Thank God. We're Saved!

Joe Manchin and and Jon Huntsman, "Turning Congress' partisans into problem solvers." January 13

LISTEN, first, can anyone explain to me th' fuck could take something called The Feminist and the Cowboy seriously? Forget the fact that we're supposed to believe that forty-year-old feminists are yet ill-prepared to meet handsome strangers in tight-fitting jeans.  Let's have a look at what the Real Man looks like. Over to Rosin's review of a week earlier:

The verbal instructions the cowboy gives Valdes once she agrees to submit to him are a guide to daily living. No back-talking; no second-guessing; no sarcastic, smart-ass remarks. She must never exit the car unless he opens the door for her. She must never walk on the street side of the sidewalk.

In what sort of female fantasy world do Real Men worry about this sort of shit? That's not a man's outlook. It's a collection of political tics from the Christian Right. You'd think a life-long feminist might'a picked up on that sort of thing in one of her four decades. Just like you think the Marlboro Man there might'a extended his concern and respect for the weaker sex into not using them as sex toys.

But then I guess he wouldn't be masculine.

Rosin says that in the galleys the book was called Learning to Submit. What was wrong with The Hack and the Hackie? You can't see the fit of a cab driver's jeans?

If we can't spot obvious, self-serving phonies in wholly manufactured settings, what hope is there with this?

Joe Manchin, a Democrat, represents West Virginia in the U.S. Senate and is one of the two dozen “Problem Solvers.” Jon Huntsman, a former governor of Utah, was a Republican candidate for president last year. They are the national leaders of No Labels.

Shit. So Just Anybody can publish a WaPo opinion piece? (Asked, and answered, long ago, I know.) Jon Huntsman, who was the slightly sane wingnut alternative in the glorious Republican primary season just past, managed to narrowly avoid ever outpolling anyone, including Tim Pawlenty, Herman Cain, Haley Barbour, and Oliver Closoff. Senator Joe Manchin receives a stocking full of coal from Santa each Christmas, which he promptly exchanges for Krugerrands at the preferred Gentlemen's Club rate. If there's any change left over he uses it to nickel and dime the EPA.

Much ink has been spilled over what’s wrong with Washington. 

The rise of partisan media, too much money in politics and congressional gerrymandering that rewards ideologues with safe seats have all been offered as diagnoses for government dysfunction. 

These explanations are accurate — but almost totally irrelevant to the urgent challenges at hand.

 

"If we are to continue to fail to address the actual reasons for Washington gridlock, not to mention the serious issues behind them, it is vital that we agree to pretend our pants are on fire."

The American people can’t just hope for the creation of a better “system.” Reducing money in politics and building a better election system are worthy and important endeavors — but they are tough, multi-year, state-by state slogs.

"You people are fucked. Won't you at least help us bail ourselves out? For the sake of simple decency?"

We need to attempt those things and to seek solutions now from the system and the leaders we already have. Businesses are not hiring, and investors are not investing as a direct result of the uncertainty created by Washington. Too many would-be workers are not working. The coming generations are being doomed to a worse standard of living than previous generations.

Yes, uh, Your Eminences? Jim Riley, Clueless Gazette. Yeah, listen, aren't you already making an argument just in the shape of a description? I mean, thanks for including "the workers" in there, at the back, an' all, but what makes the government…

Knowing that should light a fire under everybody in Washington. But it hasn’t. The gridlock continues, most recently with the “fiscal cliff” fiasco, and the fight over the debt ceiling looms.

Of course, these were both wholly artificial constructs of this do-nothing Congress you're so on about, or belong to, so you're urging us to ignore them, right? Right?

From our perspective, there is only one way for leaders in Washington to step up: They need an attitude adjustment. Everyone needs to be willing to sit down with anyone — conservative, liberal or anyone in between — to work together to achieve success for our nation. Everyone needs to recognize that principled and deeply held political beliefs don’t require an all-or-nothing approach to governance and that the letter behind a person’s name does not automatically make them stupid or treasonous.

Tell ya what, though. I'll give you a million dollars for every Democrat who's committed treason, and you give me a million bucks for every Republican who can't explain the reproductive process in the human female.

To be clear, we are not naïve about the challenge of fostering cooperation across the aisle.  

There are philosophical differences between Democrats and Republicans that can’t be papered over with nice words about civility.  

But adopting an attitude focused on problem solving is a deeply pragmatic response to Washington’s dysfunction. With Democrats controlling the Senate and Republicans controlling the House, no one can get everything they want. We will either work across the aisle to fix problems or we will achieve nothing.

Luckily, we are not the only ones who recognize this. On Monday morning, the group No Labels — a collection of Democrats, Republicans and independents dedicated to promoting a new politics of problem solving — will unveil two dozen “Problem Solvers”: a group of House and Senate members evenly split between Republicans and Democrats who have agreed to hold monthly meetings in 2013 to build trust across the aisle.Yeah, the sky's the limit.

This is a big deal. While in past years members of Congress used to interact regularly with members of the opposite party, today members of Congress interact very little with people from the other party — or even members of their own party in the opposite body. Members’ daily lives are dominated by party caucus, policy and fundraising meetings that are focused on winning elections or destroying the opposing party. There isn’t much time left over to actually govern.

But isn't this Spit the Difference shit really a political victory for these very people, not The People at large? Isn't…

But the Problem Solvers can and will seek to change this. In the next year, No Labels’ grass-roots supporters will strive to expand the number of problem solvers, with a goal of recruiting 75 members by year’s end. This could transform how Washington works. And it won’t be long before members start hearing demands from their constituents to join the group. Millions of Americans who have tired of the hyper-partisanship have realized that there is an organized group that can finally give them a voice in our political system. They have gone to NoLabels.org and are telling their friends and neighbors to as well.

It's a Washday Miracle!

Despite the gloomy outlook in Washington, the United States has great potential and promise. The American people need their leaders in Washington to start supporting our economy and stop subtracting from it.

Lousy Mine Safety and Health Administration.

We can begin tapping our potential the moment we stop taking score and begin taking steps to start solving problems. That’s the only realistic way forward for America.

No Labels: No Solutions, But Plenty of Back-Room Deals '16!

If You Can't Stand The Resistive Heating Produced By An Oscillating Magnetic Field…

YGLESIAS:

The narrower issue has to do with kitchens. Here's [Ryan] Avent's summary of a common argument about kitchen progress: 

The third argument is the simplest: the evidence of your senses. The recent rate of progress seems slow compared with that of the early and mid-20th century. Take kitchens. In 1900 kitchens in even the poshest of households were primitive things. Perishables were kept cool in ice boxes, fed by blocks of ice delivered on horse-drawn wagons. Most households lacked electric lighting and running water. Fast forward to 1970 and middle-class kitchens in America and Europe feature gas and electric hobs and ovens, fridges, food processors, microwaves and dishwashers. Move forward another 40 years, though, and things scarcely change. The gizmos are more numerous and digital displays ubiquitous, but cooking is done much as it was by grandma. 

I think people making this argument ought to watch a few episodes of Iron Chef America. They'll see cooks working with immersion circulators, commercial grade vacuum sealers, blow torches, French tops, pressure cookers, convection ovens, and blast chillers. Most people don't cook with that stuff. A huge share of Americans has an old-fashioned electric stove rather than an induction stove that heats much more rapidly and efficiently. Even things like high-quality enameled cast iron and multi-clad metal cookware aren't that common. In all those cases it's not because the technology doesn't exist but because that stuff is expensive. If we'd had a more equitable distribution of income over the past 35 years, more people would own the most advanced kitchenware.

Okay, first, Standard Disclaimer: I'd rather take up cutting children's hair or editing the collected works of Jonah Goldberg than study economics for a second five minutes.

Second: No. No one should watch a few episodes of Iron Chef America. Nor a single episode. Nor an ep. For the sake of the culture. For the sake of cuisine. For, if you prefer simple reasons, the simple reason that Bobby Flay is involved.

Hell, let's combine these, shall we? Food is particularly that arena where the social science heart of Economics, which economists like to pretend is not a cacophony of discursive thought but a science, is laid bare. To your average economy prestidigitator, a Hershey bar is a Hershey bar, a beer a beer, and a T-bone and T-bone. Never mind that a still-sizable portion of the population can tell you of a time--in their lifetimes--when a Hershey bar tasted like something called chocolate, and mass-market beer had flavor. And when "USDA Prime" did not mean "Whatever th' Fuck Cattlemen Want To Sell You, Regardless of What It Died of". There's no profit (and no pretend empiricism) in talking about such things, because there isn't any more of it to sell. Shit's out of stock, permanently. And economists are salesmen with advanced degrees; where the average commissioned sales rep, college-educated or street-smart, tries to dazzle you with footwork, the economist tries to make sure you don't notice you're being waltzed around.

But there isn't any fucking question about this. I'm not some geezer talking about the good old days (not at the moment, anyway). In my youth, Hershey bars were made of chocolate; I watched as the percentage of cardboard and wood shavings was increased in the 70s. That shit is unrecognizable as chocolate these days, but people who've grown up without experiencing the difference don't know it. I come from a line of teetotalers, but the fact is that beer market consolidation and greed resulted in the bland leading the bland, and lead to the unspeakably swillish. One need only one glance at his grocer's shelves to understand there was a need, a lack, later filled by microbrewers, and that lack was real beer, which the Big Three breweries could easy have produced once they divvied up the market, but it would have cost them an extra 1/2 ¢ per unit.  The indifferent amateur historian can determine the exact date and hour when Ronald Reagan's pen (and millions in "campaign contributions" from meat packers and cattle ranchers) turned Choice into Prime, one miracle the Free Market couldn't achieve for itself.

Look, unless he's bored, no wine salesman wants to talk to you about '45, or '61, or '85, because he doesn't have any to sell you. That may make the past immaterial, but it does not make it irrelevant. There are pressures today on even the greatest wine producers to make their product more accessible early in its life. That's economic pressure. Philosophically and oenologically it's vandalism. Economics gets a free pass from making value judgements. So long as something sells the "market", or the "consumer" has accepted it. But on the scale of Bud and Miller taking over the national market, what choice did the disgruntled consumer have? None, for forty years. Maybe imports, assuming someone near him carried any.

Excuse me while I clear my throat.

Let's ask ourselves this: why does the modern economist simply assume that labor-saving devices save labor? Because he doesn't do any? Because he was born in the middle of that stagnation that Avent so rightly identified, and doesn't really give a fuck so long as Mom/the wife/the Girl//Armando has dinner on the table on time? Seems to me that what the modern kitchen basically reduces is drudgery, which for people, that is to say women in the19th century, was a major, and inescapable fact of life. Within a generation, indoor plumbing had begun to erase the memory of hauling water, but the time spent was transferred to other pursuits (such as cleaning sinks and bathrooms).

The peak of labor-saving in the kitchen occurred for my mother's (The Greatest) generation, which had been educated for life as farm wives, or urban farm wives, but then found, out there, the continual reduction of drudgery Avent notes. It reached the middle class in the 60s and 70s. And what my mother did with the time saved was go get a job so we could afford more shit.

For me the damned dishwasher is drudgery. My mother, who was a good cook, embraced convenience foods. I've gone out of my way to avoid them. And part of that is the amount of money saved by doing things from scratch. But mostly it's because that's a better way to do things.

In terms of kitchen gadgets my mother didn't have in the 60s, I've got a food processor (the time it saves can be invested in cleaning it), but I've got my eye on a first-rate mandoline; I've got a microwave that doubles as an exhaust hood, there's one of those immersion blenders in the basement somewhere, and a slow cooker. Oh, and a convection oven (they're pretty standard except at the low end of ovens these days, Matt). None of it saves time. At best it lets me do things in a better or more efficient way. The reason I don't have a circulator, induction-coil cooktop, or a vacuum sealer is I don't run a fucking professional kitchen. Nor am I on teevee for the people who manufacture gizmos to gift me them. The reason I don't cook with a blowtorch, by the way, is that I'm not a 10 year-old child.

Hey, I'm not coming down on Avent's side in some metaphysical sense; I would, sorta, agree that gee-whiz technical gimmickry has collided with practical considerations, in the same way that real technological advancement, in physics, say, or medicine, has occurred in the absence of ideas, or much apparent interest, in how to make it accessible and universal. On the other hand Matt's correct; if we hadn't instituted massive income disparity beginning with the Reagan administration, we might see as much effort put into the home kitchen as into corporate jets or boner pills.

Then again, we might have seen more progress if Milton Friedman hadn't received such acclaim, or if we weren't busy fighting his progeny over their absolute certainty that our corporate people must be taken better care of than our real people.

What Did We Learn From Politico Today?

MONEY, shit, and The Word. And thank God that at least they don't kill trees for this crap.

Who?

Who?

"Say nothing, and say it boldly. Sorta." 

Expectations for consensus? Or gunplay?

Those plurals tell you exactly how much research went into this.

Who?

Finally some serious news. 

It Is The Height Of Idiocy To Insult The Cook

THIS, via Early Onset of Night:

Okay, so, several things, and you're probably way ahead of me. First, this is the courage of the Typical Gaultian, beginning with Ayn "Medicare" Rand herself. Second, it's the typical intelligence of the Typical Gaultian (beginning loc.cit.), who imagines his solipsism trumps everyone else's. One wonders just how large a town this bozo lives in; he'd best travel, because no town is that large, and traveling might grant him an extra week before he needs to hire both a personal chef and a taster, like a good little Jobs Creator.

Look, Dick--if I may call you Dick--in the first place the person you're ultimately fucking is the Randian superman who owns the joint, and who gets to pay (in most locations) half the minimum wage to tipped employees, one of whom now gets to pay taxes on 8% of your sale despite making nothing, thanks to your principles. If the server can show that he or she did not make the difference in tips the owner has to pony up. If you think this will spread--Rise!--keep it up (remember, a healthy adult can generally ward off even a large E. coli infestation) and see how long it takes a class of people already on the lookout for bums and cheapskates to ID you, and all your pals. Sad, but true, there are many more of them than there are Morally Superior Men such as yourself. Believe me, it'll take about three of these before the people you think you're screwing start keeping records that the Gestapo would envy.

Anyone who's worked in a retail or restaurant establishment long enough--say, one afternoon--knows there are five-hundred ways to screw over a deserving customer without ever being suspected. Go on. Test the theory.

Me? When I turned 21 my intellectual mentor in college got me a waiter's job at the place where he worked supplementing his T.A. "income". It was a college town, and this was quite possibly the only white tablecloth establishment, aside from the ones the university ran. So it attracted a species of local maroon known as High Schoolers On Prom Night. I was warned ahead of time.

The place did tableside service: Caesar salad, cherries jubilee, that sorta thing. Waiters were busy. The local agriculture progeny were unfamiliar with a food establishment where the food didn't wait on you.

In truth, I did not really have the personality necessary for a successful career in haute cuisine. I was the new guy. I got the shittiest stations. Usually including tables by the kitchen door, which were the least desirable from the customer's viewpoint. So I'd get loaded down with children, and I couldn't detour around the tables because I had to go through the kitchen.

Prime Prom Time. I get a four top. Two couples, whose formal wear had be applied with a pitchfork. They were okay to begin with, but something went wrong, or something. I don't honestly remember. They started demanding their food every time I walked by, which was every time, and grabbing my sleeve to speed it along. Then they hit on the plan of ordering refills for their unspeakable Nehis, or whatever it was, one at a time. Ha ha ha!

I took it for about ten minutes. Then I stopped at the table on my way back to the kitchen.

"I'm very sorry that we got off on the wrong foot here somehow, and I want you to know that I do hope it won't spoil this wonderful night you have ahead of you. I would like to explain something to you. I'm going to go back into the kitchen now and check on your entrees. If they're ready, just like the salads you just ate, and the drinks you've been consuming, I'm going to pick them up, put them on a tray, and carry them out to you. Most of this is going to occur behind that door, where you don't see it. I just wanted to make sure everybody understood one another."

I swear to God, before I was finished both of the girls were the color of winter lawns. Their food was up, I delivered it pronto, and never heard another peep out of any of them.

Left a 10% tip, too, which, for high schoolers, was Diamond Jim Brady territory.

It's Your Freakin' Problem, Vol. I've Lost Count

Ross Douthat, "Boehner, American Hero". January 5

FIRST, if I may take a moment, after an entire season thank God Dan Snyder and the Washington Football Club are back in the news as the cheap, thoughtless, entitled bastards we know them to be. I personally don't care if their record does determine every Presidential election. But granting Snyder a grain of respectability is the sort of thing that could ruin the karma of 400 million people.

Now then, the only way to dispose of this Douthat think piece and not spend any more time on it than it deserves is to have someone else blow it a raspberry. Even a shorter is too long, and anyway, I don't do 'em. But "John Boehner has, thankfully, saved the Republican party from the sort of people who elect John Boehner" would be one.

And who th' fuck cares? Four years ago Douthat "tried" to "reform" the Republican party, by lending it some of his hip, youthful sheen; that went over like lead Astroturf, aside from the fact that it got him the gig at the Times. Four months later he was recoiling from the Teabaggers. A month after that he was celebrating them. There is no reforming the Republican party. None. Because the problem with the Republican party is as much Ross Douthat, or John Boehner, as it is all those messy partisans Douthat and Boehner basically agree with. *

Look: there is no difference between Paul Ryan, who wants to find a cliff to drive over out of principle, and John Boehner, or Ross Douthat, who fully support the principles but don't want their fingerprints on the wheel when the wreck is found. Because those so-called principles are a crock, they've been clearly proven as such, they're rejected by most of the population, and Paul Ryan doesn't really believe them any stronger than do the "moderate" voices of his party. You gave up your ability to pretend moderation in exchange for two Reagan terms. You doubled down at every succeeding opportunity since. If you want to save the Republican party, leave it. Find common cause with centrist Democrats; Lord knows you've got enough. You're gonna have to admit that the only sovereignty over a woman's reproductive system belongs to her own brain, and you're going to have to admit that the government can do good things, and really ought to pay lip service to the poor, the sick, and the needy while it stockpiles carrier fleets. That is, you're going to have to appear sensible,, and you're going to have to get your Bronze Age impulses cut down to where they'll fit in your own garage again.

Go on. I dare you.

In the meantime, Ross-O, spare me the "dysfunctional government" routine. Your party hasn't had the slightest intention to be functional since before you were born.

_____________

* Okay, so it may be that Boehner does not actually believe in anything whatsoever. We're not trying to solve metaphysical problems here.

Michelle Rhee Is Not The Lance Armstrong Of Education

SHE'S the BALCO of Education.

And look, this stuff was known some time ago. Not only that, but the Theory of Zero-Cost Lunch was disproven in the 19th century. But Rhee has gotten away with claims of miraculous (and instantaneous) improvement both as Teacher for a Fortnight and then as Chancellor of D.C. schools. In both cases those students remained in the system; their further progress was of no interest to anyone. The fact that there were suspiciously-, make that impossibly-, high levels of wrong-to-right answer changes was spotted a short time later. The fact that D.C. schools then undertook a completely phony "review" which didn't actually look for cheating before giving the system ten thumbs up for honesty was known right away. When she was voted out by proxy in 2010 she landed with her own tax-exempt slush fund, which noted skeptic Oprah Winfrey helped launch. (Then, sadly, unqualified fluffing from Colbert while she was helping peddle Waiting for Superman and waiting for her closeup. With her new sinecure came her sudden support of school vouchers, a Jim Rockford 180º as the last piece of the Rich Guy Wingnut Education Invasion she hadn't previously endorsed.

Any single bite of this crap salad should have been enough for anyone to cast a wary eye at Michelle Rhee and the rest of the "reform" movement. Very few did. There's your evidence for the shortcoming of American education. Unless it's something else entirely.

Cakeholes

CHRIS Christie is not a nationally-elected official, an oversight on the part of God and Republican primary voters, many of whom take their marching from God's Own Crystal Set. Peter King is a locally-elected terrorist sympathizer who does have national responsibilities, due to the short-sightedness of the Founding Fathers and whatever's in the water in Amityville.

They are, presumably, grown and educated men, and as such, presumably, are familiar with such concepts as similitude, disaster, and compassion. It should not take until Christie's fiftieth birthday and the distinct aroma of his own lard roasting for him to come to terms with the idea of society rescuing its citizens in need, the same way it should not have taken Randian Superbrain Mitch Daniels sixty-two years to decide just which side of anti-trades-union legislation he was on (nor, even, the five years it took him to realize he'd changed his mind).

As for King, well, fuck him.

Faced with such circumstances we can decide on one of two explanations: either the conversion took place legitimately, in which case you have someone who' been completely oblivious at the top of his lungs for most of his adult life, and who still collects public funds. Or it's bullshit.

Oh, I know, I'm supposed to cut Christie some slack because he snapped at Fox and Friends.As far as I'm concerned that's like giving the Good Driver Award to everyone who stops at a red light.

Listen, shuttling Sandy relief onto the next Congress wasn't even the wingnuttiest thing Boehner had to do that day. That's your party. Those are your people. And while they may be clinically certifiable en masse they are not, that's N-O-T, doing anything outside the GOP norm.

I'll take my Boehner schadenfreude steaming, thank you. You eat the shit that's on your plate.

And, Governor? If someone living on the seacoast deserves immediate government attention after a hurricane, what of a child born into poverty in Mississippi? What of someone too ill or weak to be a cog in someone else's profit machine? How bout the sick or the elderly? They don't have special circumstances requiring assistance; they have everyday circumstances requiring assistance. Which should be provided them--and should continue to be provided them, in perpetuity--by their fellow citizens. Despite your party. And it shouldn't have taken you this long to realize it.

Can They Be Serious?

I STUMBLED on this bit of Klassic "Konservative" Klintoon Kartoonery last night (caution: Noonan) from November, 2008, and figured I might as well share:

Keep Gates 

But Mrs. Clinton at Foggy Bottom? Can they be serious? 

On the face of it, the apparent offering of the secretary of state job to Hillary Clinton is a clever, interesting choice: An experienced and sophisticated workhorse with her own standing in the country, and bearing a name that is popular in the world, will be the public face of U.S. diplomacy. Mr. Obama gets to put her in a subordinate position while appearing to be magnanimous, and her seat in the U.S. Senate will likely be filled by a more malleable Democrat who won't be plotting from day one to get to the White House. A threefer. 

But the downside is equally obvious: To invite in the Clintons—and it's always the Clintons, never a Clinton—is to invite in, to summon, drama that will never end. Ever. This would seem to be at odds with the atmospherics of Obamaland. "Loose cannon," "vetting process," "financial entanglements," questions about which high-flying oligarch gave how much to Bill's presidential library, and what the implications of the gift are, including potential conflict of interest. More colorfully, and nostalgically: people screaming through the halls, being hired and fired, attacking the press, leaking, then too tightly controlling information, then leaking, and speaking in the special patois of the Clinton staff, with the famous dialogue evocative of David Mamet as rewritten by Joe Pesci. 

Will she go rogue? Will the rogue go rogue?

All This And Analysis, Too:

But it will be interesting to watch. The appointment is so surprising that everyone's inner Machiavelli is working overtime. Is she floating it to box him in and leave him embarrassed if he ultimately goes elsewhere? Are Mr. Obama's people floating it knowing a) she wanted it, b) but it won't work because Bill will never give up all the information required in an FBI full field investigation, and c) hey, that's the best of both worlds, an offer that was made and a reality that thwarted it. Not our fault! And she stays in the Senate, dinged, her power undermined again.

So is this pure gut instinct? Or are her sources just that good?

Didn't You Already Cover This?

Chris Sikich, "Mitch Daniels leaves Indiana the fiscal envy of the Midwest". December 31

LAST Saturday I spent thirty-six hours at a Catholic wedding. Which savvy readers understand means I was lucky it didn't include a Mass.

It was a 19th century working-class joint, with an excellent vaulted ceiling, middling stained glass, and statuary that might'a been passable if the place was a Macy's window or a Puerto Rican taxi. Well, no one has yet accounted for taste.

The highlight of the sennight's festivities--unless you count the time my Poor Wife turned to me and said, "Didn't he already cover this?", causing me to snort out loud--came when a short middle aged woman from the groom's side got up and read, with a pious petulance, from Paul's Letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 5. The bit about wives submitting to their husbands as the Church submits to Jesus.

After she stalked off (I don't think the assessment is too harsh. Most laypersons put in this position read like they're sounding each word out phonetically; she tossed the thing off like a challenge) the priest rose to announce that the passage wasn't supposed to've been read, and that it was his mistake.

Now, I figured right there that the odds were pretty good that I was the only one in the crowd who recognized his theological quandary, let alone actually enjoyed it; a Catholic priest had just explained that the words of St. Paul concerning marriage were inappropriate at a wedding. Or maybe "unfortunate". Or, at the very least, that it covered a detail which had been negotiated away earlier in the proceedings. He went on to explain--or "explain"--how the words of Paul weren't, you know, meant to be taken as meaning what they said. Nice racket. Very convincing, assuming you were already on his side.

"Tortured" would be a charitable way to describe the logic, and I wasn't feeling charitable. Apparently Paul wouldn't have told wives of his day to be subservient to their husbands because they already were. So go figure. The only possible reading, as Easterbrook might say, is that he was just explaining the whole Church/laity relationship in terms his contemporaries would understand. Slavery.

He explained "subservient" by referencing its Latin roots, which nearly caused me to snort out loud a second time.

Look, I understand that the Catholic Church is not, as an institution, the most fundamentalist of cults, but still: the admonitions of St. Paul are open for discussion? And as nice as it was to see gender equality get a small nod from the World's Leading Proponent of Female Inferiority, it doesn't change anything. Just provided me with a brief moment of amusement in 2-1/2 hours of discomfort. I was fucking owed that much.

And, one more time, appropriately on the holiest day of the college football calendar:  how much obvious lying and cheating is enough?

Which brings us to Mitch Daniels. There's been what I consider to be an unprecedented interest in recapping his governorhood on the part of local media. Or maybe it's the same as always, and I've just forgotten the hours spend limning Evan Bayh or Bob Orr. It's been hard to see his elfish wizard face above the fold on the Indianapolis Star (motto: Still Big Enough to Fold!"), or hear Jim "the Dean Broder of Indiana Politics" Shella recount his "once in a generation" tenure, and not wonder whether a little last somethin' somethin' was discovered at the bottom of Daniels' goody box.

We've gone over and over this, and I can keep it up if they can. The "Daniels Miracle" is a feat of storytelling, not an act of governance, one which began by misrepresenting the nature of the state's deficit [and, for good measure, shopping around the total amount as needed; it began at $200 million, rose as high as $800, settled in at $500 million after Daniels' reelection, and has risen to $600 for Sikich's piece despite the table reproduced alongside (and below)]. This is Indiana, not California. The modern Democratic party in Indiana is best described as "so-called". The state was not exactly at the forefront of social spending before Mitch rescued it. It was a bottom-dweller on unemployment and welfare, and in the bottom third on education spending for decades. But Daniels was allowed to present himself as Horatius at the bridge, fighting off the ravening and outdated hoardes of the Great Society with just his large brain and his budget axe. But it ain't so. That "$200 million and up", for starters, was the way Indiana did business, through Republican and Democratic administrations. The primary state budget was enacted every two years, in off-years (a practice going back to those glorious days when the General Assembly met only every other year). Whatever shortfall or windfall had resulted from the economic predictions now two years old were addressed the next time around. In 2005 that meant the assumptions of 2003. In other words, assumptions made before the full disaster of the Bush economy, and the Jobless Recovery (Mitch Daniels, Chief Architect) was known.

Playing politics with this is one thing; turning it into evidence of your Divinely Randian-inspired moral superiority is quite another. Daniels has consistently, and darkly, hinted at financial malfeasance on the part of his predecessors (the fifth-rate rockstar Evan Bayh, and the much-respected Frank O'Bannon, who died in office) without, of course, naming any, or being held to something approaching evidence. He insisted the legislature give him his own Inspector General in 2005, specifically charged with rooting out corruption in past administrations. To date that's amounted to the discovery, via anonymous tipster, that in 1998 someone swiped some lottery tickets when everyone was at lunch. Meanwhile his privatization and government outsourcing programs are rife with crony vulturism, there's the billion-dollar boondoggle at Family and Social Services--which only coincidentally kept payments from citizens for months--serious questions about the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, what once was the state Commerce department until the Randians got hold of it (let's repeat that: our state Commerce department is now a semi-private corporation which has replaced regulating commerce with cooking up rebate deals; can't be any harm in that, can there?)--and the $2 billion tab hanging over the heads of ratepayers for Mitch's late-period coal gasification scheme.

There was absolutely no question from the start that the Daniels administration's primary business was creating a PR campaign to counteract Mitch's disastrous track record at OMB. Mr. Budget Cuts! Sadly, We Can't Spend All The Money We'd Like To! No, Really, We'd Love To Increase Spending on Education, But It's Out of the Question, So Instead We'll Accomplish Miracles! This is not an argument. It's not a program, unless your goal is to burnish your image, "prove" something about your political philosophy, and collect a lot of money for not running for President. When Daniels had Republican majorities in both Houses he solved Indiana's budget crisis the way Procrustes solved the bedding problem. They cut what was necessary to show a surplus. Regardless. In times that alternated between a horrible economy and a vertiginous recession. Then crowed about the result.  (As a commenter at the Star put it, they patted themselves on the back for balancing the checkbook, ignoring the fact that they'd put their children on starvation rations.)

That Sikich piece runs to eight online pages, and most of it actually discusses the results of Daniels' scattergun. But the point is that this should be just the starting point. It's obvious there's no free lunch. Maybe Daniels did, as he keeps insisting, inherit a state budget with accounts in disarray. Maybe privatizing everything that wasn't nailed down was the answer. If so, that's the basic question. Not whether a slash-happy governor and his henchlegislature can turn Indiana from Enlightened Tennessee to Enlightened Alabama in a decade. The victory laps and carrier landings are a bit premature at best.

But add to that the fact that the Daniels administration has been lying, flat-out, about jobs creation from the get-go, has juggled state accounts and shuffled a lot of the burden back onto local governments, obscuring accountability, and that Daniels himself has been defensive and dismissive about the pounding undercurrent of crony shenanigans, when he bothered to reply at all, and you really have pretty good reason to question the contentions on their face, let alone debate the consequences. Yet a sidebar to the Star piece says this:

Indiana’s reserves climb

2003: $-91.5 billion (debt).
2004: $-198.5 billion (debt)
2005: $-78 billion (debt)
2006: $454.3 million
2007: $959.5 million
2008: $1.3 billion
2009: $1.3 billion
2010: $830 million
2011: $1.18 billion
2012: $2.15 billion
2013: $2.04 billion.

Source: Governor’s office

Source: Governor's office. Mission Accomplished.




Proof That The Mayans Just Had Their Timing A Little Off

THE woman I passed this morning in the flour aisle at Kroger who was singing along with Cher's "Dark Lady". 

Until she saw the gun in my hand. 

Thursday Olio: Can't We Deport Piers Morgan And Convict David Gregory For Their Actual Crimes? Edition

• Do you see what I see? Okay, so I understand that Bad Timing happens; I suppose there's no way that the Times' former Style editor and go-to guy on all things Dressage Bertram "Trip" Gabriel III could have known that the WaPos were about to tell the tale of Dick "Dick" Armey, his wife, and his heat boy stomping into Freedom Works' offices to extort $8 mil.

But, then, maybe the Tripper might have noticed that the picture illustrating his piece on the Teabag Cult featured, you know, Dick Armey? Maybe instead of a fluffier about how "The Tea Party" was now "focusing" on "narrower issues"--a comforting thought, no doubt, to all those people along the Areola Corridor, or whatever th' fuck crypto-landmark they call themselves--we might have gotten an in-depth piece on the amazing transformation of Dick Armey from Republican House Majority Leader to wholly-unrelated Teabagging Revolutionary.

Krishna H. Vishnu, it's like Republicans have decided, this time around, to cure their alcoholism by drinking their way out of it. [Is this not, by the way, the clearest metaphorical picture of "moderate" Republicanism post-Bush? The problem is other people. All right, maybe there's a problem, what color should we repaint it? Wait, wait (baby), I admit I've got a problem, but what th' fuck am I supposed to do about it?]

The thing is a veritable buffet table of busted crockery:

Even more telling, Tea Party activists in the middle of the country are skirting the fiscal showdown in Congress and turning to narrower issues, raising questions about whether the movement still represents a citizen groundswell to which attention must be paid.

As opposed to, say, an obvious Ponzi scheme built on clinical insanity and Beltway chatter.

Hey, anybody remember when the nascent Teabag Revolution was focusing laserlike on economic issues, and excluding all that Culture War stuff?

“People in positions of responsibility within the Republican Party tolerated too much of this,” said Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party. He blamed a backlash against “tinfoil hat” issues pushed by the Tea Party-dominated legislature in New Hampshire for the loss of a Republican majority in the State House last month and a near loss in the State Senate. Republican leaders “looked the other way too often,” he said. “They sort of smiled, winked and nodded too often, when they should have been calling ‘crazy, crazy.’ ”

Wait, it's not Fergus Cullen the Third? Look, Mr. Cullen, your party's mainstream positions are crazy, crazy. And crazy. They've been that way since at least 1964, which was almost a decade before you were born. Ain't many of your people in that time said anything. Ain't many people grew up in the party who've mentioned it so long as they thought it helped them win. These are not the people we turn to now to address the problem. Yourself included.

“These guys want instant success,” said [Tim] Cole, a member of the House Republican leadership. “If they want to see a better result, they’ve got to help us win the United States Senate. We’ve thrown away some seats out of political immaturity.”

That'd be the Tim Cole who's helped shepherd the House Republicans' nuanced approach to governance over the last four years.

“I think the Tea Party movement is to the Republicans in 2013 what the McGovernites were to the Democrats in 1971 and 1972,” said Don Gaetz, a Republican who is the president of the Florida Senate. “They will cost Republicans seats in Congress and in state legislatures. But they will also help Republicans win seats.”

Oh, Jeez Louise, it turns out Don Gaetz (b. 1948) is fucking old enough to know better. This must be the same sort of historical process which resulted in Carl Perkins doing Elvis' opening for "Blue Suede Shoes" thinking it was his own. Democrats tossed the McGovernites before New Years 1973, Don. And they were a faction. Teabaggers are just Republicans with Tourette's.

FreedomWorks spent nearly $40 million on the 2012 elections but backed a string of losing Senate candidates, including Richard E. Mourdock of Indiana, Josh Mandel of Ohio and Connie Mack of Florida. Some Tea Party firebrands lost their House seats, including Allen B. West of Florida and Joe Walsh of Illinois.

One notable success for the Tea Party was the Senate victory by Ted Cruz of Texas.

Notable? Texas replaced Kay Bailey Hutchison with an Hispanic nutter. They lost seats they could have won. The Republican party is facing Purity Tests across the country. It's not that it isn't ready to mount a defense. It's that it doesn't have a defense. You're being out-Republicaned by Republicans now, and not just select Democrats.

• Then let's compromise and do it my way. I like Norm Ornstein; I've liked him since the days when Gene Pulliam's Star printed him on "their" side of the opinion columns, alongside Mona Charen and Bob Novak. But, really, when I saw "John Huntsman for Speaker" in someone else's headline, then read the piece and saw Mitch Fucking Daniels as Second Choice, I had to ask if there is any reason whatsoever to believe there's any sanity left on the right?

I know, I know. Ornstein's supposedly suggesting people who could win an election in the House, and maybe he's right. But it's a fantasy piece to begin with. Do we have to turn it into science fiction? Huntsman is wingnutty and soft-spoken; Daniels is utterly amoral and for sale, except Purdue already met his asking price. The Republican party does not want to compromise. Period. Spare me the When Gipper Met Tip bullshit; this is the GOP the GOP always wanted, the one you Money Boys thought was great for votes but would never be called upon to govern. Now you're gonna be living with that for a generation, at least. Which is the real panic over "the changing American demographic".

And spare me, by the way, the idea of Mitch Daniels as a "fiscal conservative". He bought himself two terms as governor; his (state) party is about to find out just how far it can get fudging numbers.

• Exhibit A. Or H. I've lost track. Daniels took one last victory lap in that fucking RV of his, and nobody cared; absent a political cudgel he's just another guy with a big war chest he's mostly keeping for himself, like Democrat Evan Bayh. Meanwhile, "Deacon Mike" Pence may be hard-pressed to get his 10% tax cut approved, even with a veto-proof Republican General Assembly; the game has changed since the legislature went gaga for Mitch in 2005. It's gonna be very interesting watching The Choirboy at work next year. First, he knows now that he could'a been Senator Pence, a much better fit for him than Governor, where there's going to be a track record, even if it is the Star keeping track. (In case you don't remember, Daniels booted his eight-year partner, Lt. Governor Becky "GED" Skillman, so Pence could run for governor without having to run her over. It was widely speculated at the time that this was done in order to clear the way for The Bantam Menace to succeed 182-year-old Richard "Dick" Lugar. That, of course, was before Richard "How Many Dicks Are There In The Republican Party?" Mourdock ate Lugar's lunch; now it's a matter of running against Joe Donnelly, in six years, having to spend money to do so, and having your career end if you try and fail.

Daniels already passed out all the plums and sold all the street signs. The state budget has cut into the bone, and pretty soon Hoosiers are going to notice there've been a few amputations while they weren't paying attention. Pence isn't gonna have the pull with the Money Boys that Daniels did, and that's before the legislature starts handing him bills defining marriage, life, and pi. He's already got Republicans in the legislature asking questions about the flim-flammy Indiana Economic Development Corporation. And who knows how long they can keep shuffling papers to make the Daniels Deficit disappear? Sooner or later every shell game operator has to skedaddle.

For The Sake Of The Country, Would It Be Possible For You To Just Be Fucking Insane Somewhere Else For A Week Or Two?

Ross Douthat, "Bloomberg, LaPierre and the Void". December 22

CONNOISSEURS of black humor may remember Benjamin "Virgin Ben" Shapiro, the "Conservative" intellectual who came out of nowhere and returned even more rapidly. (Yes, I know; he's one of Breitbart's brightest now. So fucking what?) Shapiro's schtick--technically, no doubt, that of his handlers--was that he was an amazing political wunderkind, wowing the Temple elders at a tender age. It apparently didn't matter that his actual output was a soulless and savor-free recapitulation of rightist talking points which a lad of sixteen had no business holding. Young Ben didn't talk about his own world; he talked about the world of his parents. He wrote a book about the insidious Invasion of the Pornographers, despite the fact that by the time he was born everyone in America had a VCR, and had it for one reason. It came as no surprise when he suddenly spouted off about the Soviet Union (which had disintegrated when he was 3), the Liberal Media, or Quemoy and Matsu. His most famous jaw-dropping idiocy of the period, of course, revolved around his colpophobia and its best-known symptom, his public insistence on saving his purity to present to his bride on their wedding night.

Now, it's entirely possible that in the global history of letters--most of it written in languages in which I lack basic competence, and all of it written in languages where I lack fluency--someone has tried to peddle a stupider idea. But I wouldn't take the bet. It is possible, just, that a young man at the peak of hormonal disruption of every fucking cell in his body nevertheless finds his religious or moral landscape sufficient to overcome the sexual urge. (To my knowledge, Shapiro never claimed this.) It's certainly possible that physical or psychological difficulties leave one on the outside looking in, as it were. However, the odds that a nominally-sentient sixteen-year-old decides, of his own volition, to forego the normal 24 hr/day cycle of hunting for pussy because of some scruple about the effects of promiscuous sexuality on the culture at large? Zero. Maybe Shapiro was making a virtue of necessity. I don't care. Considering his public persona I'd have bought a lifelong pledge of celibacy. I just don't know why anyone bought it as a political act from someone too young to get a driver's license.

Which brings us to Douthat, now humping along toward a monochrome middle age with the same teenage facial hair and the same teenage hand-me-down politics. Is there a single example of organic development in what we'll call, for lack of a thesaurus, Douthat's thought? (Concessions don't count.)

FOR a week after the Newtown shooting, the conversation was dominated by the self-righteous certainties of the American center-left.

As opposed to the certainties of the self-appointed public moralist, who can point to the Book his ideas come from, making them simply righteous.

In print and on the airwaves, the chorus was nearly universal: the only possible response to Adam Lanza’s rampage was an immediate crusade for gun control, the necessary firearm restrictions were all self-evident, and anyone who doubted their efficacy had the blood of children on his hands.

Mite touchy, are we?

And, look: "The Left", in general, favors some restrictions on gun ownership and weapon availability. The "immediate response" you were forced to suffer through so unfairly is a result of 20 6- and 7-year-olds being gunned down in a public school. By, predictably, some nut with an assault weapon. Normal people were shocked and appalled, Ross-O. Normal people want such atrocities to end. Normal people, not just political partisans, see the easy availability of weapons as the crucial link in all these episodes.

The leading gun control chorister was Michael Bloomberg, and this was fitting, because on a range of issues New York’s mayor has become the de facto spokesman for the self-consciously centrist liberalism of the Acela Corridor elite.

Who's the de facto spokesman for the sort of person who uses "Acela Corridor elite" as a collective noun?

So now a billionaire "Third Way" Rockefeller Republican is King of the Leftists because he, like millions of Americans, including a lot of apolitical ones, believes that maybe stricter gun laws might allow more of our fellow citizens to reach their eighth birthday?

How fucking convenient, how remarkably fucking convenient, if one wishes to pretend the argument is taking place in 1968, when yelling "Dirty Hippie" trumped everything.

Like so many members of that class, Bloomberg combines immense talent with immense provincialism: his view of American politics is basically the famous New Yorker cover showing Manhattan’s West Side overshadowing the world, and his bedrock assumption is that the liberal paternalism with which New York is governed can and should be a model for the nation as a whole.

Ross Douthat, born in San Francisco, CA, raised in New Haven, CT; attended Hamden Hall and Harvard University. Resides in Washington, District of Columbia. Spokesman for the culture of Middle America.

From 1992 to 2000: Blackville, SC. Lynnville, TN. Moses Lake, WA. Bethel, AK. Pearl, MS. Paducah, KY. Stamps, AR. Jonesboro, AR. Edinboro, PA. Springfield, OR. Richmond, VA. Fayetteville, TN. Columbine, CO. Conyers, GA. Deming, NM. Flint, MI. Lake Worth, FL.

Middle America can use all the help it can get.

It’s an assumption that cries out to be challenged by a thoughtful center-right. If you look at the specific proposals being offered by Bloomberg and others, some just look like reruns of assault weapon regulations that had no obvious effect the last time they were tried. Others still might have an impact on gun violence, but only at a cost: the popular idea of cracking down hard on illegal handguns, for instance, would probably involve “stop and frisk” on a huge scale, and might throw more young men in prison at a time when our incarceration rates are already too high.

The bullshit that "assault weapons bans failed" has been dealt with a hundred times over in the ten days since Sandy Hook; you can wish it away in your own mind, but not in public debate. As for the strain on our overcrowded prison system, it's full of drug offenders, many of 'em non-violent, and some guilty of next-to-nothing. Fact is that thanks to your party we've needed plenty of capacity, and can free up space as necessary. But, may I say, spirited attempt on the anti-racism routine, Ross. I didn't know you had it in you.

But instead of a kind of skepticism and sifting from conservatives, after a week of liberal self-righteousness the spotlight passed instead to ... Wayne LaPierre. And no Stephen Colbert parody of conservatism could match the National Rifle Association spokesman’s performance on Friday morning.

For cryin' out loud, you knew it was broken when you bought it.

It wasn’t so much that LaPierre’s performance made no concession whatsoever on gun restrictions or gun safety — that was to be expected.

It was expected from Wayne LaPierre. It isn't from every responsible gun owner.

It was that he launched into a rambling diatribe against an absurdly wide array of targets, blaming everything from media sensationalism to “gun-free schools” signs to ’90s-vintage nihilism like “Natural Born Killers” for the Newtown tragedy.

I gotta tell ya, Ross, how much I've enjoyed the "Wayne LaPierre is so old he thinks Natural Born Killers is in theaters" schtick every time I've heard it. As if Wayne LaPierre's actual political position isn't sixty years out of date.

Then he proposed, as an alternative to the liberal heavy-handedness of gun control, something equally heavy-handed — a cop in every school, to be paid for by that right-wing old reliable, cuts to foreign aid.

I'd just like to mention, once again, that this thing took the geniuses at the NRA a fucking week to come up with. And evidently no one told them a) most of that foreign aid goes to the We Need Israel to Start Armageddon Fund, and b) most of that comes in the form of weapons. If you think people should be armed to the teeth before they head over to the mall, you sure must believe Israel needs to fucking bristle with hardware.

Unfortunately for our country, the Bloomberg versus LaPierre contrast is basically all of American politics today. Our society is divided between an ascendant center-left that’s far too confident in its own rigor and righteousness and a conservatism that’s marched into an ideological cul-de-sac and is currently battering its head against the wall.

Puts me in mind of Thurber's bit in My Life and Hard Times where, after a semester of trying and failing to see anything through a microscope he finally produced a sketch of his own eyeball.

That's not the country, Ross-boy; that's the fucking interior of your own skull. It's certainly not a mirror held up to the public discussion of the last ten days, where Liberal Leftist Centrists Oblivious to the Evidence are opposed by Slightly Skewed Self-Defense Groups. That's not how sensible people in that Middle America you imagine you speak for think of things. Most people, most reasonably sane people, are so repulsed by Newtown that they don't want to hear any more excuses. That may not be a fully nuanced view, or a completely practical one, but it is the sane reaction. Your side sure didn't have a problem with simplistic, emotional arguments drowning everything out after 9/11, did it?

The entire Obama era has been shaped by this conflict, and not for the good. On issue after issue, debate after debate, there is a near-unified establishment view of what the government should do, and then a furious right-wing reaction to this consensus that offers no real policy alternative at all.

Says the guy who co-wrote that book in 2008 about how the Republican party had to adapt, then climbed on board the Teabag Express the moment it gained momentum.

The establishment view is interventionist, corporatist and culturally liberal. It thinks that issues like health care and climate change and immigration are best worked out through comprehensive bills drawn up by enlightened officials working hand in glove with business interests. It regards sexual liberty as sacrosanct, and other liberties — from the freedoms of churches to the rights of gun owners — as negotiable at best. It thinks that the elite should pay slightly higher taxes, and everyone else should give up guns, SUVs and Big Gulps and live more like, well, Manhattanites. It allows the president an entirely free hand overseas, and takes the Bush-Obama continuities in foreign policy for granted.

The right-wing view is embittered, paranoid and confused. It opposes anything the establishment supports but doesn’t know what it wants to do instead. (Defund government or protect Medicare? Break up the banks or deregulate them? Send more troops to Libya or don’t get involved? Protect our liberties or put our schools on lockdown?) 

Sometimes the right’s “just say no” approach holds the establishment at bay — as on climate change and immigration, to date. But sometimes, as the House Republicans are demonstrating in the budget showdown, it makes the eventual defeat that much more sweeping.

Speaking of sweeping: that's what the Times Op-Ed pages could use. Criticizing the "extremist excesses" of a portion of your party is bullshit. FOX News is your party. Further, you don't gain the status of Reasonableness, let alone Free Thinker, by offering the occasional half-assed swipe at it when things go bad. These people are Holy Middle America when they're turning out to vote your way, and crazed yahoos when you lose in spite of 'em. You're supposed to be the religious man, Douthat; how 'bout your standards gaining a little consistency? Meanwhile, Leftist Liberal Centrist Provincial Elites are everywhere, and at all times, barely able to cloak their inherent Evil. Or else they're simple-minded dupes. Is this the great swath of middle ground we're supposed to crowd around on?

Because if it is, you might want to work on that "sexual liberty" routine some.