Government-Hating: An American Value

G.O.P. Chairman Michael Steele made a few remarkably in-your-face comments recently about the health care debate. Here, in his own words, is pretty much where he thinks the nation is going, why it shouldn't go there, and what the Republican Party stands for. This morning on NPR he tangled with Steve Inskeep, in particular over this. One quote in particular caught my eye: " Simply put, we believe that health-care reform must be centered on patients, not government." When you listen to the NPR interview it's clear that we're hearing another in the now decades-long tirades against the government which has become the hallmark of Right Wing politics in this country. In this country, in theory, the government is supposed to be us, the people. We elect our representatives, we tell them how we want them to vote, we change our minds, we are supposed to be in charge. In theory. Obviously, the reality is far from that. For one, we are not a full-fledged democracy, we are a republic, and while we elect those who operate the machinery of the republic on our behalf, we do not have a direct say in the running. Nor could we, really. it is simply too complex. We send our representatives to the various points of departure---state capitols, Washington D.C., county seats, city halls---to do that for us because it is a big, complex, often indecipherable melange of conflicting goals, viewpoints, and problems. We do not have the time to pay the necessary attention to do that work ourselves, so we pay people to do it for us. So why do we distrust it so much? Well, because we distrust each other.

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Dense news media is stunned by Republican lies and obstructionism

How dense are our news reporters that they are stunned by Republican lies and obstructionism? Truly we are victims of journalistic malpractice. That's the well-reasoned conclusion of Jamison Foser of Media Matters:

Have these people been asleep, Rip Van Winkle-style, for the past few decades? Conservatives buried the last serious effort at universal health care under an avalanche of (media-abetted) lies. And they won the 2000 election on the strength of (media-abetted ... and sometimes media-invented) lies. And they took us to war in Iraq based on (media-abetted) lies. And ... well, you get the point. When was the last time conservatives approached a big fight without relying heavily, if not exclusively, on misinformation and deception? Why would anyone have thought this time would be different? Likewise, the increasingly obvious fact that conservatives aren't actually interested in working toward bipartisan reform -- this seems to have taken reporters by surprise. But when was the last time conservatives made significant concessions in order to win bipartisan support for anything? What makes all this shock really amazing is that so much of political journalism consists of pontification by people who have supposedly been around and understand how things work -- and yet they're constantly stunned when history repeats itself in the most predictable of ways.

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Hitler and the Dining Room Table

I like Barney Frank. He says what he feels, usually in a way that makes his argument better. But it's almost a no-brainer to do a comeback on the idiocy with which he was faced in Dartmouth, Massachussetts this past week. I mean, what do you say to someone who thinks it's a valid statement to compare Obama to Hitler? A woman carrying a poster with Obama's image modified with a Hitlerian mustache stepped up to the microphone to ask why Frank supports a Nazi policy. There are so many things wrong with this it boggles the mind where to begin. Frank's response was probably the most effective. "On what planet do you spend most of your time?" he asked. Then: "Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table." He then commented that her freedom to carry that poster and make such lamebrained statements was a tribute to the First Amendment and Freedom of Speech. I salute his restraint. To compare any president of the United States to Hitler is a stretch, even with the likes of Obama's predecessor. (I might consider it for Cheney, but even he does not match the level of malignancy achieved by Adolph, nor does our system allow for such people to act with unrestrained impunity, hard as that might be for some to accept.) But to compare Barack Obama to the man man of the 20th Century is such a profoundly ignorant mischaracterization that it is tempting to write off this whole experiment in potential civilization as a failure. Where does this shit come from? The Republican Party, what is left of it, is grasping at straws, sinking in the quicksand of its own inanity. We must take care to not be pulled into the quagmire in some misguided attempt to rescue it through well-intentioned but doomed bipartisan sentiments. The Republican Party has devolved into a nasty cadre of ideologues, a shrinking room of hydrophobic screechers who claw and scratch at anyone who tries to do this country a service by bringing it back to some semblance of decency. They have fed on their own conspiracy-fevered viscera for so long that they cannot even hear the words much less the sentences of opposing viewpoints. We should perhaps let them sink and drown. It would be a kindness. The fear-mongering is reminiscent of everything we've seen since 2000. Rachel Maddow, who is one of the most able of contemporary analysts on television, shows the process and the connections here. Shouting, screaming, inane blather---noise filling the spaces in which rational discourse might take place if only the decibel level could be reduced. Platitudes, sloganeering, slander, and lies are flooding these so-called town hall meetings and shoving aside reason and discovery and thought. These are not people who are interested in understanding anything, they are people bent on stopping something they've been told---been told---they should not allow.

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Republican Scientists are rare

PEW has issued new research findings showing that relatively few scientists are political conservatives. Only 6% of scientists identify themselves as Republicans:

Most scientists identify as Democrats (55%), while 32% identify as independents and just 6% say they are Republicans. When the leanings of independents are considered, fully 81% identify as Democrats or lean to the Democratic Party, compared with 12% who either identify as Republicans or lean toward the GOP.

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Republicans idea-less on energy issues

Think Progress has summarized current thinking by the GOP on energy issues:

Throughout the discussion on America's energy future, Republicans have been notably absent. In March, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) announced the creation of the House GOP American Energy Solutions Group, an effort to "work on crafting Republican solutions to lower energy prices for American families and small businesses." The man chosen to head the committee -- which includes notorious climate change deniers Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and John Shimkus (R-IL) -- is none other than House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-IN), who, just last night, refused to even admit that climate change is real. "Well, let me tell you," he told MSNBC's Chris Matthews, "I think the science is very mixed on the subject of global warming." "Then why should your party believe you're going to get serious about it, if you say the science is mixed?" Matthews asked. Pence replied, "Yeah, it's a fair question."
And what about the Chamber of Commerce? It MUST be walking in lockstep with the GOP, right? Wrong:
An analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council(NRDC) found that just four of the 122 board members at the Chamber share the group's questioning of science and stark opposition to federal regulations to reduce global warming pollution.

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