Sneering at the Gettysburg Address

by Doctor Science

Slacktivist Fred Clark talks about South Carolina Tea Partiers sneering at the idea of “government of the people, by the people and for the people”. I think this is another aspect of what Andrew Sullivan accurately calls America’s Cold Civil War, which is also what Dennis G. (dengre) means by the modern Republican Confederate Party and which digby talks about in a post that came up as I was writing this.

It’s no coincidence that “of the people, by the people, for the people” was a statement by the Union President, and that South Carolinians are the ones objecting. South Carolina was the spark plug for what James McPherson has accurately called The War of Southern Aggression. South Carolinians were most aggressive because they had the most to lose: SC had a black slave majority. Both democracy and the Golden Rule would have been deeply threatening to white South Carolinians.

But it wasn’t just SC. In What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War, Chandra Manning shows that Confederate and Union soldiers, especially enlisted men, had different attitudes toward government — and I see those differences still playing out today.

Of SC (and other) Tea Partiers, Fred said:

They profess a deep pessimism about the human capacity for self-government, but it comes packaged with an incompatible naive utopianism that believes in unchecked power so long as that power is wielded by anyone not elected by the public.

The contradictions of these Hobbesian hippies are seen most clearly when they are asked to explain what it is that they are for — what it is that they would like to see replace the “government of the people, by the people and for the people” at which they sneer with such vicious contempt.

… Their scorn is not directed at our failure to more fully realize the noble ideal of “government of, by and for the people.” Their scorn is directed at the belief that this is a noble ideal or that it is worthy of realization. Quote that glorious phrase from Lincoln and they will roll their eyes and sputter because they think you’re a fool to believe that such a thing could ever be even partially true.

They do not believe in it. They do not believe in government of the people, by the people and for the people. They cannot believe in it because they do not believe in government. That word, to them, means one and only one thing: tyranny. And so they respond to Lincoln’s phrase accordingly — as though he were advocating tyranny of the people, tyranny by the people and tyranny for the people.

And so again I ask, if not democracy, then what? If we are not to govern ourselves, then how are we to be governed?

That’s just it, comes the reply, we shouldn’t be governed at all.

Fred is baffled and horrified that self-proclaimed conservatives would be so anarchistic.

IMHO it’s not truly anarchy, it’s a different vision of government that Manning found well-established during the Civil War. Manning looked at letters and regimental newspapers written by enlisted men, not officers, and found:

Confederates believed that their rebellion against a federal government that inadequately served white Southerners’ interest in slavery reenacted the colonies’ revolt against Great Britain … The actual Union that the Revolution had created mattered less than the reasons for its creation.

When Confederate soldiers spoke of liberty, they referred not to a universally applicable ideal, but to a carefully circumscribed possession available to white Southerners. No mere abstraction, liberty had to do with the unobstructed pursuit of material prosperity for white men and their families.

In order to retain legitimacy, government must also serve the needs and interests of white families, according to Confederates.

Sprit_of_'76.2
The Spirit of ’76, by Archibald MacNeal Willard, is an iconic representation of the Confederate view of the American Revolution. It’s about the heroic struggle, the march toward victory against desperate odds, the admiration of young for the old and determined. It’s about courage even when the Cause seems to be Lost.

Manning:

Confederates emulated the Revolution through the act of rebellion, but Union troops honored the Revolution by fighting to preserve the American government it created. By rallying “around the star spangled banner to defend the Union of our Revolutionary sires”, one camp newspaper explained, Union troops were helping to “protect and perpetuate a Government which the oppressed in every land have looked upon for half a century as the beacon of liberty.” That statement contrasted sharply with the Confederate claim (voiced by Ivy Duggan and countless others) that the Union in 1861 violated its own reasons for being and threatened liberty.

Union troops interpreted the significance of the Union more broadly, and harbored a different vision of liberty. The Union existed, according to northern volunteers in 1861, not simply for limited purposes like facilitating white citizens’ pursuit of material interests, but for the grander purpose of proving to the world that republican self-government based on the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence could work.

government in the pre-Civil War North was not ‘them’, it was us. Both northern & southern men could and did vote, equally. But because people in the North lived closer together and in more small communities, there were many more ways there for men to participate in government beyond voting. … there were more local governments and therefore more offices with more impact on daily life than in the South, where most seemed to prefer a more hands-off attitude toward local government.

Freespeech  22043

Norman Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech, part of the Four Freedoms series, gives a Union view of what the American Revolution was about, and what government should be. A plain, unheroic man is standing up and speaking at a New England town meeting, where the government is *everybody*. Although he is younger than the men immediately around him, they are listening to him with respect (not admiration, he is no particular hero), the mutual respect of peers who are working together.

My starting-place for looking at these sorts of patterns in American history and culture is always Albion’s Seed, by David Hackett Fischer. Fischer hypothesizes that many enduring patterns in American culture arise from the different subcultures (“folkways”) brought to North America by different waves of immigrants from the British Isles: the Puritans of New England (who came largely from Essex), the Anglicans of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay (from Wessex), the Quakers of the Delaware Valley (from the north Midlands), and the Presbyterians and Methodists of the backcountry (who came from the border regions between England and Scotland, and from northern Ireland). There is a fifth major folk culture in the US, which Fischer has never been really able to explore, though at one point he planned a book about it: The Ebony Tree: African Folkways in America.

When the question is “what should be the average person’s relationship to the government?”, you get four different answers for the different folk cultures. For the cultural descendents of Puritans, New Englanders and west, they *are* the government: they have to respect the consensus of the community, but they are also expected to help shape that consensus. Government is a collective achievement, and can be pretty heavy-handed as long as it’s everyone’s hand. They also have a great deal of respect for the wisdom of age and education.

The cultural descendents of Quakers, from the Delaware valley to the Upper Midwest, have the most respect for all individual consciences. The role of government is to be a protector of reciprocal liberties based on the Golden Rule. As Fischer says,

the Quakers extended to others in America precisely the same rights that they had demanded for themselves in England. Many other libertarians have tended to hedge the principles when power passed into their hands. That sad story has been reenacted many times in world history, from New England Puritans to French Jacobins to Israeli Jews who have cruelly denied to others the rights they demanded for themselves. The Quakers behaved differently. They always remained true to their idea of reciprocal liberty, to the everlasting glory of their denomination.

The cultural descendents of the Anglican Cavaliers of Virginia believed, like the Puritans, in respect for hierarchy and authority, but their preferred government was aristocracy. Fischer quotes John Randolph of Roanoke, who said:

I am an aristocrat. I love liberty; I hate equality.

They believed — and still believe — that government should be run by the Best Men, who are known by their inherited status and wealth (inherited or otherwise). Government shouldn’t tell such people what to do, but has a necessary function in keeping the rest of society properly in line. “We shouldn’t be governed at all!” in this culture means that *I* don’t really need to be governed, but I may accept some for the sake of keeping other people in their place.

The Backcountry culture is the most familiarly libertarian, the one that believes every (white) man should have the maximum personal liberty, and government should be as minimal as possible. This is the culture that sneers most thoroughly at the idea of government “of the people and for the people” — government for them represents either Yankee busy-bodies or greedy aristocrats, and is never expected to reflect the needs or wishes of regular people who just want to be left alone.

As for Black American culture, I’m just guessing that the basic attitude toward government is to work it when you can, dodge it when you can’t, never ever trust it, but never expect to be completely free of it, either: a practical, cynical approach.

In any event, I think when Tea Partiers sneer at “government of the people, by the people and for the people”, it’s because that was *never* their culture or experience. The cultural forces that made the Confederacy are still there, and still count as common sense for many Americans.

220 thoughts on “Sneering at the Gettysburg Address”

  1. Hell of a post, Doc.
    As I check out the blogs here and there, today, I’m gonna’ drop links around, if you don’t mind.
    I also might link it over at Coates’ open thread tomorrow, if someone else doesn’t beat me to it.

  2. You’re right, I suppose, that the Tea party movement is, on a fundamental level, anarchistic. Anybody who really cares about liberty is, after all: Having a minority ordering the majority about is not really all that much worse than having the majority ordering about the minority. And having a minority chosen by the majority doing the ordering appears to devolve into option 1.
    Self government is exactly that; Governing yourself. It isn’t a form of government, it’s government’s antithesis.
    And, frankly, just asserting that the tea party is the same as the Confederates doesn’t amount to much of an argument. More like a way of avoiding an argument…

  3. “Self government is exactly that; Governing yourself. It isn’t a form of government, it’s government’s antithesis.”
    What?
    I read in a survival manual somewhere that you can survive pretty well if you drink your own urine three, maybe four times.
    After that, the noxious salts and such become so concentrated that the solipsistic cycle poisons the drinker.
    Then you have to drink someone else’s urine, which I believe is disallowed in the parched bankruptcy of Galt’s Gulch.

  4. You’re right, I suppose, that the Tea party movement is, on a fundamental level, anarchistic. Anybody who really cares about liberty is, after all …
    Come on, Brett, we’ve been over this ground before. Somalia is only one modern example … my favorite discourse on this (as I have posted before) is Brad DeLong’s No Libertarians in the Seventeenth-Century Highlands.
    The practical effect of a lack of government is the law of the jungle. Nowadays that would be catastrophic for the liberty of most people. Maybe you would wind up with a libertarian paradise after most people were dead, but I doubt it.

  5. Self government is exactly that; Governing yourself. It isn’t a form of government, it’s government’s antithesis.
    This reminds me of the observation that masturbation is the best kind of sex, because the pleasure given always equals the pleasure received…

  6. Just because anarchy, zero government, isn’t practical under present circumstances, doesn’t make government a positive good, which we should seek to maximize. Democracy is the ‘least worst’ form of government, but that’s only to say it’s the least offensive form of something bad, and to the extent we can get by without it, with people making their own individual choices, instead of voting on what everybody has to do, we should.

  7. just because I like (some parts of) our government doesn’t necessarily mean I want to maximize it.
    And why is government bad? I think it’s great. Maybe 1,000 years ago if I was a peon I wouldn’t like it, but I live in the US, and I have it pretty good. I get to have a say in what happens, and if there are things I don’t like, I can work to change them.
    I find that left to their own devices, some people (and companies) make great choices, and some make lousy ones. I like that our society, thru our votes, sets some agreed-upon standards for that conduct, and has some enforcement mechanisms to back that up.

  8. Democracy is the ‘least worst’ form of government, but that’s only to say it’s the least offensive form of something bad…
    The issue we must grapple with is, does the intervention of government in whatever scenario make things better or worse? Sure, we have to keep in mind the potential for government to make matters worse, and the danger of tyranny, but that is no excuse for ignoring the bad results flowing from a lack of government intervention.
    Once upon a time, conservatives acknowledged the fallen nature of human beings and the need for some kind of authority to keep people in line. We have laws against murder and I imagine you agree that this a legitimate sphere for government action.
    But let’s take less clear cut example, outsourcing. Market forces have led to companies moving jobs out of the U.S. to lower cost labor markets. Is this good for our society as a whole? There are serious negative repercussions: unemployed workers, reliance on foreign sources for strategic products, and the transfer of valuable intellectual property to potential adversaries. Should the government do something about this? Private actors have no motivation to consider the damage to our national security from this trend.
    We don’t really have a choice. We have to make government work.

  9. It seems to me that this is also the difference between the tribal form of unity (I am one with my family and those like us) and the national form (I am one with those in my nation.) The tribal form is more ancient, and even most modern nation states trace their roots to it. The North fought more for the civil religion of America, the idea of it, while the South fought for their tribe.

  10. Plus, you get to have sex with someone you love.
    This ignores the problem of self-hatred that is unfortunately quite common (esp. on the conservative and/or religious side but not limited to it).
    A favorite* syllogism of mine:
    1.Love thy neighbour as thy love yerself
    2.Love of self is sinful
    => Loving thy neighbour is sinful
    => hating him is the proper way
    *in describing that mindset

  11. We have to make government work, to the extent we need to have government. We disagree about the latter, hence we disagree about the former.
    If we walk into a restaurant, and I decide to order my own meal, instead of voting with you on what we’ll both eat, that does not make me an enemy of all that’s good and decent. It makes me somebody who wants to make his own choices. In some cases choices MUST be common. (Which side of the road shall we drive on?) I some cases nobody remotely sane suggests they have to be common and coercible enforced. (Chocolate or vanilla ice cream?)
    It is not a sign of madness, nor evil, to disagree with you about where to draw the line on marginal cases.

  12. Just because anarchy, zero government, isn’t practical under present circumstances, doesn’t make government a positive good
    Under what circumstances would it be practical?
    IMO it would take some kind of remarkable (and historically unprecedented) transformation of human nature to make the libertarian / anarchist ideal feasible.
    You’d need a human race made up solely of the responsible, well-intentioned, truthful, and wise.
    Otherwise it’s dog eat dog, and that is not conducive to liberty in any useful form.
    We will all be free to guard our individual hoard of potatoes with whatever ordinance we can muster.
    Thanks, but no thanks.
    Feel free to show me, from the actual history of the human race, where I’m wrong about this.
    Regarding the whole Confederacy thing, I’ve often wondered if going to war to keep the Union whole was the right decision.
    All that blood, and 150 years later the rebels are still in a snit.
    If it ever comes to it again, I say show them the door.
    As a total aside, I also just wanted to comment that the Spirit of ’76 has nothing to do with the spirit of the Confederacy. It was painted by an Ohioan who actually did fight in the Civil War, on the Union side.
    The original hangs in my town hall, here in chilly New England. It was purchased and presented to the town by a Civil War general who grew up here, and who moved to Ohio as a young man to work as a railroad engineer. His son was the model for the young drummer.
    In the mid-19th C the town I live in was a crappy little hardscrabble fishing village of 8,000, and it raised $100,000 in cash to support the Civil War effort, and sent over 1,000 men into battle. The first regiment of volunteers was mustered into service the day after the attack on Fort Sumter.
    I’m sure there’s some other painting of the time that you could find to capture the rebel spirit of the Confederacy. Perhaps one with the good old stars and bars in the background. The Spirit of ’76 has a different legacy, not one that the Confederacy ever earned or deserved. FWIW.

  13. Brett:
    “If we walk into a restaurant, and I decide to order my own meal, instead of voting with you on what we’ll both eat, that does not make me an enemy of all that’s good and decent.”
    Picky eater, are you?
    You must be loads of fun at those family-style fondue dipping joints.
    Do you sniff your food before you eat it. I have a brother who, even in the poshest of circumstances, will lean in with a suspicious dart of the eyes as if someone is trying to put one over on his gustatory constitution, and sniff the plate of food just set in front of him.
    When he tastes the wine, (his own carafe; there will be no sharing) he gargles the first taste, gives out a sort of strangled yodel, and spits the mouthful on the carpet and all over the shoes of the waiter.
    Then he produces a container of his own urine which he has smuggled into the restaurant, and takes a swig.
    You can’t take him anywhere.
    Russell:
    “Otherwise it’s dog eat dog, and that is not conducive to liberty in any useful form.
    We will all be free to guard our individual hoard of potatoes with whatever ordinance we can muster.”
    Down at the Dog Eat Dog Charcuterie, Brett might think he can just walk in and throw down a three-day old road-kill dog carcass and eat it raw, but tucking into some fly-specked carrion at barely room temperature is, well, the enemy of all that’s good and decent.
    We prefer the USDA-inspected canine, its shots up-to-date, the carcass stored properly, and the buckshot removed for less perilous chewing.
    Where’d you get them potatoes? They look familiar.
    These days, we have potato derivatives, to escape regulation. No one knows who owns them, but when they rot, the world’s entire root cellar has to be thrown out.
    Incidentally, we have the new Liberty Urination Pilsner fresh on tap today in limited quantities.

  14. If you want to go out for dinner with a bunch of friends, everyone has to agree to the restaurant, which does restrict what you can order, though you still can get whatever’s on the menu.
    SO EFFIN’ WHAT??? (I guess I’m not in the mood for dumb analogies today….)

  15. Doc, you go from a stupid post by the Kershaw County Patriots, who you link without support to the much broader Tea Party (which comprises a broad range of people, some nutty, some simply anti-large gov’t), to all Confederates to all South Carolinians. Don’t you think this is a rather broad brush? I am fairly sure that, if I had the time to scour random postings by far-left, outlier group leaders, I could make the same argument. Here at ObWi, I’d be hammered for it, and rightly so.
    Implicit in your argument is that Tea Partier’s and much of the South hates their gov’t. Were that the case, one would expect, among other things, that the South would produce a disproportionately small number of military recruits to serve that hated entity, and yet it is otherwise.
    Sorry, this is less than solid logic and the conclusion, as well received as it is here, does so not because it has substantial merit, but because it fits the narrative. Perhaps the narrative itself should be subjected to a bit of self-critical analysis . . . ?

  16. You’d need a human race made up solely of the responsible, well-intentioned, truthful, and wise.
    This.
    And don’t forget perfectly rational, well-informed, and with limitless reserves of determination, industry and energy.
    Which simply doesn’t describe any human race I’ve ever heard of.
    The only place or conditions where anarchic-ish ‘governments’ can ever possibly work is in fiction – and usually because there’s a hidden assumption that people who don’t fit the correct mold are simply a genetically defective minority, and thus liberal employment of the death penalty will be able to have things running more or less smoothly within a couple generations.
    (I’m thinking particularly of places like the moon in Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” – where the founding assumption that once you dump enough rapists/delinquent debtors/graffiti artists/lazy people/witches/what-have-you out the airlock, the survivors will have themselves a nice cozy anarcho-libertarian society.)

  17. Implicit in your argument is that Tea Partier’s and much of the South hates their gov’t. Were that the case, one would expect, among other things, that the South would produce a disproportionately small number of military recruits to serve that hated entity, and yet it is otherwise.
    You know, it’s been one of the great mysteries to me of how conservatives/the right/the GOP can sit around and demonize the federal government in general, and “unelected bureaucrats,” and taxes, the deficit, tyranny, etc., and yet when it comes to the military and defense spending, it’s blow jobs for everyone.

  18. Brett, I think it’s amazingly simplistic of you to assert that government is always bad. (Just as it is simplistic to assert that govfernment is always good.) Government cannot solve all problems, and can make some things worse. But there are some things that government can do better than the alternatives.
    Take one example you can, perhaps, relate to: You need some kind of organization to provide law and order, and to defend the nation against outsiders. Sure, you wouldn’t need that (as much) if everybody else was willing to be similarly anarchist — but they ain’t. And since others will organize into groups (whether criminal gangs or armies), you have to take some kind of steps that will deal with those on some relatviely equal basis. That means some kind of organization, which is all that government is.
    Now you can argue that government ought to be severely limited. But that’s not the same as saying that it’s always bad. Just that you don’t want it interfering in stuff you figure that you (if not anybody else) can deal with yourself. But give everybody the same choice, and you end up with more, perhaps, than you would like. Your choice is to live with that, and try to hold it down, or to move somewhere where most people are closer to your preference. If you really do want nothing at all, people keep suggesting Somalia. And there’s a reason for that. Yes, they have little government — and they also show pretty clearly what happens when others have an organization and you do not.

  19. Just because anarchy, zero government, isn’t practical under present circumstances, doesn’t make government a positive good, which we should seek to maximize. Democracy is the ‘least worst’ form of government, but that’s only to say it’s the least offensive form of something bad, and to the extent we can get by without it, with people making their own individual choices, instead of voting on what everybody has to do, we should.
    I think this is a practically useless attitude. Government isn’t inherently good OR bad, nor is it useful to view it either as “positive good” or its opposite.
    It’ll lead you to all sorts of strange places if you view government as some kind of [necessary] evil. It’d be like listing out all the bad things that air can do (e.g., feed house fires, let serial killers breathe, support the wings of killer dragons and/or disease carrying mosquitoes, kill you if it’s too full of CO, doesn’t support you very well if you’re overweight, isn’t of much use if you’re falling through it without a ‘chute, etc.) and then concluding that, really, when you think about it, hyper-oxygenated water would really be so much more rational. So that should be our ideal, even if its not really practical yet, and air should be viewed very suspiciously as a necessary evil.
    Pure lunacy.
    Government is necessary for human society. Period. The only question is how best to do it and how to make the one(s) we have better at the margins.

  20. McT, the Kershaw post is embedded in Fred’s post and Doc goes on to point out some other posts about this. Doc has a thesis about what is driving anti-government resentment. You can either say that it is normal and rational, as Brett does, or you can suggest another source.
    When Doc brought up Albion’s Seed before, I thought there were some interesting objections to the thesis. I’m actually reading a book that has some similar arguments, (called The Horse, the wheel and language, arguing for where the Indo-European homeland is) but I’m half way thru it, so I’m not sure if it applies yet or not. Being from the South, my main objection is that the thesis, as I understand it, suggests that Scots-Irish culture is responsible, yet my area (the Gulf Coast), doesn’t have much in terms of Scots-Irish, but probably has similar feelings about government, so I’m not sure if the cultural persistence argument is correct, but a lot of it is framing.
    However, something seems to be driving this anti-government resentment, (I mean, really, Michele Bachman as a plausible presidential candidate?) Do you have a plausible alternative?
    As far as military recruits, that implies a rationality that I don’t think is there when you are talking about honor and serving one’s country (that is not meant to be a slam on military service, just that you are claiming that somehow, the decision to serve is one that is weighed on a kind of rational scale seems to be a bit bizarre) As another example, when I worked with native American endangered languages, I often went to ‘pow-wows’, where various tribes gathered for cultural and social exchange. (here’s a link explaining it). One thing that every pow-wow has is a call for the veterans, who often lead what is called the Grand Entry. If there is a group that would ‘rationally’ not want to have the US flag flying over their ceremony, I think it would be Native Americans, but they have this reverence for those who have fought and served. The same argument, that there is some kind of rational calculus going into serving, would apply here. It may seem dismissive if I say it is ‘irrational’, but my own feeling is that just because I label is irrational, it doesn’t mean I think it is of less value than something that is rational.

  21. It’d be like listing out all the bad things that air can do
    IMO this is about right.
    The normal human pattern appears to be to live in communities. Part of “living in communities” is establishing institutions for organizing and regulating – for *governing* – their common life.
    As far as I can tell, government is inextricable from human life. It’s one of the things that humans do.
    We employ speech, we make music and art, we are tool users, we build stuff. And we live in communities that enjoy some kind of common public life, and we invent governments to organize that public life.
    It’s got its good side and its bad side, but talking about how it will somehow fade away into some kind of libertarian paradise is a fantasy.
    You might as well tell pigeons not to flock, or fish not to swim in schools.

  22. I mean, really, Michele Bachman as a plausible presidential candidate?
    LJ, I think the reason that Bachman is plausible to some people is that, like, Brett, they see government as always bad. So someone who is utterly unable to do the job of being President is not a problem. In fact, if anything it is a definite plus. Exactly because, if they can’t get no government, they would rather have incompetent government which is easier to evade.

  23. Pigeons, privately, are libertarians at heart. That’s why they crap all over the public statuary.
    Also, I’ve heard there is a movement among fish for home-schooling.

  24. … when you think about it, hyper-oxygenated water would really be so much more rational.
    I knew the trees was a bad move. We never should have left the ocean. [hat tip, Douglas Adams]

  25. Michele Bachman – I find her a more plausible winner of the 2012 Presidential Election than Sarah Palin. Palin is a grifter whose main disadvantage in a Presidential election is that she’s known by the electorate as a no-nothing idiot (in most respects). This was made clear in 2008 and subsequently by resigning as governor of Alaska, among other things. The swing voter, IMHO, will reject her over Obama, just based on familiarity.
    Bachman, OTOH, is still a relative unknown to the general public. Further, she’s savvy enough to at least pretend to display some competency, and has some innate, more general smartness than Palin, IMO (Palin’s innate smartness is in exploiting ressentiment). If after this debt deal we’re at 12% unemployment and Bachman is the GOP nominee, I’d give her a greater than 50% of winning.
    Further, based on a conversation with someone who has had multiple face to face meetings with Bachman, she’s smarter than she prefers to display.
    Shorter Ugh: you wish for a Bachman 2012 GOP nomination at your peril.

  26. Following DocS.’s use of Albion’s Seed, by David Hackett Fischer (The following is from researchers who use his work.)
    R. Horseman’s Race and Manifest Destiny: Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism,
    After Reconstruction and the victory of the Spanish-American War, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant solidarity was at its zenith and triumphant. The “ethnic nationalism of whiteness, underpinned by Protestantism, had penetrated and had come to dominate the American psyche… whiteness, Protestantism, American nationalism, and imperialism were bound tightly together in the moral conception of whites by the turn of the century” (Blum 2005).
    From: Blum. Edward J. (2005). Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press.
    Yet it is instructive to note how different things were not so long ago. In the 1920s, the United States consolidated its Anglo-Protestant ethnic character in a series of legislative actions: the Volstead Act of 1920 prohibited the consumption of alcohol; the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 shaped immigration flows around a quota system designed to preserve WASP dominance; and Al Smith, a Roman Catholic of part-Irish extraction, was defeated in his bid for the presidency in 1928. Nativist commentators glowed with praise for a U.S. Congress whose ethnic composition matched that of the Continental Congress of 1787. In communities large and small, powerful Protestant voluntary associations like the Ku Klux Klan, Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), Masons, and American Protective Association (APA) nurtured the bonds of white Protestant ethnicity and enforced Anglo-American hegemony. Even as late as the 1960s, 90 percent of white Protestants, Catholics, and Jews married members of their own faith.
    By the 1960s, as if by magic, the centuries-old machinery of WASP America began to stall like the spacecraft of Martian invaders in the contemporary hit film, War of the Worlds. In 1960, the first non-Protestant president was elected. In 1965, the national origins quota regime for immigration was replaced by a “color-blind” system. Meanwhile, Anglo- Protestants faded from the class photos of the economic, political, and cultural elite—their numbers declining rapidly, year upon year, in the universities, boardrooms, cabinets, courts, and legislatures. At the mass level, the cords holding Anglo-Protestant Americans together began to unwind as secular associations and mainline churches lost millions of members while the first truly national, non-WASP cultural icons appeared. Not only were barriers to non-WASP ethnic groups virtually eliminated at all levels of American life, but national institutions appeared to be reapplying the idea of communalism in an inverse manner. Namely, minority ethnic communities were now replacing the old Anglo- Protestant ethnie (or ethnic group) as the recipient of collective privilege.
    How did such a stunning transformation take place between the 1920s and the 1960s?

    From:
    Kaufman, Eric P. 2004. The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America: The Decline of Dominant Ethnicity in the United States, London: Harvard University Press.

  27. And “liberty” within the US’s racist system had more to do with being “whites” than with “rights”
    Whiteness as Property
    Abstract:
    Issues regarding race and racial identity as well as questions pertaining to property rights and ownership have been prominent in much public discourse in the United States. In this article, Professor Harris contributes to this discussion by positing that racial identity andproperty are deeply interrelated concepts. Professor Harris examines how whiteness, initially constructed as a form of racial identity, evolved into a form of property, historically and presently acknowledged and protected in American law. Professor Harris traces the origins of whiteness as property in the parallel systems of domination of Black and Native American peoples out of which were created racially contingent forms of property and property rights. Following the period of slavery and conquest, whiteness became the basis of racialized privilege – a type of status in which white racial identity provided the basis for allocating societal benefits both private and public in character. These arrangements were ratified and legitimated in law as a type of status property. Even as legal segregation was overturned,whiteness as property continued to serve as a barrier to effective change as the system of racial classification operated to protect entrenched power.
    Next, Professor Harris examines how the concept of whiteness as property persists in current perceptions of racial identity, in the law’s misperception of group identity and in the Court’s reasoning and decisions in the arena of affirmative action. Professor Harris concludes by arguing that distortions in affirmative action doctrine can only be addressed by confronting and exposing the property interest in whitenessand by acknowledging the distributive justification and function of affirmative action as central to that task.
    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=927850

  28. I know a huge part of the “conservative” “anti-state” or whatever movement is manned by folks who don’t want the State to touch their social entitlements, and when “libertarians” (whatever that means today) is a settle way to say, “The social entitlements are meant for me and not those ‘fake Americans.’”

  29. Sorry:
    I know a huge part of the “conservative” “anti-state” or whatever movement is manned by folks who don’t want the State to touch their social entitlements, and when “libertarians” (whatever that means today) talk about “restructuring” social entitlements (and its biggest government hand-out in the form of the military) is a settle way to say, “The social entitlements are meant for me and not those ‘fake Americans.’”

  30. I don’t know about the subculture hypothesis of Albion’s Seed, but I do think the attitude of the Confederacy is still alive. It’s not just a Southern phenomenon, but I do agree the mindset of “individualistic rebel” has its roots in the antebellum South and the romanticized view of an agrarian culture dominated by aristocrats (who believe in their innate superiority) served by cheap (or slave) labor.
    Unlike russell, I believe the Civil War was definitely worth fighting to preserve the Union. Despite the holdouts that are now trying to ruin the country, much of the South is a much better place for having remained a part of the United States. The North provided respite for a lot of African-Americans during the Great Migration, people whose descendants are now returning to a more hospitable South. The Civil Rights movement was moved forward by the integration of the military during the ’50s and the participation of northern intellectuals and religious groups. Nobody knows how long slavery itself would have persisted – maybe a long time. But Southern urban areas are mostly Democratic, and the demographic changes that are occurring will surely continue to affect the politics in a positive way.
    It’s possible that the current right-wing movement is the last gasp of the angry white male phenomenon, since they are a dying majority. I just hope we can survive it. The only way we can, I believe, is for liberals to unify against a pernicious movement that is intent on destroying the idea that our country is about progress, both economic and social.

  31. However, something seems to be driving this anti-government resentment, (I mean, really, Michele Bachman as a plausible presidential candidate?) Do you have a plausible alternative?
    Lunacy at the extremes is universal, but it is the left who defines the Tea Party and most conservatives (first conflation) with being “anti-government” when the better description would be “anti-big government” (second conflation).
    Tone deafness is also universal. Why is there such a ground beat on the right against “big government”? Well, look at how HCR and the Stimulus were passed. For people who weren’t on board with one, the other or both, it was the worst kind of governmental heavy handedness, both as to process and end result. And, look at the debt ceiling dramatics. Whether anyone likes it or not, we have spent more, and committed to spend even more on top of that, than we can afford to pay, even if taxes go through the roof, in which case the economic growth we must have to (1) put people back to work and (2) produce the tax revenue needed to pay down debt is DOA.
    Brett is a governmental minimalist and, as the inverse to more than a few here, has his talking points from which he is not going to move.
    Bachmann is a conservative’s true nightmare, like Palin. Without substance or meaningful vision, they simply bring a complex range of emotions bundled into a vaguely coherent platform.

  32. I suspect, without using too broad of a brush, that poor Southern military recruits today look to enlistment as a way of securing Federal “entitlements”, like jobs, medical care and education, due to the deliberately shredded nature of the social safety net at the state level and the outright hostility toward folks who might require a little help in those environs.
    I mean, you could stay in Texas and have a government that prays for rain but does little else about it, or you could join the military and hope to be assigned somewhere where it might rain on you.
    I notice too that anti-government venom in those states never seems to phase the suck on the Federal Treasury the former Confederacy represents.

  33. Lunacy at the extremes is universal, but it is the left who defines the Tea Party and most conservatives (first conflation) with being “anti-government” when the better description would be “anti-big government” (second conflation).
    As if.

  34. Well, look at how HCR and the Stimulus were passed. For people who weren’t on board with one, the other or both, it was the worst kind of governmental heavy handedness, both as to process and end result.
    This may be off topic, but I don’t get that.
    I mean, RE: end results, OK, fine. You don’t like the bills. We can agree to disagree. (I’m not entirely happy with the outcomes either, but probably from the other direction: I feel they were pretty weak tea after having gone through the Senate super majority ringer.)
    But you’re also complaining about the process.
    And AFAICT, the process was perfectly lawful. (And not that tu quoque is an argument, but I daresay it was procedurally much cleaner than, say, the contortions of passing Medicare Part D).
    I’ve certainly been aware that this is a meme out there in the tea-o-sphere (“ramming down our throats”, etc.), but I’m inclined to dismiss complaints about “heavy handedness” of the process as some combination of:
    1) sour grapes at the sheer gall of Democrats to both win majorities and then pass a couple pieces of legislation that conservatives don’t 100% agree with (which is not a process objection at all), or
    2) the view that any process wherein this (gasp) black (/Muslim/Kenyan) President initiates or signs legislation is per se illegitimate.
    If you’ve got a #3 that makes more sense than either of those, I’d be happy to hear it.

  35. And, look at the debt ceiling dramatics. Whether anyone likes it or not, we have spent more, and committed to spend even more on top of that, than we can afford to pay, even if taxes go through the roof, in which case the economic growth we must have to (1) put people back to work and (2) produce the tax revenue needed to pay down debt is DOA.
    My emphasis. This strikes me as plain old wrong.
    First of all with the borrowing terms the federal government is getting, there’s absolutely no need to stop running deficits in the short term (i.e.: during the recession).
    Which means that your conclusions about putting people back to work or collecting enough revenue are faulty. The correct thing to do is take on LOTS more debt in the short term, pay it back out in Keynesian stimulus, than reap the revenue-licious rewards of a humming, healthy economy a few years down the road. There’s no reason to think that adding a few extra trillion to debt to kick start the economy will be an unbearable burden.
    Which brings us to the fact that, in general, we absolutely can afford to sustain high levels of social and infrastructure spending indefinitely*. If the economy is healthy, and we manage to get a handle on health care costs**, projections for entitlement spending look fine. Recessions are — or can be if you don’t screw it up — temporary, and our nation is not actually broke or incapable of ever accomplishing anything ever again (Heritage talking points notwithstanding). It may well take higher rates on top earners — and it will certainly require sound management of the economy — but those are both good ideas anyway.

  36. I second jack lecou in requesting that McKinney explain how, specifically, it was heavy handed for a Democratic majority to pass a health care bill that was based the concept of: 1) allowing the status quo to remain in place for Americans who like it, 2) providing health insurance exchanges for Americans who don’t, 3) barring insurance companies from discriminating against people with preexisting conditions and chronic health problems, 4) extending the scope of family policies to cover older children who may not be settled in a workplace providing appropriate insurance, 5) basically protecting the viability of health insurance companies by requiring people to participate, or to pay a very modest penalty if they don’t.
    jack, your second comment in answer to McKinney is also very right on.

  37. we have spent more, and committed to spend even more on top of that, than we can afford to pay
    This is so manifestly untrue as to border on a lie.

  38. Very nice, as far as it goes, but it seems that this breakdown of American culture, and the corresponding analysis of attitudes towards government, flatly ignores at least four other important cultural/ethnic/religious groups: Jewish immigrants from central and eastern Europe, Catholic immigrants from southern Europe, Catholic immigrants from the Americas and the third world, and Asian immigrants of various religions.
    Though these groups are far more recent players on the American stage, their influence is at least as great as that of the Anglo-Saxon whites that preceded them (and the Africans that the whites shipped over by the thousands as chattel). These groups have managed to have an impact on American culture in excess of their population partly because they have greater than average interest in political participation, many of them coming to this country not simply as immigrants, but actually as refugees.
    To try to understand modern American culture based on a demographic model that is 150 years out of date is, at best, misguided. At worst it is an exercise in revisionism and racism, no better than the backwards looking utopianism of the conservative movement.

  39. Jack Lecou,

    I’ve certainly been aware that this is a meme out there in the tea-o-sphere (“ramming down our throats”, etc.), but I’m inclined to dismiss complaints about “heavy handedness” of the process as some combination of:
    1) sour grapes at the sheer gall of Democrats to both win majorities and then pass a couple pieces of legislation that conservatives don’t 100% agree with (which is not a process objection at all), or
    2) the view that any process wherein this (gasp) black (/Muslim/Kenyan) President initiates or signs legislation is per se illegitimate.
    If you’ve got a #3 that makes more sense than either of those, I’d be happy to hear it.

    Exactly right. In what sense was legislation passed by Congress, after some horse-trading, and signed by the President, crammed down anyone’s throat? The only possible reason to make that claim is the belief that somehow Congress and the President (especially) are not legitimate office-holders.

  40. that poor Southern military recruits today look to enlistment as a way of securing Federal “entitlements”, like jobs, medical care and education, due to the deliberately shredded nature of the social safety net at the state level and the outright hostility toward folks who might require a little help in those environs.
    You could, but then you’d expect the demographics to be disproportionately African-American and Hispanic. They aren’t. The South, followed by the Mid-West, leans fairly heavily to flag-waving types. This has been the case for decades.
    And AFAICT, the process was perfectly lawful. (And not that tu quoque is an argument, but I daresay it was procedurally much cleaner than, say, the contortions of passing Medicare Part D).
    No one said the process was unlawful. But, as I recall, the substance of HCR bill was made available 48 (72?) hours before the vote. Republicans were entirely shut out of the process, as was the public, on the details of the legislation. Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu got notoriously special deals, there was the fake-abortion compromise to get the pro-life Democrats on board and the damn thing is 2500 pages long, so protestations that it just basically preserves the status quo and fixes a thing or two here and there just doesn’t wash. In short, there was a not irrational perception of arrogance on the part of Democrats–how many times did I hear or read someone on the left say “Elections have consequences.” I am sure there is plenty of counter-spin some here might offer. To you it sounds perfectly reasonable, but that’s because your buying your own sales pitch. From the outside looking in, it’s being tone deaf.
    Also, try to recall the context. LJ wanted my take on why the “anti-government” movement has the traction it does. The answer, in short, is the appearance if not the reality of over-reaching by the left.
    I’m inclined to dismiss complaints about “heavy handedness” of the process as some combination of:
    1) sour grapes at the sheer gall of Democrats to both win majorities and then pass a couple pieces of legislation that conservatives don’t 100% agree with (which is not a process objection at all), or
    2) the view that any process wherein this (gasp) black (/Muslim/Kenyan) President initiates or signs legislation is per se illegitimate.
    If you’ve got a #3 that makes more sense than either of those, I’d be happy to hear it.

    I do, but you won’t buy it. First, Items 1 and 2 above are part and parcel of the internal kool aid the left drinks. Item 2 first–You can whine all day long about how those nasty racist conservatives think Obama is illegitimate because of his color, but saying it doesn’t make it so. If that were true, conservatives would be fine with Obama’s policies if he were white. Item 1–Democrats won across the board because they got more votes. That’s democracy. They passed HCR against widespread doubt and opposition, and were pretty self-congratulatory about it. Some of the details are covered above. The totality of the process is seen as arrogance/heavy-handedness in some quarters and produces a reaction, in this case the results of the 2010 elections.
    even if taxes go through the roof, in which case the economic growth we must have to (1) put people back to work and (2) produce the tax revenue needed to pay down debt is DOA.
    My emphasis. This strikes me as plain old wrong.

    Sure it does. That’s the left’s, and particularly the progressive left’s, take on how economics works. The problem is, not everyone agrees with this. Again, recalling the context of my answer to LJ, he was looking for reasons why the backlash against Obama et al is so pronounced. One of the reasons is that spending is way out of control and the other is the only clear picture they get of Democrat policy going forward is: keep spending and raise taxes. While this seems perfectly reasonable to folks on the left, it doesn’t appear to be quite so obvious to a lot of others. Feel free to dismiss them as idiots, racists or whatever. Name calling will continue to be as persuasive as ever was.
    Which brings us to the fact that, in general, we absolutely can afford to sustain high levels of social and infrastructure spending indefinitely*. If the economy is healthy, and we manage to get a handle on health care costs**, projections for entitlement spending look fine. Recessions are — or can be if you don’t screw it up — temporary, and our nation is not actually broke or incapable of ever accomplishing anything ever again (Heritage talking points notwithstanding). It may well take higher rates on top earners — and it will certainly require sound management of the economy — but those are both good ideas anyway.
    Again, this is standard, progressive thinking. We can spend even more than we already are and with sound management of the economy, things will be great. Some of us doubt the ability of Pelosi/Reid and Obama to manage the economy. But, on the left, it is an article of faith that committed, intelligent people can look rationally at what the country needs and find a way to engineer the correct economic result. The fact that this has never happened before in human history, particularly in a country as large and diverse as the US, gives few on the left any pause for concern.
    This is so manifestly untrue as to border on a lie.
    Well, thanks for that. Simply because someone believes that we can tax at confiscatory levels and spend virtually without limit doesn’t translate that belief into immutable fact. But, if you want to know why there is such antipathy on the right to further government growth, BobbyP’s dismissal of those who do arithmetic differently is a good example of what produces heated opposition.
    I don’t expect to change many, if any, minds. But just as Pelosi and many others got it wrong when they dismissed the early Tea Party movement as astro turf, so too do many continue to miss the boat by discounting the number and commitment of those who find the Democratic approach problematic.

  41. how many times did I hear or read someone on the left say “Elections have consequences.
    You realize that this was a George W. Bush and, more generally, a circa-2004 Republican, thing that got thrown back in their faces when they lost, right?

  42. “Simply because someone believes that we can tax at confiscatory levels and spend virtually without limit doesn’t translate that belief into immutable fact.”
    I wouldn’t expect many minds to be influenced by fact-impaired type statements like this one. Unless this is meant to refer to a hypothetical society that actually has confiscatory levels of taxation and where the party that bitches the most about deficits isn’t the one that is primarily responsible for it?

  43. Scots-Irish culture is responsible, yet my area (the Gulf Coast), doesn’t have much in terms of Scots-Irish
    Scots -Irish from the “back country” migrated following the rivers into Ar. and N Tx (Ohio-Tennessee-Mississippi-Red). The actual Gulf Coast folks mostly came across from GA, Mississippi, and Alabama.
    That’s why Dallas and Houston hate each other – very different backgrounds.

  44. we have spent more, and committed to spend even more on top of that, than we can afford to pay
    This is so manifestly untrue as to border on a lie.

    Speaking as a lefty, I don’t mind saying that we owe more money than is healthy. Depending on who’s counting, total US debt – including what we owe ourselves, which we actually do need to pay back, so yes, it does count – is in the neighborhood of 100% of GDP.
    The last time it was that high was during WWII, when we were engaged in truly global battle against two powerful industrial states.
    It would be good for us to lower our debt load to something closer to historical levels.
    Although I will say that claims of “confiscatory levels” of taxation are, as a plain and simple matter of fact, historically nuts.
    I don’t mean any disrespect, it’s just not supportable by the actual history. Both the marginal income tax rates, and the overall rate of federal taxation as a percentage of GDP, are historically low, low, low, low, low.
    If you want to go back more than about 80 years, you might have a case. Otherwise, not so much.
    The numbers just are not there.
    The South, followed by the Mid-West, leans fairly heavily to flag-waving types.
    Not quite accurate. It’s kind of a mixed bag. At least, when evaluated on a per-capita basis.
    TX and OK stand out, but so does HI and MT.
    MS and both Carolinas, those bastions of rebel yelldom, are outdone by every state in the northeast, including all of New England, NY, and NJ.
    ME outdoes GA.
    Not quite so cut and dry.
    Note that this doesn’t include Marine recruitment. I couldn’t find state-by-state stats for the Marines, which AFAIC speaks well of them.
    But statistically, there just aren’t enough Marines to make a dent in my overall point.
    how many times did I hear or read someone on the left say “Elections have consequences.”
    Seriously, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
    McK, I hope you live to be 110. If you do, you will not, from this day until the day you die, hear that phrase in an unfriendly context as often as folks like me heard it on a more or less weekly basis from 2000 until 2008.
    HCR was discussed, in Congress and in public meetings, with and without guns, day in and day out, for well over a year. It’s all that anyone talked about.
    Yes, it’s a great big burning hunk of legislation. It’s a complex issue, with about a million stakeholders each with their own axe to grind, and represents a dollar figure verging on 20% of GDP.
    So yes, it’s contentious, and yes, it’s complicated, and yes, it takes a lot of language to try to pin it down.
    I can tell you that my .Net 4.0 “In A Nutshell” book weighs in at 1,000 pages. That’s in a Nutshell, dude. Thank god I don’t hack X Windows code anymore, that was a whole bookshelf.
    How many pages in Blackstone’s Commentaries?
    How many pages of text would I need to read to come up to speed on the history of US Constitutional Law? How many for a thorough understanding of organic chemistry?
    I know a guy, a great bassist and tenor saxophonist, who has transcribed over 7,000 pages of jazz solos. The dude is a great player, and that’s what it takes to be one.
    2,500 pages for legislation to govern the entire freaking health care industry of the United States of America seems proportionate. To me, anyway.
    Yes, the average person won’t grok it all. The average person is not going to grok the legislation in all of its miniscule detail, because the average person is not going to grok the reality in all of its miniscule detail.
    That’s unfortunate, but it is what is is.
    FBOW, that’s why we have representatives, and it’s why we give them enough money to hire a staff.
    There are a lot of things like that. Life’s complicated.

  45. “Bachmann is a conservative’s true nightmare, like Palin. Without substance or meaningful vision, they simply bring a complex range of emotions bundled into a vaguely coherent platform”
    Bachman is the prefect Republican, though. She loudly proclaims how Christian she is voting to give herself a tax cut, and to decimate supports for the elderly, the disabled, the children of the poor, and the unemployed. she calls herself a fiscal conservative while suppportig her party’s policies which were intended to create a deficit (so it could be used to justify her vote agaist Medicare, Medicaid and unemployment). She’s agaisnt big government programs and earmarks while voting to shovel farm subsidies to her family and federal tax dollars to her husband’s business.
    She’s the perfect Republican politician!

  46. I’m still stuck on this confiscatory taxes crap.
    Some Republican House member was whining yesterday about the high taxes on the poor old rich who could’t afford to keep their country club memberships and had to buy less expensive cars.
    I know a old lady who has no car. She can’t afford one. She feeds a family of stray cats (mom ad her six adult offspring) who live uder her trailer. I helped her get the cats all spayed and nuetered paid for by a charity. She loves the cats–they are her family and company–but she can’t afford to feed them. (I buy a bag of cat food once a month to supplimet what she buys)She lives on top ramen herself the last week of every month.
    But never mind that!@ According to Mck she should sacrifice to help pay down the deficit first, rich people can sacrifice later on. So what should she sacrifice? Her tiny beat up old traler? Her insufficient food stamps? Her Medicaid? The Social Security disability that doesn’t cover her very rudimetary living expenses? Or maybe she should take the cats to the pound and have them killed so she won’t have to budget cat food any more?
    How come coservatives ever seem to give a shit about the confiscatory nature of the attacks they make on the poor?
    i hoestly don’t know how conservatives can live with theri consciences. Dogmas about confiscatory taxes are not more important than real poeple.

  47. McKinney (in quotes here and below “The answer, in short, is the appearance if not the reality of over-reaching by the left.”al
    And “appearance” here is media bloviating? Since my (and others’) prior comments demonstrate that there was actually no overreaching? Media, anybody? Fox News? Murdoch? Lies?
    “The totality of the process is seen as arrogance/heavy-handedness in some quarters and produces a reaction, in this case the results of the 2010 elections.”
    “Seen as”? Fox News anybody? Murdoch? Lies?
    “spending is way out of control and the other is the only clear picture they get of Democrat policy going forward is: keep spending and raise taxes?”
    Spending? Bush turning huge surpluses into deficits, leaving Obama with a financial crisis? Do you have a memory disorder?
    “Some of us doubt the ability of Pelosi/Reid and Obama to manage the economy. But, on the left, it is an article of faith that committed, intelligent people can look rationally at what the country needs and find a way to engineer the correct economic result. The fact that this has never happened before in human history, particularly in a country as large and diverse as the US, gives few on the left any pause for concern.”
    Can politicians manage the economy? Maybe not entirely. Can they influence employment? Yes. It’s called stimulus.
    “I don’t expect to change many, if any, minds.”
    No doubt. Most people who speak on the basis of dogma, without evidence, on the basis of “appearance” and what’s “seen as” …
    that doesn’t change minds.

  48. Laura Koerbeer, thanks so much for your comment. Confiscatory taxes? The lowest rates since the ’60’s? The ’60’s until the 90s being the proudest years of American history? Give me a break.
    China is progressing. It’s making huge mistakes along the way, for sure – way too much progress; way too little regulation (no, no regulation! In China!). What kind of country, McKinney, do you want to be? What do you see as our future? No taxes….. ahhhhh. Filthy air; filthy food; no education; no medicine; people dying from poverty.
    Ahhhhhhhhhhh – but no taxes. Billionaires by their swimming pools…..

  49. I was curious, so I went and looked it up.
    How many pages is the US Code, unannotated:

    The Code itself, from the USGPO, is in 35 volumes of around 1,200 to 1,400 pages each, including 6,850 pages of index in 6 volumes and one volume that is nothing but a 1,400-page LIST of the other public laws that have not been codified (e.g, the budget, etc).
    Then there is the Code of Federal Regulations, for another $1,400 or more for a subscription, for another 20,000 pages

    So yeah, it’s all nuts, and maybe the country is, plainly and simply, ungovernable due to the welter of law that’s accumulated over our not-quite-250 years.
    But 2,500 pages of law to govern the provision of health care just doesn’t seem out of scale to me.
    It’s a hell of a lot of ink and dead trees, but for good or ill, there doesn’t appear to be anything unusual about it.
    Not my field, as they say, so I’m sure I could be wrong.

  50. McKinney
    Your last comment show astounding lack oh history of your own country. This is a person who’s been in this country for only 13.5 years. Also lack of basic economy 101.
    The comment reminds me of the time when i just arrived to the US and listening to TV shows where the claims that can be attributed to US only was claimed for the world, statements like biggest in the world, longest, only free country, so on and on. Knowing better then the false glorification proclaimed all over the TV, it made me wonder how much lies the people are able to take. I found out that there is no limit to it.

  51. Simply because someone believes that we can tax at confiscatory levels and spend virtually without limit doesn’t translate that belief into immutable fact.

    Aren’t you projecting a bit?

  52. Brett’s misapprehension is widespread, and it is a serious problem.
    Government is neither good nor evil. It is not a thing to be maximized for its own sake, but neither is less government an intrinsic good. Government is nothing more than a tool; when it works effectively, it is one of our very best tools.
    It is not the only tool, and attempting to apply it inappropriately can do real harm.
    But attempting to destroy it wholesale is to attempt to cripple mankind as surely as denying us fire or electricity.

  53. Simply because someone believes that we can tax at confiscatory levels and spend virtually without limit doesn’t translate that belief into immutable fact.
    You are either delusional or belabor under the believe that you can spout bullshit without being called on it.
    It is an article of faith among right-wing blowhards that they can spout off that they are “overtaxed” and that the government “spends without limit,” believing that their statements are true by dint of the fact they say them. They are not. You are simply a self-interested blowhard who demands that these statements be taken seriously because it is in service to the morally bankrupt ideology you cling to and your social milieu of right wing conservatives you want to ingratiate yourself with. Topped off with a lot of resentment towards younger liberals that you are pissed off at.
    Spending is low. Insofar as sometimes it rises as a % of GDP, it’s because GDP had a precipitous drop-off. We cut and cut and cut your taxes and spent money on wars to keep you entertained, and it did nothing but piss you off and cause you to complain even more about taxes. Why? Because a Democrat got elected president, giving you what you felt was carte blanche to spout right-wing lies you “know” are true.
    I realize that this is how you treat your friends and family, spouting right-wing BS as though it deserves to be treated as factual, but it is not. My only conclusion is that cutting spending and taxes, letting the budget and the country crumble, does not appease the right wing hostility in your heart but only aggravates it and detaches you even further and further from reality.
    We did it your way, electing a right-wing president with a toady right wing congress, and he tanked the economy. We gave you everything you wanted, and it turned out that conservative policies are a big fat harmful lie. Why do you think we’re going to take you and your morally bankrupt ideology seriously, now? When you had the chance to care about the country, you were a right-wing Bush toady loyalist. I don’t really think that gives you credibility on this matter, especially know while you spit on the unemployed.

  54. This one goes to 11.
    Maybe dial it back a notch or two, please?
    If you read McK carefully, you will find that he is neither a blowhard nor an adherent to a morally bankrupt ideology, and he’s not a guy who spits on anybody.
    And he does actually pay a lot of taxes, as do many folks.
    I don’t have a huge beef with the substance of what you’re saying, just asking for a deep breath to be taken.
    I’ll endeavor to take my own advice.

  55. When I asked McT the question, it was a mix of rhetorical and real, and I wasn’t trying to turn him into a piñata, so my apologies if you thought I was hoisting you up there.
    I tend to take a much more sanguine view of debt (but I would, living where I do). My general example is the fact that Nintendo had revenues of $22 billion dollars in 2009, though that may be superseded by the observation that Apple has more cash than the US government.
    At any rate, apologies for calling out to wander on the firing range.

  56. he does actually pay a lot of taxes, as do many folks.
    No, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t, at least for someone living in a first world country. And the taxes he pays aren’t “confiscatory.”
    Facts matter. McK’s emotional state he’s been whipped into by right-wing ideology is not to be taken into account.

  57. But, as I recall, the substance of HCR bill was made available 48 (72?) hours before the vote. Republicans were entirely shut out of the process, as was the public, on the details of the legislation.

    Not to be uncivil, but were you under a rock in 2009? The debate went on literally for months. Outreach to Republicans to try to reach a deal went on for months and months and months. “Shut out” my bleeding foot.
    Spin all you like, but flatly refusing to compromise or negotiate in good faith and then voting ‘no’ down the line is not at all the same as being “shut out”. (In fact, the bill contained a lot of upfront concessions to Republicans – it’s been accurately characterized by many as essentially the Republican policy prescription for HCR, ca. late 90s or early oughts.)
    As for the 48 hours thing – this is a red herring. It’s common knowledge in Washington that nobody really reads the full legalese before a vote anyway, even if they’ve got a week. The broad outlines are usually known, and it’s more or less a matter of trusting the intent of the drafters and the relevant committees. Usually you can patch it up later if there’s a big problem.
    That’s somewhat problematical, I’ll admit, but not in any way unique to bills you oppose that got passed by Democrats – heck, Boehner just rushed through the debt bill with less than 48 hours, and that’s already something like the 5th time he’s broken his promise to always allow 72 hours.
    (As an aside, in principle I think I’d support keeping bills in “plain English” until the final vote – or after it. IIRC, the plain English version of the HCR bill was only a few dozen pages – it’s all the legalese involved in patching it into the existing code and crossing every T that inflates bills of even moderate complexity so much.)

    Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu got notoriously special deals, there was the fake-abortion compromise to get the pro-life Democrats on board…

    Disappointing, but still more or less normal horse trading, what’s so objectionable about this case? (Note that any Republican willing to vote for the thing probably could have asked for just about anything they pleased.)

    … and the damn thing is 2500 pages long, so protestations that it just basically preserves the status quo and fixes a thing or two here and there just doesn’t wash.

    See above about bill length in general, but on this point, I’d add:
    – Why does a long bill make these claims less plausible? Minor changes or not, a bill like this has to touch and tweak a lot of things all over the place. That tends to pad the word count.
    – And note that the claim isn’t that the bill doesn’t make any major changes – it obviously does – the claim is that the bill doesn’t change the status quo for people who already have insurance they’re happy with. That’s quite different. It’s easy to see how the new add-ons (exchanges, new rules, etc.) might be relatively more complicated.

    In short, there was a not irrational perception of arrogance on the part of Democrats–how many times did I hear or read someone on the left say “Elections have consequences.”

    Sure looks like some irrational perception to me.
    To review: A year-long debate and negotiation is followed by passage of a much-discussed, centrist-or-even-rightish-leaning bill of not-unusual length via some perfectly ordinary horsetrading and last minute legislative wrangling – in part necessitated by the fact that Republicans refused to bargain in good faith.
    Yet this is spun by the tea-party set as some kind of outrageous abuse of the legislative process in which a secret, dangerous, socialist bill was passed while Republicans were “shut out”.
    That’s not spin. It’s simply ludicrous.

    I am sure there is plenty of counter-spin some here might offer. To you it sounds perfectly reasonable, but that’s because your buying your own sales pitch. From the outside looking in, it’s being tone deaf.

    Umm, ditto. Though not tone deaf so much as “fact deaf”.

    Also, try to recall the context. LJ wanted my take on why the “anti-government” movement has the traction it does. The answer, in short, is the appearance if not the reality of over-reaching by the left.

    All you’re pointing out is that the “anti-government” movement appears to harbor a lot of incredibly false perceptions.
    This doesn’t really explain where those perceptions are coming from or why they’re finding such fertile ground…

    I do, but you won’t buy it. First, Items 1 and 2 above are part and parcel of the internal kool aid the left drinks. Item 2 first–You can whine all day long about how those nasty racist conservatives think Obama is illegitimate because of his color, but saying it doesn’t make it so. If that were true, conservatives would be fine with Obama’s policies if he were white.

    1. How would we be able to tell that that they wouldn’t be?
    2. Even if we did have a “white Obama” control to test this claim, and found the tea party still hostile, this doesn’t necessarily dissipate the racism charge. There’s still the–very credible, IMO–narrative that a lot of middle class whites oppose social spending if it’s perceived that it might benefit minorities. (A black president is just icing on the cake.)
    3. In any case, I wouldn’t say this is the sole motivation. It’s obviously complicated. Some people are just coming from it from the perspective of flatly wrong beliefs about economics. Or sheer hyperpartisanship.

    They passed HCR against widespread doubt and opposition, and were pretty self-congratulatory about it.

    I would point out, according to the polling, minority doubts. In fact, the final bill was probably somewhat to the right of the measures supported by the polling (see: public option, the).
    IIRC, overall public support DID fall in the late stages of the game, and after passage, but this was due to (1) right-wing FUD of the kind you’re rehashing here, (2) a lot of more left-wing folks souring on watered-down nature of the final bill. It’s very misleading to try lump the two together.

    Some of the details are covered above. The totality of the process is seen as arrogance/heavy-handedness in some quarters and produces a reaction, in this case the results of the 2010 elections.

    Right, per above, left-wing apathy plus right-wing anger equaled low turnout of the former and an unfortunate sweep for the latter. Not to mention the sluggish economy (thanks to undersized stimulus).
    But again, this doesn’t really explain why so many people on the right were/are so ready to believe the ridiculous FUD.

  58. I can’t take seriously the seriousness of anyone who talks about confiscatory tax levels without acknowledging the — in effect — confiscatory practices of big business in this era. By “confiscatory levels” of taxes I presume McK means taxes on higher earners; the “confiscation” I’m talking about hits everyone, and the lowest earners the hardest.
    Example 1: I got a text message the other day on my cell phone, welcoming me to some b*llsh!t service that I hadn’t (knowingly) signed up for and don’t want. Because it was time to put my son on my cell phone plan, I happened to ask at the Verizon store what I could do about the nuisance of having to pay 20 cents for text messages I don’t want.
    Turns out the nuisance isn’t just a 20 cent charge for the text because I don’t have a plan, it’s probably a $9.99 charge (if not worse) for “premium texting.” And I can’t do a damned thing about it because Congress — those confiscatory bastards — is too busy letting Verizon confiscate my money for services I didn’t ask for and don’t want to get around to protecting the little guy any more.
    The article says that the big 3 cell phone companies made about $650 million between 2006 and 2011 on cramming fees. Most of that money came from ordinary people like me, a lot of it for things people like me didn’t want. And that’s only the cut the phone companies got for putting the charges on their bills. Vastly more money, presumably, went to the crooks who are stealing $9.99 from me because Congress lets them.
    Example 2: I have a fat folder in my file cabinet of “Privacy Notices” from companies I deal with — my bank account, my insurance company, my IRA, etc. — because Congress did sort of more of less in a way force companies to inform me about all the ways I’m powerless to stop them from using my personal data for their own gain.
    These may seem like minor details, but the list could go on and on (read the Red Tape Chronicles regularly and see), and the list is symbolic of the bigger thing that’s wrong with this picture of “confiscatory” business practices aided and abetted by Congress as often as not.
    Just to get some perspective on the level of confiscation that McK is so ticked off about, I want to repeat — for the third or fourth time on this blog — my summary, from CBO data, of just how badly off the super-rich have gotten in the past 30+ years in this horrible world of “confiscatory” taxes:

    The 2005 charts divide the top quintile into 7 sublevels. The highest level of all is “Top 0.01 percentile.” In 1979 there were roughly 9000 households in that group, by 2005 there were about 11000.
    In 1979, the after-tax income of the lowest quintile was $14,400; of the top 1% of 1% it was $4,188,300. The top 1% of 1% were taking home (after taxes) 291 times the bottom quintile.
    In 2005, the after-tax income of the lowest quintile was $15,300; of the top 1% of 1% it was $24,286,300, or 1587 times the bottom quintile.

    The wealth is all going to the top, increasingly obscenely. Charting the CBO numbers, one finds that the bottom four quintiles were essentially stagnant in terms of after-tax income from 1979 to 2005. Even the lower portions of the top quintile didn’t make many gains. Only the top couple of bands did better over time, and their lines on the graph got ever steeper.
    If the top 1% of 1% gave away half their after-tax income to the lowest quintile, the folks in the lowest quintile would see their monetary resources rise by a third, while the folks at the top would have to struggle along on a mere million a month.
    There isn’t a violin in the world small enough to express my level of concern at how our “confiscatory” tax structure is soaking the poor bastards who have to get along on twenty-four million a year after taxes, while twenty-five million households try to make it on $15,000 or so.
    I got the #’s above from here in March of 2009. When I went back recently to update my charts, I couldn’t find the top quintile broken down so finely any more.
    Gee, I wonder why.

  59. Not oly does a miority oppose the HCR act, but the oppositio is based o lies from the Republica party: death panels, socialism, big govermet coimig betwee the aptiet ad the doctor…if Republican politicians had any legitimate objections to the bill they surely would have expressed them, but it is to the shame of the party ad it’s supporters that the oppositio to the bill was expressed entirely in terms of lies. The opposition was partisan politics, ot based on substance.
    WHich ought to be shockig. It ought ti be shickig that early every Republica elected to natioal office lied about a Health care reform act because they cared more about partisa politics tha the log term effects of health expeses o our ecoomy or the effects of lack of isurance o ordiary families.
    Just aother example of how Republcia poiliticias ot oly do’t care about ordinary voters but don’t care about America, either.
    Just as they showed they don’t care about America when they deliberately created a deficit, then lied about the causes of the deficit and used it as a basis for economic terrorism against their country to drive their ideological agenda down everyone’s throats.

  60. That’s why Dallas and Houston hate each other
    Nuance here. Dallas is the New Zealand of Texas and everybody knows that. It is undisputed.
    McK, I hope you live to be 110. If you do, you will not, from this day until the day you die, hear that phrase in an unfriendly context as often as folks like me heard it on a more or less weekly basis from 2000 until 2008.
    I was unaware that the Repubs began with this arrogance. I agree, turnabout is fair play.
    Your last comment show astounding lack oh history of your own country. This is a person who’s been in this country for only 13.5 years.
    I’m not sure how to respond to this.
    Not to pile on, MckT, but you spelled “Democratic” wrong.
    Thanks. Your shots are always well aimed.
    2,500 pages for legislation to govern the entire freaking health care industry of the United States of America seems proportionate. To me, anyway.
    The point is, the legislation itself should have been put out there for review and discussion. The concept was discussed, but not the actual law going into effect. It was consciously suppressed, to deflect specific criticism and because the number of last minute deals that had to be cut to get it through. It was an ugly process and probably the genesis of the Tea Party roots.
    FBOW, that’s why we have representatives, and it’s why we give them enough money to hire a staff.
    If my representative is never shown a copy of the legislation, I am not represented. It was a sh***y way to pass a bill and the left will regret the process.
    If you read McK carefully, you will find that he is neither a blowhard nor an adherent to a morally bankrupt ideology, and he’s not a guy who spits on anybody.
    And he does actually pay a lot of taxes, as do many folks.

    Thanks, Russell. If Tyro and some of the others going off on my “confiscatory taxes” comment were to read particularly carefully, they would see that I was responding directly to BobbyP. Further research would reveal that one of BobbyP’s comments on Russell’s “Tax Me” post seemed to proposed confiscatory levels of taxation and much higher spending.
    So, chill out, Tyro. I do not contend that the left universally demands confiscatory levels of taxation or unlimited domestic spending. I will note, however, that much of the word choice is substantively no different than the blowhardism on the right. Full of invective and mind reading and imputing to others the worst of motives. I am particularly amused at Sapient’s notion that I am a Fox News fan.
    Also, interesting recruitment stats, Russell.
    And, you’re right, as we’ve discussed before, I pay a lot of taxes, as do a lot of people.
    so my apologies if you thought I was hoisting you up there.
    Appreciate the thought, but entirely unnecessary. This is not my first rodeo.
    I tend to take a much more sanguine view of debt
    In a way, I do to. If it’s as bad as I think it is, then eventually, to quote the president, we will have to eat our peas regardless of what anybody wants. If it isn’t, well then, my bad.

  61. But, as I recall, the substance of HCR bill was made available 48 (72?) hours before the vote…

    The Medicare Part D vote in the House. Felonies, actual felonies, committed on the floor of the House, to insure passage.
    Oh, the horror of Dems shoving THAT one down the Nation’s throat. Oh, wait…

  62. Let me put it a different way.
    A very small percentage of the population is raking very large, and ever larger, amounts of wealth off the rest of us. That rising line of income for the top 1% of 1% didn’t come from thin air, it came from everyone else. It certainly didn’t all come from value these people added to the world. People who take moeny from me for stuff I didn’t ask for and don’t want, and who have bought Congress’s cooperation in giving me no remedy, are crooks, pure and simple, whether legally so or not. Taking some of the money back from them isn’t confiscation, as far as I’m concerned, it’s simple justice.
    Getting all exercised about the government taking a few more bucks from unimaginably wealthy people to put toward the “general welfare” and the “common good,” and not giving a damn about the fact that huge multi-national businesses are stealing a few bucks at a time from practically everyone on a regular basis — kind of a partial view of the big picture, if you ask me.

  63. My emphasis. This strikes me as plain old wrong.
    Sure it does. That’s the left’s, and particularly the progressive left’s, take on how economics works. The problem is, not everyone agrees with this.

    I’ve no doubt you can find some partisan economists who will tell you whatever you want to hear.
    Nevertheless, the basic economic outline here is not especially controversial. here for example, is an article from just a couple days ago quoting private sector bond analysts on the damage further spending cut backs are likely to do to an already weakening economy.
    The partisan counter narrative that low taxes on the rich are needed to spur supply side investments hasn’t really been finding a lot of empirical support in recent years. Nor has the absurd notion that austerity budgets reduce unemployment or help economic recovery.
    (Relatedly, the view lately espoused by many policy elites – that low inflation is far more important than fighting unemployment – is somewhat incoherent when examined closely.)

    Again, recalling the context of my answer to LJ, he was looking for reasons why the backlash against Obama et al is so pronounced. One of the reasons is that spending is way out of control and the other is the only clear picture they get of Democrat policy going forward is: keep spending and raise taxes.

    While this seems perfectly reasonable to folks on the left, it doesn’t appear to be quite so obvious to a lot of others. Feel free to dismiss them as idiots, racists or whatever. Name calling will continue to be as persuasive as ever was.
    Well, popular understanding of the economics of national debt or the need for countercyclical fiscal policy is indeed abysmal. I’ll grant you that.
    It’s problematic, inasmuch as this leads them to elect disingenuous leaders who play on this ignorance, and inasmuch as the press is unwilling to educate.

    Again, this is standard, progressive thinking. We can spend even more than we already are and with sound management of the economy, things will be great. Some of us doubt the ability of Pelosi/Reid and Obama to manage the economy.

    I think on the evidence, I doubt the ability of Republicans to responsibly manage the economy more.

    But, on the left, it is an article of faith that committed, intelligent people can look rationally at what the country needs and find a way to engineer the correct economic result.

    I think by definition, committed, intelligent people can rationally judge what the country needs.
    I do not take it on faith that we can generally find such people in Congress or the White House though.

    The fact that this has never happened before in human history, particularly in a country as large and diverse as the US, gives few on the left any pause for concern.

    Believe me, it gives plenty of us pause.
    The problem is: there’s no alternative.
    See, the fact that rational economic policies have to be fought and argued for constantly, the fact that the public and elected policy makers frequently fail to act responsibly, does not actually manifest any kind of viable alternative. Not one that will, on net, result in better outcomes or less economic suffering.

    I don’t expect to change many, if any, minds. But just as Pelosi and many others got it wrong when they dismissed the early Tea Party movement as astro turf, so too do many continue to miss the boat by discounting the number and commitment of those who find the Democratic approach problematic.

    I’ll just note that the tea party was astroturf originally, so Pelosi was right. And while it’s developed somewhat organically (cancerously, even) since then, there’re definitely still some monied interests making sure it’s all properly fertilized and watered.

  64. The concept was discussed, but not the actual law going into effect. It was consciously suppressed, to deflect specific criticism and because the number of last minute deals that had to be cut to get it through.
    Assumes facts not in evidence.

  65. Debt ceiling bill is about to pass trough senate today and be signed by Obama. Will Obama use line veto signing to leave clean debt ceiling line since he promised that he will veto partial debt ceiling rise? will he use line veto power just as Christie did to eliminate agreement with Democratic majority in NJ senate? Or as Bush did numerous times without much of a peep from Media.
    Debt deal affects only the budget of the 2013 and the cut is between $9 and &22 B, More of the cuts are coming from “super congress” commission trigger.
    2014 and following budgets are not going to be affected by this since it is going to be new different congress.

  66. i hoestly don’t know how conservatives can live with theri consciences. Dogmas about confiscatory taxes are not more important than real poeple.
    Laura, your second sentence hits the nub of it. Most of us care most about “real people”. But real people means primarily people we can relate to. If you know, as you do, someone who is poor it is much easier to relate to the poor.
    If you rarely encounter real poverty (let’s hear it for gated communities!), it becomes much easier to feel like the poor are somehow “undeserving” of you help. That is, they are the cause of their own problems, so they deserve their situation. And besides, since you rarely see them, how many poor can there really be?
    What we have, then, is a failure of empathy combined with a failure of imagination. Supported by a preference not to know anything which would break that view of the world. But once you have achieved that, your conscience really isn’t a problem. Because there is nothing for it to get a grip on.

  67. In a way, I do to. If it’s as bad as I think it is, then eventually, to quote the president, we will have to eat our peas regardless of what anybody wants. If it isn’t, well then, my bad.
    The problem with this is that this is a case where actions based on beliefs can become self fulfilling prophecy.
    Assuming that the debt situation is not currently urgent, a protracted recession or stagnation caused by misguided austerity measures will nevertheless make the long term debt situation very bad indeed.
    It won’t simply be a matter of “my bad,” I was wrong. (Indeed, there will probably be plenty of folks still around arguing that the problem is just that there wasn’t enough cutting.)
    OTOH, if short term debt funded stimulus spending were on the table, and it did indeed speed recovery, the long term debt problem would fade to insignificance. (Assuming no Bush III administration, natch.)

  68. Hat tip to Balloon Juice for the link. Especially the first six paragraphs; not new ground but explaining the origins and makeup of the Federal debt very clearly:
    http://nplusonemag.com/origins-of-the-crisis
    Especially this:
    “Intra-governmental debt is something of a misnomer: $4.53 of it is really money owed by the government to the American people. The biggest single number in sight, $2.40, represents what Americans have collectively set aside for retirement, or Social Security. This $2.40 is a surplus, collected over decades, as the total revenues from Social Security payroll taxes have exceeded the total amount being paid to beneficiaries. This surplus has been invested in the government, where it counts towards the total debt. The psychological impact of this language game should be clear. What ought to be celebrated as sound financial planning appears instead as further evidence of reckless profligacy. The more money we save, the poorer we are told we are. There is also $1.68 in savings for health care and $0.40 dedicated to needs such as highways, housing, the disposal of nuclear waste, and unemployment insurance.”
    Repeat: “The more money we save, the poorer we are told we are.”
    See my next comment as well regarding the pointlessness of saving alternatives available to 99% of the American people.
    From, for me, a surprising source.

  69. Read the comment from Redrum by a guy who works fairly well up the totem pole on Wall Street, regarding the public stock markets and the parasitic nature of the financial industry, particularly with regard to derivatives.
    Remember, the public equity markets, (what have you made in the S&P Index over the past 12 years, folks?) are where we have been told by Kudlow, the Bush Administration, and every Republican since time began that they want most or all of our Social Security savings (see above comment) to go.
    The depth and breadth of this attempted heist is monstrous. It’s civilization ending.
    “Francis Cianfrocca Monday, August 1st at 9:55PM EDT (link)
    To my mind the public stock markets are not the real stock market. The real market is PE. The public markets are where private investors go to dump their garbage after they’ve sucked the juice out of it.
    To a great extent, we don’t build great companies with public funding anymore in America. Certainly not like we once did. I think that’s an awful shame.
    And if you’re an investor in the public stock markets, well, I feel for you.
    I think that on net, the financial industry today is parasitic to the real economy, and I’ve felt that way for quite a lot of years. Nearly all the years I’ve been involved in finance, actually. If you know anything about the microstructure of derivatives markets (and maybe you do), you’re probably as disgusted as I am. And they’ve gotten measurably worse just in the past two years.
    I think that investment firms need to be restructured such that the primary stakeholders (be they partners, MDs or shareholders) must be fully exposed to the downside as well as the upside.
    I believe that the government can and MUST impose much stricter capital requirements on banks. In this, I’m in full agreement with the recent Tarullo proposals. If anything they don’t far enough. Certainly Basel III doesn’t go far enough. And the “con-cons” that people like Credit Suisse are talking about are too geeky to work right in a crisis, when you need them.”
    Me again.
    Even among a rutting herd of bleating, callow punks, Confederate violence-encouraging blockheads, and raving John Birch nativist lunatics, you can occasionally find some sense, if you get there before the moderators blam them.
    We are effed beyond all effing.

  70. it is the left who defines the Tea Party and most conservatives (first conflation) with being “anti-government”
    When dealing with abusive members of a relationship, it is wise to believe what they say. When right wingers say they want to “drown the government in a bathtub,” I believe them. Forgive me for taking their anti government rhetoric at their word.
    There is a difference here– the right believes in small government for its own sake (so they claim, at least). Mind readers that they are, they project their own false belief system on liberals, whom they believe to want “big government for its own sake” when actually the left tends to want government big enough to do what it needs to do. One ideology is a practical, pragmatic one. The other ideology is an ideology of the fanatic playing crazy.

  71. I’d like to say something about this “2500 pages” nonsense.
    I happen to be involved, right now, in negotiating a business deal involving the sale of software. Most of the terms have long been agreed to, and I could provide a 2-3 page description that would pretty well cover everything a normal person would want to know about this.
    Yet the negotiations go on, because there are lots of legal concerns, because of the need for actual precise definitions and distinctions, because of the need to allow for unlikely but possible events, etc.
    In other words, once you get into legalities, documents and agreements, and certainly statutes, can grow much larger than outsiders would think necessary to implement the basic ideas.
    I think anyone who has been involved in anything like this (closed on a house lately?) understands the process and how the paper multiplies. Surely lawyers do.
    So I have no sympathy for this particular complaint. It’s meaningless.

  72. As far as that goes, how many pages of fine print does it take these days just to log on to free wireless in a hotel? Or to buy and download a piece of software?

  73. Brett:Self government is exactly that; Governing yourself. It isn’t a form of government, it’s government’s antithesis.

    No, this is not what self-government means at all.
    If your personal view of self-governance really does boil down to “nobody else gets to tell me what to do”–as seems to be the case for the Tea Party–then it is not the least bit surprising that you find our (small-d) democratic republic so oppressive and inconvenient.

  74. Countme: You hunt them down like Osama Bin Laden and put a bullet through their eye.

    I am not on board with this.
    It’s not that I dispute the premise that Republicans in Congress have been engaged in a campaign of political terrorism and (quite literally) holding the economic well-being of the country hostage to their demands.
    They are criminals and should be afraid for their liberty, wondering when the FBI is going to arrest them and charge them with a collection of RICO and conspiracy charges. They can never be forgiven for metaphorically holding a gun on the economy and threatening to pull the trigger if they are not given a wish-list of ideological concessions as ransom.
    Make no mistake: this was, is, and remains a form of extortion and terrorism, the actions not of a legitimate political party but of a criminal conspiracy of fanatics who do not care about the harm they are prepared to inflict on the rest of the country in order to get what they want.
    But the line I quoted from you is a bridge too far. For the sake of the country, they must be destroyed–but through the political and legal process, not like that.

  75. “One ideology is a practical, pragmatic one. The other ideology is an ideology of the fanatic playing crazy.”
    This is,IMHO, a ridiculous statement. Even in the debate just kicked down the road, or concluded, we saw the priorities of both sides when faced with the requirement to actually spend less. It is not “fanatics playing crazy” to insist on some level of prioritization of spending on a limited budget.
    I suggest that the things that got cut demonstrate as much about the priorities of the Democrats as the priorities of the Tea Party. Once faced with the reality of not being able to buy everything, they picked the specific cuts as much as Republicans.
    Ans as for the 2500 pages, this:

    Yet the negotiations go on, because there are lots of legal concerns, because of the need for actual precise definitions and distinctions, because of the need to allow for unlikely but possible events, etc

    is precisely why if you got a 2500 page document with one day to read all those details you wouldn’t sign it. If it needed to be 2500 pages, which it probably did, even 48 hrs. is not enough time to get through all the details. Then there was no changes accepted at all, every amendment was killed or blocked in that 48 hrs.
    Would the people you are negotiating with even consider signing it in those circmstances? Uh, no.

  76. CCDG: It is not “fanatics playing crazy” to insist on some level of prioritization of spending on a limited budget.

    But this is not what happened, or what needed to happen. This kind of muddled argument is exactly what comes of conflating the need to raise the debt ceiling with the issue of government spending.
    The fact is that the debt ceiling had to be raised on its own. Period. It was no more optional than it is for me to decide not to pay a credit card bill in order to reduce my discretionary spending. The need to raise the debt ceiling reflects money that Congress has already voted to spend, not an opportunity to rethink that spending.
    It is ridiculous and contradictory that we have a debt ceiling in the first place, but if we must tolerate its existence, it should be a first principle of any responsible legislator that whether or not we pay our bills is never up for debate. The time for settling that debate is when you are voting to appropriate money, not when you get the bill.
    Threatening not to raise it is tantamount to threatening to sabotage the economy and creditworthiness of the United States. The financial well-being of this country is not a bargaining chip to be used as leverage to get what you want, and doing so is not just incomprehensibly stupid–it is, I argue, criminal extortion on its face.
    The only reason these two issues became conflated is because extremist Republicans in Congress chose to conflate them, knowing that they would never be able to extract the kind of spending concessions they sought without threatening the country with unthinkable economic consequences.
    Insisting on prioritizing spending in the budget is not “fanatics playing crazy”. Threatening to force the country into default and blow up the economy in order to demand spending cuts is.

  77. “Make no mistake: this was, is, and remains a form of extortion and terrorism, the actions not of a legitimate political party but of a criminal conspiracy of fanatics who do not care about the harm they are prepared to inflict on the rest of the country in order to get what they want.”
    This is also ludicrous. The President and Democrats could have had the eventual compromise months ago. There would have been little fanfare and the damage done would have been mitigated.
    The President decided to use the battle to get tax hikes, period. He went as far as he could go, the 12th hour, to try and use this debate to raise taxes. He tried everything he could to get 80+ people in the House to back down on the very platform they were elected on.
    That was just politics by Obama (and Boehner who tried to help him).
    The brinksmanship here was the Presidents, laying the foundation for the next debate.
    I am sure, my opinion, that his political advisors assured him it would weaken the Tea Party and Republicans if he could create the “terrorist” meme, and it mattered little what the eventual and inevitable compromise included.
    BTW, Democrats would love it if Obama had shown the same comittment to his campaign promises when they controlled both houses of Congress.

  78. “The only reason these two issues became conflated is because extremist Republicans in Congress chose to conflate them, knowing that they would never be able to extract the kind of spending concessions they sought without threatening the country with unthinkable economic consequences.”
    This is just not true. This issue became conflated as far back as Obama voting against raising the debt ceiling as a Senator. Some issues slowly grow over time until someone has the impetus to call them out. This is one.
    A substantial portion of Americans, although not a majority despite 80% seeming to want a balanced budget amendment, voted for members of the House with the agreement that we would stop growing the size of the Federal budget beyond its means.
    Tying the two things together was, and is, almost the only leverage for forcing prioritization.
    I hope everyone now focuses on the prioritization of the money to be spent, that is a great debate to have.

  79. CCDG: This is also ludicrous. The President and Democrats could have had the eventual compromise months ago.

    You’re still missing the point entirely: there never should have been a compromise. It should never have been necessary, because the threat not to raise it or else should never, ever have been made by a responsible party.

    The President decided to use the battle to get tax hikes, period.

    Horsesh1t. The Republicans laid down an ultimatum that the debt ceiling would not be raised unless it was part of a package to reduce the deficit. Obama attempted–wrongly, I think–to find some middle ground, proposing a number of different approaches to reducing the deficit including raising revenues.

    The brinksmanship here was the Presidents, laying the foundation for the next debate.

    There is no way to describe this other than completely unhinged dishonesty that does not at all comport with reality.

    This is just not true. This issue became conflated as far back as Obama voting against raising the debt ceiling as a Senator.

    You do not seem to grasp the vast gulf of difference between the toothless individual posturing that has occurred in the past and the coordinated threats of the Republicans in Congress this time around.
    In the past, the raise of the debt ceiling was a routine opportunity to make a point about spending and posture for the sake of politics and appearances, but the question of whether or not it would be raised has never been seriously questioned. That the ceiling would be raised was a mathematical certainty allowed individuals to vote against it as a way of making a statement.
    Every credible political observer from across the spectrum is in agreement that this time was vastly different. The markets seem to agree.

    Tying the two things together was, and is, almost the only leverage for forcing prioritization.

    This is a revealing comment. There are many, many things in life that could be used as leverage–but that should never, ever be used that way by a moral person.
    Since you’re not getting the point, perhaps an analogy will help convey just how beyond the pale the threats of the Tea Party are.
    My wife and I are doing the budget, and she notices that our credit card is close to being maxed out. She is upset about how much I’ve spent. I point out that we have had to deal with a bunch of medical issues, essential car repairs, buying school supplies for the kids and paying for college tuition. I also point out that the majority of the credit card bill is actually her own spending, much of which was on nonessentials.
    (Apologies to my actual spouse–no resemblance to any actual budget discussions intended.)
    She is uphappy with this. She refuses to accept responsibility for the debts she incurred, and keeps hammering the point that we’re spending too much and our card is almost maxed out. She refuses to pay the credit card bill, saying that we simply don’t have the money. I point out that the money is already spent and we owe it, and that I’ll be happy to discuss ways to cut back our spending–but not at the expense of our health and our childrens’ educations, and not by refusing to pay our bills.
    At that point she lays down an ultimatum: cancel all of our media subscriptions, cancel my upcoming surgery, and stop paying tuition for our eldest son, or she will refuse to pay the credit card bill. Appalled, I point out the harm that her threat would cause: we would go to collections, take a huge hit on our credit report, we’d have a hard time getting any further lines of credit and would pay more interest for what we do get; I could lose the use of my arm if I don’t have surgery and be unable to work, making our employment situation far worse; our son’s education and future would be compromised, his studies abruptly interrupted. I point out that the time to decide whether or not to spend this money was when we decided to spend it, not when the bill comes due and we find ourselves in debt.
    Those are the terms, she says. Agree to deep cuts in our budget now, or we default on our credit card debt.
    In the face of it, her initial complaint is valid. We have too much debt. We incurred a lot of expenses in the last ten years, and we owe a lot of money as a result. We should both be taking a hard look at what we spend, and work on paying down our debt and prioritizing our expenses.
    But the way to do this is not by refusing to pay our bills, costing us even more money–and credibility–in the long run.
    It is not by sacrificing our childrens’ education.
    It is not by sacrificing our health, and skipping expenses necessary to keep me employed.
    This is, in a nutshell, what the Tea Party extremists in Congress have done. It should be the biggest political scandal in American history that a group of fanatics have threatened to force the country into default in order to extract political concessions they would never have had the votes to get.

  80. I think anyone who has been involved in anything like this (closed on a house lately?) understands the process and how the paper multiplies. Surely lawyers do.
    So I have no sympathy for this particular complaint. It’s meaningless.

    I have a little bit of experience in sorting out legalities, and every case is different. But, in general, telling someone who is inclined against HCR to STFU, don’t ask to read the bill and don’t bitch because it’s so long, just take our word for it, it’s pretty simple, straightforward, blah, blah, blah, is precisely the kind of heavy handedness that provokes massive mistrust and a disproportionate backlash.
    As for compromise, if you’re not on board with the concept, why should someone compromise? It is no answer to say, “since you won’t agree to work with us, you can’t see the law we’re going to pass until we’re ready to pass it.” If that is an acceptable answer, we’re all screwed because whoever has the majority will be in a position to pass laws without the opposition getting a meaningful look at them.
    Look, feel free to try to justify the HCR process. Dismiss the other side’s complaints summarily and they will give you the same treatment right back, when the shoe is on the other foot, at which time you can claim victim status.

  81. It is not “fanatics playing crazy” to insist on some level of prioritization of spending on a limited budget.
    Sorry, I’m with Amezuki on this.
    The debt ceiling has no substantial connection to, and ought not have been discussed in the context of, planning and negotiations for budgets going forward.
    Insisting on “prioritizing spending” in the context of raising the debt ceiling is trying to close the barn door after the horse is gone.
    Too late. That money is already budgeted, allocated, committed, and in many cases, spent.
    I believe the ratio of cuts to revenue increases in the most ambitious Democratic proposal was something like 4 to 1.
    So, claims of Obama gumming up the works with demands for “new taxes” don’t fly.
    The House Republicans own this mess. They wanted it, they got it, it’s theirs.

  82. As another frame of reference, I watched the press conference of the Progressive Caucus yesterday. The position of the Progressive caucus was that all compromise should be voted against and the President should invoke the 14th amendment to raise the debt ceiling.
    This is at least as “extreme” as the Tea Party position and would have been a risk to the deal if the Democrats had a majority in the House. It’s about 74 Congresspersons, more as the overlapping Black Caucus stood with them.
    So it is about the same number as the Tea Party Caucus.

  83. McKT: But, in general, telling someone who is inclined against HCR to STFU, don’t ask to read the bill and don’t bitch because it’s so long, just take our word for it, it’s pretty simple, straightforward, blah, blah, blah, is precisely the kind of heavy handedness that provokes massive mistrust and a disproportionate backlash.

    I don’t see anyone here doing that. What I see is people pointing out that complaining about the page length or word count of a given piece of legislation or body of work is not any kind of useful argument about the merits of its content. The emails I get from Flickr that notify me of activity on my photostream tend to be one or two pages of text and images. A Heinlein juvenile is a few hundred. A Dance with Dragons runs over a thousand. You could probably trim some fat around the margins, but each of these are just about exactly as long as they need to be.
    So yes, people are right to dismiss the “but it’s 2500 pages!” complaint as irrelevant. The response to this should be something along the lines of: “Really? Which pages do you think should be omitted?”

  84. The response to this should be something along the lines of: “Really? Which pages do you think should be omitted?”

    To be clear, the point of this response is to redirect a meaningless and arbitrary complaint about length in a more productive direction. To credibly complain that the length of a piece of legislation is inappropriate, a person is assumed to have a detailed understanding of its contents in order to have an informed opinion about whether or not the length is appropriate.
    If the person complaining understands the material, they should be able to say something to the effect of, “pp 217-285 and 1103 -1220 are mostly redundant; they both set out definitions for X Y and Z, but phrase it in different ways that could lead to confusion. We could cut a lot of fat by merging those sections and ensuring that the language is consistent”. Or perhaps, “at least 400 pages of this monstrosity are consumed by nickel-and-dime amendments that are at best tangentially related to the bill”.
    Those are targeted arguments of substance and merit.
    The complaint of “2500 pages is too long” is not.

  85. “The debt ceiling has no substantial connection to, and ought not have been discussed in the context of, planning and negotiations for budgets going forward”
    I might have agreed with this two years ago, when we actually had a budget. But, the Democrats haven’t submitted a budget to be debated in the Senate since Obama took office. NO budget. Two years. Over 800 days. My Senator didn’t get to debate a budget. Amezuki’s kitchen table discussion didn’t happen. The closest thing was Obama’s budget that was rejected 97-0.
    There wasn’t one in the House until the Republicans took over, that didn’t get a Senate debate. No budget.
    I don’t agree anymore. They are tied together, and should be, or pass a budget so they are not.
    As for the past votes being an opportunity for spineless Senators to act appalled, I don’t see that as a good thing. No matter what party they were from. It makes Obama’s big speech about the debt ceiling in the Senate almost sound like a lie.
    However, I think he was serious and honest, then.

  86. This is at least as “extreme” as the Tea Party position
    Yes, and how far did they get with it?
    They are tied together, and should be, or pass a budget so they are not.
    No, they’re not, and ought not be.
    Pass a budget, and raise the debt ceiling if need be.
    Stamping your feet and claiming you’re going to turn the money tap off so that existing bills aren’t paid is not only dumb, it’s counterproductive. It costs us money.
    How much of the federal budget right now is debt service? How much *more* of the federal budget will be debt service, without changing any other line item, if the credit markets start insisting on a higher return from T-bills to account for risk of default?
    They could make the same point by stacking up $100 bills and setting them on fire.
    It’s just freaking foolish, I don’t care how pissed off they are.

  87. How much *more* of the federal budget will be debt service, without changing any other line item, if the credit markets start insisting on a higher return from T-bills to account for risk of default?

    $1.7 billion so far.
    Heckuva job, teabaggers.

  88. “Yes, and how far did they get with it?”
    Lazy blow off.
    “Pass a budget, and raise the debt ceiling if need be.”
    Can’t pass a budget, or even discuss one, unless Reid lets it get to the floor. Over two years, not one budget debate, much less an actual budget. No one stamped their feet, or burned $100 bills. They did what their constituents sent them to do.
    Just so you know, they think your crazy for objecting to fiscal sanity.
    “How much of the federal budget right now is debt service? How much *more* of the federal budget will be debt service, without changing any other line item, if the credit markets start insisting on a higher return from T-bills to account for risk of default?”
    Funny, the markets were underwhelmed by getting the debt ceiling passed, that downgrade will probably happen anyway.
    Because of the size of the debt, because we didn’t do anything to convince the markets we are serious about reducing our debt increases.
    No one seems to notice the damage in the markets the debt itself is doing. But we can always get the Fed to start buying it again, that will prop up the market.
    That’s freaking foolish, to borrow a phrase.

  89. That number’s been revised to 18 million, but it’s still money that’s been thrown out the window. Well, sort of … it depends on who gets it and what they do with it. Unfortunately, it will probably be financiers who will buy credit default swaps to profit off of someone else’s misery, or some other kind of financial innovation that does the same. Maybe we’ll get lucky and someone will decide to build a not-for-profit daycare for poor, working parents instead. (Not holding my breath…)

  90. Because of the size of the debt, because we didn’t do anything to convince the markets we are serious about reducing our debt increases.
    Debt increases relative to what? If it’s our economy, markets should be upset that we’ve decided to let our productive capacity go to waste – that is, fail to produce in the shorter term and lose our capacity in the longer term.
    And whatever budget gets passed won’t really do squat to help our debt-to-GDP ratio if our taxation and spending remains so ill targeted. Revenues will go down with the reduced economic activity resulting from the spending cuts, while welfare payments go up from more people losing their jobs. In other words, we’ll still have the deficits, but the economy will be worse that it otherwise would have been. That’s not fiscal sanity.
    No one seems to notice the damage in the markets the debt itself is doing.
    Enlighten us, please. And going back to the top of this comment where I quote you, Marty, the size of our debt didn’t seem to affect interest rates until the debt-ceiling hostage-taking started. Even if the results thus far haven’t assuaged markets completely, there would have been no assuaging necessary without the initial hostage-taking.

  91. McK,

    telling someone who is inclined against HCR to STFU, don’t ask to read the bill and don’t bitch because it’s so long, just take our word for it, it’s pretty simple, straightforward, blah, blah, blah, is precisely the kind of heavy handedness that provokes massive mistrust and a disproportionate backlash.

    Not what I said. I just said the “2500 pages” complaint was nonsense. By the way, how about a 900 page version? Still too long?
    Nor is it an accurate statement of what happened. Republicans certainly had a chance to participate in the process. They weren’t shut out, and the design of the bill was the subject of a great deal of news coverage, well before passage.
    So, much of the bill is read before it’s final. The contract I mentioned above is probably going to run 50 pages or so when it’s done, but that hardly means we don’t already know most of what’s in it, including the critical parts – specs, pricing, delivery times. The principles of PPACA were well-publicized before it passed.
    And of course it reflected the existing Massachusetts/Romney/Heritage law. On top of that, this country has been debating HCR of one sort or another since the Theodore Roosevelt Administration. It’s hardly a radical new, previously unheard of, subject.

  92. “Enlighten us, please. And going back to the top of this comment where I quote you, Marty, the size of our debt didn’t seem to affect interest rates until the debt-ceiling hostage-taking started. Even if the results thus far haven’t assuaged markets completely, there would have been no assuaging necessary without the initial hostage-taking.”
    We have been assuaging the markets for months by having the Fed buy over a trillion dollars of our new debt. It’s pretty easy to control interest rates when your central bank is buying your debt.
    That ended (kind of) several weeks ago, although they continue to buy Treasuries with what they make off of the MBS they bought in the first round of easing.
    So we were already having to artificially hold down those rates, now we will see what happens. The rating agencies, less meaningful perhaps than in the past, are looking at the risk on the debt. Not because we debated the savings required to agree to raise it, but because there are savings required.
    So today I saw my latest headline on QE3.

  93. Can’t pass a budget, or even discuss one, unless Reid lets it get to the floor.

    Then try sending a serious one. The budget has to originate in the House, and the House is currently controlled by unhinged fanatics.

    Funny, the markets were underwhelmed by getting the debt ceiling passed, that downgrade will probably happen anyway.
    Because of the size of the debt, because we didn’t do anything to convince the markets we are serious about reducing our debt increases.

    For more than thirty years, Republicans have been running up deficits without accountability while giving lip service to fiscal conservatism and pretending to care about government spending. You don’t have to like that fact, and you shouldn’t–but the numbers don’t lie. By far the biggest increase in our national debt came in the first decade of this century, driven by the Republican agenda to give tax breaks to top income earners, drag us into two open-ended wars, and pass a terrible prescription drug bill that was little more than a massive redistribution of wealth to the pharmaceutical industry.
    And yet in all of those thirty years, the markets haven’t really seem all that concerned about the national debt. They didn’t downgrade us when Reagan exploded the deficit. They didn’t do it when Bush made the Reagan deficits look like chump change. And they haven’t downgraded us despite today’s record-setting deficits and months of economic brinkmanship and threats from the Tea Party to force the country into default.
    What has happened is that the uncertainty generated by this manufactured crisis–uncertainty generated solely by the newly-credible threats of an organized bloc of the Republican Party–has raised the risk associated with our debt and consequently the interest rates we have to pay.
    Republicans have spent months bleating about the harm that uncertainty over the extension of tax cuts et al would cause to the economy. When that harm failed to materialize, they inadvertently set out to prove themselves right.
    Nobody takes Republicans seriously on fiscal matters anymore except other Republicans and the party’s enablers in the he-said-she-said media. And nobody should.
    The final tell was when Obama proposed a “compromise” for raising the debt ceiling that consisted of nothing more than trillions of dollars in spending cuts. No tax increases. No closing of tax loopholes for the wealthy Republican donor base. Just across-the-board cuts so irresponsibly steep and painful that Democrats were justifiably enraged, even though it left things like Social Security and Medicare alone. It was such a plum giveaway to what conservatives claim to care about that they were unprepared and unsure how to respond to it.
    Then they rejected it out of hand.
    These are not serious people who are seriously interested in cutting spending and reducing the deficit. These are ideologues exploiting this manufactured crisis in order to put Democrats on record as voting to cut SS and Medicare so that the GOP could dilute the justified public outrage at the cuts they voted for in the Ryan plan.

  94. Just so you know, they think your crazy for objecting to fiscal sanity.
    Clearly, there is a divergence of opinion about what “fiscal sanity” means.
    Equally clearly, there is a divergence between talk and walk regarding any definition of fiscal sanity among conservatives of the last 30 years.
    Whoever “they” are, I’m not that interested in their opinion of my mental health, because I’m not seeing much in the way of seriousness from “them”.
    I don’t really want to dive back into the tea party thing, but suffice it to say that I have no regard, at all, for the quality of their analysis. So I don’t really care what their take on my understanding of the situation is.
    I hope they enjoy their 15 minutes, and then I hope they either get serious or go home.
    Lazy blow off.
    No, lazy blow off looks like this:
    Whatever, dude.
    Insert smiley here.

  95. If Paul Ryan would stop reading all 1084 pages of “Atlas Shrugged” into the Congressional Record and taking up his staff’s time by making them chew that wet cardboard, they’d have time to do their jobs, part of which is to read the legislation.
    But, I admit, 2500 pages is a pretty long slog. I have a feeling that rather than MckT’s assertion that no one knew what was in the thing after a full year of legislative wrangling, once you cut out the hundreds of pages copied directly from Mitt Romney’s Massachussets legislation and the boiler plate from lengthy position papers written by the conservative American Enterprise Institute when they suggested much of the conceptual framework for the legislation back in the 1990s, when sanity was at least a fall-back position for the crazy people, what you would have left is the yeah-buts, why-should-I’s?, what-me-pay-for-thats?, and so on from the minority party, that were incorporated at their requests.
    Heck, Sarah Death Palin read the entire bill cover to cover and was able to sum it up in two words and five exclamation marks — “Death!! Panels!!!”
    And those two words became the bill which folks in funny tri-cornered hats said they read or didn’t read.
    Alright, so, would this have been an acceptable number of words? —
    “From this day forward, all Americans’ healthcare, from cradle to grave, including preexisting conditions will be covered under a universal single-payer system administered by the U.S. Government and paid for by an appropriate expansion of Medicare premiums and a system of co-payments. Medicaid and private insurers will be abolished.
    End of story.
    Also, shad up and thank you”

  96. From the earliest years of the American republic, white Southern conservatives when they have lost elections and found themselves in the political minority have sought to extort concession from national majorities by paralyzing or threatening to destroy the United States…
    Make of it what you will.
    Also, what, exactly, is wrong with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, other than the thought that they are fiscally unsustainable? (he asks, no one in particular)

  97. So we were already having to artificially hold down those rates, now we will see what happens.
    If global markets decided out debt was too risky, holding rates down would be impossible. QE’s primary objective is to increase the money supply to stimulate the economy. I’d say it doesn’t really work when demand is the problem, and that all it will accomplish is to replace bonds with more bank reserves, which will just sit there the same way the bonds did, but whatever….

  98. “This is at least as “extreme” as the Tea Party position”
    “Yes, and how far did they get with it?”
    I think you conceded too much here, russell. The Tea Party people were willing to bring down the economy if they didn’t get their way. The progressive caucus wanted Obama to stand up to them, rather than let them achieve most of their goals via extortion. Now we’re stuck with extortion as a political tool.
    Of course Obama himself threw this option away, but that wasn’t exactly a surprise.

  99. Donald, with respect, I disagree that “Now we’re stuck with extortion as a political tool.” We were, and have been, stuck with extortion as a political tool. The price that might have been paid was (by all accounts) something that we could not have overcome.
    Obama didn’t want to presume that the “American people” (those people who would be adversely affected by that blow – mostly people who really aren’t doing all that well now) wanted to accept total devastation. If Obama had been in a duel with Eric Cantor, we could perhaps determine their relative bravery, and ability to “stand up.” But when Obama has to think about the people who are going to sink, rather than swim, who haven’t really voted to sacrifice everything they have, “standing up” and playing chicken wasn’t an option. I, for example, preferred not to take another economic hit in my retirement possibilities (not looking good as it is) as a result of this particular battle. (Although, obviously, maybe everybody already did take a hit, etc. But the extent of suffering wasn’t subject to accurate prediction.)
    What I would like for Obama to do is to start calling out Republicans instead of “Congress.” I support him, and will support him and work for his reelection – otherwise we’ll have an even worse disaster. But he needs to stir some passion. Soon.

  100. Now, they want to gut Social Security and hand it over to defense contractors.
    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/02/1002385/-Lieberman:-We-have-to-cut-Social-Security-to-pay-for-fighting-theIslamistextremists
    No new revenue of course. Just all of the old revenue going straight down the Republican special interest corporate sh*tcan.
    Meanwhile, as austerity stalks and strangles European economies, European bond yields continue to soar, profiting Germany.
    I wonder when the resentful fascist vermin in Greece, Spain, Portugal, and England begin to emulate the resentful fascist vermin in Germany after World War II?
    You know, austerity and unemployment … the panacea.
    Now imported here.
    Stay tuned for fascism’s march here too, as Tea Partiers Medicare scooters are defunded and they resort to goose-stepping in coming years.

  101. “Stay tuned for fascism’s march here too, as Tea Partiers Medicare scooters are defunded and they resort to goose-stepping in coming years.”
    This is so freaking true. And the only thing that will stop it is a unified left. Hard to be unified. Harder to fight. They did it before though. Can we?

  102. Have you guys been following events in Wisconsin? People are organizing to fight back. However the Republican coalition of the selfish, the stupid, the mean, and the crazy is still over forty percent of the voters. Also the thug party will not allow fair elections. Wisconsin Republicans have passed what is likely to be a very successful voter suppression law. The dirty tricks have started too.
    In other words once Republica thuggery gets obvious in a way that directly effects enough middle class white people,then organized wide spread determied resistace does result. But the thug party is prepared for that: voter suppressio laws, right wing judges, a whole bag of dirty tricks and a corporate media that treats all R behavior like its just normal politics.
    I think we are watching democracy end.

  103. The Tea Party people were willing to bring down the economy if they didn’t get their way.
    Heard a tea party guy on the radio tonight on the way home. He was on Diane Rehm’s show.
    His position was, basically, that due to our debt load, the US was actually not such a great credit risk, and the ratings agencies should downgrade our credit anyway. Debt ceiling or no debt ceiling.
    The portion of the US federal budget in 2010 that went to debt service was ~$165 BILLION dollars. Every point of additional interest costs us billions.
    With a freaking B.
    These are the folks who are going to lead the way to fiscal sanity and health.
    Pistol, meet foot. Well played, morans.

  104. a whole bag of dirty tricks
    I though the bogus absentee ballots sent to Democratic voters by Americans for Prosperity, with instructions to return them *after the deadline*, was a nice touch.
    “It was a typo”, said their spokesperson.
    The proper response to that is “jail, b*tches”, but I am not holding my breath.
    And of course, both sides do it.
    I’d love to have a reasonable and polite discussion of the issues on the merits, but this crap is just wearing me the hell out.
    Can’t all of you fair and reasonable conservatives who hang out here on ObWi knock some freaking heads and straighten these dudes out? It’s like the dragon’s teeth of Richard Milhous Nixon are sprouting a bumper crop.

  105. And the only thing that will stop it is a unified left.
    The first step toward getting a unified left is getting a left at all.
    We’re not even close to that.

  106. CCDG
    We have been assuaging the markets for months by having the Fed buy over a trillion dollars of our new debt. It’s pretty easy to control interest rates when your central bank is buying your debt.
    So we were already having to artificially hold down those rates, now we will see what happens.

    Then how do you explain this chart
    couldn’t find perfect chart for it with both QEs and interest rates that i’ve seen before on the Krugman’s blog. Both times QE start interest goes up and then turns down in the last quarter of QE ending higher then when it started.
    Chart shows that QE only increased interest rates, not lowered it as you and your GOP gods believe.

  107. Interest rates will not go up until unemployment goes down. No matter what else is done, no matter the debt pc, no matter printing, gold value or anything else. That’s what examples from history teaches when an economy enters liquidity trap or deflation. Great depression and Japan lost decade are those examples.
    Difference is that we are now going against oil peak, which blocks coming out of recession. When economy start recovering, demand for oil goes up and so does its price which devastates the consumers and economy with it. Every 10cents in gasoline price means $75B less for else in economy.

  108. Thank you, Laura. The heartening thing about Wisconsin is that people there have finally figured out what’s happening to them. I hope it’s not too late.
    “Can’t all of you fair and reasonable conservatives who hang out here on ObWi knock some freaking heads and straighten these dudes out?”
    No, they won’t. The “fair and reasonable” conservatives on this blog believe that if laws are passed by Democrats, that Democrats are “heavy handed.”
    “The first step toward getting a unified left is getting a left at all.”
    Alrighty then. In the meantime, those people to the left of the Republican party need to fight the Republican party.

  109. CCDG
    Funny, the markets were underwhelmed by getting the debt ceiling passed, that downgrade will probably happen anyway.
    Because of the size of the debt, because we didn’t do anything to convince the markets we are serious about reducing our debt increases.

    Aren’t you tired of repeating the same threat since TARP bailout. It’s been THREE years of that terror threat repeater. First during bailout, then stimulus, then HCR, then Bush tax cut extension and now again. Do you even pay attention to level of interest rates? 10Y T were under 6% and today they are 2.87%. How many contradictions can you hold at the same time?

  110. Obama will get my support back AFTER he used/s the next round of GOP extortigations and/or State of the Union address to blow himself up with the whole crazy crowd (and a good deal of the spineless crowd too) present. Pelosi should stand as a backup in the wings with guns and chainsaw to take care of surviving backbenchers.
    Reading the news I also demand that Joe Lieberman has to take a bath in hydrofluoric acid.
    Should I by any chance meet Eric Cantor while I have an axe handy, I’ll make 1st page headlines. (Admittedly rather unlikely given that a) I rarely walk outside carrying an axe and b) I am not aware that he plans to travel to Europe or at least my part of the woods).

  111. Can’t all of you fair and reasonable conservatives who hang out here on ObWi knock some freaking heads and straighten these dudes out?
    Two problems here. First, just as the view here is that Republicans are fascists and much more who run roughshod over their opponents, so too is the view looking this way from the other side. Second, those on the left here who acknowledge two sides to some discussions are in the minority. So, while I and others would like to see a lot of things change, that isn’t likely and, quite frankly, I don’t have the interest I once did in fixing things on the right. I just come here to chat. Assuming I am one of those conservatives you had in mind.

  112. First, just as the view here is that Republicans are fascists…
    I think they’re oligarchs and plutocrats, myself – plutarchists, if you will. Well, Dick Cheney’s kind of fascist, I guess, so you got me there.

  113. Freddy at L’Hote says it for me:
    “I believe that it is absolutely just, practical, and sensible to expect those who have enjoyed the great fruits of our democracy to contribute a disproportionate share of the money that ensures our democracy remain solvent.
    That’s the mild version. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is more corrosive to our democracy than the vast concentrations of wealth and power we now see, concentrations of wealth and power that are defended by self described conservatives as both natural and moral when in fact they are neither.

  114. First, just as the view here is that Republicans are fascists and much more who run roughshod over their opponents, so too is the view looking this way from the other side.
    Feh. Give me some similar D examples to the GOP’s systematic voter suppression efforts.

  115. I don’t have the interest I once did in fixing things on the right.
    I can understand and relate to that.
    I just come here to chat.
    I can understand and relate to that, as well. I’m pleased you’re here, your company is more than congenial.
    Assuming I am one of those conservatives you had in mind.
    You are, sir.

  116. And to be clear on what that means is to explain the charts that follow GDP growth and interest rates. Higher growth follows higher interest rates, full stop. This low rate of 2.62% means really low growth/ decline. It is a clear prediction for the growth, per Krugman.

  117. Exhibit #10,000, via http://www.washingtonmonthly.com:

    House and Senate members quickly left town yesterday, starting a month-long recess that will keep lawmakers out of DC until after Labor Day. Under the circumstances, though, “recess” is probably the wrong word to use.
    If this were a literal congressional recess, President Obama would have the option of making recess appointments, and given the number of executive branch and judicial vacancies created by Senate Republican obstructionism, the White House would have ample motivation to put this presidential power to good use.
    That’s why GOP lawmakers have ensured their recess isn’t a real recess.

    Following the House, the Senate will hold a series of “pro forma” sessions over the next month, effectively blocking President Barack Obama from making any appointments during Congress’ August recess.
    That means Obama won’t be able to seat his pick to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, whose nomination Republicans have vowed to oppose until Obama makes changes watering down the agency’s authority.
    After passing the debt limit legislation on Monday, House leaders announced they would hold pro forma sessions through August, a procedural move that forced the Senate to follow suit. The Constitution requires that for either chamber to take more than a three-day break, the other chamber must give its approval.

    Every Tuesday and Friday for the rest of the month, someone will show up in the House and Senate chambers, bang a gavel, look around, and then go home. Republicans believe this is necessary, of course, to prevent the president from filling vacancies that need to be filled with qualified officials who’d be confirmed if given up-or-down votes.
    Also note, congressional Republicans are determined to prevent President Obama from being able to exercise this power for the indefinite future, regardless of the seriousness of the vacancies or the extent of the Senate GOP’s obstructionism.

    They just are not serious about actually governing. But I’m sure that Both Sides Do It. And pointing out that they don’t lead to all sorts of whiny resentment.

  118. No, the (common, ruling) GOPsters are not fascists. They are what came before those in the late 19th and pre-WW1 20th century. That is: a cancerous outgrowth of old conservatism after a malign infection of bacillus paranoides and mycetozoum mammonis. It’s the culture medium fascism can grow on/from.

  119. What I would like for Obama to do is to start calling out Republicans instead of “Congress.”
    sapient, I think that there is a case to be made that if the President did as you suggest, he would be written of as just making a partisan attack. Whereas there is some merit in blaming a Congress (regardless of who nominally controls it) for its actions. That might not be a better approach, but I don’t really think it’s as open-and-shut as you seem to believe.
    I would also not that the Congress, collectively, enjoys a much lower level of approval from voters than the President does. So there may also be some political benefit to keeping the focus there. Just a thought.

  120. “Obama didn’t want to presume that the “American people” (those people who would be adversely affected by that blow – mostly people who really aren’t doing all that well now) wanted to accept total devastation. If Obama had been in a duel with Eric Cantor, we could perhaps determine their relative bravery, and ability to “stand up.” But when Obama has to think about the people who are going to sink, rather than swim, who haven’t really voted to sacrifice everything they have, “standing up” and playing chicken wasn’t an option. ”
    I’m not sure what this means, but perhaps you didn’t know what I meant. I was replying indirectly to CCDG’s claim that the progressives in Congress who wanted Obama to invoke the 14th Amendment were just as extreme as the Tea Party people. Do you agree with that? I regret that Obama said he wouldn’t consider using it. He seems to negotiate by jumping 3/4 of the way to the Republican position and then gets blamed for not compromising on taxes, a problem which he solves by giving in. The simplest explanation for this behavior is that he really is center or center-right in orientation and sincerely thought he could reach a meeting of minds with the saner members of the Republican Party.

  121. The simplest explanation for this behavior is that he really is center or center-right in orientation and sincerely thought he could reach a meeting of minds with the saner members of the Republican Party.
    Correct.
    Obama is a moderate conservative. On a scale from FDR to Goldwater, Obama is approximately Dwight D. Eisenhower.

  122. “then gets blamed for not compromising on taxes, a problem which he solves by giving in”
    I should add that if he wasn’t willing to use the 14th Amendment then he had no choice but to give in.

  123. I’m pleased you’re here, your company is more than congenial.
    Well, thanks for that. I just hired an expert witness from MA. Maybe I’ll get up that way someday and we can have a drink, maybe two.

  124. I regret that Obama said he wouldn’t consider using it.
    I assumed that this had something to do with being first term rather than 2nd term. I do think that Obama is too cautious, but going to the 14th amendment would have been a high risk, high reward move, which is something that Obama seldom, if ever, does. And while I would have loved it, one has to wonder if you would see this marriage of convenience between those who decry Obama flauting the war powers act and those who would demand impeachment for employing the act. And if there is anything that Republicans do well, it is marriages of convenience.
    Obama also labors under this remarkable restraint to his actions, in that he can’t be too angry or too confrontational. The spectre of an angry, confrontational black man would be catnip for a lot of the far-right and it is something that seems to have governed his actions up to now.

  125. Obama flauting the war powers act and those who would demand impeachment
    This is a very fair point. A lot of angry progressives very much wanted Obama to essentially dare the GOP to imnpeach him, on the basis that the move would be fatally unpopular with the rest of the country (not to mention being a huge distraction just when the country needs a distraction least).
    The problem with that thinking is believing the popularity of an action, or the damage an action would do to the country, are disincentives to the GOP.
    Not only are such considerations not disincentives to the GOP, they are the very opposite. The GOP is intent on restoring pre-Teddy Roosevelt era political, social, and economic norms. They hate America, and most Americans, and the more pain they can cause, the happier they are.

  126. … if the President did as you suggest, he would be written of as just making a partisan attack.
    wj,
    You are surely correct, because there are people who would accuse Obama of partisanship if they saw him tie his left shoe before his right one. But there are also people (e.g. me) whose esteem for a politician RISES when he stops mealy-mouthing.
    My question for you, though, is this: just WHO is it who would write off Obama for being “partisan”? You??
    A follow-up question: why haven’t the SAME people who might write off Obama as “partisan” for calling Republicans “Republicans” already written off the Republicans for THEIR frothing, spittle-flecked, rabid partisanship? Why is partisanship OK just for Republicans?
    –TP

  127. “Obama is a moderate conservative. On a scale from FDR to Goldwater, Obama is approximately Dwight D. Eisenhower.”
    The John Birch crazy fascists (yeah, not you MckT, the crazy people) back then who called Eisenhower a Marxist and a Communist met in private living rooms and southern watering holes to plot the destruction of the U.S. Government.
    Today, the John Birch crazy fascists who call Barack Obama a Marxist and a Communist sit in the House of Representatives, with a few in the Senate, and plot the destruction of the U.S. Government.

  128. Donald, I sympathize with your point. In addition, I think the creative legal options that some people suggested for Obama are really interesting. It would have been hugely fun, from a legal standpoint, to see them play out. I loved reading about the various options – and thought the trillion dollar coin possibility was extremely fun to ponder.
    Unfortunately, everyone agreed that that there was a huge risk (almost certainty) that these options wouldn’t have solved the underlying problem, that there would probably have been a market crash and a subsequent (worse than we have now) depression. Faith in our system (and in our treasury bonds) isn’t a matter of declaring it. Investors, and the world market, have to believe it. If Obama had done all the right things, but under speculative legal theories which might have been challenged, there would have been a huge possibility that the markets would not have trusted the instruments (such as Treasury bills). For Obama to have said, “Don’t worry, be happy, I’ve got this under the 14th Amendment” would have been hugely irresponsible, and would have put everyone, including middle class types who are barely hanging on, in great jeopardy.
    As to placing Obama on a scale from FDR to Goldwater, I don’t think that’s fair or possible or helpful. Obama has a very different country to manage than FDR, or subsequent presidents, and he personally has different cards. FDR was the leader of large Democratic majorities, and he was a patrician. Obama had a substantial majority in the House for his first two years, and a bare majority (with the filibuster) in the Senate. Now he has Republicans and a divided Senate. And he’s the first African-American President, which gets him a certain amount of good will, but suspicion on the other side (the Muslim from Kenya, ad nauseum). He has walked a tightrope. I personally know people who have predicted that he will be assassinated, because in their experience, an African-American president is a bridge too far.
    I want him to be stronger and to call out Republicans. The Republicans have proved over and over that compromise isn’t an option. But he is a pragmatist; he looks at the situation and tries to find what he can win, and tries to adopt rhetoric that will get the most support. Maybe he could have won a bit more during his first two years, but I don’t happen to think so. If we were to revisit every issue, every vote, we would have seen the extreme, recalcitrant Republicans and right-wing Democratic senators obstructing the more progressive possibilities. In an attempt to govern, he adopted moderate rhetoric as a tactic. Maybe a bad tactic, but considering the vitriolic, and in some cases racist, opposition, I think his tactics were understandable.
    I feel that we have to stand behind him (including talking up his virtues). It’s really our only chance. Because the Republicans are fascists. I truly believe that – sorry McKinney.
    Maybe now that his reelection campaign is approaching, he’ll be more passionate. I wish he’d be more accusatory against Republicans. But for the most part, when I listen to what he says, especially when he’s answering questions at a press conference or a townhall, I agree with him completely. He’s logical and humane, but he doesn’t have a Congress that will enact a WPA. Instead, many of them are happy run the country off a cliff – demonstrably and on purpose.

  129. “Obama also labors under this remarkable restraint to his actions, in that he can’t be too angry or too confrontational. The spectre of an angry, confrontational black man would be catnip for a lot of the far-right and it is something that seems to have governed his actions up to now.”
    Yes’m.

  130. Well, I won’t get into whether the markets would have gone berserk if Obama had gone the 14th Amendment route because I don’t know–it seems to me we’ve just demonstrated that we’re a banana republic the way things worked out, where insane policies can be imposed by crazy people. Fortunately the rest of the world is pretty screwed up too, so we have that in our favor.
    As for Obama, he seems centrist to me and I have never understood liberal/lefties who thought otherwise. Lesser of two evil politics I understand. Maybe we’re just starved for someone in power we can claim is on our side.

  131. Maybe he could have won a bit more during his first two years, but I don’t happen to think so.
    sapient,
    There is no reason but dullness and lack of creativity on Team Obama’s part for the fact that our current tax regime is not called “the Obama tax cut”.
    Maybe Obama could not help caving to the GOP last December. Maybe he could not help violating one of his three main campaign promises (get out of Iraq, pass universal healthcare, end the Bush tax cuts) because the Koch astroturf campaign got lots of teabaggers elected. But there is no good reason whatsoever for Obama’s stupid, stupid framing of the cave-in as “extending the Bush tax cuts” instead of “Dubya and the GOP voted the sunsets into law. You guys want a new tax cut? Okay, I’m here to give it to you.”
    I grant you that the teabagger hatred of Obama might exceed even their love of tax cuts. It’s possible they would have rejected continuing the low rates, rather than call them “the Obama tax cuts”. But their puppetmasters probably would not have cared much.
    A president can’t control the Congress. But he can control the conversation. Or at least try to. Obama did not even try.
    Don’t worry, there’s no chance in hell that I will fail to vote for him next year. But if he wants enthusiasm from me, he has a lot of talking to do.
    –TP

  132. Hope he does some talking, Tony P., because without enthusiasm, the t-baggers have it. That’s the sad fact.
    Donald, no argument.
    But I have fun thinking of stuff that russell (the great compromiser with McKinney) says. Russell, I will speak to you directly, since I’ve been admonished about speaking in the third person:
    You once provided me with a very insightful comment about the marriage issue, citing Wendell Berry (and forms of living, etc.). I was quite taken with that comment because I had, in the past, spent time with Wendell Berry’s writings, and much admired him. I still count some of his poems as favorites. But it seems to me that he very much represents an aspect of what the original Doctor Science post was getting at, a romantic view of the agrarian, not-much-government, anti-progress, antebellum view of things. Just made me think.
    Definitely OT – sorry. But Eisenhower? He grew up on a farm in Kansas. Maybe that’s the connection you’re making between him and Obama. Kansas.

  133. I don’t know if the Republican party meets the defiition of “fascist”. Individuals in the leadership might. I do think that the party is opposed to democracy. Republican politicians, particulalry the very cynical leaders at the national level, know that their policies will ever be widely supported. That’s why they have carried out with great success a coordiated campaign over the last thirty years to udermine democracy: use systemic use of lies to obscure their real policies and to destroy public discussion of issues, the creation of a fake news channel and the network of hate mongerers, the use of wedge issues that the leadership does’t really care about to polarize the populatio ad eergize thier side, the decision to bring religous fanatics and rightwing extremists into their party to enlarge their base, the KStreet Project, packing the judiciary with rightwing activist judges and blocking judges that aren’t rightwing activists, ALEC, union busting, voter supression and election dirty tricks.
    It isn’t necesarily fascist but is is a party that is quite deliberately destroying the systems ad norms that make democracy possible.

  134. Laura,
    I love your take on things. I guess what I want to know is that after all of the Republican anti-democratic tricks have succeeded, and they finally have absolute power, what kind of society do they want?
    My belief is that they want a master-slave society. Maybe they see themselves as benevolent masters, but if you look at this, this is what we’re talking about.
    It means that human beings mean nothing to them compared to what kind of money/power they can have. Human beings might as well be in slave labor camps. I just don’t see the difference.

  135. I won’t get into whether the markets would have gone berserk if Obama had gone the 14th Amendment route because I don’t know
    I’m not sure if I was making an argument about the markets (and given my ability to sell low and buy high, you should be deeply suspicious if I do), rather than an argument about how Obama is constrained in a lot of ways as the first African American president.
    Slightly related to that (and something I think you might be interested in, DJ) is a clip from this Guardian piece
    In the summer of 1996, months after the Dayton peace agreement was signed, little had changed. Karadžic was able to drive across Bosnia, through four international checkpoints, waving insouciantly at the Nato troops on guard, whose orders – dictated by a nervous Clinton administration – all but precluded them from taking action. “The rules of engagement said in effect: ‘Don’t pick him up, unless you actually trip over him,'” recalls Charles Crawford, who was UK ambassador to Bosnia at the time. “Anything that involved going off the road even 10 yards was regarded as ‘not being in the course of your normal duties’.”

    In fact, the Americans were keener on the Europeans arresting war criminals than they were on doing it themselves. Clinton was fearful any US casualties could cost him his re-election in November 1996. It was the US president who had insisted on the restrictive rules of engagement for Sfor, the Nato “stabilisation” force in Bosnia.
    But the US special envoy to the Balkans, Richard Holbrooke, saw it as American humiliation. In June 1996, he wrote to the president: “The implications of Karadžic’s defiance go far beyond Bosnia itself. If he succeeds, basic issues of American leadership that seemed settled in the public’s eye after Dayton will re-emerge. Having reasserted American leadership in Europe, it would be a tragedy if we let it slip away again.”
    It was only once Clinton had secured his re-election, and appointed Madeleine Albright – a former refugee from Nazi Europe who insisted US military might should be used to prevent a repeat of such atrocities – that Washington began to focus seriously on catching war criminals.

    At my school, professors in there last 2 or 3 years before retirement, no longer need to attend faculty meetings. I mentioned that this was a nice gesture to them to a colleague and he said that it wasn’t for them, it was that people who were at the end of the tunnel would be more likely to speak their mind and it would cause too many changes. With that in mind, it will be interesting to see what happens if Obama is elected to a 2nd term. I’m not arguing that we should be more enthusiastic about Obama because of the possibility of him reinventing himself as a man of the left in his second term, but I do have all my toes and fingers crossed.

  136. The John Birch crazy fascists (yeah, not you MckT, the crazy people) back then who called Eisenhower a Marxist and a Communist met in private living rooms and southern watering holes to plot the destruction of the U.S. Government.
    Today, the John Birch crazy fascists who call Barack Obama a Marxist and a Communist sit in the House of Representatives, with a few in the Senate, and plot the destruction of the U.S. Government.

    My uncle’s private living room, on lovely Long Island, as it turns out. Good times.
    That aside, IMVHO your comment here is on the money.
    Also IMVHO, Hofstadter’s “Paranoid Style in American Politics” and Piercy’s “Love in the Ruins” are about all anybody needs to know to understand where we’re at as a country right now.
    Those, and Frankfurt’s “On Bullsh*t”.

  137. Thanks Sapient.
    I don’t have much tolerance any more for people who treat politics like its all just esoteric mindgames with no consequences to real people.
    Re: our Galtian Overlords. They are capitalists with some Ay Rad mixed in. One of the biggest rightwing lies of all is the lie that capitalism goes with democracy and socialism goes with totalitarianism. The truth is that democracies will not tolerate udiluted capitalism and will mitigate its effects with regulations, unions, taxes and socialist institutions–because that’s what the voters will demand. A free trade capitalistic economy will tend to concentrate wealth among the few at the expense of the many and the many won’t put up with it if they can vote. Socialim o the other had goes quite nicely with democracy in Canada, Norway, Swedew, France, even to some extent here.
    (Yes I know those coutries ad our nation, if fact most nations have mixed economies.)
    There’s a reason why capitalism does not go with democracy: its basic priciple is to seek maximum profit for minimum investment, something for nothing being the ideal So keep labor costs down, try to surpress competition, coosolidate ad form monolopies, ru the busiess for profit regardless of the effect of opperatios o the environmet the health of the commuities…abuse is inevitable. Abusive behavior is built in. They oly way to have an economy tht is close to being purely capitalist is to deny peole access to the power of government ot control the abusive behavior that is inevitable i the pursuit of the ideal of something for nothing.
    Combine that with Ayn Rand’s cult of selfishess ad you have a very toxic, very anti-democracy ideology ad that’s your Republica party.
    (Which is not to say socialism is perfect or without built in problems. My own feeling is that mixed ecoomies are best ad ideologies are for people who are to lazy to think and just want to believe.)

  138. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee:
    U.S. incomes plummeted again in 2009, with total income down 15.2 percent in real terms since 2007, new tax data showed on Wednesday.
    The data showed an alarming drop in the number of taxpayers reporting any earnings from a job — down by nearly 4.2 million from 2007 — meaning every 33rd household that had work in 2007 had no work in 2009.

    No income tax was paid by 1,470 of the 235,413 taxpayers earning $1 million or more in 2009, compared with the 959 taxpayers with million-dollar-plus incomes who paid no income taxes in 2007.

    The number of tax returns filed fell to 140.5 million, down almost 2 million compared with 2007, as millions of Americans went from working to having no earned income or so little that they did not have to file a tax return.

    This is unsurprising given the market downturn:
    The number of Americans reporting incomes of $10 million or more also plunged even more than the steep drop in income for the population as a whole.
    Just 8,274 taxpayers reported income of $10 million or more in 2009, down 55 percent from 18,394 in 2007. Compared with 2007, total real income of these top earners in 2009 fell 58.6 percent to $240.1 billion, but average income slipped just 8.1 percent to $29 million.

    I guess they really did go Galt.

  139. As Chesterton said, poor people sometimes object to being badly governed. Rich people always object to being governed at all.

  140. This is good, really really good from David Frum’s post.
    Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Wall Street Journal editorial page between 2000 and 2011, and someone in the same period who read only the collected columns of Paul Krugman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of the current economic crisis? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?

  141. That’s a good quote. Ad it brings me to consider another rightwing lie: the claim that conservatives are opposed to big government. The pattern well established over time is that people who call themselves conseravtive oppose the use of government power to protect weaker parties from stronger parties, hence the opposition to the Civil Rights Acts, anti-pollution laws, equal rights for women, the Miranda decision, ad so on. The parttern is also that the conservatives never voice their oppositio in terms of the merits of the specific court ruling or law under discussion. They can’t because to do so would expose their instict to support the powerful. In other words they couldn’t argue in favor of Jim Corw laws or pollution or the abuse of defendents so they argued instead that government lacked the power to right those wrongs. Of course the reason for putting rightwing activists on the Supreme Court is so that once the voter suppression laws get challeged and make it to the Supremes Alito, Scalia, Thomas ad Roberst will be right there to say “It is so sad that people who can’t drive can’t vote in Wiscosin but we are agaist big government and can’t do anything about it.”
    Republicans and people who call themselves conservatives consistantly favor policies which concentrate power adn wealth into the the hands of fewer and fewer people and support the use of governmet power to further that concentratio and oppose the use of the goverment to do any redistributing. (confiscatory taxes!) It is an essentially anti-democratic view justified with a lie.

  142. In the same vein from Michael Mandel

    First, the measured rapid productivity growth allowed the Obama Administration to treat the jobs crisis as purely one of a demand shortfall rather than worrying about structural problems in the economy. Moreover, the relatively small size of the reported real GDP drop probably convinced the Obama economists that their stimulus package had been effective, and that it was only a matter of time before the economy recovered.
    A more accurate reading on the economy would have–perhaps–cause the Obama Administration to spend more time and political capital on the jobs crisis, rather than on health care. In some sense, the results of the election of 2010 may reflect this mismatch between the optimistic Obama rhetoric and the facts on the ground.

  143. And from Mandel in March:

    But there’s a broader issue as well. As we saw above, the mismeasurement problem obscures the growing globalization of the U.S. economy, which may in fact be the key trend over the past ten years. Policymakers look at strong productivity growth, and think they are seeing a positive indicator about the domestic economy. In fact, the mismeasurement problem means that the reported strong productivity growth includes some combination of domestic productivity growth, productivity growth at foreign suppliers, and productivity growth ”in the supply chain’ . That is, if U.S. companies were able to intensify the efficiency of their offshoring during the crisis, that would show up as a gain in domestic productivity. (The best case is probably Apple, which has done a great job in managing its supply chain for the iPod, iPhone and iPad and extracting rents).
    From an economic and policy point of view, there’s a big difference between purely domestic productivity gains, productivity gains at foreign suppliers, and productivity gains ‘in the supply chain’. The benefits of domestic productivity gains will like accrue to the broad array of production and nonproduction workers in the U.S. The benefits of productivity gains ‘in the supply chain’ will likely go to the executives and professionals, both in the U.S. and outside, who set up, maintain, improve, and control supply chains. That’s a much smaller, globally mobile group. And the benefits of productivity gains at foreign suppliers? Well, that depends on how much power U.S. buyers have vis-a-vis their suppliers…that is, competitiveness.

  144. Always interesting reading Krugman as he takes credit and contradicts himself all in one oolumn

    The WSJ view was that federal borrowing would crowd out private spending by driving interest rates sky-high, that the bond vigilantes would destroy the economy. Note that when the linked editorial was published, the 10-year rate was at 3.7%, with the Journal in effect predicting that it would go much higher.
    My view was that government borrowing in a liquidity trap does not drive up rates, and indeed that rates would stay low as long as the economy stayed depressed.

    Then he points to ct’s favorite ten year Treasury rates as proof he was right.
    Unfortunately for him, the policy enacted was NOT what he proposed, as he points out in the same column:

    It’s kind of annoying when people claim that I said the stimulus would work; how much noisier could I have been in warning both that it was grossly inadequate, and that by claiming that a far-too-small stimulus was just right, Obama would discredit the whole idea?
    Of course, the WSJ also said that the stimulus wouldn’t work. The difference was in how it was supposed to fail.

    So, they didn’t do what he proposed, so interest rates didn’t go up, so his point is proved?
    Lots of things in the economic sphere are worth discussing. But when he starts claiming genius because the outcome matches his projections, but the policy wasn’t anything like what he proposed, well I just see him as another hack.
    Even though I believed, at the time, the stimulus should have been at least three trillion. Which agreed with him, I can’t use what happened to prove I was right.

  145. Countme
    I believe it is less about apostasy then about following his overlords who seems to be getting afraid of upraising of hu(a)ngry population.
    Anti-consumer policies seems too successful and too rapid.

  146. CCDG
    So, they didn’t do what he proposed, so interest rates didn’t go up, so his point is proved?
    Correct logic sequence should be:
    So, they didn’t do what he proposed, so economy didn’t improve, so interest rates didn’t go up..
    Which is not a contradiction with his

    My view was that government borrowing in a liquidity trap does not drive up rates, and indeed that rates would stay LOW AS LONG as economy STAYED DEPRESSED

    And i also said that economy is against peak oil.

  147. I liked Krugman’s column attacking rent controls. But Frum’s column? It’s an opinion column about another opinion column that, in Frum’s opinion, is right more often than wrong.
    If not that, I can’t tell what. Frum doesn’t actually go in and do any kind of checking at all, which is unusually shoddy even for Frum. From a guy normally predisposed to argument by assertion, this column that crithicaltinkerer links to isn’t really out of the ordinary.
    But his fashioning of Paul Krugman into The Enemy is literal strawmanning. Krugman isn’t The Enemy; he’s just a guy.

  148. So, they didn’t do what he proposed, so interest rates didn’t go up, so his point is proved?
    They didn’t do as much as he proposed, and the government automatic stabilizers (unemployment, food stamps, etc.), combined with massive drops in revenue led to lots of borrowing in any event. The WSJ asserts lots of borrowing will lead to higher interest rates (‘crowding out’).
    Interest rates went down.
    Your assertion is therefore without foundation.

  149. “…government of the commoners, by the political/managerial class, for the aristocracy, shall not perish while we still have a shekel between us!”

  150. There is now social and economic unrest in Israel as well as poor and middle-class Israelis demand liberal reforms.
    I wonder how long it will be before the murderous conservative vermin at Redrum begin calling for Bibi Netanyahu to butcher his own Jewish people because they have become the “Other” and demand minimum-wage hikes.

  151. Tea Party ass-teroids:
    http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/08/to_infini-tea_and_beyond_tea_party_in_space_aims_t.php?ref=fpblg
    I go along with the principal of this.
    To wit:
    I hereby claim the entire solar system, including mineral and overflight rights, except Earth, as my private property. Any filthy socialist enterprise like a government or private corporate sociopathic Tea Party entity who trespasses on my property will be f8cking killed, and I mean hunted down and destroyed.
    Not so much as a “Who goes there?”. Read the f*cking signs.
    Since someone at some time or another promised Brett Bellmore the Moon, I’ll respect his hegemony there.
    I reserve the right to lease out intergalactic nuclear missile launch sites on nearby planets to the Chinese government, because, well, it’s my stuff and I’ll do what I want with it.

  152. I wish we had riots. I don’t want rocks to be thrown thorough the windows of some small business or at a cop but I really would enjoy mobs throwing at rocks at a Republican Congresscreeps.
    Won’t happen, though. Americans have too much of a peasent mentality.And my Congressman is a Democrat.

  153. I could name some Dems that are not much better than the GOPsters. Kick the (blue) dog!
    I all seriousness, if I were Eric Cantor, I’d double-check my security detail. Bush II just asked for a slap in the face as default mode. With the likes of Cantor it would be a sign of extreme restraint to break just his/their nose(s) and provide work for his/their dentist(s).

  154. I wish we had riots. I don’t want rocks to be thrown thorough the windows of some small business or at a cop but I really would enjoy mobs throwing at rocks at a Republican Congresscreeps.

    Someone you know said this not all that long ago:

    Bottom line: in order to kill people have to dehumaize the victim. And that is all too easy for people to do, even self-proclaimed posessors of superior morals or self-proclaimed patriots. Maybe people who strongly indentify with one group find it easier to dehumanize everyone else.

    Interesting contrast, no? Who says we’re not flexible?

  155. You are right. I wasn’t thinking of the rocks as being potentially fatal. Spitting on Republicans in Congress is better.
    However I am not dehumaizing them. They are all too human in their selfishness and their vanity. They are self-proclaimed posessors of superior morals and patirotism and that’s what enables them to do things like create a deficit, lie about it, and use it as an excuse to gut funding for Medicaid. And yes, it does seem that Republican voters indentify with each other in a sort of herd or gang mentality, although I wasn’t going to say so since it’s the sort of thing that can’t be proven one way or the other. The purpose of hatemongerers like Limbaugh is to promote an us-against=them group mentality amongst Republican voters.
    I don’t think it is possible to counter this sort of bad behavior without calling it out and treating it with the contempt it deserves. The failure to do so is what gives Republican politicians the false legitiamcy they need to be elected. We would be a better ad healthier coutry if extremists were mocked and dispised for thier irrationality and self indulgence. People who put themselves forward as candidates for Congress should hold themselves to a high standard of behvavior out of respect for the office. They should know what they do’t know and be willing to learn, they should avoid being doctrinaire, they should be focused o practical solutions to problems, not personal ideological agendas, they should see themselves as responsble for all of the citizens, and should discuss issues based on fact.There isn’t a single Republican in Congress that does that. They lie as a matter of policy because they know their agenda is bad for most Americans. They think their stupid ideology is more important tha real people. They engage in anti-democratic practices to get their own way.
    Spitting on them would be a much healthier reaction to them than pretending they just have a different point of view that we can all discuss.

  156. “Who says we’re not flexible?”
    I don’t believe I’ve ever seen that picture of Eric Cantor before, contorting himself flexibly into the inflexibility of Norquistian pledges.
    Or is it Paul Ryan?
    Well, maybe not. If it was him, the photo would show his head disappearing up Dagny Taggert’s posterior in a final paroxysm of Bush era pre-hate-Obama flexibility just before the uncompromising, Tea Party/Ayn Rand rictus of destroy-the-country-and-the-full-faith-and-credit-of-the-U.S.-Government-to-achieve-our-malign-ends set in, frozen for all never-never time.
    Flexibly create and vote for world-ending deficits during the partisan nose-thumbing 2000-2008 period (unfunded, unnecessary war, irresponsible tax cuts in the face of those war expenses, blithely disallowing any regulation and oversight of banking, Wall Street derivatives, and the mortgage industry, etc, etc), and then, once the swarthy one gets elected, stand on one leg with the other slung over the shoulder and demand that all of us assume that position as well, for effing eternity.
    I think Standard and Poor’s got wind of that picture before they downgraded, thinking they just couldn’t figure out how such inflexibility could ever untangle itself.
    Repeat and rinse for European austerity, no matter what happens, and what we are seeing the past few weeks on the streets and in the Bourses is just the beginning of what’s going to happen.
    Laura has suggested stoning and spitting (and previously shunning), which I think shows a generous propensity for flexibility, though I notice she insists on using only action verbs that begin with “s”.
    I differ with her. I take a look at the corpse of the old Republican Party having contorted itself into John Birch inflexibility, and like a coroner investigating the cause of death and maybe trying to pry the corpse apart so we can fit into the pine box, I say, “take it into the parking lot and bring me a f&cking machete.”
    Now, raise my taxes and may God rest the late Republican Mark Hatfield’s soul, who died this week (unmentioned by the howling f*cks at Redrum, by the way), one of the last decent elected conservatives, who was a paragon of American flexibility.

  157. I’m just having a hard time taking Andrew Sullivan very seriously anymore, I’m afraid, following his positively manic obsession with the question of Trig Palin’s parentage.
    I wince every time he’s linked here by people whose opinions I otherwise respect. I’m considering throwing in frequent cites to Sean Hannity by way of retaliation.

  158. Meanwhile, the secessionist who is courting the above-mentioned twittering lovelies via his God-Bothering Pray It Rains, Oh Lord, But Not On The Faggots and Lesbians stadium reality show lurches like Confederate cannons toward Fort Sumter.
    If you read the bonafides of the jagoff (multi-racial, to be sure, I mean, The Big Revival Tent is open to all manner of jagoffs) preachers attending that grifter barbecue, you’re liable to find yourself on the list of Others who will be dealt with presently.
    The Governor was kind enough to include the President’s family in his prayers (Lord, please protect the President’s family) but come to think of it, considering the armed, tooled-booted company he keeps, I’m thinking that’s not so much of a blessing but rather, maybe a reason for the Secret Service to review their security procedures.
    Lotta funny crapola from similar lovelies occurred in the weeks and months before JFK visited Dallas, too.

  159. Welp, I hold no brief for Andrew Sullivan, but would just note that Sarah Death Palin tends to bring the best out in everyone.
    As to the wanna-be crucifiers of all things atheist on FOX’s Facebook page, I’m happy to cut out the middlemen/messengers alerting us to the fact of the Christianist outpouring of peace and love and instead tune in to Sean Hannity and marinate in the hate directly.
    What’s that? This just in.
    It turns out FOX is deleting the 8000 killer messages from their “audience” and I doubt Hannity is going to mention them on tonight’s show.
    I’m sure though that if he knew about Laura’s spit, stone, and shun strategy, he would, in a fair and balanced sort of way, read her statements (which I endorse) and her statements alone and enter them into evidence of what a hateful, violent nest of Democrat, socialist, liberal, Muslim, and RINO turncoat Republicans Obsidian Wings has turned out to be.
    Which is why I’m here with you Slart ;), and all the rest of the good people who have found refuge at OBWI, instead of flying a fuel-laden Boeing whatever-the-number-is of their latest 800-passenger plane is up Roger Ailes’ fundament.
    Things could change though.
    I’m nothing if not flexible.

  160. Off and on-topic, the America Joe Scarborough grew up in — and, it turns out, the one he’s been working his entire adult life trying to destroy:
    http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_08/the_america_that_scarborough_g031441.php#
    O.K. I’m done here.
    I need to pop over to the Walker Percy thread, which I’ve been eying since it went up, in the coming days and say what needs to be said about that gentle, humane man, a conservative in the true, good sense of the word, not that I agree with him on everything, and one of my two favorite American prophets of the second half of the 20th Century, the other being Paddy Chayevsky.

  161. For Slarti (not for the first time) —
    I by no means agree with everything Andrew Sullivan writes; I don’t agree with everything anyone writes (except russell…).
    In fact, a lot of the time I want to start jumping up and down in frustration at Andrew Sullivan’s opinions (“punish the successful” indeed).
    But:
    1) His site provides me with a digest of topics (with links if I want to pursue a wider range of viewpoints) that I would be unlikely to take the trouble to track down otherwise.
    2) The analogy isn’t exact, since Sullivan’s blog is a one-man show (for all practical purposes). But do you read only those websites where no one ever goes off the rails? If a person has extreme opinions or obsessions about one topic, are his/her opinions on all other topics suspect? Paren’t monolithic, after all.

  162. Andrew Sullivan, from what I can tell, alternates being saying really sensible things and incredibly stupid things. I don’t read him regularly, but from what I have read that’s been my impression. I was never curious enough to find out what he was saying about the Palins, but if he was obsessing over their personal lives it sounds like Mr. Stupid was at the keyboard.

  163. Slarti
    Someone you know said this not all that long ago:
    Your first comment today gave me a great cheer from hope that you have learned something from ObWi debate about Breivik massacre.
    But then next comment showed that you only used this principle as a weapon to discredit your opponent.
    I wince every time he’s linked here by people whose opinions I otherwise respect. I’m considering throwing in frequent cites to Sean Hannity by way of retaliation.
    It shows that you do not care about principles but only to win. It shows that you understand the principle “Maybe people who strongly indentify with one group find it easier to dehumanize everyone else.” and most probably you do agree with it even tough you rejected it when it came to be applied to you and the group you belong to. You rejected it when claimed that Breivik is “just” nuts. And Breivik worked on such principle. Contradictions, contradictions.
    Do people that caused the death of 77(and more) people
    deserve to be stoned when justice doesnt reach them trough legal means? How about those who voted to do things that will cause thousands of deaths? Did they work on principle of identifying with one group and believing that they have moral superiority? Just like those that voted to start war in Iraq and cause hundreds of thousands of deaths. Just like those who vote to cause the suffering and deaths of those that can not pay for their hospital treatments?
    I say that they deserve the stoning and to be extremists were mocked and dispised for thier irrationality and self indulgence. And the country would be better off.
    But now the question comes to Who is to decide who are those extremists? Isn’t that the job of united standard schooling education? But then the question is Who is to decide what is supposed to be that standard? Religion or science? Isn’t that the job of education to answer?

  164. Off and on topic again (what is the topic?), but I found the article in the New York Times today regarding the rioting and mayhem in English cities to be fascinating.
    This: “Mr Cameron had hesitated for two days to abandon his break at a villa in Tuscany as the looting and rioting spread across England, and then to other cities ….” …
    … juxtaposed with this quote from a female looter in London I heard on the radio: “I’m just takin back me tax dollars.”
    Hmm..
    Then back to the New York Times article for this:
    “On Tuesday, a police oversight body said that forensic tests had shown that both shots fired at the scene had come from a police officer’s Heckler and Koch submachine gun, and that the tests so far had shown no evidence that the loaded Italian-made BBM pistol carried by Mr, Duggan has been fired in the confrontation.”
    Picture here of the Heckler and Koch (a German firm) machine gun:
    http://www.hk-usa.com/military_products/mil_submachine.asp
    Now, one wonders if the Germans are exporting the same firepower to police forces in Ireland, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and whoops, there goes France, to enforce fiscal austerity and protect their very own banks, etc.

  165. But then next comment showed that you only used this principle as a weapon to discredit your opponent.

    How so? Who’s my opponent, in your scenario?

    It shows that you do not care about principles but only to win.

    No, the comment that you quote shows that I care not at all for the opinions of Andrew Sullivan, who is much more interested in Sarah Palin’s uterus than I find seemly. I have many other areas of disagreement with him that lack the ick factor, but the ick factor is what causes me to turn away from anything he writes. You of course are free to read him or not read him, as is everyone else.

    Do people that caused the death of 77(and more) people
    deserve to be stoned when justice doesnt reach them trough legal means?

    Which people are you referring to? What, in general, are you even talking about?

    And the country would be better off.

    Wait: this sounds as if you, too, are advocating the stoning of politicians whose opinions you don’t agree with.
    I suppose violence is justified if it fits your ideology.

    But now the question comes to Who is to decide who are those extremists?

    Some of them are the ones who advocate violence when they can’t get their way politically, I say. It’s practically the definition of extremism: the advocacy of extreme measures.

  166. the things you did not disagree with in my comment are more important then the ones you listed. I am talking about having a principle of non violence and how ideology leads to it. The point of it is to show how interconnected we all are.
    Wait: this sounds as if you, too, are advocating the stoning of politicians whose opinions you don’t agree with.
    I suppose violence is justified if it fits your ideology.

    Correct wording that applies to me is: Advocating for stoning of politicians whose ACTIONS i do not agree with. And i do not agree with actions to go to war with country that was not an iota threat to our country. Iraq. Only threat they were was to the corporate plans for control of oil and hegemony. Both sides of the isle, Rs and Ds who voted for that war deserve stoning. Not as a punishment but as a prevention of future damage that they keep doing. Since they wield a huge power even some are not in congress anymore they still influence the public and policy.
    Some of them realize the blunder and learned something that will never repeat again, they are excused.
    My principles are: protect the weak and doubt the power, also non violence. But there is some responsibility in enforcing if possible in order to protect the weak.
    I am not advocating anything violent, i am talking about what they deserve in some perfect world where laws are applied equally to poor and to powerful.
    The fact that their actions(voting) are producing the outcome that will lead to a lot of violence, such as a civil war, or in the best case scenario, riots such are happening in London nowadays.
    As Cameron already discredited those looters as “pure” hooligans and criminals, shows that leaders will retreat even harder into ideology that created such environment that creates such riots. The ideology (which is fascist ideology in my opinion) that gives corporations anything they ask under excuse that they are “job creators”. And what corporations want is more profit, which will come with cutting the costs, easiest one is labor cost, which produces poor and alienated population, not to mention it destroys corporate customer base.

  167. And you are conflating opinions with knowledge of history. To know how history repeats itself over and over we should know principles under which it repeats because we were not there to see and compare, most of the time. Laws of action and reaction are everywhere not only in physics. We are interconnected.
    Conflating politics and science. Politics should not decide about economy which is science based. I admit, Not fully developed science, due to data collection abilities in previous years but its getting better.

  168. But the biggest point should be that stoning is a metaphor for public humiliation, just as tar and feathering is. Since you know that such violent public humiliations are abandoned long time ago and impossible for anyone to advocate it literally, it is just an excuse to turn away from the topic of the discussion and to pretend to have a higher moral ground. Using it as a weapon against oponents with different views (not opinions). Views are fact based conclusions taken from other’s positions and intentions. Less or more facts taken into consideration makes the views. Opinions can not be proven right or wrong since they do not use facts, but estetic, religious or moral preference.

  169. impossible for anyone to advocate it literally

    No, it’s not. Legally sanctioned stoning is no longer with us, but anyone can throw rocks.

    it is just an excuse to turn away from the topic of the discussion and to pretend to have a higher moral ground

    So confident you are that you know my thinking. Why, I shouldn’t even need to

  170. An excuse is an action?
    No. Sorry, no.
    You maintain that I am avoiding the topic, under guise of faux concern. I’m not doing that, I promise you.

  171. You never know who’s going up against the wall next, come the revolution. It could be you. I seem to recall a few who were shortened in the aftermath of the French Revolution were themselves revolutionaries. You might wind up being seen as not revolutionary enough or, like Hébert, too revolutionary.
    It’s therefore probably a plus to be a pseudonymous revolutionary in any given age.

  172. Yup, once they figured out Robespierre’s IP address, zee jig, it t’was up, mon ami.
    “You never know who’s going up against the wall next, come the revolution. It could be you. I seem to recall a few who were shortened in the aftermath of the French Revolution were themselves revolutionaries. You might wind up being seen as not revolutionary enough or, like Hébert, too revolutionary.”
    Well, merely as a thought experiment, let’s posit the “you” in that statement as the self-described revolutionaries elected by the Tea Party Movement and their enablers in the vestiges of the now moribund Republican Party.
    Further, that these revolutionaries, to further their, at best, incoherent, but non-negotiable ends, are attempting to inflict a certain amount of controlled (in their minds they believe they can control it), but cleansing, chaos and pain on the polity and society around them, not to mention a once-functioning government.
    They have been called nihilists, but I don’t believe in calling people names that make them blink and seek out a dictionary.
    Rather, (again, this is a thought experiment), I believe that maybe what is required as an antidote to these folks inflicting what they believe to be controlled (controlled in that only the Other is afflicted by the strategic pain and damage), is some ferocious, uncontrolled nihilism leading to a howling chasm of chaos, for its own sake, just to see if they can handle the real thing, the real thing being pain and damage, as Robespierre experienced, turned back on them without control.
    And that all they hear by way of connection to the illusion of controlled chaos as the now uncontrolled chaos comes at them uncontrollably is the cackle of Madame Defarge.
    I’ve always thought Heath Ledger’s Joker captured the psychology of this. Even the bad guys, who liked a little chaos to further their own ends, in their gnarled little heart of hearts, ended up hoping Batman could restore order, because this guy, Heath Ledger’s Joker, was into some serious unseriousness.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRG1tWQN6e8
    As a footnote, I saw a photograph of Michelle Bachmann, Louie Gohmert, and Steve What’shiswho, the bomb-throwing rep from Iowa,Illinois one of those I-States, walking off of a stage, smiling broadly, I expect after each stepping to the microphone and emitting the most fatuous mouth flatulence about the uncompromising length they were going to go to inflict their idea of chaos and pain on the country, a veritable bonfire of the inanities, but with real people experiencing real pain and suffering at their hands.
    They were proud of what they were up to.
    And, I thought (musing experimentally), what if Heath Ledger’s Joker was in the room, skulking around near the back, or better, in the front row fiddling with a remote control device connected to some real f8cking pain and suffering.

  173. Countme, the last time I heard a proposal like that was Tom Friedman’s column Crazier than Thou.
    We all know where that led.

  174. Well, I think we actually ended up, in the case of the Bush Administration’s wars and the follow-on right-wing infestation via the Tea Party, with “Alright, We Tried Crazier And That Didn’t Work, So Let’s Try Really F8cking Dumb.”
    But yeah, here we are.
    Heath Ledger is dead and now another slick, shallow monster from Texas, this time with secessionist Confederate concealed carry deep in whatever Texan gland that plays his heart on TV, arises from his kneeling in armed, malign prayer, and staffing his foreign team with the exact same deja vu horror artists Bush used to blow up the world and bankrupt the Treasury, with the added charming angle that while Bush II spent a little Federal money for drought relief AND prayed for rain, this newly evolved psychopath (deadlier acid for blood, more teeth in bigger jaws) will devolve the Federal Government down to only a weekly prayer session for the free market dead and dying, with the exception of the tactical nukes the taxpayer will be forced to buy so his God can bring wrath to the Other, arises to join the champion sneerers and wanna-be Jokers already lining up to destroy the country.
    Nah, I think a Heath Ledger/Joker intransigent tax revolt (not one penny, marginal or otherwise, f*ckers) from the left, several million strong and adequately equipped and extravangantly ruthless, would be just the start of a welcome uncontrolled chaos for this joke of a polity.
    But maybe Obama rope-a-dopes them and it won’t be necessary.
    I doubt it.

  175. Personally, I would say that asserting an interest in having your state secede should pretty much disqualify you from running for the Presidency.
    But WTF do I know.

  176. This is also ludicrous. The President and Democrats could have had the eventual compromise months ago. There would have been little fanfare and the damage done would have been mitigated.

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