the defeatists!

Sometimes nothing more is required...

Really, this sums up what we have to look forward to, at best...

Although this is a good time of the year to revisit Dr. Dennis Leary...who actually has a doctorate in Humane Letters from his alma mater, Emerson  in Boston-center-of-the-universe-MASS.

And for no reason except I just thought of it...

Not Atlas Shrugged but Lord of the Flies...

now i was 15 in 1973, and as the years went by it dawned on me, as it dawned on a lot of folks, that there wasn't going to be a revolution. also it is a bit hard for an anarchist to contemplate the actual mechanisms and results of actual revolutions. none of the twentieth century revolutions eventuated in anything that resembled the rhetoric of the revolutionaries. and every successful revolution of the twentieth century eventuated in a totalitarian regime. and i got sidetracked of course: love, poetry, philosophy, drugs. i remained committed to the ideas, which i found in emma goldman or developed for myself, and i have tried to express them or stay true to the anti-authoritarian impulse, of which i have found over the years that i have an inexhaustible supply. but i also made some sort of peace with some sorts of authority (even my own: the hardest task).

Crispin "Bowties and ee cummings are cool" Sartwell, 12-15-2010

Way back when we first started this thing, one of my bros found a political-social index that ranked you on a left-right, libertarian-statist matrix. We all were various combinations of left-libertarians...I believe that I was the furthest to the left, and Mr. Fun was furthest to the right although more libertarian than I. Of course, that calls into question the real meaning of Libertarianism.

Well, Christopher Beam in New York Magazine has a great article on just that topic. It's kind of anti-libertarian, but only in so far as the more radical and Objectivist types push it. Reading it, I realized  that the most conservative of the founders, Hamilton and Adams were probably the most statist; Jefferson and Madison would have seemed far more liberal, in all senses of the word, as well as the least statist. Intersting how that happens...When Ron Paul accuses the Federal Reserve of covering up Roswell or whatever other nefarious doings, he is the spiritual heir not of Hamilton but of Jefferson and Andy Jackson.

The thing about libertarianism is that it's really not a left/right thing but a high/low thing. Someone who is totally libertarian is...well, possibly Crispin "Snakewalk" Sartwell, who is in fact an anarchist, a professor of Philosophy at Dickinson and owner of an extremely large and disturbing collection of pictures of John Mayall. (He also is the Stig on Top Gear -- the real one in England, not our phoney version. And a practicing Druid...) However, Crispin is far too generous and kind -- except to his students where he channels Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds by being cruel to be kind -- to fit the extreme social libertarian mode. Crispin, as a philosopher, knows that when you carry thing to their logical extreme, they tend to warp and become illogical. Light bends in atmospheres, and ideas bend in connection with reality. Pure light and pure ideas are interesting concepts, but what mainly of Platonic importance; we can argue about the essence of libertarianism or of light in the abstract -- however, getting things done and maybe getting some ambient lighting in the cave would be more illuminating. We can argue about Orcs all we want, but it's of little practical use unless you're an animator, a writer or a fan of Atlas Shrugged...Crispin, far more articulate than I, puts it well, as he always does even when (or perhaps especially when) I disagree with him.

 

The New York Magazine article nails that aspect of libertarianism really well --

Consider the social side of Libertopia. It’s no coincidence that most libertarians discover the philosophy as teenagers. At best, libertarianism means pursuing your own self-interest, as long as you don’t hurt anyone else. At worst, as in Ayn Rand’s teachings, it’s an explicit celebration of narcissism. “Man’s first duty is to himself,” says the young architect Howard Roark in his climactic speech in The Fountainhead. “His moral obligation is to do what he wishes.” Roark utters these words after dynamiting his own project, since his vision for the structure had been altered without his permission. The message: Never compromise. If you don’t get your way, blow things up. And there’s the problem. If everyone refused to compromise his vision, there would be no cooperation. There would be no collective responsibility. The result wouldn’t be a city on a hill. It would be a port town in Somalia. In a world of scarce resources, everyone pursuing their own self-interest would yield not Atlas Shrugged but Lord of the Flies. And even if you did somehow achieve Libertopia, you’d be surrounded by assholes.(AXE Emphasis Added)

Beam earlier makes the point that a radically libertarian reading of the Constitution probably is closest to the original intent of the Founders. However, that original intent or idea had all sorts of provisos about the common good, the general welfare, justice and so on. Thus there was room to evolve, and the government has expanded in order to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare. Does it go too far at times? Yeah...but, in a libertarian world, a truly libertarian world, there is no agency to really do those things. Beam points out that out and does it exceptionally well...Citing a former Cato Institute Wonk who left because he was either too intellectually pure or not pure enough, Brink Lindsey, who says that "The dominant strain of libertarianism these days is—and I’m not using these words in any kind of pejorative sense—radical and utopian,” he says that mainstream libertarianism is pretty far out there.

Libertarian minarchy is an elegant idea in the abstract. But the moment you get specific, the foundation starts to crumble. Say we started from scratch and created a society in which government covered only the bare essentials of an army, police, and a courts system. I’m a farmer, and I want to sell my crops. In Libertopia, I can sell them in exchange for money. Where does the money come from? Easy, a private bank. Who prints the money? Well, for that we’d need a central bank—otherwise you’d have a thousand banks with a thousand different types of currency. (Some libertarians advocate this.) Okay, fine, we’ll create a central bank. But there’s another problem: Some people don’t have jobs. So we create charities to feed and clothe them. What if there isn’t enough charity money to help them? Well, we don’t want them to start stealing, so we’d better create a welfare system to cover their basic necessities. We’d need education, of course, so a few entrepreneurs would start private schools. Some would be excellent. Others would be mediocre. The poorest students would receive vouchers that allowed them to attend school. Where would those vouchers come from? Charity. Again, what if that doesn’t suffice? Perhaps the government would have to set up a school or two after all.

And so on. There are reasons our current society evolved out of a libertarian document like the Constitution. The Federal Reserve was created after the panic of 1907 to help the government reduce economic uncertainty. The Civil Rights Act was necessary because “states’ rights” had become a cover for unconstitutional practices. The welfare system evolved because private charity didn’t suffice. Challenges to the libertopian vision yield two responses: One is that an economy free from regulation will grow so quickly that it will lift everyone out of poverty. The second is that if somehow a poor person is still poor, charity will take care of them. If there is not enough charity, their families will take care of them. If they have no families to take care of them—well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

Of course, we’ll never get there. And that’s the point. Libertarians can espouse minarchy all they want, since they’ll never have to prove it works.

It's also worth noting that we basically tried to do all the stuff noted above and none it worked. When every bank printed money, it didn't work. My "Bank of AXE" fifty dollar bill might not work so well in Orange Country where they're mainly using "Bicycle Sites Bank" money. If I say I have a bank, I can print money...yeah, didn't work in the 1800s, and won't work now. Private Toll Roads as opposed to public roads? Didn't work. Private charities -- with a severly weakened government safety net, they're in trouble. Eliminate it, and have you seen Angela's Ashes recently? One can argue that privatization of natural monopolies is an example of extreme libertarianism, and I think that -- if we consider Enron as a great example of this kind of thinking -- one would be right and establish Beam's position of true minarchy would result in being surrounded by greedy assholes.

Government should provide that which can not be provided equitably or adequately by the private sector. For example, the Food and Drug Administration outsources the responsibility to review research proposals for human subjects in clinical trials to Institutional Review Boards. That works reasonably well, except that the people paying for the review are...the people who are trying to get the trials done. I used to work for one of those boards, and frankly, I found there to be a serious disconnect between the idea of making money reviewing the ethical standards of a research proposal and then taking money from the people you're reviewing. In no way do I question the integrity of the organization -- far from it. There was a motive in making certain that the research proposal conformed to and that the research was then conducted in strict accordance to the rules -- nobody likes to be sued for gross negligence or go to jail for corruption. Since the airwaves are now crowded with commercials for various law firms that talk about suing for serious side-effects, the big Pharmaceutical companies don't want anything to screw them down the road; approval of shody proposals would result in bad research, risk to subjects and possibly huge damages.

By basically outsourcing this responsibility -- approving research as meeting FDA requirements -- the FDA was putting responsibility for that piece of the approval process  in hands that made sense and that had a strong economic motive to do a good job. However, if you outsource operations of a major airport to the private sector or even sell it to the private sector you are guaranteed problems if there is a crunch between regulation and requirements versus profitability. If you like spending days with the several thousand of your closest strangers waiting for someone to get the runways cleared and the planes deiced, then such an arrangement would be right in your comfort zone. However, if you're not insane, you want the people making decisions to allocate resources to be primarily driven not by profit for shareholders but services for stakeholders. The focus of the constituencies is different -- and, the common good in this place should outweigh profit.

 

The repugnant, the ridiculous, life, love and baseball

The Year in Repugnant Ideas | Freakonomics Radio.

I am one of the dabblers in social science and economics who really liked Freakonomics as a way of getting people -- in my case, my students -- to think off-kilter and get new insights. Stephen Levitt, the economist of the pair, is well known for proposing that the reason crime is down is that over time, legalized abortions reduced the number of criminals. That's not a proposal for mandatory abortions; it is an observation that can be argued both qualitatively and quantitatively. Levitt's frustration with the scarcity of organ donators, especially for kidneys, despite a reasonably good supply is based on his belief that there are inadequate incentives for donations. What should be the going price for a kidney? The cited Israeli approach -- giving living donors preference if they ever need a donor -- is fascinating; on one level, a quid pro quo guarantee.

The idea that economists look at things without a slant based on their beliefs is interesting. I spent the better part of a year in college debating the issue of value judgments in social science. Personally, I think that value judgments drive most things in social science, which is why social science is to science what supply side economics is to economics...a confused pastiche. The economists who are truly great -- Smith, Malthus, Schumpeter, Galbraith, and yeah, Krugman -- don't hide their beliefs and value judgments.

In a related approach, Paul Krugman has come up with a new concept to understand our somewhat screwy world these days; we are ruled today by Geloiocracy, the rule of the ridiculous. In an earlier entry on his blog, Krugman is looking for the right word. He has a couple of examples, including the Republicans' new economic leader -- Paul Ryan -- who is another Ayn Rand type. Krugman uses a quote worthy of PJ O'Rourke or Christopher Hitchens from Kung Fu Monkey to put that in perspective.

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Although Greenspan has backed off from his confession of philosophical inadequacy after the subprime disaster, I find it fascinating that the John Boehner's of the world are turning back to the crap that got them where we are now..

Perhaps the greatest example of a Geloiocratic pronouncement of the past ten years that became an operating principle in government was Tom Delay's "The most important thing to do in war is to lower taxes..." Morally confused, intellectually bankrupt, repugnant to reason (IF Socrates is a Man, Elephants are Carnivores!) and stupid. Go Team. USA USA USA. Say what? The most important thing to do during a war is to win it and have something left after you've won it. That's fairly obvious -- but, if you combine Geloiocracy with repugnant ideas you come up with crap like that.

I think the Freakonomics guys are right in that just because an idea makes you queasy doesn't mean it can't have merit. If nothing else, a really bad idea can possibly provoke some good ones. I knew a Jesuit named Shea at the Catholic West Point who delighted in saying that evolution was an absurdity because it was "repugnant to reason." I don't know if Father John Shea actually believed that or not, but by pushing that idea he provoked generations of Holy Cross pre-meds to actually think about it.

If an idea is morally or ethically repugnant -- Swift's discussion of the virtues of  Irish children as a source of meat comes to mind -- it can provoke thought. But, if an idea is repugnant to reason -- or, just fucking stupid! -- and can be shown to be so, it's harmful from the beginning if it's not identified upfront as some sort of intellectual, thought provoking game.

If we allow ourselves to be ruled by the ridiculous, then we deserve whatever happens to us. Or, as Krugman comments, "Future historians will giggle at our expense."
   

Soon, at a city near you...Is Dick Armey the Republican Ernst Rohem?

When Bachmann-Palin-Overdrive top the charts... Moral laxity? Really?

 

Hop aboard the dipshit express and fall in the pit full of vipers...

My brothers are all pretty much convinced that the absurdity of the last election was no big deal -- the Republicans are idiots, the Democrats are idiots, most Americans are idiots and what the hell, AXE, go play some guitar and drink so coffee and chill out, a little, ok? Well, some of my brothers in the Defeatists and assorted associated Malcontents have children. The spouse and I will leave behind...cats. If that. If I wake up in ten or twelve years and find myself spouseless and catless, I'm setting fire to everything and heading for the nearest ice flow. There's some dignity in that...I'm not killing myself, I'm just going to go watch the scenery.

However, if you've bothered to have kids, you probably care about what their future is...or, what the fuck is wrong with you? Seriously, if you aren't interested in the future of the country, the economy, the world why are you having children? Trust me, condoms are cheaper than kids. If you're going to make that sort of investment in the future, you probably ought to care about the future.

Once again, Paul Krugman who plays David Hume to my Immanuel Kant so often, provides a bit of clarity on his blog. The Republicans are proposing rules changes in the house that will make it easier to vote legislation to cut taxes while harder to add programs and far more difficult than at present to raise taxes. In other words, they're saying that so long as the deficit grows through generosity to people who don't need it, things are fine with owing all that money. The only way to cut the deficit is to cut spending...In other words, the deficit hawks are really lackies and pigeons for the nonsensical ideology of starve the beast. Krugman call them frauds. I think he's generous...being a fraud requires that you have the sense to pour piss out of a boot and not all over your own feet and rug. You pour it over some other guys feet and rug. Since most of these guys and gals aren't that rich, they're pouring it all over their own feet, their own rugs, and their children's cots.

In addition to the rules issue, the Republicans are floating the idea of passing a law to allow the states to declare bankruptcy, with the requirement that the bankruptcy judges will be prohibited from raising taxes or requiring the states to do so. The theory appears to be that being required to cut expenditures will result in the necessary re-negotiation of things like union contracts, pension agreements and so on. This will reduce the burden of those things -- the good faith and credit of the states -- on the state governments. Of course, the pensioners of New Jersey and Florida will find themselves destitute...however, as Antony says of Greeks in Rome, "Fuck 'em."

I expect that I will head off tomorrow to get the car serviced and while I wait, I may wander over to see the Coen Brothers version of True Grit. I was kind of indifferent toward it -- I always considered the Duke Wayne version a less than wonderful experience, and while I'd enjoyed the novel, I wasn't going to spend the money. However, Stanley Fish's column in the Times this morning has made me want to at least consider the argument, especially in line with the Krugman column. While Fish begins with and sees a meditation in the movie on the disconnect between heroism and virtue, I found the conflict between the issues of fairness and grace to be key in exciting my interest.

Mattie gives a fine (if terrible) example early in the novel when she imagines someone asking why her father went out of his way to help the man who promptly turned around and shot him. “He was his brother’s keeper. Does that answer your question?” Yes it does, but it doesn’t answer the question of why the reward for behaving in accord with God’s command is violent death at the hands of your brother, a question posed by the Bible’s first and defining event, and unanswered to this day.

In the novel and in the Coens’ film it is always like that: things happen, usually bad things (people are hanged, robbed, cheated, shot, knifed, bashed over the head and bitten by snakes), but they don’t have any meaning, except the meaning that you had better not expect much in this life because the brute irrationality of it all is always waiting to smack you in the face. This is what happens to Mattie at the very instant of her apparent triumph as she shoots Tom Chaney, her father’s killer, in the head. The recoil of the gun propels her backwards and she falls into a snake-infested pit. Years later, as the narrator of the novel, she recalls the moment and says: “I had forgotten about the pit behind me.” There is always a pit behind you and in front of you and to the side of you. That’s just the way it is.

The pit, for Mr. Boehner and friends, is the disconnect between what they're saying and what they're going to do. I don't know if they will be able to totally fuck up the tax code or overwhelm the Senate and the President. I suspect not -- John Boehner is too much of a politician to want to have eveything go totally south on his watch. Because, he wants another watch. However, he's at least proposing a score to march to that has traps for him. If he's able to pull the trigger, utterly slash spending while cutting revenue from the only people who will be able to afford to pay it, we're fucked. And, he may not have any choice...assumming the Democrats can overcome the tendency to move toward the middle of the divide, then we will have two years of nothing. However, if they do what is in fact natural in negotiations and in governance -- grant a concession to get a concession -- we'll have chaos. I already expect to see no infrastructure, no education funding, no increase in benefits for the 99ers, no jobs bills, no further aid for Veterans. Expect programs for seniors, children and infants to be slashed. If States are allowed to declare bankruptcy, expect greater and greater problems. These people are threatening the nation, so that their constituency of nutcases and uberrich can buy more crystal chandeliers. If the states, in some pattern of randomness start declaring bankruptcy, what exactly happens to the good faith and credit of the United States? The idea that a bankruptcy court will not be able to force a state to increase revenue -- another idea floated in this bankruptcy thing -- is just irrational nonsense. If you have a deficit that you are concerned about, you try to control your spending and to increase your income. Slashing spending is actually easier than increasing your income, because increasing income requires thought and making smart choices.

If John Boehner and Eric Cantor and Michelle Bachmann decide to do something totally nonsensical, we will be forced to depend on the good sense of the Republican Senators in conjunction with the Democrats and the courage of Barrack Obama as president and the wisdom of the Supreme Court to prevent it.

See why Crusader AXE is worried? Well, the Huntsman family and the Koch brothers will all get to buy more yachts and collections of pornography...and hell, human organs. Why not? Let the rich stockpile livers and kidneys from cops, firemen, teachers, librarians, farmers, and soldiers. What the hell -- they're not rich, and they're not needed for these people.  Boehner will be able to afford some Merlot to swill while the Capital goes up in flames while Jeanne Schmidt and Michelle Bachmann play canasta in the Lincoln Monument and shantytown...

Taking a dip in the cleansing waters of ice cold intellectual purity

One of my brothers alerted me to this post over at IOZ. I was impressed, and I dislike Frank Rich's smarmy feel almost as much as IOZ, so it seemed like a reasonable thing to do to import the link and then cross-post my comment. Well, it seems like a reasonable and lazy thing to do. Visit Who is IOZ and check Monsieur's current bete noire...

My comment at IOZ:

I am always glad to take a dip into the cleansing waters of IOZ's thought. It's been stunning to me that Obama has been called socialist for embracing a number of positions somewhere to the right of JFK. Looking at the numbers, I find it equally amazing that materially, the world was far more equitable and hopeful in 1960 than it is today. There was a lot wrong, no doubt, but fellow alum's Michael Harrington's The Other America did get somethings to happen that were good for the poor. I think the problem is that the spiritual/existential/social is not directly tied to the material. Thus, a gay closeted man in 1957 might have felt more financially secure what with the social safety net and basic expectations of near lifetime employment; at the same time, looking at another guy could result in being beaten up, arrested and/or ruined by gossip and innuendo. I suppose the beating can still occur -- not being gay, I have no experience here; and, we all risk arrest anytime we step outside the police's acceptable range of deviance. Gossip and innuendo can still happen of course. So, basically, nothing has changed since 1956 except we're all in danger of being fired, dispossessed and driven to a life of migrant farm working in West Virgina...or some other fate that is merely a prelude to death.

So, fifty years on all we've lost is hope. Existentially, that is...

On a totally unrelated note, glad to see that while IOZ still leads in articulate insanity and argument, you have some of the same admirers like Mac Cosmetics grace the site. I'm glad to see he contributes as much to you as he does to The Defeatists on-going dialogue with a evil and unhappy multiverse.

I do want to acknowledge that MAC COSMETICS also seems to read and enjoy IOZ. I recommend, MAC, that you visit Protean Wisdom, the Guys from Area 51 and of course, Shakespeare's Sister as well as Monsieur's site and ours...

Santa can be an evil SOB

There are Santas...and then there are Santas.

The Krampus Santa that resides on Mr. Fun's outer arm is a scrawny bike wuss Krampus that has Mrs. Fun wondering about the possible parenting skills, maturity and ability to earn a living of Mr. Fun....Mr Fun better be sure the sinister elf is not around when he gets it filled in.

Commandante probably is regretting the Santa suit in plaid.

John Boehner, El Serracho and Charlie Crist are doing Santa Jello-Shots at the local tanning booth.

Someplace, a hooker in a Santa Suit is performing oral sex on a Christian Conservative Teabag Party twit.

And Bill O'Reilly is still wondering why a girl wouldn't want falafel rubbed on her back while taking a shower...

And, as for me I'm still on the road headed for another joint, always did feel the same just saw it from another point of view...Tangled up in Blue...and red and white and green.

Trembling I asked, what do you want of me oh Lord? Feed my lambs...yak blood.

You know, I am starting to just give up on this whole Christianity thing. Not on the Jefferson Jesus, but on the whole idea that Christians have anything to do, as a group, with things like hope and charity and tolerance. Greed...O'Reilly says that Jesus wasn't into extreme charity, which leads me to believe he was dozing during catechism classes. If charity was Chuck Norris, Jesus would have used Chuck Norris as a bitch...One of the patrons of soldiers was St Marin of Tours, a Roman Officer who, according to legend, came upon a cold beggar one winter night, and drawing his gladius, the Roman Infantry sword that was the AK47 of it's day, cut his warm cape in half and gave one to the beggar. Later, that night he had a dream in which Jesus appeared as the beggar, wearing the cape and saying, "Whatever you do to the least of them, you do to me."

 

Now, I can stand a little disingenious stuff in political discourse, and I accept that hypocrisy is as human as blocked colons. But, the nonsense delivered by the Christian Right is going to result in something pretty damn disgraceful. I grew up hearing about the starving children in Europe; when the plight of people in Appalachia was revealed, it became a scandal. Things were done by government, churches and individuals to provide food, clothing, shelter and some minimal level of medical care.

And then, the Christian Right found its true voice -- the Falwells, Robinsons, Reagans, Bushes, Cheneys and DeMints, the Brownbacks and the Palins and the Bachmanns. Tom Delay crowing that in time of war, the most important thing is to cut taxes. Cutting taxes for the rich and then complaining that critical and deserved social programs are just too expensive because they have to be paid for.

There's already entirely too much truth in this cartoon, and it's only going to get worse. When the fuck are we going to wake up as a people? As soldiers, citizens, men and women who deserve the rights, freedoms and liberties we have by rising to our responsibilities to provide our own people freedom of speech --which is for people, not corporations; freedom of religion, including from religion if need be; freedom from want so that no American should be cold, hungry, dirty; and, freedom from fear. Of losing a job and never finding another one; of losing one's home and having no place to go; of needing surgery and not being able to pay for it.

You know, I kind of hope these Bible-Belting, fundamentalist twits are right and the rapture comes -- they're going to be amazed to find themselves left behind while all the poor, cold, tired, hungry, alone and afraid are gone. I'm sure the Rupert Murdochs, Glen Becks, Koch Brothers and Tea Partieres will spin it that being left behind with the Bernie Madoffs, child rapists, swindling capitalists, and terrorists means that they were the ones raptured and there was just some misunderstandings along the way...

No New York City Firefighter feels they're disrespecting their religion by being on duty on Chrismas or Christmas Eve.

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Worst Responders
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I've been not so quietly getting pissed at the country's stupidity for a long time. Well, I guess my irritation hasn't exactly been a secret to my friends, family and anybody who happens to ask...but this just pisses me off deeply. You want a story that symbolizes what's wrong with this country and whose fault it is?  THIS IS IT!  People who risked everything without hesitation are being disregarded by the nation, the state and the city but Donald Trump is going to get the money for a new hairpiece...there will continue to be folks to send the donations to fund the parties at the Lesbian-Bondage themed strip clubs. So the Republic is safe...because the Republicans can continue to stoke outrage over Islamo-terrorism while ignoring the American victims. Proving that the Islamoterrorists are kind of right about us...but, that's an irony for another day.

Stewart has probably done more segments this year on the legislation known as the Zadroga Bill than any other topic. The bill would provide $7 billion in benefits for those who first responded on 9/11 and are now experiencing subsequent health problems such as cancer and respiratory disease. While it passed the House, Republicans have blocked the bill from advancing in the Senate.

Stewart noted that, while the 9/11 first responders bill is stuck, Congress did manage to pass the controversial tax bill that will extend tax cuts to everyone including the super wealthy.

The untold story behind 9/11 is what's happened to the first responders who spent months there, twelve hours a day, seven days a week doing and seeing horrific things...and breathing in and getting covered with toxins while the EPA and Rudi 9/11 were saying everything was ok. No health hazards here.

 

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9/11 First Responders React to the Senate Filibuster
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Well, a lot of them are sick -- desperately ill. There is a bill in the quque to cover their medical expenses and some compensation. It got behind the tax cut for the rich thing; it got behind the DADT thing; it got behind the speeches about retiring Senators things. The House did what it was supposed to do. The Senate -- no, not so much. Actually, the Republicans did the same thing to this that they have done to everything except dysfunction. They covered their ears with their hands and screamed about how awful it is! Two networks have covered it in detail...I don't mean a favorable mention or a barb at the Republicans which MSNBC has done. That's nice, but the Dan Choi channel has done a lot more on other things. Including, by the way, the whole issue of the filabuster. There's a lot more here that maybe, just maybe, if it had been fully covered by the media and campaigned on would have changed things in the last election and been the sort of issue that could have energized the American People.

Look, being an American should be about being a part of something greater than yourself. If not, then don't pretend you're a patriot. It's really simple -- brave men and women do things that probably are not rational, but they do them because it's their job, it's their duty, it's their country/city/family. You move toward the danger, not away from it. You don't stop to think "Gee, this might be bad for my health down the road..."

Well, at least two stations have covered this bill adequately. Fox News didn't mention in it's coverage that the reason the Senate was filabustering this was because the Republicans were filabustering it. So, fuck them, they're useless and evil.

I respect Rachel Maddow, but the country is not going to become outraged over the delay of DADT reversal. It's not immediately revolting to the average person. There's a process, and it's grindingly slow for the folks involved, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. And, some of the characters she's lionized are not totally wonderful. You don't do political things in uniform; the wearing of the uniform is not intended to be a political statement. So, getting chained to the White House fence in the Army Combat Uniform might seem a nice symbolic gesture, but it violates the Unifomr Code of Military Justice. And, it's not cool with me.

But, the two networks that have done right by the First Responders of 9/11 are -- Al Jeezera, described by Jon Stewart as the network Osama bin Laden sends his mix tapes to -- and Comedy Central.

What the fuck is wrong with us? Why are we not enraged? Are we stupid? What is wrong with the Democrats? (Silly goddamn question, I know...) But if there was somebody in charge of the Senate with some balls, this could have been the issue. This, Veterans Benefits, Unemployment, Jobs, tossing families off insurance -- on and on and on because of the deficit. We don't want to stick our kids with a tax bill -- bullshit. So cut spending, change the rules of the game to benefit the rich so the rich kids of the future can have more limos. I don't think that most Americans are all-in with that sort of logic. But you know, I've been wrong before.

UPDATE: Shepard Smith appears to be a real Journalist working on Fox News! And a man with a conscience...Mirable dictu!

Just so we're clear, Matt Taibbi is becoming essential reading and Bernie Sanders the essential man

Sanders blew all of that off and just looked at the deal’s moral implications. Which are these: this tax deal, frankly and unequivocally, is the result of a relatively small group of already-filthy rich people successfully lobbying an even smaller group of morally spineless politicians to shift an ever-bigger share of society’s burdens to the lower and (what’s left of the) middle classes.

The Bernie Sanders revival show and one-man moral crusade last week was incredible. The guy made his point, made it well, and I do not understand why more people don't pay attention...except, of course, for our national ADD affliction. I realized it this morning when I made coffee and initially forgot to add water...somethings just don't work despite the best intentions and the best ingredients. Because you forget the fucking water because you stop paying attention.

Matt Taibbi is an interesting journalist; I suspect he doesn't often forget the water. He went to Russia and played professional basketball in Mongolia or some goddamn place like that after college. He wrote for The Exile, the ex-pat paper of record in Moscow, and then came home. He writes his own books, writes free-lance for various magazines covering things like sports and politics. He writes for Rolling Stone; and, he has made it crystal clear that it is possible for the average educated American to get their arms around the goddamned insanity that is contemporary finance and business. He's figured out that money, not morals drives things in government. And, he had this to say about Bernie Sanders...

Not long ago I was sitting at home writing something for publication – I won’t say what, except that iwas full of nasty and personal language, and I was about to press on to the next part of the piece when suddenly I hit a mental speed bump. A voice in my head whispered – this really happened – it was a passage about a certain politician on the Hill. Out of habit I launched into a description that “If you write that shit and Bernie Sanders sees it, he’s going to be disappointed in you.” So I went back and removed the gratuitous body blows from the article...This idea that you can’t be an honest man and a Washington politician is a myth, a crock made up by sellouts and careerist hacks who don’t stand for anything and are impatient with people who do. It’s possible to do this job with honor and dignity. It’s just that most of our politicians – our president included, apparently – would rather not bother.

Now, the Defeatists is kind of a defeated mess these days. Captain Capitulation is involved with blackmarketing computer chips to Bangladesh; Holier than Mao is involved in navel gazing; Commandante is composing duets with his daughter for guitar and hurdy-gerdy; El Serracho is keeping the sites up someplace for some reason; Brother Mr. Fun is stuck in snow and getting scarey tatoos so that his upcoming children can really be scared. AXE, well, I keep writing in this thing and ready comments from what appear to me to be metrosexual robots telling me about my spiritual well-being and stuff that really is none of their concern, while telling me how inspirational. Of course, the comments at the other site I write for are largely about how the Jewish Nazis are taking over the world, which is somewhat more troubling than commentators who take their name from outlet sites.

However, we've always endorsed candidates. On one occasion, at an actual convention gone terribly wrong, we threw Agi over a bridge while nominating Captain Capitulation for President, and AGI who surprised us by being able to swim for VP...did you know that tatoos add bouyancy? Who promptly decided to start ignoring us completely. On another occasion, we fired Captain Capitulation and nominated Cthulhu for President, although I think we kept the good Captain on for Vice President. The Guys at Area 51 chose to nominate Gus Hall last time, in the belief that a dead communist was preferable to John McCain and Barrack Obama. The Defeatists went along because Mike Gravel dropped out, and in the context of coming back to life after eight years of Bush-Cheney, a dead Communist made sense. And, of course, there was the inevitable confusion between Dead Communists, Dead Kennedys, and the Grateful Dead. Figured we might somehow get over the top with a Gus Hall/Monsieur IOZ ticket, figuring a dead Red and a Gay Blogger from Pittsburg would do the trick. These were all disasters...

Now, Bernie Sanders is an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats; he's an avowed Socialist; he's from Vermont; he wears regimental striped ties with full windsor knots; and, he obviously believes in fighting the good fight and doing what's right even though he's pretty damn sure he's not going to win. In other words, he's an old version of the Defeatists. And, I suspect that if somehow he won, he'd have to be dragged into the Oval Office and chained to his desk. So, although it's early, it's all already to late: Crusader AXE is nominating Bernie Sanders for the coveted Defeatist Nomination for President in 2012.

Oh, and John Boehner is obviously too emotionally disturbed to be Speaker of the House. So, given the Republican Majority, we endorse Michelle "Brainfart Batshit" Bachmann for Speaker; and, John McCain for Ambassador to Mongolia. He can play power forward...