World comes to a halt as Republicans take to the stage in Iowa to debate future of humanity

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Ah, yes, there was a Republican debate last night in Ames. Good times. Maybe if I weren't on vacation I would have cared. (I was too busy watching The Makioka Sisters -- a stunningly beautiful film.)

Or maybe not.



No, no, let me be serious for a moment.

Did last night's debate mean anything? Well, not as much as Saturday's straw poll -- which won't really mean anything either, though it will clarify both public and insider GOP perceptions and possibly even help separate the wheat from the chaff, as they say.

Not that we don't already know what's wheat and what's chaff.

Romney is wheat. He's the national frontrunner -- though doubts remain on the right (if not venomous opposition from conservatives and other Tea Party types, and he may have a fairly low support ceiling.

Bachmann is also wheat, or at least what passes for wheat these days in the GOP (and on the far right generally). She's a serious contender, craziness notwithstanding.

Other than that?

It's amusing to see Santorum and Gingrich try to convince us we should take them seriously. Do they take themselves seriously? Of course. Do they know they've become joke candidates without a hope of winning anything other than the political equivalent of a Razzie? Maybe -- if they're being honest with themselves, but one doubts either one is capable of such self-effacing honesty.

It's also amusing to see more of the Bachmann-Pawlenty spat. T-Paw, lagging far behind in the polls (not even doing well in Iowa, so close to his Minnesota home), is still so desperate for attention that he's taking the gloves off, as they say, hopeful of emerging as the compromise candidate (particularly liked by the Beltway punditocracy) between the establishmentarian, business-oriented Romney and whoever ends up leading the charge from the radical right, either Bachmann or Perry (or both). Yes, I suppose he still has a shot. Yes, it's a long, long one. And he doesn't stand a chance against Bachmann in their little ongoing feud.

Pawlenty death watch: He'll "reassess" matters if he does poorly in Ames. Now there's a nice, lovely euphemism for "make up some self-aggrandizing excuses and get the hell out."

Perry life watch: It looks like he'll take the leap on Saturday. Not that he's trying to upstage the Ames straw poll or anything. No, of course not.

Cain? Yes, he took time out of his busy schedule scapegoating Muslims to grace us with his presence.

Paul? Hey, did you know he really hates government and much, much prefers the Hobbesian state of nature?

Huntsman? Oh, yes, Huntsman the Formidable, as I've dubbed him. He remains to me and impressive figure, an old-school, Reagan sort of conservative who in other, saner times would have been the clear GOP pick. Now? Not so much.

Wait, you want substance? Come on, you all know how it went. Obama is the satanic incarnation of anti-American evil. And taxes are bad, so very, very bad!

(But if you want some helpful fact-checking, check here. Needless to say, there was some fastness and looseness going on last night. What else is new?)

Besides, that spat is what seems to have gotten the most attention.



And, overall, it does now seem that civility in this Republican field is a thing of the past. As Slate's John Dickerson explained:

The debate had the makings of a serious discussion about leadership,
what form it should take, whether the candidates have demonstrated it,
and how it should be applied in Washington. However, this discussion
took place in a roller derby where that underlying theme was obscured by
people trying to bruise and batter each other. Criticisms and veiled
critiques broke out into the open among candidates desperate to avoid
being eliminated from consideration. In the end, there was a lot of arm
flailing. Everyone went round and round, and the lot of them wound up
where they had stood before the debate began.

Fight, fight, fight! Isn't that what we all crave -- what really gets us going? Who cares that the global economy is imploding or that our civilization is crumbling? Or that it's this right-wing ideology, so much on display last night, that is one of the main causes of our present (and future) crises?



Politics is a bloodsport.

And now, on that note, I'm going to go sit out on the deck and read (about something that has nothing to do with American politics circa 2011).

(photo)

Right but wrong

By Capt. Fogg



You could fault Ron Paul for stating the obvious, but hey, somebody has to do it. Should the country try to save it's triple A rating with Moody's? Why bother when those helium-filled bond ratings proved to be based on politics and greed and by giving investors false confidence, helped precipitate the market collapse of 2008?

“I always wonder about this ratings, the bond ratings before the crash three years ago wasn’t helpful, so sometimes I wonder if it’s political theater to build up the fear.”

said Dr. Paul on Bloomberg TV yesterday. Of course it is, but is he doing the same thing?



But I'm not sure that I agree with the rest of his assessment: that the country is insolvent and bankrupt and got that way by excessive spending on the health and welfare of Americans. It's a bit like telling your spouse that the family could go to Disneyland more often if they weren't saddled with life insurance and a retirement savings plan, but I don't think one can rightly compare the financial problems of an individual or a family with the problems of a country in such a simplistic fashion.



One becomes insolvent and enters bankruptcy because one's income is insufficient to be able to manage one's debt. An individual does not always have control over how much money he makes; can't always find a job, can't always be healthy enough to work, can't always pay medical bills.



That's not so with a government. Our revenue shortfall is in some large part voluntary; an effort to "starve the beast" by thwarting its ability to run programs that the electorate voted for. That attempt is also a bit of political theater with a lot of smokey pyrotechnics and a bit of dramatic hand waving involved so as to obscure the fact that very low taxes on large incomes do not raise revenue, by magic transfer from the people who put much of their incomes into hedge funds and equities to the people who spend most of their incomes on food and shelter.



So yes, Social Security, a government program that did much to create the Middle class and take tens of millions of older people out of abject poverty, is going to run out of funds eventually because they're going to make it run out of funds so that they can do away with it. So yes, it's also political theater designed to create fear and panic, but perhaps the word 'theater' isn't quite strong enough. I'd call it a scam.



(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Craziest Republican of the Day: Ron Paul

By Michael J.W. Stickings

He's not running for re-election, focusing instead on what will inevitably be his losing campaign for president.

But whatever his personal political priorities at this time, Ron Paul, hyper-libertarian extraordinaire, is still certifiably insane.

To wit:

The United States's top credit rating is "probably not" worth saving, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) said Thursday, less than a day after a major rating agency indicated it was considering a downgrade as the country hurtles toward the August 2 deadline without a deal to raise the debt ceiling.

Yes, certainly, something (and something drastic) needs to be done to address America's massive debt. Tax increases to reasonable levels, particularly for the rich, and cuts to defence spending, I would argue, not the unravelling of essential entitlement programs that are part of the social fabric. While there needs to be shared sacrifice, the burden shouldn't, as it so often is, be imposed on the poor and others who are already struggling just to make ends meet, if they can even do that.

But it would be disastrous, if not apocalyptic, to let America go into default. Paul may not think it matters, but how about the tens upon tens of millions of Americans who need their Social Security cheques just to put food on the table? Interest rates would shoot up, effecting not just the federal government but everyone, including business.

Is American "bankrupt"? Well, not in the usual way, but obviously it can't continue like this. But what's clear is that failing to raise the debt ceiling wouldn't help at all -- and wouldn't just have a "short-term effect."

For Paul to suggest that it may all just be fear-inducing "political theater" shows just how little he actually knows about the economy, about anything. He is an extremist ideologue for whom, as is so often the case with such ideologues, the facts don't much matter.

And at a time like this, with the country teetering precariously on the brink of collapse, that sort of willful aversion to reality is not just irresponsible but dangerous. And it's not just Paul. This view, pushed by the Tea Party, is orthodoxy throughout the Republican Party, including notably in the House. Yes, the Republican Party, it would appear, is more than content to let the country fall into the abyss. Remember that the next time they talk about how patriotic they are. 

When it comes to Paul, the only good thing is that he's not in a position to do anything about it. He has a vote in the House, but that's it. What's far more worrying is that the GOP's view is more or less his view, at least in the House and for many Republican senators. And with that craziness infecting pretty much the entire party, America faces an enormous threat from within, a threat that could very well take the country down.

WARNING: GOP presidential candidates cause brain damage, coma & media-assisted suicide during CNN debate

By Nicholas Wilbur

What an embarrassing performance by the Republican presidential candidates during the CNN debate Monday evening. 

The voting public's general lack of enthusiasm for any one candidate was reinforced by their anti-Obama bandwagon harping – blaming him for everything from Bush's bailout to the price of tea in China (it's cheaper) – and their hollow promises to right every alleged wrong that this country has ever seen. They offered nothing but clichéd, tired, and overly rehearsed talking points about how much they love our troops, how much they sympathize with those effected by the recession, how much they worry about their children and grandchildren, and how much of a better job they would do if they were president.

ChristianPost

We are no closer to a Republican candidate than we were yesterday, and if the debates continue to provide no more than political platitudes and make-believe prescriptions for solving the country’s problems – if the candidates can't go beyond promising blanket repeals of everything Obama has done – then they are securing their own fate as uninspiring, unelectable, and unqualified talking heads. This was a waste of time.  

I'm sure I am not alone in feeling dumber for having tuned in to this poor excuse for a debate. 

My reactions to the debate, in reverse order, via Twitter:

@MuddyPolitics: Bachmann is using multi-syllable words during CNN debate: "vital," then falls back on "the," to," "it," "I."

@MuddyPolitics:Pawlenty, in answering question about bringing home U.S. troops from Afghanistan: I just want to say thank you…

@MuddyPolitics: Coming up: withdrawal or don't withdrawal troops from Afghanistan? expect mass anti-Obama lectures. 

@MuddyPolitics: Santorum's only chance in 2012 was to have a presence at the debates. He doesn't. He's done.

@MuddyPolitics: Summary of #CNNDebate #GOPdebate : get rid of the courts, the federal government & Congress – that is, the U.S. government. Problem solved.

@MuddyPolitics: Cain doesn't believe in the 14th Amendment. Must have consulted Palin on that answer. #GOPfail 

@MuddyPolitics This is weird to say, but Ron Paul is the most sane, most realistic of the bunch. I know...I know... #oxymoron 

@MuddyPolitics: Ron Paul: protect our borders, not those between Iraq and Afghanistan. 

@MuddyPolitics: Bachmann stands for life, and gets a round of applause. No pro-death candidates so far... 

@MuddyPolitics: Bachman: I've fucked up 5 of my own children, 23 foster children. Poor bastards. 

@MuddyPolitics Santorum: we need 2 look @ the authenticity of a candidate – throws Romney under the bus, & for good reason. #abortion

@MuddyPolitics: Bachmann would consult "commanders in chief" over DADT. Past presidents?

@MuddyPolitics: Pawlenty says, "I was in a union." He just lost all his chances of winning the nomination. 

@MuddyPolitics: Cain doesn't know what "right to work" is.

@MuddyPolitics: Newt's second accusation of Obama policy being "stupid"

@MuddyPolitics: Pawlenty's only valid quote of the night: "We live in the United States of America." True...true... 

@MuddyPolitics: Santorum mentions "trickle down." #GOPfail

@MuddyPolitics: Bachmann uses her hands a lot when talking. Especially when talking about liberals. #CrazyArmCircles

@MuddyPolitics: Paul: I have no uplifting metaphors, just boring details. Hence my popularity.

@MuddyPolitics: Bachmann "We're going to win...President Obama is a one-term president!" 

@MuddyPolitics: Bachmann: Tea Party is a group of "disaffected Democrats." hahahahahaha

@MuddyPolitics: Newt cites Heritage Foundation. Bravo! 

@MuddyPolitics: Romney: "I can't wait to debate him." Declares he's the GOP's nominee!!! 

@MuddyPolitics: I think American Idol is more stimulating than this. 

@MuddyPolitics: Ohhh... #Obamneycare comes up. Mitt says he'll overturn #Obamacare. Goes on defensive about Romneycare. Hilarious.

@MuddyPolitics: Bachmann "will not rest" until she overturns #Obamacare ... 

@MuddyPolitics: These aren't candidates, they're candidebts. Intellectually speaking. 

@MuddyPolitics: Ron Paul says Federal Reserve caused the financial bubble. Government's fault. Duh. & people don't understand. Duh. 

@MuddyPolitics: Ron Paul can't think of anything Obama has done to boost the economy... wow... 

@MuddyPolitics: Bachmann says: "I filed my paperwork today to seek the office of the president today." Today she did that. 

@MuddyPolitics: Newt: "They ought to start creating jobs." Great details so far in this debate.

@MuddyPolitics: Romney pulls "Pelosi/Reid" card in demagoguing Obama." FUCKING ORIGINAL!

@MuddyPolitics: Romney gives kudos to Pawlenty for recognizing that the president needs to go. BRILLIANT! 

@MuddyPolitics: CNN asks, where were the jobs after Bush's tax cuts? Pawlenty doesn't answer, but talks to time limit.

@MuddyPolitics: Santorum says "I'm...uh...not...uhh...wait...what was the question?"

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

Why the GOP is f***ed in 2012

By Nicholas Wilbur 

The future of the Republican Party rests on the shoulders of one candidate. Unfortunately, not even the Republican Party has any idea who that candidate will be. 

The long list of potential, possible, likely and too-stupid-to-calculate-basic odds second-string presidential hopefuls include: a flip-flopping Mormon with a soft spot for government-run health care; a libertarian advocate of legalizing heroin and prostitution; a perpetually stoned former governor from a state most Americans don’t know is part of the union; another Mormon (this one who worked for a socialist as ambassador to communists), a paranoid Constitutionalist whose followers have threatened to rape a high school girl who challenged their candidate’s knowledge of America’s founding documents; an evangelic whose last name has come to mean “the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter”; a hopelessly unattractive Minnesotan with no redeeming qualities other than his own self-awareness in admitting publicly that he’s boring; and a pizza maker.

Romney is ready to take on
supporters of Medicare. Other
potential GOP candidates,
 order your red man suits online today

With such a pathetic roster of uninspiring candidates, the Republican Party was more than happy to leave the media spotlight for a weekend as the perpetually campaigning Mama Grizzly from the Upper One state launched a Memorial Day “Rolling Thunder Magical Mystery Bus Tour” along the east coast. Riding into DC on an all-American hog and dressed in full leathers, the still unpopular, still unqualified former half-term governor of the Great Frontier, who sold her soul to Rupert Murdoch in order to prolong her short-lived 2008 Mama Grizzly publicity tour, kept the limelight burning for one last-ditch effort to sell some books and boost her public image before the media finally catches on and permanently turns the cameras away from the publicity hound and onto the real, equally hopeless but nonetheless inarguably “legitimate” candidates for the presidency. The most that will come of this magical bus tour is a Fox News segment on patriotism and motorcycles – and possibly a sequel to Hustler’s 2008 porn flick “Nailin’ Paylin.” (“Nailin’ Paylin Part II: The Bang Bus Tour,” or maybe “Paylin Does Pennsylvania.”) 

Whomever the GOP trots out as the next “savior of the party” better come equipped with a red man suit, a dog-eared copy of “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” and either Scott Brown’s Cosmopolitan centerpiece photographer, Brad Pitt’s personal trainer or Bristol Palin’s cosmetic surgeon – because he’s going to have a lot of heartened hearts to soften before Election Day. 

Between near-riotous town hall meetings prompted by Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to “voucherize” Medicare, the party’s backing of anti-union laws, and the continuous state- and federal-level efforts to defund family planning services and undermine women’s right to choose, the Republican Party’s presidential nominee will face the seemingly impossible feat of convincing retirees, women and laborers – not to mention the unemployed, the LGBTQ community and college students fighting for grants and scholarships – that the GOP cares about more than securing the votes of the Tea Party base. 

Then, of course, there’s the question of party’s post-primary strategy: how will he (or, less likely, she) go toe to toe with the supercandidate (and popular incumbent) Barack Obama, who enters the race with the political equivalent of a Seal Team 6 campaign apparatus? President Obama – the Commander in Chief who captured and killed Public Enemy No. 1, the international uniter, the eloqutionist and the level-headed pragmatist – is already salivating at the prospect of debating a presidential challenger about the fiscal ramifications and social consequences of continuing tax cuts for millionaires, abolishing the health care reforms that stopped insurance companies from dropping coverage on a whim and bankrupting families without mercy, eviscerating the social safety net for seniors and the poor through radical changes to Medicare and Medicaid, holding hostage federal funds for disaster relief to ravaged states until Democrats embrace more budget cuts and every other radically unpopular policy the GOP has pushed since 2010. 

All of this is to say that the candidate Republicans nominate to face off against Obama in 2012 won’t be a candidate who is capable of actually winning. There is no such candidate. Not even in the party’s wildest, homoerotic political wet dream does such a candidate exist. But that isn’t what the 2012 race is all about. If Republicans are smart (a rhetorical question if there ever was one), they’ll take advantage of the free publicity, use the opportunity to train a future leader in the art of presidential campaigns, save the estimated $1 billion they’ll have to spend in order to make a dent in the Obama incumbency, and use 2012 as a primer for the only election race in which they have a fighting chance: 2016.

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

Why we need Ron Paul

By Capt. Fogg

I rather hope Ron Paul becomes the Republican presidential candidate in the next election. It's true that I agree with some of what he says, some of it quite strongly and it's true that I disagree as well and just as passionately, but if he is Barack Obama's challenger, the nature and tone of the debates and the wider campaign will have to address some fundamental assumptions that always are ignored. One of the many fundamentals that separate the left from the new right is the ranking of rights in our society. Paul asserts what most of his party would rather hide beneath heaps of polemical hyperbole: that Property rights are the basis of freedom and being thus fundamental, must not be abridged for the common good.

I'm one of those people, you see, who thinks all ethics, or at least all ethical judgements are situational and that what we like to call fundamentals is an abstract construct, a bit like Euclidean geometry, which is immune from other, perhaps decisive factors. Parallel lines do indeed intersect in a universe with curvature and morally clear decisions become less clear when they have to cope with the purpose of morality and ethics.

Speaking to Chris Matthews last week, Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) declared that he would not have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act -- not because he's a racist, and to be sure he says he would have desegregated government institutions like schools, but because the rights of property owners are fundamental to our basic freedoms; freedoms that our constitution implies, property rights are rights inherently and independently fundamental as they stand. Is he insisting that those with no property have fewer or no rights? That's up to him to clarify and I expect he would like the opportunity.

“I believe that property rights should be protected,”

says the man from Texas. Who would disagree when presented in the abstract? But life isn't an abstract thing and may I defend building a nuclear waste dump next to Manhattan because of that declared axiom? Are property rights part of a constellation of rights all designed by humans to make human life free of certain abuses? Are rights, like Newton's laws, fundamental or descriptive? If they are things invented by the people and for the people, to what purpose were they invented; to protect the one against the many or the many against the one or both? Do they apply equally at all points on the long curve or are only around the middle where we experience things?

I'm sure Paul would have to admit with liberals, that there are limits to "fundamental" rights, but just what those are and for what reason those limits are put there, needs to be dragged out of the cave and into the light. Do rights exist for the benefit of people and if so does the right of one man always trump the right of every man? Are we here for the law or is the law here for us? Do the rights of all really flow from the rights of an individual or are individual rights sometimes an impediment? If there is an impediment to that road to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, must 300 million of us endure it so that the abstract right of one may be protected? Yes, that's extreme, but as with Newton's laws, it's the extremes that absolutes are shown not to be so absolute. In short, can Libertarian theory produce a country that any of us will want to live in - in whole or in part?

(Of course if I were to debate him, I would, in my quasi-deconstructionist way ask him what he means by property and whether that question isn't more fundamental because without asking that, defending property rights can defend slavery or rape and some slightly worse things.)

We need to talk about it. We've been stuck at this point for too long. These concerns aren't new and they aren't going away and we all need to rethink our opinions at a fundamental level as a regular practice. I think Paul and Obama are both well qualified to do it and will do it -- and if we have to endure another hysterical fugue about flag pins and death panels and birth certificates and Communism aimed at the stupidest elements of the population; lies and slander and tactical statements of opinion that a moment may reverse - - well let's just say that the civil war doesn't need to be fought this way again.

(cross posted to Human Voices)