02.19.16
by

The Rubio Photoshop Fiasco: In Praise of Ratfucking

So, the real story of the Rubio photoshop incident, wherein the Cruz campaign circulated a doctored photo of a smiling Marco shaking hands with President Obama, is that the Republican party is so far gone that the very idea of a sitting senator meeting the President is enough to send a campaign tailspinning into sputtering agony. That’s nuts.

 

 

rubio-obama-650x326

The horror…the horror…

 

Horrors! According to Mediate, the Cruz campaign has responded to this with normal maturity. “If Rubio has a better picture of him shaking hands with Barack Obama I’m happy to swap it out,” says a spokesman. Because, you know, it is hideous to think that a Senator might ever do his job and work with the President to pass laws.

Continue reading →

02.13.16
by

The ugly upcoming nomination battle

So Antonin Scalia, the flabbergastingly partisan Supreme Court justice whose rulings for the last 15 years were less judicial and more a highbrow translation of AM radio, has passed away.  No one wished for his death; just his resignation. He was a man who was loved, I’m sure. Still, in light of things like the insane and potentially catastrophic (and, it has to be noted unprecedented) ruling to stay the Clean Power Bill, this is an opportunity to move forward.

But it’s going to get ugly. If you listen closely, you can hear a thousand thinkpieces being written that will argue how it is tyrannical for a lameduck to nominate a Supreme Court justice. Senators are already limbering up for the nomination fight, practicing teary piousness about how the President owes it to the legacy of this great American patriot to nominate a “true Constitutional conservative”.  The confluence of an election year, Scalia’s unique role as berobed channeler of the right-wing id, and the unerring antipathy to letting Obama have any normal Presidential prerogative will make this perhaps the ugliest fight in Supreme Court history.

The prerogative is the important thing. Republicans take it as gospel that anytime Obama behaves like a President he is acting like a king. This time will be no different. A quick look back makes it seem like this is the latest in his term a President has had a Supreme Court nomination since LBJ, but that’s due to justices generally not resigning in an election year. This is different. There is nothing that can be done.  Barack Obama is still the President. It is 100% within his rights to nominate a justice, and 100% in his rights to nominate a justice

Barack Obama is still the President. It is 100% within his rights to nominate a justice, and 100% in his rights to nominate a justice  with whom he is aligned, politically and judicially. This being an election year doesn’t change that.

So when you hear an argument that Obama owes it to Scalia’s memory to appoint a true Constitutional originalist like Scalia (which he only was when it suited him, and which is a bankrupt and idiotic ideology anyway), or that he should do the right thing and postpone having 9 Justices for at least a year, remind them of Article II, section 1.

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows

Note it doesn’t say “3 years” or “but during an election year he shouldn’t do anything.” Obama was elected by a large majority for a four-year term, with all the Presidential perogatives that entails. No true Constitutionalist could argue otherwise.

01.28.16
by

Last Chance: CNN And The Trump Debate Decision

By and large, I agree with Slate’s Jim Newell about Donald Trump’s decision to skip the debate. I don’t actually see it impacting the polls too much. People who have decided “Yeah, I really think that Donald Trump should be the President of the United States” have different ideas about qualifications than you and I, and sticking it that stuck-up blond will, at worst, do little to shake their resolve. The only question is if this vocal and poll-driven support translates into action, to votes and to caucusing. So if he ends up winning Iowa this will look like a masterstroke of political will, and if he loses he’ll look like a dope, but they will be ex-post facto narratives.

empty-debate-podiums

To me, the important thing is that Trump invited the other networks to stream his “counter-programming”, a nauseatingly insincere “fundraiser for wounded veterans”, which attempts to give a patina of respectability to his petulance. It seems likely that his act can get higher ratings than the debate, if just because people will want to see how much he attacks Fox and Megyn Kelley, because people are attracted to his style(which is bizarre: his shtick sounds exactly like a peculiarly dimwitted third grader who just learned how to swear).

It’s CNN, and MSNBC, and any of the business spinoffs, that interest me, if they decide to show it. Let’s stipulate a few things.

  1. No one really thinks of CNN as journalism anymore. They do some good work, and their reach is impressive, especially during breaking news, but it is buried under speculative and sensationalistic fluff.
  2. The Republican debates have been seal-barking absurdities, completely disconnected from reality, and highlighted by the two young Hispanic hopes arguing about how the other one doesn’t hate Mexicans enough.
  3. Tonight’s debate won’t change that.

And yet, it seems to me to be important that nobody cover Trump’s event. In doing so, the networks will abdicate any pretense they have about politics being something that matters, something that impacts people’s lives. As bad as the debates are, they are necessary for people to get a glimpse at the candidates, how they are when taken off guard, their personalities, their strengths, and especially their weaknesses. Debates are usually scripted and easily veer into sideshow, but are still an important part of the process.

To say that “Trump is rewriting the rules!” is true, but it is impossible to argue for the better. Sending cameras to this self-serving egoshow only further undermines the disconnect between POLITICS! as a show and the real politics that can make lives better or worse for the hundreds of millions who aren’t on TV and in the club. It is saying that the only thing which matters is the spectacle, the human torso imping his knife-mouthed way across the screen.

Ratings are important, and advertising dollars keep the lights on. Sticking it to Fox would be fun for CNN and MSNBC, and it is always fun to see Fox get swallowed by the beast it created. At some point though, a decision has to be made on whether the commitment to democracy means something, and as over-the-top as this sounds, gleefully ignoring even the most surface-level demonstration of the electoral process so that a megalomaniacal billionaire can do his witless routine demonstrates that commitment means nothing.

01.13.16
by

Last State of the Union: LiveBlog!

7:51. Getting ready for President Obama’s last State of the Union. This should be a good one, even if it doesn’t have the mic-dropping moment of last year’s, which, in retrospect, was a signal that this wasn’t going to be a lameduck session.

Pictured: mic drop

Updates to follow in this space! Probably!

7:55. You know what would be neat? If Obama won the Powerball tomorrow.

7:56. This is from earlier, but there is no better way to draw a distinction between the GOP and the Dems than this passage.

As is the tradition, the two parties are inviting guests to highlight political points, with Michelle Obama, the first lady, leaving an empty seat in her box in recognition of victims of gun violence, and Speaker Paul D. Ryan inviting two members of an order of Roman Catholic nuns challenging the Affordable Care Act.

The thousands of gun violence, deaths a year vs the right to deny nurses condoms. Also: Kim Davis.

Continue reading →

01.12.16
by

David Brooks Still Refuses To Get It

So, reading David Brooks when he is critical of the GOP is sometimes like watching a movie trailer for a bad comedy. You’re nodding along, laughing, things are going great, the narrator is saying something like “They were a perfect match, and had planned the perfect life, until…” and you hear the cheesy record scratch. Then there is, I don’t know, some kind of obnoxious kid or mean aunt or something. Maybe a really big rambunctions dog who raps. It’s not important. The important thing is that you are suddenly reminded that what you were vaguely enjoying is actually terrible.

That can sum up Brooks’s latest column about what an unbearable load Ted Cruz is. He starts with a story I had never heard, about how Cruz went to the Supreme Court to try to keep someone in jail for 16 years for stealing a calculator (he should have gotten a max of two, apparently)*. It is a perfect illustration of his unbending brutality and lack of anything relatable to human compassion. There’s even a few really good lines, like when he speaks of Cruz’s always-apocolyptic rhetoric, saying “As is the wont of inauthentic speakers, everythings is described as a maximalist existential threat.”

Continue reading →

01.06.16
by

How The West Was Won: The Oregon Militia Didn’t Build That

The militia- which even a cursory glance could tell you is not a well-regulated one- occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge has been called many things. Attention hungry springs to mind (I admit they are well-orchestrated). A “clear case of white privilege” is another (to point out that if they were black or Muslim they’d be dead was as immediately axiomatic as it is correct). To a very select few they are heroes, but even to the GOP candidates they are misled, though their cause- militating, literally, against overwhelming federal power- is a correct one.

It’s the proximate cause that I think is underlooked in all the coverage. There are a number of underlying causes, the most prominent of which is the victimization complex of well-armed white guys who want to “take back the country” that never actually belonged to them. The psychology here is really is of course the big deal, the sharp end of something wild and dangerous howling through the country. But we also need to really look at their stated cause, which is both dismissed and under-remarked on.

Continue reading →

01.05.16
by

What Donald Trump’s Bonedumb Ad Shows Reveals About GOP Foreign Policy

So, Donald Trump has finally released his first campaign ad, and it has some pretty interesting parts, showing not just how dishonest his campaign is (which is a given) nor just how divorced from reality is the entire Republican foreign policy debate (also a given, but maybe less so), but how the GOP has constructed an entire alternate reality in which they can’t help but live.

The interesting part isn’t that, when you Google his ad, the first few pages are media coverage of it, showing how much his campaign and the liberal media conspiracy feed off each other. Nor is it the nakedly racist xenophobia sounds like open mic night at the Bunkersville Patriots Lodge (though that matters). It isn’t even that the ad promises to shut off Muslim immigration until “we figure out what’s going on”, which might be the first time a campaign pleaded that we give it a few minutes to think, ok? It isn’t even that the swarms of Mexicans crossing the border are actually Morrocans.

(Speaking to NBC, his loathsome campaign manager  Corey Lewandowski clarified: “No shit, it’s not the Mexican border but that’s what our country is going to look like. This was 1,000 percent on purpose.” It’s an interesting argument, really. This isn’t what our country looks like, but it is what it is going to look like unless we build something we don’t currently have. One could ask why it doesn’t look like it now, then, but that would be churl.)

Continue reading →

06.25.13
by

On sports

At some point or another, every real sports’ fan has used some variation of “we” when talking about the defeat or success of their team.  Then someone else will say, with full snark, “oh, ‘we’?  How many home runs did you hit?  All you did was sit on the couch and drink beer.”    That is often followed with “Get out of my apartment”, at least if you happen to be  me (and, I have to emphasize this, the conversation takes place in my apartment, because otherwise that’s an empty retort).

It is my least-favorite argument, and you can hear it from both fans and non-fans.   It is true that never once did I play a down for the Bears or hit a seeing-eye single for the Sox or pass the puck on the tape to set up a Kane one-timer, but really, that doesn’t matter.  And it doesn’t matter because of the very nature of fandom itself.

Sports as exercise, as camaraderie, as a thing to do makes perfect sense.  But fandom doesn’t.  You have no relation to the players, you are cheering on millionaires making money for billionaires (or, in the college game, supporting the NCAA, which is arguably worse).   You have no control over whether the coach is a moron who doesn’t take the ball first in overtime, or if the team signs good players, or if they want to move to another city.   On a more immediate level, nothing you do can change the outcome of any game or any pitch or any pass.   It doesn’t make any sense.

And that’s the point: rooting for a team in an inherently irrational thing to do.   In terms of investment-to-reward, it is one of the dumbest things you can do.  And, because of that, it is so important and fundamentally human.  You don’t get anything out of it other than the thrill that comes from seeing something beautiful.

I estimated last night that I have spent 5% of my waking life watching sports, and I am guessing that is a low estimate.  And there are so many times when I wonder why I bother.  Why do we do this to ourselves?  Why have I suffered through so many awful Bears teams and Sox teams that are almost, but not quite, good enough (and now look to be entering a long stretch of bad baseball)?   What do we get out of this?

And then last night happens.   The deafening roar as the victory was ripped away from defeat.  The wordless white-noise thrill as my table of friends and a bar full of strangers and a city rose up as one voice, high-fiving and hugging and acting as if we had been friends forever and were making vows never to part.   All the pain and misplaced suffering and outsized sadness melted away, and you realize, this is worth it.

But the pain is part of it, too.  If there are any Boston fans reading, I don’t know this exact pain, because it is yours, but know that the Bruins played like vikings.   We’ve all had losses, and those are important, and not just because they make the wins better.  Because they are something you share.   And that’s the whole goddamn point.

I don’t have time to look it up, but someone once said that it is good that art has no inherent value, that poetry doesn’t bring food to the table.  In that philosophical sense, neither does being a fan.  And that’s why it is great.  And unlike art, it rips screams from your throat and elicits a group feeling that is alien in anything else we do.

So, being a fan is inherently irrational, and it only makes sense if it is something to do as a group.  On a basic economic level pro teams wouldn’t exist without fans, but it is more than that.   They exist because we want them to, and maybe need them to.  They exist so that I could be with my dad and brothers when the White Sox finally made that last out in the World Series.  So that I can talk to a friend about watching Michael Jordan in his prime.  So that we can lose ourselves in a flurry of improbable goals.   So no, I’ll never contribute to a team winning anything, other than at softball, but that doesn’t diminish my role.  I know they players won.   But I’ll continue to say “we won the Cup”, because: why let an ugly truth render nil this beautiful absurdity?

06.19.13
by

Traitor Says Other Traitor is Bigger Traitor

Ellsberg tries to clear his name…

I’m joking of course- Ellsberg is a hero, and Snowden…well, he isn’t helping his case by “revealing” that sometimes one country gathers information from another even if they aren’t engaged in war.

It is an interesting question, though.  Ellsberg revealed the lies that were told to enmesh us in a dirty and pointless war.  Snowden revealed, or at least confirmed, what was being done to us, with our assumed consent.   Ellsberg uncovered and brought to sunshine a pack of viscous lies.  Snowden’s leaks make it impossible to lie to ourselves.

Both force us to decide what we want to do, but I think Snowden’s is more important because we have to decide what we want to be: are we OK with the possibility of overwhelming intrusion in the name of security?   Does that change us from a people who practices self-governance to one that is governed?   Are we far past the point where that question even matters?   Or does tacit, even electoral consent to the NSA collecting metadata mean that we have taken back the burden of control?

I think in the long run the Snowden leaks will end up being more interesting, politically.  Most people reading this blog might scoff at that, because they at the very least assumed all of this, or knew it based on other earlier leaks and stories.  But I don’t think most people really thought much about it.  Snowden is forcing us to do so- and if we don’t, that is also a choice.   These leaks, whether they come from Snowden the brave hero who risked it all or Snowden the ChiComSymp, are a chance for us to decide what we want our relationship to be with the security forces who protect us.   I don’t know what we’ll choose, or even what is right- but I think this confirms this era, the mix of technology and the counter-terrorism mindset, will be looked back on as a watershed for who we are as a country.

 

(caveat: it is a mark of narcissism to think that you live in the most important times- every generation thinks it’s the last.  I don’t think this is the most important era in American history, but it is a pretty damn interesting one, anyway.  It beats the hell out of the 90s)