Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing: the Hand of Fate

Democrats and Republicans may seem at loggerheads, but they agree that some things are just inevitable; nobody's fault; nobody's cause. Our only task is to adapt to these things.

They just disagree on how to apply this fatalistic principle.

Republicans believe that the Wall Street Crisis just happened. Movement Republicans believe it was entirely caused by Congressmen Barney [HE"S A HOMO BUT WE WON'T MENTION IT!!!] Frank, Nancy "Daughter of Satan" Pelosi, and the former head of Fannie Mae [WHO'S BLACK BUT WE WON'T MENTION IT!!!][unfortunately he's also a crook, to be honest]. But even relatively rational Republicans talk about it as just a cycle. Cycles happen. Part of nature, really. The same way they rationalize away human-caused climate change. Cycles.

Meanwhile, Democrats looks blandly at the transformation of America's demographics from 90% white to, soon, minority white (already achieved in California's publis school system BTW). As if white people has suddenly started having black, Latino, and Asian kids. As if who immigrates to this country is entirely some kind of force of nature--not the product of intentional policies planned and carried out with great determination by the leaderships of both parties, though for different reasons.

And don't you dare complain, because if you do it means you're exactly like Hitler.

What the Wall Street meltdown and the slow-mo extermination of Anglo America have in common is that their perpetrators and political allies don't want these events examined. They want you to shut up and not complain--just deal.

Because otherwise there'd be bankers in jail and the reinstitution of quotas for immigration from different countries--and a moratorium on immigration by unskilled laborers from anywhere and anybody from Latin Ameirca, since both greatly overlapping categories have already fulfilled any kind of rational quota for the next couple of centuries.

Can't have that. So instead we have the Hand of Fate, conveniently invoked by both parties whenever they want to pull something on the American People they always talk about as if they're on our side.

The debt ceiling gives a blank check to the ever-growing Federal government!

Wrong. The debt ceiling is for our debts we've already incurred. That's why it's called the debt ceiling. At this instant our government's debts exceed revenues and fungible resources--as was also true, spectacularly, at the instant President Obama took office in 2008. This would remain true even if our federal government stopped spending anything it wasn't legally required to spend right now.

If you as an individual welch on your debts, you lose whatever assets your debtors can lay their hands on and your credit rating tanks. Then when you want to borrow money later on, you're going to pay the rates people with bad credit ratings pay--if you can borrow at all.

When a nation welches on its debts it can hang onto its assets unless it still has to borrow. But when and if it does, Whoa Nellie. And nations that welch on their debts always have to borrow. And the new higher rates ripple through the economy, affecting all but the very rich.

The time to question the need for a higher debt limit was when the deb were being incurred--when we went to war in two countries and gave the richest of the rich a sweet tax break, and put it all on the national credit card, passing the bill on to the next President, along with the reckless fiscal policies that the nation had to bail out when that bubble popped.

And the Republican Congress did vote to raise the debt limit--seven times during the Bush era. It appears that deficits don't count unless a Democrat is in the White House. Then suddenly it becomes the biggest crisis in American history. And jobs? Turns out that's not important at all. Which is logical. All the members of congress have jobs themselves, after all.

It turns out the goverment does have death panels!

Well, we have one death panel: the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. They radical cuts they want to apply to Medicare and Social Security amount to a national death panel that says to America's seniors "If you were so foolish and immoral as to get old without getting rich--you are of no further use to society. Please board the nearest ice flow and float away. Stop trying to burden the wealthiest Americans' quest to become even wealthier with your whining."

It's time to spend, spend, spend

No, I'm not kidding. All across America our infrastructure is crumbling. It absolutely will be repaired--we're not about to let our interstate highway system and bridges and dams and levees and sewer pipes and plants and water pipes and power lines go away. And deferred maintenance is usually tripled maintenance--meaning that its costs vastly less to fix things before they're totally broke.

My alcoholic grandmother is a perfect example of the Republican Congress. She bought a new Chevrolet in 1956 and never added oil or got it changed. And back then engines leaked oil--you always had some drip on the garage floor.

Eventually--after about 16,000 miles as I recall--the oil level dropped to the point that the engine seized.

Now compare the cost of a new engine vs. a couple of oil changes and a few quarts in between. Not to mention the experience of driving the car at the moment the engine seizes.

That's what's going on with our infrastructure. Remember reading about that bridge collapsing in the Midwest and killing a bunch of people? That was the poster child for the cost of deferred maintenance.

And it doesn't have to be quite that dramatic. A few years ago I hit a huge pothole while driving our camper van on a local freeway. The awning above the sliding door popped open and deployed at 65mph, costing us time and money that will never be counted as part of the cost of not repairing that pothole.

Now multiple my own little example by millions, and add that to official estimates of the multiplying factors of the costs of deferred maintanance.

Right now we are firing the people needed to do all this maintenance locally, regionally, and nationally, in the name of deficit reduction. This is exactly the same as a company balancing its books by refusing to pay its bills. It is exactly the same as calling Social Security an entitlement when most of it is our money, withdrawn from our paychecks throughout our working lives, then "borrowed" by Congress to spend on other things--and now telling us they don't want to pay back the money they "borrowed" from us--and that it's really not our money anyway--that we're living too long and there aren't enough young workers to support retirees.

Well, not as long as the hedge fund manager who got $4.7B for his labors last year paid 15% on his income, like all his fellow hedge fund managers and most of Wall Street's Masters of the Universe. What tax rate did you pay on your income?

I can't see how a party can call itself "conservative" and at the same time advocate welching on debts and stepping over dollars to pick up nickels via deferred maintenance. That's not how you economize. Our infrastructure is not a luxury. It's the core of what a government provides its people--and it's going to be paid, either now for X dollars or a few years for now for 3X or even 5X dollars (plus lives lost here and there).

The time for government to economize and lay off staff is when the economy is booming and the private sector can absorb laid-off government workers. The time for government to spend--yes, deficit spend--is when the private sector isn't hiring (or in the current case, hiring plenty of workers in China and Sri Lanka etc. but not in America) and the workers are needed to do maintenance projects that have to be done anyway.

Unless the Republican Party's vision of our future is for us to once more become hunters and gatherers in the forest in bands of warring tribes of a few dozen each. Is that what they really mean when they champion a "traditional lifestyle" ?

Antonio Vargas--hardworkin hero deserving citizenship, or illegal who needs to go home?

It is obviously not Antonio Vargas' fault that he came here from the Philippines illegally at age 12. I believe him when he says that he didn't even know he was here illegally until he was 16. I also believe that as a juvenile he wasn't fully responsible for his actions until he turned 18.

But I wasn't responsible for his actions either.

Say I buy stolen property without knowing it was stolen. Suppose the seller shows me a certificate of ownership that looks legal to any but an expert's scrutiny. Then suppose the real owner shows up to claim his property.

I have to hand it over without compensation, despite my absence of ill intent, even if handing it over is a great hardship for me. Because whatever I did or paid or need, the property isn't mine to keep,.

Vargas is a perfectly legal citizen. Of the Philippines. I've been in the Philippines. If I tried to overstay my visa there I can assure you I'd be deported promptly. I also saw the opportunities there for someone who speaks fluent Tagalog and fluent, unaccented American English. Vargas would do fine there.

But even if his life there were going to be wretched--life "there" is wretched in many places around the Earth. It doesn't obligate America to take in everyone who has it tough in his own country, just as no other country is obligated to give citizenship to any American who doesn't like it here. One billion humans are starving at any given time, according to UN figures. Not poor. Starving. There situation is vastly worse than anything Vargas will face if, with his American college education, he's deported back to the country he's a citizen of.

So if need trumps all, we need to take in those billion starving people.

Or if ability to contribute to America trumps all, Vargas' journalistic training is trumped by all the doctors and engineers and physicists and wealthy businesspeople and established artists who'd like to move here.

But there's also the issue of laws. Pro-illegal immigration folks say we're a nation of immigrants. Anti-illegal immigration people say 80% of Americans are neither immigrants nor the children of immigrants. So we are not for the most part a nation of immigrants. Of course everyone is descended from immigrants. But then so is everyone everywhere except for some in East Africa.

On the other hand we are a nation of laws, and those apply to all of us. Now few want a totally rigid, blind application of the law. Otherwise judges would have no discretion. But even fewer want a nation without laws, where justice is a purchasable product, like a car, or where the law is applied differently depending on whether you belong to a favored group or not.

In this case, Vargas is a journalist. You know that this field has been shrinking dramatically, with many actual American journalists forced out of their chosen profession, or out of work altogether. What can you say to a skilled, creative, out of work journalist to justify giving Vargas a place at the table while he only gets to look in the window?

And what can you say to, say, an Austrian journalist who's been waiting patiently for a visa to come here for longer than Vargas has been here illegally? Do you tell the Austrian, "Look, dude, you're a chump. Here we give preference to those who realize the rules are for fools. You shoulda just come here illegally, then said it would be inconvenient for you if we sent you home. Because the needs of a Philippino who wants to enjoy life here are more important than the needs of people who want to come here legally, and those were born here.

Nor can Vargas apply for asylum because he's homosexual. Homosexuality is legal and tolerated socially in the Philippines, along with homosexual adoption, and serving in the military while openly homosexual.

Nor can Vargas claim that opposition to his immigration is racist. Legal immigration to America hasn't recognized race as a factor for many decades, and our huge level of legal immigration includes numerous people of all races and ethnicities.

I'm OK with Vargas applying for a visa--from the Philippines--and waiting his turn, and his application being considered along with all the others.

At the end of the day Vargas' arguments amount to special pleading--"Give me what I want because I want it. Break the rules for me. And stiff many others for my sake, because...well...because I really, really want it."

People fall for such arguments because so many people don't think much better than chimpanzees: they look at what's under their noses and don't think about the others that they aren't looking at at the moment, or at the consequences of misplaced kindness. But it isn't socially acceptable to call such people chimpanzee-brains, even as they routinely call people who oppose illegal immigration racists, Nazis etc.

Our unelected President

Many Republican legislators act as if our actual President is Grover Norquist, head of the so-called Americans for Tax Reform organization that has gotten most Republican (and some Democratic) Party legislators to sing a "no new/higher taxes under any circumstances whatsoever" pledge.

So the Republican Party has sworn allegiance to this unelected guy, following his dictates slavishly. Making him their Jefe Supremo--not us voters--not the elected President.

Amazing.

One of the non-negotiable tax reforms is the one that would tax the income of hedge fund managers and their ilk the same as that of hotel bus boys (for the details, read Nicholas Kristoff's New York Times column "Taxes and billionaires." 

Whenever you bring this stuff up, Republicans will say something like "10% of Americans pay 60% of taxes." Well, that's because they're appropriated most of America's gross domestic product for themselves. Meanwhile the other Americans pay plenty of taxes--just not income taxes. Those other taxes--including many withholdings on their W2s--are highly regressive BTW.

Proper tax reform and other structural reforms would put an end to the quiet class war America's billionaires have been waging against the middle class for decades, such that CEOs once again just made twenty times the income of their entry-level employees, instead of up to 180,000 times that (which is what one hedge fund manager makes, while being taxed like a taxi driver).

Raising the debt limit: there there the big spenders go again--or jeapordizing our economic standing for political gain?

NYTimes columnist Paul Krugman wote an editorial about raising the federal debt limit, titled

To the Limit:It isn’t at all unthinkable that the battle to raise the federal debt ceiling could end in failure.

In the editorial, Prof. Krugman detailed the contest between the Democratic and Republican leaderships, faulting President Obama for not standing up to GOP extortion, as he saw it. My answer (which the NYTimes apparently rejected):

The question isn't what the billionaires' serviceable villains are up to. It's how they manage to keep getting elected by the very people they have most betrayed. After all, rank and file Republicans aren't profiting from their party's perfidy. They're losing. Big time. Then blaming that loss on the very people who are trying to save them.

H.L.Mencken said “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.”

Put that message through a thousand well-financed bullhorns every day for decades, and many will ignore what little activity goes on across their cerebral cortices in favor of the chimpanzee brain always lurking below. There, where tribe trumps reason, the GOP has convinced half the country that the Democrats are not in the American tribe. They're alien occupiers not to be believed--actually not even to be listened to in the first place.

And when you try to counter slick, well-financed, utterly internally consistent (at the emotional level) propaganda with reason, you have to realize that what they hear bears very little resemblance to what you said. They will hear what their leaders have taught them to "hear" when Democrats speak: what they perceive as the enemy tribe trying to trick Real Americans into surrendering their precious body fluids.

Good luck with that.

FDR was able to win because he could match them at their own game. What I fear our president doesn't understand is that it is irrational to treat people as if they are rational.

It wouldn't hurt, of course, if the Democratic Party stopped telling blue-collar Anglos that they must make whatever sacrifices needed to accommodate the needs of our Latin neighbors to solve their overpopulation crisis by exporting it here, to either take their jobs or drive wages down to starvation levels, by people whose jobs are neither endangered nor diminished by the illegals.

That's how we play into the GOP's hands.

It's not about the national debt

"The discussion in Washington seems to be entirely about the deficit.
"That's not the big problem in this country. The big problem is jobs and economic growth.
"And it's all this discussion about what government programs are we going to cut?
"The Republicans are completely controlling the debate. And the President isn't even saying 'What really matters is jobs and economic growth, not deciding how many FBI agents you're going to fire.'" 

--Jeffrey Toobin, CNN analyst, 6/30/11

taxes

What's interesting in the GOP's opposition to all tax increases--including even closing loopholes in the current tax structure--is the unspoken assumptions in such statements.

The fundamental assumption is this: "Taxation is theft." Kind of like Karl Marx's "Property is theft" assumption. And of course if taxation is theft, government is the thief. The unspoken corollary is that government exists to take money from hardworking white people and give it to lower-class white slackers along with blacks, Mexicans etc.

A second corollary is that government is way too large--that nearly everything government does could be done more cost-effectively by for-profit private businesses. And that the average government employee is a lazy white slacker or a lazy black or Mexican--that the tern "dedicated, patriotic, hardworking government employee" is an oxymoron.

A third is that rank and file American Republicans will benefit more from reducing the size of government drastically than it will lose by the consequences of America threatening to default on its debt obligations--even though those debt obligations are to a great extent the consequence of a Republican President's two terms and a Republican Congress's eight years, 2000-2008, during which they spent like drunken sailors and cut taxes at the same time, incurring obligations that are now due.

These assumptions are supported by cherrypicking government expenses to "prove" the claim that government = bad government. Take America's infrastructure. The Republican Party's dream is apparently India, which has an abysmal, creaky, underfunded infrastructure.

This dystopian ideal is support by bogus examples, such as Amtrak. It costs more than it brings in. As do all passenger railroad lines in all other countries. What this "fact" fails to note, though, is that roads--most of them free--also take in far less than their zero revenues produce. Or that the airline alternative doesn't include the cost of the massive air pollution caused by airliners, or the air traffic control system's costs, or the infrastructure required to support every airport--or the fact that air travel is likely to become exclusively a luxury item as fuel prices steadily increase, due in part to declining oil resources, increasing cost of extraction as lower-grade sources are used, and competition for oil resources from China, India and elsewhere.

Typically business try to avoid paying for the costs imposed by their doing business--like, when's the last time a coal company put back the mountains it blew up to get the coal? Never. Nor do consumers pay directly-but they always do indirectly.

The Republican ideal, then, is the Potterville from "It's a wonderful life" (the Frank Capra movie starrring Jimmy Stewart magically visiting what his town would be like if he'd never been born and the greedy, soulless banker Mr. Potter succeeded in taking over the town). In Potterville everything's on an a la carte basis. You only pay for what you use--but when you need it you pay monopoly prices, because all unregulated business becomes a monopoly. Always.

And if you're so immoral as to not be able to pay, well, why should the immoral have a safety net? Go into the forest and die. Oh, wait. There is no forest. Well, a ditch somewhere will do.

This kind of cynical idealism fights the facts, though. Currently we have the lowest tax rates in America since 1950. In the 1950s and 60s the highest marginal tax rates were in the 70% range--and we had the highest rates of job growth and income growth. The lowest rates of job growth were during the Bush II which coincided with the lowest marginal tax rates in this period, and income for most besides millionaires and billionaires has been flat at best when adjusted for inflation, and has declined for blue collar workers who have to compete with illegal aliens for jobs.

Side note: the real benefit of illegal aliens for the GOP is that they have unintentionally destroyed blue collar unions in America--one of the main sources of funding for the Democratic Party, while the GOP's main source of funding--billionaires--are the one part of our demographics that have thrived.

We also have the second lowest tax rates in the industrialized world (after Japan).

And a keystone of America's leading position in the world is the underlying solidity of our economy. People all over the world buy our T-bills because they're so trustworthy. We have never defaulted on our obligations. And by even threatening to risk a default, the GOP risks degrading our position in the world--permanently. 

Every business has an intangible, "good will," that's hard to quantify exactly--but affects the business's ability to secure funds--sometimes decisively.

Other nations don't give a rats' patootie about our internal dogfights. They care whether they can depend on the stability of the dollar, our T bills...on the certainty that we always pay our bills. Always.

A business--and a country, in its business aspect--depends on its name being worth something. And that name, once tarnished, often never regains its former luster. Think of how you feel about a manufacturer once you've bought a lemon from that company.

It is unconscionable for the Republican Party to use America's name--its trustworthiness--as a bargaining chip, whether you agree with the goal of that bargaining or not.

If we go into default, it will damage our economy more than 9/11 did. But by even threatening to do so, other countries are already starting to look around...to re-evaluate their business dealings with us.

What would you think about an acquaintance who singlehandedly drove your credit score from, say, 750 to 600? To 300? Would him saying it was for you own good in the long run change your feeliings about him?

Think about it.

"Taxes should be as low as possible--but not with borrowed money."
--Alan Greenspan, today

Edit:

The 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, section 4:
"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including payment for pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellions shall not be questioned."

Meaning the President can judge the debt ceiling legislation unconstitutional and just go on, paying the debt, and tell Congress if it wants less debt, pass constitutional legislation that makes it so, instead of trying to welsh on debts already incurred.

Thought for the day

.

"Prejudice, not being founded on reason, cannot be removed by argument." 

— Samuel Johnson

Rejoinder to "pro life" pitch

I wrote this as a letter to the editor (250 word limit) in a local newspaper, in response to a letter by a Catholic couple assailing Planned Parenthood, making all the usual assertions and mistruths about abortion. In this response I chose to sidestep their talking points by making some of my own that I believe trump all of that. The headline also conforms to this local newspaper's length limits (it fits on one line of a typical newspaper column):

Overpopulation reality

Dear Editor: Anti-abortionistas like to flatter themselves with the catchphrase “pro-life” It does describe their good intentions—the kind the road to Hell is paved with.

Their validity depends on overpopulation denialism. Acknowledging the overpopulation crisis would nullify their narrow fixation on abortion. The typical’ rejoinder is that not everyone in every country is having too many children. They’re grasping at straws. Russia’s declining overpopulation doesn’t change the fact that our species would need 1.4 Earths to support its current population at everyone’s current standard of living, including the billion that are starving. And even today’s humongous population isn’t stable—it’s increasing by over 140 people a minute.

Unless anti-abortion zealots can figure out a way for us all not to have to share this one planet, or to add another half-Earth to this one, the pockets of population decline won’t prevent inexorable catastrophe—the collapse of fertilizer/antibiotic-intensive industrial farming/ranching, of trawling-based high tech fishing, potable water resources, and rapid extinction of tropical rainforests (that produce 70% of the oxygen we breathe).

And America isn’t one of those pockets of decline. Our population has quadrupled since 1900—about the same rate as the human race as a whole. Worse yet, the Bay Area has 11 times more people than in 1900, doubling just since 1962. (Yet New Urbanists believe we need more.)

The anti-abortionistas’ philosophy of endless growth is the philosophy of cancer. Slowly but surely it’s dooming us.

Cities also deploy the law of unintended consequences

Cities typically require condo complexes being built to set aside 10% of the units for sale to low income people. Such units are called BMRs--Below Market Rate units. This is, of course, an unfunded mandate. Cities administer the program, and don't let BMR owners profit from appreciation of the units' value over time (or depreciation too I guess).

That way people who qualify for BMRs--often city employees in the lower ranks--get to live in the city they work in instead of having long commutes.

OK, that sounds good if you believe we should all be required to help others. Which I do to a degree.

But here's the rub: BMR owners can be depended on to vote against special assessments.

Suppose your condo complex needs an earthquake retrofit? Many older complexes are unreinforced "soft story" buildings (homes built over garages), which also often have unreinforced cripple walls, and are inadequately secured to the foundations...stuff like that. It costs usually $9-12K per unit to bring older buildings up to modern existing building retrofit standards.

Our complex just lost such a vote, by only a handful of votes. In all likelihood it would have passed if not for the BMR voting bloc and always "just says no."

Now all our city needs to do is require such retrofits. But they won't. Neither will yours.

I say if a city's going to indulge in social engineering, it should take responsibility for the negative consequences of that social engineering.

So if it's going to force us to have those of more modest means among us, it needs to keep that requirement from killing us. Otherwise the city is guilty of future negligent homicide.

Don't we teach our kids to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions? Seems like we ought to expect cities to do likewise.

Where's Waldo? ...er, Ehkzu?

I've been here:

http://www.amazon.com/Dream-Me-Jackie-Evancho/dp/B004UB2WAQ/ref=/ref=cm_cd_t_pb_i

In the discussion forums. Including hundreds of entries by moi.

They're for a singer named Jackie Evancho, whose first pro full-length CD shipped June 14 and is now #2 on the Billboard charts.

I only mention it here to (a) account for my whereabouts and (b) because she has some relevance to political centrism.

For one thing, her music straddles both the classical and pop worlds, drawing from many sounces, as centrists do. For another, many people love her music but want her to do the kind of music they specialize in listening to, just as centrists get the same response from those of the Left and Right.

Lastly, unlike most entertainers, she's actually a force for good in this world. Not just in her charitable activities, but in her art as well. Something about her makes people (myself included) want to be better human beings than they are.

"but the top earners pay most of the taxes today--so you shouldn't raise their rates"

Every time anyone brings up the T word, Republican shills promptly quote the bogus statistic that the rich pay most of the taxes now, so how dare you propose socialist income redistribution?

First, they don't--you only get that stat by only considering the federal income tax--not state and local taxes, and not all those little items that are withheld from workers' paychecks. When you put everything together it turns out that most Americans pay a similar % of taxes. That is, we actually have a flat tax--we just get it from sleight of hand and loopholes and of course the corporate gains tax that lets billionaires pay lower taxes than their secretaries.

Second, they pay "so much" taxes because they have grabbed so much of America's economic output for themselves. From the end of WWII into the 1970s, big corporation CEOs got about 20X what their peons earned. Now it's over 400X--unlike that of any other rich country, but similar to countries like Mexico and Russia.

That's the "income redistribution" and "class war" that has been going on since Reagan's presidency.

Lastly, the Republican's tax theology is supported by bullhorning. For example, today on Fox News Sunday they had a Democratic and Republican junior Congressman on debate taxation. Fair enough. Only the moderator allowed the the Republican Congressman to constantly interrupt and talk over the Democratic Congressman, sometimes even double-teaming her.

So Anti-Tax Theology  is reinforced in the public forums by rhetorical dirty tricks.

Who plays the race card?

I was listening to one of the right wing radio stations in our area this morning and they were going on--and on, and on--about how Chris Mathews had said Newt Gingrich was a racist for calling Obama our first "food stamp president"--and how ridiculous and contemptible Chris Matthews was for saying that.

Well, Matthews was right--and BTW he didn't call Gingrich a racist per se but made a more nuanced statement about Gingrich playing a coded race card. However, even though he was right, so-called Liberals do play the race card wrongly every day--especially when they brand as "racist" anyone who dares to complain about illegal immigration.

This is a situation where two wrongs make two wrongs.

So-called Conservatives have been making coded racist statements ever since they found it unproductive to make uncoded racist statements, sometime back in the late 1960s--early 1970s. White Southern pols would say in their stump speeches "Y'all know whut ah stayund foah." And the audience did.

But the coded speech has a backup, which is to feign outrage if someone interprets the coded speech as conveying a racist message. Apparently Conservatives believe there is no such thing as innuendo. They live in a hard, bright, clear black and white world where you are totally not racist unless you say "I believe Negroes are inferior to Whites." Short of that, when you talk about welfare mothers and food stamp presidents and imply that Obama got into Harvard because of affirmative action not because he's smart and hard working and that he must have been born in Kenya and all the rest of that stuff--well, no racism can possibly be implied here.

And that too has a backup, which the general public never sees--which is the aggressive campaign the Right Wing Noise Machine mounts against anyone in the mainstream media who accuses any right wing pol or pundit of racism. Right wing websites marshal the troops, and the offending media outlet gets a torrent of letters and phone calls and emails to the offender, his boss, the advertising manager of the medium, and the advertisers/sponsors as well. This doesn't always work, but it does so often that many media figures privately admit they're daunted by it, and walk on eggshells around issues like accusing so-called Conservatives of coded race-baiting.

Meanwhile so-called Liberals race-bait anyone who opposes illegal immigration and various social welfare programs, along with inner city schools. And they do tend to have the sympathy of mainstream reporters, who generally vote Democrat themselves. Special interest groups with racial agendas--most notably The Race, an organization promoting advantages for people who regard themselves as Mexicans--play the race card daily.

Even media that steer clear of editorializing outside the editorial pages can be found advocating for the Leftists side when racial issues become involved. That's why so-called Liberals abandoned talking about overpopulation, from the 1970s onward.

The main difference between partisans of Right and Left is that the ones on the Right has a much bigger bullhorn, thanks to the billionaire class being on that side.

So--both sides play the race card incessantly; and both use it to shortcircuit debate by using race-baiting in personal attacks instead of dealing with the facts and logic involved in the actual issue.

Scoffing at the very idea that any so-called Conservative could possibly have any racial motives is just one part of this unsavory stew.

Why independents who don't love Obama should vote for him in 2012

Suppose the GOP manages to cough up a non-crazed candidate--someone like Mitt Romney, or Mitch Daniels. And say you're interested in fiscally responsible government.
Moreover, let's say you agree with the punditocracy that the GOP will cement its control of the House Representatives and will also get not just a majority in the Senate but a filibuster-proof majority.

If all of these things still seems likely in November of 2012, you should vote for Obama, for the simple reason that the Republican Party has proven repeatedly that it spends like a drunken sailor when it's in power across the board--and only Obama can keep the GOP from doing exactly what it did in the Bush era: actually increase the size of government and government spending and put it all on the national credit card.

They say this time it's different. And the wife-beater claims this time time it's different if she's just take him back. But the siren call of lobbyists offering a cushy future for retired Congressmen if they just cut special deals for the lobbyists' special interests is still there--in fact, since the Supreme Court nuked the dam that controlled campaign spending, lobbyists will have even more power than they did.

What Republican president will be able to veto his own party's bills? None that have a prayer of getting nominated.

Meanwhile none of Obama's legislative initiatives will be enacted--of that you can be 100% sure. Because the GOP hates him with a visceral fury you might not even be aware of unless you watch Fox News--as I do regularly--or listen to the AM radio political talk shows. I'm sure their biggest regret is Obama's marital fidelity--so unlike the wayward ways of so many Republican congressmen (and several presidential aspirants as well). There will be no Monica Lewinskys in Obama's life that they can use as a pretext to impeach him. So he'll be there--if you vote him a second term--to play the role of the corporate CFO, keeping the megalomaniacs in Sales, Marketing, Manufacturing etc. from going nuts on the company dime.

Even if you want a hyper-conservative Supreme Court like we have now, a second Obama term won't change that, because the conservative majority is relatively young and healthy. The only Supremes likely to retire or die are the less conservative minority, and replacing those won't be a game-changer--especially since the coming Republican Senate will block any nominations that even slightly left of center. They might even block any nominations he makes period, as they've been doing with so many presidential appointments.

Because of the nature of the electoral system, the coming Congressional majority may well not represent a majority of Americans--remember, Idaho gets just as many Senators as Texas, and the Electoral College gives one Montana Republicans the same voting power as four California Democrats. So Obama may be all that stands between minority rule and us.

Moreover, even if you're big on states' rights, remember that the Republican Party has no respect for states' rights as a principle--only in specific areas that advantage it. So even there you'll probably get more actual states' rights from a divided federal government than from a monolithic Republican one.

The one thing you'll get from a monolithic Republican government in 2012 is the repeal of healthcare reform--in fact they might be able to override a presidential veto on such a repeal anyway--which will be replaced by the past status quo of the past 100 years.

And then there's Social Security, which is solvent on the books for the next 40 years--all the government has to do is return the monies it "borrowed" from the Social Security trust fund, as it is legally required to do. Here again a monolithic Republican government will do everything it can to repeal Social Security and privatize it. The rank and file may thwart it, but it won't be for lack of trying.

Lastly, the GOP is now, to a remarkable extent, a captive of radicals who are so in love with their ideology that they don't care what the consequences are. This happened during the Iraq reconstruction, when the people sent there to administer the country were chosen strictly for their ideological credentials, with disastrous results. The current stated willingness of the GOP members in Congress to not raise the debt ceiling is a case in point. The worldwide consequences of defaulting on our legal obligations would cause a worldwide crisis, with one result being America losing its position as the center and the bedrock of the world economy. Yet you have a remarkable number of Congressmen saying they don't care.

You could argue that the Democrats are being equally mulish, refusing to cut two trillion dollars in Federal spending as the price of GOP cooperation. But wait'll you see the country we get if we're forced to do that.

So I put it to you that Obama is the most small-c conservative choice for President in 2012, given the coming Republican big majority Congress.

PS--that big majority is to a striking degree the product of the GOP promoting baldfaced lies by the dozens, amplified by a billion dollar propaganda campaign. There are legitimate differences between the parties, but they aren't the basis of the current GOP gains. Look at Factcheck.org and Politifact.com and see.

Vaccines cause autism! Cellphone towers cause cancer! Nuclear powerplants kill people!

Today Fox News is touting a story that the Federal government has been handing out huge rewards to families whose kids got vaccinated, then became autistic.

Parents who believe this kind of witch doctor medical conspiracy theorizing are using this fact to "prove" that vaccines cause autism. Rational people are using it to prove that the federal government is succumbing to sob stories with vast handouts of other people's (yours and my) tax dollars.

If I drink a glass or orange juice, then get a heart attack, it doesn't "prove" that orange juice causes heart attacks. Kids get vaccinated before signs of autism become obvious. Yet again people are connecting the dots--only the dots aren't actually connected.

Isn't it strange for conservatives to hate the federal government?

Conservatives are our Tories. They revere law and order, authority, orderliness, respect for tradition. So you'd think, being the closet monarchists they are, that Conservatives would adore the majesty and puissance of our Federal Government.

They usually say well, it's the state governments they revere, but whenever they gain control of the federal government they invariably work to expand its authority over our lives--running roughshod over "States Rights" in the process--in all those areas social conservatives care about--homosexuality, abortion, gun rights yada yada.

So the question remains--whence this hatred of the Federal Government. What group of American conservatives has such an intense grievance against our Federal Government that it overrides their respect for authority?

Southern Whites, that's who. For many of them, the Federal Government is still seen as a foreign occupying force, much as Iraqi Shiites might look upon American troops in Baghdad.

Especially since the South won the Civil War after one of their own assassinated Lincoln and he was replaced with a Southerner who hated Reconstruction. The South was able to replace slavery with virtual serfdom until the late 1960s--so it was only in the 1970s that the Union actually won the Civil War. Meaning the wounds are fresh, and the gutter triumphalism of the rap culture rubs salt in those wounds daily, despite the balm (for Southern Whites) of putting so many Black males in prison that it has practically become a rite of passage for a significant portion of American black males.

This, finally, makes sense of the apparent paradox of Conservative hatred of Federal gummint.

This also makes the Libertarian stance (the Soviets confiscated Ayn Rand's parents' lands, therefore all government is evil) nothing more than convenient window dressing for the real reasons most anti-Federal government Conservatives harbor. It gives them ideological cover. Then they don't have to talk about Blacks.

At the recent Fox News Presidential Debate in South Carolina, the winner of the debate among the audience and the South Carolinan focus group was a Black libertarian businessman. And no wonder. The 1% of American Blacks who are Republican are treasured by Southern Whites, because they give them plausible deniability for their racism.

The Antebellum South had its House Negroes--Blacks who got to dress nicely and live near Massa and his family instead of living in dirt floor shacks with the field hands.

If the shoe fits...

And who gives these Southern revanchists their giant bullhorn in the media?

The other group that hates the federal government: billionaires. For them as a group, every cent the Feds spend on social services is stealing from them to give to the undeserving poor. And every federal regulation is seen as an attempt to enslave them. So they're delighted to give their fake thinktanks and sock puppet pundits marching orders to provide ideological cover for their Southern voters.

Who killed Bin Ladin?

Last Sunday Navy commandos snuck into Pakistan and killed Osama Bin Badin in the expensive home he'd been living in a few miles from Pakistan's capital.

This gave rise to dueling headlines.

The Democratic headline: Obama as Commander In Chief orders successful raid on Bin Ladin's hideout, gets the man responsible for 9/11.

The Republican headline: George Bush as Commander In Chief gets Bin Ladin through policies he set in place and which were continued by the Democrat president who succeeded him.

The Libertarian headline: Bin Ladin's dead. Let's immediately withdraw from Afghanistan, Iraq, Europe, Japan, and anywhere else we have bases abroad.

The Tea Party headline: Obama the Foreigner botches description of Navy raid that killed Bin Ladin, proving once more that he's an incompetent bungler.

Peacenik (Euro and American) headline: Imperialist American president orders invasion of sovereign country and the murder of an alleged criminal, proving once more America's disregard for rule of law.

Pakistani headline: same as above, plus "and proving that Pakistan's civilian government are Stooges of the West."

Indian headline: Pakistan's promotion of terrorism demonstrated once more by discovery that it was harboring world's worst terrorist.

Afghan headline: Same.

Chinese headline: there is no headline, because no Chinese were killed by Bin Ladin, so it doesn't matter.

Russian headline: Bumbling American imperialists lose helicopter while violating a sovereign nation's territory.

Brit headline: Obama nails Bin Ladin. Brits give Obama heartfelt thanks. 

Arab headline: noble defender of Muslims martyred by Americans in their war on Islam; Americans also invaded a Muslim country in doing so [note that many Muslims were relieved that we killed him--but they're not the ones who usually get to write the headlines]

What Lara Logan's gang rape at the hands of 200 Egyptians means

Women in Egypt--from devout Muslim women shrouded from heat to toe to Western women in Western garb, young and old, have been complaining for many years about their appalling treatment at the hands of Egyptian men on the street. Individual complaints to the police are useless. Complaints on behalf of the women are equally useless, met either with bland denials or claims that the women in question were only Western women dressed like--from the Egyptian viewpoint--prostitutes. A recent study revealed, however, that veiled women got sexually harassed/assualted just like Western-dressed women.

Such behavior isn't unknown in the West. Gang rapes occur, at the hands of football teams (recently, in my area), or half a dozen black loiterers near a high school dance (also recently in my area), or the Central Park jogger in NYC, at the hands of several dozen blacks. The Jodie Foster movie "Accused" retells the true story of a party girl gang-raped by Portuguese-Americans in New England. With a little research you can find gang rapes by every major American ethnic group's members.

But I don't recall reading about a women being sexually assaulted by a mob of over 200 men in a public area in a city--ever in our history. Nor do I recall reading about such a thing in Europe, or in Japan.

I have heard about women getting touched/fondled in Japanese trains and busses and on the streets in Italy and Greece and suchlike.

All of which is to say that it's not a black and white situation--but the Arab world does appear to be in a class by itself when it comes to treating women like objects.

Lara Logan--despite the 40 minute sexual assault she suffered in Cairo--probably can't say "Arab society treats women like things." Note that I didn't say it was misogynistic--that would mean the men hate the women. That doesn't seem to be the case. More that women are simply treated the way American sociopaths treat everyone.

So it's no wonder Arab society has such strict rules about not wanting women in one's own household to go out and about by themselves. If I lived in an Arabl country I'd feel that way myself--because Arab men represent such a clear and present danger to women who aren't guarded by a phalanx of family members.

Islamic Sharia law forbids gang-raping women, to be sure, but it also enshrines treating women as lesser creatures than men--for example, via the rules of testimony in court, in which a man's word counts for more than a woman's word.

Of course Arab society isn't the only one that treats women like property. And we shouldn't forget that women have had the vote in America for less than a century. OTOH a century ago women may not have had the vote but the didn't risk being gang-raped on the street by hundreds of male citizens either.

Arabs would hotly deny the idea that Arabs themselves see men as brutes menacing all women who aren't being actively protected by others--their apologists say that women need to be protected from themselves. That's certainly the rationale behind female genital mutilation--done to many millions of Muslim girls in Africa (including Egypt). But individual Arabs surely realize how much Arab male attitudes and behavior endanger women.

I don't think any of this has much to do with Arab-Western "clash of civilizations." It's a feature of Arab society--one of the things that marks it as backwards, having much more in common with rural Indian, sub-Saharan African and Chinese societies than with modern Western ones.

Though even those areas don't gang-rape women in public by large crowds of men as far as I know. Nor is "honor murder" of one's own children remotely as common.

None of these are universals. 200 men gang-raped Laura Logan--but many other Egyptian men surely wouldn't have done so in the same circumstances. But while such behavior isn't universal in Arab countries--it's much more common there.

That's my point and my indictment.