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Inoculated

Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Well, [according to the Beltway pundits](http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-villagers-will-not-be-ignored.html), Obama has himself three scandals. Amazingly enough, one of them, about which the Republicans will take the least umbrage, actually does involve an abuse of power by people for whose actions Obama is responsible. I refer to his Nixon like pursuit of information about members of the press. Charlie Cook [says these scandals are unlikely to hurt Obama much](http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/off-to-the-races/while-republicans-rant-about-benghazi-and-irs-public-mostly-yawns-20130513), and he gives some good reasons, but I'd like to add one more.

This is an example of the Republicans being hoist on their own petard, so to speak. Another way to put it is that they have inoculated either Obama or the electorate (or both), such that the one is unlikely to be tainted by scandal, and the other is unlikely to be impressed by charges of scandal.

Reagan was famously called the “teflon president”, and the complaint had merit. Obama has a teflon coating of his own, a coating generously applied by Republicans. The Republicans have been calling him a socialist gun stealing liberty hating, Kenyan-born Muslim terrorist for the past six years or so. People have learned to ignore stuff that comes from the Darrel Issas of the world, and the folks who do listen are not the folks the Republicans need to impress if they decide to go the full crazy and start impeachment proceedings. What makes them think they can get people to listen to silly charges about Benghazi given their track record of crazy? The press stuff has some merit, though it’s hardly an impeachable offense, given that Congress has fallen over itself giving the President carte blanche to spy on Americans as long as the “t” word is used in the right places.

The Beltway folks think what they think is what we think. They thought that with Clinton too, though there it was more nuanced. With Clinton, they thought that we thought what they thought we thought and could never come to grips with the fact that we didn’t think like that at all, and that we were even more capable than them of looking beyond a blow job. With Obama, they truly think we think what they think. They think they know us. But they don’t. It may be there town, but the rest of the country belongs to us.

There is an opportunity here, if Obama and the Democrats would grab it. People are tired of a do-nothing Congress, half of which is obsessed with getting the President, no matter how flimsy the pretext. They are more interested in jobs than Benghazi. A counter attack might work, but don’t hold your breath.

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A little more on the IRS “scandal”

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

I’m beginning to feel like I’m cheating, as I’ve linked so often to Pam Martens and her excellent blog, Wall Street on Parade. Today she has another excellent piece, exposing the extent to which the Koch Brothers have funded the tea party movement for the sole purpose of influencing elections.

Yesterday, I said this about the IRS actions that have given the Republicans the vapors:

The real scandal, of course is that both parties (but of course, the Republicans more blatantly) have gotten away with abusing the 501©(4) designation, and the IRS has done nothing about it.

So, while I do encourage you to read Ms. Marten’s entire post, I want to draw special attention to the closing paragraph, which proves that great minds really do think alike.

The debate right now should not be the ethics of the IRS investigating Tea Party groups – the debate should be why the U.S. Department of Justice has not brought any criminal prosecutions.

(via Wall Street on Parade: It’s High Time the IRS Investigates the Funding of the Tea Party)

Only the Republicans could get away with turning criminals into victims, and only Democrats would enable them.

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The IRS “scandals”

Monday, May 13, 2013

The scandal de jour revolves around the fact that one office in the IRS, under a Bush appointed commissioner, used terms such as “tea party” and “9/12” to help pick and choose the 501©(4) applications to review. I don’t have much to add to what’s written here at the American Prospect. The real scandal, of course is that both parties (but of course, the Republicans more blatantly) have gotten away with abusing the 501©(4) designation, and the IRS has done nothing about it.

What these folks did might have been illegal, but then, what would our Republican friends be saying if the FBI, for example, failed to look into an organization that called itself the Muslim Brotherhood for the Promotion of Terrorist Activity in the United State? The fact is, the search terms they used were fairly accurate predictors for the type of organizations that abuse the law. Again, the mystery from my perspective is why they bothered, since the IRS has made no attempt to go after organizations like Crossroads.

One interesting aspect to all this is the extent to which the Republicans never learn. Sometimes, they can be more obtuse than Democrats. Karl Rove has hypocritically suggested that Bush would have been impeached had he ever dared do such a thing as Obama didn’t do; when in fact, he did do what Obama didn’t do, and remained, sadly, un-impeached. Obama might not want to go through it, but if I were the head of the DCCC, I might be looking forward to a repeat of 1998, when the Democrats made unexpected gains, helped in part by the disgust engendered in a substantial part of the electorate by what most considered an unjustifiable push toward impeachment. Compared to the “case” against Obama, that against Clinton was incredibly strong. Clinton did, in fact, arguably commit perjury. Obama happened to be president while an agency headed by a Bush appointee, with which he was not supposed to interfere, and with which he apparently did not interfere, engaged in questionable, if understandable, activities. If the Republicans impeach it’s a recipe for electoral disaster, particularly if the Democrats seize the moment and mount a coordinated counter attack. People want jobs, and they want Congress to do something about it. The Democrats may not be able to pass legislation, but they sure as heck can keep shouting about the fact that Republicans are wasting their time on trivia while people are suffering. Truman rode a “do-nothing Congress” to an against the odds victory. Despite the gerrymandering, the Democrats might be able to do the same if they could just get their act and voices together If they must pursue the IRS issue, and it’s worth a few hearings, the Democratic senators should be promising to find out why the people working for George Bush’s appointee did this sort of thing. But, alas, this is probably asking too much. For reasons unfathomable, Democrats are much more comfortable while in a defensive crouch.

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Outrage in Texas

Saturday, May 11, 2013

It would be no surprise to hear that Amendments 1 and 3 through 10, possibly 13 and certainly 14 and 15 were being ignored in Texas, but I was stunned to see that the Lone Star State is trampling on Second Amendment rights, the most absolute rights of them all, with nary a word of protest from Rick Perry or other defenders of criminal rights:

Texas authorities said on Friday that they had opened a criminal investigation into last month’s deadly explosion at a fertilizer plant that killed 14 people and injured some 200 others.

The announcement came hours after a paramedic who responded to the explosion was arrested on a charge of possessing the components of a pipe bomb, though law enforcement officials declined to say whether the charge was related to the blast.

(via New York Times)

The Second Amendment is absolute, permitting of no exceptions. Sure, if the guy actually used a bomb to kill someone, lock him up, but he has an absolute right to possess a bomb, and that’s all he’s been accused of doing. Don’t try to argue that the founders did not have bombs in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment. That’s like arguing that they didn’t have assault weapons in mind, and we know that’s not true. Nor does the argument that they were referring solely to guns wash. The sword was a part of every officer’s kit, and taking a man’s sword was a far greater affront to his honor than taking his musket.

No, “arms” consist of anything that one can use to efficiently kill other people. Why, I’ve been toying with the idea that the whole thing about car registration and licensing is a plot to steal our liberties, because in a pinch, you can use a car to take out multiple government agents at a time. If this paramedic had a well founded fear (and which such fears are not well founded?) that he needed to be able to make a bomb to protect himself from governmental tyranny, where does the government get off telling him he can’t? This puts us on the same slippery slope we avoided by turning down background checks. Who would have thought this threat to our liberties would come from the state of Texas?

Addendum: I used the word “honor” in the post above. This is a word that had great currency at the time of the Founding Fathers, though both the use of the term and the behaviors associated with the concept have fallen out of use. So, for those of my readers that might be puzzled, I’ll attempt a brief explanation, incomplete as it will be due to that brevity, though it has precious little to do with our sacred Second Amendment rights.

As with so many things in our history, this word, and the concept it encompassed, was subject to a North-South dichotomy. Here in the North, for the most part, the word was used to refer to a code of conduct that promoted probity and disinterestedness, particularly in a politician. While he was a Southerner, George Washington may be said to exemplify this view, but let us not forget the irascible John Adams. A man (women didn’t count) who valued his honor would attempt to live in accordance with the view that his personal interests were secondary to the interests of the people, and that telling lies for political gain was unworthy of a gentleman. It is not at all difficult to criticize the moral blindness of some of these men on particular subjects, slavery being among the foremost, but the fact is that they actually did try to live in accordance with this creed, as they understood it.

In the South, the term had a slightly different meaning. A man was not required to actually adhere to any particular standard of conduct, except that he was required to fight a duel when anyone claimed that his conduct did not conform to these principles, whether the criticism was objectively justified or not. It was apparently believed that winning a duel somehow established the justice of one’s cause, though how this opinion hung on in the Age of Reason has never been explained. Andrew Jackson might be considered to exemplify this understanding of the concept. This attitude was not limited to the South, witness Alexander Hamilton’s fate, but the farther north one went, the more foreign this view of the concept became.

This is but a capsule summary of this concept, which figured so much in the self conception of the 18th century man. There are some who argue that our nation at present might benefit somewhat by a reintroduction of the Northern practice, but most observers agree that it is unlikely to happen, for the lesson has been learned that succeeding at the political game, like playing Hamlet’s recorder, is “as easy as lying”.

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Friday Night Music

Friday, May 10, 2013

Breaking some rules here, but this song seemed like the perfect follow up to my previous post about the man who used to be a Senator from this great state.

No concert videos available, so this will have to do. This was one of those songs that I heard on my first transistor (6 transistors!) radio many years ago.

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Hey Joe, Shut up and mind your own stupid business

Friday, May 10, 2013

The Boston Police say that they have no way of knowing if they’d have done anything different than the FBI had it passed along information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

The FBI did not initially share with Boston police the warnings it had received from Russia about one suspect in last month’s marathon bombings, despite the work of four city police representatives on a federal terrorism task force, Boston’s police commissioner told Congress on Thursday.

Yet Commissioner Ed Davis acknowledged that police might not have uncovered or disrupted the plot even if they had fully investigated the family of Tamerlan Tsarnaev based on those warnings. The FBI after a cursory investigation closed its assessment on Tsarnaev, who died in a police shootout after the bombings. Boston police learned about the Russian security service warnings only later.

“That’s very hard to say. We would certainly look at the information, we would certainly talk to the individual,” Davis said. “From the information I’ve received, the FBI did that, and they closed the case out. I can’t say that I would have come to a different conclusion based upon the information that was known at that particular time.”

(via theday.com Mobile Edition)

But Joe Lieberman, he who has not been right about anything for thirty years or more, knows better:

“Why didn’t they involve the local law enforcers who could have stayed on the case and picked up signals from some of the students who interacted with them, from the people in the mosque?” asked former Sen. Joe Lieberman, who also testified. “In this case, aggravatingly, you have two of our great homeland security agencies that didn’t involve before the event the local and state authorities that could have helped us prevent the attack.”

Sure Joe, all those things could have happened, since the Boston cops would have figured they had nothing better to do than to snoop around a guy who up until then had been perfectly harmless because they would have had some sort of sixth sense that he was going to set off a bomb at the marathon. Hell, where was Joe at the time? He was the head of the Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. Senate. Wasn’t he keeping tabs on these things? Why didn’t he introduce legislation to make us a full on police state so this type of thing could never happen. In his case, he would probably have wanted to restrict the full time surveillance to Muslims and real Democrats, but whatever.

Joe, please take a bit of advice from the little girl over an Non Sequitur: Shut up and mind your own stupid business. Let the rest of us rest easy in the knowledge that we are finally rid of you and that your business is no longer our business.

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The Hispanic “Race” and other thoughts

Friday, May 10, 2013

Jim DeMint’s Heritage Foundation is catching flack for publishing the ravings of a white supremacist, though why that should be a surprise, I do not know.

Prominent Republican lawmakers such as Marco Rubio has questioned the accuracy of the $6.3 trillion price tag. Then there are the revelations that the co-author of the study, Jason Richwine, wrote for white nationalist publications which comes after the Washington Post discovered Richwine wrote that whites have superior intelligence to Hispanics in his doctoral dissertation.

Richwine’s dissertation asserts that there are deep-set differentials in intelligence between races. While it’s clear he thinks it is partly due to genetics — “the totality of the evidence suggests a genetic component to group differences in IQ” — he argues the most important thing is that the differences in group IQs are persistent, for whatever reason. He writes, “No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.”

(via FDL News Desk)

Okay, I’m willing to attach the term “racist” to Richwine, and I realize that it’s difficult to define the term “race” in any definitive fashion given that it has no biological foundation, but since the argument that different “races” have different IQs requires at least some coherent way to define the difference between one race and another, I am deeply puzzled by Richwine’s conclusion. Has anyone every actually argued that Hispanics constitute their own race? If so, which race is it? My general impression is that the term is applied generally to people who come, or whose ancestors came, from Spanish speaking countries in the Americas. (Also counting, of course, the folks who were within the present geographical limits of the greatest country on earth when it decided to take some low hanging fruit away from Mexico.) My further impression is that these folks are an amalgam of Native American, Europeans and Africans, with the mixes differing pretty wildly from place to place. So it would be interesting to know how this “scholar” defines the term “Hispanic”. Is there some magic amount of white blood that exempts one from membership in this race, or is the old saw about one drop still operative? For that matter is it only the Hispanics that come here that are dumber, or is there some empirical evidence that the average IQ in South America, Central America or Mexico is lower than here in God’s (who is and always was white, by the way) country? I guess my money would be on the theory that the average Hispanic IQ is inversely proportional to the quantity of African blood in the Hispanic. Old traditions die hard.

But getting back to the whole idea of defining races, if we get to make up new races pretty much at will, is some color variation from the norm (the norm being white, of course) a sine qua non for a group to qualify as a race? Because I’d like to define a new race: Republicans. I have no evidence that their IQs are not lower (though the idea is full of truthiness), but they are definitely unable to employ their brains to engage in rational thought. For that reason they are definitely inferior to those of the Democratic race. In order to preserve our way of life (i.e, the things and social customs I like and the ideologies with which I agree) we should limit their privileges consistent with their inferiorities. Obviously they should not be allowed to vote. Being a softie, I’m all for opening up preserves, where their race can develop along its own lines, and where they can even shoot each other to their heart’s content. Since they couldn’t vote anymore, we could let them watch Fox News as much as they want.

The price tag for allowing them to range freely has been enormous. We have been mired in depression now for 5 years, almost solely because their inability or refusal to engage in rational thought has made it impossible for us to get out of that depression. They’re here, so we can’t build a fence to keep them out, but we can certainly take steps to keep them under control.

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Good News from Hartford

Thursday, May 9, 2013

If you’ve ever wondered why Connecticut’s voting laws are so backward-practically Southern in their resistance to making it easier to vote- wonder no more. For reasons that most likely no one can articulate, our basic voting law is embedded in our Constitution, impervious to change by mere legislative action. It is unconstitutional for the legislature to make it easier to vote absentee, or provide for early voting, etc.

Connecticut’s constitution includes specific language outlining aspects of the state voting process, as well as a series of reasons why a voter may obtain an absentee ballot. It limits absentee ballots to people who will be out-of-state, are disabled, or are unable to go to the polls on Election Day because of their religious beliefs.

The state’s Democratic majority and Secretary of the State Denise Merrill have sought changes to the election process. But in order to amend the constitution, the General Assembly must pass the resolution two years in a row by a simple majority or once by a three-fifths majority to put it on the ballot for voters. Both chambers passed the bill last year and the House already approved the resolution again this year.

“This is about allowing Connecticut voters to cast their ballots in a way that works better with their busy mobile lives, and in turn getting more voters to participate in democracy,” Merrill said after the Senate voted Wednesday. “Some 32 states have enacted some form of early voting or no-excuse absentee ballots and more than 30 million Americans cast their ballots early in the 2012 presidential election.”

(via CT News Junkie)

This is great news for Connecticut voters, and Denise Merrill deserves a tip of the hat for pushing this issue. Naturally, the opposition is mainly from the Republican side of the aisle. Hopefully, it will pass and we can get on to the business of modernizing our voting laws.

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Unseemliness in Boston

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Prior to the Boston Marathon bombings perhaps the most hated person(s) in the history of that fair city (apart from Bucky Dent) were the Redcoats that opened fire during the Boston Massacre. John Adams stepped up and, despite the potential impact on his political career, provided a successful defense. His actions paid personal and historical dividends in the long run, even earning him a chapter in John Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage.

Were he alive today, Kennedy would have no need to contemplate a new chapter for his book; at least not one arising out of the ugly aftermath of the bombing. Tamerlan Tsarnaev denied the humanity of the people he chose to kill. Presumably, he did what he did, to make a point, and his victims were merely collateral damage to which he gave not a second thought. Now, some folks want to return the favor by denying him a burial place. Boston Mayor Tom Menino seems like a nice guy, and from what I understand he has been a decent mayor, but he doesn’t cover himself with glory by kow-towing to these demands. By all means, tramp the earth down after the job is done, but don’t cave to people whose attitude is an outgrowth of bigotry toward immigrants, Muslims, or all of the above. We didn’t have this debate about Timothy McVeigh.

How refreshing it would be to hear a politician come out and appeal to the better angels of our nature, and call on us to be better than our foes, rather than compete with them to see who can be more spiteful and narrow minded.

Bury the man. He was a human being, however loathsome, and we owe him that recognition, not for his own merits, but as an affirmation of our own.

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Dems in Groton City Win a Big One

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Congrats to the Groton City Democrats:

Democratic incumbent Mayor Marian Galbraith secured a second term Monday, defeating Republican challenger James Streeter.

Meanwhile, Republicans gained one seat on the council with the election of two of their candidates.

“I feel great. I’m very honored to have the confidence of the residents of the city,” Galbraith said. “I’m proud to have run a positive campaign and looking forward to working with the new council to move forward with the progress the city deserves.”

Galbraith defeated Streeter, 852-696.

For the City Council, voters elected four Democrats and two Republicans.

(via theday.com Mobile Edition)

The Dems in the City had an uphill climb this year, given the fact that they sold the formerly publicly owned (and money losing) cable utility for almost nothing to a private outfit. Probably the right thing to do under the circumstances, and the present officeholders really had nothing to do with the situation, but politics isn’t always fair. Under the circumstances, a loss of one seat could be considered a moral victory.

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