A few thoughts, in part reflecting on comments to the previous post, in part expanding on some of the ideas.

“Freedom” and “Liberty” are interesting subjects to examine, as their definitions seem to be highly subjective. Looking up dictionary definitions of the two, one might see them as synonymous–the ability to act as one pleases without external restraints. The lines are blurred, the definitions shift.

“Freedom” describes the power to do what you want without others acting to restrain you; this is limited only by the potential of your actions to harm others, the classic “your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins.” In Benen’s example, gay marriage serves well to define this: two people of the same gender making a social contract to love, honor, respect, and support each other harms no one–in fact, only helps people, and serves if anything to strengthen society by strengthening the individuals. Others acting to thwart this act of love and support could serve as a classic example of the opposite of freedom. This exists in contrast to, and really completely externally to, what is allowed within past definitions of the institution–definitions which have changed so radically over time that any attempt to restrict marriage upon the basis of the past becomes a practice in hypocritical self-indulgence, of cherry-picking morality to suit one’s bigotry.

“Liberty” is often considered a natural right, the state of being free, but also is commonly associated with having rights to act freely in relation to the society in which you live. Certainly if there is a liberty we have claim to in our country, it is the liberty to believe as we will, to worship or not as we wish, and not be restricted or hindered by society or the state in the free expression of that belief. Again, Benen’s example is well-chosen; the people who wish to build that community center, mosque and all, should be allowed to do so even if it were directly across the street from Ground Zero instead of a couple of blocks away. They are at liberty to do so; trying to stop them is a restriction of that liberty. Allowing them to do so honors the victims of 9/11 at the highest order, as it perfectly exemplifies the principles upon which the nation is founded; but even that is a side point to the fact that liberty means they can believe what they wish and worship where they please. Again, the only restraint is where the expression of that liberty deprives others of theirs, by causing harm or restraining others, and the mosque does not do that. Any crass or slanderous analogies of harmful acts to this one would simply express ignorance and bias.

Where Benen seems to have reached not far enough is in exemplifying “opportunity”; certainly, having the opportunity to access affordable health care is one. Frankly, anyone who argues that private health care, health care for profit, which skims at minimum 30% off the top and works its hardest to deny and cheat and steal, is better, cheaper, or more ‘efficient’ (efficient in terms of serving the patient) is, to put it bluntly, a moron. Just ask any senior-citizen Tea Party member if they’d prefer private health insurance over Medicare; they’ll tell you which is better. They’re not morons, just hypocrites. But “opportunity” is much more than just health care. It’s a chance at the American Dream. Of owning a home–but that’s become a money game, filled with predators who, free of regulation and policing, have stolen that opportunity from too many of our number. Opportunity is the chance to get a meaningful, productive job for decent compensation–but the current conservative mindset is intent on maximizing profit for shareholders and depriving the worker of every opportunity possible. Opportunity means getting a fair and equal education–but the localization of education, not to mention its defunding at all levels and the skyrocketing costs of higher education, robs most Americans of what is considered one of our most fundamental opportunities.

The real and unavoidable conclusion here is that opportunities are best served when provided or regulated by the state, as ‘free market’ methods to key services simply throw the doors open to inequality, unrestricted greed, and savage predation. In this way, public health care is, in fact, one good example of a true American opportunity–being fought and quashed by the fearful throngs of the small-minded.

Benen’s example of “values” comes from a similarly rich field, but this one is an excellent choice. Separation of Church and State is one of our most fundamental values, essential to religious liberty and freedom. Only the most unobservant or intentionally ignorant could fail to recognize the fact that where a system of belief merges with state, religion suffers horrifically. For in the end, only one belief system will prevail, and it will then act to mercilessly quash all others. So many Americans are willing to see this marriage because it is their religion they see as married to the state, and they feel fine with quashing the rights of others in this regard. But ask any Christian if they believe that official state atheism under Stalin was a fine idea; I doubt they’d agree. My grandfather, a Spanish Republican, believed in the freedom of religious liberty, but had to flee Spain after the fascists elevated the Church of Spain to power, oppressing all other beliefs, including all other Christian beliefs. What the church-and-staters fail to recognize is that Christianity is hardly monolithic; which sect prevails? The answer: probably not yours. Prepare to suffer, like those who came to America roughly four hundred years ago to escape the persecution at the hands of their Christian brethren.

The claim is that separation of church and state has “gone too far,” but this is false victimhood; religion is everywhere and prospers just fine, it is only limited in very narrow confines seen as great only because they are wildly exaggerated and emphasized by those in evangelistic fervor, craving to fill every last crevice with a dominant faith, and refusing to recognize that entanglement of church and state is not a freedom, but a vital threat to that freedom.

James Madison, primary author of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, made it very clear: “Every new and successful example, therefore, of a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance; and I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.” Nor was this Madison’s only reference to the value; find here a long list of references to exactly this principle. However, the fundamentalist and right-wing crowds see history through a fog of their own bias. They quote statements of faith by various historical figures and equate them to professions arguing for the merging of church and state, as if Madison’s values were somehow false or non-existent. They belittle those who would fight even the smallest entanglements between church and state as spiteful pettiness, and then turn around and claim that these exact same incursions justify full marriage of church and state.

The fact is, as Madison wisely saw, perfect separation of church and state–secularism, not atheism–is the only true path to religious freedom. That is perhaps our most proud, honorable, principled, fair and priceless values. And it is being trashed by selfish hypocrites who aggrandize themselves in cloaks of fraudulent persecution, who ironically work to defeat themselves but are just too shallow-minded to realize it.

Benen’s example of sacrifice is also spot-on. Back in WWII, people sacrificed nobly and severely. They passionately collected materials to be used in the war effort, selflessly and patriotically went without meat or sugar so that these could be diverted to the troops, and did so much else to give to their country so they could secure the future of their children. But now we have despicable faux-patriots, people who clamor for war but will not serve; people who claim to support the troops but then mindlessly put them in harm’s way with inadequate provisions while cutting benefits to them and their families back home; people who drape themselves in the flag but do not even understand the sacrifices it represents. People who use debt and deficit as political weapons of the moment, who now scream about their danger, and yet cannot bring themselves to list what must be cut, and whine endlessly about how the super-rich deserve to inherit every penny of what they did not earn and remain free even from tax levels lower than at just about any time in recent history. Sacrifice means giving up a great deal so that all may prosper. But the current clarion call from the dexter is “I’ve got mine, so go fuck yourself.” The right wing today, the child of Reagan’s “greed is good” Me Generation, is the absolute antithesis of sacrifice.

And about truth? Let’s face it, the last thing the Tea Partiers and the right wing in general today are about is “truth.” They scream that the president is a communist, socialist, and fascist, without even the wit to understand that these descriptions are contradictory. They mock global climate change because it’s cold outside where they are, then go mute when heat waves cover the globe. They smear opponent after opponent with bald-faced lies and doctored videos, only shifting focus to new smears when the original lies are brought to light. They never, ever acknowledge when their lies are disproved, they simply move on to the next lie, often returning to ones repeatedly exposed as such. They sketch lurid and self-contradictory conspiracies on chalkboards, or else believe the most pathetically absurd of claims, so long as it suits their ideology. They condemn the president for doing things they themselves promoted only shortly before. The list goes on and on and on and on.

For the right, it’s about one thing and one thing only: power. That’s all that matters. The ability to control; and since they cannot win power honestly, they do it any way they can–and often state it exactly that way, we’ll do whatever works for us. Sadly, they have now latched on to the worst of realizations: the power to destroy a thing is the power to control it. And they are destroying with abandon. Truth is simply the first casualty.

Because if anyone can restore honor, it’s Glenn Beck.

Wait, didn’t somebody promise to restore “honor and dignity” some eight years ago? Oh yeah, him. Well, I suppose that if Beck is now trying to restore honor, then Bush must have only been able to restore dignity.

Don’t you just love it that in explaining his “Restoring Honor” rally, Beck lies rather transparently? His rally is not only being held at the Lincoln Memorial, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his historic “I have a Dream” speech, but it is being held on the 47th anniversary of that event. But Beck claims that it’s “only a coincidence,” and that the date was chosen to fit people’s schedules only. Yeah. And he claims that the rally, featuring him and Sarah Palin, with the Tea Party in large presence, is “nonpolitical.” Again: yeah. Very honorable there, Beck.

This segment from Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show is simply too good to pass up posting here. After having shredded Fox’s tissue-thin logic in their smears against the New York Sufi community center / mosque, Stewart & Co. today caught them in an act of hypocrisy of the worst kind: accusing the mosque of taking money from a Saudi they claimed had terror connections … but they “neglected” to mention that this same Saudi is part-owner of Fox News itself. In fact, they “neglected” to mention the guy’s name, so it would be harder for viewers to look it up and discover the link back to Fox. In classic Daily Show form, they then proceed to hilariously rip Fox a new one. Enjoy:

Me, I vote for equal measure of both Evil and Stupid. There’s room enough for everyone here.

So, then, what does that make their viewers? Not good at fact-checking, to be sure. But probably, more likely, simply people who want to believe a certain set of things and so look for a news source they can fool themselves into thinking is credible so they can tune in and hear their worst suspicions not only vindicated but actually evolved to even further levels of paranoid delusion. These are millions of Americans who boast of knowing “facts” but really just are intellectually whacking off to the hardcore stuff. They believe the dialog to be realistic and letters to the magazine “forum” to be real-life true stories. Oh yeah, baby!

No, the viewers aren’t necessarily evil–they’re just intellectually lazy and/or dishonest in the pursuit of a nightly ideological climax.

But Fox? Evil and stupid. And crazy. Ergo, high ratings. It follows.

Note: sorry I’ve been away for 3-4 days. End of the semester and the usual intense grading period intervened. Back to the fun:

Another case of astonishingly naked hypocrisy from the right wing: the judge who ruled that California’s Prop 8 (banning gay marriage) was unconstitutional is rumored to be gay, so his ruling is invalid and he should be impeached.

But it didn’t bother them at all that a judge ruling to overturn a moratorium on offshore drilling had investments in the oil industry.

And if the judge ruling on Prop 8 had been a conservative Christian with a history of antipathy toward gays, they would not have had a problem.

Remember the ruling on Intelligent Design in Dover, PA? The judge was a Bush 43 appointee, a Christian, and had a conservative track record; as a result, the right wingers, before the trial, were confident that he would rule for them–they had no problem with his politics or religion beforehand, despite both of those playing a role in the case. It was only after he ruled against ID that they turned on him, viciously–just as they are now howling over Judge Walker.

But are they right in this case? Assuming the judge is in fact gay, was there indeed a conflict of interest?

The answer has to be “no,” just as there was no conflict in the Dover judge’s case. Your identity should not be something that can recuse you, or else judges would be recusing themselves right and left. Male judges should not recuse themselves in rape cases, nor should female judges. Christian judges need not recuse themselves in establishment cases, nor should atheist judges. It could be argued that both white and minority judges ultimately have personal interests in judging discrimination cases–thus no one would be fit to rule on them. In cases such as these, we must trust the judge to be impartial, else no one could judge anything. It is only when a judge has a specific interest–a financial investment or a personal friendship, for example–that they should recuse themselves. But not simply because they belong to a class that could be affected by the law in question.

The whole indignation on the right about this judge’s alleged sexual orientation–despite the fact that he was a Reagan appointee and has been inhospitable to gays in the past–is nothing more than standard right-wing hypocrisy: any decision we don’t like is judicial activism and is wrong, no matter what; any decision we like is OK, no matter how legally twisted. They want the Scalia/Thomas brand of justice: legislate a conservative mindset from the bench, ignoring the actual law whenever it becomes inconvenient.

This February, conservatives (especially on Fox) had a ball mocking global warming–more than that, they seriously attacked the validity of global climate change–because of massive snowstorms that hit the east coast. Steven Colbert mocked them back, calling them “peek-a-boo-ologists” for having no greater scope of attention that the current time and place. Other pointed out that such snowstorms were fully consistent with global warming trends, as higher temperatures evaporate more water into the atmosphere, allowing for more snowfall in colder seasons. The conservatives ignored this, and instead kept on talking about how cold it was, and how could “global warming” be taken seriously when there was so much snow piled up outside my front door. They had a grand old time.

When April brought early heat waves to the same areas earlier hit by the February snowstorm, conservatives simply paid no attention.

But how about now? We are seeing record-breaking heat waves all around the world. Russia is suffering from the worst drought in 130 years combined with the record temperatures as its heat wave destroys crops. India, Japan, Iraq, China, the United States–all suffering from heat waves. Record-breaking heat is also hitting Kuwait, Iraq, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, and Pakistan.

The heat wave is global, and 2010 is set to be one of the world’s hottest years on record.

Proof of global warming? Not exactly–but it is fully consistent with it, just as February’s snowstorms were, and is one more point of data contributing towards its validity.

More to the point, the “peek-a-boo-ologists” on the conservative side seemed to be quite content with taking current weather conditions as more than enough evidence to make up their minds.

Now? Fox News, for example, is silent. As far as I can tell, the right-wing blogs are ignoring the issue, and conservative radio and TV personalities are staying quiet on the story as well. Not a peep from the right.

Gee whiz, I wonder why not?

Republicans always say they’re the champions of the small businessman. You know, the regular Joe who decides, in the best and most noble tradition of entrepreneurship, to bet all he has and start a business. Pure American capitalism at work, admirable for its courage and for the fact that it employs people and helps local and national economies.

The problem is, that whole attitude is a sham.

Not the part about small businesses–that’s very much true. It’s the Republican attitude that’s a sham.

Take, for example, the goings-on of the past week and a half. Republicans want to extend Bush’s tax cuts–all of them, especially those for the wealthy–but the rationale they put forward is that it’s all about small businesses. From July 14:

Senate Republicans on Wednesday pressed Democrats to extend all the tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush, arguing the party’s plan to let the breaks expire will hurt small businesses. …

Republicans said ending tax cuts for the wealthy would dry up the funds of small-business owners and make it harder for them to expand their operations. Grassley warned there would be political consequences for allowing tax cuts aimed at the wealthy to expire.

Get that? The GOP is not behind these tax cuts because they want to give massive amounts of money to people who already have massive amounts of money. It’s small businesses which are the real focus of their work.

Now, keep in mind that these tax cuts, if extended, would cost more than a trillion dollars over the next ten years, and Republicans are not putting forth any way to pay for the cuts. And remember, it’s the small business aspect which is a key point.

Fast-forward one week:

Perhaps the last best hope of Democrats to pass legislation aimed at creating jobs before the November elections seemed to be crumbling in the Senate on Wednesday as Republicans signaled that they would block a bill to expand government lending programs and grant an array of tax breaks to small businesses. …

Democrats were harsh in their criticism of Republicans who held up the unemployment money by refusing to vote for it unless some way was found to keep the costs from being added to the deficit.

So, the Republicans are eager to spend more than $1 trillion, unpaid for up front, going straight to the deficit… but they don’t want to spend $30 billion directly on tax breaks and loans to small businesses unless it is paid for, up front, and not added directly to the deficit.

Like I said, the whole small business thing is an unabashed sham. They don’t give a flying frack about small businesses. They use small businesses as a front whenever they want to give something excessive to the rich, saying that if they don’t get what they want, small businesses will suffer. Similarly, if Democrats want to do something they don’t like, such as raising the minimum wage or strengthening regulations–even when small businesses are made exempt–Republicans trot out small business owners and try to claim they will be hammered by those nasty Democrats and their anti-regular-American-small-businessman ways.

Whenever you hear a right-winger say anything about “small businesses,” let that be a red flag, make it set off your BS detector, and look closely–you’ll almost certainly see a boon to rich people and corporations thinly disguised behind the suckered sap they have gulled up to the press conference podium to stand in as the face of small businessmen.

It is identical to the lie about Republicans being pro-military and the liberals being against the troops. The Republicans are pro-military contractor, and are military hawks (who more often dodged service themselves), while it’s the Dems who are always sticking up for the men and women serving their country. But that doesn’t stop GOP pols from standing in front of the troops or using them as human shields for political purposes.

In the end, when the GOP gets its way, the soldiery gets screwed. Same goes for small businesses, who suffer when the large corporations which the GOP really cares about are allowed to mow them down.

Fortunately, two–though only two–Republicans crossed the lines and voted against their party and with the Democrats to give that aid to small businesses. And, at least for the moment, it seems that the Bush tax cuts for people making over $250,000 a year are still set to expire.

After crusading to end unemployment benefits, apologizing to BP, trying to extend tax cuts to the wealthy that failed to help the economy, and so many other things that were sops to the rich and sucker-punches to regular Americans, anyone who votes Republican this year believing that will help anyone but the rich and the powerful is, and forgive me if this means you, not thinking straight. But a lot of people do see that fact, and still vote Republican, and often do so because they have bought into the trickle-down fantasy that somehow helping these big businesses will eventually help the little guy. Or else they believe that it’s wrong to tax those who are wealthy and use that money to support those in need, because that would be parasitic–as if the wealthy are not parasitic on everyone else, or as if just that one form of parasitism is acceptable.

That’s the headline:

GOP: No more help for jobless, but rich must keep tax cuts

WASHINGTON — Republicans almost unanimously oppose spending $33.9 billion for extended unemployment benefits for some 2.5 million people who’ve lost them, because they say it would increase federal budget deficits.

At the same time, they’re pushing a permanent extension of Bush administration tax cuts, especially for the wealthy, which could increase federal budget deficits by trillions of dollars over the next 10 years.

How do they justify this?

Good question. The answer: Darwinian philosophy thinly disguising a well-known bias for rich people. Poor people vote Democratic; you don’t want to give money to those people. Besides, they lost their jobs, and conservative economic philosophy says that losers don’t deserve pity or help–that’s socialist entitlement bullcrap. Rich people, on the other hand, deserve to keep the money they’ve earned–because they’re so good at investing it in stuff like making businesses that employ those jobless people (and, um, they make sizable campaign contributions, ahem).

Forget that the economic engine is driven primarily from money spent by people just like the ones who are jobless, while more money for the rich is what causes the economy to stall. Rich people can be as rich as you can make them, but none will invest in new businesses if the common folk don’t have any money to spend.

And that thing about paying for stuff and how deficits will destroy us? That just applies to Democrats, you silly. Haven’t you been paying attention?

Michael Steele, Republican Party Village Idiot:

“Keep in mind again, federal candidates, [Afghanistan] was a war of Obama’s choosing. This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in. … It was the president who was trying to be cute by half by flipping a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan. Well, if he’s such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right, because everyone who has tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed.”

Umm… if Obama is the one who chose to start the war in Afghanistan, then pray tell, what the bejeezus were we doing there for the previous seven years? And what would Steele have done differently, so that had Obama done it, Steele and the entire right wing would not eviscerate him for it?

The denial is staggering.

Seriously, I am beginning to think that Steele is there to make Boehner and the other Republicans look brilliant by comparison.

Jon Stewart, as usual, has the goods. In short: Fox castigates the Obama administration for bringing up things that happened under Bush when explaining their reaction to the oil spill. Fox & Friends was livid that David Axelrod “blamed” the Bush administration for the oil spill. (Their “interpretation” of his comments. In fact, Axelrod mentioned the economy and the wars in the Middle East as distractions, and at least at that point in time did not lay blame for the spill directly on Bush.) This interpretation of an indirect comment by Axelrod was what set them off. According to Fox and Republicans & other right-wingers, you can’t “keep blaming Bush.”

Stewart points out that not only did right-wingers blame Clinton for things that happened during the entirety of the Bush administration, but just two weeks earlier, F&F blamed Clinton for the oil spill. So, after a year and a half, it’s “weak” and “unserious” to (by their interpretation) blame Bush for stuff he was, um, directly responsible for, but it’s OK to go back nine and a half years and more and somehow find a way to blame Clinton for the oil spill.

Whilst this level of hypocrisy is more or less SOP at F&F, it still has to be seen to be fully appreciated, and nobody takes us there like Stewart. Enjoy.

Right-wingers are agreed: political correctness is crap, and should be snubbed and never observed. People should be able to say whatever they want, call others what they prefer. Some right-wingers claim it is a Communist plot (I’m not kidding). Many insist it is a form of Orwellian mind control. It is evil, evil, evil.

Once you get past the hysterical bits, Conservapedia’s basic definition of “political correctness” is “the alteration of ones choice of words in order to avoid either offending a group of people or reinforcing a stereotype considered to be disadvantageous to the group.” This offends them–they don’t like to be told what they can refer to other people as, and hate having to “clean up” their speech and use terms others insist on, or avoid subjects others are touchy about. They want the freedom to say anything they like without constantly being nagged about how it makes others feel.

The emphasis on “they want the freedom.” Not others. They hate political correctness–except, of course, when they don’t like what others are saying. Like, if you want to say that you don’t believe in God, we don’t like that so you’d better be sensitive to how we feel and shut the hell up. If an atheist group puts up a billboard or an ad on a bus simply saying “Don’t believe in God? You’re Not Alone” then that is completely unacceptable. If a man wants a vanity plate that reads “ISNOGOD,” that’s offensive and shouldn’t be allowed. And just see what happens when a store puts out an ad saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”–you’ll see right-wingers demand others be not just PC, but hyper-sensitively PC.

Or calling teabaggers “teabaggers” despite the fact that they themselves coined the term just months earlier, that’s not cool either. It upsets their gentle sensibilities. Now, intentionally subverting the adjectival “Democratic” to a pejorative “Democrat” because they can make commercials emphasizing the “RAT” at the end, that’s OK. But calling us tea-baggers, we don’t like that and you’re being an ass for using it.

Or talking about things America has done wrong, you can’t do that, either, or we’ll be miffed, so shut your yap. Sure, identifying one’s own country’s wrongs is the adult, responsible, and educated thing to do, garners the respect of others around the world, and helps prevent future wrongdoing–but I don’t like the sound of it, so you better stop “apologizing for America,” because it offends me.

No, the right-wingers don’t hate political correctness–they demand it, but in true conservative form: only when it’s to their advantage. When someone says something that offends us, it’s “disrespectful,” and you’d better change your tune right quick. But when we say something you don’t like and you’re offended–well, tough luck, you whiny liberal–when you’re offended and want us to stop, that’s political correctness. And that’s Communist.

Wow. Talk about slick. When Republicans slapped Barton’s wrist for saying aloud what they all felt, Boehner and the GOP leadership slipped in some pretty telling language. To quote a commenter from the previous post, “Behold”:

“The oil spill in the Gulf is this nation’s largest natural disaster and stopping the leak and cleaning up the region is our top priority,” said the leaders. “Congressman Barton’s statements this morning were wrong. BP itself has acknowledged that responsibility for the economic damages lies with them and has offered an initial pledge of $20 billion dollars for that purpose.”

First, note that BP is painted as a responsible business: they are taking “responsibility” and “offered” and “pledged” to pay for economic damages. Nothing about Obama making them do this–no, it’s as if BP always intended to pay this much, and would naturally have done it without any outside pressure at all.

But look closer, and you’ll see something slicker than snot: the oil spill was a “natural disaster.” Got that? BP is not responsible for the disaster; no, they “acknowledged that responsibility for the economic damages lies with them,” a significant difference in wording.

In a few short sentences, Boehner managed to (1) distance himself from Barton’s gaffe, (2) make it seem like he is attacking BP by castigating a party member for apologizing to them, therefore gaining props from the public, (3) take credit for trying to stop the leak, saying it was “our” top priority, (4) remove all credit from Obama for getting BP to pay when clearly BP was doing all it could to avoid that, (5) make BP seem like a beneficent good guy, a responsible business which pledged and offered and took responsibility when in fact nothing of the sort is true, and (6) remove all feeling of actual responsibility from BP by qualifying the nature of their responsibility (economic, not actual; volunteered, not legal or actual) and painting the spill as an act of god, a “natural disaster,” as if BP wasn’t to blame and was instead somehow the victim of it all.

That’s pretty breathtaking.

So much for high-level Republicans “not taking BP’s side” in this.

What do the following have in common?

• Using budget reconciliation
• Speaking to schoolchildren
• Schoolchildren sing songs about you
• Using TelePrompTers
• Having “Czars”
• Corporate bailouts
• Bowing to foreign royalty
• Prosecuting terrorists in civilian courts
• Interring terrorists in civilian prisons
• Reading terrorists their Miranda rights
• Criticizing specific media outlets for unfavorable coverage
• Not wearing a jacket or tie
• Not wearing a flag lapel pin
• Putting your feet up on your desk
• Not going to church all the time

If you guessed “things Obama has been criticized for,” you’d be correct, but incomplete. The full answer is, “things Obama is criticized for though other presidents were not.” Even more specifically, “things that Bush did to the same or a greater degree but no one noticed, but when Obama does them, the right wing goes berserk.”

This came to note recently when Obama was castigated by right-wingers for not doing anything to mark the anniversary of D-Day or the Normandy invasion. And it’s true, he didn’t. He marked the day last year, but didn’t this year. So, Obama is an ass, right?

As it happens, he’s doing exactly what every president does: he marks the occasion on special anniversaries, like last year when it was the 65th anniversary of D-Day, and like Bush did on the 60th anniversary. But Bush only observed D-Day twice in his eight years–in 2001 and in 2004, and nothing was made of it the other 6 years when he did nothing. When Obama followed suit this year, it’s a “snub,” and Obama is an insensitive cad, insulting veterans, America, and living up to his Hitler image.

The ODS (Obama Double Standard™) was also an issue recently when it was found that the Obama administration had offered a job to Joe Sestak to coax him from running against Arlen Spector; the right wing thought this was worthy of special investigation as if it were a major scandal, despite that kind of deal being an everyday occurrence in D.C. politics and there being nothing wrong with it. Similarly, Obama was castigated by the right wing for not going to Arlington on Memorial Day, despite the fact that presidents often don’t go.

Not to say that any of this is new, or a surprise. Just noting what others are noting about now, which is that Obama is being attacked for stuff which is done (or not done) all the time by presidents and nobody cares. It’s a double standard, it’s hypocritical, it’s dishonest, it’s stupid. In short, the right-wing SOP.

Sounds strange, doesn’t it? Republicans are supposed to be the prigs, the “family values” crowd, the religious, morally-upstanding types. So how come you can now be a Republican, cheat on your wife, get caught in a scandal doing unacceptable and even illegal things, and still stay in office and run for re-election? It’s a little bit more than IOKIYAR.

You may think that Clinton was the one who made it OK to have an affair without resigning, but that’s not entirely accurate. Many presidents before Clinton were known to have committed adultery, it was simply considered out of bounds to talk about it. What made the Clinton affair, as well as the graphic terminology involved, so public was the fact that right-wingers deployed a relentless offensive to make it as public as humanly possible. Newt Gingrich, the party leader at the time, pushed incessantly to investigate, publicize, and attack the president over his affairs–all the time while Gingrich himself was having an extramarital affair. The central issue, however, is that Republicans who worked furiously to root out the scandals, throwing every accusation they could and investigating every lead they could come up with before finally striking gold with Monica Lewinsky–and then they rode that one to town, making as big a noise as they possibly could.

Now, there was a problem with that: this was a sitting president, and a popular one. Think of Bush 43 in office, who had real scandals–violating several constitutional amendments among other laws, for example–and yet Republicans, then and since, have fought tooth and nail against the idea of even investigations, much less actual prosecution. The presidency is not something you toss out lightly. Republicans were OK with cheapening the office and the act of impeachment; the public, not nearly as much. The Republicans knew that Clinton would fight this, and that the nation would be quite averse to seeing the office sullied by a resignation. Doing something wrong is, strangely but truly, the lesser sin–resigning is the frank admission of that wrong on the highest level, soiling the office far more than anything else, and is only a last resort against criminal prosecution. Even with Bush, who committed far more grievous crimes than lying about an affair (including his lying under oath in a criminal case at about the same time Clinton did so), the nation was averse to giving credence the commission of these crimes with any kind of official action.

As a result, we had the occupant of the highest office in the country have an affair and he did not resign–he even finished office with high approval ratings.

In the election following his successor, the Republican party ran with a candidate who had in his past worse affairs than Clinton; consequently divorced and also having been centrally implicated in the Savings & Loan scandal, he received the stamp of approval of his party. Similarly ignored were the even worse affairs of fellow candidate Rudy Giuliani, while fellow Republican and serial adulterer Newt Gingrich made sounds of running for president soon, and thrice-married Rush Limbaugh ascended to de facto leader of the conservative movement.

Now, once Democrats have been exposed doing something that Republicans believe is wrong and then got away with it, they see this as an open door to do the same in spades–and they do so with gusto.

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who voted to impeach Clinton for his “reprehensible” behavior, hiked the Appalachian Trail and acted aberrantly to say the least, and used state funds for his dalliances; not only has he stayed in office, there is even talk of his running for president in 2012. Nevada Senator John Ensign, who called for Clinton to resign and said he “had no credibility left,” not only had an affair, but paid off his mistress in a way that was potentially illegal; Ensign is still in office. Louisiana Senator David Vitter, who earlier replaced a congressman who had an affair, using it as fodder to call for Clinton to resign, not only had extramarital sex, but did so illegally, hiring prostitutes; he escaped arrest only due to the statute of limitations, and is now still in office. Idaho Senator Larry Craig, another Clinton critic, was arrested for soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom stall, and did not resign, instead finishing out his term.

Making all this even worse is the fact that conservatives continue to run on “family values” and “higher moral ground” issues. They still hold that infidelity is a sin while committing these sins in the greatest number. Democratic politicians, Clinton in particular, are not squeaky clean in all of this, but they do have the redeeming quality of not preaching on the issue and not hypocritically focusing on such affairs by Republicans while committing those sins themselves. John Edwards stupidly committed adultery, but at least he was not at the same time running on a pro-marriage and family-values platform while attacking his opponents, like McCain and Giuliani, for their infidelities.

In the end, the greatest responsibility for making an extramarital affair allowable while staying in office lies with the right-wing crowd, and it is so primarily because they never actually cared about its morality, but instead found it to be a convenient political weapon. They used the issue as a form of cheap political attack, preached incessantly about it, were exposed as hypocrites, and now violate the principle commonly and openly, creating the model for all to follow, legitimizing it. Thus, they devalued its impact and made it an acceptable practice.

These, the same people who claim to be defending marriage by denying it to others.

Liz Cheney tries to revive the 1990’s mindset where every single imagined impropriety, no matter how frivolous or unsupported, merited an independent prosecutor:

Look, I think there are some things that clearly rise to the level of needing independent investigation. And what you have had happen here, obviously is the White House put out a statement the Friday before Memorial Day announcing Bill Clinton was involved, which I’m sure was really not that reassuring to most Americans. There is not an impeccable record of integrity there on the part of the former president. Secondly, then you have Rahm Emanuel basically have his own lawyer, the White House counsel issue a statement saying ‘Hey, this is all fine, we’re good to go,’ with no analysis whatsoever. Clearly, you need somebody to come in and take a look at exactly what happened.

Hey, Clinton himself was involved–that’s reason enough for an investigator right there!

What Cheney is talking about is the fact that the Obama administration offered Joe Sestak a White House position in exchange for him not running against Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter. Scandal!! Lawbreaking!! Why, no one has done that, except for perhaps every other single president in U.S. history!!

It’s not surprising that wingnuts want to smear Obama with something, it’s the sheer ridiculousness of their choice of vehicles. The offer Obama made is the same kind of political horse-trading that goes on every day in Washington, and is not even considered unethical by the more conspiratorially-minded. Even the Bush administration ethics lawyer said there’s no “there” there.

But Cheney seems to think that by singling out Clinton as a “cut out,” she can get an actual investigation started:

There is a lot here that just smells funny. If the White House thought what they were doing above board why did they go to Bill Clinton? Why did they need a cut-out for whatever they were doing? I want to know what he offered. I want to know what the president knew. The president said he didn’t know. I find it really hard to believe that the chief of staff would go to the former president to get him to try and get somebody out of the race without telling the president. And finally, this is very reminiscent of the campaign finance scandals back in the mid-’90s when they were selling the Lincoln bedroom. So I think the American people have a right to know here. We have Bill Clinton, Rahm Emanuel back engaged in this exactly what happened? Were any laws broken? Was an offer made?

Yes. Let’s not even think of investigating the massive, illegal warrantless wiretapping, or the near-infinite graft during the Iraq War in which billions simply vanished; let’s not have an investigator looking into Halliburton or the no-bid contracts, or the collusive policy-writing by oil company executives. And it’s traitorous to ask for an investigation of torture, or of the abandonment of national security leading up to 9/11.

No, let’s start a huge investigation because of an unsuccessful attempt at mundane, garden-variety political deals which cost nothing, harmed no one, and which happen all the time and nobody gives a rat’s ass about.

Ironically, if anything, Cheney’s blathering actually validates Obama’s ethics: if this is the worst someone like her can think of to charge Obama with, he must be pretty damned squeaky clean.

You can almost smell the desperation among the right wing to smear Obama in any way they can, using the time-honored political strategy of throwing as much mud as they can at him until something sticks. But in their method they betray their shallow, self-contradictory nature. Obama is a socialist, they tell us. He’s a communist. And he’s a fascist. Which is kind of like trying to say that he’s a Democrat, a Libertarian, and a Republican–they don’t mix.

In the BP oil spill disaster, the right wing sees a glimmer of hope, in that there’s a terrible incident that covers a span of time, so of course it can be blamed on Obama. At first, they saw an environmental disaster hitting the Gulf region, and naturally glommed onto the idea that this was “Obama’s Katrina.” However, the meme didn’t catch on; whereas Bush was immobile and inept, Obama is merely unsuccessful. Hurricanes are something that the US government is expected to act on promptly and with vigor; oil spills, not so much. The government’s handling of Katrina was hampered by stagnation, corruption and cronyism within the bureaucracy which Bush was responsible for; the government’s responsibility for the BP oil spill also harkens back to corruption–but not Obama’s, as Bush was the one who deregulated the industry to allow this to happen. With Katrina, Bush delayed ending a vacation, and dallied for five days before ordering in the national guard while people starved, were abandoned, and died; Obama has been doing about all that a president can for such a crisis–that it is taking so long is not a matter of incompetence, but rather the difficulty involved. It took ten months to stop a similar–but less disastrous–oil spill in the Gulf back in 1979. Had Obama’s direction been able to cap this leak after just one and a half months, it would have been miraculous, not a failure.

So the “Obama’s Katrina” story didn’t work–but the right-wingers felt they could tack this on Obama if only they had the right slogan. So in came “Obama’s 9/11.” Forget that this claim betrays the idea that 9/11 was a failure on the part of the government to respond well to a severe crisis, something right-wingers insist was not the case. And forget that the right wing tried to say that the economic crisis was “Obama’s 9/11,” or that the New York Times Square bomber incident was “Obama’s 9/11,” just like Haiti was supposed to be “Obama’s Katrina” before the oil spill was. One reason they fail is because they just don’t resonate: the oil spill is a terrible disaster, but not a political scandal. Who associates Bush 41 with the Exxon Valdez? Nobody–they associate Exxon with the Exxon Valdez. Fact is, the public doesn’t blame presidents for oil spills.

So the 9/11 meme didn’t gain any traction–the comparison was kind of silly, and right-wingers may not have liked the inference that 9/11 was a failure that could be blamed on the previous administration.

In fact, right-wingers may have started to become aware of how revealing it was that they were constantly trying to assign Bush scandals to Obama–Obama’s Katrina, Obama’s 9/11, Obama’s Enron, Obama’s Harriet Miers, Obama’s “Mission Accomplished,” Obama’s Iraq War, and so on. It highlighted the fact that the Bush administration was hip-deep in scandals, validated the idea that Bush’s scandals were indeed his fault, and came across as a desperate ploy to “hand off” the scandals to a Democratic administration in the hopes that Bush would no longer look so bad.

As a result, we are now seeing a different approach: The BP oil spill, we are now being told, is “Obama’s Iran Hostage Crisis.” The parallel is supposed to be that this is a long-drawn out crisis which will kill the president’s chances of re-election.

Yeah, good luck on that one. When it fails, what next? Obama’s Vietnam? Obama’s Great Depression? Obama’s Appomattox? Obama’s Boston Massacre? It could be months before the spill is finally plugged; the right wing will have the chance to try out a variety before the well runs dry.

Can’t wait to hear the next meme.

Cavuto loves this topic: how Democrats just can’t stop blaming Bush for stuff, and how it’s time for them to stop. He often goes on about it, and here’s his latest rant:

Today, Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Ed Markey saying: “For years, the Bush administration’s oil strategy placed the granting of drilling leases ahead of safety review.”

Ipso-facto — Bush to blame for the big leak-o.

Just like he’s apparently behind that big thousand-point swing-o.

Just like he’s to blame for the unemployment rate that’s higher than when he left office, and the deficits that are much higher than any year he was in office.

All problems, all Bush, all the time — probably until the end of time.

Aside from the fact that Republicans blamed Clinton for just about everything–the bad economy (for effects well beyond his immediate influence), 9/11, etc., as well as past Democratic presidents for a variety of deeds both real and imagined–they still hate Roosevelt for Social Security, and Clinton for decimating the military, for example–there is the fact that the Dems are not blaming Bush for anything he didn’t do. Bush was responsible for the problems that led to the oil leak.

Cavuto asks:

When does the statute of limitations run out on blaming someone? When you start looking at good numbers, or start looking in a good mirror?

No, the statute runs out when the effects of what you did end. If you’re playing ball indoors and you break a vase, you don’t stop being to blame because you ran upstairs and your brother walked into the room. And if you burn down the house because you thought it’d be fun to see what color flame the curtains produced, you don’t stop being responsible for the effects on the family budget just because X number of months have passed by. Now, if Mom buys an ugly new vase, then you’re no longer responsible for how the living room looks. And after the house is rebuilt, if a wiring short burns it down again, you’re not to blame for that. But if you did something bad and the effects of that action bring about crisis later on, then there is no “statute of limitations” on your responsibility.

Bush relaxed regulation and oversight on the banks; so long as the banking crisis affects us, that’ll be Bush’s legacy. Bush similarly set things back in the oil industry, Cavuto’s current snipe, and so he bears much of the blame for that. Cavuto would hold Democrats to blame for the worst effects of Bush’s policies, and for the mismanagement under his agencies, simply because the Dems were present and did not act to stop Bush effectively enough. Even when something is directly due to Bush’s bad judgment, it’s still the fault of the Democrats because they didn’t stop it. Republicans love to point out how Democrats bear at least equal responsibility for stuff like the Patriot Act and the Iraq War, as if they were their ideas just as much as they were the GOP’s. Conversely, they love to take credit for stuff they opposed, like the 1990’s deficit reduction and the money coming from the 2009 stimulus. No matter how opposed the Dems were, if something bad happens, their presence in D.C. makes them culpable for the bad stuff; no matter how opposed Republicans were, their presence gives them credit for any success. They observe no statutes of limitation where these things are concerned.

Republicans didn’t stop blaming Roosevelt for Social Security just because a year and a half passed by after his term ran out. No, the basic GOP line is, blame the other guy. The Dems do that a lot too; the difference is, at least recently, they’re a lot more right than the right-wingers are.

The actual rule is, you break it, you bought it. Cavuto just doesn’t like it because now it applies to Bush. What Cavuto is in effect doing is asking, when can we start blaming Obama for everything, even stuff which is clearly Bush’s fault? Of course, on Fox News, the answer is “sometime between Obama’s nomination in 2008 and his election later that year.” Cavuto is ticked off because the rest of the media is not following that same guideline, and is instead blaming Bush for stuff that he actually did.

Now, some things do run out if enough time passes, especially under the rules of the game. The economy is an example of this. By the midterm elections, it will be harder to effectively blame Bush for the economy, though that’s a political rule, not a rational one. Realistically, Obama is responsible for what he has done or has failed to do from Day One; but Bush will still have to be held to account for the long-term effects of his policies. Bush added at least $5 trillion to the national debt, and indirectly probably much more than that; he can’t stop being responsible for that. Iraq was pure Bush; he won’t ever stop being responsible for its effects (nor would Cavuto want people to forget that he got Hussein, only that it cost so much). Certainly, Republicans have never let anyone forget the Clinton bubble burst, something Cavuto himself often brings up, nine years after the fact. Nor should we forget that Republicans, including Cavuto, started blaming Obama for the ills of the nation even before he got into office and was able to actually do anything.

And in terms of overall political claims, Obama had to start out hobbled: Bush handed him a market that was hemorrhaging jobs, 740,000 per month. Never mind that Obama was not responsible for that state, nor that he introduced a stimulus bill that immediately reversed that trend; Obama is officially “responsible” for the jobs that Bush really lost, and so after his first year in Office, Obama “lost” 3.35 million jobs, something the history books will hold him to. All things being fair, Obama should be allowed to start at zero and measure his performance based on where he started, not where the last guy dumped his failures on him. By that measure, Obama created 4.8 million jobs in the same 1-year period, and 7.4 million from Day One to the end of April. Instead, he’s still 2.8 million jobs in the red, and will have to struggle to climb out of the hole that Bush dug for him.

I don’t see Cavuto giving Obama a break on that. Which means that Cavuto has no problem assigning blame to Democrats where no blame is due. He just has a problem with assigning blame to Republicans where it is due. True Fox News principles.

So, Cavuto, if you want to be anything else aside from a transparent partisan gasbag, start getting upset only when someone blames Bush for something he didn’t do. Political rules will let people forget Bush long before the actual responsibility even partly fades. But when you do something and the effects last beyond the moment, then you do what most adults do: take responsibility.

Grover Norquist, noted arch-conservative, on President Obama reportedly using the term “teabagger”:

This remark is the equivalent of using the ‘n’ word. It shows contempt for middle America, expressed knowingly, contemptuously, on purpose, and with a smirk. It is indefensible to use this word. The president knows what it means, and his people know what it means. The public thought we reached a new low of incivility during the Clinton administration. Well, the Obama administration has just outdone them.

Um… yeah. Right. This from a guy whose entire political movement has made it virtually mandatory to twist and create an epithet from the very name of the opposing political party, so much so that the previous president and the party’s succeeding candidate for president used the term constantly. This from a guy whose own movement incessantly calls the president a “communist,” “socialist,” “fascist,” “traitor,” and much worse, comparing him regularly to Hitler, even suggesting he’s the antichrist, daily accusing the president of horrific conspiracies and crimes.

But no, Obama is reaching “a new low of incivility” by using a term that the Tea Party themselves coined for their own use, and only realized after months of open laughter was perhaps not the most effective term to use.

Yeah. Right.

Something I’m hearing a lot is people excusing Republicans for the Arizona immigration law because a few Republicans are speaking out against it. For example, take this diversion by Jake Tapper from This Week:

To be fair, to conservatives, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, a conservative Republican, and Florida Congressman Connie Mack have had some tough words about parts of this law … these are conservative Republicans, nobody would question Bob McDonnell’s bona fides as a conservative, and they are voicing serious concern about those laws.

Tapper, who leans to the right himself, said this as the conservatives at the table nodded sagely and voiced assent. But the whole claim is BS, frankly. Think about it: if a Democratic legislature in a Democratic state passed a bill banning guns, and a Democratic governor signed it into law while a large majority of Democrats across the country approved, would conservatives agree that Democrats were not responsible just because Brian Schweitzer and Jim Webb spoke out against it? Please.

Republicans thought up this law. They passed it, against a solid wall of Democratic votes. A Republican governor signed it. 75% of Republicans who have heard of the law approve of it, and are the only ones I hear defending it. That there are a few right-wingers who see the true ramifications of the law and object hardly make this not a Republican matter. This may be the right wing of the Republican Party, but it is the Republican Party which produced it, and most Republicans approve of it.

What we’re seeing is Republicans trying to disavow the more radical actions of what is frankly the majority of their party while not really doing anything to stop or reverse those actions, so they can appeal to a broader base and not be taken to account for what the party is as a whole. Good midterm election strategy, but not the truth.

Bill Maher, in that same round table discussion, made a few excellent points about the racism inherent in the law. Imagine a law, maybe based on militia activity, that would pressure the police to pull over white males in pickup trucks indiscriminately, asking them for their papers and jailing them if they fail to produce. Like they’d be OK with that, wouldn’t scream “reverse racism” or some government plot to oppress them, and create widely-believed conspiracy theories about Obama and this is what happens when you put a black guy in the White House. The Tea Party crowd would be in an uproar about that, unlike now, when we’re not hearing a peep out of most of them. No, only when it’s people of another color whose rights are trampled when 3 out of 4 of in the party as a whole give hearty applause. As Maher pointed out, if the large masses of hysterical, gun-toting radicals calling for government overthrow were almost all black, you think they would be treated like the teabaggers are? Would Fox News be organizing for them and upholding their Second Amendment rights? Hell no.

But, remember: IOKIYAR. And being white helps a lot. Not that the two are different data sets, mostly.

The Bush administration thoroughly attacked the Constitutional rights of all Americans. They virtually killed off the 4th amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

That administration essentially made it legal for the U.S. government to invade your privacy–your person, house, papers, and effects–without a warrant, without probable cause, without even a specific location and without anything more than a general category of what is to be searched for. After stacking the Supreme Court with justices just waiting for an excuse to place their stamp of approval on such practices.

And the Fourth Amendment wasn’t the only one shredded. You can be arrested without being informed of the charges and swept away to a foreign land without counsel–there went the Sixth Amendment–to be held without due process, and you can be tortured so as to testify against yourself–there went the Fifth and Eighth Amendments–and can be locked up for years without a trial, and never get a jury trial–there went the Seventh. That these rights are not violated daily against all citizens is moot; the foot is in the door, the camel’s nose is under the tent flap, and the precedent is set.

So it flabbergasts me when I see right-wingers going berserk about how the Obama administration is somehow responsible for depriving them of their rights, seemingly oblivious as to what went on under Bush, as if his bolstering of the Second Amendment made up for stripping most of the rest. Sure, the Obama administration gets the blame for perpetuating many of these practices, but the Republicans are the ones who did the damage, and the point is that once the damage is done, it almost never gets undone. Even more to the point, the right-wing protesters don’t even seem to be protesting the actual deprivation of Constitutional rights that Bush committed and Obama is being soft about, but instead they are outraged by some imagined theft of rights that Obama hasn’t even come close to perpetrating.

Consider Arizona: Republicans in control of the state senate just passed a bill which would allow police in the state to stop people just for looking like they’re not legal citizens, demand to see one’s “papers” like they were Gestapo or Soviet state police, and if you don’t have them, haul your ass off to jail. This is exactly the kind of crap that the Tea Party crowd imagines Obama is pulling and get outraged about it–but it’s the Republicans in Arizona doing it, along party lines (all Democrats opposed it and only one Republican joined them). The paradox is that the Teabaggers will probably love this because they imagine it will never apply to them–so it’s OK to violate the rights of Americans of color, even as it whittles away at the rights of everyone. It’s “no government-run health care and don’t touch my Medicare” all over again.

The stupidity dazzles, the irony blinds. Welcome to the Tea Party™.

It’s like shooting fish in a barrel when the other side completely and utterly abandons any and all semblance of reason or adherence to facts or logic. Nevertheless, with Jon Stewart, shooting fish in a barrel can be such fun.

It is so, so sad that millions of Americans take these right-wing gasbags at face value. But then, we’re looking at a populace which has this as a representative sample:

Palin’s view of nuclear weapons was shaped by her stint as the commander in chief of the Alaskan National Guard, our first line of defense against Soviet nuclear weapons. Obama has held his same views since he was a stoner college student and has showed no signs of maturing.

Which of the two would you trust?

One does not have to wonder much why the “comments” section of his blog post is strangely blank. To his credit, the blogger posted an update in which he admits to being wrong about Palin having had control over nuclear weapons while governor of Alaska. Less to his credit, he does not acknowledge that Palin had no business whatsoever with the Alaskan National Guarda. This, of course, completely ignoring everything else wrong with what the guy writes. At some point, you just have to stop critiquing, usually when you realize that you are dissecting the verbiage of what is essentially the political equivalent of the village idiot.