There is no GOP "War on Women"

The following is a press release from the GOP's Ministry of Propaganda:


Washington DC-- It has come to our attention that outside agitators from the Democrat Party have accused us of hating women, just because a handful of homely, overweight Communistic Lesbians couldn't take a joke or two or three thousand from harmless comedian Rush Limbaugh, and because the legislatures we control have made the first priority not the deficit or jobs but making sure women don't get abortions--even if their life depends on it. Because it's the principle of the thing.

Sure, many fertilized eggs don't even develop into fetuses, and many fetuses aren't viable. But some are, so all are.

Not all women carry our babies, but some do, so all do. They're our sacred vessels.

So of course we love our women. Our beautiful, humble, obedient, baby-bearing women. Women who know their place--at our side, supporting us, caring for us, depending on us, making us feel manly.

Our women are our most prized possessions.

Out on a Limbaugh--should the Armed Forces Network carry him?

Some considerations:

1. Just as servicemen surrender a portion of their free choice as a condition of their vocation, citizens surrender control over the disposition of their tax dollars as a condition of their participation in our representative, constitutional democracy. We have a say over where our tax dollars go via petition, voting, citizens’ initiatives (at the state level), and, ultimately, lawsuits.

2. What servicemen want to listen to should absolutely be a consideration. Actually, I’ve heard that the troops would actually prefer to listen to rap and hip-hop, and that Rush Limbaugh’s show is mainly promulgated at the behest of the older white men in the top brass, in hopes of indoctrinating the troops. I haven’t found research proving this but it sounds plausible to me.

3. But though what servicemen want to listen to should be a consideration—especially since they go in harm’s way for us—it’s not dispositive in and of itself. From a military POV, the AFN should give soldiers the subset of what they’d like to hear that also contributes to their military mission—especially as it contributes to unit cohesion.

Thus the military non-political argument for banning Limbaugh is that he harms servicemens’ respect for the chain of command by expressing scathing contempt for our military’s Commander In Chief in nearly every sentence he speaks during his daily 3 hour stints. I fail to understand how that assists servicemen in carrying out the CIC’s orders—which is the heart of their job.

He also expresses scorn for the 17% of the armed forces who are women. Nearly all military women use contraceptives. Last week Limbaugh spent three days, three hours each of those days, branding all such women “sluts” and any of them who expect their health insurance to cover contraception “prostitutes” and demanding that such women provide taxpayers with videos of them copulating, for Mr. Limbaugh’s viewing pleasure.

The military has a serious problem with rape and sexual harassment of servicewomen. It it worse than most civilians realize. Mr. Limbaugh’s ongoing misogyny contributes to this problem—the most recent example is just one of innumerable ones over his decades in broadcast.

Mr. Limbaugh also expresses hostility towards blacks, Hispanics, nonreligious people, Muslims, and foreigners in general, usually with dogwhistle speech. All these groups are minorities in the armed forces as well as in civilian America—but it hardly encourages unit cohesion to encourage antagonism by the white majority of servicemen toward people in one’s unit who belong to any/all of these minorities.

An additional issue is that nearly everything Limbaugh says is verifiably factually false, and much of that falsehood is slander as well. This is a separate issue from his political orientation. There are many conservative commentators who lie less often and almost never engage in misogyny or statements undermining the chain of command. We could poll servicemen on which of those commentators they would like to hear.

One other point about servicemen’s own preferences—what if 51% of them wanted to hear torture porn fantasies? Should we allow that? What if 49% objected? How do we balance the wishes of majority vs. minority, commanders vs. enlisted personnel, taxpayers vs. the military?

These aren’t simple issues. However, I believe Limbaugh has made it simple in his case.

Also, the percentage of military personnel who are in his camp has been dropping steadily. Today Republicans only number less than 41% of members of the military. It used to be nearly 2/3, but the GOP’s morphing from a political party into a tribe—and its saying increasingly nonsensical things about military matters—may be contributing to this.

“Conservative” once equated with “Republican.” No more.

So yes, Limbaugh should go--not because he's a right winger, but because his program is bad for our military's tactical and strategic objectives. 

Bush II who?

Fascinating how Republicans rhapsodize about Reagan (despite the fact that he'd be considered a RINO today) while the last GOP president--for two terms no less--is an official Nonperson.

And yet Romney, Gingrich and Santorum all endorse Bush II's overall tax and economic policies, along with his Ready! Fire! Aim! foreign policy, firm belief in big government intrusion into our bedrooms with no respect for states' rights (contrary to GOP mantras about same), and contempt for science and economics when their findings don't support GOP Billionairian theology. They should give credit where its due--and so should their followers. 

Especially since the overall policy similarities give us a horror movie-quality foreshadowing of what a Republican-dominated Congress, Presidency, and Judiciary would have in store for America. 

Of course my non-Republican conclusion is that Republicans don't want to talk about Bush II precisely because a Romney presidency would be Bush II Redux. Right down to both of them claiming to be "outsiders." Now there's unintentional humor for ya.

Romney would kill medical care reform, just like Bush II would; he'd hang onto the tax cuts for the rich that Bush II got--and which, instead of trickling down, has cost America at least 3/4 of a trillion dollars so far and counting; he'd endorse the government rape of women trying to get abortions (or should there be a different word for inserting a foreign object into a woman's privates against her will at the behest of male-dominated legislatures and male governors?). And he'd enrich himself personally and substantially through implementing his policies--just like Bush II did. And Bush II and Romney both worked hard to mimic what regular people who weren't born rich were like--Bush II with his fake ranch, Romney through his, um, family anecdotes (they're regular Motor City folks because his wife has two Cadillacs--and she doesn't "feel" rich!).

Bush II is one of your own. He's not just your past--he is, if the GOP has its way with us, our future. And he still actually rules one of the three branches of government, through his radical corporatist appointees, who are likely to rule that roost for decades to come, regardless of who wins in November.

So come on, guys, give credit where it's due. You aren't the party of Reagan--who raised taxes repeatedly and avoided foreign entanglements. You're the party of Bush II. Own it.

Mightily ticked-off Republican women

On the Tavis Smiley show former hardcore Republican Congressman and lifelong solid conservative Joe Scarborough said his even-more-conservative-than-him "Pro-Life" wife who's never voted for a Democrat for President in her life...won't be voting for any of the GOP candidates this time around, due to what she perceives as the Republican war on women.

The last straw for her was Reichsleiter Limbaugh's multi-day verbal sexual assault on a Georgetown U. grad student, followed by GOP TV's staunchly defending Limbaugh's accusations (if not his amazing stylings) across its various programs, followed by every GOP candidate wannabe and the congressional leadership refusing to directly denounce those stylings, instead resorting to copouts like "Well, I wouldn't have said it that way and let me tell you how Obama has failed the country" or "What does it matter what entertainers say?" or "there goes the Lib-er-ul Elite Media again, criticizing a conservative for what they excuse Lib-er-uls saying all the time," followed by Reichsleiter Limbaugh's own apology-by-blaming-everyone-else.

The Party Faithful who are men may be buying all this, but many conservative women voters are seething.

And those women haven't failed to notice that President Obama has a flawless marriage/parenting Family Values record, including two daughters he's obviously devoted to...and even brought his mother in law with him to the White House.

Remember in the '90s when Clinton was running for re-election and the Republican pitch was that personal character was everything you needed to know--when it was Clinton vs. personally squeaky-clean Bush I? I remember being told by party faithful at church that I mustn't vote for a cad like Clinton.

But now that the Democrat is the squeaky clean one and one of the four remaining GOP contenders is Newt...suddenly personal character is irrelevant.

Only a lot of Republican women haven't forgotten that stuff, and still think it matters. And the depiction of Obama as a foreign devil actually intending to destroy America just doesn't comport with the family stuff they see. And Michelle Obama has been an outstanding first lady--both confident and supportive--and not too full of herself either.

Obama's obvious emotional stability and deliberative approach to major problems suits the tastes of many GOP women on the process level. They don't want a hothead in the White House. Or a zealot, actually. That's not conservative, in any real sense of the word.

Not to mention the fact that now they've heard both Obama and Romney sing...

No more need for the State Department

According to the Republican Party, we appear to have no need for our State Department, because it simply duplicates Israel's, and our job, say all the presidential contenders (except for Ron Paul), is to jump when Israel's government says Hop!

Of course Israel is an ally. An important ally. But they don't always act in our interests, and we don't always act in theirs (unless the GOP gets control of both Congress and the White House, of course).

And actually even if we considered Israel's welfare more important than ours, if we state that our job is to obey the dictates of Benjamin Netanyahu, it diminishes our ability to act as an honest broker between Israeli and Arab interests--and given the turmoil in the Middle East today, that's more vital to Israel than ever.

The presidential candidates on the Right have let it be known--again, except for Ron Paul--that if they were president it'd be bombs away over Iran. This from people who have never served and have never had any other kind of military experience either.

Well, that has one benefit--to them: it drives up gasoline prices as speculators see huge opportunities for profit if we go to war with Iran and oil supplies are crimped.

And, by total coincidence, the higher the gas prices, the less likely the White House's incumbent will be re-elected.

Hmmm....

It's about freedom of religion

The GOP has revived the same principle the Puritans upheld when they emigrated to the New World: freedom of religion.

Only the Puritans interpreted "freedom of religion" as "freedom of me to impose the standards of my religion on you." Thus it isn't good enough for a Republican fundamentalist pharmacist to not use the day after pill. It's against his religion to let you have it too--even when a doctor wrote the prescription.

And it isn't good enough for Catholic-owned businesses that employ non-Catholics to encourage the Catholic employees not to use birth control. The Catholic church demands the right to discriminate against employees who want their medical insurance to cover birth control pills (which are also needed for some medical conditions that have nothing to do with birth control). Somehow it violates your religion if I don't abide by its rules.

In all of these cases, the Republican Party interprets freedom of religion exactly as the Puritans did.

Suppose I owned a private business and belonged to a Christian Identity church that preaches that Negroes are racially inferior to whites, and thus I declared it my Christian duty not to employ qualified Negroes?

Suppose I owned a private business and belonged to a Salafist Muslim congregation and demanded that any female who worked for me wear a burqa to, at, and from work? (That's the fullbody covering required in Saudi Arabia.) My conscience requires that I not employ whores--that is, women who fail to wear burqas. Or I might just say no woman can work for me--their only place is in the home.

By their principles, the GOP must support these business owners' right to impose their religion's notion of morality on their employees.

And if my conscience demands that I use birth control to avoid adding to world overpopulation--apparently that doesn't count. Is it only the conscience of GOP-approved religions that count? Is that it?

The GOP retort is that women who want birth control are free to buy it themselves as long as they don't ask their employer to provide it, against his conscience (and it's always his conscience, not hers, isn't it?). And if the woman doesn't like it she can go work somewhere else. This is very Libertarian--there's no such thing as society. Just proud, manly individuals. And their consciences that you are required to abide by.

Of course the GOP believes we are a society when its values are concerned--hence all the legislation that gets implemented in our bedrooms and in our private lives. Thus alcohol is legal, marijuana is not--even though alcohol is clearly more dangerous by any measure. But when the values aren't GOP ones suddenly we're all individuals and "society" is just another word for "Com-yew-nist."

In this case society has agreed collectively that private businesses are not to discriminate by race, creed or religion, except for churches--not businesses run by churches, but by the churches themselves.

That includes ante'ing up for birth control pills and the like--and Republicans generally went along with this until just now. In fact 28 states require this explicitly, and the numerous Catholic organizations in those states complied without a whimper.

So why does it suddenly become freedom of my religion to exclude contraception coverage from my private health insurance that you help pay for? I'm not asking you to use condoms with your own wife. And why is this an issue now in a presidential election year, when it wasn't earlier?

In every country where the Catholic Church gains enough adherents (in America, largely through illegal immigration, which the Church staunchly promotes), it demands that the nation's laws obey Catholic dictates. Evidently the Church thinks it's approaching that tipping point here. Just a few tens of millions more illegal immigrants can seal the deal.

And the fact that 98% of Catholic women use birth control against Church orders makes this even better. A church that can't get its own adherents to adhere to its medieval family planning policies expects the general public to.

Really?

Lastly, before the Catholic church presents itself as a prime source of moral instruction, one might suggest some internal housecleaning first...

Catholic Church coloring book

new verb: to Limbaugh someone

That is, to call a young woman who wants all employers to include contraception in their medical insurance a slut, a prostitute, and to demand that she provide sex tapes of herself to pay back the public--or at least Mr. Limbaugh--for including this in health insurance.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/03/sandra-fluke-rush-limbaugh-slut-comment-outside-the-bounds-of-civil-discourse/

EDIT: And, given the fact that not one Republican official publicly denounced Limbaugh for his slander, I guess "GOP" must stand for "Gynecologically Obtuse Party."

Why do they hate President Obama?

Talk to a lot of Republican voters, and you'll hear them describing Obama using amazing language. They tell me--who they know as a Democrat--that he's a Fascist, a Communist. Literally. They'll tell me how much they dislike him personally. Since by any rational standards he has governed as a moderate, pragmatic center-left Democrat, it's hard to understand them talking about him as if he were Hugo Chavez. 

Here's one possible explanation--though they'll never admit it (often not even to themselves):

You don't have a right to the fruits of my labor!

The current crop of GOP presidential wannabes harps on this right wing trope--that government is theft on behalf of the lazy poor who want to steal from the industrious rich.

It's Class Warfare!

But as Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren points out, every successful business depends on the government providing the infrastructure--social and physical--those businesses rest on. Imagine trying to launch a business in Mogadishu. Wages and property costs would be rock-bottom. But without any of that physical and social infrastructure, you'd immediately be raided by the local warlord and/or Islamofascist insurgents. Your employees wouldn't know what they needed to know. You'd be out of business in days.

And when the richest .1% of Americans are the only ones whose incomes have risen substantially (as a group) in the last 40 years, despite huge increases in productivity, it should be obvious that a prime source of the wealth of the richest of the rich is government welfare through sweet insider deals and financial manipulation--not from producing goods and services.

Thus it should be apparent that it's actually the richest of the rich who believe they have a right to the fruits of our labor--not the other way around.

Sympathy for the Mormons

Mitt Romney during his mission for the LDS Church

I know a lot of Mormons, and seeing the Republicans desperately searching for ABR (Anyone But Romney) makes me feel for Mormons.

The Mormons, politically, are the perpetually jilted suitor. They are, as a group, the most Republican-voting of any religion which has significant numbers. Their lifestyle is the most Republican of any statistically significant group--that is, living in keeping with the values Republican leaders preach (even if they themselves don't practice it--not to mention their patrons). They talk the talk. They walk the walk. And yet the people they most love...don't love them.

A considerable number of fellow Republicans believe that Mormons aren't Christians--that they belong to a cult, like Scientology, and that every Mormon on Earth, regardless of how he leads his life, is doomed to burn in the literal fires of Hell for all eternity once he croaks.

Even if Mitt Romney had the far right track record he doesn't, and even if people liked him...they'd still be searching for ABR. Because he's Mormon.

The GOP forms a new civil rights organization

AP--Washington, D.C.: The Republican National Committee today announced the formation of a new civil rights organization: the ABLU (American Billionaire's Liberties Union). According to RNC Communications Director Sean Spicer, "All real Americans know that our billionaires are the main source of all that's great about this unique country. Yet foreigners like Democrats and Kenyan secret Mohammadens have conspired against America's Billionaires, oppressing them and demonizing them. 


"But billionaires are emotionally fragile. If we criticize them, expect them to follow the same rules as the rest of us, even tax them like the rest of us instead of letting them run their corporations out of mailboxes in the Cayman Islands...they will have emotional breakdowns and quit being the job creators. And then what will happen to their factories in China? 


"The ABLU will stand up for this oppressed minority, and strive to keep America structured entirely for their benefit. And then we'll all benefit from trickle down economics, with the crumbs occassionally falling from their groaning tables like manna from heaven for the rest of us.


"Our ABLU motto is "We hold it to be self-evident that all men are created equal. But some men are more equal than others." 

Voter suppression

http://blog.law.cornell.edu/voxpop/2010/09/01/electronic-voting-and-direct-democracy/

Democrats are up in arms over what looks to them like a nationwide Republican campaign to disenfranchise likely Democratic voters. They say it's not just anti-Democrats, it's also racist (and employing mechanisms the Old South used to disenfranchise Blacks) and must be stopped.

But saying it must be stopped sounds like the solution the mice came up with when they met to figure out what to do about the cat. They decided to put a bell on the cat's neck. 

Yes, we should stop conservatives from carrying out their vote suppression pogrom. And the cat should have a bell around its neck. 

How about proposing things that take the other side into account? A little political judo, using their own ideas to let them hang themselves?

Like a national biometric ID database--which India is adopting now. Unless you think India is wealthier than us and more high tech, surely if India can do it we can. 

And it hoists the right wingers on their own ideology. A universal biometric database using retina scans is the only way we can find out who and how many illegal immigrants are here. You could tell them that anyone who opposes a biometric ID is supporting illegal immigration.

Watch the smoke coming out of their ears on that one. 


It also prevents voter fraud. Sure, there isn't any. But they insist there is. Instead of telling them they're wrong, tell them OK--universal biometric ID will stop all that (nonexistent) voter fraud. Meanwhile it will enable everyone to vote. No ID cards. No worry about name changes. Just your retinas. 

In India poor people are lining up for the ID because it will stop local Indian buraucrats from diverting Federal aid funds for the poor to nonexistent "ghost workers." 

Here in America, a universal biometric ID database solves the Republicans' phony problem while fixing our real voting problem: them.


And then we can address the real voter fraud issue: how those ballots are counted, today, by partisans of one party or the other. Now there's an incentive to cheat.

The Founding Fathers didn't believe in policies--they believed in goals

we tend to consider the Founding Fathers' specific policy/government recommendations rather than the goals those recommendations served; so that under very different circumstances--like the world today--being smart, independent thinkers by and large, they might recommend very different specific policy points, because they cared less about the policies than about the fundamentals of each American having as much opportunity to actualize himself as possible, and government governing with as much fairness and efficacy as possible. 

It's like being a bush pilot. Your goal, coming in for a landing, isn't to fly in a particular way regardless of weather--it's to land in one piece. Absent crosswinds and other weather problems, you come in straight of course. But if you've got a 30Kt crosswind you'll come in with plane facing kind of sideways--hairy to look at from the ground--and then touch one wheel down while horsing the plane around to point forward so as not to snap the landing gear off or flip the plane.

The point isn't to come in in any particular way--it's to come in so you land safely, adapting your flying to the flying conditions.

Which is why I don't think either Jefferson, Hamilton or Adams would change their goals about the good life for Americans that they sought to support with their policy ideas--just that you gotta know the territory, to quote from The Music Man.

For example, they may have supported every able man having a gun in the house. By "gun" meaning, of course, a musket that takes at least half a minute to reload between shots, per barrel. Laws appropriate to a musket-level technology might be silly to insane in the context of an RPG/Mac10/SAW/50 cal. sniper rifle technology. And in a highly heterogeneous society like ours. 

So I'm only saying that the Founding Fathers seemed to be pretty smart. The rest follows logically.

The war against religion

http://hiddenlosangeles.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/whalesize.gif

I'm always interested in the assumptions beneath what's said.

With the current brou-ha-ha over the Obama administration's now-compromised dictum that Catholic-owned institutions that serve the general public (as opposed to churches, monasteries etc.), for example, I've noticed that once more religious people frequently seem to assume that what they'd call "non-religious' "secular" or "unchurched" people don't actually have moral views that should be respected.

It's like the way the ancient Greeks came up with the root for the word "barbarian": they assumed that those who didn't speak Greek didn't speak--they just uttered nonsense noises, which the ancient Greeks portrayed as "bar-bar-bar." That's how they came up with "barbarian."

Fast forward to the conservative commentator who said that Republican Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor had no morals because she believed in pragmatic compromise. To him, pragmatism wasn't a moral system he disagreed with--it wasn't a moral system at all.

Bar-bar-bar....

So the ones fulminating over ordering institutions that serve the public to follow certain rules-for-all don't acknowledge that the side wanting contraception provisions included are taking a moral position they disagree with. 

This is philosophical jingoism. You can't even debate the issue if the other side won't admit that you're on a moral side.

And of course we can argue that their position is extremely immoral, given the world overpopulation crisis. But overpopulation hasn't been mentioned by either side in the public debate over this issue. Yet it's the Blue Whale in the swimming pool.

Not to mention all the states in which Catholic schools and hospitals are required to do this by state law. Haven't heard any uproar about that before now. 

Tax-exempt institutions are entitled, by law, to campaign on behalf of issues, but not candidates. However, if you pay attention to conservative media, you'll see Catholic church authorities campaigning to overthrow President Obama. This church has also ordered its adherents to disobey American laws that conflict with Church orders (in the context of the Catholic Church actively promoting illegal immigration from Catholic countries to America, along with granting full citizenship to such people). 

In countries where the Catholic Church is in a majority and its adherents are fervent--as in Latin America--you see this church aggressively involved in politics. I see nothing wrong in doing that. Just in its being exempt from taxation when it does so.

But at this point, with a quarter of the country Catholic and a majority on the Supreme Court Catholic, and our Catholic population expanding rapidly, it's already too late. Our only hope is that native American Catholics aren't anywhere near as fervent as their Bishops and their Mexican immigrant congregations. Perhaps as the Mexicans become acculturated over the next several hundred years they'll mellow out. 

Safety nets

The richest Americans generally oppose the social safety net. They say it weakens people's moral fiber. Each of us should make it on his own, and society best helps by affording opportunities, not by being the nanny state

At the same time they fiercely oppose any estate tax whatsoever, saying it's their money and they should get to do whatever they want to do with it. They don't concede the point Elizabeth Warren has made that their fortunes were made based on the safety net society affords us all--streets, lights, freedom from armed invasion, airports and airlines regulated (horrors!) by the FAA, public education for their workers...

But forget all that. It's their money! And what they want to do with it is to posthumously give their children a life of ease without effort.

As quarter-billionaire Mitt Romney has done, making all his children effortless millionaires (and paying little or no taxes on these gifts, through tax loopholes cleverly inserted when no one was looking).

So the rich want children to have a huge safety net--their children, that is. It doesn't weaken the moral fiber of billionaires' children to give them life on a golden platter, apparently. 

Just yours.

To be fair to Governor Romney, does believe in the social safety net we currently provide poor people. He said so. But apart from what that affords people, he doesn't care. He said that too, and in context--including saying that if there were a problem he'd fix it. Which means he doesn't see the current situation of poor people and their safety net as having problems. 

Conservatives don't believe that, for conservative reasons, and liberals don't believe that either, though for liberal reasons. Which makes the Governor neither fish nor fowl. 

And to the point of my point here, he certainly hasn't provided his sons with the social safety net they'd have if they were poor. He made them all instant millionaires. 

Okay, so he's a social Darwinist (not that Darwin believed in any such thing, actually). 

Unless you're as rich as he is, though, why would you vote for someone who believes his children deserve the good life without effort, while your kids need the moral uplift of self-reliance? 

An exchange

Here's a comment and a reply from a Washington Post article about Romney and immigration:

buzz5663

1/28/2012 3:15 AM PST

Romney insn't 'anti-immigrant'.

lol. Romney wants to starve you out, he wants to force you to 'self deport, but he is not anti immigrant. Just imagine how it would be if he was against you.

Recommend

ReplyReport

ehkzu

1:08 AM PST

Who is "you?" I was born here. Our two best friends came here from India and Russia--legally. They're citizens like me. Romney doesn't want us to go. And our friends are certainly immigrants.
So he's not "anti-immigrant."

So you, sir, are guilty of writing propaganda by conflating opposition to illegal immigration with opposition to legal immigration.

I won't be voting for Romney because I understand voodoo economics. I'll be voting for Obama. So I'm on your side. Only I'm not willing to write propaganda to support my guy, and you are.

And to what purpose? Do you seriously think independents are going to vote for Obama because of this little piece of agitprop? You'll just offend them and push them into the Republicans' eager arms. Democrats will win by vigorously opposing Republicans' smear tactics--not by imitating them.

www.blogzu.blogspot.com

The New York Times refutes "self deportation"--they think

Today's featured editorial in the New York Times is titled "Do-It-Yourself Deportation." Next to the illustration--a drawing of a Sensitive Boy weeping blue Doves of Peace, you get to read the teenager's sad tale of how his parents self-deported. Actually, you aren't reading what he wrote, because he isn't fluent in English. You got to read a translation of him telling us that America must give him and his parents and his brother citizenship because they work hard, and, well, gosh darn it, they want it. Reeeely bad.

I want a million bucks. Reeeely bad. I want free airlines tickets for the rest of my life so I can travel more. I want a Ferrari. In green please. Red is so yesterday. I've worked hard. I keep my nose clean. I'm a devoted husband. So gimme.

No? Why not?

Well, here's why. Because America could spare the minuscule percentage of our national budget to do all those things for me. But it can't afford to do so for every single nice, hardworking person who wants these things.

That's the principle of universal application, as opposed to special pleading, which is what Antonio and I were doing. 

And the universal application of Antonio's special pleading is to let anyone come here and get citizenship if they reeeely want it and they're willing to work hard and keep their noses clean. I'm sure Antonio's down with us deporting violent felons. Just not the 10-20 million nice guys like him.

But nearly all those nice guys have less than the equivalent of an American high school education. Guess what the unemployment rate is for American high school dropouts? I believe it's around 25% or thereabouts.

OK, suppose we limited it to high school grads plus kids who haven't dropped out? Yet?

Then what do we tell all the people from all over the world who've applied to come here? "Sorry, we've changed our minds. You should have come here illegally, then said "Hey, I'm here, so gimme.""

Of course it's not Antonio's fault. He's underage, after all. But it's not our fault either. It's his parents fault. And it's Mexico's fault for its national policies that favor unlimited reproduction without worrying about how to provide work and food and water and housing for all those people. 

Well, why worry? Just encourage them to come here. Because somehow it's our fault. And if we don't give them citizenship we're insensitive. And isn't being insensitive the worst thing we could be?

The New York Times believes our nation's immigration policy should be handed over to the government and citizens of Mexico.

Doesn't that sound, well...insane?

Romney vs. Obama on taxes

Great point to make with your conservative friends.

Wholly apart from its other features, Mitt Romney's tax reform proposal would make a ton o' money for Romney.

President Obama's tax reform proposal would lose him many thousands of dollars personally.

Ask your conservative friends to ask Romney to propose something--anything--in the economic sphere that wouldn't profit him personally and substantially.

Thus far he hasn't. 

Of course you could argue that everything that's good for a quarter-billionaire investor like Romney is good for the country. 

But you could also point out that a Mormon tenet is "to avoid both sin and the appearance of sin."

And this certainly has the appearance of self-dealing--of following the practice of so many people in government, Left and Right, who use their position of public trust to enrich themselves personally.

They're rarely as baldfaced about it as Governor Romney, though. An example of his, um, honesty?

EDIT: Romney follows the scripted Republican rudeness of calling the Democratic Party the "Democrat Party." OK, fine. So let's call the Republican Party the, "Publican Party."

On with the Republican debates

http://www.motifake.com/136409

Today's NYTimes editorial speaks in favor of the Republican debates continuing, because it's good for President Obama. They've got a point, but they also erred in the way that people who only speak to people who already agree with them err.


This editorial seems to assume that Republican voters share Democratic voters' values. And they do, to some extent, but in a different order.

Democrats are most terrified of being thought insensitive.
Republicans are most terrified of being thought weak.

The debating points the editorial cites shows how far apart the parties are. To the NYT it's self-evident that these points are wrong.

But take "Ending multilingual ballots (disenfranchising millions)." ---i.e. being insensitive. Quelle domage.

But a Republican reading it would say "First, that's Democrats being disenfranchised, second they're not--they're just being asked to learn this country's language so they understand the national discussion about the issues before they vote. Otherwise they'll vote tribally, for whatever group they belong to, instead of voting as Americans"

Ditto the NYT's horror of "making [illegal aliens'] lives miserable" in order to get them to self-deport. Again, that assumes that Republican voters fear being seen as insensitive to illegal aliens' feelings.

Seriously? Republicans could care less. it also hurts bank robbers' feelings to arrest them. And wife-beaters. So? Republicans would say it probably is "insensitive" for our nation to only accept people who we want to come here, instead of telling the world "step right up. Mi casa es su casa."

As if happens I'll be voting for Obama because of the GOP's voodoo economics. Not because it's "sensitive" to do so.

Democracy's tipping point

The viability of any democracy is determined at election time by two things:

1. Does whoever's in control at election time jigger the election process to make sure they stay in power?

Across the country, every state government controlled by the Republicans has been engaged in strenous attempts to prevent the rampant voter fraud they claim has been giving Democrats an unfair advantage in elections. Only there isn't any--the efforts to uncover fraud are epitomized by Republican claims that 950 dead people "voted" the the South Carolina primary. After an expensive taxpayer-paid investigation of the claims, they discovered one (1): a guy who was dead all right--but had died after voting.

It's that way across the country, but waving this red herring has been used by the GOP to justify a variety of voter restrictions that just happen to crimp voting by demographics who generally vote Democratic.

2. Does whoever loses the election cede power peacefully?

The language the Republican leaders and their surrogates are using about President Obama doesn't just persistently misrepresent the facts--it uses incendiary language that has succeeded in making many millions of Americans hate Obama--not his policies, but the man himself. They've succeeded in making many rank and file Republicans believe that Obama actually intends to harm the country and intends to subvert the Constitution. Republican friends of mine call him a "fascist" and a "Communist."

This runs the risk of having a lot of Americans not accept the results of the last election or of the next.

Democrats faced when the Supreme Court chose a president of their liking in 2000. But Democrats believe in Democracy, whatever their other faults may be. I'm not as sure about the Republicans.

The Republican Ministry of Propaganda is playing with fire, just as it did when it decided its goal wasn't just winning elections, but of marginalizing the Democratic Party, so that it's no longer a factor in national elections. Scary stuff.

Then again, the GOP's secret soul is monarchist...

These are the guys who sided with the Crown during the American Revolution.