Tribal bullshit ruins everything

How can some conservatives be so perceptive, yet be so dense? I just read this thing by Arlen Williams, and he actually understands or perceives the same damn things that liberals understand or perceive: the end of the nation-state, the erosion of American sovereignty/empire, the slide into Third World status. Not only that, but he understands that transnational corporations are at least partially responsible for all of that. AND NOT ONLY THAT, but he understands that free-traders and libertarian conservatives like Grover Norquist are enabling it. In other words, Williams and me are on the same fucking page! But unfortunately, my dear readers, we can never be friends because the anti-free-trade, or hyper-nationalist wing of the GOP thinks tribally, and I am not of their tribe. Glenn Greenwald talked about the same problem a few days ago.

Williams gets very profound here:

"Overriding or deconstructing the fact of the American nation is treason and we have been warned about it from all prior generations. Realizing this shows we need a new paradigm in the Soft War against American Sovereignties* — the real paradigm. Words without a objective core, such as "conservative" and "liberal" do not fit American vs. anti-American conflict. Conservative transnational... conservative communitarian... please."

Liberals have also tried to reframe the ideological spectrum into something that more properly reflects the actual allocation of power in our country and around the world, and I would say that our new spectrum looks very much like their new spectrum. From their perspective, the anti-Americans are some invisible Marxist, Trotskyist, Progressive cabal somehow allied with McDonalds and Levi Jeans (see the groundbreaking scholarship of Glenn Beck for more of that). From our perspective, the anti-Americans are just McDonalds and Levi Jeans, as well as thousands of other corporate pirates and the banks that finance them. The difference in our new political spectrums is who belongs on the American side. From their perspective, Americans are people who adhere to a narrow, fundamentalist Christian faith, have lots of money, and eat lots of meat. From our perspective, the Americans include everyone who is exploited by the aforementioned anti-Americans, which I suppose includes pretty much everyone in America and around the world.

So that's of course a huge difference. We liberals consider everyone, no matter their nationality, to be potential Americans-- a very non-tribal concept. It's enscribed right there on the Statue of Liberty: give us your tired, your hungry, your huddled masses yearning to be free. And this consideration of everyone as a potential American is not and should not be limited to immigration. Indeed, everyone around the world who embraces human rights and democracy should be embraced as our ideological brethren. For people like Arlen Williams, foreigners including Muslims, Africans, Chinese, Russians, and even Europeans, will always be suspect no matter what they profess. Exhibit A is the Egyptian revolution.

The people who Williams and I agree are anti-American-- people like Grover Norquist and GW Bush-- consider as friends and allies only those countries that (a) support our global supremacy and (b) let transnational corporations ruin their economies. Despite what Williams sees, there is no common ground between true liberals, who are internationalists on ideological grounds, and neocons or corporate pirates, who are internationalists on hegemonic and materialistic grounds.

Clearly, there is a new trans-ideological perception in America and abroad of who our common enemies are. This perception is based in reality, but one side of the ideological divide is hopelessly mired in tribal warfare and will not be joining the revolution anytime soon.

A Gem of an Article from the U.S. Treasury Website

Ever surfed through government websites purporting to be educational? I did, recently, and I was shocked, shocked. I found this history of the U.S. tax system at the Treasury Dept. website. The bold text is my emphasis:

"The economy boomed during the 1920s and increasing revenues from the income tax followed. This allowed Congress to cut taxes five times, ultimately returning the bottom tax rate to 1 percent and the top rate down to 25 percent and reducing the Federal tax burden as a share of GDP to 13 percent. As tax rates and tax collections declined, the economy was strengthened further. [well, no, because in the next paragraph a bad thing happens.]

"In October of 1929 the stock market crash marked the beginning of the Great Depression. As the economy shrank, government receipts also fell. In 1932, the Federal government collected only $1.9 billion, compared to $6.6 billion in 1920. In the face of rising budget deficits which reached $2.7 billion in 1931, Congress followed the prevailing economic wisdom at the time and passed the Tax Act of 1932 which dramatically increased tax rates once again. This was followed by another tax increase in 1936 that further improved the government's finances while further weakening the economy. By 1936 the lowest tax rate had reached 4 percent and the top rate was up to 79 percent. "

This is the tone of the entire history lesson: a lower federal tax burden maintained at all times leads to a stronger economy. This is right-wing bias. Lower taxes alone do not strengthen the economy, as the transition between the 1st and 2nd paragraphs hilariously indicates. The second paragraph has some redeeming qualities because it correctly describes the '32 and '36 tax increases as having worsened the Depression. Also, the phrase "the prevailing economic wisdom" alludes to the fact that in 1932, the idea of economic stimulus during recessions had not taken hold yet.

Fast-forwarding to the Reagan tax cuts, we have this rather insensitive phraseology:

"By reducing marginal tax rates it was believed the natural forces of economic growth would be less restrained. The most productive [read "wealthiest"] individuals would then shift more of their energies [read "spend more of their money"] to productive activities rather than leisure"

I'm sick of this crude language. Obviously, the Reagan tax cuts did not discriminate between hard-working rich people and lazy rich people. It gave them all the same amount of money. And wtf is this all about:

"Over the 22 year period from 1964 to 1986 the top individual tax rate was reduced from 91 to 28 percent. However, because upper-income taxpayers increasingly chose to receive their income in taxable form, and because of the broadening of the tax base, the progressivity of the tax system actually rose during this period."

Pretty sure that's a complete lie. Either that, or the article has a distorted definition of "progressivity", and it would do well to clue us in.

Now the Bush tax cuts, and the realization that this article has not been updated since '01 or '02:

"The 2001 tax cut will provide additional strength to the economy in the coming years as more and more of its provisions are phased in, and indeed one argument for its enactment had always been as a form of insurance against an economic downturn. However, unbeknownst to the Bush Administration and the Congress, the economy was already in a downturn as the Act was being debated. Thankfully, the downturn was brief and shallow, but it is already clear that the tax cuts that were enacted and went into effect in 2001 played a significant role in supporting the economy, shortening the duration of the downturn, and preparing the economy for a robust recovery."

Those were the days! -- and you knew who you were then!! Boys were boys, and men were men!

When the Obama propagandists ever get around to updating this article, I suggest they insert the part about multi-trillion dollar derivatives-trading being completely unregulated and untaxed throughout the nineties, the oughts, and even now.

the evolution of elite conservative thought:

John Adams, Federalist: "Let the human mind loose. It must be loosed. It will be loose. Superstition and despotism cannot confine it."

Newt Gingrich, Republican: "I think this is one of the most critical moments in American history. We are living in a period where we are surrounded by paganism."

our wingnut cousins in the former USSR

This is a good documentary on the growing right-wing/authoritarian movement in Russia and what it looks like on the ground. The best part is at 35:55, which looks like a militia gathering in the U.S. Of course, in Russia, their wingnuts are more influential. Note that during the gathering, the head Y-chromosome talks on the phone with a parliament member.

Thank you, Matt Taibbi, for this post

Goldman Sachs CEO and human/squid hybrid, Lloyd Blankfein, is participating in a too-cute NPR series on summer jobs. Before growing his money-scenting blood funnels, young Master Blankfein worked as a concessioner at Yankee Stadium. He says that he learned the value of a dollar by making 3 cents per drink sold. I believe I speak for all present concessioners at Yankee Stadium when I say, "Go fuck yourself Lloyd." Actually being a productive human being for one summer does not absolve you of the fact that you are presently a parasitic cephalopod.

no one knows what libertarianism is: one of the many reasons why libertarianism is stupid

So libertarianism is still being talked about because Rand Paul is still saying stuff. (I know, calm down people.) The latest thing he said was some racist bullshit about the Civil Rights Act. Read this on how Rand and his supporters don't actually care about staying true to liberatarian philosophy (O RLY!!!). Read this on how we should never be surprised when it turns out that libertarians are shallow people who don't actually have any convictions. Finally, read this on how it sounds when libertarians desperately want to be accepted by liberals (not to mention non-crazy people):

The basic libertarian position on civil rights is as follows: (1) Private discrimination should, in general, be legal (this includes affirmative action preferences, btw). Many libertarians would make exceptions for cases of monopoly power, and most would ban private discrimination when the government itself ensured the monopoly by law, as with common carriers like trains; (2) The government may not discriminate. If necessary, the federal government should step in to prevent state and local governments from discriminating; (3) The government may not force private parties to discriminate, and the federal government should, if necessary, step in to prevent state and local governments from forcing private parties to discriminate; (4) The government must protect members of minority groups and those who seek to associate with them from private violence. If the state and local government won’t do so, the federal government should step in; and (5) As part of the ban on government discrimination, and to prevent rent-seeking voters from taking advantage of the disenfranchised, members of all racial groups should be treated as individuals for voting purposes, and thus members of all groups should have equal voting rights. If state and local governments don’t guarantee such rights, the federal government should step in.

Well shit, if it were not for point (1), I would be a libertarian. Too bad point (1) is the sum totality of everything that is wrong and stupid about libertarianism. The reason that (1) is everything is that libertarians want everything privatized. Also, the modern corporation can be just as oppressive as government. Just ask people who work as slaves in the third world. Do you think they care whether their government or a multinational corporation (often in collusion with their government) is oppressing them? No. The result is the same: oppression.

But just because I'm thorough, let me deal with points 2 through 5 as well. First of all, the notion that the federal government must step in to uphold civil liberties and due process protections is called liberalism. That's our turf, damnit. If you want to act as though 2 through 5 are your thing, then awesome, but don't write it down in a blog and claim that it's your thing. It's a liberal thing. I seem to remember the Democrats taking great political risk in passing the Civil Rights Act, officially making it our thing. Back off of our thing.

Lastly (damn you thoroughness!), points 2 through 5 violate a central tenet of libertarianism (at least the sort of libertarianism that conservatives associate with, which is the only sort that matters politically): smaller government is more accountable to voters than bigger government, so federal government should not interfere (unless of course the GDHs legalize weed, then Big Brother should kill said GDHs). Is that about right? I mean, are libertarians going to violate this central tenet just because the darkies have a problem with the locals? See, to me, this gets to the heart of the matter. Libertarianism is too filled with contradicttion to make any sense. Either civil liberties are protected, or they are not. There are few gray areas-- and certainly not the gray chasm of "state's rights". The problem is that the vast majority of libertarians hold the "state's rights" view or at least associate with the "state's rights" crowd. The "state's rights" argument, since slavery, has almost exclusively been evoked in order to limit civil liberties, not expand them.

The conclusion here is always the same when the subject is libertarianism. As tristero at Hulaballoo says, "Everything good about libertarianism is already part-and-parcel of liberalism." Everything else about it is stupid or dangerous.

footprints of wingnuttery

Just saw a Vanguard documentary on the Ugandan anti-gay climate at the time that the Ugandans were considering a bill which would have punished gay people with life-imprisonment or death. It was fucked up. I remember the row it created. Rick Warren had to issue a condemnation of the Ugandan bill because the fuckwit was part of a cretinous milieu of wingnuttery that has descended on Africa recently. The American Right has come to Africa under the pretenses of missionary work and fighting HIV. But what they are really doing is spreading right-wing ideology. The main dude spreading the hate, fiery evangelical Pastor Ssempa, said two things that drew my immediate attention: "liberal media" and "George Soros." Now who do you think taught the goodly pastor about the twin terrors of the liberal media and George Soros? Probably not Jesus.

me making fun of Thomas Sowell

Sadly No has brought to my attention a piece by Thomas Sowell, who I remember reading in my hometown paper's op-ed section. He was creepy back then, and -- yeah, still creepy. Allow me to add another "shorter" to Sadly No's summation:

Shorter Thomas "Asian is the new White" Sowell: "The only thing black students learn in our failing public schools is liberal political philosophy -- and probably buttseks."

Sowell explains that when black students are exposed to the guiding light of white skin, or the equally impressive incandescence of the yellow man, they lose all aspiration. Back in the good ol' days, the White Man was the "Pied Piper" of black people, leading them out of poverty with His gay tune of prosperity. Why, in those days, the White Man had only to stand up straight and tall and say, "Look at me coloreds! I pulled myself up by the bootstraps! You can too!"

Now its all gone to hell. Ever since liberals started preaching equal opportunity, black students see high-achievers, and their first thought is, "Hey, according to equal opportunity, I should achieve similar results as the high-achievers. But I'm not. Even though we're in the same classes, our unequal performances must be due to an unequal distribution of capital vis-a-vis the inequity inherent in laissez-faire market economies. The failure of my school system to properly address this inequity is an injustice that me and my fellow low-achievers may correct by stealing the lunch money of the high-achievers." By Jove, Dr. Sowell, you have cracked the case! The solution must lie in teaching students accountability. But how? What criteria must teachers use to judge the achievement and progress of students? If only there were some sort of scale to express said achievement quantitatively? Jeez, I guess figuring out this teaching thing is tough work. It's like, conservative bromides about personal responsibility are not enough anymore. This does not bode well. Oh well, at least there's White Heaven:

Debbie Schlussel hates fat (and brown) people and the liberals hiding behind them. So much fat, so many liberals.

Debbie Schlussel is concerned -- in a rather morbid way -- she's morbidly concerned that liberals are engaged in an evil plot to rid the world of junk food, starving us all except for the Hollywood elite, who shall grow to Jabba the Hut sizes. Hollywood will then exalt morbid obesity as the new unattainable body type. We shall all huddle around our few old CRT televisions and watch as the Jabba the Hut version of Kristin Chenoweth is carried down the red carpet by her skinny, disgusting manservants, and we shall lick our lips at the prospect of scavenging enough caloric intake to one day be as satiated and luxuriant as Jabba Keifer Sutherland.

Why -- how, God -- does Debbie Schlussel divine these things? Does she consume Teh Spice? Does she commune with Ronald Reagan's ghost? Does Spice provide access to Ronald Reagan's ghost? Nej. Debbie Schlussel has deduced the foul liberal agenda because People magazine editors "They" have determined Gabourey Sidibe, Oscar-nominated actress of Precious fame, to be a "Most Beautiful Person". Sidibe is an obese African-American woman. Debbie Schlussel objects to this new definition of beauty, and she adds these racially charged racist remarks, because why not: "she's not just any fat actress, she’s a Black fat actress in a ghetto movie promoted by Oprah and based on a 'gangsta lit' book."

As I see it, People is promoting an excellent actress who broke through Hollywood's glass ceiling for large women and non-whites. That's beautiful. As Debbie sees it, however, People magazine editors Hollywood is thinking one of two things: (1) They really think Gabourey Sidibe is beautiful, which is ridiculous because everyone knows that Hollywood thinks that only size six bodies can be beautiful (QED). (2) They love food more than they hate fat people, so their alliance with liberal foodie Nazis is really an effort to impoverish Real 'Murica of food and concentrate food in Hollywood, where the stars will feast and grow enormous at our expense. In the latter construction, Gabourey Sidibe is a dry run for Jabba Lindsey Lohan.

In summary, Debbie Schlussel is ugly -- on the inside.

OMG, Harry Reid is the Devil! Tell me something I don't know, Republicans... James E. Christ!

This is precious. Republicans upset about slavery! Come the fuck on! Everyone knows that Republicans invented slavery 5000 years ago in Egypt. This is why 70% of Jews are Democrats.

Remember when Alan Greenspan realized that his whole life was a fraud?

Yeah, he totally did:

A long-time cheerleader for deregulation, Greenspan admitted to a congressional committee yesterday that he had been "partially wrong" in his hands-off approach towards the banking industry and that the credit crunch had left him in a state of shocked disbelief. "I have found a flaw," said Greenspan, referring to his economic philosophy [Randian quackery]. "I don't know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact."

...

"I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms," said Greenspan.

Alas, Greenspan has yet to hara-kiri himself on national television. Oh well. Yesterday, Digby wrote that the problem with Ayn Rand acolytes, besides the fact that they won't die properly, is that they fail to realize that "unbridled greed and selfishness makes people reckless." This is true, but there is also a perfectly logical reason why Ayn Rand remains a black taint upon all humanity: ownership of our shining city upon a hill is collective. Yeah, look it up. The corporation is a financial instrument with which America's patrician class smears accountability throughout the land. No one person wants full ownership of something as big and complicated as the modern corporation. They would have to be an utter loon. And yet many people who are stuck in Ayn Rand's fantasy universe actually think that the people who run America's financial empire are accountable for the health of their empire. They are not, and they never were. The only people who truly put their financial asses on the line in this "malfunctioning corporation called the USA" are small business owners.


When the hell did we lose sight of this? How did the free market become construed as financial anarchy? There's a lot of talk about how we have privatized gains and socialized losses. To some extent, that's always going to be true. The government is always going to be there, God willing, to bail out large companies in order to prevent recessions. Furthermore, people already socialize their losses by putting their money in stocks and bonds. The government cannot force management to "go down with their ships." Well, it could, but then no one would manage any corporations, and we need corporations to make microwaves and maintain the intertubes. In conclusion, the solution to the boom and bust economy is strong, sensible financial regulation and smaller corporations. 

Bow-chica-bow-bow

David Broder wants to tea-bag Sarah Palin:

The snows that obliterated Washington in the past week interfered with many scheduled meetings, but they did not prevent the delivery of one important political message: Take Sarah Palin seriously.

Her lengthy Saturday night keynote address to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville and her debut on the Sunday morning talk show circuit with Fox News' Chris Wallace showed off a public figure at the top of her game -- a politician who knows who she is and how to sell herself, even with notes on her palm.

This is how you would write a column about a mentally-handicapped politician running for town dog-catcher -- if you were her mom.

George Will's Freaky Voyage

George Will celebrates the New Year by taking a massive hit off his life-sized Ayn Rand-shaped gravity bong and writes about the nature of the universe:

Already 99.9 (and about 58 more 9s) percent of the universe - it is expanding lickety-split - is beyond Earth's atmosphere. Into what is it expanding? Hard to say. We can say there is lots of stuff in space: Hold up a penny at arm's length and you block from your field of vision three galaxies - billions of stars and other things - 350 million light-years away, which is right next door in our wee corner of the universe.

Get that? There's lots of stuff in space, and it's beyond our so-called "warming" atmosphere. This means that if global warming is a problem, rich people can always expand, like the universe, into the great unknown! But fear not intrepid voyagers, this column is not simply about dog whistle-politics and fancy science talk, it is about the indomitable human spirit:

Before Darwin, many people believed that no species could become extinct because this would mean there had been an imperfection in God's original handiwork. Yet 104 years before publication of "On the Origin of Species," the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 had caused some people to doubt that God has ordained a benevolently ordered universe. Nevertheless, in 1787 other people - Americans call them the Founding Fathers - who were influenced by Newtonian physics and the deist idea of God as cosmic clockmaker, devised a constitutional system of separated powers, checking and balancing one another, mimicking what they considered our solar system's clocklike mechanics.

Today, we know there is a lot of play in the joints of the Constitution, and that every 40 million years or so asteroids of more than half a mile in diameter strike Earth. Yet the Constitution still constitutes, and the fact that flora and fauna have survived Earth's episodes of extreme violence testifies to the extraordinary imperative of life.

Yes, George, certainty exists beyond the bong smoke. Happy New Year, you crazy bastard!

Cal Thomas: "Obama tells kids about Jesus; Jesus rolls in grave -- wait..."

Cal Thomas, who is a syndicated columnist and not an anonymous pussy blogger, is outraged about Obama's lesson to children about the true meaning of Christmas, which is apparently that Jesus was a hippy: 

The president spoke of what Jesus "symbolizes for people all around the world," which he said, "is the possibility of peace and people treating each other with respect." And then, in the best tradition of a community organizer, the president said Jesus is about "doing something for other people." Even the "three wise men" were invoked to support the president's idea of wealth redistribution: "...these guys ... have all this money, they've got all this wealth and power, and they took a long trip to a manger just to see a little baby."

And what conclusion should be drawn from that journey? The president told the children, "...it just shows you that because you're powerful or you're wealthy, that's not what's important. What's important is ... the kind of spirit you have."

To the president, this means the spirit of government taking from the productive and giving to the nonproductive. To him, Jesus is a socialist, or perhaps an early Robin Hood. Any first-year seminarian (if the seminary is a good one) could destroy this flawed exegesis.

Jesus of Nazareth was not a symbol. Neither was He just a good teacher as some who do not fully accept His teachings about Himself like to claim. As Paul the Apostle put it, "Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners -- of whom I am the worst." (1Timothy 1:15)

(Yeah, Paul was a douche.) Anyway, Cal Thomas is clearly the Antichrist, but if you don't believe in that sort of thing, he's also just plain mean-- and crazy.