The Fighting Side

In response to this recent story, a conservative commenter repeated the standard Republican canard that the deficit had skyrocketed under Barack Obama, it presumably having been under control before then. I responded by explaining that while, yes, the deficit had risen dramatically in 2009, the federal government fiscal year had begun on October 1, 2008. Which essentially lays the 2009 deficit at the feet of the final Bush budget. I then enumerated the main contributors to the deficit: two unfunded wars, unfunded Medicare Part D, TARP, etc.

The commenter responded by calling me a liar.

Upon which it occurred to me that this exchange was emblematic of the two-year rhetorical food fight that passes for public discourse in this country. The bones of it are this:

1. A conservative repeats an unfounded right-wing talking point about Barack Obama
2. A liberal refutes the assertion with facts that require some effort to put across
3. Challenged by facts, the conservative denies reality by making an ad hominem attack on the liberal.

This dynamic plays out over and over. Here's another one:

Ireland's fiscal calamity is due to its socialist economy and welfare state. 

That might be the case were Ireland socialist, but it isn't: This is a crisis of capitalism, not a cautionary tale about socialism.

You are a socialist elitist libtard.

Or:

Obama is a socialist because he socialized the auto industry.

No, he didn't. Two of the three auto companies were temporarily and partially nationalized. That's a different thing altogether. Plus, the auto companies asked the federal government to step in.

How does it feel to be a tool of union bosses?

One side assumes an error of fact and responds appropriately. The other assumes duplicity and responds as if personally attacked.

Read the conservative comments on MSNBC some time: They are basically one unfounded assertion after another, without the slightest effort at providing supporting evidence. One of the latest is to ascribe every piece of negative economic news about health care to the Affordable Care Act, without bothering to account for medical inflation. (The ACA has barely begun to take effect, so any attribution of negative impact is bound to be an overstatement.) Then there are the obvious attempts to spread rumors. Take this one: The health care law has caused private physician practices and long-term care facilities all over the country to close. No evidence is cited of this because there is no evidence of it.

Which is no surprise, as conservatives, like Pavlov's, dog, have been trained by their masters at Fox News and on talk radio to respond to reality with a snarl. (Although surely their mouths water first.) There's no such thing as debate in conworld: Only attacks on their wallets and way of life. Well, their wallets are being attacked, just not by who they think. As for their precious way of life -- the one in which shooting and God are equal moral values -- they've somehow drawn the contorted conclusion that anyone who doesn't want to share it is attacking it.

Seriously, does Mark Holwager actually believe that gay marriage is going to bring Sodom and Gomorrah to Monroe City, Indiana (pop. 548). Or that regulating firearms in Washington, D.C., will keep him from shooting? Do the Cosgrays fret that $33,000,000.00 in federal grants will end Life As They Know It in White County? Or that a blogger in Redmond, WA hates them with every fiber of his being? Apparently, they do.

It's old news, I suppose, but conservatives have gone from hiding behind a distortion of facts to showing blatant contempt for them. That's a fact.

My Indiana Home

Heartland America doesn’t feel the same way as people in the cities. We do believe in religion, we go to church all the time, we shoot and fish, and love our families. Some of the time you wish folks in the cities would come live with us and see how we live.

Indiana teabagger Mark Holwager

You can't make this stuff up! It's here. As I understand Mr Holwager, because I live in the city,

• I don't believe in religion. (O.K., he got me there. But there are a lot of churches in Seattle despite my best efforts.)
• I never go to church. (Guilty. But I'll bet Mr. H has plenty of neighbors who sleep in on Sunday.)
• I don't shoot and fish. (Guilty, but of what? Shooting and fishing are values?)
• I hate my family. (You'd have to ask my kids, but I think I'm okay on this score.)

As for Mr Holwager's invitation to come on in an set a spell, a visit to rural Indiana any time soon isn't in the offing. Then it hit me: If I can't take Citizen K. to French Lick, I can bring French Lick to Citizen K. And I have to admit it: Who wouldn't want to live where you can mount a scope while you get a haircut?

The thrill of it all.

Indiana has had a massive influx of Chinese immigrant.

Where else but Heartland America can you get a Rice Krispy Flurry?

Scope and a haircut.

Fine dining in the Heartland. Reservations only after 6 pm.

There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight.

"Come see how we live."

Indiana values diversity and does not tolerate racism.

One of many thriving business districts in rural Indiana.

Homes in rural Indiana have many modern conveniences.

Community swimming pools are a common sight.

Wyoming Will Be Your New Home

No law shall restrict a person’s natural right and power of contract to secure the blessings of liberty to choose private health care systems or private plans.

So says a law under consideration by the Wyoming state legislature. The law would impose a fine and a five-year jail term on any federal government official or employee or an employee of any corporation doing business with the federal government (read: hospitals) who attempts to "enforce" the Affordable Care Act in Wyoming.

I have it on good authority that the Constitutional originalists in Wyoming have access to James Madison's most closely guarded papers. Among them, they found this partial draft of the preamble to the Constitution:

...promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to choose private health care systems or private plans to ourselves and our Posterity...

Below the draft, the originalists read the following:

While I must to define the Blessings as meaning the Inalienable Right to private Health plans, I cannot. For yester even a mysterious man cloaked in Black waylaid me and told me that should I not remove These nine words from the Preamble, he and other Liberals would go to Dolly. And he described in great detail the Things the Liberals would do to my Wife while the Negroes came in from the fields to watch. As I could not bear this, I removed the Nine. I fear I have doomed the Nation to Government run Health care. Although it is the Liberals who have done This. It is always Them. 

So It is done. Now I must decide whether a Slave is 3/5's or 3/4's of a Person...

Upon reading this, the originalists looked at each other grimly. Wyoming would be the Constitution's new home. It would be safe there...

It was impossible to resist including the photo of a woman who depends on Medicare holding a sign objecting to government-run health care. Shooting fish in a barrel, I know, but sometimes the flesh is just too weak...

I Wish I Was a Headlight on a Northbound Train

I wish I was headlight on a northbound train
I'd shine my light through the cool Colorado rain
I know you rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone

Some time around 1934, the musicologists and folklorists John and Alan Lomax heard a young African-American woman, in prison for murder, sing a verse from a song they came to call "Woman Blue." The Lomaxes found other verses of "Woman Blue," which may be over a hundred years old, and published the lyrics in their book American Ballads and Folk Songs. The "rider" of the lyrics is either a man or a woman; the term possibly finds its origins in images of mounted prison guards.


Consigned to obscurity for nearly thirty years, "Woman Blue" was resurrected by the white folk singers of the early Sixties and recorded for the first time, as "I Know You Rider." From the coffee houses of Greenwich Village, the song migrated to rock acts interested in folk music; it eventually became a concert staple for the Grateful Dead. (They performed it more than 500 times.) A few years ago, the Allman Brothers began playing it, and the song with roots in Texas prisons and work farms became a transcendent communal anthem complete with virtuoso guitar solos.

The enigma of "I Know You Rider" is why it lay dormant for so long. It's a great song of dogged hope, the yearning for freedom, and a devoutly wished-for flight to a better world -- feelings and desires that resonate throughout human history. If young people experience that as celebratory, perhaps they are dancing for humanity's unique connection to itself from one generation to the next. Or maybe they're dancing for the sake of dancing. That's okay, too.

There They Go Again

John Boner and Eric Cantor have been talking big about cutting the defense budget, but plenty of members of their own caucus don't like the idea. At. All. Sez Rep. Howard McKeon of California:

I cannot say it strongly enough: I will not support any measures that stress our forces and jeopardize the lives of our men and women in uniform...

Brave words indeed.

But guess what Howard didn't say strongly enough? In fact, he didn't say it at all -- strongly, weakly, or mediumly -- that in the last election cycle he received $300,000.00 in campaign contributions from defense contractors. Last cycle was especially kind to Howard, since it brought with it nearly 40% of the $778,000.00 he's received from the masters of war since 1992. Always one to know on which side his howitzer shells are oiled, Howard certainly won't be complaining about unrestricted corporate campaign contributions any time soon. Yep: Those defense contractors is just real good folks...

You know who else is real good folks? Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker, the New York Times reporters who wrote this story. In a 17-paragraph story, they buried the fact that Howard was the single biggest recipient last election of defense contractor largesse in the 12th 'graph. The Times has editorialized against the influence of unrestricted corporate donations. Is it too much too ask their reporters that they elevate the single most relevant fact in the story to place where people might actually read it?

State of the Union

President Obama was not at the top of his game last night, but he gave an effective speech. The most telling part of the aftermath was the near-uniform Republican dismissal of the idea of federal investment in the development of future job sectors. It wasn't a radical proposal: The president didn't call for an industrial policy (although we need one, and badly) and he didn't call for anything beyond the American government's traditional role as an incubator. Yet, Republicans made the curious and undocumentable claim that that has never worked. Just who do they think came up with the internets, anyway?

Of the response during the speech, what struck me the most was the tepid applause when Obama called for a five-year freeze in federal spending. I don't regard that as anything more than a rhetorical gambit, but both sides responded to it with disapproval: Republicans, because he didn't demand cuts; Democrats, because he didn't demand expansion.

This showed not only the impossibility of compromise in this climate, but that actual consensus on anything is about as likely as Woody Allen dunking over Shaquille O'Neal. But maybe there was something to Obama's proposal: Perhaps he came across like a responsible man making a reasonable request of the children in the room, all of whom chose to sit on their hands and pout...

The New York Times thinks he done good...

So do the American people...

Stanley Fish on Obama's rhetoric (he liked it)...

Rush to Judgment

It was smart, it was articulate, it was oratorical. It was, it was all the things the educated, ruling class wants their members to be and sound like.

Rush Limbaugh on President Obama's Tucson speech

Limbaugh spoke these words while accusing conservative Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer of "slobbering" over the president's call for unity in the face of tragedy. Krauthammer's acid response ("I find it interesting that only the ruling class wants a president who is smart, articulate, or oratorical in delivering a funeral oration") was correct enough, but missed the larger point and ironically played into Limbaugh's hands: His arch, sarcastic words put himself in the role of a disdainful elite who sneers at the dittoheads who represent the real America.

I have no doubt that Limbaugh's remarks were thought out and planned in advance. He knew that he was speaking to and for a responsive audience that resents President Obama's education and intellect and, by extension, the supposed condescension and snobbishness inherent to liberalism. So, if Limbaugh was on safe ground by accusing the president of intelligence, fluency, and eloquence, he speaks for people who self-identify as being none of those things, people who see themselves as uneducated, tongue-tied, and coarse.

People who are self-loathing.

People who may wrap their ugly self-image in the ribbons and bows old-fashioned 1950s values, but whose rage belies the plain-spokeness they think they're conveying.

People who deep down -- or maybe not so deep down -- find it awfully tough to swallow the reality that the black son of a single mother has run laps around them in the game of life. This is even tougher to ingest than a similar reality about a small-town boy from Arkansas raised by a single mother, and that went down about as smoothly as a dreadnought.

People who believe that their guns actually serve as a bulwark against government tyranny, a pathetic delusion if there ever was one. A real tyrant -- a Hitler or a Stalin -- would chew these guys up, spit them out, wipe his mouth with the 2nd Amendment, and take about three seconds to forget what had happened. I've seen the people who frequent gun dealers: They could stand up to the Gestapo or the NKVD about as well as I could protect Drew Brees's blind side.

And the country has let itself be held hostage to this.