increases the wealth of other shareholders. But it doesn't create a single new job and it doesn't raise the wages of a single employee.

...A basic bargain was once at the heart of the American economy. It recognized that average workers are also consumers and that their paychecks keep the economy going.

We can't have a healthy economy until that bargain is restored.

To keep this unholy alliance going, Republicans are actively trying to suppress Them from voting. You know, Them. The poor, the brown, the students, the young. Those who are "takers". Republican Congressman Paul Ryan makes it explicit:

We're coming close to a tipping point in America where we might have a net majority of takers versus makers in society and that could become very dangerous if it sets in as a permanent condition.

This political view is unsustainable. If you don't have people who can make and buy things, you don't have much economic activity. Eventually, that's bad even for the well-off. But in a party where science-denial and rejection of the reality of climate change are doctrines, you can't expect that much foresight.

Anyone who votes for a Republican is voting for the past: the Gilded Age, or the wild '20s, when the rich got richer and the working class suffered. Our infrastructure is crumbling and some cities can't pave roads or light the streetlamps, but the party on Wall Street is ongoing. It's a vote for selfishness, against community, against social fabric, and it's profoundly unChristian.

Now what are we going to do?

Economic crisis? Blame the poor (updated)

Because my research is funded by the National Institutes of Health, I take a particular interest in the budget process on Capitol Hill. Currently, there is no Federal Budget. We are operating on a "continuing resolution" that keeps the lights on minimally while Congress argues over cutting the budget. Without knowing its budget, NIH cannot make some grant awards, which means we're all sitting on our hands wondering if we'll have to let our staff go. The original House Resolution 1 would have gutted NIH. (Aside: there is significant bang for the buck in NIH grants, including education, employment not just of scientists but of support staff, and of course new knowledge that leads to better health, treatment and cures. See this PDF from FASEB for more.) As we point out routinely, China, Korea, and Signapore are increasing science funding. Only in America are education and research candidates for decimation.

The US has competing interests in needing to spend to create jobs, and reducing the deficit caused by spending. Alas, the tea partiers elected in the midterm cycle have no interest in jobs. They really have no interest in the deficit, either. What they want to gut are programs they don't like, including health care, education, and assistance for the poor. By attaching "riders" to the bill to de-fund EPA, Planned Parenthood, and NPR, they reveal themselves to be no different than the conservative social warriors of the past. And they relish the idea of shutting down the government.

For many people, this is background noise. Unless you are a political junkie, you may not have followed the sorry tale of how we have limped along this far in the budget year. You will probably notice if the government shuts down. If you are poor or in need or receive any sort of government assistance, you will notice a lot faster.

Disproportionately, the cuts proposed would affect the least amongst us. Why? Well, RumorMill reports that the Tan Man, House Speaker John Boehner, blames the poor.

"Can't pay your student loan? Face it your parents were lazy and you couldn't afford college. The world needs ditch diggers and you were born into a family of them. Can't pay your mortgage? Your house was too expensive and you couldn't afford it. Your taxes going up too much? That's what you get for electing a democrat president.

Did he really say this? We'll know if the quote comes out in Rolling Stone as it is suggested. However, regardless, it's a little disturbing that it's so easy to imagine that he did.

And regardless, we have the actions of the Republicans attacking the poor. Actions speak louder than words, and these are the goals of the House based on HR.1.

From here.Good Christians, every one, I bet.

Perhaps they need to do more reading.

Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least among you, you did not do for me.' Matthew 25:41-45

If you aren't outraged you aren't paying attention.

Revised

Picture by IT, who recently worked the Hill in favor of NIH funding

What Rule of Law?

The union-bashing Governor of Wisconsin and his Republican minions managed to pass a bill abolishing collective bargaining for public unions.

The State Supreme Court issued a restraining order.

The Republicans ignored it.

Wisconsin Republicans made up a new process because they felt like it: bill passes legislature, bill signed by governor, bill goes around by Secretary of State's office, bill published by some agency called the Legislative Reference Bureau, law is on the books.

The Legislative Reference Bureau itself said it can't publish measures into law and also can't take the place of the Secretary of State's office, but the Wisconsin GOP doesn't care. They're making up the rule of law as they go along.

Not surprisingly, the Judge issued another restraining order. Still, the GOP doesn't care. The rules only apply to the other people.

Almost immediately after Judge Sumi issued this new order, some Republicans said that as far as they're concerned, the union-busting measure is still the law, court order or no court order.....

The Walker administration's Department of Justice said, "Whether the Department of Administration or other state officers choose to comply with any direction issued by Judge Sumi is up to them."

Look, this is a Constitutional crisis. You don't get to ignore the court, regardless of your power-mad ideology. As the Judge said,

"Now that I've made my earlier order as clear as it possibly can be, I must state that those who act in open and willful defiance of the court order place not only themselves at peril of sanctions, they also jeopardize the financial and the governmental stability of the state of Wisconsin."

Still snorting at the scent of fascism?

How dare you criticize The Party

A faculty member at Wisconsin who followed the money trail of the labor-bashing Governor and ALEC, and wrote an op-ed for the NY Times about it, apparently riled up the Republicans. They are asking for Freedom of Information access to the professor's email, looking for anything they can use to discredit him.

The warning is clear. If you dare disagree with the Party, they will go after you. Great way to shut down dissent or disagreement, isn't it?

As I said, you may say "pshaw" when I mention fascism, or highlight the attack on representative democracy in Michigan, but there is something very, very dangerous afoot in this country.

Update More on the request from the NY Times