Andy...Lives?

Wow.

 

I did an impromptu street performance with Kaufman one night (I was drunk, he was with his woman), and it is one of my proudest moments ever that I made him stop and laugh at something I did. If you think he was (is?) funny on stage, he was (is?) faster and funnier off. He was (is?) one of the few people on the planet who could make me laugh in person.

 

I hope this is true, but somehow, I seriously doubt he was able to bottle that energy for 30 years as a stay-at-home father. I suspect this may all have been a planned tribute to his genius.

The Trouble With Liberals

I was watching FreeSpeechTV this morning.

(Side note: If you don’t get FreeSpeechTV on your television provider, switch to DISH Network, stat. You’re missing out on some amazing programming.)

In the course of a “commercial break” – FSTV does not accept sponsor ads or government assistance in order to stay completely independent. It is wholly supported by viewers like me – I saw in rapid succession public service announcements for marriage equality, a greener earth, and aid to the homeless.

And it started me thinking: those are all noble and worthy causes, which means they’re all pretty much doomed to failure if something doesn’t change in the reality-based community.

In one way, Republicans got it correct. They managed to squeeze under their so-called “big tent” libertarian social conservatives, Bible thumpers and economic royalists, none of whom has a whole lot in common with the others. Yes, there’s some crossover, but the poor white church goer has a lot less in common with the Wall Street banker than he does with the guy down the road on Medicaid and food stamps.

This coalition has held strong for thirty years, only recently beginning to show cracks. It’s been glued together by the electoral successes it has purchased (or stolen), particularly at the grass-roots level, from school boards to county seats, city councils and state legislators.

Liberals tend not to have that particular depth of resource. There is an advantage to inviting the Wall Streeters to your table, I suppose. That meme, of liberals being behind in fundraising, may be changing, tho.

So how do we herd cats here? How do we get people who are passionate about marriage equality on-board with the green movement and assistance to the homeless?

Republicans had a thematic bind to their message. William F Buckley said it best decades ago: the job of conservatism was to “stand athwart the world, yelling ‘Stop!’” the entire conservative wing of the Republican party bought into that, free marketeers worried about “socialism” to the religious right worried about “moral decay”. It was an easy image for them to fall in line with.

Back in liberalism’s heyday, the 60s and 70s, we had some easy pickings to get in line behind. We watched the TeeVee and saw black men and women being terrorized in their own homes, an endless war with countless dead and dying, and the promise of a trip to the moon on the word of a slain President. We saw a war on poverty.

We saw people give a damn. We didn’t need an overarching philosophy. We just did it.

The ground is fertile for a renewal of the liberal America we grew up with. Already, the diversity of the American population threatens to drown old white men in a rainbow sea. Young people are getting involved and they tend to be for progressive policies.

Perhaps all we need to do is to wait. But there’s a danger in that waiting gives conservatism time to re-tool their message, and present it in a palatable persona like a Chris Christie.

We may not have as much time as we’d like.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) Climate change deniers have been all up in everyone’s face about how the hurricane season was so moderate this year and so maybe global warming is untrue. Yea. About that…

2) A President who apologizes? Next you’ll tell me one will want to balance the budget!

3) I wonder who will be the first to submit a bill of impeachment on that point.

4) How crazy are Teabaggers? This crazy. Not content with losing the governor’s race in Virginia to one of the most corrupt people in politics, they want to double down on the Cooch.

5) Little noticed in the hoopla about the elections this week, what with Chris Christie punching out the Bouncy Clown the Democrats ran (and who did a whole lot better than anyone could have hoped) and Bill de Blasio kicking the GOP to the curb, was even more bad news for the Republicans: a Green Party candidate for the first time outdrew a Republican opponent. Serpe ran in the City Council 22 district election, won by a heavily favored Democratic machine party candidate, Costas Constantinides, who was running in a predominantly Greek neighborhood as a favorite son. Serpe pulled 15% of the vote. By comparison, no other Green party candidate pulled in ten and many pulled in less than one percent. Republican Daniel Peterson polled 11.2%, possibly because he was invisible for the entire cycle. Serpe is the first Green Party candidate to place second in a race that featured both major parties.

6) You’ve heard of the Six Fingered Man? Here’s the Six Finger asteroid.

7) Speaking of space oddities…

8) And even more space talk.

9) Could we soon have a nuclear non-proliferation agreement with Iran?

10) Finally, peeing: ur doin’ it rong.

The Next Great War

You may or may not be aware, but World War III has already started. We just haven’t gotten caught up in it. Yet.

To appreciate how Congo descended into this madness, you need to step back more than a hundred years to when King Leopold II of Belgium snatched this huge space in the middle of Africa as his own personal colony. Leopold wanted rubber and ivory, and he started the voracious wholesale assault on Congo’s resources that has dragged on to this day. When the Belgians abruptly granted Congo independence in 1960, insurrections erupted immediately, paving the way for an ambitious young military man, Mobutu Sese Seko, to seize power—and never let go. Mobutu ruled for 32 years, stuffing himself with fresh Parisian cake airlifted into his jungle palaces while Congolese children curled up and starved.

But Mobutu would eventually go down, and when he did, Congo would go down with him. In 1994 Rwanda, next door, imploded in genocide, leaving up to a million dead. Many of the killers fled into eastern Congo, which became a base for destabilizing Rwanda. So Rwanda teamed up with neighboring Uganda and invaded Congo, ousting Mobutu in 1997 and installing their own proxy, Laurent Kabila. They soon grew annoyed with him and invaded again. That second phase of Congo’s war sucked in Chad, Namibia, Angola, Burundi, Sudan, and Zimbabwe—it’s often called Africa’s first world war.

In the ensuing free-for-all, foreign troops and rebel groups seized hundreds of mines. It was like giving an ATM card to a drugged-out kid with a gun. The rebels funded their brutality with diamonds, gold, tin, and tantalum, a hard, gray, corrosion-resistant element used to make electronics. Eastern Congo produces 20 to 50 percent of the world’s tantalum.

While the UN was able to pressure the external forces to withdraw, the mineral wealth of the Congo remains both elusive and plentiful, just ripe for some organized nation to exploit. Like perhaps the United States. Or China.

I’ve noted in the past the fascination China has with sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Nigeria.

Nigeria is not immune to the unrest in Africa. If anything, it may be the bullseye for the violence and upheaval. The next great war that engulfs the planet may not pit Muslim against Christian, but the Islamic world against China (who has her own issues with its Islamic minority, the Uighurs). At stake, the economic future of the entire planet, relying as heavily on technology and the promises of technology to come, that requires the minerals and energy under African soil.

And it seems my prediction from 2010 may be coming true. And if you think the US is pissed at Pakistan for allowing the Muslim fundamentalists such free rein with nukes lying around, imagine being just across a mountain range from them. It is not looking good for the world.  

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) We’ll get through this, despite the hiccups, we will have universal health insurance.

2) I have a suggestion for the NYPD: stop-and-frisk more white kids, if you’re determined to keep the program. There are many more white kids committing crimes than there are black kids, and who knows? Maybe you’ll be allowed to keep it despite its noxious First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment tramplings?

3) In case you were wondering why shit has gotten so strange lately, the Milky Way huffs fumes.

4) It’s been more than thirty years since AIDS and HIV popped up on the global health radar. We may finally have at least one cracked.

5) Banksy! Come back! Come back, Banksy!

6) Today, Americans officially begin to starve.

7) He plays for the Dallas Stars, keep in mind.

8) NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

9) Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble…

10) Finally, someone investigates the phenomenon that is Florida.

If You Lost Your Health Insurance Because of "Obamacare"...

Blame your insurer for selling you crappy insurance:

The controversy mainly surrounds the minority of Americans who shop individually for insurance – not for people insured through an employer-based plan or a government program such as Medicare.

The White House has said that, technically, the law allows insurance plans that individuals had in 2009 to be grandfathered in under the law, whether or not their coverage meets ACA conditions.

In practice, though, it’s common for insurance companies to change their policies frequently. Once they change, the policies need to comply with ACA standards of acceptable coverage.

So, as Obama argued, many Americans will now be offered stronger insurance coverage. And in a shift from prior law, a policy can’t be denied or jacked up in price based on an individual’s health.

“Junk insurance,” Like this idiot:

On CBS This Morning, Crawford reported that 56-year-old Dianne Barrette received a letter last month “from Blue Cross Blue Shield, informing her that as of January 2014, she would lose her current plan. She pays $54 a month. The new plan she’s being offered would run $591 a month, ten times more than what she currently pays.”

[…]First of all, the plan that Barrette paid $54 a month for is barely health insurance at all. It’s part of a subset of insurance that Consumer Reports calls “junk health insurance” (and which even the company that sells it recommends that customers not rely solely upon) and it pays only $50 towards most of the services it covers. That’s it. If Dianne went to the doctor every week for a year, her plan would pay, at most, $2600. Meanwhile, based on average office visit charges, Diane would pay about $5,600.00. She probably doesn’t go to the doctor every week, of course, which means her plan pays a lot less, while her premium buys her a lot less. If she goes to the doctor, say, six times in a year, she’s paid a $648 premium for the privilege of spending another $600 on office visits. The plan also pays up to $15 per prescription, which will get you a few milligrams of most prescription drugs. The one decent deal on her plan is that it covers 100% of in-network lab services.

But many people just want the peace of mind to know that if something really bad happens, they won’t have to worry about being billed into the poorhouse. What if the worst happens, and Dianne needs to be hospitalized due to sudden illness or injury? Well, unless Dianne is suffering complications due to pregnancy, her plan covers nothing. If she’s having complications from pregnancy, it covers fifty bucks. It’s entirely possible that now-healthy Dianne is “happy” with this plan, but the whole idea behind the Affordable Care Act is that the rest of us are not happy having to pick up the tab if Dianne gets a disease, has an accident, or otherwise needs to go to the hospital. Frankly, though, Dianne would be better off saving that $648 and negotiating her office visits on her own.

Ironically, it took FOX News(!) to get the other side of the story out:

Greta [van Susteren] teed up the interview using the same setup as Crawford’s piece, that Barrette is “finding out she will have to pay 10 times as much for health insurance” because “she is losing her current plan to Obamacare.”

“I have a copy of your Florida Blue insurance and it’s about $54 a month,” Greta continued, “and now I understand that under Obamacare, it’s going to go up, at least they said that the policy they would offer you under Florida Blue, would be $591; is that correct?”

Actually, the plan BCBSFL was only one of many plans Dianne has to choose from, 10 of which are cheaper than that $591, and based on her income, she’d only pay around $209 a month, but Greta did cut right to the chase about the quality of her old plan.

“Your $54 a month policy is a pretty, you know, bare bones policy, “Greta said. “Why do you want to keep that one, except for the price? Maybe you can get something better with a subsidy?”

“Well, I know it doesn’t cover lengthy hospital stays,” Barrette replied, adding “It’s perfect for what I want. I get co-pays for doctor visits and prescriptions. So it suffices what I need. Also, the price isn’t too bad either.”

Her $54 plan actually doesn’t have copays for doctor visits and prescriptions. It pays $50 toward covered doctor’s visits, Dianne pays the rest, and $15 toward prescriptions, Dianne pays the rest. As for hospitalization, Greta again went where CBS did not, and actually asked about it.

“Well, does it pay for any hospitalization, the current policy you have?” Greta asked.

“Again, I’m a little confused about it,” Barrette answered. “I have been reading over and over the policies, and it appears that it does cover some outpatient, but when you go through the booklet they sent, it would say refer to this, refer to it but then refer back to… it was very confusing.”

Keep all this in mind when your idiot conservative friends start getting all “But he promissssssssssssssssssed!” about Obamacare. Yes, you can keep your plan if you’re happy with it AND if it meets the criteria established for minimum healthcare coverage under the ACA. But if it doesn’t, the insurance company has to kick you off, just like a bar has to kick you out if its closing time. There’s a law, you see…

The Official End to Ted Cruz's Presidential Aspirations

Beating up on Trayvon Martin’s mom:

During a Senate hearing on "stand your ground" laws and public safety, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz tried to dismiss claims that such laws had racial implications. Because many black people are victims of violent crime and need to defend themselves, Cruz said, "the notion that 'stand your ground' laws are some form of veiled racism may be a convenient political attack, but it is not borne out by the fact remotely." The chair of the subcommittee, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, offered a quick and biting rebuttal. Sitting in front of the two was Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin's mother.

The hearing stemmed from the 2012 shooting of Martin, the Florida teenager shot to death while walking back from the convenience store after being confronted by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman. That case prompted new consideration of the type of self-defense law that, at first, allowed Zimmerman to go free without criminal charges.

[…]Speaking directly to Martin's mother, Cruz suggested that the family was "simply the mourning the loss of your son," while "other players" sought "to do a great deal more based on what happened that Florida night." But Sybrina Fulton was not there simply to mourn the loss of her son.

Durbin’s rebuttal?

Let me be very specific when I say this. Don't take my word for it. Take the testimony of Hillary Shelton, director of the NAACP, Washington Bureau, in which he states — and it's part of this record — "Few issues have caused as much angst and raised as many deeply held concerns among our members and the communities we serve as 'stand your ground' laws. These laws and their applications have sadly resulted in no less than the murder of people who were doing nothing more than walking down the street."

Sybrina’s Fulton, Trayvon’s mother, was even more pointed:

"I just wanted to come here to...let you know how important it is that we amend this 'stand your ground' because it certainly did not work in my case," Fulton said, speaking without consulting prepared remarks. "The person that shot and killed my son is walking the streets today. This law does not work."

Go back to Canadistan where you came from, Ted.

 

Not Wrong, But Not Right

Atmospheric scientists have a really tough job: predicting weather. This year, 2013, has seen a hurricane season that lived up to predictions, and yet, did not:

In August of 2011, Tropical Storm Irene became the worst storm to hit New York since 1972. A year later, Hurricane Sandy made Irene look like a drizzle, and Governor Andrew Cuomo referred to the danger posed by the massive storms as the "new normal." So it was hardly comforting for New York, still largely unprepared for another Sandy, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted in May that there was a 70 percent chance this year's hurricane season would be more active than normal, with three to six major (category three or higher) storms.

Then ... nothing happened. With the season winding down, there have been twelve named storms, two hurricanes, and not a single major hurricane to date. On the surface, it seems kind of embarrassing. But one of the lead scientists behind the NOAA forecast says that it is just proof that you shouldn't pay attention to hurricane projections anyway.

[…]Consequently, while the number of storms predicted was on target, "They just didn’t find an environment that was conducive to go on and become strong," Franklin says. "So we had lots of weak systems that didn't last very long."

What may have happened, scientists speculate, is a phenomenon called “sinking air”.

When air rises, it carries moisture from the surface, especially the ocean, to upper levels of the atmosphere. This creates instability and instability breeds thunderstorms and thunderstorms seed hurricanes.

When the opposite happens, when air sinks, it brings drier air down, and basically soaks up any thunderstorms. They’ll still form but they get short-circuited.

This is important because of the human propensity to a short attention span.

It’s one year since Superstorm Sandy hit New York City, and we’re still digging out. We can take preventative steps, but there’s nothing like being prepared.

If This Doesn't Persuade You We Need Immigration Reform STAT, Nothing Will

We hear an awful lot – too much, in my book – about the shiftless, lazy welfare-grubbing, taxpayer mooching undocumented workers flooding our nation, and overwhelming our social services.

And then there’s this guy, who I believe is far more representative of the average immigrant who comes to this nation:

They are busboys, dishwashers, construction workers. They are on their feet at enervating jobs all day and often all night. Many do not have health insurance. Most find it difficult to afford the increasingly hefty fees New York Road Runners charges for its races, especially the marathon, which now costs at least $227.

For [Julio] Sauce, that is half a week’s paycheck. 

Sauce finishes first in his age group, 40-49, regularly, despite working ten hours a day as a cook. Recently, he worked from 2:30PM to 12:30AM on a Saturday evening, and grabbed three hours’s sleep before winning a half-marathon in Central Park, a good hour’s ride from his home on Coney Island. Chew on that for a bit: he works 60 and 70 hour weeks (we presume he’s not bound by union regulations) and still manages to find time to train to win races in one of the most athletic and competitive cities on the planet.

I ride my bike a lot in the wee hours of the morning (not as wee now as just a few weeks ago, admittedly). The neighborhoods I most worry about riding through?

Not the wealthy or upper-middle class neighborhoods. Those folks are soundly asleep and I’m white, so the private security guards wave and smile and go back to napping.

No, it’s the immigrant neighborhoods: the Asians, the Latinos, the Caribbean folk. Those neighborhoods are bustling with folks rushing to work, even on Sundays. The buses run frequently, livery cabs zip in and away from the curbs, men and women with backpacks and earphones jaywalk to the subway station across the street. I have to be vigilant, especially in the dark.

Folks work hard. Folks get hurt and sometimes they have to go to the ER, and even Ronald Reagan felt it was necessary for any ER to treat any patient, no matter what the cost and no matter whether they could afford it or not.

Of course, Reagan also inaugurated the whole “welfare queen” lie, by making up an anecdote.

We can all come up with anecdotes about lazy shiftless immigrants. It’s called “stereotyping” or worse. Facts, fortunately, have a liberal bias.

 

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) Conservative heads to assplode in 3….2….1….

2) I understand and even support animal rights activists in this, but to be fair, a bit of Olde New York charm resides in those horses and the carriages. It is a must-do for any tourist who comes to New York.

3) Dude, that’s col-l-l-l-l-d.

4) NSA, meet KARMA

5) I wanted to say something about this, but now I forget…

6) Now that President Obama has admitted that healthcare.gov is a mess, what is his honeymoon? Keep in mind that when Massachussetts implemented this same program, they too had major glitches but were able to resolve them before the last-minute deluge of applications, likely to happen here, as well.

7) I don’t know if you happened to catch the premiere of Blackfish on CNN last night, but you really should see it to understand how wrong it is to keep these beautiful animals penned up.

8) Once again, Europe leads the way.

9) Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I think I’d rather die young, if it’s all the same.

10) Actual Texas science curriculum

The Orcs Are In Trouble

Gee, you think the shutdown was a good idea for the GOP? I suppose you could if you think a permanent Democratic majority is a good idea:

Washington (CNN) -- In a sign of the political hangover congressional Republicans are suffering in the wake of the government shutdown, three-quarters of Americans in a new national poll say that most GOP members of Congress don't deserve to be re-elected.

A CNN/ORC International survey released Monday also found a majority saying that the Republicans' policies are too extreme. And according to the poll, Democrats have an 8-point advantage over the Republicans in an early indicator in the battle for control of Congress. But with more than a year to go until the 2014 midterm elections, there's plenty of time for these numbers to change.

Normally, numbers like this are meaningless, but here’s an interesting statistic out of the study:

[…]nearly four in 10 saying even their own representative doesn't deserve a return ticket to Washington next year. Both figures are hovering around all-time highs in CNN polling.

See, the conventional wisdom goes that everyone hates Congress, and the people who infest it, but Congress has a 95-98% re-election rate.

Which means everyone hates everybody else’s Congresscritter. Except now, suddenly, people are waking up that the only way to clean house is to clean house.

Unfortunately, we don’t get state-by-state numbers, but the underlying data based on self-identifying political views seems to suggest that even conservatives states (PDF) are taking a very close look at their individual members of Congress with an eye towards replacing them. The question there becomes, are they thinking they should be more moderate and willing to work with Democrats and the President, or even more strident and obstinate? The jury is still out on that one, but it is safe to say that the current make-up of the House of Representatives is in play, and that the Democrats could steal enough moderate seats to claim a majority next year.

The party which occupies the White House for a second term rarely if ever has gained seats in the Congress in the mid-term elections. It could happen next year. It has a very good chance.

Unlikely

There’s this whole foofaraw this week about the US intelligence community gathering 70 million private phone calls in a month. In France.

US intelligence chief James Clapper has denied reports that US spies recorded data from 70 million phone calls in France in a single 30-day period.

The director of national intelligence said the report in Le Monde newspaper contained "misleading information".

In a separate story, the newspaper said the US bugged French diplomats and used the information to sway a key UN vote.

Both reports were based on leaks from fugitive ex-US intelligence worker Edward Snowden.

This seems really unlikely and a fairly ludicrous postulate. Not that it couldn’t physically happen, but there’s a few key elements to this story that would discount it immediately in my book.

Most significant of them is this:

The document quotes America's former UN envoy Susan Rice as saying the NSA's information helped the US "keep one step ahead in the negotiations".

Admittedly, it’s not impossible that Susan Rice would be given clearance for knowledge of this supersecret spying program, but really? No administration would trust its United-frikkin’-Nations envoy with a clearance that would put her above everyone in the food chain except, perhaps, Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

It strains credulity, and calls into question whether Edward Snowden has been snow-jobbing us all along and is merely now trying to see what he can get away with.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Snowden is responsible for this little gem that’s starting its journey around the nutcase far right.

Do I think the government does what every other stinking government on this planet does and spies on other nations, particularly their diplomats? Yes. Do I think the NSA grepped 70 million phone calls in a month to sift through for some…what? Data, I assume? No.

Not Wrong

Jonathan Chait is not wrong.

Writing in this week’s New York Magazine, he posits the following:

Pragmatic conservatives warned their tea-party brethren that shutting down the government would not harm Obamacare and would instead harm the Republican Party. And lo, both halves of the prophecy have now come to pass. New polls by CNN and the Washington Post measure the damage. Both polls show Democrats taking an 8-point lead in the generic ballot for Congress — a result that, if it held up, would likely depose the Republican majority. The election is a year away, and everybody expects the damage to subside. But deeper reputation damage can be detected. CNN asks voters if they consider each party “too extreme” or “generally mainstream.” By a 52 percent to 42 percent margin, they deem the Democrats generally mainstream. By a 56 percent to 37 percent margin, they call Republicans too extreme. The shutdown may not have been an act of suicide — there’s plenty of time to recover — but it was surely a suicidal gesture.

In the wake of the debacle, reporters and mortified Republican pragmatists alike have attempted to reconstruct the erroneous thinking that led the GOP to undertake a doomed strategy. There certainly were elements of legitimate miscalculation at play. (The simplest and least appreciated is that many of them initially believed shutting down the government would halt Obamacare, and by the time they learned otherwise, they had already printed up the T-shirts.)

In the most important ways, though, the tea party’s strategy was not a strategy at all. On the surface, demanding an end to Obamacare in return for reopening the federal government was an insane negotiating strategy. Attempting to analyze these demands in strategic terms misses the point. It’s not a plan to achieve a defined legislative end. It’s a demonstration of dissent from a political faction that has no chance of winning through regular political channels. The problem they are attempting to solve in each case is not “how do we achieve this policy objective?” but “how can we express our outrage?”

When put in this context, there is an undeniable internal logic – I said “internal” – to the shutdown. Some people like to blow shit up just for the sake of watching it burn. In this context, Ted Cruz makes sense. In this context, shutting the government down to protest a law you don’t like is the ultimate rebellion.

And yes, it is a tantrum. And now it makes perfect sense.

For future reference, if you want to distinguish between something with internal logic and something with external logic, ask yourself this simple question: what happens next? Let’s say the Teabaggers got  their way and somehow, Obamacare was repealed. What happens next? They still don’t grow the caucus, they still don’t become a bona fide political movement and they’ve still managed to incapacitate their own party worse than the nation.

What still has to be worked out is why 22 Representatives would be so treasonous to…nevermind the country…their own party as to blow it up now, and why Weaker Boener would let them?

It was a no-win situation for Boehner but it was an even bigger no-win situation for the Teabag caucus.

Chait hints at the motivation for this bizarre psychotic episode later on in his piece:

This reflects the deep vein of pessimism that has run through the right since the Obama era. I tried to capture it in my story a year ago, “2012 or Never,” which analyzed the widespread conservative belief that the last election represented a final chance for the old Reagan coalition to hold back Barack Obama’s America — which they imagined, in a distorted but not altogether false way, as racially polyglot and addicted to the spoils of redistribution.

The implications of this are staggering: it explains why the push to infest state & local legislatures with conservatives, right down to school boards. It’s a scorched earth policy that tries to ensure that whatever bounty the nation has put in place will be unavailable to future generations.

It’s the ultimate “I had mine, go fuck yourself,” conservative elitist commentary. It explains why infrastructure doesn’t get maintained. It explains why, in the face of thirty years of evidence to the contrary, conservatives still talk of tax cuts for the rich benefitting us all.

Mostly, It explains how Mitt Romney, an inconsequential man of Silly Putty values, could be selected as a national candidate against one of the most dynamic and beloved political figures of this century. They knew they’d lose. They were merely sewing salt in the planting fields.

A Novel Come to Life

If you ask 100 people to name a book about a modern dystopian society, 100 of them would probably talk about 1984, the George Orwell novel about centralized government dominating a nation so much that “Big Brother is Watching You”.

Those folks are sheeple. The book that really reveals our modern century dystopia far better is by a near-contemporary and predecessor of Orwell named Aldous Huxley: Brave New World.

Although the books deal with the degradation of the individual, they come at it from different approaches and different causes. Let me let Neil Postman handle this bit:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Postman added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.

The Roman Empire collapsed amidst bread and circuses, while the monarchy bled the nation dry. Distract the people, the thinking goes, and you can pick their pockets at will.

This was not the message of 1984, to be sure. Orwell had a distinctly unfun society to place his story in. Huxley’s book predicts the Kardashians. Orwell posits a centralized authority figure ruling and micromanaging the very sex lives of its citizenry, and while many of the trappings of his society are pretty apparent in the modern West, he discounts the ability of private enterprise to lay behind this totalitarian form of government, or rather, opts to ignore it as it would have given comfort to the very society he was trying to mock, the Soviet Socialist republics.

One must not criticize capitalism if one is to attack its chief rival.

Huxley writes from a different and more valid place: his dislike of American society just after the turn of the 20^th Century. He incorporates wide-spread happy pills (like Prozac), wide-spread licentiousness (OK, here he was very wrong morally but not wrong observationally), and emerging eugenics (like genetic counseling. And worse.)

It’s no coincidence that Huxley sets his piece in the year 632 AF—“After Ford” – after reading Henry Ford’s seminal book My Life and Work and seeing its principles in place across America: a faster-paced lifestyle with entertaining diversions, an orientation towards youth and the loss of individual identity from the workplace factory lines to the nameless faceless mobs of the cities.

Yes, that’s right: you were once one of those “kids these days” no matter how old you are.

In Huxley’s world, we are each from birth inculcated with the command to consume, that money has value only for what it buys, and that you should know your place and do your job while those who employ you are free to move about as they see fit, even if that means taking your job away from you and giving it to someone else.

I’m re-reading this book now, and I get the eerie sensation that the reason 1984 is dropped into the national dialogue so often is not that it’s a valid comparison, except superficially, to modern day America, but that this distracts us from reading a really predictive look at America.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) Not News: Racist Republican candidate is racist. News: He’s running for mayor of New York.

2) Sabre-tooths are among us.

3) John Boehner, Weaker Boener, doesn’t seem to feel the knife in his back.

4) The stress of closing then re-opening the government got to a lot of people. Some more than others.

5) Our long national nightmare is over.

6) Stephen Colbert was on fire last night at the Al Smith dinner. Many of those jokes are inside Noo Yawk stuff, but you’ll enjoy them.

7) If only Chuck Todd had the balls to say this to Ted Cruz’s face. I’d have respect for him.

8) SASQUATCH ISREAL!

9) The Teabaggers may be the death of the Republican party. PARTAY!

10) If you believe this, he has a bridge to sell you.

Cruz-in' for a Bruisin'

So, you know who else besides Weaker Boener stepped on his dick with the shut-down? This guy:

WASHINGTON — It might be time for Ted Cruz to get a dog.

Because as the saying goes, if you want a friend in Washington, that’s what you do. And by the time Cruz’s crusade to defund Obamacare finally crashed to a halt Wednesday, the Texas senator had precious few friends left.

The government shutdown alienated colleagues in both parties. It generated fresh animosity toward the tea party and a flurry of recriminations toward Cruz. Voter support for the Republican Party plunged.

And the health care law survived unscathed.

It’s clear this entire sordid stinking episode was about his 2016 ambitions. It’s also clear that he stands zero chance of being the Republican nominee in 2016.

Either Cruz grossly miscalculated his strength here or he had something else in mind than running as the Republican candidate. After all, he managed to push Rand Paul into a centrist position here (Paul came out grudgingly against a shutdown) while firmly establishing himself as the head of the congressional Teabagger caucus. This positions himself nicely as an alternative conservative candidate for a Tea “Party” should the corporatists decide they’ve sucked enough lifeblood out of the GOP. It would present an image of Cruz as an outsider for a rabble that desperately craves a change in DC, while never truly straying from a Republican platform of hate and exploitation, something the corporatists at FreedomWorks and The Heritage Foundation would insist upon.

Cruz ain’t bright enough to have thought of this nuance on his own, but for sure, someone like a Sheldon Adelson or even Dick Armey could have persuaded this idiot to pull this stunt with this endgame in mind. Check Ted’s butthole. Someone’s hand is up there. For Cruz’s part, he made a major gaffe in challenging the authority of a former professor of Constitutional law who must have been painfully – maybe “joyfully” is the more correct word – aware of the implications of capitulation not only on his immediate prospects as President, but longer term to the office itself.

Obama stood toe-to-toe. Cruz and the Teabaggers flinched. We can see that the entire caucus flinched since just a single change to the Affordable Care Act was put into the Continuing Resolution, and even that (a means test for the income subsidy for low income Americans) makes sense as a precaution. I’m surprised it wasn’t in the original bill. Perhaps Obama out-thought us even years ago.

It will be hard for Cruz to come back from this: his 21 hour filibuster-lite stunt ensured that his name would be associated with the shutdown in perpetuity. Indeed, had he not made that speechification, the Republicans might have had a far easier time of painting President Obama as the obstructionist.

“Might”, not “would”, but certainly the pasty, flop-and-gin-sweated face of Ted Cruz on the Senate floor negated any possibility of that, Sam I Am. And engendered the mockery of a nation (really dumb stunt, reading to your kids, Senator) and the ire of his fellow Senators. When Rand Paul – who also knew he had a finite time – filibustered-lite, he at least stayed on topic and then some. This isn’t the old days when you didn’t have a C-Span camera sitting in your face. You’re going to have to provide dramatic and non-mockable sustenance to the audience.

I suspect this is why Harry Reid has been reluctant to alter the filibuster rules from the get-go because one day he, too, might have to read to his grandchildren from the pit.

The End Times. I Mean, Games

Weaker Boehner has had it.

WASHINGTON — A frantic day of legislative maneuvering ended in futility for Speaker John A. Boehner on Tuesday, as the most conservative members of the House refused to back his proposed compromise to end the standoff over the federal budget.

The failure leaves a bipartisan Senate plan negotiated by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as the sole way out of a stalemate that risks a U.S. default on its bills and huge economic disruptions.

A bill that passed the Senate would receive Democratic support in the House, guaranteeing a majority if Boehner were willing to bring it to the floor even without the backing of most Republicans. He is widely expected to do so, however, having run out of time for other options.

The blinking. It happens. I can’t see how 20 members of a minority part – as in they don’t control the Senate or the White House – stands a chance in hell of blocking the budget agreement.

While I’m glad this is happening (my 401k finally started to show a profit since 2008), part of me is evil enough to wish Reid had basically said to McConnell “This is on you. You fix this problem. I have bigger fish to fry.”

And then went off and fixed the filibuster rules to prevent Ted Cruz from making an ass out of himself, his party, and the nation.

Things have reached such an impasse that China, among our largest foreign creditors, is sounding an alarm. Not “criticizing,” panicking. That’s on Boehner, too. He created this crisis, whether it was through a drunken negligence or his own deviant planning, and he has to own its consequences.

I can’t see how he survives as Speaker at the end of the next term (if indeed he makes it that far.) He’s managed to piss off the radical reactionary racists AND the moderate centrists of a party that has over the past thirty years watched itself tear asunder, held together only by the soft glue of Ronald Reagan’s falsified resume.

In truth, the only saving grace the Republican party has for the 2014 elections is, apart from gerrymandering, the short attention span of Americans. If I’m Obama, I’m praying for a one year budget agreement that raises at least the shadow of default next October.

“Full faith and credit,” Teabaggers. That’s in the Constitution, too.

The Saving Grace of Saving Face

Comes the salvage operation for the House Republican caucus:

House Republicans, increasingly isolated from even some of their strongest supporters more than a week into a government shutdown, began on Wednesday to consider a path out of the fiscal impasse that would raise the debt ceiling for a few weeks as they press for a broader deficit reduction deal.

That approach could possibly set aside the fight over the new health care law, which prompted the shutdown and which some Republicans will be reluctant to abandon.

In a meeting with the most ardent House conservatives, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, laid out a package focused on an overhaul of Medicare and a path toward a comprehensive simplification of the tax code.

Somebody blinked, in other words.

The biggest loser in all this, not surprisingly, is House majority leader Eric Cantor. It was his very vocal support from the Teabagger wing of Congress that instigated this shutdown, that continued it beyond a symbolic gesture (and made me out to be wrong, something I will not tolerate, Congresscritter!) and embarrassed the mainstream majority of the Republican party, who must now fight for its very relevance while finding a way to shut up conservatives.

John Boehner found a path out and while he was not left untouched by the idiocracy, he deflected the bulk of the contempt off him while sniping from behind the cover of the Dark Side.

So what happened? Harry Reid happened.

In the meantime, Koch Industries accused Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, on Wednesday of spreading “false information” about the company by suggesting it was behind the move to tie a demand to keep the government open only if financing was eliminated for Mr. Obama’s health care law.

“Koch believes that Obamacare will increase deficits, lead to an overall lowering of the standard of health care and raise taxes,” Philip Ellender, the company’s chief spokesman, wrote in a letter to senators. “However, Koch has not taken a position on the legislative tactic of tying the continuing resolution to defunding Obamacare, nor have we lobbied on legislative programs defunding Obamacare.”

To be honest, this was probably the single most brilliant piece of subversion I’ve seen in many years. Reid is to be applauded for dragging this out into the light. As we say in fencing, le coup de grace, the final blow was when the Koch brothers found out that there's a price to be paid when Americans are paying attention carefully.

But do a quick thought experiment. Imagine being in that meeting where Ryan unveils the exit strategy. How nasty and spiteful are things going to get?

Waning Boehner

We’re starting to see the last throes of a desperate man at the head of a desperate caucus:

Boehner, responding to President Obama’s hourlong news conference, said he remained "disappointed" that Obama refused to consider talks centered on House-passed spending measures that included provisions tied to the healthcare law and that would "provide fairness" to Americans.

He also insisted that any action to raise the nation’s debt limit should be in concert with steps to limit future borrowing.

"There is going to be a negotiation here," Boehner told reporters. "It's time to have that conversation, not next week, not next month; the conversation ought to start today."

Translation: "You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddy!"

Foot-stomping and holding your breath until you turn….well, a normal white person would turn blue but someone of your hue would be more gray, I suppose…is the clearest sign of desperation you’ve shown so far, Weaker Boener. It all but cries out, “Look at me! I’m still relevant! I’m still relevant, dammit!”

The take-away from this quote is that President Obama has uncovered an endgame that circles around Boener and the Teabaggers, one that either Boener did not expect or was unprepared for.

It starts with this, however:

President Barack Obama has invited the House of Representatives Democratic caucus to a meeting at the White House to discuss the budget crisis and the looming debt limit deadline, a White House official said on Wednesday.

Other caucuses will be invited in coming days, the official said. The meeting Wednesday will take place at 4:30 p.m.

We’ll likely see a proposal cobbled together today, possibly kept private, until the President can meet with Boener and present it as a done deal, take it or leave it. I suspect the protocol will be House Democrats, Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans, House Republicans, with the last two possibly being invited simultaneously to prevent attempts to subvert the deal.

Lest anyone think that President Obama has any reason to be patient with Weaker Boener, I will merely mention two words: Grand Bargain. He couldn’t deliver his caucus despite a handshake with the President. Why should Obama pay him any courtesy now?

Newtered

In every crisis, there is a watershed moment where the solution – or at least, the denouement – appears. Thus endeth the shutdown:

Senate Democrats could introduce a bill to raise the debt limit this week, according to a Democratic aide. Considering the procedural roadblocks the measure could face, aides said they have to get the legislation rolling well before Oct. 17, when Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has said the government will run out of borrowing authority.

It was uncertain whether Democrats can muster the 60 votes they would need to push a debt ceiling bill, with no strings attached, through the Senate. The measure would likely run into opposition from Senate Republicans such as Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who has been leading the drive to make delaying Obama's healthcare law a condition for raising the debt ceiling.

I disagree with the Tribune in one respect: I think it will be fairly easy to get 60 votes, despite the grandstanding of Cruz. Even Rand Paul has signaled that he wants negotiations to begin in earnest to re-open the government, even if he lies and even if he clearly helped plan it. He has, I think, seen the writing on the wall, and he has to differentiate himself from Ted Cruz if he wants to make a dent in the GOP primary season in 2016. Showing himself as reasonable could garner him a lot of kudos, even as he maintains his nutcase caucus.

Meanwhile, the House Republicans continue to pass jigsaw puzzle funding of programs they like, which Harry Reid continues to ignore. This is an altogether proper way to treat little babies: let them cry themselves to sleep.

Weaker Boener continues to show himself as an ineffectual and ineffective leader, and he’s pissing off both wings of his caucus: the right and the far right. I have no doubt that come January 2015 (if not before) he’ll either be forced to resign or he’ll suffer the ignominy of being voted out as Speaker…assuming the Republicans hold onto the House, not a guarantee.

And it won’t be Teabaggers voted out. Most of them won by clear majorities, not pluralities, over centrist and even conservative Democrats in their districts. It will be moderates, and this will likely shift the House to a more liberal make up.

Ironic, then, that Karl Rove’s strategy of creating a permanent Republican majority in Congress by gerrymandering districts at the state level and polarizing election and Congressional districts could backfire so badly that the Republican party itself becomes wholly irrelevant in a very short time.