Archive for November, 2010

Turning Over A New Leaf

Monday, November 8th, 2010

post by tensor

Sadly, Dino Rossi’s days as an elected politician here are finished, although Jim Miller was his usual expert self in not figuring this out without help from his commenters. (In fairness to Jim, it did involve big numbers which reflect reality.)

Now that Mr. Rossi has left the rough and tumble of electoral politics behind him, going back to his career of Galtian hero who creates wealth profiting from the suffering and misery of “the little people”, what will become of our inspirational near-namesake? Long known as the clubhouse of Mr. Rossi’s most star-struck fanbois, how will they survive without him? Sure, gracelessly refusing to call his twice-victorious opponent by her proper title whilst urging her (and others) to make sacrifices on our behalf will do for now, but how, oh how will they continue? Perhaps they’ll just have to climb down from their treehouse, recognize that politics is more about policy than personality, and understand that vote-by-mail is here to stay, resulting in sky-high turnout rates for King County.

Nah, they’ll just transfer their hopeless man-crush to someone else:

Mitt Romney has the good looks of a President cast in Hollywood.

While he didn’t actually play in any B-movies, or action-hero roles, or subsequently make a mess of governing California, we can imagine he did. And darn it, that’s good enough!

His wife, Ann, would make an attractive first lady and, politically crass as it sounds, her multiple sclerosis would gain sympathy in a campaign.

STOP MAKING FUN OF TRIG!

All five sons are handsome, successful and married to beautiful women.

And, like Mitt, they were careful to go nowhere near the war their old man supported.

(There’s a special place in wingnut hell for any guy with (a) the guts to serve in an actual shooting war, who (b) then denounces it after returning home. Mitt’s refusal to do either makes him Their Man.)

He is a member of an American home-grown religion, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, better known as the Mormons. Although Mitt says Jesus is his Lord and Savior, many Christians consider Mormonism a cult. This is because the LDS theology is at variance with orthodox Christianity as defined by the creeds and other Christian statements of faith.

Having your political party depend on the votes of bigoted fundie Christians has a downside, you say? Blasphemy!

He probably could get by the faith issue, America is more tolerant than in years past…

Despite the chronic and strenuous efforts of said fundie voters.

As a candidate in past campaigns, he took some decidedly liberal stands on issue such as abortion, gay rights and immigration.

It’s almost like he wanted to get elected in our modern America.

He now touts himself as a conservative especially on financial matters but to claim the conservative mantle, he has flip-flopped on several aforementioned social issues. He may be able to slip by this by arguing he has learned his lesson since his days as a Republican candidate in one of the bluest of blue states.

Flip-flopping and claims of expediency being the currency of our self-described moral leaders.

Mr. Romney has his work cut out for him.

Sadly, the Magic 8-Ball says he’s the candidate most likely to die in a bizarre accident involving a big jet airplane.

The Outer Bounds of Anti-Islamufascism

Sunday, November 7th, 2010

– posted by thehim

How crazy do you have to be to believe something about CAIR that not even WingNutDaily is sure about?

Living in the Past

Saturday, November 6th, 2010

Post by Carl Ballard

Based on the 11/6 Lou Guzzo piece, I think he thinks that the Berlin Wall is still up and Lee Iacoca is still president of Chrysler.

Not Fans of Democracy

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

Post by Carl Ballard

FW Con is nuttier than even the typical Republican nut. And I don’t think repealing the 17th amendment is on the table. But this has more currency on the right than you’d think. And a lot of Republicans won a lot of races the other day based on things that I didn’t think were on the table recently. So, may as well swat this stuff down.

The 17th Amendment made senators elected by the people, rather than the state legislatures. This had a reverberating effect on all parts of the constitution, namely, the abandonment thereof. Todd Zywicki at The Volokh Conspiracy explains.

Yes, the biggest problems today can totally be traced back to too much democracy. In the Senate.

It is important to note that the constitution set in power a government in a precarious balance. All the evil in men’s nature was set in opposition to itself, while all the good was magnified and multiplied. That is, the yearning to be another man’s master would be frustrated in the federal government, while the yearning to protect men’s freedoms would be amplified.

And what better way to protect freedoms than denying the freedom to vote for one of the chambers of Congress?

The senate was to be composed of a bunch of elitist snobs who disdained American democracy, that is, the actual power of the people to determine their government. These elitists were to temper the will of the people as expressed in the House of Representatives.

If you were writing a piece in about how important it is to keep Senators elected by the people, you probably wouldn’t have to change a word. Personally, I think the Senate is too much like that now, and we should do what we can to weaken it compared to the House.

Now, imagine the people electing a brand new House of Representatives in a throw-the-bums out fashion like we see today. Now imagine that congress goes into session and starts proposing all kinds of strange things that disrupts the way government is setup and working. The natural reaction from the senate is to say “No, thanks.” But how can they say it?

They can make a logical case, appealing to our better nature? They can run ads saying how the other side is wrong? They can engage in active democratic debate?

If the say, “no thanks” in the way they’d like to say it, by pointing out how stupid the people are, then the people will rightfully become upset with the senate and work to replace them through their state legislatures. Any corporate executive knows that even if the board is on your side, if the shareholders get upset with you, the board will quickly change their opinion of you as well.

They can’t call their constituents a bunch of fucking retards. What a loss! And really, the goal is to be less accountable than a CEO is to their shareholders?

So that’s off the table. What methods remain?

Stating their case clearly.

Really, the only way the senate can effectively argue against the will of the people is to put the argument in terms of our natural rights and the constitution. Does this sound familiar? This is what the Supreme Court has to do every day, at least now that the senate doesn’t do it for them.

The Supreme Court oversteps its bounds all the time, and should throttle the hell back.

If we want the constitution to be important, then we have to make it the only useful tool in the senate’s hands.

Senators can’t invoke the Constitution today!

Now that the senate is elected directly by the people, the reaction people have to an opposing senate is to simply wait two or four more years to replace them along with the House. In fact, oftentimes a sweep is enough to change the balance in the senate as the mood of the people change. This means the senators are nothing more than big representatives, where 2/3rds can safely ignore the will of the people at any given time.

This paragraph argues that Senators should be less accountable and complains that Senators aren’t accountable enough. Awesome.

Is it any wonder that the constitution has eroded under such a system? The Senate need not argue about the constitution. They only have to appeal to the people’s emotions, the same way the House does.

The worst abuses of the Constitution (by both parties) are done by the executive branch.

And so the only branch of government who considers the constitution is the Supreme Court, and even then, it is not always in their interest to do so.

The Constitution in this case being Gardner’s interpretation where the Interstate Commerce Clause has no meaning and Republican presidents can invade any country at any time for any reason, and if you disagree you’re committing treason.

Folks, if we want to enshrine the Constitution as the law of the land, we have to repeal the 17th Amendment. We have to surrender the power to elect our own senators and establish a body of elitist snobs whose only weapon to defend their snobbery is the constitution. This, tempered with a raucous and wild House, a power-hungry president, and a judicial system whose sole purpose in life is to convince people never to bring a case to court, and you have the makings of a wonderfully balanced government. A government that only unifies on questions that protect all of the people’s rights, and never aligns when only a small group of people are to be served.

Folks, this is fucking insane.

Democracy can be our friend, but it is still our enemy. We must temper democracy with republicanism, and we must temper republicanism with dictatorship and democracy, and so on and so forth. That is what separation of powers and the balance of power is all about: taking the best parts of all the forms of government and using them to subdue the bad parts of other forms of government.

I literally have no idea what he’s talking about with dictatorship and democracy (it’s for a future post, that I can’t wait to read). No, there are no “best parts” of a dictatorship. Seriously, fuck.

One day I’ll write an article about why we need to eliminate the popular vote for president. It has something to do with the fact that our best presidents have been dictators unpopular with the people.

Awesome.

Today’s American Hero

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

This nutjob:

37-year-old Jennifer Leigh Jennings was at a gas station in Tukwila, Washington when she noticed two women struggling with a pump. It seemed the women had already paid the clerk, but they were having trouble get the pump to work…

Yet to Jennings, this wasn’t a case of an everyday petroleum purchase. It was a sure sign of terrorism! After all, the two Somalian immigrants were dressed in traditional religious garb! And they were right there in Tukwila! Pumping some goddamned gas!

So Jennings drove up next to them and started blasted them with racial slurs, a sure way to stop a terrorist attack. Our patriot called them “terrorists,” “suicide bombers,” and the ever-popular “sand niggers.” One victim also says Jennings asked, “Are you trying to bomb our gas stations? Our country?”

I think the most appropriate punishment for Jennings is to have her live in Somalia for a month.

Well, he does get off on writing poetry too…

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

- posted by demo kid

When I read the title of this little note by Doug “I got kneed in the balls in Spokane” Parris, I couldn’t help but think that this was the only climax he was going to reach this year.

So I have to say that Doug’s posts have truly degraded in quality over the past few months. At least his prior lameass posts were good for an unintentional laugh! But making fun of Dino Rossi for being in a fashion show for charity? Damn… it’s like the smelly kid in the back of the class making fun of the quarterback for narrowly losing the Homecoming King vote.

Puts This Post in a New Light

Monday, November 1st, 2010

Post by Carl Ballard

Everybody! Go read Lee’s piece on the involvement of private prisons in the Arizona immigration law, and the NPR piece that spawned it. When I heard the NPR story, and the involvement of the group ALEC, it reminded me of this piece I wrote a couple years ago.

Wouldn’t a group that claims to want more free markets want to loosen up immigration requirements instead of finding a way to hate brown people?

Lee’s been providing some great insight on that question recently.