Religious Right?

I've read plenty of analyses of how the American conservative right captured the hearts and minds of the faithful. These have been mostly discussions of the tactics; appeals and alignment on social issues (abortion, women's rights, gay rights), making sure that each and every Republican candidate makes the appropriate obsequious noises to god and country, prayer breakfasts and prayer meetings. What I haven't heard adequately explained is why.

Conservatives - politicians in general - are no more or less religious than the rest of us. In fact, given the level of the compromises made to their values daily, I would argue that as a class politicians may be less religious than just about any group in the country except scientists. And citizens who profess faith to one of the major religious cults and their offshoots - supposedly based on the good deeds of some ahistorical figure - should be looking to ally themselves with the party that makes care for their fellow citizens a prime plank in their platform. To borrow one of their own phrases, "what would Jesus do?" So how did that all go so wrong?

The Republican Party has become the party of the white, wealthy elite; that is self obvious. And yet, through the tactics I mentioned above they have captured the reactionary religious factions of the deep south and in a fair bit of the rest of the country. Getting these folks to consistently vote against their own and their children's best interests. But why? Their aims are not the same - at least not the aims they both profess daily. So the Republicans have thrown on the cloak of religion to capture a pretty large voting block, but to those who observe closely, these two groups just don't fit well together. What is it about the faithful do Republicans want (besides their vote)?

Their blind faith.

If someone can believe - against all scientific evidence to the contrary - that the world was created in six days just 10,000 years ago they will believe in Trickle Down Economics. If they believe that the Koran was dictated directly into the ears of a first century man in the Levant by god they will believe that the President was born in Kenya. If they believe that they can speak in tongues with little flames dancing over their heads, they will believe - despite mountains of evidence - that anthropocentric global climate change is a hoax. If they believe that an early first century Jewish teacher - who may or may not have ever actually existed - was the literal "son of god" they'll believe that corporations are people. If they believe any or all of the above, they'll believe just about anything you tell them.

That's why the Right has courted the religious in America. Their ideas and theories have been tested and found wanting many times. They were losing voters; they could see the future and it was not all white men nodding their heads sagely at the preachings of rich white men at the head of businesses looking only to improve the bottom line. But they were not in a hurry to let go of their power or their money. Maybe other writers have come to the same conclusion but I'm sure the editors of major publications would never let this be written for public consumption. In any case, I've never read this anywhere else. But it makes perfect sense. In a twisted kind of way.

And it scares the hell out of me.

Life Aint Fair

Conservatives are upset at the number of references to "fair" in the SOTU speech. "Life's not fair!" they claim. On that very narrow point, I agree with them.

But here's where their argument falls apart.

Life is not fair. In a strictly Darwinian sense, life in the jungle, life in the caves, life on the African savannah was not fair. But one of the reasons that we are all here, able to have this conversation, is that our ancestors worked to make life a little more fair. They banded together for protection; they worked together at hunting and gathering - and later at agriculture. They helped the old, the young and the sick not just because it was the "right thing" to do, but also because those who might have been seen as a burden in the days of roaming the savannah were now able to help on the home front.

Just about every societal advancement our ancestors worked so hard to create was in an effort to make life more fair. A conservative commenter on one of my Facebook friend's posts about the SOTU - in reference to fairness - stated "when YOU feed a poor child that's [good], when government does it that is... evil."Really? When only the government has the resources to reach all of those in need, even then their feeding of a hungry child is evil?

I want to live in a fair society. When conservatives can look around the ideological blinders even they want to live in a fair society. Can anyone really imagine that they want to live in a truly Darwinian society where only the strong survive?

Americans Are Stupid

A community center is not a mosque. Yet liberals have allowed the Tea Baggers and the rest of the xenophobes on the right to frame the discussion around a "mosque at Ground Zero." As Keith Olbermann stated, it's not a mosque and it's not at Ground Zero. But Keith is the only person of note saying so.

If the (absolute) least common denominator gets to set the frame how is it possible to have an intelligent conversation?

Cannon Fodder

The actual term is archaic; it first described those front line soldiers, in the time of linear warfare, who marched straight into cannon fire during an attack. Unfortunately the phrase has never been given the time to truly fall into disuse. And BushCo. have done their best to make sure it didn't go out of style in their time.

That most dangerous and feared weapon of the insurgents in Iraq and now, more and more, Afghanistan is the IED - Improvised Explosive Device. Those soldiers caught in the blast of such a device - the ones not killed outright - are left with broken or missing limbs and faces and with permanent, debilitating brain injuries.

But BushCo. has repeatedly said - about many things - "we couldn't have known!" And, after all, you have to go to war with the military you have, right? But every time they've uttered those words, it's turned out to be a lie. This time is no different.

The Pentagon "was aware of the threat posed by mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) … and of the availability of mine resistant vehicles years before insurgent actions began in Iraq in 2003," says the 72-page report, which was reviewed by USA TODAY.

[snip]

Marine Corps leaders "stopped processing" an urgent request in February 2005 for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles from combat commanders in Iraq's Anbar province after declaring that a more heavily armored version of existing Humvee vehicles was the "best available" option for protecting troops, the report says.

Why would Marine "leaders" stop processing such an urgent request from their comrades in the field? I've known lots of Marines and the only thing that would keep them from helping a fellow Marine is pressure from the top. Lots of pressure. Remember that BushCo. was still suffering under the delusion that they could prosecute two wars on the cheap and could "transform" the military into a lighter, more deployable force. I'm sure there was plenty of pressure to keep costs down and to keep materiel as light as possible. No matter the human cost.

Add this to the way-too-long list of stories you can tell your conservative friends who still believe the lie that Republicans "support the troops."

No One Could Have Predicted...

How many times did we hear that from BushCo. over the past eight years? Too many to count about too many things.

Here's another one to add to the list; seems that they were warned about the mortgage crisis and financial meltdown:

"Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories," California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.

So they were warned, just like "Bin Laden determined to strike the U.S." and like Katrina storm damage warnings and like so many other disasters in waiting that BushCo. ignored.

So, what did they do?

Bowing to aggressive lobbying -- along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK -- regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.

But of course there were consequences, right?

Many of the banks that fought to undermine the proposals by some regulators are now either out of business or accepting billions in federal aid to recover from a mortgage crisis they insisted would never come. Many executives remain in high-paying jobs, even after their assurances were proved false.

January 20 can't come fast enough.

Worst. President. Ever.

Lost in the Wilderness

It's where lots of pundits are saying the GOP will spend the next several years. And it wouldn't be a bad thing if that stretched into decades. But to me it's where I wish the media would leave Sarah Palin.

Please.

She cost McCain - if not the election - at least a lot of votes. She cost the GOP what little credibility they had left. And most of all - she's an idiot.

On Hardball last night, Chris Matthews asked a GOP guest, who had claimed Palin was ignorant of the world but not stupid, whether if you were still ignorant in your forties, weren't you, de facto, stupid? It was a brilliantly obvious question. The only answer to which is a resounding YES.

So please; I don't care if she's making moose chili back in Wasilla. I don't care about her ignorant, pregnant daughter or her pot-smoking future son-in-law and I most assuredly do not care about the first dude anymore. Her and the rest of the Wasilla Hillbillies have had their 15 minutes. In fact it was old after about five.

What Constitution?

Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann have gotten lots of mileage out of the fact that neither Sarah Palin nor McCain spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer could state the Constitutional role of the Vice President. While this in itself is disturbing - if for no other reason than it's reasonable to expect an applicant for a job to at least know what that job entails.

But, really, we shouldn't be surprised.

Just think of all the other aspects of our Constitution and our laws that Republicans have ignored over the past eight years:

1. Habeus Corpus? Check.
2. Extra-legal prisons on foreign soil? Check.
3. Trashing the Fourth Amendment? Check.
4. Illegal war? Check.
5. Lying to the American people? Check.
6. Suppressing and/or stealing votes? Check.

Well, you get the idea.

So while I appreciate Matthews' and Olbermann's humor, I just can't be surprised anymore. I can only hope that we can win in November with a large enough margin to swamp any attempts at stealing another election and we can move on towards healing.

But - just because we can - add to the comments your favorite "extra-Constitutional" activities of the last eight years. Don't be shy, there are plenty to go around!

Reflections on Race

I have to admit that growing up my family was pretty racist - in that casual, always been like that way - and in many respects are still that way today. Perhaps not as baldly as I remember growing up, but it's still not unusual for my parents to use the "N-word." Having grown up in Florida during the 60's and 70's - I was born in 1961 - I picked up a fair bit of that mindset. There were racial fights in my high school even in my Senior year, 1979. I'll admit to using racial epithets back then.

Entering the Military Academy placed me in a completely different environment. Not only is the Academy in New York, far from the open bigotry of the South, but the Army had been integrated for decades by that time and I worked and studied side-by-side with people of all races and faiths. In fact, like generations of soldiers before me, I had to learn to trust the person next to me with my life - regardless of what they looked like. Unlike the African-American "acquaintances" I had in high school, I made my first black friends.

As you can probably guess, it was Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama that brought on these memories. For the most part, until this year, I had mostly been able to forget that our country still has large areas where racism - the kind I grew up with - still holds sway. I am occasionally reminded of it when I visit my hometown when one of my parents or one of their friends lets slip the N-word as though it were nothing. Living in New York it's sometimes easy to forget about all of that.

I had thought that America had moved past (most of) such a shameful past.

Obama's campaign has been many things to many people; hopeful, inspirational, exciting. But it has also been an uncomfortable reminder of things in our past. And such reminders can provoke many of the opposites of these admirable things. Unfortunately, those opposites have been on display this year and most especially in the past couple of weeks. Think of Michele Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchannan, Palin's rally attendees; think of those who pass on the whisper campaign of racial and religious fear-of-other. Saddest of all, think of John McCain who lets all of this happen in his campaign, on his watch.

Perhaps the most important thing that an Obama win in two weeks could do is to move us closer to a time when we really have moved past such a shameful past. I now believe that it's been premature of commentators to say that we've come to a post-racial society. Maybe, we can actually - finally - get there.

I'm hopeful.

I Am a Liberal and a Democrat - But I'm Not Anti-American

If you watched Hardball tonight, perhaps you saw the segment with Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation and Republican Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. If you did and you're not as angry as I am, then you weren't paying attention.

Bachmann said that the press should "investigate" all the Democrats in Congress for being - and I shit you not - Anti-American. This was after a discussion of the tenuous connection between Barack Obama and William Ayers. She failed to appreciate the nuance that Obama was only eight years old when Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground or that when Obama was working with him he was a lauded member of the Chicago education system.

No, in the new Republican formulation - trotted out daily by the Caribou Barbie - any of us who disagree with the rabid Republican right are now Anti-American. Any of us who's business or charitable acquaintances were at some point in the past any less than pristine, Republicans are Anti-American. And a member of the US Senate has just said so.

Michele Bachmann, meet Joe McCarthy.

Bachmann, despite Vanden Heuvel's backing away from the word, is a fascist.