I really do not want to do yet another Fiscal Cliff article. Really, I don't...

...but sometimes the world just won't wait for me to feel like blogging about it. Sometimes the world will insist on turning, whether I want to actually see it turning or not. 

So since I really don't want to do this, how do I do this? How do I talk about the latest developments in congress, especially when the story is that there really aren't any developments?

Wait a second...maybe that's it. I'll tell you a story! Are you sitting comfortably? Good...then we'll begin.

Two congressmen, a Republican and a Democrat, stand at the brink of the fiscal cliff. They are tired of dragging the nation behind them toward the precipice, especially when the nation does not want to go. But they've almost brought the nation to the edge and while neither of them want to push everyone else off, they both see the cliff as perhaps the best way to get what they want.

The Democrat says, "Let's not do this." 

The Republican says, "No, let's not. No one wants to go off the cliff. I think we should let the poor people go off first."

Democrat: "The poor people? Why the poor people? They can't survive a fall like that! I think we should push the rich people off first."

Republican: "The rich people? Nonsense! The rich people vote for Republicans! Rich people make stuff. We've got to let the poor people go over the cliff first to cushion the fall of the rich people."

Democrat: "That's nuts! Poor people buy stuff and make rich people rich! Besides, everyone knows that poor people don't have any fat on them...how can they cushion the rich people's fall? We've got to let the softer rich people go first; that will make the poor people's landing much softer."

Republican: "It's all about numbers. There are so many more poor people than rich people, so a pile of them will be that much higher and if they're already down there, then the rich people won't have so far to fall."

Democrat: "That's crap. Everyone knows that rich people are much fatter than poor people, so obviously sending a few rich people over first will make the landing softer for all those poor people who fall on them."

Republican and Democrat, at the same time: "So that's why you letting my constituents go over the cliff? To soften the blow for your constituents? Hey, wait a minute..."

And while the Republican and the Democrat are arguing, everyone falls off the cliff onto the jagged rocks at the bottom.

Well, that's one way to look at it. Actually, that's two ways, mutually exclusive and both of them ending with us going over the cliff. (Or curb. Whatever.)

But that brings up another difficulty: Perception. A lot of this "cliff" stuff is all a matter of perception. Let's go back to those two Congressmen on the edge:

Republican: "Look, you've got to give in. Can't you see that cliff getting closer?"

Democrat: "Of course I see it! That's why you've got to give in; we can't let it get any closer!"

Republican: "I don't think you see it well enough! Here, look into this telescope..."

Democrat: "I don't need your telescope. I can see it just fine. The fiscal cliff is big enough and scary enough without you magnifying the problem."

Republican: "Hey, wait a minute...if I turn this telescope around...yeah, that works! Just look in the big end rather than the small end...the cliff doesn't look nearly as close, or nearly as dangerous! As long as we keep looking in the big end..."

And as they're arguing about how to view the approaching cliff, everybody goes over the cliff.

As of today, talks in Washington have broken down over a Republican scheme to change the way inflation is calculated, which would keep payments for Social Security (among other programs) from having to make such large cost-of-living adjustments.

Are they insane? As a Social Security and food stamp recipient, let me clue you all in on something: "Cost of living" increases are a joke. They don't actually keep up with increases in the cost of living. For example, in the last few years my food stamp amount has gone up very little, while the cost of groceries has gone up a lot, by as much as 100% in many cases. Social Security benefits are expected to go up next year by less than half of the increase ion the cost of living.

Increases in such "entitlements" are already lagging far behind the actual cost of living...and they want to make increases slower? 

But I'm feeding a pet peeve here, and I digress.

Notice that both of the above stories end with all of us going over the cliff. I really believe that that's what will happen. Both sides in this debate are now acting like the cliff is an inevitability, even as they continue to be seen as working hard to avoid it. Despite rhetoric, neither side seems to be making much of an effort; neither is willing to let go of its own hard-core ideals to come to an agreement.

Like I said before, it's a matter of perspective. both sides think they've already gone too far to reach an agreement, and neither seems to be willing to go one step further. They both want the other side to come to them, rather than to make the trip themselves.

I understand this; I myself think that the Democrats (the President in particular) have already given too much and that it would be folly to offer one thing more. I'm sure that hard-core Republicans feel much the same; I'm sure they feel that they've already made too many concessions to the Democrats.

I'm not going to get into who's right and who's wrong. In fact, at this point it doesn't much matter who's right or wrong. Time alone will tell, and we'll all never agree on just what it says.

Governing requires compromise. It's all well and good to stick by your principles, except when doing so keeps anything from getting done. If a compromise is reached, It won't be anything that either side feels that it can live with. That's the nature of such things. We can only hope that, ultimately, it will be something we can all live with.

But time will tell.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

(If it seems to you that I've changed some of my opinions on this "fiscal cliff" thing, you're right. I have.  I see it as somewhat more threatening, more dangerous, than I did before. I still think we can survive it, and I think we may have to, but it would be much better if we could come up with a way to stop short of it.)

Today's latest: Talks on Fiscal crisis Face Setback That Threatens Deal (New York Times)

Fiscal Cliff Solutions: Why Raising Taxes on the Wealthy Is The First Step (policymic)

Fiscal cliff losers: Rich, poor, and everyone else (Tulsa World)

"R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me..."

OK, so you can't respect the man; can you at least show some respect for the office?

I'm going to take a round-about way of getting where I'm going, but don't worry, I'll get there.

As I've said before, I live in a blue state but a red county. Very red as it happens, so most of my friends and acquaintances are Conservatives. No big deal; I can respect other people even when I disagree with them. I would like to think that they can do the same, and by and large they can, but once in a while I get something that makes me wonder.

Today I saw a picture that a friend "shared" on his Facebook "wall" of a Presidential motorcade in Hawaii (Obama, of course) with a car going by, the driver allegedly flipping the President the bird.

Here's the pic in question:



Small, isn't it? So small that I can't tell with any certainty what that driver is actually doing with his hand. He may indeed be flipping off the President, or he may be waving. There's no way to tell. I zoomed in as closely as I could, but the resolution of the image is too low to get more detail.

I looked for the source. First I tried a google search for the caption ("Flipping off the president with his motorcade leaving for the airport in Hawaii") and I found a large number of Conservative blogs and Facebook pages that had reposted it, usually with the additional comment "GIVE THAT MAN A MEDAL!" (Yes, all in caps.) But I couldn't identify the source.

I found the same thing, and same captions, posted at a "Bikers against Obama" page at BikerOrNot.com ("The Social Network for Bikers!") but, again, no source was given.

I was able to identify one legitimate news story that used the picture, without the anti-Obama captions or the pointy-thing indicating the alleged middle finger, in The Daily Mail (UK) online. There was no mention in the story or the photo captions of anyone flipping off the President. You'd think that if it had happened, and that the paper ran a story using the picture, there'd be some mention. But not a word. (And, as it happens, the article in The Daily Mail wasn't pro-Obama at all. Just the opposite, in fact.)

Here's the pic, as it ran in The Daily Mail story:



No improvement in resolution; I still can't say what that guy is doing with his hand.

I did note that the photo is credited to the European Pressphoto Agency but could find nothing middle-finger-related on their site, either.

(The only news story I could find for "giving Obama the finger" was a piece in The Bakersfield Californian from early October, and even then no one was actually given the finger.)

OK, enough about the damn photo. It isn't what I wanted to talk about anyway.

I want to talk about respect. Respect that whoever first created this nonsense out of something that doesn't appear to have actually happened (if you have any actual information that it did, please post it in a reply) did not show to the President. Respect that everyone who "shared" that picture (and I include my conservative friend in this) did not show to the President. Respect that the President is due, no matter what you think of him, simply because he's the President.

And he is the President.

I remember when we had eight years of Regan and four years of Bush Sr. (and my sincerest get-well-soon wishes to him) when anyone who made such comments about the Republican President was damn near ostracized. I remember after 9-11 when criticism of Bush II was met with far sterner measures. And I don't remember any of these Republicans receiving the same amount of open hostility and disrespect as Jimmy Carter received. Nowhere near as much as as Bill clinton received. And as for Barack Obama...well, the lid has been blown off.

Just yesterday I saw a news story about some guy who had put an Obama-statue in his front yard. His smiling Obama was depicted as eating a watermelon. He was interviewed; he saw nothing wrong with the statue, saw nothing racist in it, and had no plans to take it down any tome soon.

Do a Google search on "hate obama" and you'll be amazed, and I hope disgusted, by what you find. I came across the "I hate Obama" web site, which is about as disrespectful as you'd imagine to be, and then some (although, to be fair, this site is nearly as anti-Demodcrat is it is anti-Obama).

The web is covered in Obama hate sites. Page titles like "I hate Obama" and "Why I Hate Obama" and "Why I still Hate Obama" are among the more printable ones, even if they lack in imagination. There are sites selling anti-Obama T-shirts and posters and coffee mugs and what-have-you. There are sites that are dedicated to anti-Obama jokes.

There are hundreds (if not thousands) of blogs and forums and pages that mostly repeat whatever anyone comes up with that's both anti-Obama and remotely clever (most of which they repeat verbatim, without doing even the most basic fact-checking).

One hate-Obama site stands out from all the others: "Nigger Barack Hussein Obama - Niggermania Forum," which proudly declares itself to be the home for "Nigger Jokes and Racist Humor." This is a collection of "humor" so vile that even I won't repeat any of it.

(Yes, I know it's not "PC" to use the N-word, but I don't think Obama's more vehement detractors have heard of "PC.")

(Democrats, of course aren't immune to this kind of thing; I'll admit that I've indulged in a bit of it myself. I remember "Jail to the chief!" being a common slogan on the Left during the Nixon administration, for example, and I'm sure I said that a few times. I remember the "Too Stupid to be President" site that flourished under Bush II, and I know I visited it a time or two. Well, it wasn't right then (I wasn't right then), and it's not right now.)

I can't ask you to express your love of Obama if you feel nothing but contempt for the man. But has it occurred to you that when you express this contempt, you don't appear to care much if you are contemptuous of the Presidency of the United States?

Like it or not, Barack Obama is the President. You may not like that fact, just as I never liked the fact that George W. Bush was the President. But Bush was the President, whether I liked it or not, and I had to accept that. Conservatives insisted that I should, and they were right about that. But most of them have changed their opinion lately.

OK, so you can't respect the man; can you at least show some respect for the office?

I think it was the Nixon years that did it, that made us a nation of people who had lost respect not just for our leaders but for the position of leadership as well. I think that Nixon himself earned a loss of respect; nevertheless, every President since has had to pay for Nixon's errors. Under Nixon, contempt for the office itself came to eclipse contempt for the man, and the office has never recovered. In fact, contempt for the office has grown steadily over the years. We have had Presidents who have earned our respect, lost our respect, gained our respect, never had our respect, but does anyone think of respecting the office anymore?

I remember an editorial by Andy Rooney, back during the Nixon presidency. Andy was at someone's home when he noticed a framed picture of Nixon on the wall. (This was back during Watergate, when the nation was divided into pro-Nixon and anti-Nixon camps.) Andy indicated the picture and said, "I noticed your picture of President Nixon. I see you support him."

"No," the man replied, "that's a picture of the President of the United States. I support him."

But people don't seem to think that way anymore.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

(I cited a number of sites on the web that were anti-Obama. Nastily anti-Obama. Offensively anti-Obama. You won't find links to them here; do your own research if you must but I'm not going to help you any more than I have.)

Not at all a pro-Obama link, but it illustrates the fact that the "finger" story is bogus: All the president's men: Obama given a 20-MAN motorcade... (The Daily Mail, UK)

The only reference I could find for giving Obama a one-finger salute: Some protest but most at Meadows welcome Obama (The Bakersfield Californian, 10-08-12)

For an interesting view from abroad: Why do they hate Obama? (The Times of India)

The article you'll never see

Sometimes I amaze myself. But most of the time I just bore myself silly.

Tonight I sat at my computer intending to write an article. Not this article, obviously, but an article. I had in mind to do a follow-up on last week's article, Spam eggs bacon and spam, and I was all prepared. I had a title: Spam Part II: The Sequel (redux). I had research material; I had saved all my spam emails for a week. I had a few clever lines all ready to interject into the text at the proper moment. I was ready.

I started writing. And very quickly (well, about a page into it) three things became apparent:

1. This was going to me excessively long.

2. This was going to be mind-numbingly tedious.

3. I would rather replace my insulin syringes with railroad spikes than finish the dreadful thing.

So I stopped.

Which left me with nothing to write tonight. Which brings up a question: Why do I feel I need to write something every damn night? Well, I don't write every night, but I feel guilty when I take the weekend off from blogging. Why? Couldn't I just let this go until the new year? I'm mostly doing this for my own entertainment, so why do I feel I need to be entertaining?

Well, I don't know why, I only know that I do.

So here I sit, writing an article about why I'm not writing an article. (Does this seem contradictory to you?) Obviously, at this point I'm just writing for the sake of writing, writing without point, without direction, without really understanding what or why I'm writing. When I could be writing other things...

I could always write another article about my old articles, why some of them were wrong or some of them were unfinished, but honestly I'm not in the mood to put on my trudging boots and go trudging through my literary past. Besides, my trudging boots don't fit right since I lost all those toes.

I could always write another long article about what I'm reading these days, except that I can no longer afford to buy books so I'm reading old ones and I've already blogged about them.

I could always tune in to MSNBC and see if anything infuriates me enough to write something about it, but frankly I'm not feeling all that political tonight.

There's always the Fiscal Cliff; that's always good for a few paragraphs. But I'm tired of the Fiscal Cliff. Even though there's always something new to write about it, frankly I'm tired of writing about it. I don't think I'll tackle that one again until after the first of the year, when we'll either have pulled up short of the precipice or gone over it. I'm betting on the latter.

I could always write about John Boehner doing something stupid; John Boehner is always doing something stupid and it's always fun to tell people how stupid what he's done is. Fun, perhaps, but it's getting a bit old. If he would only do something smart...now that would make an article.

I could always find fault in something Obama has done; it seems that he's always finding a way of disappointing me and I always feel compelled to point that out to everyone, as if to say "See? I was WRONG!" but I'm really in no mood to stand in front of my shortcomings (or his) and wave a red flag so that everyone notices them.

Or I could just sit in front of my computer and hope that inspiration strikes me. Although, frankly, there's about as much chance of me being struck by an idea in my living room as there is of me being hit by a locomotive in my living room.

And anyway, you'd never get a locomotive up that hill.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Spam, egg, sausage, and spam...

Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam!
Lovely Spam! Wonderful Spam!

If you haven't already guessed, I'm going to talk about spam.

No, not that stuff from the grocery store made of something almost (but not quite) totally unlike meat. I'm talking about the stuff that clogs up your email inbox, not your arteries.

And like most of you, I get a lot of it. Ads for cheap Rolex watches. Pleas from African dictators to assist them in their money laundering. Offers for cheap Viagra from Canadian pharmacies. Promises of wondrous growth from a miracle penis-enhancement formula. Emails from women I've never heard of who allegedly want to date me. Emails from men I've never heard of who allegedly want to date me.

Some are more creative. Like the post from an allegedly long-lost "friend" that you've never heard of, who wants something. Just what they want varies, but it usually involves money. Yours.

Of course, not all begging emails are spam. (I just deleted several paragraphs excusing my own begging. Yes, I am aware of how pathetic I appear.)

And they're getting more creative by the day. I recently got spammed on my cell phone (yes, I have one now). I received a text message from someone named Patrick that said, "Hello, sweetness!" That was it. I suppose it says something about me that I immediately assumed this was spam, but there were a couple of red flags. First, I don't know many Patricks and none in that area code (Hawaii, I think). Second, I'm not gay. Third, anyone who would call me "sweetness" does NOT know me.

Not surprisingly, most spam emails are of a sexual nature. They either offer you sex, or a way to find sex, or a pill or something to make sex better, or pictures of other people having sex (who appear to be enjoying it far more than you enjoy looking at it). This includes dating services, which will promise to find you either Mr./Ms. Right or Mr./Ms. Right Now. It also includes the mail-order-bride industry (is there a mail-order-husband industry?).

(I've never been tempted to try the mail order route; I just hate it when I order something in the mail, but when I get it it isn't what I ordered or it doesn't work...)

I must admit, I have a secret respect for the emails that use a technological trick get you. There's always some virus or other that replicates itself by reading your inbox (or Facebook account or whatever) and sending a message to whoever it finds there, usually containing a masquerading bit of code that will totally screw up your computer. As quickly as the virus-checking software gets a handle on one of these, it mutates into a form they can't defeat. Well, that's what viruses do...

Occasionally, spam gets political. There are always causes that need your support, or candidate that need your support. There are petitions that need to be signed or legislation that needs to be passed/defeated, with your help of course. And most of them want money; they'll offer to feed you for a "donation" of several hundred dollars. Often a thousand dollars or more; I can't imagine spending that much on dinner without at least getting laid at the end of it (though I suppose you would get royally screwed).

Then, of course, there's that guy who used to flood the Internet with email searching for the missing components of his time travel device. I always thought this was a joke, until a few years ago when I heard this guy was actually serious! Deranged, but serious. Apparently he had spent a fortune on junk from people who claimed that they had the missing components (but he would always need something else to make it work). I had always assumed that these posts were bogus, but apparently not; but they were an invitation for others to scam him. This makes then unique among spam, being an invitation to rob someone rather than an invitation to be robbed.

(I must admit that I thought about selling him an old vacuum cleaner and calling it a time displacement vortex generator, that would work if he had a temporal dissonance reduction coil...)

I miss that guy.

There is another class of spam, that I wouldn't even call spam; the emails that want you to give something to someone else. Save the children, save the whales, save the puppies, save the planet...most of these are legitimate causes that you feel bad about deleting unread. (And you should feel bad about deleting them unread.) Most of them want donations. Most of them need donations. Please, do them the courtesy of reading their email, even if you don't donate.

Some few of these, however, are bogus or at least massively dishonest. The hard part is telling one from the other. This is tricky, and I can offer you no advice. (I am spared this dilemma since I can't afford to help myself, let alone anyone else.)

Spam is something that we all complain about but all find ways to live with. We've all gripped about it, we've all deleted it, we've all been annoyed by it, we've all said something should be done but we can't think what so we endure it.  Just like the "junk mail" that clogs up the postal system, it's part of our lives now and is fading into the background noise of an internet that will continue to become what it will become, rather than what we wish it to be. I am not saying that we shouldn't complain, shouldn't try to change the Internet for the better (Hell, that's what I'm doing right now!), but we each have to realize that the Internet is bigger than we are and individual effort against it is bound to end in tears.

But together, now...

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

The Infamous Monty Python Spam Skit! (detritus.org)

(There are a bunch of anti-spam sites on the 'net but I'm too lazy to look for them; do your own research tonight.)

No vote of no confidence

...and in this case, "no vote " means that there was no vote.

I wasn't going to get political tonight. As most of you know, I am currently going through a crisis and I didn't want to get serious. I was halfway through a lightweight piece on something trivial. Then Congress melted down.

It happened just a couple of hours ago., and I didn't feel that I could (or should) ignore it. The Republicans in the House have given up trying to undermine Obama for the day and gone home. Remember, this was the day that House Speaker John Boehner said that the House was going to pass their "Plan B" plan to avoid the fiscal cliff; it didn't pass. It didn't even get a vote.

Here's what happened.

A couple of days ago, Obama made an offer ro Boehner and the Republicans. It was a generous offer. Overly generous to my thinking, and I hope he backs away from it; nevertheless, Boehner rejected it. Then Boehner pulled a stunt: He put forward his "Plan B" bill which he said would avoid the Cliff. It would have raised taxes for Americans making over $1 million. (The President originally asked for higher taxes on those earning over $250 K but later backed off to $400 K; I hope he backs off from that offer.)

(Plan B also would have ended the tax breaks in Obama's 2009 stimulus, including earned-income and child tax credits for lower income families. It would also have ended the $2,500 American Opportunity Tax Credit which is helping 11 million families send their children to college.)

Boehner managed to get the blessing of tax cut guru Grover Norquist, that Conservative non-entity that refuses to believe he's a non-entity. Norquist said that since Boehner's plan didn't include a tax hike (and he had to go through a few logic back-flips to justify that bit of nonsense) then anyone who voted for Boehner's plan wouldn't be breaking their pledge to Norquist not to raise taxes, ever.

Now, Boehner didn't believe that his plan would get through the Democratic-controled Senate, but he really believed it would get through the House. He planed to pass his bill and then dare the President and the Democrats not to pass something, something that the Republicans could vote for without tears.

Boehner expected to put his bill before the House for a vote today. There was no vote. Boehner spent all day trying to get the votes for his plan, and failing. When it was obvious that a vote wasn't going to happen, he pulled his bill and recessed the House. Plan B was DOA.

Boehner's problem was with the Conservative wing of the Republican Party. These are the people who automatically reject anything that originates from Barack Obama, anything which includes a tax increase for anyone (even millionaires who don't need tax breaks). The right-wing members of the House couldn't support this bill because it wasn't hard-line-against-Obama enough, and coupled with Democrats (who weren't going to support a bill designed to ultimately embarrass them) the bill was as good as dead. Without Conservative support (or at least cooperation) Boehner's "Plan B" didn't stand a chance.

With Congress out until after Christmas, and with just a few working days available between Christmas and New Year, it doesn't look like we'll be stopping short of that Fiscal Cliff we've all been talking about.

The tragedy is that this didn't have to happen. If Obama's last offer had been brought up for a vote, it had a fair chance of passing the house. Obama's offer was a serious offer; as I said, I think Obama was giving too much away but that's the nature of compromise. Boehner's counter-offer was never intended as an actual offer; the idea was to pass it in the House, have the Senate reject it and then accuse the Democrats of not bargaining in good faith. It didn't matter to the Republicans that their proposal couldn't get by the Senate...they never planned for it to. They just wanted to shame the Democrats.

They shamed themselves, and they shamed John Boehner. Boehner is looking even less like a leader, and people are asking if he can survive as Speaker. I think he can, but it might be better for him not to. Certainly, a stronger leader might not have brought about this fiasco. A better leader might have realized that Obama's offer was about all he was going to get, and accepted it (or at least have welcomed it as a serious offer and a possible bases for compromise).

No vote on John Boehner's plan is a serious "no confidence" vote for John Boehner.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Boehner's Plan B fiscal cliff bill pulled amid dissension in GOP caucus (CNN)

A Closer Look At Boehner's Plan B: Tax Hikes For Parents And Workers (Forbes)

Beohner Abruptly Scraps 'Plan B' Vote in Setback (CNBC)

John Boehner 'Plan B' Wins Grover Norquist Support, But GOP Remains A Chorus Of Dissapproval (Huffington Post)

The Meme Hunter (UPDATED 7-26-2014)

UPDATE 7-26-2014: Just to update this a bit, since it's been a year and a half since I wrote this... In the last year or so, I have gone a bit insane with the memes. I decided that, since I wasn't going to win this war, to give up and embrace the thing I most dreaded, the meme. But I can't say I ever learned to love them, ever though I have written nearly two hundred original thoughts and posted theme as memes, as well as over a thousand (I have no idea how many, really, but over a thousand) quotes from various people, everyone from Che to Hitler. 

Obviously, I don't feel the same about the things as  did when I wrote this article. My complaints about them are still the same, I just deal with them differently. Take my comment about memes being "...low on the creativity scale." I dealt with this by starting to write my own from scratch. If I have a political (or funny) thought these days, I am more likely to do a meme of it rather than a blog post. This has the benefit of forcing me to be concise, and not to type continually in a pathetic effort to preserve my own brand of drivel for something like posterity, foisting my excessive verbiage upon an unsuspecting world. (See what I did there?) 

I have not done so out of narcissism; a narcissist would have made more (or even some) effort to promote himself and I have gone out of my way to keep this low-key. But even that may change; I am currently contemplating posting some of my memes, the original ones anyway, on a web page. I may not...but then again, I might.

The point I am trying to make is that my attitude toward memes has changed. Radically, even. Even so, my criticisms of memes still stand; they tend to be far too long on rhetoric and far too short on verifiable facts, ills that could be prevented by a bit of fact-checking on that Internet thing you love so well. 

I'm going to repeat my last paragraph from  the article: 

"Look, use Google to search the web before you start spreading false information. At the very least, use Wikipedia (it's not perfect, but it's there and it's free and it's pretty factual). Or you can try the fact-checking at Snopes (a fact-checking site) if you've a mind. You've got so many resources on the Internet it's a shame if you just use them to rerererererererepost shit that someone else just made up because it sounded like something a lot of people would agree with."

And now that I've said all that, here's the original article from December of 2012. Please read it as an historical snapshot of the way I felt then, and feel no longer.

Just doing a bit of fact-checking...

A meme, according to Webster's, is "an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture." They're also those picture-and-caption graphics everybody reposts, rereposts and rerereposts to Facebook instead of coming up with something original to say. This from the mentality that gave us a "like" button because typing "I like that!" takes so damned much time.

As you may have already guessed, I hate memes.

Well, I don't hate all memes. Not even most of them. Most of them, in fact, are funny and I don't even mind hitting that annoying "like" thingy every time I come across one. But they're not all funny. A lot of them are political, and there appear to be a bunch of people on both sides of the fence staying up late thinking up new memes for you to rerererepost.

The problem is that the people who write (or should I say create, even when they're low on any creativity scale) these things often don't bother to take the time to fact-check them.

I complain about this a lot. (I am entitled to complain; I've had my Curmudgeon's license since I was fifty) I don't expect my complaining to accomplish anything, however, even though it makes me feel a bit better about being so powerless. Sometimes, though, it's good to be a curmudgeon.

Like now, for example. Let me explain:

Tonight I received a couple of memes from a Conservative friend who continually rerererereposts such stuff for my edification. Well, that's OK, I really don't mind reading the Conservative memes from him any more that I mind the Progressive memes from another friend, and of course neither of them is alone in this rererererereposting. I get a lot of this stuff.

But these were noteworthy because the obviously hadn't been fact-checked; perhaps the "writer" didn't think his readership was up to the challenge.

Do not throw down a challenge to me if you don't want me to pick it up.

1. Meme the First

I don't post these things, but I'm going to post these for illustrative purposes. Since the "author" obviously intended them to be rerererererereposted, I feel I am on solid legal ground in doing so.


Interesting point...but something rang false about it. So I spent all of two minutes looking up the Oklahoma City bombing on Wikipedia, and a couple of more minutes reading that article, then I posted this:

"Current fertilizers are made with ammonium sulphate rather than pure ammonium nitrate, to make them far less explosive. And anyone now buying large amounts of fertilizer (he bought a hell of a lot of it, more than a farmer was likely to need) would send up red flags that are unlikely to be ignored. But you can still buy fertilizer...it's just harder to make a bomb of it and if you buy enough to make a bomb expect the feds to take a good look at you."

I also posted a link to the Wikipedia page in question. Just call me Mr. Helpful. (It's at the bottom of this article, if you want to read it.)

2. Meme the Second

This one wasn't any better in the factuality department.


Once again, this sounded flawed to me. I remembered that story, and I remembered it differently. Ever in pursuit of truth, I aimed my trusty browser at Google and once again the hunt was on. For two minutes. A couple of minutes to read, and I posted this:

"Interestingly, this guy had shot two students dead and left seven others injured (and had stabbed his mother, dead), and was leaving when Joel Myrick stopped him. Incidentally, I heard this story in the mainstream media. But you can read it on Wikipedia."

And, of course, I posted a link. (It's also at the bottom of this article.)

(I'll elaborate further. The killer's name was Luke Woodham and he had finished killing everyone he was going to kill at Pearl River school, and was in the process of going away when Joel Myrick fetched his gun and halted the killer. Myrick's having a gun saved no lives at Pearl River; indeed, if a gunfight had broken out the body count could have been much higher. You could argue that Myrick's actions prevented Woodham from going somewhere else and killing again, but without any evidence that Woodham was going to go elsewhere to kill again your argument would be entirely speculative. Anyway, Myrick could always have tried being a little less confrontational and whipping out his cell phone and calling 911. But what if he didn't have a cell phone, you ask? Well, a loud voice yelling "I NEED A CELL PHONE! IT'S AN EMERGENCY!" would have worked nearly as well; everyone has them these days, apparently.)

Conclusion

I did not invent fact-checking; I have no copyright on the process. Anyone can do it. It takes very little time. Far less time, in fact than it toke to compost the two replies I've cited above. It's so simple that I can't think why no one bothers.

Look, use Google to search the web before you start spreading false information. At the very least, use Wikipedia (it's not perfect, but it's there and it's free and it's pretty factual). Or you can try the fact-checking at Snopes (a fact-checking site) if you've a mind. You've got so many resources on the Internet it's a shame if you just use them to rerererererererepost shit that someone else just made up because it sounded like something a lot of people would agree with.

Do you agree? Like and Share if you do! (I am laughing my evil laugh evilly...)

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Meme in Wikipedia

Oklahoma City bombing in Wikipedia

Pearl High School shooting in Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Google

Snopes

The Marching Morons of Sandy Hook

All I can say about Sandy Hook is that it was a horrible tragedy. Beyond that, everything else is just noise.

I'm not going to try to analyze the events of that day. I am not going to try to give you an explanation. I'm not sure there is an explanation. That hasn't stoped others from putting forward their pet theories, however. One such is Mike Huckabee. Among the others are the gun-control nuts, and I mean both the pro-gun and anti-gun nuts.

1. I Hate Huckabee

Unfortunately, this kind of tragedy brings out the morons. Chief among the morons flocking to this tragedy is former Presidential wannabe Mike Huckabee. Appearing on Fox News this past Friday, he said:

"We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"

Really, Mike? You blame a lack of religion in the schools for a tragedy that is truly senseless? A madman who had no business being in the school (and no connection with the school or, as far as we know, anyone in it) walks in and opens fire, killing twenty small children and seven adults, and you think it's because the children weren't praying hard enough? This happened because God wasn't there?

Look, I don't believe in God. I make no secret about that. If I did believe, I think I would be horrified by Huckabee's assertion that God had been "systematically removed" from that school.

I'm a bit confused by Huckabee's theology. I can remember back to Sunday School, where I was taught that God is everywhere. Is that not the case, Mike? Was my Sunday School wrong? Are there truly places that are "god forsaken?" Places where evil just happens, and if you're caught by it there its just your hard luck?

I don't see evidence of God everywhere (or anywhere). But if I did, I'd see Him at Sandy Hook. You see, there was a teacher there named Vicki Soto, who tried to shield her students from the gunfire. She gave her own life for this. Mike Huckabee may not see God there, and being an Atheist I don't either, but if I did believe in God I'd definitely see Him in this. I would definitely see His hand in the actions of Vicki Soto. Her act of self-sacrifice in the face of evil was truly God-like.

If I believed in God, I would dare you to tell me that the horrible, bloody disaster that happened at Sandy Hook happened because God wasn't looking out for those children because they weren't in a place favored by Him. I'd tell you that there was no such place.

2. The Great Gun Debate, renewed

The echos of the killer's gunfire had hardly faded before this tragedy was being used by both sides of the ongoing gun control debate to try to advance their separate causes. The same old arguments were trotted out; the pro-gun forces calling for teachers to be armed and the anti-gun forces calling for the population to be disarmed. Neither point of view directly applies to this situation, but that hasn't stopped the arguments.

Actually, I'm not going to say much about this since I said my peace four years ago (A well regulated Second Amendment, 11-8-2008) and my opinions haven't changed much since then. Neither have Barack Obama's.

The President is going to be right in the middle of the current debate. It's likely that he'll be accused of "flip-floping" on gun rights and ownership, since he'll have to respond to the current calls for more and stronger gun legislation. Mostly, such accusations will come from those who have believed all along that he was secretly anti-gun. Actually, as far as I can see his position hasn't changed: he's always been pro-hunting weapons and even pro-handgun, but he's always had a problem with "assault weapons." I said so four years ago:

"Obama has come out in support of an individual's right to bear arms, be they hunting weapons or handguns for personal defense. He's somewhat less supportive of military style rifles, what are often erroneously called 'assault weapons'...." (A well regulated Second Amendment)

In that article, I explained that I didn't think we needed military weapons in private (civilian) hands, and why. I said that once upon a time we felt we had a right to rise up against tyranny, and even if we still have that right from a practical standpoint it's impossible:

"The idea that we the people could rise up in opposition to the government wasn’t a reasonable one. Isn’t a reasonable one. We might have rifles and ammunition but we the people were always way short on tanks, artillery, fighter jets, stealth bombers, destroyers, aircraft carriers, ant-ballistic missiles and stuff like that....Makes the possession of an 'assault rifle' seem kind of pointless."

It's still rather pointless; more so, since truly military hardware has become so much more specialized and "high tech" in the four years since I last addressed this issue.

Conclusion

Certain things can be reliably predicted in the aftermath of something like Sandy Hook. Idiots will appear and will say idiotic things. Old issues will get dusted off and debated anew. Pundits will go on-line and either agree with one side or the other or complain that nothing ever really changes in the cloud of misery that something like Sandy Hook kicks up. The best that we can hope for is that whatever new legislation, new attitudes, and/or new ways of relating to each other and to the violence we live amidst, they won't be any harder to live with than what we have now.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Sandy Hook massacre: New details, but few answers (Washington Post)

Mike Huckabee: Newton Shooting No Surprise, We've 'Systematically Removed God' From Schools (Huffington Post, 12-14-2012)

Sandy Hook First Grade Teacher Victoria Soto Remembered as Hero (CBS New York)

Gun Control Laws: After Sandy Hook, Poll Finds Bump In Support For Greater Restrictions (Huffington Post)

Sandy Hook Massacre Changes Gun Control Conversations (NPR)

"Everybody do the Michigan Rag..."

They want your rights. And they've already taken them.

First the Republicans in the state legislature used their very temporary conservative majority to pass (against the majority of the public's will, mind you) controversial "right to work" legislation that strips unions of much of their power. Now, you may think that stripping unions of their power isn't such a bad thing; I know a few conservatives who believe precisely that. I'm not going to argue that here. My point is that they did it against the public's will. That's important; the people who voted the staunch Conservatives out of power have had to suffer a last-minute power grab by the staunch conservatives, who have passed a raft of legislation that the newly elected legislature, who will have a mandate to govern, will be powerless to act against. So much for mandates.

The "right to work" thing was bad enough, but the bastards didn't stop there. Read what I wrote about all this yesterday (I seem to be drifting a bit... 12-13-2012). I spoke of "...backward fools with outdated opinions (who) still hold much, perhaps even most, of the power." I then went on:

"You cannot have failed to notice that there is an actual crisis of democracy going on there (in Lansing), where the Republicans have pushed through, at lightning speed, a series of anti-union measures and are poised to do the same with anti-abortion and anti-gay measures; a legislative bulldozing of civil liberties that they're undertaking now because they can now. In a couple of weeks, when the new more Democratic legislature sits, they won't have the votes for unpopular causes near and dear to the Conservative heart."

And it still wasn't enough for the Conservatives.

There's an unpopular law in Michigan, a law which allows the Governor to actually override the will of the people, to dissolve local elected governmental bodies and replace public officials, including mayors, with a Governor-appointed "Emergency Manager" who has full power to cancel contracts, sell off public property, and alter any agreements with police and fire departments (even to dismantle them). This "Emergency Manager," not being an elected official, is not answerable in any way to the people he/she has power over. In short, a virtual dictator answerable only to the Governor. Democracy be damned.

You may have thought that was all settled; you may remember that we voted on whether we wanted to keep the Emergency Manager law, and we the people clearly said "No!" You may remember it that way...and indeed that's the way it happened.

But the governor and the Conservative wing of the Republican Party like this law, and don't like that we voted to scrap it. So they've brought it back. Today they've passed a bill restoring the hated Emergency Manager's tyrannical powers. They did this absolutely against the public will. They did this against out expressed wishes. They have taken our democratic right to have a legislative say away from us. And they have used legislative chicanery to make it impossible for the new legislature to change this new law, impossible for the people to act against it.

(What I mean is this, and it's important to remember: These new laws have been "fast-tracked" through the legislative process, with no opportunity for public hearings; that could be the basis of future legal challenges to these bills. Also, a provision in these bills prevents any possibility of a challenge through a voter referendum; remember, it was just such a referendum that did for the old Emergency Manager law.)

But I have to be honest; the bill provides several options for cash-strapped communities other than the dreaded Emergency Manager. Once a "financial emergency" is declared (by the Governor) such communities (or schools) can:

1. Sign a consent agreement, where they consent to have the state tell them how to conduct their local affairs.

2. Enter into mediation, and that part seems to be a bit undefined.

3. Go into Chapter 9 bankruptcy.

4. Accept an Emergency Manager who will have much the same dictatorial power as he/she would under the old, rejected law.

Doesn't seem like much of a choice to me.

You may have thought that you voted on this, that you said that these "Emercency Managers" had to go, and you'd be right...but it doesn't matter now. Your rights have been taken away from you. What I cannot abide is that the very people charged with preserving, protecting, and enacting the principles of Democracy have instead worked to negate them.

If I sound like I'm as mad as hell about this, it's probably because I'm as mad as hell about this. But I'm just a voter...apparently, I don't matter in Michigan.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Despite Protests, Michigan Is A Right-To-Work State (NPR, 12-12-2012)

Amid protests, Michigan legislature passes 'right-to-work' bills (Los Angeles Times, 12-11-2012)

What's a consent agreement? Do you really want to know? (Michigan Radio, WUOM Ann Arbor/Detroit)

Michigan House passes new emergency manager bill and

Michigan emergency manager bill heads to Gov. Rick Snyder's desk (Detroit Free Press, 12-12-2012)

I seem to be drifting a bit...

This is a wall. This is me banging my head against it. Any questions?

I am less driven to blog these days.

I'm not sure why this is. Perhaps with the election over I no longer feel the need to be political. Maybe I feel that, with Obama safely re-elected, I can relax.

Fat chance of that. If I ever doubted the need to keep fighting what I see as the good fight, I don't doubt it now. I feel that need acutely.

Look at Washington, where the Right continues to play its obstructionist games despite the ever-more-apparent fact that the population doesn't want that to happen. Where the Right continues to try to take the voter out of the equation, making it harder and harder for people who don't look (and vote) like them to exercise their right to participate in their nation. Where backward fools with outdated opinions still hold much, perhaps even most, of the power.

For that matter, look closer to home, to the state capitol (Michigan's state capitol, that is) in Lansing. You cannot have failed to notice that there is an actual crisis of democracy going on there, where the Republicans have pushed through, at lightening speed, a series of anti-union measures and are poised to do the same with anti-abortion and anti-gay measures; a legislative bulldozing of civil liberties that they're undertaking now because they can now. In a couple of weeks, when the new more Democratic legislature sits, they won't have the votes for unpopular causes near and dear to the Conservative heart.  It's now or never. I would have preferred never, but...

So it can't be that I'm not feeling political; after all, I just typed that last paragraph without interruption off the top of my head. Apparently, I still feel something.

Maybe I put my finger on it when I typed "Lansing." Maybe the debate over the Republican legislative lame-duck juggernaut has depressed me to the point that I just can't bring myself to blog about it. Maybe I'm feeling powerless to resist this fresh right-wing onslaught. Maybe I don't feel that there's much point in resisting such forces, when they are so adept at forcing their political will on the people of Michigan, who (by a clear majority) don't agree with them.

Well, let's talk about that for a bit. The voters of Michigan had their say in the election, and the Democratic Party did better than the Right expected. With a raft of new Democrats coming into the Michigan legislature, they certainly wouldn't have the votes to push through their more extreme pet laws. So they're doing it in the lame-duck session, during those last few weeks when they'll be able to get such measures through to the Governor's desk. Where, despite the positions he has stated for the last few years, he has been all too quick to sign them.

Worse, and cleverly, they have included budget considerations that, according to Michigan's Constitution, cannot be challenged by referendum. In other words, the people of Michigan don't have a say. The people, instead of having a legislature that enforces the people's will, are instead saddled with a legislature that forces its will on the people. The legislature does not have any kind of consensus to act this way...but they're doing it, for no better reason than that they can.

Perhaps that's what's getting me down; the apparent futility of expressing political opinions in a system where my opinions don't matter. Perhaps I am tired of banging my head against that wall. Perhaps I am finally seeing the futility of trying to be heard while shouting into the wind.

Well, no, I never cared much about that. I persist in writing this blog even though not many people read it. I continue to express my opinions even if they're ignored. I like my opinions, and don't much care if anyone else does. As it happens, I started doing this blog to prove to myself that I could still write after several strokes. Even though the jury's still out on that, I keep writing to make myself feel better.

Obviously, it works; I feel much better now than I did when I sat down at my keyboard.

I think that is the point I'm trying to reach, the answer I'm looking for tonight, the thing I need to do now...to keep writing as long as it still works. Even if democracy doesn't.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Now what the hell was I going to say?

What do you do when your train of thought gets derailed?

I had something in mind to write tonight. I even had a good start on writing it. But then an old friend of my brother's dropped by, drunk, and after an hour or so of dealing with a drunk I could not for the life of me remember where the hell I was going with that article. This article.

This sort of thing happens from time to time.

But I did write an opening, and I hate to waste it. I started by telling an old joke; as I recall it was the only clean one I knew that made whatever point I was trying to make, but what the hell was that point? I haven't a clue.

Still, why waste a good bad joke? Here it is:

There's an old joke:

A cop is walking down the street in New York when he sees a filthy homeless guy standing alone in the street, whistling The Star Spangled Banner. After a few verses, the homeless guy starts jumping up and down saying "Rutabaga! Rutabaga! Rutabaga!" as he frisks himself, then he starts singing I Enjoy Being a Girl as he traces strange symbols in the air with his finger. Then he stands on his head and recites Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Then he starts whistling The Star Spangled Banner again, and repeats the whole bizarre display.

The cop goes over to the homeless guy and asks, "What the hell are you doing?"

"A secret mystical dance" the homeless guy responds. "It keeps elephants away."

"Elephants?" the cop asks. "There aren't any elephants within a thousand miles of New York!"

The homeless guy smiles knowingly and says, "You see how well it works?"

Trust me, this all has something to do with what's been happening in Lansing, Michigan. But I'll get back to that; first, some background.

The question is, what background? What was I going to say next? That last line indicates that I was going to comment on that mess in Lansing, that I was going to say something about the history of the current conflict, but I have no idea what sort of comment I wanted to make.

It's getting worse. I just began a sentence with the word "Thortand" and I have no idea what the hell "Thortand" means. I think it was a typo (I hope it was a typo) but as to what I meant to type, I haven't a clue. Actually, my typing is so bad these days that I always look forward to spell-checking my work, since I'm at my most creative when I don't know what the hell I'm doing. Usually.

It's got to be some kind of typo. I make a lot of typos. I usually love trying to make head-or-tails of my own bad spelling, but in this case your guess as to the origin of "Thortland" is as good as mine.

Wait a minute; I've got it now. I was trying to type That, and... ...um...no, I wasn't. That doesn't make any sense. I am so confused!

OK, it's obvious I'm not going to get back to whatever I was writing. Maybe I should just have a beer and relax. Waitaminute...that drunk at the door got my last beer. Damn.

Well, there is one thing I can do. I can whistle The Star Spangled Banner. I hear it keeps elephants away.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

"Still I look to find a Reason to Believe..."

When it comes to Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, I got it wrong. Way wrong.

If you're going to be the sort of person who exposes their political philosophy to public scrutiny (and apparently I am), then you run the risk of being publically wrong. How you choose to deal with that should say a lot about who you are. Who I am...but you'll have to be the judge of that.

I choose to own my mistakes, not to hide from them.

This makes me a bit unusual among the political "commentators" cluttering up your bandwidth. There are three common ways of dealing with such errors:

1. You can ignore your errors, and simply move on hoping no one will notice. This is bad policy; in an age when every word you type is electronically preserved somewhere, it gets increasingly difficult to pretend you didn't say something. If you achieve any kind of notoriety, your words will eventually come back to haunt you.

2. You can flat out deny that you made an error. Again, the problem is this internet thingy that preserves your mistakes forever. Still, lying about ever having said something that later turns out to be pure horse shit does seem to work. The attitude among pundits seems to be that if people are listening to you they're inclined to believe you, and if they aren't listening to you then you have no reason to care what they think.

3. You can admit that you made a mistake, but claim it wasn't your fault. This requires someone to blame, but there's always someone you want to demonize that will serve for a scapegoat. If it comes to it, you can always claim that it's everyone else's fault for not being the people you hoped they were, and that in a perfect world you would have been right all along.

There's a fourth way to handle errors. Like I said, If you're going to be a pundit, even a self-styled one, then you run the risk of error. You're human; you will make mistakes. In my own case, I am not fit to judge what sort of "pundit" I am; only you can judge whether or not I'm worth listening to. And part of my value as such, as I perceive it, is to admit it when I'm wrong.

So now we come to it; we come to my own foolish error.

In an article I wrote about a month ago (Egypt, Israel, Gaza...peace? 11-21-12) on the occasion of an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, I wrote about hope for a lasting peace (that hope is still pending) and had praise for Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, for his role in the deal. I said:

"But now there's hope for peace. Maybe it's no more than a faint hope, maybe it won't last, maybe it's too fragile to survive in such a harsh environment. But as long as there is a hope for peace, there's a hope for peace. And it appears to be mostly Mohamed Morsi's doing."

The very next day, Morsi turned tyrant. He gave himself virtually unlimited powers to "protect" Egypt. He granted himself the power to enact legislation without any judicial oversight or review. Though today Morsi reversed much of this totalitarian power-centralization, it came only after massive protests in the streets and a warning from Egypt's military: "Dialog is the best and only way to reach consensus. The opposite of that will bring us to a dark tunnel that will result in catastrophe and that is something we will not allow."

Morsi now governs from behind barbed wire, surrounded by his "Revolutionary Guard." The Egyptian Army has assumed even more power for itself in response to Morsi's edicts, but Morsi still has the strong backing of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. Any way you look at it, Morsi cannot be seen as the beacon of hope that I portrayed him as.

So where did I get it wrong? Well,  I erred on the side of hope. When Morsi brokered that peace deal, there was certainly cause for hope. The fact that it has held this long means that there is still hope, but I have to admit that there is less of it now. Both Israel and Hamas have been approaching peace as if neither of them really wants it.

More to the point, I had hope for Morsi. I pointed out that Egypt and its President had been wild cards in the Middle East, and no one really new what sort of a leader Morsi would turn out to be. With the peace deal, there seemed to be reason to hope that Morsi would turn out to be a source of reason and dialog in the region. Instead, the next day he showed himself to be neither.

Yes, I blew it and I can offer no excuse. In a world where people are far to quick to judge for the worse, I was too quick to judge for the better. I was wrong.

(I should say that I should have written this a couple of weeks ago, that it's late in coming. Which it is... Well, I never said that when I owned a mistake I did so promptly, now did I?)

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Egypt: Mohamed Morsi cancels decree that gave him sweeping powers (The Guardian/The Observer, UK)

Egypt crisis: Opposition shuns Morsi move (BBC News)

Egypt's Morsi leans on uncomfortable alliance with military (Los Angeles Times)

Mohamed Morsi in Wikipedia

Political lessons from Thelma & Louise

As the dreaded Fiscal cliff approaches, Democrats are starting to sound like there might be something to be afraid of, after all.

I wrote an article on the "Fiscal Cliff" last week (Cliff notes, 11-28-12) and while it's a bit soon to review what I wrote, something appears to be happening. Left-wing pundits and politicians are acting like there actually might be something there to be afraid of, after weeks of treating it dismissively. As late as yesterday they were treating it dismissively.

Now, there seems to be real concern about the coming budget crisis. MSNBC's commentators, after a month or so of calling it a "fiscal curb" or "fiscal slope" rather than a cliff, are now making other noises. Chris Matthews, on his MSNBC show Hardball this afternoon, said that the fiscal cliff really was a cliff and not merely a bungee jump; we wouldn't necessarily rebound.

I myself have been dismissive about the fiscal cliff. Still am, in fact; I think that in the first few weeks of the new year Congress will actually get something done if they've got impending fiscal disaster, real or imagined, to frighten them. Other commentators differ...as the cliff approaches, they seem to be getting more afraid of going over the precipice.

There's another way to look at this. Until the "disaster" arrives at 12:01 (or so) AM on January 1, the Democrats are holding all the high cards. After the cliff goes from theoretical to fact, that advantage may dissappear. I'm not saying that the strength switches from one party to the other, I'm saying that the Democrats will not have the advantage of the Republican desire to avoid plunging into the unknown. They'll be on more equal ground...a condition to be avoided by any Washington insider of either party.

For now, though, it's advantage Democrats. Until the fiscal cliff becomes reality, the Republicans have more incentive to deal. The President and his party are making the most of that incentive. I won't say it's all over but for shooting the horses; I will say that the Republicans in Congress seem to have caved on whether or not the rich should pay more. (Sort of; the devil is, as always, in the details and those details are still pending.)

I think they'll have to pass tax cuts for the 98% without similar cuts for the 2%. I hope that they'll also give in, at least somewhat, on the pending matter of giving the President control over the debt ceiling without having to fight it out with Congress all the time.

Obviously there's a lot of uncertainty yet, and I think its that uncertainty that's fueling this building anxiety on the part of the Democrats in Congress. And it's that anxiety in Congress that is being echoed in the left-wing blogisphere.

At least, that's what I think is happening. I'm not any kind of authority and I can't say what's driving the left-wing blogisphere, even though I am a part of it. (And I hate that word "blogisphere;" it isn't even a freakin' word!) It is entirely possible that I don't know what I'm talking about. (So what else is new?) But it is important to note that if I have been wrong (am wrong) about the impending fiscal cliff, then most of the other Progressive bloggers and pundits were, until now, just as wrong.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

From 11-12-2012: Fiscal 'cliff?' No, fiscal 'curb'... (The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC)

From 11-18-2012: Petrified by the Fiscal Cliff? Relax, it's just a slope (NBC News)

From today, 12-06-2012: This is a fiscal 'cliff,' not a bungee jump (Chris Matthews on Hardball, MSNBC)

Taking three for the "team"

There was a sort of Republican "night of the long knives" today, when Speaker John Boehner ousted four Conservative Republican representatives from their respective committees, including two committee chairs, because they were not "team players." This is a significant shift in direction for the GOP, which has become dominated by its most vocal Conservatives over the last four years (though it's been going on for much longer than that). This illustrates the ongoing war within the GOP over its future.

There are three factions at war over the Republican soul.

There is a faction that is made up of the Tea Party movement (please note that I did not say "former Tea Party movement" because their still around) that is strictly Constitutionalist, and tilts quixotically against the twin windmills named Big Government and Big Spending.

There is a faction made up of Evangelical Conservatives, who are staunchly both Evangelical and Conservative, devoted to promoting their Christian values but willing to compromise those values themselves to do it.

There is a faction devoted to Big Business (personified by Mitt Romney). They have the very real belief that what's good for business must be good for America, and to them this is self-evident, and their inability to prove it does not diminish their belief in it. (The Big Business faction is slowly being disenfranchised; a quick Google search showed many, most in fact, Conservative sites saying essentially "we may have been pro-Big Business, but we aren't anymore." Sadly, they seem to lack any evidence of this "transition.")

There is, obviously, a certain degree of overlap between these three factions. Also, certain areas of strong disagreement, and it's this disagreement that the Republican party as a whole has to overcome if they want to become a party that truly represents all of America. They've got to realize that the larger America that they need to represent includes women and minorities, people whose needs and desires are seriously under-represented in the existing Republican party, people whose needs and desires haven't just been overlooked by the party but actively opposed by the party as it exists now.

It should be noted that there are moderate Republicans, many of whom feel disenfranchised by the party's continual shifting away from center. (Meghan McCain and Colin Powell come to mind; they have been ostracized from the GOP for not being conservative enough.) These are among the dissenting voices that the Republican party cannot seem to embrace. Sadly, these voices aren't numerous enough or strong enough (or loud enough) to constitute a powerful force in the party. Hardly a faction themselves.

And there are those who appear to be merely paying lip service to diversity, hoping to make themselves seem to be more centrist without actually altering their core beliefs, the beliefs which a few months ago made them the darlings of the Conservative movement. (Bobby Jindal is, in my opinion, the biggest standout among these; sincere or not, his statements from the center are generating a hell of a lot of press for him which certainly won't hurt in a 2016 Presidential run.) These people are old-fashioned Republicans wearing new clothes; if they ever come into power they'll turn their coats. Again.

Even though I am strongly Progressive (are we not supposed to say "Liberal" anymore?) I want to see a strong Republican party, even a strong Conservative Republican party, because I feel that the nation is best served by a full and honest debate over important issues before the electorate decides. The problem is that with the Republican party as it is today debate doesn't happen and the nation is ill-served. Orthodoxy reigns. Dissent is not tolerated. And the opinion of the electorate is a thing to be disregarded if it stands against this orthodoxy.

This makes America more of a divided nation, a more polarized nation, a weaker nation. And it sickens me.

I want to see a stronger America. I want to see an America strengthened by an open and honest debate with an informed electorate holding its representatives accountable for their actions. I want to see those elected representatives responsive to the will of the people, not trying to shape the people to their will.

I do not believe that I will live to see that America. But I may be wrong; after all, five or six years ago I did not believe I'd live to see an African-American President.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

John Boehner Faces Conservative Fury For Booting Members From Key Committees (The Huffington Post)

Beware of false GOP rebranding efforts (Salon.com)

Meghan McCain: Lots of Republicans 'treat me like a freak' (Lean Forward, MSNBC, 5-25-12)

John McCain Blasts Colin Powell (The Huffington Post, 10-25-12)

The Party of Big Business (The American Conservative)

The Tea Party movement in Wikipedia

Post election depression

I'm tired of the election. I mean, come on! It's been over for nearly a month! 

I sat down at my computer tonight to hammer out a new article. I suppose this is it...but it isn't what I expected it to be.

I scanned today's news to see if anything inspired me. There was something about yet another Republican budget proposal, yet another way we can supposedly avoid the dreaded "fiscal cliff," another proposal that was just a retread of Mitt Romney's tax plan and budget, as if the damned election didn't happen, as if we hadn't just had a national referendum of precisely these issues and the Republicans hadn't lost.

Which they did, by the way.

I spent an hour or so on Google looking up relevant articles. I roughed out the article itself. I sat and thought for a while about what I was going to write. Then I sat down to watch some TV news to get a handle on what was being said on both sides.

And I decided that anything I had to say had already been said by everyone on the left, and no one had anything to say on the right that made enough sense to bother refuting it. In short, adding my voice would be pointless.

Well, never let it be said that I didn't approach something pointless and put too fine a point on it.

I'd give you my point in a nutshell, but I just did that; we had an election, an election in which these very points were fought over ad nauseam, and Mitt Romney lost. To go a bit further, there was also a Congressional election in which the Republicans lost big and gained little. Most of the Senate seats that were "up for grabs" went Democratic. The Republicans held onto the House, true, but they lost ground there as well.

But after that big Democratic smack-down, the Republicans are trying to spin a monumental loss into a partial victory. In his letter to the President today, in which he outlined yet another tired "Romneynomics" retread, Speaker John Boehner said:

"After a status quo election in which both you and the Republican majority in the House were re-elected, the American people expect both parties to come together on a fair middle ground and address the nation's most pressing challenges."

Oh, come on, John! We the people have been after that for four freakin' years now, and you and your party have thrown up every conceivable roadblock. You have filibustered against more legislation than in any previous Congress, by either party. You have made Congress notorious for doing absolutely nothing, far less than even previous "do nothing" legislatures. And now you want to "come together on a fair middle ground?" Now?

Your losses in this past election were monumental. Your party tried to take control of the Senate, and not only failed but lost seats. Your party went into the election with a very comfortable majority in the House, and it's true you held on to a majority, but a smaller majority than you had. You lost seats. Some of the seats that you lost were in districts where the Republican candidate should have expected an easy win, but didn't get one. Over all, this last election for Congress went horribly bad for you. But now you want us to believe that this was a "status quo election?" Are you freakin' serious?

(If you hadn't blocked nearly every piece of legislation that came before you in the Senate, maybe you could make that "fair middle ground" line without having it sound like a bad joke. But you did; you blocked, delayed, and vetoed your way through the last four years. Likewise, if you hadn't lost House seats, maybe you could claim a partial victory there. But you did lose House seats.)

The election is a month over and you should be able to stop trying to convince yourselves of a fantasy and get back to work. You show no sign of actually wanting to do that. You should be able to come up with proposals that are something more than the plans and policies that America has already rejected. Again, there's no sign of any effort on your part to make something happen. Not even to help something happen. I'd even go so far as to say that you don't behave as if you want anything to happen at all.

Are you waiting for us all to go "over the cliff" so that you can then claim that it isn't your fault? If so, what are you going to do if the Left is correct that it really isn't a cliff at all, but more like a slope? In other words, what if the disaster you're driving us towards, with dire warnings about going over the precipice, turns out to be no disaster at all and all your warnings prove to be just so much hot air?

Like I said, this ground has been covered and re-covered, but I felt like venting. So I vented.

The Blues Viking

The opinions here expressed are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.

Speaker Boehner's letter to the President (PDF from the Speaker of the House's web site)

Boehner Sends Cliff Counter, But Revenue Too Light for White House (NationalJournal)

Boehner's Offer For Bipartisan Compromise On Taxes Nearly Identical To Romney Plan (ThinkProgress)