Do You Think We're Not in the Grip of Nihilists?

In his book, "Collapse, How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," anthropologist Jared Diamond explores how societies past have repeatedly made absolutely rational, short-term choices that carried nihilistic consequences in the longer term. Societies have done things for their short-term benefit knowing full well that they would devastate future generations. Failure is often a choice.

We are one of those societies.

Among the crises we're facing - runaway climate change, overpopulation, rapid exhaustion of the planet's finite resources - is the Mother of them all, Earth's sixth mass extinction.

Now you might think that the prospect of mass extinction, in which complex life forms such as humans and other mammals are directly in the crosshairs, would trigger an appropriate response from our corporate and political leadership. If you did think that, you would be wrong.

Maybe you’ve read King Lear and remember this famous line: “‘Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind.” The words were written more than 400 years ago as a comment on the deadly consequences of greed, delusion and political folly, but they could serve just as well as a Republican party slogan today. They’re a fitting description of the Republican party’s delusional campaign to deny the environmental crises that threaten our planet and our civilization. 

For decades now, Republican politicians and their patrons in the fossil fuel industry have used thinktanks, front groups and public relations operatives to promote faulty science and perpetuate the myth that the climate crisis is a hoax. This campaign of climate deception, which is elegantly documented in books like Merchants of Doubt, has exacted a huge toll on the planet and its people – it has sabotaged domestic and international efforts to combat greenhouse gas pollution and exacerbated a crisis that is acidifying oceans, melting polar ice caps, supercharging storms and making the Earth less hospitable to human and animal life. We have a name for the purveyors of this deceitful campaign: we call them “climate deniers”.

At least in the US the Republicans are open about it. They openly ridicule the prospect of mass extinction in Congress. Ain't gonna happen, that's an end of it, move on. Here in Canada we're more discrete. We prefer not to mention it at all, not after we've just grossly overpaid for a crazy pipeline with an election looming. Best if we just ignore it and hope no one notices.

America is Broken, Probably Beyond Repair

The sad fact that America's Congress is "bought and paid for" is well known. America has long lost any notion of "government of the people, by the people, for the people." It is instead government of the people by a few people acting for the benefit of a select, privileged and small segment of the people.

The corruption that is so rank within the House and Senate is something that the Republicans don't even bother to hide any more. The Republican tax reform law was a consummate act of political corruption. Even stalwart senator Lindsey Graham tweeted last month admitted that the "donor class" now gets what it has so richly paid for.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Thursday became the latest Republican to admit the GOP is trying to ram through massive tax cuts for the rich to satisfy its wealthy donors, telling a journalist that if the party’s tax push fails, “the financial contributions will stop.”

Lindsey Graham says “the financial contributions will stop” if tax reform fails.

— Alan Rappeport (@arappeport) November 9, 2017

David Sirota, reporter with the International Business Times, responded by noting that it is both “laudably honest for Graham to admit this” and “a repulsive glimpse of how politicians see so many public policies as private financial transactions between them and their donors.”

In today's New York Times, Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein lament how the Republicans "broke Congress."

What is astounding, and still largely unappreciated, is the unexpected and rapid nature of the decline in American national politics, and how one-sided its cause. If in 2006 one could cast aspersions on both parties, over the past decade it has become clear that it is the Republican Party — as an institution, as a movement, as a collection of politicians — that has done unique, extensive and possibly irreparable damage to the American political system.

Even today, many people like to imagine that the damage has all been President Trump’s doing — that he took the Republican Party hostage. But the problem goes much deeper.
...

First, beginning in the 1990s, the Republicans strategically demonized Congress and government more broadly and flouted the norms of lawmaking, fueling a significant decline of trust in government that began well before the financial collapse in 2008, though it has sped up since. House Republicans showed their colors when they first blocked passage of the Troubled Asset Relief Plan, despite the urgent pleas of their own president, George W. Bush, and the speaker of the House, John Boehner. The seeds of a (largely phony) populist reaction were planted.

Second, there was the “Obama effect.” When Mr. Bush became president, Democrats worked with him to enact sweeping education reform early on and provided the key votes to pass his top priority, tax cuts. With President Barack Obama, it was different. While many argued that the problem was that Mr. Obama failed to schmooze enough with Republicans in Congress, we saw a deliberate Republican strategy to oppose all of his initiatives and frame his attempts to compromise as weak or inauthentic. The Senate under the majority leader Mitch McConnell weaponized the filibuster to obstruct legislation, block judges and upend the policy process. The Obama effect had an ominous twist, an undercurrent of racism that was itself embodied in the “birther” movement led by Donald Trump.

Third, we have seen the impact of significant changes in the news media, which had a far greater importance on the right than on the left. The development of the modern conservative media echo chamber began with the rise of Rush Limbaugh and talk radio in the late 1980s and ramped up with the birth of Fox News. Matt Drudge, his protégé Andrew Breitbart and Breitbart’s successor Steve Bannon leveraged the power of the internet to espouse their far-right views. And with the advent of social media, we saw the emergence of a radical “alt-right” media ecosystem able to create its own “facts” and build an audience around hostility to the establishment, anti-immigration sentiment and racial resentment. Nothing even close to comparable exists on the left.

Mr. Trump’s election and behavior during his first 10 months in office represent not a break with the past but an extreme acceleration of a process that was long underway in conservative politics. The Republican Party is now rationalizing and enabling Mr. Trump’s autocratic, kleptocratic, dangerous and downright embarrassing behavior in hopes of salvaging key elements of its ideological agenda: cutting taxes for the wealthy (as part of possibly the worst tax bill in American history), hobbling the regulatory regime, gutting core government functions and repealing Obamacare without any reasonable plan to replace it.

This is a far cry from the aspirations of Republican presidential giants like Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, as well as legions of former Republican senators and representatives who identified critical roles for government and worked tirelessly to make them succeed. It’s an agenda bereft of any serious efforts to remedy the problems that trouble vast segments of the American public, including the disaffected voters who flocked to Mr. Trump.

The failure of Republican members of Congress to resist the anti-democratic behavior of President Trump — including holding not a single hearing on his and his team’s kleptocracy — is cringe-worthy. A few Republican senators have spoken up, but occasional words have not been matched by any meaningful deeds. Only conservative intellectuals have acknowledged the bankruptcy of the Republican Party.

What Now? What If the US Senate Scuttles the Iran Nuclear Deal?

All 54 Republicans in the US Senate will vote against ratification of the Iran nuclear pact negotiated between Tehran and the P6 nations.  They'll need 13 Democrats to vote with them and the deal is effectively stillborn.  Democratic senator Chuck Schumer could deliver the Republicans the votes they need.

Israeli prime minister Netanyahu has shamelessly lobbied Congress to reject the deal, arguing it leaves Israel in peril.  No surprise there. But what if Netanyahu gets his way and his US minions sabotage the deal?  James Traub from the Center for International Cooperation says failure at this point could wreck relations between Israel and the Democrats for a generation to come.

Netanyahu threw down the gauntlet with the Obama administration a long time ago; perhaps he thinks he has nothing left to lose. But that’s almost certainly not true. If 13 Democrats heed the Israeli siren song and the nuclear deal collapses, only a fantasist can believe that Iran will come back for a new and harsher deal or that the United Nations and the European Union will hang tough on sanctions. Instead, Iranian centrifuges will start spinning once again, while Pakistani scientists carrying nuclear blueprints will make clandestine visits to Saudi Arabia. Netanyahu will then take the game one step further by calling for airstrikes against Iranian facilities. If he succeeds — which I doubt — Americans will never forgive Israel for its role in a catastrophic decision.

Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that he is perfectly prepared to pay that price. Can Chuck Schumer say the same? I would suggest that his higher obligation would be to protect Israel from its own worst instincts.

Traub believes the relationship between Israel and the Democrats wouldn't survive a veto override.

...if Congress overrides Obama’s veto — thus destroying the signal foreign-policy achievement of his tenure, humiliating the president before the world, and triggering a race for nuclear weapons capacity in Iran and across the Middle East — ...Democrats will blame Netanyahu and Israel. And it won’t just be the American left, which already regards Israel as an occupying power. The fraying relationship between Israel and the Democratic Party will come apart altogether. Pro-Israel Democrats like Hillary Clinton will have to begin calculating how high a price they’re prepared to pay for their continued support.

Consider the geopolitical math. Until recently, critics of the proposed nuclear deal could claim that “our allies in the region” believed that it threatened their security. But last week, the Saudi foreign minister blessed the deal, if rather halfheartedly. The president of the United Arab Emirates and the emir of Kuwait sent congratulatory notes to Iran, though that still falls short of an endorsement. “Our allies” will not continue to lobby against the deal; only Israel will.

From the Mekong to the Rio Grande - Some Things Just Don't Change

During the Vietnam War, America maintained a large and active riverine force to patrol the Mekong and its tributaries to engage Viet Cong elements.  It was a role featured in the movie, Apocalypse Now.  Remember this scene from the movie?

That was then, this is now only today it's the Rio Grande that the Americans are patrolling with machine guns.

Gee that machine gun looks familiar.  Wow, it's the same (only a bit updated). But what about the menacing looking guy with the baseball hat and sunglasses? That's former Texas governor and Republican presidential hopeful, Rick Perry, manning up for what is claimed to be the now obligatory Rio Grande cruise for Republican aspirants.

The Christian States of America?

What if America became a theocracy?  Apparently a survey of Republicans found 57 per cent in favour of making Christianity the official religion of the United States.

Younger Republicans in the 18 – 45 age group were more favorable to the idea, with 63 percent of that cohort affirming that Christianity should be our national faith. Majorities of the older age groups still agreed, but in slightly smaller proportions. Among self-proclaimed Tea Partiers, 58 percent wished to establish Christianity as a state faith; and among those favoring former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee in the Republican primary, 94 percent would support such a measure. Eighty-three percent of Rick Perry fans replied that they would prefer Christianity be made our national religion, along with 62 percent of Rand Paul advocates.

...But aside from the illegality and irrationality of it, naming Christianity the United States’ national faith would do damage to the faith and faithful even if it did somehow shore up national morality. This is because national faiths, for better or worse, tend to morph into nationalism with a faith element, rather than a faith that happens to be practiced by a particular nation.

This is already true of right wing rhetoric wherein Christianity is made to stand in for American conflicts or situations. Earlier this month, for example, President Barack Obama faced censorious outcry after noting that Christians of the past carried out the Crusades; with Republicans like Governor Bobby Jindal accusing the president of going hard on Christianity in lieu of ISIS, it’s clear the Crusades were, in this instance, turned into an analogy of a purely modern conflict, with Obama implied to be on the wrong side. By criticizing Christianity instead of Islam he was understood to take the side of foreigners rather than Americans.

Ironically, the same zealots who pitch this nonsense are also fervent in their supposed support of America's "founding fathers" even though they were decidedly secular and avowed supporters of separation of church and state.  

The GOP War on Working Class America

Freshmen GOP - 2010

Paul Krugman recently questioned the sanity of Congressional Republicans who, he contends, have inflicted such a level of dysfunctionality on the federal government as to leave America ungovernable.

Robert Reich, however, seems method in the madness of the "Party of No."

The real answer, I think, is they and their patrons want unemployment to remain high and job-growth to sputter. Why? Three reasons:

First, high unemployment keeps wages down. Workers who are worried about losing their jobs settle for whatever they can get — which is why hourly earnings keep dropping. The median wage is now 4 percent lower than it was at the start of the recovery. Low wages help boost corporate profits, thereby keeping the regressives’ corporate sponsors happy.

Second, high unemployment fuels the bull market on Wall Street. That’s because the Fed is committed to buying long-term bonds as long as unemployment remains high. This keeps bond yields low and pushes investors into equities — which helps boosts executive pay and Wall Street commissions, thereby keeping regressives’ financial sponsors happy.

Third, high unemployment keeps most Americans economically fearful and financially insecure. This sets them up to believe regressive lies — that their biggest worry should be that “big government” will tax away the little they have and give it to “undeserving” minorities; that they should support low taxes on corporations and wealthy “job creators;” and that new immigrants threaten their jobs. 

What Reich is claiming is that the House and Senate Republicans are waging a covert war on working class Americans, blue and white collar, - the masses - for the direct financial benefit of their richest of the rich patrons - the few.

Does Reich's take sound extreme to you?  Maybe you've got a better explanation for the insanity Krugman describes as a willful effort to render America ungovernable.

There's a coup underway in America, one that will oust democracy and install a fascist corporatism in its place.  Congressional Republicans are the spear carriers of the plotters and, so far at least, they appear to be winning.

For a deeper insight on the coup that has befallen America, read Paul Craig Roberts' "In the Grip of Tyranny."

Chrysler Exec to Trump: "You're Full of SH_T!"

Donald Trump doesn't know how to shut his big, fat, greasy mouth.  

Today Trump tweeted, "Obama is a terrible negotiator.   He bails out Chrysler and now Chrysler wants to send all Jeep manufacturing to China--and will!”

Chrysler vice-president of design and president of the Dodge division, Ralph Gilles, fired back: "You are full of shit!"

Gilles later apologized for his choice of words but added,  "lies are just that, lies."

Who Says Shit Like This? Oh yeah, ...Republicans - Again

"Some Girls Rape Easy"

Wisconsin state representative Roger Rivard says his pappy taught him to be wary of "consensual" sex because "some girls rape easy."

“He told the Journal Sentinel that his father had advised him not to have premarital sex, and he took that seriously.

‘He also told me one thing, “If you do (have premarital sex), just remember, consensual sex can turn into rape in an awful hurry,”‘ Rivard said. ‘Because all of a sudden a young lady gets pregnant and the parents are madder than a wet hen and she’s not going to say, “Oh, yeah, I was part of the program.” All that she has to say or the parents have to say is it was rape because she’s underage. And he just said, “Remember, Roger, if you go down that road, some girls,” he said, “they rape so easy.”

‘What the whole genesis of it was, it was advice to me, telling me, “If you’re going to go down that road, you may have consensual sex that night and then the next morning it may be rape.” So the way he said it was, “Just remember, Roger, some girls, they rape so easy. It may be rape the next morning.”‘

"Legitimate Rape"

Missouri Republican senate candidate Todd Akin is against abortion - under any circumstances - and that includes what he calls "legitimate rape."   According to Akin, victims of legitimate rape have some internal switch that prevents the woman from conceiving.

                 
                   
                   
 
It turns out Akins didn't come to his perverted views all on his own.  He's actually a follower of the radical Christian pastor D. James Kennedy.

Kennedy, who the Anti-Defamation League has termed a “Christian supremacist,” repeatedly railed against legalized abortion, calling it the “American Holocaust” and suggesting that it would lead inevitably to genocide in the United States. But Kennedy’s discussions of rape and abortion in particular betray extraordinarily disturbing views about rape victims: 

Kennedy believed that rape victims who chose abortion are “hysterical.” In “Abortion: Myths and Realities,” Kennedy labels victims of rape who chose unsafe abortions when safer procedures are illegal “hysterical,” saying “We are told by some of the radical feminists that the women will become hysterical, that they will abort themselves with coat hanger.” Abortion rates are, in fact, higher in nations where the procedure is criminalized, and men describing women whose choices they disapprove of as “hysterical” has a storied sexist history.

Kennedy suggests rape victims can be responsible for being raped. In “Life: An Inalienable Right,” Kennedy expresses concern that rape victims who chose to get an abortion are occasionally responsible for their own rape, saying that “Even if they want to say the woman had some part in it—which in most cases they probably don’t—surely the baby did nothing wrong, so the only innocent party is killed and the rapist often goes free.” He doesn’t elaborate on how this might be true, but another Kennedy sermon says “the immodest woman is contributing to the lust of other people” by wearing revealing clothing.

Kennedy thought husbands should determine if their wives can have abortions. Though not specifically addressing rape, Kennedy approvingly cited a Roman prohibition on abortion motivated by the husbands should have control over women’s reproductive choice, saying “That newly created life is as much the husband’s as it is the wife’s. Historically, it is interesting to note that when the Roman Empire did away with laws that allowed abortion, it was done not because of the woman or the harm that abortions were doing to women (and indeed they do vastly more harm than most people are aware of), but because the husband was being defrauded of his progeny.” Interestingly, Akin has worried that criminalizing marital rape provides women “a legal weapon to beat up on the husband.”

This is a nation gone utterly mad.

                 

How Screwed Up Are the Republicans? This Screwed Up

The Center for American Progress has a report on one thing the Republicans will absolutely not accept cutting back - the US military budget.

“Decline is a choice” is the mantra many conservatives are chanting to oppose any cuts to the defense budget as part of a deficit reduction deal. Reducing defense spending, they say, will drastically imperil the security of the United States even though defense spending is higher in real terms than at any time since World War II. But they are fine with cutting investments in infrastructure, education, and science and technology that make us a stronger nation.

Conservative members of Congress have vowed to “draw a line in the sand” against defense budget cuts, while former Bush administration Defense Department comptroller Dov Zakheim would rather the United States go into default than see the defense budget trimmed beyond the president’s proposals. The common conservative belief, summarized by Max Boot, is that “eviscerating” the defense budget will do the same for “the role of the United States in world affairs.”

"Eviscerating" the defence budget?   This is a defence budget funded virtually entirely on money borrowed from foreign lenders.  It is a defence budget that is greater than the total military budgets of every other nation on earth.

The American far right openly links their country's place in the world to its killing power.   They think that maintaining that killing power is the best, possibly only, way to avert their nation's decline.   It apparently hasn't occurred to them that their defence budget has been insanely bloated for a decade now but that hasn't prevented their steady decline one bit.

As Andrew Bacevich and others have chronicled, the 21st Century has been marked by the militarization of American foreign policy, evidenced by the ascendancy of the Pentagon and the decline of the State Department.   This was all in keeping with the delusional vision of The Project for the New American Century, which formulated the Magna Carta of Neo-Conservatism.   Yet America's "muscular foreign policy" (a term regrettably parroted by Harper and Ignatieff) was tried out and proven a failure in both Iraq and Afghanistan.   The world's sole superpower with its unrivaled military machine was brought low by primitive villagers armed with Korean-war vintage assault rifles and rocket launchers.

The trillions expended on America's military ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have purchased miserable failures, the prospect of perpetual blowback and other undesired consequences.   As if there was any shortage of proof for this, an article from today's Guardian reveals how the most influential leader in Iraq today is an Iranian general, Qassem Suleimani.   America's greatest enemy in the region has been the greatest beneficiary of America's military and political stupidity.

Unfortunately, facts are no longer relevant to today's Republicans for whom government itself has become "faith based."  Theirs is a dogma of beliefs fiercely upheld regardless of reality.   After three decades of repeated and utter failure, they still maintain that tax cuts for the rich stimulate their economy, are a vital key to America's wellbeing.  They believe that public healthcare is a fanciful, totalitarian notion.   They believe that the very engorged and out of control military/industrial machine that saps their strength actually makes them stronger, safeguards their place in the world, forestalls their decline.  They believe the mountain of scientific research and analysis on anthropogenic global warming is a hoax.

It's more than fair to say that today's Republicans exist in an alternate universe, one entirely independent of logic or reason.  Yet theirs is the hand that insists on steering their Thunderbird to the cliff, just like Thelma & Louise.

Republicans Dissolve Global Warming Committee

The Congressional Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming is no more. The Republican House majority strangled it to death within hours of wresting control from the Democrats.

The Guardian reports the committee members didn't go away quietly:

The final report concludes with the question of whether the United States will respond to all the information that the committee has compiled during its lifespan on the climate and energy challenge:

Someday, our children and grandchildren will look back on the record of the Select Committee. That record will reflect a respectful and rigorous debate and an unprecedented understanding of the challenges before us. Whether or not they will see that this generation has taken the bold action required by these challenges remains to be seen.

Do Americans Deserve the Republicans?

It all sounds so insane.   A country awash in debt extending tax cuts for the rich, cuts that have to be made up with even more money borrowed from foreign lenders.  A country whose people's longevity and health are third rate wanting to scrap universal healthcare.   A country where the white and blue collar classes are reeling from a market gone mad from deregulation now fiercely opposed to regulation.  A country whose people believe that "socialism" means totalitarianism and state ownership of all property.   A nation whose people believe, as pointed out by Andrew Bacevich, that liberty means affluence.

If it must be, then let it be.  What can possibly be done with a people driven mad through the deliberate infliction of fear, frustration and anger?   Better yet, what can possibly be done for them?  Either way the answer is not very much.   If they want to transform America into a Thelma & Louise act, the rest of us just have to make sure we don't jump into the back seat.   If they want the Republican vision of America, the delusion, then they're going to deserve what they've got coming. 

What about us?   There are going to be problems.   Our economy is slaved to theirs and, when they reach for that handle, we all get flushed.  

Krugman predicts a Republican win will trigger at least a "double dip recession," perhaps even a full blown depression.  It is widely assumed that America is charting a path to stagflation and a Japanese-style "lost decade."  Except it won't be "Japanese-style" at all.   Japan endured a decade of flat economic growth and deflation but - and it's a very big but - Japan was and remained a creditor nation.   Japan still holds almost as much American debt as does China.   America faces tumbling into its own lost decade still heavily reliant on foreign credit.

An unstable, even insolvent America presents foreign lenders with a bouquet of problems.  It's one thing to lend a guy money but if you begin to suspect he's planning on paying you back just 60-cents on the dollar, the value of his business plummets.  Japan and China each hold more than a trillion dollars of U.S. debt.  One thing that's made that bearable for the United States is that this debt is in U.S. dollars.  Today, not only is America heavily in hock to the Chinese but it is demanding the Chinese revalue their currency, the Yuan, the effect of which is to devalue the American debt China holds.

So if you're getting the shake down from the guy who still wants you to keep lending you're going to be very tempted to look for a more stable medium of exchange than the U.S. dollar.   You might write new debt for another, more stable currency or basket of currencies.   Dropping the greenback as the world's 'reserve currency' would be devastating for the United States.   The confidence in the U.S. dollar would be undermined and the Americans would face the prospect of having to repay debt in other nations' currencies that might be very disadvantageous.

If America wasn't so heavily indebted and utterly dependent on foreign lenders, a devalued greenback might be a blessing.  It would certainly make imports more expensive while making American exports more competitive.   But America is heavily indebted and is dependent on foreign borrowings and there's no sign that the American people are willing to bear what changing that would mean.   They truly believe they have the right to live beyond their means - in perpetuity.  And once you're able to believe that, you're perfectly able to swallow everything else the Republicans are dishing up.

And so that big, blue Thunderbird convertible just keeps racing for the cliff.

Could Charlie Crist Upset Florida's Republican Tea Party?

Florida's Republican nobs have passed judgment on Governor Charlie Crist's ambitions for the US Senate - he isn't rightwing enough to deserve the nomination. So Crist is planning to run as an independent which, according to McClatchey, has his party utterly apoplectic:

You've never seen such fuming, whining and grinding of capped teeth. And that's not from voters — that's from Republican leaders, who are pitching a hissy fit.

They want the governor to shut up and go away, but he's not playing ball. They want him to yield the stage to Marco Rubio, a robotic right-wing smoothie, but Charlie insists on hanging around for an encore.

...Not so long ago, the governor was their golden boy, and not just because of his trademark tan. Most of the party's top dogs were singing his praises for the Senate
.
But try as he might -- and at times it was pathetic to watch -- Crist just couldn't swerve hard enough to the right. His belated bashing of President Obama sounded halfhearted compared with the spittle-flecked ravings on Fox News.

The governor is famous for tacking with the political breeze, but even he couldn't pull off a convincing ideological swoop to ultra-conservativism.

That's the irreconcilable problem: Crist is a moderate in a party whose leaders no longer tolerate it.

Always distrustful of him, Republican screamers officially turned on the governor after he accepted federal stimulus benefits. In a state suffering from brutal unemployment and epidemic home foreclosures, only a moron would have turned down the money.

And that says it all. Charlie isn't moronic enough to deserve the Republican nomination in Florida, the state where he's the sitting governor. Charlie didn't measure up to the, "spittle flecked ravings" of today's Republican leadership.

The Rank Hypocrisy of the Right Makes Even the American Enterprise Institute Puke

It's not easy to get something as far right as the American Enterprise Institute to turn on its own but congressional Republicans and their backers in America's delusional rightwing media did just that.

Norm Ornstein, writing in AEI's Enterprise Blog tears a strip off congressional Republicans, the Wall Street Journal, and all the Republican hacks that infest America's TV and radio outlets:

...I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news. It reached a ridiculous level of misinformation and disinformation over the use of reconciliation, and now threatens to top that level over the projected use of a self-executing rule by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the last Congress that Republicans controlled, from 2005 to 2006, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier used the self-executing rule more than 35 times, and was no stranger to the concept of “deem and pass.” That strategy, then decried by the House Democrats who are now using it, and now being called unconstitutional by WSJ editorialists, was defended by House Republicans in court (and upheld). Dreier used it for a $40 billion deficit reduction package so that his fellow GOPers could avoid an embarrassing vote on immigration. I don’t like self-executing rules by either party—I prefer the “regular order”—so I am not going to say this is a great idea by the Democrats. But even so—is there no shame anymore?

What Kind of Moron Does It Take to Support Republicans? Ask the Republicans

How does the Republican Party see the rank and file, small donors to their cause? Well, thanks to an internal, 72-page GOP document carelessly allowed to fall into Democratic hands, now we know. From Politico:

"The small donors who are the targets of direct marketing are described under the heading 'Visceral Giving.' Their motivations are listed as 'fear;' 'Extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration;' and 'Reactionary.'" That's right, the Republicans know their real party faithful. They ought to. They spent the entire dark years of the Bush regime making the American people fearful, preying on their vulnerabilities. Now fear drives the flow of cash into their coffers. And, yes, the Repugs know their nearest and dearest are indeed reactionary. They're knee-jerk rednecks, just the way the Grand Old Party likes'em.

Does anybody think that bottom feeder that passes for our prime monster is any better than his Republican, American Idols? Inculcating fear, anger and bigotry is their very stock in trade.

Reactionary people are stupid. They don't think, they react. You feed them the right stimulus, a heaping helping of fear, or appeal to their base bigotry and out pops their chequebooks.

The Republicans, having been caught with their pants down, are running for cover just as fast as their little paws can carry them. And that, kids, is why these far-rightwingers are assholes.

The Slur That Now Leads the Republicans

David Frum appears to be losing his bid to reclaim his beloved Republican Party for intelligent people or at least keep it from sinking to the very bottom of the Slimbaugh cesspool.

A half-century ago, many conservatives followed another leader who accused the president of the day of treason. The leader was Robert Welch and the president was Dwight Eisenhower, whom Welch termed a "conscious and dedicated agent of the communist conspiracy." We all remember that Bill Buckley defied and opposed Welch. Today we admire Bill for doing it. We forget that Bill's actions nearly wrecked National Review, as Welch's followers canceled their subscriptions and accused Buckley himself of adhering to the conspiracy. That seems funny in retrospect, but it was not funny at the time.

The writers at NR have not forgotten this history. And yet that has not prevented us all from reliving it. I fear that the costs of indulging paranoid talk in the conservative world will be far greater than ever they were in the 1960s. Back then, sensible Republicans could ignore Robert Welch. But Limbaugh is omnipresent - and now our former vice president has told us he is to be preferred as a party leader to Colin Powell. Powell - the man who could have had our party presidential nomination for the asking in 1996! The man that Cheney's administration sent to Congress and the United Nations to make the case against Iraq in 2003, because that administration knew that Powell commanded more respect and deference than any other administration member, not excepting the president himself.

The blogger Matt Yglesias made a telling point the other day. The assertion that Limbaugh leads the conservative movement began as a slur, an attack point. It is the weakness of our Republican elected leaders - and the indulgence of those who should be our conservative intellectual leaders - that has elevated the slur into plausible reality.

It's too bad the Republicans chose to make the hicks, bigots, fundies and rednecks their path to power. Now they're stuck with them and, worse, it's not just the camel's nose under the tent anymore. It's the whole damned camel. Hey guys, learn to live with it and, when you get a moment, grab a shovel and clean up that mess in the corner.

Think Big Oil Has Folded On Global Warming?

In public Big Oil may be saying all the right things, but it's no accident that Republicans in Congress are still working furiously to fend off any meaningful action to slash America's carbon emissions. Why would Big Oil give up? Big Tobacco sure hasn't.

Much Too Dumb for Prime Time

Bobby Jindal is riding to the rescue of - Rush Limbaugh!

Slimebot sparked a controversy when he first told his radio audience that he wanted President Barack Obama to fail. The remark was widely taken as unpatriotic, anti-American. It seemed to coalesce Limbaugh's supporters and opponents alike.

But Limbaugh may be the most popular Republican in the states right now. The Dems have done everything they can to raise Lardo's prominence. The Louisiana governor, however, hasn't been faring as well. The Deep South wunderkind, thought to be the first person of colour to have a shot at the Republican presidential nomination, was selected to give the Republican response to Obama's quasi-state of the union address. Obama was expectedly good. Jindal, by comparison, was sophomoric. He had a few minutes of national television exposure and he bombed.

Now Jindal seems to be grabbing for the Limbot lifeboat. While in Washington for a fundraiser, Jindal said it's okay for Republicans to want President Obama to fail if they think he's jeopardizing the country. I expect we'll hear a lot more of this sort of thing from Jindal as he gropes his way toward a run for the Republican nomination in 2012.

America's Republican Malignancy

Forget the fact that they hatched, and for three decades nurtured, the Era of Greed that has finally brought the United States to its knees. As the New York Times' Paul Krugman writes, the Republicans aren't finished, not yet.

...it’s now clear that the party’s commitment to deep voodoo — enforced, in part, by pressure groups that stand ready to run primary challengers against heretics — is as strong as ever. In both the House and the Senate, the vast majority of Republicans rallied behind the idea that the appropriate response to the abject failure of the Bush administration’s tax cuts is more Bush-style tax cuts.

And the rhetorical response of conservatives to the stimulus plan — which will, it’s worth bearing in mind, cost substantially less than either the Bush administration’s $2 trillion in tax cuts or the $1 trillion and counting spent in Iraq — has bordered on the deranged.

It’s “generational theft,” said Senator John McCain, just a few days after voting for tax cuts that would, over the next decade, have cost about four times as much.

It’s “destroying my daughters’ future. It is like sitting there watching my house ransacked by a gang of thugs,” said Arnold Kling of the Cato Institute.

What Krugman illustrates isn't Republican perfidy - that much we've come to expect. It's that the Republican message continues to resonate with a sufficient segment of the American electorate that the tax cut/trickle down/Voodoo economics scam still lives.

Maybe Americans have been so dumbed down that they're now just too stupid to save themselves - maybe. It seems that the party that decriminalized the fraud that doomed Wall Street - and the global economy - can still peddle its poison. The Republicans have lost Congress and the White House but they're an insidious malignancy that might not quit until they've destroyed the United States.

Good for the Soul - Another Republican Falls to Hate-Based Blowback

The Republicans have been in power in too many places for far too long. It's made them say the most stupid, hateful things and they're starting to pay the price for it.

In keeping with the theme underlying the McCain-Palin campaign, North Carolina congressman Robin Hayes sought to warm up the crowd for a McCain campaign rally with this zinger:

"Liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God."

Hayes later denied he'd said any such thing - until the tapes came out. When he shot himself in the foot, the incumbent Republican was five points ahead of his Democratic rival. Oopsie! Hayes Democratic opponent now leads 51-46.