perfidy

Why is Congress wasting its time on an inquest into steroid use in baseball, and exactly what article of the Constitution grants them the power to do so?

What... because the g-d d-mn president said so?

Don't they have a tit to outlaw or something?

Did Diebold and a cabal of Republican state employees conspire to disenfranchise thousands of Ohio Democrats last November? Does even asking the question make me sound like a liberal moonbat?

What if I told you that noted pinko Commie and liberal firebrand Christopher Hitchens was the one who asked it?

I'm from Ohio, I know the depths of venality and stupidity to which its Republican leaders routinely descend, and even though the better angels of my nature encourage me to scoff at conspiracy-mongering as this, I also know one other thing: It is impossible to overestimate the overweening greed, piggishness and crapulence of Ohio's leadership. This bears further scrutiny and a public shaming of resident mouth-breather "Gubner" Bob Taft just on general principles. After that we can go after that creep George Voinovich too. George Voinovich: the only governer in US history to parlay his ruin of a state's economy and infrastructure into a successful bid for Senator.

[wik] Or is Hitch just shining us on?

Last night, I saw President Bush on the toob calling for drilling in ANWR. For all those who are opposed to this heinous despoilation of mother Gaia, some perspective:

The Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge is an area the size of South Carolina. The proposed drilling area is about 2000 acres, about the size of a major metropolitan airport like, say, Dulles.

It isn't going to ruin the nature. And when Iran flips out and starts sinking oil tankers going through the straits of Hormuz, having that supply of oil might be a good thing.

Sometimes the notion occurs to me that one of the founding principles of the United States - that regular folks should be represented by other regular folks - was a terrible idea. If you have faith that the general mass of humanity are smart enough to tie their shoelaces and not drink their coffee til it's cool enough not to burn, that's a brilliant plan. However, if your faith in humanity extends no farther than the conviction that people are in general pretty dumb, then the Founder's great Enlightenment-driven zeal seems rather less well founded.

As the axiom goes, in a democracy, people tend to get the leader they deserve. While that might be a comforting thought to some folks, it fills me with the screaming horrors. Three vignettes from the past few days should suffice to explain.

Case the first: Sen. Tom Delay (R-Texas). Speaking about the Supreme Court's hearings today on the display of the Ten Commandments in public spaces, he said "I hope the Supreme Court will finally read the Constitution and see there's no such thing, or no mention, of separation of church and state in the Constitution."

While this is in fact true in a strict actuarial sense, there is a mention of separation of church and state in the first amendment to the Constitution. While Tom DeLay gets points for effort, I strongly suspect that the Chewbacca defense won't work on most members of the Supreme Court. Moreover, DeLay implies that the eight and one half members of the Supreme Court have not actually read the document they swore to uphold, when it's perfectly clear that at least few of them did at least once.

Clearly, Texans are pretty dumb.

Case the second: Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). Speaking about broadcast decency, Stevens said that his next trick as head of the Senate Commerce Committee would be to push for broadcast decency standards for cable and satellite entertainment.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens said on Tuesday he would push for applying broadcast decency standards to cable television and subscription satellite TV and radio.

"Cable is a much greater violator in the indecency area," the Alaska Republican told the National Association of Broadcasters, which represents most local television and radio affiliates. "I think we have the same power to deal with cable as over-the-air" broadcasters.

"There has to be some standard of decency," he said. But he also cautioned that "No one wants censorship."

Stevens told reporters afterward that he would push legislation to apply the standards to cable TV and satellite radio and television. It could become part of a pending bill to boost fines on broadcasters who violate indecency restrictions or of an effort to overhaul U.S. communications laws.

--snip--

Federal regulations bar broadcast television and radio stations from airing obscene material and restrict indecent material, such as sexually explicit discussions or profanity, to late-night hours when children are less likely to be watching or listening.

Stevens said he disagreed "violently" with assertions by the cable industry that Congress does not have the authority to impose limits on its content.

"If that's the issue they want to take on, we'll take it on and let the Supreme Court decide," he said.

I'm not sure I understand. People pay for cable and satellite programming. I pay for titties and swears, and I darn well know it. Is Stevens implying that the American people are too dumb to know what it is they are paying $50 a month for, that they are too dumb to know what they want? Well... I wouldn't put it past them, but Ockham's Razor applies here.

Alaskans must be pretty dumb.

Case the third: Rep. John Tierney (D-MA 6th District). Recently the US House of Representatives voted to raise the maximum fines that can be levied for showing boobies on TV or saying "shit" on the radio. That bastion of searingly intrepid investigative journalism, Rolling Stone, observes that for the same price of $500,000 per incident,

If the bill passes the Senate, Bono saying "fucking brilliant" on the air would carry the exact same penalty as illegally testing pesticides on human subjects. And for the price of Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during the Super Bowl, you could cause the wrongful death of an elderly patient in a nursing home and still have enough money left to create dangerous mishaps at two nuclear reactors. (Actually, you might be able to afford four "nuke malfunctions": The biggest fine levied by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last year was only $60,000.)

Why do I pick on Rep. John Tierney of the Massachusetts 6th when the vote sailed through the House 389-38?? Because I voted for him, and I goddamn well guarantee you my vote wasn't cast so he could fritter away his days banning titties on the tube like a craven little sock puppet for the Moral Majority. Hey John! I'm a champion grudge-holder, and come 2006, I'm going to vote for titties!

Well everyone, the joke's on me. People in Massachusetts must be pretty fucking dumb.

[wik] Gerard of the American Digest writes,

I take your point about the general attitude of DeLay, but I don't think it is a dubious assertion to say that his reference to the Constitution *does not* take the amendments into account. As far as my own experience in discussion goes, when people say "The Constitution" they mean the entire document, amendments and all. As you are aware, the interpretation of the clause under examination in the first amendment is where the argument lies. To assert that DeLay means other than the whole document seems to me to be a weak read.

That's exactly my point. DeLay knows-- and everybody knows-- that the 1st Amendment is an amendment to the Constitution, and therefore is part of it. But, my politician's mind tells me that, if pressed on this, DeLay is able to justify his howler of a comment by arguing that the Bill of Rights is the Bill of Rights TO the Constitution, an appendage, and therefore not technically part of the original whole. That interpretation is correct in a strictly technical sense, but crashingly disingenuous in the colloquial. It would be like getting on someone for lying for saying "I buttoned up my shirt" by claiming that since they started at the top button, they had actually buttoned *down*their shirt.

I feel I'm giving DeLay the benefit of the doubt here. If he is in fact arguing that the 1st Amendment does NOT contain a clause prohibiting the establishment of a state religion and state endorsement of one religion over others, then he is either A) dumber than I ever suspected or B) thinks we're all that dumb, and therefore is himself even dumber than that. While I know he's pretty damn dumb, I prefer to hold out hope he's being a mealy-mouthed politician rather than either A or B.

[alsø wik] Patton, a Texan, writes in agreement that Texans are, in fact, dumb. To plunder Raymond Chandler, down these dumb streets walks a man who is not himself dumb.

Dubya got a richly deserved smackdown yesterday from a federal judge (whom, ironically, he had appointed to the bench), who ruled that alleged "dirrrty bomba" Jose Padilla should either be charged with an actual crime, or set free.

"The court finds that the president has no power, neither express nor implied, neither constitutional nor statutory, to hold petitioner as an enemy combatant," Judge Floyd wrote.

The judge said he had no choice but to reject the president's claim that he had the power to detain Mr. Padilla, who was arrested in May 2002 at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago and was later accused of having planned to detonate a radiation-spewing "dirty bomb" in the United States as part of a plot by Al Qaeda.

"To do otherwise would not only offend the rule of law and violate this country's constitutional tradition1," Judge Floyd wrote, "but it would also be a betrayal of this nation's commitment to the separation of powers that safeguards our democratic values and individual liberties."

'bout right. War is not a blank check.

taking control of the Democratic party, throwing it so far to the left it's almost antipodean. That damn Howard Dean, that filthy pinko, that usurper of power, that MoveOn-powered moonbat hijacker of the minority voice. That filthy pro-Second-Amendment fiscally conservative Gingrich-admiring cool-on-Clinton state's righter pinko is going to take the Democratic party to its doom with his Berkeley love-ins and his hairy-legged birkenstocked sensitivity advisors. Its doom, I tell you! Its doom!

My ass.

Don't move back to Virginia.

No disrespect to Buckethead, Ross, my wife's family, or the beautiful city of Alexandria, but I can't live somewhere where I can't wear my pants how I want, no matter how low or tacky. Oh, also the gay thing. Hey... both are the state's decision and rightly so... but...

Both from this story.

I: Newt Ging-er-ich

"Why would you go home tomorrow having cut benefits in Social Security for a problem that might happen in 25 years?" said Gingrich, who supports private accounts but opposes benefit cuts to pay for them."

Let me ask him a question: Q "Why would you go home tomorrow having installed a sprinkler system in your house for a fire that might happen in 25 years?"

A: Because, Newt: when the house is burning down, it's too late.

II: Rep. Rob Simmons (Conn.):

"Why stir up a political hornet's nest ... when there is no urgency? .... When does the program go belly up? 2042. I will be dead by then."

Social security reform needs to happen, and soon. If you wish to cavil and argue about how, please! do!, but do it over there, if you don't mind. The sheer amount of cravenness and stupidity I see on the Republican side of the aisle on this question (and don't get me started on the Democrats!) is positively mind-blowing. Cut my benefits! I don't seriously think I'll ever see them anyway! Give me a private account! I don't seriously think I'll see a cent anyway! Means test the hell out of it! If I'm that faking rich at age 70 that means testing applies to me, you can keep my nassssty chips!

And Rep. Simmons, be careful. Talk like that and your career will be dead much sooner than you think, you spineless fuck.

Slacktivist looks at the social security trust fund one way. I look at it another.

Contributed to a trust fund? Did you really? Hmm. I guess you can look at it that way, and you can also look at it this way:

You're Abe, and you have a son, Ben. You set up two accounts, one for "regular stuff", and one for "retirement". You're worried about the retirement account, so you put extra money in it. But your regular bills are pretty high, so you "loan" the extra cash from the retirement fund to the regular fund, and then you go ahead and spend it anyway. Then you go back to Ben and let him know that he "owes you" the extra cash you put in the retirement fund.

So how much did you really save with that little sleight of hand?

As a not-quite-young-anymore person, I've been in the workforce 20 years, and I've paid plenty of taxes, both regular and social security.

This generation of workers (along with the previous) have _voted_ themselves benefits far in excess of what they've produced. I agree on the nature of the paper -- the government better damn well pay it back, or financial systems all over the world are going to feel the shockwave.

But don't paper it over with an "I paid into this" attitude. You didn't. You didn't pay for the government you got over the last 20 years, you won't pay for what you're getting over the next 10, and as a whole, the citizens of this country have simply decided that screwing over the next generation is the very most important thing to them.

So what to do? Wage-indexed benefits have got to go. You can't attempt to sustain a "20% of average wage" standard for benefits in the face of a 3-to-1 worker-retiree ratio. Convert social security into a truly pay-as-you-go system, on a year-by-year basis. Stop the theft of the surplus by the general fund. Means-test benefits; it's social security _insurance_, not "my check is in the mail". Begin computation of cost-benefit ratios for drugs and employ a harsh test -- the drug is not on an "approved list" unless spending those same drug dollars on less high-tech medicine can't save more lives. Weight these tests towards children and the young. They're paying the bills.

The greatest generation was followed by the greediest generation whose myopic gaze falls upon the desert of its works -- castles made of sand, a loving gift to their progeny...

While reading an otherwise provocative and lively discussion by a group of film critics (2004: The Year in Movies) which manages to cover all the ground between loving and hating Dogville, Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Passion of The Christ and dismissing all three as forgettable failed experiments, I came across the following phrase, written by Scott Foundas of the L.A. Weekly:

As early as Sundance in January, there was Jehane Noujaim's Control Room, an extraordinary survey of the current propaganda wars (ultimately, the ones that really matter)...

It is unfortunate that Foundas chose the word "ultimate" in arguing that wars of words and ideas matter in the end more than wars of killing. He is using it in a poetic sense to lend heft to his assertion that propaganda "really matter[s]." Unfortunately for him, "ultimate" means the last, the end, the thing which cannot be overcome.

I have argued in this forum repeatedly that the US armed forces can do no greater good for themselves, the USA, and (he said, from his seat of white male imperial privelige,) the world than to work as hard as possible on winning the 'hearts and minds' battles in the wars they are fighting. The "propaganda wars" Foundas refers to include these and more. The 'hearts and minds' efforts are incredibly important, because after the killing winds down and nations get back to doing what it is nations do when they are not busy tearing themselves into pieces, it would be really nice if we were not hated as a matter of policy as the Great Satan Above All Satans. In the short run winning the hearts and minds battle-- or at least trying to do better on that front than breaking even-- can only help. In the long run it can ensure that the sun does not soon set on the American Century (1919-?).

But as truly important as they are, in war, hearts and minds are not the "ultimate" thing in a war.

Ultimately, "propaganda" only matters when someone is left alive to see it.

A California Catholic school has angered some students' parents by choosing to accept for enrollment two boys who are the adopted sons of a gay couple. The angry parents "demanded that St. John the Baptist School in Costa Mesa accept only families that pledge to abide by Catholic teachings," and vet applicants accordingly. The school's leaders point out that if that were done to the desired extent, "then children whose parents divorced, used birth control or married outside the church would also have to be banned."

The angry parents, evidently forgetting that as Catholics they don't have a whole lot of lay authority, intend to appeal their case all the way to the Pope, under the thesis that the ancient and inscrutable Vatican heirarchy operates just like an episode of "Law and Order."

These gay men, as the argument goes, are doing a horrible horrible thing in wanting to give their children a Catholic education and to raise them in the Catholic tradition. After all, what gay person would ever love God? Sez one angry parent, "the boys are being used as pawns by these men to further their agenda." Guh? While I can understand the outrage to a certain degree, since the Catholic church stands foursquare against homosexuality, I cannot quite get my head around the idea that Catholics would turn away the children of homosexuals. I thought only one sin got passed down through generations.

[wik] Edited 1/4/04 for moral and grammatical clarity.

For no good reason I am reminded of two quotes today.

The first is from New York politician (and later US Senator and founding member of the GOP) William H. Seward. After a dinner party in the late 1840s at which he locked horns with Elizabeth Cady Stanton over the vexed questions of women's suffrage and women's rights, Mr. Seward admitted to Stanton:

You have the argument, but custom and prejudice are against you, and they are stronger than truth and logic.

The next comes from everyone's favorite humanist misanthrope, H.L. Mencken.

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."

In other news, I think it's kind of funny that certain parties are doing their yearly Dance of Vexation over the greeting "Merry Christmas." Leaving aside the delicious ironies inherent in Protestants of any stripe defending a Mass, a pox on all y'all's houses for bringing this up in the first place. 80 percent of the country is Christian. That's no beleaguered minority. And, hearing a few "Merry Christmases" isn't going to blacken anyone's soul within their bodies (or burn the ears out of their heads). Tolerance isn't about making everyone feel comfortable at every turn. It's about tolerating shit that makes you crazy. Your shit is making me crazy; this is me tolerating you with all my feeble might and precious good will. So, to those making noise: Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, kiss my ass, kiss my ass, kiss your ass, kiss his ass, Happy Hannukah.

Happy Festivus, everyone.

From the what-the-hell-were-they-thinking department: Two committee members just got the unlimited ability to look at anyone's tax return, through what GOP leaders are (probably truthfully) calling a screw-up.

Makes you wonder about the legislative process in general. What other little time bombs are waiting in these huge bills?

More than just an ok-to-decent Rolling Stones album, it's the focus of this blogcritics master post dedicated to dissecting the outcome of everyone's favorite day of electoral reckoning.

Some real good stuff in there.

This is one of the more thoughtful bits on Roe v. Wade I've ever run across. This part amused me greatly:

For the record, I’m with Justice Ginsburg on this one: I think ROE was wrongly decided. Indeed, I’m not entirely convinced that the court was right in GRISWOLD. It’s one thing to say that laws against contraception or abortion are foolish and unwise. It’s quite another entirely to say they’re unconstitutional. I mean, look, the state of Texas has a law--and it is still enforced--that says owning 5 marital aids is perfectly legal, but owning 6 is a felony. Stupid? You bet. Constitutional? You bet. And, really, I’ve never come across any situations in which more than 4 were ever needed anyway.

And as an added bonus, this:

And just look what ROE’s done to the process of judicial nominations. It’s the 800 pound gorilla of the judiciary. Jeez, it’s getting to the point where selecting judges is gonna be have to done like picking jurors: You can only get a seat if you’ve never read ROE, never written a Law Review article on the right to privacy, never given a speech about it, never had any friends or family members who’ve eve had abortions, etc., etc. And that’s how you end up with David Souter on the court. If we got rid of ROE entirely we’d have to go back to picking judges on the basis of, I dunno, intellect or experience and stuff.

Thanks to Rocket Jones for the tip.

Or not really. Bush's cabinet has seen less turnover over his first term than any administration in recent memory. The only major shift was in Treasury a while back, when O'Neil was shown the door for not being on board with White House policy. So far, six cabinet secretaries have resigned, two more are expected, and two replacements have been named. Most notably, bete noire of the left John Ashcroft and darling of the left Colin Powell are leaving. In both cases, Bush has nominated White House insiders to fill those positions, and when Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge resigns, that will likely be the cases as well. Bush appears to be doing what anyone would have expected of him – nominating people of proven loyalty to important positions.

A couple things have interested me about the nominations we know about so far. In both cases, Bush is nominating minorities to high government positions – Gonzales for AG and Rice for state. Yet aside from scant reference to “first Hispanic AG” and “First Black Woman Secretary of State” I haven’t seen much cheering from the usual suspects about the significance of these appointments in regard to race/gender issues. Perhaps the fact that they are conservative Hispanics and Black Women negates the achievement.

Gonzales will face some flack for writing the memorandum defending the exclusion of detainees from the Geneva convention. While this position is legally defensible, I have in the past argued that it was a bad idea. Aside from that issue, I think that Gonzales should offer no more offense than any other Republican nominee. For one thing, he is not a fundamentalist Pentecostal Christian, a belief that seems to make all liberals quake in fear. Why this should be so is beyond my powers to comprehend. The religious right certainly differs from the left in their conception of the good society. But they are not engaged in some desperate conspiracy to strip all the freedoms the left holds dear and put hippies in camps. That’s me, not them. But in any event, Gonzales isn’t one, so that should make many people happy.

Condoleeza Rice will be officially nominated for Secretary of State early this afternoon. In many respects, she is an obvious choice for the President. She is loyal, agrees with him on foreign policy, and will likely act to reign in the careerist diplomats at State. She will be a competent representative of American interests – rather than the representative of foreign interests to the administration. Appointing Rice to State signals that there will be no real change in the thrust of American policy – not that anyone expected that there would be.

Some might argue that Rice is unsuitable because of the faulty intelligence that led Bush to move on Iraq. But I think that this really isn’t a criticism of Rice, but rather of the intelligence services themselves, which brings us to the CIA. Jon Henke of [url= QandO]http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=429]QandO[/url][/url] gathered up some reactions on the left to the craziness at CIA. And gently pointed out to them that the same thing has happened before. It’s been a long time since the CIA has been shaken up, and recent performance (for oh, say, the last four years) has been subpar at best. What was once admiringly called the Silent Service has since become a loudspeaker service, with every CIA agent with an ax to grind running to the Washington Post. Disagreeing with the president is one thing. Actively undermining a sitting president is unacceptable. Hopefully Porter Goss can begin the process of reforming the CIA, so that it can once more provide useful intelligence to the executive. (An important first step would be beefing up the operations side of the house – human intelligence efforts have been haphazard and pathetic ever since the Church commission gutted the CIA back in the seventies. Indications are that this will be on Goss’ agenda.)

All in all, nothing about Bush’s new nominees is earth-shattering, controversial or a sign of the apocalypse. I think Goss has the potential to be an outstanding DCI, and Rice may well be an excellent Secretary of State. Gonzales will do a decent job at Justice, but will not attract the hatred that Ashcroft did. We’ll have to see what other people are nominated, but I expect that there will be at least one democrat in the mix. So far, so good.

Let the healing commence.

It's a few days after the election, and I've had time to calm down. I'm sorry Buckethead's offended by what I wrote. I regret the tone of the piece, but it accurately reflects what I was feeling at the time. I am bitterly disappointed. I'll try to be as clear as possible as to why.

Based on my examination of the issues in this campaign and the track records of the candidates, I felt that Kerry represented the best choice. The policy documents on his web site contained solid ideas to address a number of problems in the country, and were for the most part in line with my own ideas to repair the situation.

Fundamentally, you can vote your heart, or you can vote your head. Sometimes, when you're lucky, you get to vote both.

I am essentially a two-issue person: I am concerned with the financial structure and mechanisms of the federal government, and with war. As readers here know, I know a reasonable amount about the first, and little about the second.
No credible support of Bush's first term financial policy exists. A good number of the expert, fiscally conservative Republicans publicly departed the party over this issue. The only economists left on the supply-side bandwagon are spending what remains of their credibility at a tremendous rate. I have pleaded, time and again, for any substantive discourse on this topic. What I unfailingly receive are declarations that "taxes are lower", or some such. On who? By how much? And at what cost? A one-dimensional analysis of Bush's two tax cuts yields the not-quite-astonishing fact that a lot of people paid slightly less in tax, and a very few people paid a lot less in tax.

If I offered to pay you $300 now on the condition that I also get to put $2000 on your credit card balance (and I get the cash), would you take the deal? No rational person would.

This administration (and rose-glassed Republicans) have argued that "deficits don't matter". Deficits do matter, when the difference between deficit growth and economic growth becomes too great. There are numerous examples throughout the world (and in American history) of what happens when governments go bankrupt.

This administration has the worst record on spending in modern times. They increased discretionary spending at a record 7% per year, and that does not include huge expenditures on the military, primarily due to Iraq, which will inflate the true deficit by hundreds of billions more.

Republicans defend Bush's policies with two arguments: First, tax cuts for the wealthy will lead to economic growth, which will make up for the spending. The second is "numbers don't matter".

I have repeatedly addressed the first, here on Perfidy. I have done so with facts, and with numbers, and with references. In return I have seen nothing other than a repetition of supply-side mantras, usually prefixed by "everybody knows that...". Well, it just ain't so. Supply-side economists are the laughingstock of the profession for a very simple reason: The predictive quality of their models hovers around zero. When you put forward a theory that theory will make predictions, based on observations and actions, of outcomes. The relatively tame predictions of the supply-side economists have suffered greatly at the hands of reality. The outlandish claims and predictions of the political class with respect to the same ideas have no identifiable relationship to reality.

The "numbers don't matter" argument is unnerving, to say the least. If numbers don't matter, why bother altering the taxes at all? Hell, why bother paying taxes at all? Why don't we just drive the deficit up into the stratosphere? Economic growth will take of it, right?

It is very rare to encounter someone of either party that believes that we can run a federal government without any taxation at all, if the government is to continue performing its current set of functions. So the numbers do matter after all, and we are in agreement. What we're really arguing are where the lines are. What constitutes acceptable taxation, spending, and deficit? The deficit-as-percentage-of-GDP argument simply does not hold; by that measure we are a year or two away from record debt. A continuation of Bush's massive spending increases guarantees that it will occur. Further tax cuts will exacerbate the problem.

But this isn't really a place where I'm going to argue the numbers because I've done it before. And from what I can see, speaking to my Republican friends, you're not interested. I am perplexed as to the source of your continued support for supply-side fiscal policy, tilted towards the very wealthy. I wish it were otherwise.

The war in Iraq is an extraordinarily complex creature. Let me simplify to this: Polls have found that 75% of registered Republicans believed, in the runup to the election, that Saddam Hussein was responsible at least in part, for 9/11. It follows that if you believe that, a war in Iraq makes sense. Amongst the other 25%, the prevailing attitude seems to be that although the public reasoning given for the war was proven wrong, there were other perfectly good reasons for the war. I place value on the public statements of a politician, in the political process; I hold them to those statements. If we do not, where is the incentive to govern in the light?

The best available information on the Iraq-9/11 link at this time was and is the report of the 9/11 commission, which dimissed the possibility. The Bush Administration did not take the country to war directly on the issue of Saddam's role in 9/11. That role was continuously intimated, though -- and a trusting GOP party base took their leader's subtext at face value. The claimed direct support for the war was weapons of mass destruction.

I was a fence-sitter on the decision to go to war. The public evidence simply did not support war on the WMD issue. But...there was the President and his top advisors on television, advocating forcefully for war, and using phrases like "we know he has them". In a democracy you need to put some trust in elected leaders, and that led me to assume that Bush must have been in possession of evidence that had to stay secret. It was the only thing that made sense at the time -- intelligence must have shown proof positive that there some incredibly bad things going on there, and it was time to go in.

What we know now is that no such hard evidence ever existed, or was ever presented to the President. What weak evidence remained has since been demolished by internal collapse, or by the reality of what we have found in the country, now that we "own" it.

The President gambled that he would find WMD in Iraq. If we assume that he placed faith in his top advisors and only they were in possession of the details that would have led to a different decision, we must conclude that the President has a poor ability to pick solid people for his team. A lot of liberals (come on, let's admit it) have accused the President of being a liar. I do not. I feel utterly comfortable with calling him a gambler, though.

On the financial issue, the President engaged a tax cut policy with no likely positive outcome for anyone other than the wealthiest citizens in the country. The tax cut did come with serious, destructive side effects; these risks were well-known, in advance.

So on the two issues that matter the most to me, this President engaged policy that came with massive, dangerous, and well-known risks. He did so to achieve a very limited up-side outcome; to achieve even that limited outcome required dozens of known problems to break in the President's favor. They did not.

We can argue all day long about Iraq and whether long-term success is possible there. What we should not be arguing about is this: The outcome in Iraq is not what the President and his core team expected. As combat opened in Iraq, the working plan, authorized by the President, was to have force levels drawn down to below 60,000 troops within 90 days.

I will not make the argument that the outcome on tax cuts was not what the President expected, because I do not believe the President expected anything remotely resembling the outlandish claims of various GOP politicians to come true.

Let me return to the disappointment of democrats, and to the disappointment of this liberal. Bush's victory has been a bitter pill. Why? Based on my view of policies and supporting evidence, it reveals a fundamental flaw in this democracy's ability to make rational decisions. On the two issues I have highlighted here, I simply cannot find any rational, factual support for his decisions, now or at the time he made them. And that, friends, is disappointing as hell.

Most liberals looked at this election with hope and faith. They were not looking at their party, and they were not looking at their candidate when they felt these things. They were looking at their entire system of government. Surely now, in the face of such poor decision-making, such obvious division, such disparity between predicated and actual outcomes, the rationality of democracy would exert itself. We were confident that enough Republican moderates (and I consider Mr. and Mrs. Buckethead to be two of them) would look at the same facts, the same speeches, and come to something close to the same conclusions. All across the country, the serious, moderate Republican columnists (who also appeal to moderate Democrats) made substantial criticisms of the Bush administration, and many of them publicy declared their intention to vote for Kerry, based on Bush's performance.

We were waiting, held breath, for the relief that would come as the elections would yield a basic assurance that most of us saw the same facts and reasoned the same way.

It has been devastating to watch "liberal" goals be discarded, one after the other, by this Administration. I refuse to call them conservative, because they are not. At least, they are not conservative in any positive sense I care to associate with the word.

We really care about the environment; Bush threw Kyoto and the EPA in the trash and never came up with an alternative. We care about equality; Bush voters believe that racial equality and the equality of homosexuals are disjoint issues. We believe that the best foreign policy and outcome comes from cooperation and trust; Bush has alienated virtually the entire world with a bullying attitude, squandered lives and vast resources on a pointless exercise of cultural engineering. We care deeply about freedom; Bush's embrace of religion and his integration of it into the secular decision making process and apparatus scares us, because the past and the present show us where highly public religion leads. We care about the fiscal stability of our government; Bush has recklessly gone where no budget has gone before, while inexplicably proclaiming that he has done the opposite. We think that the future our children will inherit will involve the environment, religion, equality, globalization and fiscal stability; Bush has jeopardized virtually all of it, for no discernible reason.

Nowhere in Buckethead's missive has he put forward reasons for a Bush vote. In the absence of such I can only speculate, and my honest speculation goes something like this:

1. Terrorism is the greatest problem facing the country. Bush is "better on terror", because he will take the fight to the enemy and prevent future disasters; Kerry would focus more at home, and with him as President there will be a higher probability of a terrorist attack.

2. Fighting Arabs/Iraqis in Baghdad is better than fighting them here.

2. "Activist" judges are destroying the American Way of Life. Tolerating certain behaviors is fine; giving deviants official recognition is unacceptable. Kerry would force homosexuality into everyday lives, and homosexuals would "take control".

3. Higher medical costs are due to a tort system out of control. Bush would reign in medical malpractice; Kerry would make the problem worse because of "trial lawyer support", or socialize medicine in some way, which would mean a drastic reduction in service and availability.

4. Tax cuts for the wealthy help the economy, spur job growth, and "raise all boats"; Kerry would roll back the tax cut and choke off the economy.

5. A "liberal elite" has dominated the political scene. This liberal elite "despises" regular Americans and is trying to socially engineer the country . George Bush brings regular-guy, common sense to the job; Kerry is a card-carrying member of the liberal elite.

6. The "liberal media" lies about almost everything. George Bush can be trusted to tell the truth.

7. Republicans run a tight ship; Democrats would tax and spend.

8. Bush has had four years experience in the job, in tough times. Kerry has no experience as a leader.

9. A President with solid "moral values", and public Christianity is the best measure of this; a vote for Kerry is a vote for immorality.

10. Environmental science is bogus, and full of crazy predictions from liberal scientists who just want to make money. George Bush is right to roll back environmental controls, Kerry would wreck the economy with regulations to protect us from problems that don't really exist.

Am I somewhere close to correct with this? These particular ten points strike me as rationally demonstrable to be false; that argument is not relevant at this time.

I think Dan Drezner put it best, when he declared his intention, as a lifelong Republican, to vote for Kerry. He said that he just couldn't understand Bush's decision-making process, and while he disagreed with some of John Kerry's policies, he could understand how he made them.

We are dismayed because we do not understand how George Bush and his administration make decisions. We despair when a majority in this country support something we do not understand, and offer no additional reasoning for that support. We despair when, as in this year of issues that seemed dramatically simplified and obvious, far more so than in decades past, that our policies and beliefs are so mercilessly discarded by the tyranny of a majority that is actively hostile towards the personal freedom, collective responsibility and tolerance that we cherish. We are additionally left with the ugly aftertaste of intolerance, knowing that intolerance for sexual preference tipped the balance in this election.

You claim the existence of a massed heartland of reasoned conservatism. I have perhaps claimed something similar, a wide bastion of reasoned liberalism.

I despair because neither exists. I do not understand how this electorate makes decisions. Countless conversations with dozens of Republicans have come to naught; careful shared discussion of facts and policy which often led to fragile consensus on courses of action are discarded in a matter of seconds before a raised fist of misdirected anger, as tribal urges render that discourse meaningless, powerless in a new tangled context of emotion-driven, faith-driven political power.

Have I not been open to other views? I believe that I have been. I have admitted when I have been wrong, and if I have been demanding in the nature of discourse, it has not been to create a separate standard for myself.

I find it telling that in years of discussions on recent Republican policy with dozens of those on the other side, none has ever sought to convince me of their correctness; it was for me to be informed of that correctness. Perhaps I am not worth the investment. More likely, it is that some form of faith lies at the heart of these policies, and my good friends have simply been humoring me, knowing that unless that faith was present in me, no conversion could take place.

A missionary spends years in the field; good, enjoyable years of toil bringing truth, a desire to help, and the will to leave the world a better place than he found it. If his works are "writ in water" and without effect, does he not doubt? When does a man decide to turn inward, and for what reason?

I claim a right to decide it, when and where I choose.

President Bush was reelected last Tuesday, and by a large margin. Not a landslide, but a three and a half million vote lead is not squeaking by, either. As a conservative and a republican (not the same thing, by the way) I was relieved and pleased that my candidate had won the election. I went to bed when it became clear that it was over, and was up in time to see Kerry's gracious concession speech. The talking heads began their usual dissection of the results, and wondered what it meant for the losing side. All seemed well with the world, and I made a conscious decision not to post any gloating remarks here at perfidy, lest I seem to be, well, gloating.

I might not have bothered. My small gloats would have been entirely lost in a sea of ridiculous whining and moaning from the left. Leaving aside the moonbats at the Democratic Underground, and the covers of leftist British newspapers, there has been an awful lot of crying. But along with the crying has come loads of insults directed at the winner, and those who supported him.

In Slate, Jane Smiley has some not very smiley things to say about the 51% of the electorate that voted for Bush:

Why Americans Hate Democrats - A Dialogue

The unteachable ignorance of the red states

The reason the Democrats have lost five of the last seven presidential elections is simple: A generation ago, the big capitalists, who have no morals, as we know, decided to make use of the religious right in their class war against the middle class and against the regulations that were protecting those whom they considered to be their rightful prey - workers and consumers. The architects of this strategy knew perfectly well that they were exploiting, among other unsavory qualities, a long American habit of virulent racism, but they did it anyway, and we see the outcome now - Cheney is the capitalist arm and Bush is the religious arm. They know no boundaries or rules. They are predatory and resentful, amoral, avaricious, and arrogant. Lots of Americans like and admire them because lots of Americans, even those who don't share those same qualities, don't know which end is up. Can the Democrats appeal to such voters? Do they want to? The Republicans have sold their souls for power. Must everyone?

Progressives have only one course of action now: React quickly to every outrage - red state types love to cheat and intimidate, so we have to assume the worst and call them on it every time. We have to give them more to think about than they can handle - to always appeal to reason and common sense, and the law, even when they can't understand it and don't respond. They cannot be allowed to keep any secrets. Tens of millions of people didn't vote—they are watching, too, and have to be shown that we are ready and willing to fight, and that the battle is worth fighting. And in addition, we have to remember that threats to democracy from the right always collapse. Whatever their short-term appeal, they are borne of hubris and hatred, and will destroy their purveyors in the end.

Ironically, she implies that Democrats aren't Americans. This is one of the more sensible responses to Kerry's loss that I found.

Over at Q and O, Jon collects some responses from the left:

TBOGG:

James Wolcott nails it with a sledgehammer:

"Good, Go Ahead, America, Choke on Your Own Vomit, You Deserve to Die."

AMERICAN STREET:

Osama Wins!!

VARIOUS COMMENTERS AT ATRIOS:

I hope the people who voted for Bush get eight legs, ten arms and brain tumors.

...

The rest of the world should know that we ... will never succomb to the relentless efforts of right-wing extremists who seek to turn the United States of America into a replica of the Third Reich.

...

welcome back to 1923

...

What we have been doing isn't working, it's time for a new plan. I bet the Jews and Germans thought they could ride Hitler out, too. You see where that got them.

...

...Chimpy McCokespoon...

...

[Ohio] is just as full of morons as any other, except more so. Fucking ruined my life and my body - hope to be able to kill a few of them before I leave...

...

We are on the path to becoming a fascist state--only revolution or a violent coup will stop it.

As a conservative, it would be easy to take offense at all of this - and there is plenty more out there. I can personally vouch for the fact that had Kerry won, I would not be reacting in this peculiar manner. There seems to be a common feeling among right wing bloggers that the reactions of the left seem a little too much, a little over the top in both vituperativeness and whining tone. Patton over at opinion8 shared a similar thought via email, and Michelle Catalano has an interesting story to tell over at a small victory.

Why all of this rage, angst and fear over Bush's victory? Let's leave that for a moment, and move a little closer to home. I can easily dismiss the ravings of other bloggers, because they're likely talking out of their ass just as I often do here. But intelligent people that I personally know, have met face to face and who know me are guilty of the same rhetoric that I cited above. Yesterday, Mrs. Buckethead's band was in the studio working on their new, full length album. One would think that this would be a happy time for the band, but the news of Bush's victory weighed heavy on their minds. You see, everyone in the band save my wife is a liberal. Oh, to be sure, the bass player votes Republican just to spite an old girlfriend, and GuitarPicker is a longtime commenter here at Perfidy and has many libertarian leanings. But the band is in fact reliably liberal.

After her experience yesterday, my wife was loathe to return to the studio today. Nearly everyone in the band had said something grossly offensive to conservatives, completely unwilling to remember or recognize that my wife the conservative was in the room. One of the other singers made a comment along the lines of, "How could so many people be so stupid and vote for that idiot?" My wife gently pointed out, "I am not an idiot and I voted for him." The response was classic - "Oh, we don't mean you!" This pattern is classic bigoted behavior. Bigot: "All x are filthy, stupid mouthbreathers." Interlocutor: "What about this x?" Bigot: "Oh, that one's different. It's all the rest of them that I'm talking about."

No doubt, that singer would be shocked to hear her pronouncements classed as bigotry. She is a liberal, from a long and distinguished line of liberals, and nothing she says could ever be bigotry. She is careful to excise all racist, classist, sizeist, and genderist concepts from thought and speech. But, damn, those conservatives are baby-eating, rapist, warmongering idiots. Other members of the band had similar thoughts to offer my gentle conservative wife. The usual gamut of base canards was offered - Bush is stupid, the fundamentalist Christians are going to put us in camps, and of course, OIL! The banjo player had shaved his head and vowed never to cut until a democrat was once again in the white house, and we are free of the abomination that is George W. Bush. (Saving grace - apparently he looks like much less of a dirty hippy than previously. I hope he ends his days an old man, never having cut his hair.)

Mrs. Buckethead is not political in the sense that I am. While her conservatism is likely stronger than mine, she does not enjoy political argument and finds political discussion rather beside the point. She'd much rather play music. So, being subjected to this from her friends and bandmates is painful on at least a couple levels. One, she is being insulted by friends who in the depth of their pain over Kerry's loss, seem unable to realize that they are saying rather hurtful things. Two, she doesn't like to talk about these things - and therefore has never developed the snappy comebacks and putdowns that characterize modern political argument. She doesn't want to appear a poor winner, despite the fact that that means that these ungracious slobs can continue being tragically poor losers.

And here, on this very website, my friend Ross has given into the temptation to view Bush's victory as apocalypse. Despite the fact that the previous four years have failed to see the arrival of apocalypse; the determined chicken littles on the left - just like the preachers in the nineteenth century who constantly were calibrating the date of the arrival of the end times - must postpone the immanentizing of the eschaton. Here's a sample of what Ross thinks about Bush's reelection:

But Bush represents the certainty of an economic death spiral, the affirmation of xenophobia (and just about every other phobia, including homo-), and the sunsetting of liberty. He's got a four year track record to prove it. At least with Kerry there was a chance for fiscal discipline and for cooperation on the international level; no such chance exists now.

We're really entering a new era, now. If you're a smart, wealth-producing, socially liberal, fiscally conservative person, you need to start thinking about protecting yourself and your family from this lunacy, and you need to start doing it right now. The bible-wielding welfare-staters are coming for us. They want to spend our tax dollars on things we don't agree about, like stupid wars. They want to force everyone to hate gays. They want to take away a woman's right to choose. They do not believe the environment should be protected. They want to swagger around the playground, declaring that the opinions of those who live elsewhere in the world don't matter. They talk financial discipline, but implement the largest discretionary spending increases in modern times. They hand huge breaks to the buddies of the people in charge of their "party", and they hand the bill to us, and to the next generation. 

So how do you protect yourself and your family against this lunacy? I don't know yet. I'm trying to figure it out. I'm not sure it's possible; at least, not in America.

So there you have it! Now that the benighted majority has consigned us to another four years in hell, what can we be certain of? The economy will go into a death spiral - despite the stock market rally that is still ongoing, and the new positive job numbers that just came out. We know that our leadership hates all the wogs. Despite the fact that we were once all wogs ourselves, and that same leadership has committed this nation to the expenditure of blood and treasure in an attempt to bring freedom to those same brown skinned folk. Also, the administration and all its followers are afraid of everything, including gays. Well, that's obvious, isn't it? Without fear, the hate core of the right could never create the fear based police state that Ross figures is right around the corner. Liberty, well that's right out the window. (Except the liberty to own guns. The left never did support the complete bill of rights.) We'll start more stupid wars, which will make the rest of the world hate us even more, and that will destroy the environment, and we'll all either freeze to death or broil, depending on what the global warming activists are predicting today. And don't forget the swaggering. The villain must swagger, because otherwise we won't know he's evil. That's important, because unless a villain swaggers, you never have the satisfying denouement.

I think Ross has his hate labels confused though, given that the bible thumpers rarely if ever support the welfare state - though they are famous for their charity. They'll be coming for you, though. Probably to give you a homemade pie or something, but they'll be coming nevertheless. Ross, at least you are a Canadian; you can run to the Canadian embassy when the jackbooted thugs start roaming the streets. I guess the rest of us are stuck here to face the worst.

I cannot express in words the extent to which this kind of thinking both bores and offends me. Every time a Republican wins national office, the litany of despair begins anew. In situations like 2000, the litany is embellished with whining over stolen elections. Always it's dark conspiracies and the end times drawing nigh. Only two liberals of my personal acquaintance have resisted the temptation to parade this thinking in front of me or my wife: Johno and Mapgirl. (And with my hair trigger set, I came close to accusing Johno of it - sorry, dude) I understand the disappointment, but seriously liberals, believe me when I say that:

• The fifty-nine million of your fellow citizens (a majority, btw) who voted for Bush are not idiots, at least no more so than a normal bell curve would indicate.
• Neither are they evil, fascist, or baby-eating.
• Liberals will not be put in camps.
• We have just as strong, if not stronger, feelings for liberty than you. If by some strange cosmic irony, someone does start a police state in the next four years, I assure that we'll be fighting it too, and we're a hell of a lot better armed.
• The economy will not suffer a melt down.
• Rationalizing the tax code and reforming social security are not bad ideas. Further, they are not sneaky attempts to create a police state or some other nonsense. See above.
• If the rest of the world hates us, 1) that's not new and 2) It doesn't mean we're wrong.
• The end times are not nigh.

Make the attempt to be a gracious loser, for lose in fact you did. Last Tuesday, Bush became the first candidate since 1988 to receive a clear majority of the vote. His party increased its strength in both houses of Congress. Deal with it, accept it in you hearts, and get on with your life. Cease and desist referring to me and others who supported the president as idiots, morons and worse. The world will not come to an end.

Sez Dean Esmay, the funny thing about the press and Bush is " the fact that so many in the mainstream press keep talking about Bush as this "hard right wing" guy may have some perverse consequences."

This is an idea with some merit. I know from experience that what people think of you can be very liberating in just this way.