Meet the Original Libtards!

Our friendly Tea Party “Patriots” often tell us that they love the constitution. In fact it takes second place only to that timeless book, the Bible–the one God wrote to tell us how to behave. Probing, (as I am always wont to do), I discover that it’s not only the constitution that is revered, but of course the “founding fathers” who, as you know, among other things, brought us the constitution.

That always amuses me ever so much.

Sadly, it seems common to the PayTREEots not to dig too deeply into the mantras they are taught by Fox and people like pseudo-historian David Barton. If they did dig a bit they would find that their adulation is ironic to say the least. Barton of course would have them believe that the FFs were all deeply religious men and that they basically made the Declaration and Constitution tracts which God hopefully would  approve of wholeheartedly. The truth of course lies quite a ways left of Mr. Barton’s imaginative ramblings.

We all know that many of the founders of our fair republic were anything but religious in their leanings. Jefferson is notable for his refusal to believe in the truth of any of the bible’s miracle stories, actually editing them out of his personal bible. (You can see his bible with all the little cut-outs somewhere, probably at Monticello). The other giant, Franklin might be defined as a deist at best.

This should not be surprising since all the FF were the rich elites of their day, and were well read. And what they read and what inspired them (oh you must remember this from high school) were the likes of Locke, Rousseau and Voltaire. All were “men of the enlightenment”. You could easily add Isaac Newton and Spinoza to the mix as well. They were men who started to see that the world could be explained through normal observation and reasonable deductive conclusion. Some, like Newton, were men of science, who were uncovering the physical laws that governed the universe.

In all cases, they were the heretics of their day as well, rejecting the church’s claims that the bible was the only resource needed to explain the world. Some professed a belief in God, but not in the traditional sense of their day.

The explosion of new thought spread across Europe and Britain, and eventually to America where it inspired Jefferson, Franklin, Madison and others to reject the “god-given” circumstances of both colonialism and monarchy. They were “enlightened” to perceive the world differently and their place within it differently. They could finally conceive of themselves as in control of their own destinies.

They formed a government based on enlightenment principles of freedom, democracy, and most of all reason as the basis for rule. They ushered in the concepts of capitalism, markets, the scientific method, religious tolerance (read tolerance to practice what YOU believed, or be free to believe nothing). It was a movement based on equality and commonality and shared responsibility.

In effect, they were the liberals of their day. They were the heretics to the religious right with all their talk of reason and science. They brought forth a new type of government.

The conservatives of their day? They were Tories.

It thus is so very ironic to think of Tea Party adherents touting their love and admiration for our Founding Fathers, today. In the time of our founding, such people would have been sending their sons to stand with King George III.

But of course Tea People never think that deeply.

I can see why.

It is just too embarrassing.

Searching For the Meaning of “Good” Friday

I’ve never been quite sure what the “good” in Good Friday meant. Perhaps we see beyond the pain, torture and death of Christ to the event of Easter. We live in those awful moments not in the moment itself, but in the promise of Sunday.

That seems to trivialize it a bit for me, and it doesn’t satisfy. I know that the Passover, celebrated as the Last Supper by Christians is that wonderful celebration by Jews of the release of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. It celebrates freedom. And no doubt as the Synoptic Gospels relate, this date for the Last Supper of Jesus (the first night of Passover) serves to symbolize our liberation from sin.

John changes the mix a bit by placing the Last Supper not on the first night of Passover, but the day before, when the lambs are slain for the meal. He likens Jesus to the lamb slain. The general symbolism remains the same.

I am not a believer of substitutionary sin–the theory that Jesus took upon himself our sins and died for them– a demand of a God who requires payment for a sinful world. Such a God, to me at least, is both harsh and ugly–sending his own son to die in the most horrible of ways.

Rather I see, (note that these ideas are surely not my own, but are the theology of many a learned scholar and teacher as well as believers) that Jesus by his willingness to die for his beliefs, shows us the perfect way to engage with this creator we call God. Jesus, in dying, pays the ultimate price for principle, the foundational principle of life–love, no matter what the cost.

For this is the essence of the God that Jesus points us towards. A God who is unimpressed by formulaic ritual and a God saddened by our tendencies to divide ourselves into groups of “saved” “faithful” or “pious” and all others who somehow by human standards fail to reach the mark. So saddened is God by our divisiveness that Jesus shows through his willingness to endure scorn, beating and tortuous death, that even the least among us is worthy of dying for.

As we struggle in our daily lives to come to grips with the deep agonies that divide us as a people and as a world, Jesus on the Cross, stands as testament to the strength that we too can express if we are willing to take up that Cross ourselves and stand for love at all costs.

Jesus stands against those whose primary goal is to protect “number one”. He stands against those who are motivated by greed, self-preservation, and egotistical individual ruggedness. He points the way to a God of grace and love, who calls us daily to be bigger than our selves in our love of brother and sister. This God, so real, so in love with His creation that He becomes one of us, in an effort to show us, by his teaching, suffering and death, what He is really all about.

I speak not of Jesus as the son of God, but as the Son of Man, for the reality or fantasy of Jesus as the incarnate God is beside the point really. If Jesus is so infused with the Spirit of the Transcendent One, then it matters not the creeds we dutifully recite each Sunday. Jesus moved aside as human, and allowed the Spirit of God to envelop him so completely that God really was among us.

All the more important that we be especially careful to separate the Jesus of history from the Jesus of the Church. More and more I find them quite different beings, with quite different agendas. After having read much, I am still in love with Paul and his exuberance for the Gospel, but I recognize that Paul molded the ensuing Church and molded Jesus into that Church. I’m not so sure that it is the Jesus of history whom he never met in the flesh.

We must comb the Gospels carefully I think to find that Jesus–that gentle yet firebrand individual who sought to bring all into the house of God, as true and perfect children. He tenderly attended to the needs of the most broken and rejected in society without asking of them anything in return, other than to put God first in their lives. His anger was invoked by those whom he saw as impeding the people in their attempt to know their God. He pointed the finger and accused them of having lost all sense of why they were doing what they did. It had all become for show, for power, and for accolades.

True piety rested with the many Marys who lived with the Master, the self-less women who sat at his feet, absorbing his wisdom, who anointed his head, washed his feet, and knelt at the foot of the cross, and ultimately went to dress his broken and dead body, and found to their amazement that his real presence washed over them.

If we learn anything from the Friday, called Good, it is that we too can approach God in these simple acts of service–not by asking questions about who deserves and who doesn’t deserve our acts, but in simply being willing to give in love, knowing that the Spirit of God inhabits each and every one of God’s created beings.

Have a blessed Easter Time.

(I know that many of you who read this are not religious, and at best agnostic if not actually atheistic in your outlook. But I think that whatever you believe, you are beloved and understood and accepted by God as you are, and I hope the sentiments I express, resonate in that “human” way that knows no faith.)

Just Send Them to a Psychiatrist

I finally figured it out. How stupid of me not to have seen it before. Nobody beats their head against a wall forever. The outcome does not change.

It is apparent that the GOP is suffering from a bad case of masochism. I mean a really severe case of it. I mean let me explain it by way of a baby.

Okay, you hold an animal cracker in front of an infant, and they will reach for it. You hold out four animal crackers and they will drop the one and grab for the four. Then hold out one, and they will drop the four and grab for the one. They don’t differentiate because they don’t know the concept of quantity yet.

Now the GOP sorta like this. You dangle a few teabibbers in front of them, and they will drop a legion of regular fiscal conservatives. They can’t seem to get the idea of counting. They give up the vast middle because the fraction dances a jig in front of them and threatens to go (where exactly?).

I think they get a perverse sexual kick out of it. Just a theory mind you. But you explain why they can’t let go of the crazies in favor of a really much larger middle.

The Chinese are busy stealing our intellectual property.

That used to be done by stealth by men and women sneaking into offices and jimming safes and taking pictures of formulas.

Cloak and dagger stuff. Something you could at least applaud for the sheer audacity of it.

Now? It’s all done thousands of miles away by geeky types with lips smeared with pizza sauce and button-down plaid shirts and cheap sneakers.

I am very sure that if you go to that building in Shanghai where the special section of the Chinese army is busy breaking into computers all over our land, that is what you will find.

I think we should shame them. I mean, “hey Chinese government, can’t you think up these things yourself? Are you so pathetic in intellect that you have to steal it? So much  for your much touted smarts!”

After all, it worked so well with Japan and South Korea.

It must be something in the rice that makes these folks so wily when it comes to cheating. Or again, it may speak to just how smart they really are.

In any event, we are getting screwed.

The GOP are messing up the immigration thing.

There is no way out for them.

Even if the “calmer” heads in the GOP (stop laughing!) prevail, do you think that the Latino population is going to forget the fight within the party?

When folks are talking about keeping them in guest worker mode forever as a way to insure cheap labor for the “dirty” jobs, well, I think you have already lost the battle no matter what the final outcome.

Perhaps the GOP needs a lesson in “shut the f**k up” when it comes to talking outside of very very closed doors.

It’s that masochism thing again I think.

It is lost on no one, that anything the President proposes, is “dead on arrival”. They actually use those very words.

So if the President proposes  some ideas on immigration, they call it “interference” and “political posturing”. If he leaves Congress alone, they call it
“unengaged” and “not leading.”

They also think we are too dumb to catch on.

They always think we don’t see the truth.

But to be fair, when you have been divorced from the truth as long as they have on almost everything, it’s probably pretty hard to know fact from fiction.

And they are still using the old Rovian playbook which states on page one: If you say a thing again and again, sooner or later, it will be taken as true.”

Of course that is only true if you keep a straight face and are talking to a Teabibber. Actually with a Teabibber, you don’t need the straight face. They are so wrapped in their own little alternative reality that the won’t know the difference.

Lord, things are getting wicked in the Vatican.

Now they are talking about a secret study that shows that the Curia is just chock full of backbiting intrigue, jockeying for power, and *gasp* homosexual liaisons.

Sounds like your average government to me.

Sounds like Benedict has buyers remorse.

Sounds like the Catholic Church is in for a very bumpy ride.

I sigh a lot. I’d even consider going back to the Episcopals, but here in my town, there are no liberal Episcopals only the conservative Anglicans.

It’s just about enough to make a person give up organized religion and just steer an independent spiritual ship. I’m sure Jesus gets tired too.

Once upon a time it used to be pretty easy to tell who was crazier.

Kim Dong Un, like his crazy daddy, Kim Jong Il, were just about the craziest of the loons on the globe.

But America does like to be first.

And we have been running that race into the ground lately.

I mean, like I said, it’s darn near impossible to pick a jackass of the week in Amerika any more.

There are people just standing in line for the honor of being named to that lofty pedestal.

A perennial finalist every week is Wayne La Pee Pee Pierre.

But I’m pretty convinced I’m gonna live long enough to see him placed in a lock box and buried. Better yet, he can be chopped up and put in the nose cone of every nuclear device we have. I bet he would like that.

Shame on YOU Cardinal Dolan

As I understand it, Cardinal Dolan was invited to give the benediction at the RNC. The DNC followed suit, seeing no other reasonable way to go. Dolan as you may know has been the vociferous opponent of any type of insurance coverage for birth control, even when not paid for by Catholic based institutions.

Now a benediction is a prayer bestowing a blessing on the assemblage. It is not an uncommon thing to have certainly. It is fairly rare to have someone from out-of-town to vie for the job. While I can’t confirm this scenario, I heard last night that Dolan first offered to give the benediction, was rebuffed by the Democrats, who then invited him after he accepted the RNC offer.

Now you might think that he gave the same benediction? NO. Though they resembled each other to a great extent, there were some subtle and not so subtle changes that made his remarks anything but the “apolitical, non-partisan” statement that he claimed.

You can read both benedictions here. 

Basically Dolan changed “those yet to be born” to “those waiting to be born . . .[and]that they be welcomed and protected.” This to apparently chastise the Democrats for their pro-choice stance on the issue of abortion.

Dolan then went on in the RNC version to encourage “respecting the laws of nature and nature’s God, and not seek to replace it with idols of our own making.” In the DNC version he added, “Empower us with your grace so that we might resist the temptation to replace the moral law with idols of our own making, or to remake those institutions you have given us for the nurturing of life and community.” This was a direct snipe at the DNC position on marriage equality.

President Obama and VP Biden were blessed by name on in the DNC version, while Mr. Romney and Ryan were blessed by name in both.

So much for being non-partisan. The perhaps saving grace, is that at least MSNBC did not even show the benediction but went straight to analysis. It seems that may have been true for just about everyone but Foxy Noise who showed it in full.

It is shameful in any case, whether heard or not, that a Cardinal would act in such a totally partisan way before a national audience.

Ð

It hardly seems worth saying. He was magnificent as we expected he would be. And frankly so was Joe Biden. Both speeches were thrilling, and uplifting. What the President and the other speakers managed to do, is to change the dynamics of the election. Basically it comes down to: we know what we are doing, and they haven’t got a clue what is wrong or how to fix it. Why this man still thinks that Russia is our worst enemy. This man goes on a tour of Europe and manages to insult our best friend. Instead of a referendum on the President, it is now a referendum on an out-of-touch venture capitalist and a Ayn Randian ideologue who would destroy the most vulnerable among us.

It’s about CITIZENSHIP–with the benefits of life in America come responsibilities. I almost expected him to recall the refrain: ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. Really that’s what he meant.

Ð

Oh Gosh, Sistah Sarah is all up in a tither. I mean John Kerry mentioned her name. I mean wow. I mean, dang girl, he mentioned your NAME. Not in a good way though, which is why your panties are all twisted up in yer huntin’ pants. Remember Sarah you said, that you were no Jenny-come-lately to foreign policy, cuz you could see Russia from your front porch. Now later, you embellished that to what you “really” meant which may or may not have been what you said, but you said it. And Senator Kerry did laugh and remind us and suggest that all Willard knows about Russia he learned from Rocky IV.

It was a good line. Just admit it and move on girl. Don’t be so nasty. It will amount to nothing. Cuz you amounted to nothing.

In case you are curious:

“How does he even know my name? I mean aren’t these guys supposed to be these big wig elites who don’t waste their time on the little people like me — me representing the average American who, yeah I did say in Alaska you can see Russia from our land base and I was making the point that we are strategically located on the globe and when it comes to transportation corridors and resources that are shared and fought over [in] Alaska and I as the governor had known what I was doing in dealing with some international issues that had to do with our resources that could help secure the nation.”

Word salad for the day served!

Ð

And with that, have a good one. It’s Friday after all, day of contemplated debauchery.

Snarking My Way Along

 

 

I do believe that Willard and Paulie could win a contest of “whoppers” told. The crap spewing forth from those rich lips is unbelievable.

The best that Boehner the Orange can say about his pal Paulie, is that he is not a knuckle dragger conservative. That must be the Tea-Pots.

But Willard said nobody should run for President (or be a heart-beat away I assume) who doesn’t have at least 3 years in the real world of business. But Paulie has sucked off the government teat his entire life. According to Ayn Rand, that’s not compromising principles but merely recuperating “reparations”.  Go Paulie Go!

Meanwhile, it is being hotly debated whether the Willard penchant for lying is a character flaw, or a mental defect.

It is hard to understand how he can blatantly tell lies (the one about “you didn’t build this” being the MOST obvious), and not know they are lies.

Does the desire to be King of the World really cause one abandon all principle? Or is the absence of any principles the hallmark of a presidential candidate? A hard decision I reckon.

I almost look forward to the occasional gaffes by the Dems. To watch the GOP talking heads blow gaskets over the perceived “outrages” is utterly funny.

Did you see Sarah explain that she couldn’t think of a single Republican who had EVER  said such mean and outrageous things in a public campaign.

Jon Stewart then followed with a long series of snippets from her 2008 campaign. Pallin’ with terrorists ring a bell? Sistah Sarah, thou memory is short.

The Tea Tippers are sure busy telling me about how I am losin’ my freedoms at light speed. And it’s all to do with that usurper in the “WHITE” house, who shoulda have known, well that the BACK door was his entrance.

Anyway, they don’t seem to be yappin’ a bit about losing their freedom to vote across Amerika. Oh but, I forgot. It ain’t “their” kind that is, is it. It’s the young and the old and the poor and the NOT WHITE who are, and who gives a damn about them?

Which is why they are all for this supply side economics of which they know nothing at all, except that anything that takes away from the moocher class is a good thing–except that when you listen in on those conversations at those country club establishments of which ordinary folks can’t attend except as waiters–you too are declared to be of the moocher class.

And if you get you way, you will soon find that out. And then who are you gonna come crying to?

Still the choice is hard for the average red-neck.

Where are the PROTESTANTS?

Politics make strange bedfellows they always say.

And one of them doesn’t believe in condoms so I’d be very careful if I were you.

And while both sides sling mud with varying degrees of misleading jabs, we continue NOT to have the conversation that should be the hallmark of a civilized democratic society.

Do we believe that everyone who is born is a human being, precious and to be cherished such that he or she should be fed, clothed, housed, educated, medically cared for, provided with meaningful work at fair wages and with time to enjoy one’s life? Is that the bottom line basics that all of us deserve?

Or do we believe that we live in a jungle where the fittest survive, and if you are lucky, you get the best of things, and if you are not, you scrap by with hard work thankful for the end of your life and some peace?

Which is the promise of our founding? Which is the hope of our parents? Which is the vision of our species?

But then again, maybe we don’t deserve any better:

Related articles

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• Boehner Call Conservatives “Knuckle-Draggers” (markamerica.com)
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Inside Every Tighty-Righty is an Ethel Merman

This isn’t exactly new news. In fact it was alluded to in Max Blumenthal’s Republican Gomorrah. But a new study confirms the old, and well, frankly, confirms what we secretly always suspected.

The study done a research team from three universities shows that those who are most vocal in their denunciation of gay folks and their having normal rights, are, yeah, you guessed it, more like to be repressed homosexuals themselves.

They are most likely to have attraction for those of their own sex, especially where such feelings were severely restricted by authoritarian parents. Gays remind them of what they can’t bear to admit about themselves, as it were.

Our thanks to Juanita Jean for the heads up. And some whacked out group in Maine who is fighting against marriage equality, urges its members to refer to same-sex marriage as “sodomy based marriage.” Why some are so ugly I do not know. But then we do know don’t we?

¶

I hit the top of some search engine the other day, and posted visits of like nearly 1,000 on Saturday. It was a post from a year ago on Good Friday. No idea why it peaked any interest. The Internet is just plain weird.

¶

Here in the meadow, things are plugging along. I have pretty much finished with the packing of all but the necessities needed for the next few weeks. I’m fairly generous since I’ve already found I needed that jar of unopened olives that I’d already packed. The POD is ordered and will be here on Monday next. We are starting to look for a car to buy. We have a long list of little things to do, mostly calls to make and short visits like  to the bank (things get complicated with you have direct deposit, and with my SS starting in June). But I’m starting to see that there is indeed light at the end of the tunnel now.

¶

A couple of weeks ago, Chris Hayes’ UP had a really great discussion about faith and science. Dawkins was on as well as Steve Pinker, both atheists, or agnostics as even Dawkins admits to. Susan Jacoby rounded out that side, with Robert Wright bringing up the more, I would say, nuanced side. Stanley Fish, in the NYTimes, Opinionator, has a really interesting two-part article discussing the issues, here and here. He makes a very thoughtful argument that, while it changes nothing in the determination of scientific reality versus religion, he sets the discussion on a more rational (I think) base.

¶

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this, and rather doubt it is accurate, but I nearly fell off my chair in laughter when I saw it.

It came from the Constant Weader.

It’s an interesting thought experiment.

Now some of you will spend more time in reverie on that possibility of the physical experience, and will miss the fine political statement.

And most of you who do will be men.

Women just have a finer sense of morality and decorum.

But then, I’m not telling you anything new there am I?

¶

Rick Warren never was a middle of the roader. He’s a thinly disguised righty, who harbors the usual right-wing belief system that supports all the Ryanesque harshness as Americanism at it’s best. This is what he said to Jake Tapper a few days ago:

Well certainly the Bible says we are to care about the poor….But there’s a fundamental question on the meaning of “fairness.” Does fairness mean everybody makes the same amount of money? Or does fairness mean everybody gets the opportunity to make the same amount of money? I do not believe in wealth redistribution, I believe in wealth creation.

The only way to get people out of poverty is J-O-B-S. Create jobs. To create wealth, not to subsidize wealth. When you subsidize people, you create the dependency. You— you rob them of dignity.

Sounds fairly tame? No. Not at all. First of all, Jesus never suggested that there were limits to “caring for the poor“. And what is fairness? Nobody on the left is suggesting that everyone “make the same amount of money”. We recognize that some are more ambitious, more talented, and more delay gratification in order to educate themselves to the level that will put them in a higher wage bracket.

What does fair opportunity mean? Arguably we have always had that, although the journey may be very arduous for some, extremely so, but there have always been rich people who bucked all the odds and succeeded. And frankly this is what Warren means. And most people can’t achieve under these circumstances. Fairness to us means that everybody pays their fair share without resort to fancy accounting practices that effectively reduce one’s taxes to zero, all the while that the average person is paying a painful amount.

While jobs are everyone’s goal, and frankly I cannot fathom a man who believes that receiving government assistance amounts to being “subsidized wealth”. Show me the wealth in SS benefits and we can talk.

Warren and the Right in general attempt to place the onus of poverty on the impoverished and to help the middle class feel victimized and threatened by efforts to redress the injustice. And they use the Bible to make the middle class the traditional poor that Jesus talked about.

How many times can we remind everyone that Projectionism is at work here.  

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Or Are You Just Glad to See Me?

Strip search!

Oh yeah.

Oh?

You mean it’s not THAT kind?

Oh.

You mean nasty women in sensible shoes making me do what?

Oh no, no, no, no.

It seems our illustrious banc of increasingly, how shall I say this delicately, CRAZY MF’ing NUTS, have decided that the most minor of offenses (and only being charged) subjects the lucky recipient to a lovely and sexless full body search. Strip it ma’am!

Now, once upon a time, in a universe invented by me, a remember sitting in a classroom at MSU listening to a professor tell me all about his computerized model for predicting the outcome of cases before the supremest of Supremes. He had something like a 93% level of accuracy, so there was something to his madness.

I do very much recall that he suggested that one idea that played heavily on their collective minds in determining these “individual rights” cases, was the degree to which they could envision themselves or others of “their kind” being subjected to the objected of action. Most could see themselves, for instance, stopped in a store by mistake by a security officer who thought they saw something funny. So they were protective of people’s sense of personal privacy when confronted by rent-a-cops.

Well, apparently, five of ‘em no longer see the possibility that they might be *gasp* arrested for some minor offense, even by mistake. So they have no problem with all your privaty parts swaying in the wind before strangers as they poke and probe parts unseen since your mommy wiped your butt.

I personally don’t know whether to be offended or excited. I’m still pondering. Denise finds it all odious.

¶

I’m a fan of Andrew Sullivan. Which is not to say that I agree with him on a whole host of issues. But sometimes he is just simply right. If you didn’t see the piece he did on Christianity, then do please follow the link and read it. It’s really good. I’ve been kicking around a post about religion and organized religion for a bit, and this certainly helped to gel some ideas I’ve been bubbling up. The organized Church is to a real extent, merely the vehicle we choose to express our faith. When we start defending the institution, we are probably heading in the wrong direction.

¶

Those of you who hang out here regularly, know that I loves me some quantum mechanics. I get all squishy doe-eyed when quarks are mentioned and singularities, and oh, be still my beating heart–dark energy. Well, here’s one that purely had me giggling. A Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney, well, it does explain a lot. It does. Really. Think multiple universes and Romnealities. Think Romneverse. Delicious.

¶

Bless her heart, Ann Romney is doin’ her best to stand by her man. He’s human! He’s funny! He’s a prankster! Ann assures us that he is no stiffy. Just “unzip” him and you’ll see. Well, gosh, I bet she didn’t mean it THAT way. But that’s the way we all took it.

We know that Willard is amusing.

We  expect they are a fun family.

But I am concerned about one thing.

They name their kids weird too. Like Tragg.

What is a Tragg? Is it like a Trig or a Bristol or one of those Alaskan things?

Is there something we don’t know here?

Or did Sarah pick it up from Willard?

Wanna use an etch-a-sketch now Ann?

¶

I probably should read more Susan Sontag. I definitely should read more Peter Abelard. I need more lives in order to read all the things I need to read. Which doesn’t even begin to account for all the things I want to read.

¶

Ya know, the Supreme Court. I’ve been reading lots of opinions about what they will do. And why. Mostly about why. I mean lets start out with the fact that they have no enforcement tool. They depend on a sense of legitimacy which will encourage the active arms of government to do as they say. How precarious is that?

So far, it’s not been.

But plenty of folks were disturbed by Bush v Gore, and thought it was partisan.

Plenty of folks are disturbed by Citizens United. Plenty figure the Court is overly supportive of big business interests.

When something like 96% of all legal experts say that the constitutionality of the AHCA is clear, you have to wonder.

Do these black-robes actually care how history views them? Do enough of them care? Does Roberts care?

Kevin Drum at MotherEarthJones has a good article. Would a defeat of the health care act mobilize the Left?

¶

I just read, (without citation) that Willard has said that an economy is simply the sum total of businesses. Has he been reading Rand? I guess workers, consumers, teachers, police, firemen, doctors, and on and on and on, don’t have a thing to do with it. Just fodder. If ever there was a man consumed with the idea that what he does has done, is the only thing that matters, it’s Willard.

¶

There has been comment on the fact that Newty and Ragin’ have failed to correct or to respond to ugly remarks made by supporters of theirs who ask questions. Things that have to do with the President being a “Muslim” and so forth. It turns out that Willard is cut of the same piece of cheap cloth, more than willing to allow slurs to go unanswered, and even willing to have his picture taken with them. Witness:

 And there you have it.

 

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