Political Gridlock – Page 21

A Civil War Meditation

May 9th was the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. It passed unnoticed in most national media. Despite Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, America’s black citizens were not truly free until MLK made us really see their problems during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s. In 1965, the 100th anniversary of the Civil War, the Voting Rights Act was passed.

The Voting Rights Act, along with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, were the largest step forward for equal rights in our nation’s history, certainly more important than the Emancipation Proclamation.

We are fascinated by the Civil War because it is an epic story. The American Republic was founded in 1789, and the nation only lives 72 years with slavery before it is torn apart by the argument over states’ rights, and the right to own slaves. We go on to fight a war that kills some 750,000 people, (equal to 7 million today). We then free 3.5 million people overnight, and then take years to try to put the country back together. Today, about 1 in 3 Americans can trace an ancestor to one side or the other in the Civil War. That adds up to about 100 million of our population who are remotely connected to the war.

What is sometimes lost in the story is that Lincoln, a Republican, introduced big government to America. At the start of the war, the country had a weak central government. Lincoln built the centralized state. Consider what Lincoln created:

• The first national income tax
• The first military draft
• The Quartermaster Corps, which became the 2nd largest employer in the country during the war, behind only the Union Army
• The largest confiscation of property in US history when he emancipated the slaves. Slave owners in the South lost $3.5 billion of net worth in the process
• A re-imagining of the US Constitution, passing the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, ending slavery, formalizing birthright citizenship, creating black male suffrage, and guaranteeing equal protection under the law. It can be said that these Amendments were a second American revolution.

Conservatives ask: “Where did big government come from?” It was invented by Lincoln, a Republican, to win the Civil War. If the Civil War ended with Constitutional Amendments that can be called a 2nd American Revolution, perhaps the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts of the mid-1960’s was yet a 3rd American Revolution. And there may be other “revolutions” to come.

Yale University Professor of Civil War History, David Blight wrote in The Atlantic that the nation has never truly gotten over that conflict. He says that the great issues of the war were not resolved at Appomattox, and in a sense, not only is the Civil War not over, it can still be lost.

When we think about the legacy of the Civil War, one of the issues that we have re-visited since the Reagan era is the revival of a debate about states’ rights and the place of federalism in our Republic. This is a persistent legacy of the Civil War, the issue of state power versus federal power: does America owe its first loyalty to the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, that says the Constitution, federal statutes, and treaties are “the supreme law of the land?” Or does the 10th Amendment come first, which states that the federal government possesses only those powers delegated to it under the Constitution?

Professor Blight says that the question we have to ask the states’ rights supporters is: “states’ rights to do what?” Or, “for whom and against whom?”

During the Civil War, the states’ rights argument was used to preserve the racial order in the South. Today, the states’ rights debate is hidden in the term “limited government”, versus the right’s categorization of “big government”.

Lately, conservative partisans have brought back “nullification”, but couched in near-Orwellian terms, such as “right to work,” or, “religious freedom.” We have 36 state legislatures controlled by Republicans that are trying to eliminate abortions, remove environmental protections, enhance gun rights, and privatize education, all of which need a weaker federal government to succeed.

And every time a politician of the South says she/he is “standing on principle” and pledges “a return to our founding principles of limited government and local control,” our progress from the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, through the New Deal reforms, to the 1960’s Civil Rights acts are again threatened.

50 years after the Voting Rights Act, we are finally aware that there are millions of Americans who have never fully accepted the verdict of Appomattox.

As Professor Blight said this week in a BBC lecture, as long as we continue to debate states’ rights, and as long as we continue to leave the “problem” of racism unresolved, we will need to study our Civil War.

Thirty Years of Wrong

Everyone probably knows about Jade Helm 15. It is a two-month operation by the Pentagon in which Special Forces from four branches of the military will carry out simulated operations amid territory designated as “hostile” in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado.

US Army Special Operations Command said that simulated exercises like this are routine. They also said that the public wouldn’t experience any disruption in their day-to-day lives, since the entire operation takes place in remote areas.

But, many Texans have expressed both suspicion and opposition to the project. Some claim it’s an attempt to institute martial law. Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz told Texans that he is on it: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

My office has reached out to the Pentagon to inquire about this exercise…We are assured it is a military training exercise. I have no reason to doubt those assurances, but I understand the reason for concern and uncertainty, because when the federal government has not demonstrated itself to be trustworthy in this administration, the natural consequence is that many citizens don’t trust what it is saying.

And Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) called up the Texas Guard (one of three of Texas’ quasi-military groups), ordering them to “monitor” the Special Forces troops during their eight weeks of training.

Abbott seems to think his weekend warriors will accomplish…what? Then again, if you’re convinced that Jade Helm 15 is a false-flag operation designed to distract you while The Black Guy in the White House and his evil Muslim overlords plot a takeover of Texas, nothing will convince you otherwise.

It can be exceedingly difficult to discern where the parody ends and the serious conspiracy theories begin. Here is a claim from The Common Sense Show:

You see, there are these Wal-Marts in West Texas that supposedly closed for six months for ‘renovation’. That’s what they want you to believe. The truth is these Wal-Marts are going to be military guerrilla-warfare staging areas and FEMA processing camps for political prisoners.

How do you reason with people gripped with an ironclad conviction that all of the above is true, and that those who can’t see it, are dupes under the influence of Obama, Rachel Maddow, and George Soros?

Texas isn’t a barometer of much, except perhaps the price of oil pipe for fracking. Illegal immigration is going down. The number of Mexican-Americans in the voting population is going up. Rick Perry is still learning to count to three, and Ted Cruz, a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, certainly knows which way is up. Apparently, he is more a deeply cynical man than a deranged one. Either way, he’s unfit for public office.

This false issue and the Republican response to it, is another example of Neo-Fascism in America. In this case, it is billionaires aligned with corrupt Republican politicians. They have an organization, ALEC, that drafts and shares model state-level legislation among state governments in the US. They have purchased state and federal legislators to do their bidding. Fascism doesn’t say, “We hate you!” It says, “Those guys over there hate you. They’re out to get you. Luckily, we’ve come to help you”.

This is the price we are paying for false equivalence by the media, which was popularized starting in 1982 with CNN’s Crossfire. It’s the same thing you get if you allow children to engage in anything their little heart desires: What do you get when there are no negative consequences for despicable actions, including bigotry, or in-your-face political ham-handedness?

You get a situation that is out of control, as it has been in the past 30 years.

Today’s conservatives/Republicans/libertarians are grown-up delinquents who have figured out that there is no bed time, no chores, no tests to take, and no need to eat their vegetables of responsibility.

The continuing assertion by the GOP that the President is behaving illegally, or that his orders should be ignored, is contributing to public distrust. Since our laws flow from the Constitution, it’s particularly annoying that those that claim to love it the most are directly attacking it with claims like this.

We are surfing down a very slippery slope. Right-wing politicians win elections by demonizing the government. They are now addicted to it. Like other addicts, they have to keep upping the dosage to get the same effect.

Unfortunately, they’re into serious overdose territory now.

Moving the Goal Posts on Obamacare

Gallup has an informative chart about the declining percentage of uninsured in the US:

The percentage of uninsured Americans climbed from the mid-14% range in early 2008 and peaked at 18.0% in the third quarter of 2013. The uninsured rate has dropped sharply since Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) took effect at the beginning of 2014.

It is possible to argue that an improving economy and a falling unemployment rate may have accelerated the steep drop in the percentage of uninsured over the past year. However, the uninsured rate is significantly lower than it was in early 2008, before the Great Recession, suggesting that the recent decline is due more to Obamacare than to just an improving economy.

From NY Magazine on this trend:

It is starting to look possible that this trend is not some random fluke that has happened six straight quarters but is somehow related to the enactment of Obamacare. So any day now, we can expect conservative politicians and intellectuals to begin publicly rethinking their analysis of this law.

They were correct. Here is the 2010-2014 short version of the Republican viewpoint on the ACA:

The ACA will not reduce the number of people without health insurance. Indeed, it might make this problem we don’t consider a problem, even worse.

Now that the ACA looks to be doing the job, the 2015 short version of the Republican viewpoint is:

Everyone knew that the ACA would result in a huge drop in the number of people without health insurance — what does that prove? Besides, how can we really know that it all isn’t a big coincidence?

This is called “Moving the Goal Posts”. Wikipedia says it means

To change the criterion (goal) of a process or competition while still in progress, in such a way that the new goal offers one side an intentional advantage or disadvantage.

Here is an example of moving the goal posts. From Cliff Asness: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

In contrast, the rise in coverage is heralded by a myriad of Obamacare supporters as one of two major pieces of proof the law is working. But, how can something we knew before the fact be proof of anything?

Shorter: If we predict that something good will happen as a result of a new law, and that good thing happens, it doesn’t count as proof that the law served its purpose or was any good at all, unless Republicans say so.

The goal post movers also said Obamacare was a job killer. House Speaker John Boehner announced on March 17, 2010, five days before President Obama signed the ACA into law:

The President … continues to push his job-killing government takeover of health care that will hurt small businesses at a time when they need certainty, not more Washington tax hikes and mandates.

In 2011, House Republicans even passed the “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act” — the first time that any piece of congressional legislation ever had “job-killing” in its title. Sadly for both Mr. Boehner and the House Republicans, we have added 12 million new private sector jobs since the bill was passed.

There is a new J.D. Power survey which looks at enrollee satisfaction with the ACA. It finds that people who signed up for insurance on the exchanges were slightly more satisfied (69.6%) than people with non-exchange plans, usually through employers (67.9%). People re-enrolling on the exchanges were 74.4% satisfied. New enrollees for 2015 were 5.5% more satisfied than 2014 enrollees, who endured the disastrous roll-out of healthcare.gov. So people like the subsidies and they like their actual insurance policies.

Think about it: ACA forecasted costs have been consistently revised downwards. The number of uninsured are dramatically lower. Satisfaction with Obamacare is higher, and it didn’t kill jobs.

It’s utter Tyranny.

Maybe that’s why the Senate’s top five Republican leaders have cosponsored legislation to extend Obamacare insurance subsidies until 2017. The extension will give Republicans more time to again move the goal posts.

They should try this one: Now that Republicans control Congress and most state governments, we have way fewer uninsured.

Conservative policies work!

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 19, 2015

Sunday’s reason to fear for humanity:

Médecins Sans Frontières, (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders) just announced that it will launch search and rescue operations for undocumented migrants trying to reach Europe by boat from North Africa. Last year more than 3,400 people died at sea. This year, the death toll is predicted to be even higher, since more are trying to make it, and the European Union has cut funding for at-sea assistance by 80%.

The BBC reports the prevailing view in Europe is that helping save boat people will just encourage more to take the risk of a Mediterranean crossing. In fact, the EU has funded a border control operation, called Triton, with fences in some countries, and which only operates vessels close to Europe’s coast at sea. From Arjan Hehenkamp, MSF’s general director:

Europe has turned its back on people fleeing some of the worst humanitarian crises of our time…The decision to close doors and build fences means that men, women and children are forced to risk their lives and take a desperate journey across the sea.

So, Europe is saying, “Stay away, and should you try, be prepared to die”.

Some of the boat people are not prizes either: According to CNN, a boat with 105 people trying to get from Libya to Italy reported that Muslim passengers threw 12 passengers overboard because they were Christians. All 12 died. The remaining passengers said they avoided the same fate by forming a human chain and putting up a fierce fight.

Is this cavalier treatment of human life becoming the new normal? There has always been violence between clans and religions since prehistory. But when a refugee is on his/her way to (supposedly) a shot at a better life, why would a reflexive thought be; “kill the infidels”?

And why would the 28 member states of the European Union so willing to let “other” people die? Wotta world.

On to cartoons. It was a busy week for JEB!, Hillary and Rubio. And a gyrocopter dropped an info bomb about Citizens United on the Capitol:

The Park Police seized the mail the pilot was carrying, and why not? The letters were useless to Congress-critters — there was no money stuffed in the envelopes.

JEB! tries to explain checking the “Hispanic” box on his voter registration form:

Sen. Rubio explains his reasons for running:

But it looks like Hillary vs. Jeb, so everything old is new again:

Fortune Magazine says 42% of American workers make less than $15/hour. That means minimum wage workers will miss the boat:

Tax Day and the Estate Tax

Today is tax day, and most good American doobies will have filed their taxes by midnight tonight. It takes the temperament of an accountant who’s passed the relevant CPA exam parts to self-prepare your taxes, and Wrongo has that temperament for less than 2 hours a day, so doing the Wrong family taxes never gets easier.

You might like “Tax Rap” by Go Remy. It was a submission to a Turbo Tax contest. While it didn’t win, it is very funny:

For those who read The Wrongologist in email, you can find the song on YouTube here.

On Tax Day, we have to talk about the Estate Tax, or as the Republicans call it, the “Death Tax”. Why? Because House Republicans are going to repeal the Estate Tax this week. In their ham-handed way, they will link the two events to show Americans that Republicans are lowering taxes for the people.

But as Bloomberg points out, the Estate Tax is now paid by only 0.2% of US estates. That translates into about 5,500 households a year. The Hill reports that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that repeal of the Estate Tax would add $269 billion to the federal deficit from here to 2025.

The Republican logic for repeal is that the tax unfairly steals the family jewels from ordinary hard-working Americans, but the current estate tax doesn’t kick in unless an individual has assets totaling more than $5.43 million. For married couples, the threshold for avoiding the tax is $10.86 million.

Not chump change.

Under the Republican plan, estates would pay no taxes. Furthermore, families would be able to pass assets across generations and avoid paying capital gains taxes on both real gains and so-called phantom income attributed to inflation, a loophole called “stepped up basis” in the tax code. Subsequent heirs could continue this strategy so that the gain is effectively never taxed.

Here are a few quotes from Republican supporters of Estate Tax repeal:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.):

This tax doesn’t just hit the big guy, it hits the little guy — like the small business and the family farm.

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) made the “double taxation” argument:

The death tax is the wrong tax at the wrong time, and it hurts the wrong people…They are double and triple taxed.

Sen. John Thune (R-SD):

The death tax imposes a tax rate as high as 40 % on family farms, ranches and small businesses, which hurts economic growth by discouraging savings and development.

But, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that only 120 farms and small business, where at least half the assets are in farm or business assets, had to pay the estate tax in 2013. And double-taxation shouldn’t be so hard for Republicans to understand. No one claims that when a worker gets paid a wage, and pays a tax on that income, and who later spends some of that after-tax income paying someone to mow their lawn, that it is double-taxation for the lawn guy to pay income tax. This is really simple: Money moves from entity, to entity, to entity, and each time, tax applies.

So, the facts don’t support the case against the estate tax, but this does not matter to Republicans.

It has become an ideological issue, even if the data show that that relatively few small farms or businesses appear to be affected. Even if it’s only a handful, that’s apparently too many for Republicans.

The truth is that repealing the Estate Tax would mainly benefit the very wealthiest Americans. In 2016, the wealthiest 1,300 or so estates (those worth $20 million or more) would receive 73% of the benefit, with each receiving a tax windfall averaging roughly $10 million, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation’s analysis of the repeal proposal approved by the Ways and Means Committee.

This is a special kind of welfare. It is welfare for the rich. This will give multimillionaires, who are the only people we are talking about, an additional 40% of wealth transfer upon the death of a parent. This undresses Republicans as planning to create a permanent aristocracy based on inherited wealth.

And Republicans say they will address income inequality if only America votes for them in 2016?

The GOP proves again that they are not what they claim. They claim to be for balancing the budget and decreasing the deficit, but leap at the chance to lavish more $ billions on the rich, while increasing the deficit.

The facts mean nothing to President Nordquist, or to our right-wing friends when discussing taxes.

Happy Tax Day!

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 11, 2015

Big week. Another black man killed, Hillary announces to no one’s surprise, the anti-Iran deal resistance cranks it up a notch and a Cuban handshake for Mr. Obama.

Let’s start with the cop-involved killing in North Charleston SC. Two memes that appear every time a cop kills an unarmed black man are “one bad apple” and “the victim probably deserved it”. Let’s unpack this: The knee jerk response in some quarters is that since there are so many good cops, and so few bad ones, that the cops who kill merit the benefit of the doubt, particularly when the shooters say they were in fear for their lives. No need to look at a systemic problem in policing.

The second is the steady drip of “facts” that amount to character assassination of the already-dead victim. They had a record, they were late with family support payments, they resisted, or they made a sudden move. Or, a cascade of other facts that indicate the victims were no saints.

But, none of these things merit vigilante justice.

It’ll always be “one bad apple” but that bad apple will most often be a white cop killing a black man. It’ll always be “maybe the victim deserved it”, and it will most often be a black victim who deserved it.

Here is the value of video:

“Comply or die” is the state of the art in policing:

Republicans want Iran deal to go away. Obama too:

Chicken Hawks count noses on Iran:

Iran hears a familiar song and dance:

SS Hillary launches:

In 2008, Barack Obama wrapped up the delegates he needed to be the Democratic nominee at a shockingly early point in the campaign. Even a very strong finish by Hillary Clinton did nothing to improve her chances. She was finished before she knew what hit her.

She learned a huge lesson. This time, getting the nomination seems more inevitable, but she’s out of the gate early.

Given the lack of bench strength in the Democratic Party, it’s no wonder that the New Republic worries that she is a single point of failure for Dems.

What could go wrong?

Monday Wake Up Call – April 6, 2015

Today’s Wake up is for the Republican Chicken Hawks who think that Iran is the Greatest Threat To America™. They are denouncing the possible nuclear Iranian deal because Bibi says, or because they think it takes the military option off the table, or they think that Iran got too good a deal, or all of the above.

Here, from the Atlantic, are some specific details from Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The table below summarizes the new framework accord and analyzes differences between where Iran stood before negotiations, and where it will be, if, or when, the accord becomes reality:

By eliminating 12,000 centrifuges and five bombs’ worth of low-enriched uranium, the accord extends the breakout timeline for Iran to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb to one year. By requiring the reconfiguration of Iran’s planned plutonium-producing reactor at Arak, the accord essentially closes the door to a plutonium-based Iran bomb. And by agreeing to establish a new mechanism that will allow unprecedented access for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to suspicious nuclear sites anywhere in Iran, the accord makes it much more difficult for Iran to cheat.

It’s time to ask critics of the proposed deal, particularly those running for president in 2016, exactly where they stand, and what they would do if an agreement is reached.

Wouldn’t you think after Iraq, the American people would want to debate this, and emphatically say that war with Iran is such a stupid idea that no one advocating it should get within a mile of the White House, the State Department, or the Pentagon? Everyone, (Republican chicken hawks included) should want to negotiate peace as our default position.

But, it has been a whole twelve years since we started a war, and given the history of the last few decades, we’re past due. So who’s the big, brave Republican running on an Iran war platform? Everybody.

Wake up Chicken Hawks. Here to help rouse you from your neo-con wet dream, a song by The Lone Bellow, a Brooklyn NY-based group with three-part harmonies and great melodies. This is “Then Came the Morning” from their 2nd Album of the same name. Here they are on WFUV, Fordham University radio:

Sample Lyrics:
Take my words, breathe them out like smoke
Burn every single letter that I wrote
Let the pages turn to ash, I don’t want them back
Everything you always said to me

Monday’s Hot Links:

Tesla made an April fool’s announcement and investors were pissed:

PALO ALTO, Calif., April 1, 2015 – Tesla today announced a whole new product line called the Model W. As many in the media predicted, it’s a watch. That’s what the “W” stands for.

In the following minute, the stock jumped $1.50. Nearly 400,000 shares traded in that time, and it was the heaviest one minute of trading volume in the stock since the first minute after the IPO on Feb 12. Sadly, there is no watch. People bought the stock because they were introducing a thing called the Model W. They didn’t read beyond the headline, and thought whatever it was, would be big. Invest wisely, grasshopper.

The next two links contrast a big business solution to a big problem, with an open-source solution to a big problem. The big business solution is elegant, expensive and patented. The entrepreneurial solution is elegant, cheap and free:

The latest technology for removing salt from seawater, is developed by Lockheed Martin, and will be a game-changer. Desalination technology is all over the world, but it is inefficient, using lots of energy to force salt water through a filtration system. That makes it expensive. Lockheed has developed a special filter that doesn’t need as much energy to push water through the filter. Its made out of Graphene. If this scales up, where do we put the excess salt? Or, if you really are thinking, If Lockheed can strain salt ions out of water, then why not gold ions? Invest at your own risk.

Ever hear of Liter of Light? They are a charity that makes a skylight-type light using a used liter plastic bottle, filled with water and a little bleach that is placed through tin roofs in the 3rd world. They then added an LED light and a 1 watt solar collector, for light at night. All of this started in the Philippines. Liter of Lights now has chapters in 53 countries, and has installed 350,000 daytime lights and around 15,000 night lights. Watch a video here. Please, you won’t regret it.

According to UNESCO, more than 1.5 billion people around the world currently have no access to electric light, and around 1.3 billion of them must spend up to half their income to light their homes at night. The fact that the technology is not patented, or owned by a large, multinational corporation, like Lockheed, who owns the Graphene filter, makes this a sweet place to send some of your excess money, Wrongsters. Do not expect a financial return.

Indiana’s Bridge Too Far

We all have heard about Indiana’s “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” (RFRA). Republicans are arguing that Indiana’s law is no different from the federal law passed in 1993 that Democrats voted for and Mr. Clinton signed. That is untrue. As Think Progress points out, Indiana’s bill goes much further than the 1993 federal law or any other state law:

There are several important differences in the Indiana bill but the most striking is Section 9. Under that section, a “person” (which under the law includes not only an individual but also any organization, partnership, LLC, corporation, company, firm, church, religious society, or other entity) whose “exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened” can use the law as “a claim or defense…regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding.”

So here is the difference: Neither the federal RFRA, nor 18 of the 19 state RFRA statutes says anything like that, only the Texas RFRA, passed in 1999, and the new Arkansas RFRA law contain similar language.

Garrett Epps in The Atlantic points out that the federal RFRA and the other 18 state RFRAs protect private citizens’ religious beliefs from their government. Indiana’s is the only law that explicitly applies to disputes between private citizens. This means it could be used by individuals to justify discrimination against individuals that might otherwise be protected under law.

That’s the difference. The Indiana law is a blanket permission to discriminate, plain and simple. It’s effectively a “Stand Your Ground” law for bigots. If you choose to discriminate against someone, you can claim the law as a defense if you feel your “exercise of religion is substantially burdened.”

Back to Section 9, which also defines a person in this case as any organization, partnership, LLC, corporation, company, firm, church, religious society, or other entity. So, if an Indiana business wanted to refuse to serve LGBT customers on religious grounds, they could theoretically claim this law as a defense, and say that allowing them to shop there would “substantially burden” the business’s “exercise of religion”.

If you doubt the original intent of the Indiana RFRA, check out the photo of Gov. Pence’s signing ceremony. You will see nuns in full regalia, along with 2 anti-gay lobbyists as well. If you missed it, you can see it here. Maybe its not surprising that the Governor’s people won’t reveal the names of all who are in the picture. Indiana had the lowest voter turnout percentage in the Nation in 2014 at 27.8%. Maybe Indiana voters need to take charge of their own situation.

Those on the religious right who hold political office continually promote a social agenda as an act of political resistance to our secular world. This problem has been with us since before we became a country. It was part of most of the original 13 state constitutions. Except for Pennsylvania, every other state’s constitution required you to be a Christian believer to hold office, or in some cases, only Protestants could hold office, since being a Christian seemed too broad a definition.

William Penn only required an acknowledgement in some sort of creator, leaving only atheists outside of the political arena.

Those that want the laws of god in heaven to become the laws of the USA here on earth see Indiana’s RFRA as a political victory. Conservative Christians vote for politicians who will prosecute various forms of “sinful” behavior, especially if sexually defined, like abortion, online pornography websites like hdpornvideo.xxx, pornography magazines, and homosexuality. Some want to outlaw certain books, or music. Some go further, and bomb abortion clinics and kill doctors, while some will beat a gay person to death every now and then.

Now they are back to passing laws against “sin” while pretending they are upholding religious liberty. This is a country where Christianity is overwhelmingly the majority religion. To carry on as if its followers are a persecuted minority is abjectly false. Many of them carry little copies of the Constitution. Too bad they don’t understand what it says.

The Wrongologist is sick of eating their shit, and so are the majority of Americans.

Why Are Republicans Actively Undermining Obama’s Foreign Policy?

“Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule, or ruin, in all events.” – Abraham Lincoln, Cooper Union Speech

This is a short meditation about the Republican Party. Last week Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) took to the Senate floor, to encourage the Israelis to bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran:

The Israelis will need to chart their own path of resistance. On the Iranian nuclear deal, they may have to go rogue. Let’s hope their warnings have not been mere bluffs. Israel survived its first 19 years without meaningful US patronage. For now, all it has to do is get through the next 22, admittedly long, months.

Those 22 months would be the remainder of Mr. Obama’s term as president. You can see a video of McCain’s speech here.

And so, the Republican effort to make our foreign policy a partisan mess continues.

You may have heard the phrase, “politics stops at the water’s edge”. That thought dates to 1948, when the idea of a Treaty to establish NATO was debated in Congress. The Senate was controlled by Republicans, Harry Truman was president. Senator Arthur Vandenberg (R-MI) worked with the Truman Administration to create and pass the Vandenberg Resolution, which paved the way for the US to negotiate an agreement with our European allies.

Vandenberg was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and it was he who said “politics stops at the water’s edge”. He helped the Truman administration get bi-partisan support for the Treaty.

You can connect the dots from John McCain’s love affair with Middle East war, to John Boehner’s (R-OH) love affair with Bibi, to Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-AR) letter to Iran, undermining Obama’s negotiations on their nuclear program. In them, we see a complete repudiation of Vandenberg’s principle.

The Lincoln quote should remind us that he was speaking to his fellow Republicans in February, 1860. The issue then was slavery, and it was dividing his party along with the country. Lincoln urged fellow Republicans not to capitulate to Southern demands to recognize slavery as being right, but to “stand by our duty, [opposing slavery] fearlessly and effectively.” But, his comment about “rule or ruin” has resonance today.

As the 2016 presidential race picks up speed, we can expect foreign policy to be the key issue for Republicans. The strategy starts from Mr. Obama’s foreign policy approval ratings holding at 37% in a January 2015 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. As we can already see today, the Republican presidential contenders will inevitably compete to appear more hawkish on foreign policy.

Republicans will run away from the economy and towards their testosterone-laden policy positions of more guns, less butter, lower taxes. The public clearly believes that Mr. Obama should have done more to manage Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Iran, and Yemen. And with so much to be unhappy about, Republicans should have little trouble making the case that it is time for a change.

The ISIS stalemate most likely is helping Republicans. A recent CNN poll finds that 58 % disapprove of his handling of the campaign against ISIS. It will play even better for Republicans if the situation worsens, and Americans grow more frustrated with setbacks, or just a lack of progress. The Republicans will try to lure Mr. Obama into sending in ground troops. If he does, there is a high likelihood of things going wrong, which will only help the Republicans in 2016. The GOP has cards to play on Iran, Syria and ISIS, but sadly, they may only be playing politics, positioning the Democrats for a failure that cannot be explained or papered over in the 2016 election.

The Vandenberg precedent is not a part of our Constitution, so there is nothing illegal about the Republicans abandoning it. It is also a good thing to review principles and historical precedents to see if they are still useful. But the precedents the GOP are so busy abandoning are the guidelines established years ago to allow our representatives to work together, despite their differences, for the good of this country.

This new, more politicized approach will hurt us all.

Monday Wake Up Call – March 30, 2015

Today’s wake up is for the science deniers. Gallup conducted a poll that correlates political ideology, education level and acceptance of the consensus of scientists about climate change. 74% of Republicans with a college degree say the risk of climate change is exaggerated, while the opposite is true among well-educated Democrats, only 15% of whom think the risks of climate change is exaggerated. More education apparently will not mitigate the partisan divide on global warming.

The same seems true with evolution. Here is a snippet of an article by James Krupa, Professor of Evolution at the University of Kentucky:

…one of the most misused words today is…theory. Many incorrectly see theory as the opposite of fact. The National Academy of Sciences provides concise definitions of these critical words: A fact is a scientific explanation that has been tested and confirmed so many times that there is no longer a compelling reason to keep testing it; a theory is a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence generating testable and falsifiable predictions.

So “theories” and “facts” co-exist by definition. Krupa quotes the late Stephen Jay Gould:

Evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world’s data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts.

The public acceptance of evolution in the US is the 2nd lowest of 34 developed countries, just ahead of Turkey. Half of Americans reject some aspect of evolution, so it must be a steep uphill climb in states like Kentucky to fight against the power of fundamentalism.

Why does this have to be a battle of faith(s)? Among the religious groups that support the teaching of evolution are the Episcopal Church, Lutheran World Federation, United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church, United Unitarian Universalists, Roman Catholic Church, and the American Jewish Congress.

In fact, 77% of all American Christians belong to a denomination that supports the teaching of evolution. The question that should be asked is: “Why can’t evolution and faith in God co-exist”? Why can’t the physical body spring from one source of life, and the soul from another?

So, wake up deniers! Today is Eric Clapton’s 70th birthday. This wake up is from the movie, “The Last Waltz”, celebrating the career of The Band, directed by Martin Scorsese. You must see this movie. Here is “Further On Up The Road“, first recorded by Bobby “Blue” Bland. That’s Levon Helm on drums and Robbie Robertson on guitar along with EC:

Your Monday Hot Links:

Willie Nelson will be offering his own brand of weed. The legendary pot smoker is trying to get out ahead of big business in those states where pot is legal with “Willie’s Reserve”.

Prospect Magazine is out with its annual list of the top 50 world thinkers. Any list like this is always good for a laugh, and this year, Prospect doesn’t disappoint: They have Russell Brand at #4 on their list.

Amazon is now requiring warehouse employees to sign a non-compete agreement. The requirement extends even to seasonal workers. The agreements can last for up to 18 months. But, seasonal workers can be employed by Amazon for as few as three months. That’s a hell of a trade-off.

A major publisher of scholarly medical and science articles has retracted 43 papers because of “fabricated” peer reviews. The publisher is BioMed Central, based in the UK, which publishes 277 peer-reviewed journals. In a sad commentary on scientific scholarship, there is a blog that tracks scholarly paper retractions called Retraction Watch.

A scientific team in Myanmar rediscovered a bird previously thought to be extinct. The bird is Jerdon’s babbler, and had not been seen in Myanmar since July 1941. The team found the bird on 30 May 2014. Jerdon’s babbler is not to be confused with Boehner’s babbler, which is immortal.

5 years after its launch, there are 5 things that Americans still don’t understand about Obamacare.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Political Gridlock