See how it works?

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It works like this: Jay Rockefeller denounces Howard Dean as "irresponsible" for suggesting that lousy HCR legislation be scrapped, but he doesn't denounce Joseph Lieberman (King of the United States) as irresponsible for aggressively acting to scrap the HCR legislation unless Rockefeller's public option was removed from the language.

Sure, Jay is upset, he confesses. But that doesn't mean "...I take my football, and run home and sulk, and complain, or hold out for $100 million for something in West Virginia," he assures us. No, he mans up to it all and... blames Howard Dean.

Wherein I have a sissyfight with JMM

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It should be evident to anyone who reads this that Josh Marshall is my media hero, mainly due to the accomplishments of his TPM investigative reporting unit and his fine capacity both for issuing political ridicule and championing human decency. But today, with this post and a few earlier ones, the lad has disgustipated me. Just like that, both the public option and Medicare buy-in are dead at the hands of the King and Queen of the United States, Joseph and Olympia. But Josh thinks that furious progressives (not to mention the majority of Americans) should bend over and take it for the good of the Democratic Party. I wrote a note to tell Josh, politely, that he's full of shit. Here it is, for what it's worth:

“Ravening masses,” Josh? Really? Pheeewwww!

So many “responsible” liberals, like some who pontificate in your comments threads and sometimes you yourself, always seem ready to provide cover to “serious” politicians like the putative King and Queen of the United States, Lieberman and Snowe, when they bargain in bad faith in order to destroy progressive public policy initiatives that are favored by a majority of Americans. These people enable the erosion of majority rule by lecturing us about how "something is really better than nothing," and that if we threaten to pull our support then we’re “taking our marbles and going home.” We’re engaging in political theater instead of political activism. We need to grow up. Or whatever.

Progressives are authorized by you to speak our piece --- gosh, thanks!!! --- but not to use our own political muscle to sabotage King Joseph’s health care vision for us peasants (which is to say, no meaningful reform whatsoever plus increased costs for many, many working people). Withdrawing support from this ugly policy initiative would be irresponsible of progressives, you say; a “cop out.” Pheeewwww! You rarely reek of sanctimony, but today you sure do.

Joe Lieberman, with constant backroom assistance from Rahm Emanuel in the White House and the entire GOP as a pom pom squad, blocks and scuttles majority rule in this country, and “responsible” liberals cluck a pretty good game about it. But in the final analysis, betrayed progressives are expected to STFU, accede to King Joseph’s proclamations, and “improve it” later. Tell me: what makes you believe that it will be feasible to “improve it” later if King Joseph and Queen Olympia do not wish it to be improved? Seriously: what makes you think that is a possibility?

This situation represents an epic failure of Democratic leadership, especially by Obama, who is supposed to be, um, a leader after all. Since you are a “political junkie,” I will direct your attention to Machiavelli’s “The Prince.” Machiavelli’s contribution to political science was not his prescriptions for achieving ends by any means, but by describing what successful leaders from history *did* to achieve their ends. And, as you’re fond of saying, it wasn’t through bean bag. I’m not suggesting that President Obama lead his adversaries to their demise behind a velvet curtain, Caesar Borgia style. But geez: RTFM! For starters, you don’t invite a Fifth Columnist from the other side into your tent, at least not if you expect to keep your own counsel. Next, you do use your charm, your guile, and your muscle to compel people (particularly opportunists) to get with your program. Neither Obama nor Harry Reid seem to have any idea whatsoever about how to get anything done, except on behalf of King Joseph and Queen Olympia. Step back and ask yourself, what is really going on here? If Obama really believes he’s playing 11-dimensional chess, as Atrios likes to joke, then he’s stalemated in half of the dimensions and checkmated in the rest.

If this useless HCR legislation represents a “responsible” liberal’s idea of the best the Democratic Party can do to help our constitutional democracy start clawing its way out of the hole after 30 years of Reagan Revolution, then you can have it. It makes zero real-world difference if policy wonks see some advantages to passing the current legislation: there’s nothing in it for me or anyone I know. It makes zero difference to me that scuttling this version of HCR would be an embarrassment and a 2010 electoral disaster: they deserve it.

To be more specific, the “responsible” Democratic Party does not deserve the support of progressives as it has “progressively” been undermining our interests since the day Ronald Reagan smirked his way into the Oval Office and tore out the solar panels. I totally advocate that progressives should “pick up our marbles and go home.” They’re *our* marbles! And you can’t succeed without them any more than you can succeed without Lieberman’s marbles. Politics ain't bean bag. So go ahead, “responsible” liberals: call us “cop outs.” Cluck about us from now until the inauguration of President Lieberman and Vice President Snowe. Maybe that will be change you can believe in. But not me.

So then, Josh wrote back:

"[StuporMundi], You might want to adjust your sensor for facetious post titles."

And then, my tit for a tat (and I'm done, because basically he's a mensch):

Maybe my sensor does need adjusting, Josh. But judging by the body of your post, the title doesn't seem facetious at all. Your point appears to be that the ravening masses need to get with the Lieberman/Snowe/Landrieu program because it provides "monumental gains" relative to something or other. And that progressives who want to use Lieberman's tactics to scuttle the legislation are irresponsible "cop-outs." So maybe the title of your post is facetious in your eyes only, but actually an accurate indicator of your intended meaning. (Incidentally, there was something more to my note than the throwaway comment about the title of your post. Maybe there was some substance, maybe not.)

Judging from what you wrote, it seems that in your view this HCR legislation must clear the Senate *not* because it's good for U.S. citizens, but because it would be an electoral disaster for the Democrats to come away empty handed. If that's the case, so be it. If the Republicans are going to continue dictating regressive national policy through people like Lieberman and Snowe (and helpmeets like Rahm Emanuel), then let's allow the GOP to directly control the levers of government so they can be fully held to account when all the chickens come to roost. Today Krugman said, not ironically, that this nation is well on its way to failed-state status. I agree, and am not sanguine about that.

That's all. A bunch of recycled words about my hissy fit in the blogosphere today. This Lieberman/Snowe agenda is pretty much what I've been expecting the Senate to come up with. We've been treated to 6 months of political theater: Garfield Goose on the Little Theater Screen. My political contributions for the foreseeable future will be routed to progressive Democrats challenging apparatchiks like Harry Reid and Claire McCaskill and Max Baucus in primaries.

Update before I'm done: JMM and I had one more exchange but it's not worth reporting because I need to log off and download some more purple booze into my gullet.

The King of the United States; or What We Can Learn About Current Events from The Little Theater Screen and William Shakespeare

When I was growing up in Chicago, the must-see after-school show for kids of a certain age range was Garfield Goose and Friends. See, Gar was the self-appointed King of the United States. His Prime Minister and "mouthpiece" was one Frazier Thomas (not pictured in the photo at the left, which, incidentally is being reproduced in compliance with the Fair Use Doctrine for purposes of education and social commentary). Nobody except Frazier could understand Gar's furious declamations, which consisted of the clattering together of a two-piece fiberglass bill, signifying nothing. Frazier also used his good offices as the official interpreter for all the other mute puppets on the show. By "interpreter" I mean that Frazier basically put words in their mouths because any sound that issued was incomprehensible to the viewer. Frazier Thomas served as the affable, long-suffering Enabler In Chief for a delusional Monarch.

Joe Lieberman, our current King of the United States, is similar to Garfield Goose in that he is operated by an unknown puppeteer with a hand way up his ass, and the sounds he makes are insanely grating on the ear. The corporate media, our current Royal Enablers, are similar to Frazier Thomas in that they presume to tell us exactly what Joe Lieberman's sociopathic performance art piece means by putting words in his mouth for us to hear. Unlike Joe Lieberman, Garfield Goose never did anyone harm when off camera. And unlike our corporate media, Frazier Thomas would often challenge The King's intelligence, motives, and ethics, and the substance of these challenges would be borne out in the end as Gar got his comeuppance about this thing or that. And he'd also show us Clutch Cargo cartoons on The Little Theater Screen.

I am utterly dumbfounded, even as I and so many others have fully expected it, that our constitutional democracy has come to this: the triumph of minority rule as ceded by the representatives of the true majority to the party of know-nothings, bigots, Wall Street, tea-baggers, and no doubt more than a handful of holocaust deniers.

It's pointless to blame Joe Lieberman, a known serpent who is behaving exactly like a serpent. I blame Barack "Othello" Obama and his lieutenant, Rahm "Iago" Emanuel. Evidently Iago's machinations have the Moor of Hawaii utterly unable to lead the nation or his own congressional majority, and so suspicious of his own Mandate For Change that he's getting ready to smother the life out of it like Desdemona in her chambers.

Afterword: This current disgusting healthcare reform episode, plus the concurrent military escalation in "The Stans," compels me to dust off the Petraeus-Lieberman Dream Ticket Theory for 2010. Not my dream, you understand; just my theory. Most Democrats deserve to have their asses handed to them for this travesty, but not mine and yours as well.

What I learned from the Bible this week

I have been working my way through the Book of Genesis, words by God Almighty with pictures by Robert Crumb. It is interesting to read reputable translations, unexpurgated and basically unedited except where Crumb jumped between different translations to restore a "Behold!" or select a more scholarly and precise choice of words than King James's crew provided. I say interesting because Judeo-Christian ideas and references so permeate Western Civilization that many of us don't recognize the full extent. Irrespective of any literal or allegorical truth found in the text, reading this book is to me a very similar experience to reading a good history.

I found the story of Noah and the Ark to be intriguing. This adventure was much more of an ordeal for Noah and his stalwart family than I ever received in Sunday School. The narrative is vivid and it plays out over a time scale that makes the flood and its rescission almost seem plausible. The three gentlemen pictured at upper left are Noah's three sons, Shem, Japheth, and Ham. I immediately noticed that Ham appears to have an anger problem, as if about to exclaim "Get busy, Porkypine, we got a job to do!" as a prelude to a smack in the kisser. And Shem seems to be cooking up a wisecrack, apparently vulnerable to the same lapses of judgment that plagued his distant descendant, Samuel Horwitz.

I claim "discovery" of this charming coincidence in the same way I claim "discovery" of Saturn about 25 years ago in my backyard telescope after returning from the fridge with my third beer, after the earth had revolved a few degrees through the ecliptic. I performed a quick google search to discover that, sadly, comics publisher Dan Nadel had made the same connection back in October, shortly after publication. (Schmuck probably got a free review copy, but I had to save my hard-earned shekels to purchase mine.)

As far as I can tell, this is the only "gag" Crumb embedded into his Old Testament illustrations. Somehow, this works for me and I think it might not offend me even if I had a long-nurtured reverence for the text. When you look at Crumb's drawings of the ark, sealed with hot pitch, it's easy to see these three lunkheads tripping over each other and bonking each other on the noggin with 8-cubit two-by-fours.

Editor's note: fair use is claimed for the image of Shem, Japheth, and Ham, which is reproduced here for purposes of literary critique and education. The art panel is copyright 2009 by R. Crumb; the text is in the public domain as previously furnished by The Lord and His earthly designees.

Analysis of my paralysis

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My "paralysis" is metaphorical, thankfully, but genuine in that very sense. I've simply lost the capacity to comment frequently on an unprecedented upwelling of mass psychosis and psychopathy that is represented to news consumers as "populist vigor." Rising rapidly to the top of my reading list is the Book of Revelations (or whatever its official name is), in which it is shown that the end times will be characterized by a polar reversal in how the damned human race assesses good and evil. I'm starting to think that the Jehovah's Witnesses may be more credible interpreters of reality than The New York Times.

That's not all. I've been deeply affected by the sight of Barack Obama futilely scampering around to co-opt snakes and sworn enemies under his imaginary big tent of collegiality. Maybe Obama really is playing some awesome game of 10-dimensional chess in which he's five moves ahead of all opponents on all planes. But I have no way of guessing, and he's used up all the benefits of my many reasonable doubts. Basically, it appears to me that he's using the Oval Office for approximately the same purposes I feared Hillary Clinton would: to symbolically appease credulous liberals with rhetoric and tokens while nurturing same cabal that began delegating our national sovereignty to a world government administered by banks and industrial corporations 30 years ago. (Sometimes I think the Black Helicopter crowd, in some sense, may have a more accurate worldview than Tom Friedman --- they are just hallucinating about who is pulling the strings while Friedman revels in the glory of the institutions that really are pulling the strings.)

For the past several weeks I've been trying to figure out what to do with this blog. It seems impossible a the moment to write a meaningful opinion essay on public affairs. The data stream is fully choked with disinformation and what Situationists called The Spectacle. I'm leaning toward a radical de-emphasis of direct commentary on The Spectacle since it's about like trying to document all the faces that appear in the clouds when no one else is looking.

Let's see what emerges. Something asymmetric, I hope.

Dumb sayings

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One medium latte, including tip: $4
Closing costs on house refinance: $1650
New 15 foot steel garage door and opener: $2400
New radiator, head gaskets, timing belt, water pump, and thermostat: Pricey....

All pundits suck except for me

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I did my best to avoid listening to vacuous celebrity pundits talk about yesterday's insignificant elections. Everybody's nervous about the economy, they tell us. Well no fucking shit. It's a critical fact about current affairs, but it had nothing to do with any of the nationally reported election results.

The results of the NJ governor's race was accurately predicted by pollsters for weeks: a toss-up between two unpopular politicians. The Democrat lost because the machine didn't bring out the urban vote for him. Urban Obama voters stayed home because Corzine and the NJ Democratic machine have issues --- nothing to do with Obama. There was to be no surprise no matter which way the wind blew.

The results of the Virginia governor's race was accurately predicted by pollsters practically since Day 1. There really hasn't been any significant liberalization trend in Virginia over the past decade, just the trading of some Republican seats for some conservative Democrat seats. Virginia has a southern mentality, and 18 months of racist slander against Obama during and after the 2008 campaign has evidently resonated with many "independent" voters (you know: crackers). A Pat Robertson protege will always win in Virginia if he behaves himself during the campaign. No surprises; no meaningful national momentum shift related to "economic jitters" or Obama indicated by the results.

The only significant result was the NY-23 special election, which wasn't critical or "key" in any conventional strategic way. The significance of it was that the Tea Bag Party, as led by Sarah Palin and Fred Thompson, was successful in marginalizing New England Republicans by backing a right-wing radical. Nothing to do with "economic woes" or Obama, but lots to do with the heart-warming plague that could subdivide the Republicans into two permanent minority parties or else create a small but decisive exodus of New England Republicans to the Democratic side of the divide.

For the old folks out there, the NY-23 special election campaign was roughly analogous to what it would have looked like in about 1970 if George McGovern and Ted Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson III had made a strategic decision to ally themselves with emerging radical left-wing political celebrities like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Bobby Seale... after the disastrous 1968 Democratic National Convention and presidential election. The Democrats in fact were tarred with guilt by association with left-wing radicals in the 1972 campaign, but the connection was spurious. Machine Democrats left George McGovern to the wolves in 1972, but for reasons very different than Radical Chic. Republicans exploited the generational divide in the Democratic Party to persuade the Silent Majority that the "Yippies" were running the show. It worked, and it paved the way for Ronald Reagan to begin his ascent from the slime to claw the Constitution from its hermetic glass display case and drag it in shreds back down into the slime... along with the rest of us.

An interesting question is when New England Republicans will work through their denial and wise up to the idea that there is no place for them in their party. If I were in Obama's political boiler room, I'd be volunteering for the Democratic Northern Strategy project in order to put down a historical bookend for the odious Republican Southern Strategy that defeated conservative Southern Democrats with Republicans or peeled them off to the Republican side. A Northern Strategy would not have to produce dramatic numerical shifts. I think that the best wedge issue for a Northern Strategy would be reproductive rights, i.e., reproductive rights for women.

Editor's note: sorry, no time to edit this mess for readability tonight, but I think the gist is self-evident. I'm now off to read some Fletcher Hanks comic reprints before bedtime. Stardust The Super-Wizard --- yes!

The zombie of Billy Mays

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Back from the dead... For A Limited Time Only!!!

[Photo credit: Beer-D.]

Special note to Anonymous

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Thanks for commenting on my post of 14 May 2009 and providing the JR link. But I must question your grasp of either mathematics or physics. Or the quality of your stereo vision. Jane may have been one-dimensional (I don't know for sure) but she was also very much three-dimensional. By my Simple Country Editor (TM) ciphering method, that makes her fully four-dimensional, putting her in a class with such notables as Heinlein's Valentine Michael Smith and Eugene the Jeep, Popeye's "fourth-dimensional dorg."


Editor's note: fair use is claimed for the accompanying image of Popeye the Sailor and Eugene the Jeep for purposes of education and cultural commentary.

So sorry, honorable readers, for my absence

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Man, I have been bent out of shape for several weeks now and it made me afraid to log on and post here. While I hate to use media-manufactured cliches, the term "perfect storm" does seem to apply in my sad case. Were I now writing to you from the zombie afterlife, another media-propagated cliche --- death by a thousand cuts --- might even be more to the point.

Some causes for my woeful state of affairs include two foolish attempts to have a good-faith conversation with two different certifiable libertarians (borderline psychosis grade); extreme sunlight deprivation due to climate and astronomical conditions; a management change at work with all the associated uncertainties; and a rising tide of "fucking shitwater" (as we like to refer to it around the StuporMundi Thanksgiving banquet table) that passes for public discourse; and a steady stream of reminders about the shortcomings of social life in my little town.

But that was then and this is now. I'll be dipping my little tootsies back into the warm, salty world of Blogspot in no time, and will resume my position in your life as a Polar Star of reasoned discourse and boyish charm before you can say "Jack Robinson."

Trashy little friend of the business world

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As seen on Atrios, Scott Simon's "friend from the business world, Joe Nocera," clearly demonstrates the odious nature of celebrity journalists with some intervention by a blogger named Matt Browner Hamlin. Nocera believes it is right and proper that there should be two different kinds of contracts for each of the nation's two principal social castes (i.e., Masters Of The Universe and All The Rest Of Us Slobs) --- one type that is sacrosanct versus another type that is merely a short-term serving suggestion to trick the rubes.

What a trashy little whore a man must be to write such things for open consideration by the general public. When celebrity journalists and pundits are not held accountable by their publishers for spreading lies or demonstrably ridiculous opinions, they need no credibility in order to earn a giant payday. It makes a guy wonder why the New York Times keeps people like that on salary.

I'll bet Joe Nocera is the type of person who thinks he's too important to wash his hands before returning to work. Absent gloves or hand sanitizer, never shake hands with a trashy little whore of a man. And if he touches you anyway, consider chopping off his hands. Thus Sprach StuporMundi.

Families: our most important resource

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Overheard last Saturday on the second level of Bergner's, Market Place Mall, Champaign, IL. Dramatis personae: a Mother, Upholstered with Fast Food; a Daughter, Inflamed with Desire.

Mother: No!
Daughter: Why? I don't have any!
Mother: Put them down before you break them!
Daughter: Whyyy?!? I don't have any!!!

See, this is what I was talking about [updated]

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We can disagree about the amount of harm this kind of headline does to Obama. But I argue that these kind of paper-cut news bites will cumulatively, subliminally, diminish his credibility and integrity in the public eye. It's not that HuffPost's snotty little headline is totally out of line, because it isn't. But it was entirely predictable and avoidable, just as I said. And he'll be taking it from the right and the left, both, for the duration. Especially as the economy continues taking, which every reputable macroeconomist says it will.

And my greater point stands, too: taking the prize blew a perpetual serving of chum to cowardly but bloodthirsty celebrity pundits who love to sniff at "apparent contradictions" in their betters. Every cycle of bandwidth this kind of petty critique takes up is one less cycle available for covering a real news topic. Unnecessary and regrettable, but not for the reasons the celebrity pundits give.

Update: TPM points to a real zinger by the always beyond-odious Pat Buchanan, who uses a sophomoric trick of rhetoric to launch an exciting new meme: thanks to the Nobel committee, he says, Obama is once again the recipient of affirmative action. That's all on this topic from me for the time being.