brainiac conspiracy

Dude-Bros

Sometimes they say dude-bro things. Which, often, are demeaning to women.

Not that they intend this, mind you---if you ask a guy like Chris Matthews, he'd probably swear up and down that he's never uttered a sexist remark in his life, that you're just taking him out of context. But we should remember that a lot of men who achieve lofty positions of privilege and power in this country tend to be very ambitious, competitive Type-A alpha males, and a lot of guys with this personality type still think of women as the "fair sex" in an unintentionally condescending way. Things are getting better on that front, but old habits die hard. If a Hillary Clinton candidacy can ignite a fresh debate over gender the way Barack Obama's candidacy ignited a fresh debate about race, the Republic would be well served should she choose to run for President. (Not that she's my favorite Democrat, but there would be a positive social utility to her candidacy either way.)

---Baron V

Plessy v. Hobby Lobby

We've been there before, it could happen again. It all comes down to how much damage the Chief Justice wants to wreak on the commonweal. In this case, I am guessing plenty. Would love to be proved wrong!

---Baron V

Mars Needs Women

If we could elect many, many more of them, chances are good we'd have more responsible government with smarter policy, fewer wars, less grift, etc. There would be a few Bachmanns in the mix, but most of them would be smart policymakers. At least we could give them the opportunity to prove it since we already know how the menfolk roll, and most of them are slugs.

---Baron V

AIn't Talkin' 'Bout Love

It's like this: if Hillary Clinton runs for President in 2016, your humble blogger will probably vote for her, not out of any great feeling of affection for her or because we should expect her to deviate much from the current Third Way/DLC/neoliberal corporatist agenda. My vote, like many others' on Team Democrat, will likely be grounded in simple pragmatism, i.e., as a practical desire to keep the crazy people out of the White House until the middle of the next decade while demographic shifts in the population turn the Republic a deeper shade of blue. If there's been a big take-away from the Obama administration, it's that we still don't have anything close to a progressive governing majority, and we won't until we get more leftist candidates for office elected at the state/district level because truly transformative national politics---and policy---just won't emanate from the top down anymore as they did in Franklin Roosevelt's time. The old farmer-labor alliance that provided FDR's base of support simply doesn't exist anymore, having been replaced by pro-choice hedge-fund managers and gay-friendly Silicon Valley CEOs. It's not the power structure that most of us lefties would like, but it's the one that we have, so the best we can do at the national level is to collaborate with them when they're doing good works, criticize them when they're not, and work on building a new governing coalition that won't need to rely on Wall Street money to win elections. It could still happen, couldn't it?

---Baron V

Today's Worst Person

Barack Obama.

Besides being another needless unilateral concession to the crazy people for which nothing in return will ever be offered, and beside the fact that it always has, and always will be, abused by the crazy people in Jesus' mighty name, we need to purge this religious crap out of our politics, not encourage more of it. All it does is degrade our discourse and polarize the citizenry, and no good ever has, or ever will, come from it---unless providing the crazy people with another fig leaf they can hide behind when they decide that rape victims should be denied access to contraception strikes you as a social good. Now, it might be one thing if every town council meeting were opened by remarks from a pastor, a rabbi, a mullah, a monk, and an atheist, but of course that's not what will happen, and when you consider how many guns these people own, anything that fuels their sense of self-righteousness any further is a dangerous game the President needs to stop playing. He has no obligation to be President to all Americans when a sizable plurality of white Christian Americans refuse to recognize his legitimacy to be President.

---Baron V

Tuesday Night Music Blogging

Because Real Americans know that the ladyparts are always and forever a thing.

---Baron V

Legacy Hires

Governing isn't simply about debating and interpreting legislation right now, it's also about debating and interpreting legislation years into the future. And the best way to ensure that both current and future interpretations of legislation are in harmonious accord is to make sure you have people working in government many years hence who are in accord with your agenda right now. That won't happen, however, as long as Team Democrat insists on playing nice with crazy people who have no intent on playing nice in return, and who have been planning for years to turn the nation's appellate court system into the legal arm of the Chamber of Commerce:

This year’s The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back From Liberals, by Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin, says, “Every single federal judge appointed by President George H.W. Bush or President George W. Bush was either a member or approved by members of the Federalist Society,” a group of conservative and libertarian lawyers formed in 1982 to counter the influence of “orthodox liberal ideology which advocates a centralized and uniform society.”

---Baron V

Reality TV

It's always more compelling when it's, you know, actually real.

I went off to bed after the vote but before the final ruling from the chair, and I have to admit I was surprised Team Republican decided to play by the rules. Personally, I doubt they'll be called back for a special session to deal with this----the issue's too fractious, it made the Republicans look terrible, and the governor's approval ratings are shit. So, bad optics for the moment. But we can be sure they'll try it again a couple of years from now!

Update (2:50 pm): Well, I stand corrected. Guess I should have remembered that shameless people will generally do shameless things.

---Baron V

It's Not a Question of "If"

But "when."

Of course they are going to vote to impeach the President, and they are simply waiting to recapture the Senate next year so they can drag the Republic through a full-throated show trial with the Chief Justice presiding. Barring that, they'll stage some symbolic vote in the House as they've done repeatedly with the Affordable Care Act. But it's going to happen, and it has little to do with the President. It has almost everything to do, on the other hand, with the fact that one of the two major political parties in America no longer recognizes the legitimacy of the other party---which is to say, the legitimacy of two-party government. It's like Hamas and the Israelis. This also explains why it was always, and still is, foolish for the President to attempt any kind of compromise with Team Republican. That's because bomb-throwers waging ideological jihad don't do compromise.

This isn't your father's Republican Party. It's not even Ronald Reagan's Republican Party. It's a party of the crazy, by the crazy, and for the crazy. And that's why they'll eventually vote to impeach the President. Because it's crazy, and so are they.

---Baron V

Stuff I Learned Today

Basically, that hetero couples should be allowed to marry and homo couples shouldn't be allowed to marry because hetero couples can make babies when they have sexytime and homo couples can't, and because the only meaningful purpose for people to get married is, well, to make babies.

Which might come as a bit of a surprise to these people, and these people, and these people.

I think what really amazes me about this issue is that we are still litigating it in the 21st fucking century. One would think that an enlightened nation would have put this matter to rest decades ago, so I guess we can conclude that we don't live in a particularly enlightened nation.

---Baron V

It's a FrankenParty Now

Seems as though we've heard this narrative (or some variant of it) for the last four or five election cycles: Specifically, that the responsible members of the GOP "establishment" are rushing in to regain control of the sandbox and save the party from the crazy people who Republican voters keep nominating for office. Even if true, however, it's hard to see how it succeeds when the party's core beliefs are, well, crazy. Yes, non-crazy Republicans can sometimes win elections for high office (Romney, Christie), but they are the outliers; after spending five decades cultivating a voter base that firmly believes that a clump of embryonic stem cells is the same thing as a baby, that creationism is as scientifically valid as evolutionary biology, and that Democrats employ a private army of black militants and undocumented immigrants to steal elections, they simply can't execute a volte-face and expect the rubes to follow them unquestioningly. The fixers might do Realpolitik, but that won't play with a group of people who have been taught to embrace the party platform as Holy Writ. I mean, how do you convince your supporters to compromise with Democrats when you've sent the last 50 years claiming that they're the agents of the Antichrist? The Machiavellian pragmatists like Rove and Armey may wring their hands in dismay, but in the end, they'll go wherever the grifting is the most lucrative---and generally, that's the camp that's marketing the most intoxicating snake oil.

---Baron V

No Good Deed Etc.

Don't say you weren't warned this would happen because earlier today, well, you were:

The Faith & Freedom Coalition called it “window dressing and more of the same.” The Catholic Association tagged it “just another accounting gimmick.” The Judicial Crisis Network described it as “no solution at all.”

“Today’s proposed rule does nothing to protect the religious freedom of millions of Americans,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has helped employers bring lawsuits against the administration.

For the last time, stop trying to reach consensus with a bunch of woman-hating, gay-bashing, forced-birth, pedophile-shielding perverts. These people aren't good-faith stakeholders to be bargained with, they're psychotic control freaks who don't mind looking the other way while their spiritual leaders bugger young boys but who go into psychic vapor lock whenever some woman insists on enjoying sexytime for its own sake without having to accept the guilt of Eve's Curse. They and their equally perverse Deity deserved to be mocked and ridiculed, not bargained with, and their tax-exempt status revoked.

---Baron V

Seen That Movie Before

So we know how it ends:

The Obama administration proposed broader latitude Friday for religious nonprofits that object to the mandated coverage of contraceptives, one that will allow large faith-based hospitals and universities to issue plans that do not directly provide birth control coverage.

Their employees would instead receive a stand-alone, private insurance policy that would provide contraceptive coverage at no cost.

Because compromising with these people has worked so well up to now.

So what will the administration's response be when the usual gaggle of holy men from Our Lady of Perpetual Butthurt cry Hitler because forcing them to allow their employees to have access to contraception under any circumstances violates their religious beliefs because their tax dollars will be partially paying for it? That's really what this phony constitutional argument is really all about. These people don't want to a reasonable compromise over contraception---they want to ban it altogether. Well-intentoned liberals have been trying to meet them halfway over abortion rights for the last 30 years, and see how well that's worked out.

---Baron V

Got an Easy Answer For That

No.

It never ceases to amaze how many members of the pundit class subscribe to the Great Man Theory, i.e., the belief that the tides of history can be magically reversed, and their flow altered, by a single strong leader blessed with singularly clear vision and an iron will. Think Hercules hosing out the Augean stables! In this case, however, no one person---or even a movement---can fix what's wrong with Republicans because the party is like an alcoholic on a three-day bender, refusing to acknowledge that it has a serious problem.

Making it plain: The party and its base have been trending crazier for decades, to the point that now roughly a quarter of the voting-age population is trapped in a kind of manufactured psychosis of voter fraud and death panels and legitimate rape and forced labor camps. No one leader can possibly serve as Therapist-in-Chief to "fix" what's wrong with them. Like drunks in denial, they are going to need to "hit rock bottom" before they ever change their act, and they aren't there yet by a long shot.

---Baron V

Why We Prosper

There are many reasons, obviously: hard work, an educated labor pool, availability of investment capital, favorable tax and trade policy, etc. But most of all, it happens when our womenfolk cease and desist their liberated ways and embrace their ordained role in our society as breeding stock. How are Wal-Mart and Amazon gonna keep prospering without a steady inflow of new greeters and warehouse workers?

---Baron V

And Another Thing

Riffing off the previous, lowering---not raising---the Medicare eligibility age would save a lot of money!

[I]t is also useful to consider that employer-provided health insurance is heavily subsidized through the tax code. A premium reduction equal to the average tax subsidy paid today by the federal government for employer-based health care would reduce the cost of Medicare buy-in by 30 to 50 percent---and by more if the subsidy was limited to eligible enrollees earning less than 200 percent of poverty.

Kindly make sure Team Democrat puts it on the table for discussion, assuming they haven't yet caved.

---Baron V

Credit Where Due

I've pilloried this guy enough times on this blog, and for perfectly good reasons. But transgressions aside, his remarks at the closing of last night's yuckfest really slapped me upside the head---not that I agreed with every agenda item he mentioned, but because, well, I couldn't find a lot to fault with the principle underlying them:

All of us reverently recall a man of deep Catholic faith and ringing patriotism, who had a tear in his Irish eyes for what we would call, the “uns”:

The un-employed;
the un-insured;
the un-wanted;
the un-wed mother, and her innocent, fragile un-born baby in her womb;
the un-documented;
the un-housed;
the un-healthy;
the un-fed;
the under-educated.

Government, Al Smith believed, should be on the side of these “uns,” but a government partnering with family, Church, parish, neighborhood, organizations and community, never intruding or opposing, since, when all is said and done, it’s in God we trust, not, ultimately, in government or politics.

Let that sink in for a moment. Government has a moral obligation to provide comfort and assistance to the unemployed, the homeless, the sick, the poor, the indigent and the immigrant---the weakest and most vulnerable of its citizens. It's such a novel idea, it's amazing no one's ever thought of it before. Oh, wait.

Granted, we can quibble over the meaning of "intruding or imposing," and at times we probably should, but it's hard not to be moved and impressed by the overarching principle at play here.

What's more, if our government actually did do these things, I am guessing that the "unborn baby" issue might, just might, recede into the distance since it's been established that more highly educated women who earn a living wage at jobs that provides affordable health care are far less likely to ever rely on abortion services than women who have none of these things. Not that the zealots won't cease their crusade for control of women's bodies---that's been a constant in our patriarchal social order for thousands of years---but over time, it'll be that much more difficult for them to be taken seriously in polite company for railing against a medical procedure that's becoming increasingly rare.

I guess for me, it breaks down like this: You'll never get me to agree with the Church's absolutist stand on abortion. But if a few more folks in the so-called "pro-life" movement actually expressed the same protective concerns for people who've already been born into this world that they do for clumps of embryonic stem cells, I'd give their moral argument a lot more respect than I currently do---which is to say, none at all---and so, I imagine, would most people who consider themselves "pro-choice." Maybe some pro-life Catholics would consider retaking possession of their movement from the clutches of the zany brigade?

---Vitelius

Sunday Night Baseball Blogging

It seems to be in vogue these days. Plus, I actually attended this game! Naturally, the home team lost.

---Vitelius

Sunday Night Religion Blogging

Because this day is all about the Supernatural Fetus.

---Vitelius

Got an Easy Answer For That

No.

This is why.

---Vitelius