The Brief Life of Bipartisanship and the Return of the Wingnuts

Hey, remember how the modest two year budget deal hammered out by Paul Ryan and Patty Murray was a sign that insane partisanship was on its way out? Yeah, you can stop shoveling dirt in gridlock's grave, because Republican hostage-taking isn't all that very dead yet.


Wall Street Journal: House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) signaled that Republicans would not raise the debt ceiling next year without some sort of concessions from Democrats, saying lawmakers were still crafting their strategy.

“We, as a caucus, along with our Senate counterparts, are going to meet and discuss what it is we want to get out of the debt limit,” Mr. Ryan said on Fox News Sunday. “We don’t want ‘nothing’ out of the debt limit. We’re going to decide what it is we can accomplish out of this debt limit fight.”

The U.S. government spends more money than it brings in through taxes, which means the Treasury Department has to borrow money by issuing debt. The government can only borrow money up to a certain level - called the debt ceiling – which is set by Congress. In October, lawmakers agreed to “suspend” the debt limit until Feb. 7, 2014. The White House has said it will no longer negotiate with Republicans on conditions for raising the debt limit, but many Republicans have said they will only vote to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for budget changes like spending cuts.


Is it an empty threat? Maybe. Democrats and the White House have adopted a "no negotiating with hostage-takers" policy, making it clear that only clean debt ceiling bills will be considered. They can do this because the previous debt ceiling fiasco and the more recent government shutdown have firmly established the GOP as the usual suspects to rounded up when that particular brand of mayhem goes down.

But the fact is that the far right are not at all happy with the budget deal and it may be that GOP leadership -- or just Ryan himself -- sees the need to throw red meat to the 'baggers.The Tea Party may have lost a lot of clout by demanding suicidal moves from the Republican Party, but they're still going to have an outsized influence on the party's primaries. These TP candidates may not stand much of a chance of making a real dent in incumbents, but that doesn't mean that party establishment types don't have to take them seriously. Those 'bagger candidates will run ads and those ads will need to be answered. Money will have to be spent -- money candidates would much rather spend in the general election against their Democratic rivals.

And, of course, it wouldn't be a Republican primary without candidates trying to out-wingnut each other. This is probably the bigger problem for GOP candidates -- the primary pulls them way over to the right and when they try a Mitt Romney-like shift back toward the middle in the general, they find it's just too far to go. You can't have sound-bite after sound-bite promising all-out war against Democratic policies, only to later contradict them all by promising to work toward greater unity in Washington. Yet this is what Republicans in more competitive general election fights will be forced to do.

And Paul Ryan's preemptive hostage-taking is the party already being dragged right. He knows this sort of talk doesn't fly with anyone at all other than the teabaggers, but he figures the damage done by betraying America and sleeping with the enemy hammering out a pitifully limited and unambitious budget deal with Patty Murray is a wound that needs first aid pronto.

This is yet another corner the GOP have painted themselves into; if they ignore the outraged base and insist -- as they have been -- that the Ryan-Murray deal is how Washington is supposed to work, the 'baggers completely lose it and all hell eventually breaks loose. If they cave into the base and crash the economy with a doomed debt ceiling fight, they deliver yet another self-inflicted wound to a party already dying a demographic death of a thousand cuts. And worst of all, it's hard to see how they could've avoided it. All the traps the GOP snare themselves in these days were actually set long ago, when they decided to use rightwing media to outrage Republican voters over things that aren't actually real. Now those voters demand that Republicans respond to those fantasy problems in the fantasy world, rather than the real problems in this world. The party has completely lost control of their messaging and now their BS is in control of them. What about the birth certificate? What about all the plots to bring communism to America? Disarming patriots and sending them to FEMA camps? The UN takeover? What about BENGHAZI!!?

So how does Ryan get out of this particular self-laid bear trap? I'm not really sure. And I kind of doubt he knows. Which means there could be a debt limit debacle in the cards. It seems doubtful -- Republicans know they're bluffing and they know Democrats will call their bluff -- but what else is there?

The sin of getting government to work in even the most modest way demands an atonement. And Paul Ryan isn't eager to lie down on that sacrificial altar himself.

-Wisco

[photo by Gage Skidmore]

Busting the Myth of the Victorious Gun Lobby

You're familiar with the narrative by now. One year after the Sandy Hook Massacre, where gunman Adam Lanza took the lives of twenty young children and six adults, Americans are no safer from gun violence than they were before. Worse, because conservatives are reactionaries and their first impulse is to respond to liberal arguments with contrarian dickishness, legislation has been passed in more Republican areas that actually loosen gun laws. The narrative is, as one Washington Post blogger put it, that "gun control is losing, badly."

But the chart above is from that very blogger's post. A Gallup poll shows that the appetite for stricter gun control is still there. It is, in fact, quite easily the most popular opinion, beating the "no change" crowd by more than 10 points and soaring over those who want to weaken gun laws by 36 points. Further, gun ownership is down from an all-time high of 51% of respondents to an anemic 37% -- with a particularly steep decline since Sandy Hook. If we could have a national referendum on gun safety right now, strengthening gun laws would win in a landslide.

Mitt Romney wishes he could've been "losing" like this. He would've been losing all the way to the White House.

 

Further pouring cold water on the media's victory celebration for the gun lobby is Mother Jones' Mark Follman, who finds that the push for stricter gun restrictions has largely been a success, despite the media narrative portraying the opposite.


[N]o, the gun lobby did not "win." The real action after Newtown was not in the nation's capital—it was in most statehouses around the country, where no fewer than 114 bills were signed into law, aiming in both political directions. America has warred over its deep-rooted gun culture on and off for decades, and Newtown set off a major mobilization on both sides.

Determining how that battle changed the terrain in 2013 isn't just a matter of the total number of laws passed (some of which contain multiple measures), but also the types of activity and swaths of population they affect. Unsurprisingly, the redder states mostly continued to deregulate firearms, while bluer coastal states—and a more politically split Colorado—moved aggressively to tighten restrictions.


America did pass more laws loosening gun laws than tightening them, but those laws were passed where fewer people actually live. The fact of the matter is that, in terms of actual populations covered by laws, gun safety advocates have quietly been winning big. Comparing the gun lobby's 75 wins to gun safety advocates' 56 is extremely misleading. Passing legislation is like running a business -- you try to compete where it's easiest win. And where it's easiest to win is most places other than Washington.

Right now, that means state by state. If it comes down to it, it can go county by county, city by city, town by town. The failure of congress to toughen background checks was not the final fight -- and it wasn't the final fight because it didn't change anyone's mind.

"If you’re a suburban mom outside of Philadelphia who’s angry about this issue, just because it wasn’t on the floor of the Senate doesn’t mean you woke up and stopped caring about it," Jon Carson, executive director of Organizing for Action, a group formed from Pres. Obama's reelection campaign, told the Washington Post.

Right now, the gun lobby and conservatives seem to believe they've won and put the gun control issue behind them. They are wrong.

-Wisco

Is Paul Ryan's Deal Something Paul Ryan Can Support?

There are three things I can pretty much guarantee happened this morning; the sun came up, newspapers were delivered to doorsteps, and Paul Ryan wetted his finger and stuck it out the window, to see which way the Tea Party winds were blowing. After working out a budget deal that takes a little bit of the bite out of the sequester, Rep. Ryan is likely measuring the pulse of his colleagues in his chamber -- and finding that pulse is a little more agitated by his deal than he might've hoped.

Over at Business Insider, Brett LoGiurato has an article up, the headline of which says it all: "Conservatives Are Starting To Freak Out About The Budget Deal." The Heritage Foundation doesn't like it, the Tea Party doesn't like it... In short, the base hates it. A man who still reportedly harbors presidential ambitions, Paul Ryan has always tried to walk a fine line between seeming to be the moderate Republicans who can win a general election and the Tea Party extremist who can win Republican primaries. And in attempting this balancing act, he has largely failed. If there's on person you can count on to oppose a deal swung by Paul Ryan, it's Paul Ryan. If the 'baggers hate it, he's going to hate it. Because, let's face it, winning the GOP primary is the first step in winning the White House. So it's first things first; make sure the rightwing extremists are happy, then try to figure out how to explain it to everyone else later.

And the extremists are unhappy.


Brian Beutler: ...19 conservatives didn’t exactly say the deal should go down. But in a letter to House GOP leadership, they basically opposed the terms of the negotiation and pressed Speaker John Boehner to bring legislation to the floor that would undercut it.

“[W]e encourage you to allow a vote as soon as practicable on a full-year ‘clean CR’ funding bill at the levels established in law by the Budget Control Act,” the letter reads. “Democrats are not interested in solving the problems created by the sequester: they are only interested in using the threat of the cuts as leverage to increase spending across the board, to increase our national debt, and to raise taxes and fees.”


All of which brings up the specter of another government shutdown. I know the conventional wisdom is that Republicans have learned their lesson from the last one, but that argument fails on two important points:

• Republicans don't really do lesson learning. If they did, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell would not be the GOP leaders in their respective chambers today.
• It ignores the fact that Republicans haven't really paid much of a price for the shutdown. Sure, their numbers crashed right after it. But the media turned their attention to the bungled Healthcare.gov rollout, knocking GOP shutdown stories off the front page. The religious extremist Tea Party types no doubt see the hand of God -- or at least the power of prayer -- in this, shielding them from the public's wrath and visiting it upon their most bitter enemy, Pres. Obama. If it happened once, it will probably happen again.

I'll admit, the second point is offered with tongue in cheek -- but barely. I have no doubt that a big chunk of the 19 signatories believe this or something similar -- especially Dominionist messiah Ted Cruz. And I have as little doubt that there are plenty in the House caucus that would be persuaded by this argument -- and plenty more who will go along just to pretend to be persuaded. The difference between a religious nutjob and someone who's only pretending to be a religious nutjob is pretty much nonexistent in a practical sense. And the 'baggers who aren't religious extremists are all phonies who pretend to be to win elections.

So don't be surprised if this big bipartisan deal fizzles out under pressure from the House Wingnut Caucus. And don't be surprised if you see Paul Ryan turning the screws to up that pressure.

-Wisco

[photo by Gage Skidmore]

With Plastic Gun Ban, Congress Votes to Kill a Cherished Gun Lobby Argument

Bad news for the people who think the Second Amendment term "well-regulated" means "not to be regulated." A long-standing gun regulation will be formally renewed at the White House today, proving that even the Tea Party-dominated House of Representatives sees allowing certain weapons to be legally owned would be ridiculously and needlessly pro-criminal.


CNN: The Senate voted unanimously on Monday to renew a 10-year ban on guns that cannot be picked up by metal detectors commonly found in airports, court houses and government buildings.

The law, which prohibits firearms made mostly of plastic, was set to expire at day's end.

It had drawn renewed attention recently due to its pending expiration and the advent of mainly non-metalic handguns produced by 3-D printers.

The House acted last week, and now the measure goes to President Barack Obama for his signature.


In a world where bottles of shampoo are perceived as a serious danger of terrorism, an undetectable firearm ban was really a no-brainer. And the current guns are undetectable, despite a steel fig leaf designed to create a loophole in law. "Currently, plastic guns made using 3-D printers comply with the law by inserting a removable metal block," CNN reports. "That has led to worries plastic guns could pass through metal detectors without being flagged by simply removing the block."

Of course, not everyone's happy. While the NRA has remained wisely mum on this common sense and noncontroversial ban, the more strident and extremist gun nuts haven't been as quiet.


Bloomberg News: Mike Hammond, legislative counsel for the Gun Owners of America, a gun-advocacy group in Springfield, Virginia, said the technology is now widely available, making a plastic-gun ban unnecessary.

“The genie’s out of the bottle,” Hammond said.

Individuals who intend to break the law will not be deterred by a ban on plastic materials, he said. “It’s stupid to think it would make any difference.”


This "people will break the law anyway" argument has always struck me as the most logically weak of all gun lobby arguments -- so much so that it always catches me off guard when someone actually makes it to me. I find myself wondering if they're making it because they think I'm dumb and hope to trick me or if it's the fact that they're so dumb they can't see the obvious flaw.

Hammond's argument can be made against any banned substance or controlled item, of course, from methamphetamine to improvised explosive devices. Laws against these things don't stop people from making them or using them, so by the gun lobby's argument, these things shouldn't be illegal at all. People should be allowed to cook and sell meth even in school zones and wear suicide bomb vests on passenger flights. The law doesn't make it impossible to do these things, so it's somehow absurd to suggest making them illegal.

In fact, if we apply this reasoning universally, then rape, murder, and theft should all be totally legal, for the same reasons. The only laws congress should ever pass are those that are impossible to break -- no going faster than the speed of light! -- and, of course, those laws would be completely unnecessary.

What laws banning substances and items do are to take dangerous people -- along with their contraband -- off the street and put them behind bars. When we find out someone's running a meth manufacturing operation, we can shut it down. When someone's planning to blow up a plane with an IUD, we can move in and stop them. These things happen all the time, proving the "law is powerless to stop it" argument is a bunch of fatalistic horsecrap. If we can't possibly stop people from breaking the law, how is it that we manage to do it over and over and over?

And the big blow to the pro-guns-everywhere crowd in this law is that it proves that even many teabaggers in congress don't really believe this bad argument. Here we have a law banning a specific gun, passed because congress doesn't want people to be able to sneak a gun through a metal detector -- and obviously they believe that law can be used to prevent that. A vote against renewing the ban would be ridiculously pro-criminal, pro-terrorist, and pro-assassin. A vote for this ban is a vote for the fact that gun restrictions can reduce gun crimes.

In short, it's a vote against the "gun laws can't stop criminals" argument.

Unfortunately, the House GOP decided to cast their votes in the most cowardly way possible -- by a voice vote, so names wouldn't be attached to votes. The only way to know if a rep voted for or against the ban is to wait for them to tell you. And a lot of them won't, in large part because that vote proves one of their favorite arguments against gun control is a lie and that they don't actually believe it.

So again we return to that question: when a Republican congress critter makes the "laws can't stop criminals" argument, are they lying or stupid? Given the way the plastic gun ban turned out, the odds lean toward "lying."

-Wisco

[photo via Statesman.com]

The GOP's Obamacare Problem

It's being called the relaunch of Healthcare.gov. But the fact that 100,000 people signed up in October -- while the headlines were filled with stories about how the website wasn't working -- suggests that "relaunch" might not be the most accurate description. However, one aspect that's never actually gotten off the ground before was the effort to get Americans to sign up in large numbers. Since the website was hampered by capacity problems, an awareness campaign would've been counterproductive. In fact, until recently, the administration was discouraging organizations from running recruitment campaigns of their own.

That's about to change.


Politico: President Barack Obama will launch a coordinated campaign Tuesday by the White House, congressional Democrats and their outside allies to return attention to why the Affordable Care Act passed in the first place.

After two months of intense coverage of the botched HealthCare.gov rollout, the president will host a White House event kicking off a three-week drive to refocus the public on the law’s benefits, senior administration officials told POLITICO.

The White House will take the lead in emphasizing a different benefit each day until the Dec. 23 enrollment deadline for Jan. 1 coverage. The daily message will be amplified through press events and social media by Democratic members of Congress, the Democratic National Committee, congressional campaign committees and advocacy organizations, officials said.


And the Obamacare "trainwreck" that (according to pundits) dooms their 2014 prospects? Democrats are planning to run on it, not from it.

"Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill say that in order to get back  on offense on Obamacare, they have to draw a two-sided picture: Democrats  delivering benefits on one side, and Republicans trying to deny them on the  other," the report goes on. "That, one party operative said, is what polling says will help them win."

Of course, Republicans have given up on repealing the Affordable Care Act, but that's not something they're able to admit. The failure of the government shutdown to produce anything at all for Republicans has created a waves of anger and fingerpointing, resulting in destructive primary challenges across the country. One longtime Republican operative, Richard Viguerie, predicted that the GOP primaries will be an "absolute bloodbath."

"We gotta give up on Obamacare!" will not be a winning message during Tea Party-driven bloodbath. They'll have to try to out-crazy each other on the issue. That's a real problem for them in the general election. Since Republicans have no alternative to Obamacare, they wind up advocating the unsustainable pre-ACA status quo by default. And it may be that the only thing more unpopular than the reformed healthcare system is the unreformed one. Republicans would be better off putting this issue behind them. In reality, they have -- but reality doesn't play with the base, so they're forced to pretend that they haven't.

Greg Sargent argues that "folks are overlooking the possibility that no matter how unpopular the law, the Republican stance on health care may prove a liability, too. The basic Dem gamble is that disapproval of Obamacare does not automatically translate into zero sum political gains for Republicans, and that voters will grasp that one side is trying to solve our health care problems, while the other is trying to sabotage all solutions while advancing no constructive answers of their own. Polling shows disapproval of the law does not translate into majority support for GOP attempts to repeal or sabotage it, and Dems think this will only harden as more people enjoy the law’s benefits."

And even if they don't improve, if things stay exactly the way they are now, Republicans lose the Obamacare issue. Since most people don't want repeal -- and didn't while even the most critical Healthcare.gov stories blared from the media -- Republicans are already on a bad footing on the issue. And they have been for months, having become a mostly single-issue party with over forty bills to repeal the Affordable Care Act passed in the House.

The Affordable Care Act won't be a winning issue for the GOP. Whether it will be for Democrats remains to be seen. But if anyone has the upper hand on the issue right now, it's not Republicans.

-Wisco

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

America Needs a Raise

For me at least, the most interesting story over the holiday weekend was Black Friday mayhem. Running the search term "Walmart Police" through Google News gained me this little screenshot, which I think sums up the spirit of the day pretty well -- people shot, stabbed, and beaten over prices that are really no better than those in any other sale throughout the year. False scarcity and media hype about "can't-miss" deals can drive people to do things they may not be very proud of in the sober light of Cyber Monday. Our consumerist culture is by nature predatory, with the corporate predators tricking the prey into thinking they're predators too -- which leads to predictable outcomes as consumers compete to "hunt bargains."

Another type of corporate predation was also in the news, as Walmart workers staged Black Friday demonstrations to protest low wages. They're starvation wages, really, which have Walmart employees running food drives for each other and relying on food stamps to survive. What's surprising to me is how little bleed-over there is from one story to the other, despite the fact that they're clearly related. Not only do Walmart workers earn far, far too little for their labor, but the Black Friday chaos stories demonstrate just how lousy a working environment the company's willing to tolerate in order to sell someone a toaster oven. Anyone who can read about the Black Friday frenzies across the nation and think that people who have to deal with that don't deserve a raise... Well, they've got a real interesting definition of "deserve."

And of course, the myth that low wage workers have undemanding, cushy jobs is exposed as BS.

All of which brings us to Paul Krugman's call to raise the minimum wage -- and more.


The last few decades have been tough for many American workers, but especially hard on those employed in retail trade — a category that includes both the sales clerks at your local Walmart and the staff at your local McDonald’s. Despite the lingering effects of the financial crisis, America is a much richer country than it was 40 years ago. But the inflation-adjusted wages of nonsupervisory workers in retail trade — who weren’t particularly well paid to begin with — have fallen almost 30 percent since 1973.<

So can anything be done to help these workers, many of whom depend on food stamps — if they can get them — to feed their families, and who depend on Medicaid — again, if they can get it — to provide essential health care? Yes. We can preserve and expand food stamps, not slash the program the way Republicans want. We can make health reform work, despite right-wing efforts to undermine the program.

And we can raise the minimum wage.


A realistic minimum wage and a working social safety net. What a shocking idea. Conservatives love bootstrap stories, but the math -- like all rightwing math -- simply doesn't work. Sure, a worker can work hard and become a supervisor, manager, or more, but how many middle management employees do conservatives think a company needs? Not everyone can follow that path -- even if everyone at a particular store is deserving. People are going to remain in low wage positions by necessity. It's simply unavoidable. Every employee at any given Walmart can't be a floor manager. Someone has to be on the operating end of a mop. In any case, living on the minimum wage shouldn't be a punishment for failing to live up to Republican expectations.

And raising the minimum wage is good for everyone.


When it comes to the minimum wage, however, we have a number of cases in which a state raised its own minimum wage while a neighboring state did not. If there were anything to the notion that minimum wage increases have big negative effects on employment, that result should show up in state-to-state comparisons. It doesn’t.

So a minimum-wage increase would help low-paid workers, with few adverse side effects. And we’re talking about a lot of people. Early this year the Economic Policy Institute estimated that an increase in the national minimum wage to $10.10 from its current $7.25 would benefit 30 million workers. Most would benefit directly, because they are currently earning less than $10.10 an hour, but others would benefit indirectly, because their pay is in effect pegged to the minimum — for example, fast-food store managers who are paid slightly (but only slightly) more than the workers they manage.


This is the principle of "everybody does better when everybody does better" -- something obvious to most people, but shocking and anti-intuitive to conservatives. And that get's back to the idea of punishment. Conservatives, at heart, believe that everyone is evil. Therefore conservative ideas are always about punishment. If you punish women for having sex by calling them "sluts," they won't have abortions. If you punish schools for underperforming by pulling funding. If you punish the poor for their poverty by saddling them with an unlivable minimum wage, while cutting programs that would help them -- like food stamps, Medicaid, and welfare -- then they'll just decide it's too hard to be poor and stop it.

This doesn't work at all and why should it? It's what the status quo was before the minimum wage or support programs were put in place. Want a glimpse of how well the Republican approach to poverty works? Pick up a Dickens novel. All those crazy, big gummint ideas exist to fix the failures of a society that lived by what would be modern conservative social Darwinist rules. That's how we know that conservative economic principles would fail -- we've already tried it. For centuries. The poor had plenty of time to get sick of poverty and knock it off. Somehow, they never really managed. Poverty was rampant, income levels were pretty much fixed, and the phrase "middle class" was incomprehensible babble.

People are being underpaid to work in terrible conditions. History proves that doing something about that helps everyone. And that doing nothing will just make things progressively worse.

-Wisco

[photo by Brave New Films]

What We Know About Sandy Hook

The official police investigation into the killer behind the Sandy Hook massacre has closed and the final report offer frustratingly few answers. Authorities found no evidence that he'd ever spoken about any plans to commit the crime to anyone else, but that this crime was committed for reasons we'll never know. He'd had no contact with anyone at the school, so it couldn't have been some argument or feud. And the "violent video games" theory? Adam Lanza seemed obsessed with only one video game in particular, according to CNN.


But while many of his video games were violent, others were not. For months before the killings at Sandy Hook, he would go to a movie theater on weekends to play the dance game "Dance Dance Revolution" for hours, the report recounts.


Maybe he was playing violent video games at home. But so do plenty of other people. Only one went out and committed an unimaginably horrific crime. If a video game drove him to a murderous state of mind, there's more evidence that video game was "Dance Dance Revolution" than "Call of Duty."

However, much of what we do know is damning. Lanza was isolated by his own mental health issues. And those issues could not have been helped by the fact that his mother was a gun-obsessed survivalist. For a young man with mental health issues, having the only person who was really in his day to day life be so far removed in her world view from anything resembling reality can't possibly have been helpful. And the presence of an arsenal of real guns proved far more deadly than any games involving imaginary ones. CNN again:


On December 14, 2012, the morning after Nancy Lanza had returned from a trip to New Hampshire, her son shot her four times in the head with a .22-caliber rifle. Then it was off to the school where he once had been a relatively happy child, packing four other guns and nearly 500 rounds of ammunition. He fired more than 150 shots from a .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle before turning a 10mm Glock pistol on himself once police arrived, according to the report.


That's what we know. Anything about video games or mental illness or parenting is speculation. The one thing we know about the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School is that it was carried out by someone with more ammo than any responsible person could possibly need, fired from the barrel of a gun designed to shoot that ammunition into human bodies at the fastest rate possible without being fully automatic. Lanza's ability to fire bullets into kids and teachers was limited only by the speed at which he could pull the trigger and the capacity of his magazine. Those meager limitations proved to be no impediment.

That's what we know. When Lanza went from classroom to classroom, gunning down kids, we know he didn't use a video game. He used a .223-caliber Bushmaster assault rifle. That's what we know. That's pretty much all we know.

You'd think that this knowledge would be enough to do drive us to something. But that would be discounting the bottomless cowardice of people like Lanza's mother who collect ridiculously dangerous guns under the impression --now tragically proven inaccurate-- that each one she owned enhanced her safety. And it would be discounting the tremendous evil of gun manufacturers and lobbyists who, like Big Tobacco before them, are completely comfortable with profit margins being inflated by death tolls. And it would be discounting the mendacity of rightwing media trolls, whose only real argument is "liberals are always wrong," which forces them to oppose even the most common sense solutions to gun violence -- or anything else, for that matter.

That's what we know. We know Adam Lanza was able to carry out the massacre because he was able to gain access to weapons which by no stretch of even the most inventive spinmeister's imagination enhanced anyone's safety that day. And we know that there are people, whether through greed or cowardice or plain stupidity, who are more than willing to leave that as the status quo. And because of them, something like this will happen again.

That's what we know.

-Wisco

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

What Happens When GOP Economic Fairy Tales are Applied to the Real World

A piece in the New York Times this weekend compared the economic fates of Wisconsin and Minnesota, two states that were in roughly similar economic condition in 2012. Minnesota elected a Democratic government, while Wisconsin chose Republicans. And it was with this choice that the two neighboring states' fortunes began to diverge.


Three years into Mr. Walker’s term, Wisconsin lags behind Minnesota in job creation and economic growth. As a candidate, Mr. Walker promised to produce 250,000 private-sector jobs in his first term, but a year before the next election that number is less than 90,000. Wisconsin ranks 34th for job growth. Mr. Walker’s defenders blame the higher spending and taxes of his Democratic predecessor for these disappointments, but according to Forbes’s annual list of best states for business, Wisconsin continues to rank in the bottom half.

Along with California, Minnesota is the fifth fastest growing state economy, with private-sector job growth exceeding pre-recession levels. Forbes rates Minnesota as the eighth best state for business. Republicans deserve some of the credit, particularly for their commitment to education reform. They also argue that Minnesota’s new growth stems from the low taxes and reduced spending under Mr. Dayton’s Republican predecessor, Tim Pawlenty. But Minnesota’s job growth was subpar during Mr. Pawlenty’s eight-year tenure and recovered only under Mr. Dayton.


Trust me, it sucks when your state is used as an example of economic failure. While Walker complains that previous higher taxes and spending are dragging the state down (a tough argument to make -- the mechanics are so bad he doesn't even bother to explain them), Minnesota has raised taxes and spending to great success. And that spending has been distinctly Keynesian. NYT reports that the "lion’s share of Minnesota’s new tax revenue was sunk into human capital." Wisconsin, of course, has been anti-Keynesian, reaching into workers' pockets to take pay and benefits away.

And that's where conservative economic policies fail. One way of looking at Republican economic theories is to say that any government involvement in the economy is bad. Why? Well, I actually haven't heard a good explanation of that. It just is. It seems to be less of a logical argument and more of a moral one -- i.e., progressive taxation is unfair, as is providing some sort of even minimal safety net. Where they used to argue that taxation was metaphorical theft, they now argue that it's literal theft. Taxation and social programs have been lifted out of the "good or bad for society" argument, because conservative can't win that argument. History proves again and again that progressive taxation and social spending are to the common good. They "promote general the welfare," to use a phrase from the preamble -- i.e., the mission statement --  of the Constitution.

If it's "unfair" to tax the wealthy and corporations at a higher rate, in order to at least try to guarantee a bearable level of existence for those in need, then cry me a freakin' river, moneybags. If the right were really as objective as they claim to be, they'd argue that fair and unfair are irrelevant. What matters is "works" or "doesn't work."

Of course, if they really were that objective, conservative economics would've died the first time Reagan raised taxes.

But Reaganomics lumbers, zombie-like, on -- both dead and brainless. And it's because the argument isn't so much a recipe for a healthy economy -- or even for basic fairness -- but a rationalization for allowing a small number of very fortunate people to transfer wealth from the bottom to the top. In Wisconsin, that means cutting benefits for workers and the poor to pay for new goodies for the wealthy. What's that gotten us? An economy in a downward spiral, as workers no longer have any money to spend and demand drops. And of course, cutting spending while you've made certain consumer demand will plummet is like drilling holes in an already sinking boat; you've already poked a hole in the hull by taking money away from workers and now you're further reducing demand by cutting government spending.

In short, what Walker has done is a recipe for destroying an economy and -- lo and behold -- it's working. We need to be more like those crazy lefties across the Mississippi, who care less about what whiny one-percenters think is "unfair" and more about what works for everybody

-Wisco.

[photo by Nick Ares]

Murder as a By-Product of Rightwing Fearmongering

Josh Marshall writes that the BS storm surrounding Obamacare right now has become a "white noise of derp and mendacity" -- i.e., there's so much spin and propaganda here that it all sort of cancels itself out, at least in terms of specificity. There's a lot of criticism out there, but there isn't any single line of attack. Apparently, piling on over the rocky rollout hasn't seemed to have been enough to do much of anything. More is needed. The volume mut be increase. The anger must be red-hot. The rightwing herd must be driven to  panic.The derp must peg the stupidometer.

And that's just what Republicans are planning to do -- if they can manage to settle on one single messaging strategy. Marshall warns us of one narrative that seems to be forming on the right: "Top Republicans are now making a concerted effort to convince the public that Obamacare 'navigators', people trained to help people navigate the new system, will steal their identities and private personal information."

They're diving on testimony from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and -- surprise! -- taking it out of context to induce hysteria. On Nov. 6, Sebelius was asked whether it was a requirement that the Obamacare "navigators" undergo a criminal background check. She said there wasn't a federal requirement, but that they were farming the job out to private contractors. Those entities have "the responsibility to screen their individual navigators and make sure that they are sufficiently trained for the job."

Who are these fly-by-night organizations filled with unchecked felons? According to the report, "local United Way chapters, higher education institutions and the like."

But hey, if slandering the United Way gets people to think Obamacare is a massive ripoff, then that's fine. Because there is nothing on this Earth more important that getting Republicans elected. If you trick people into staying with lousy insurance -- or no insurance at all -- who cares? Not the self-serving nihilists who make up the current GOP. Besides, if everyone starts believing crazy, made up BS about Obamacare navigators, what's the worst that could happen?

Oh yeah, some teabagging nutjob could use his Sacred Second Amendment Freedoms to put down some tyrants. You know, like Paul Anthony Ciancia, who shot and killed a TSA agent at LAX. He reportedly had anti-government 'patriot' writings on him at the time. Remember why Ciancia assassinated a TSA agent? Allow me to remind you.


Southern Poverty Law Center: The TSA, short for the Transportation Security Administration, is an agency of the DHS charged with ensuring the security of transportation, most notably air transportation. Although it has not been widely singled out by Patriots, it has been subjected to criticism by far-right homophobes, among others, who have alleged that TSA agents engaging in hand searches are really sexually groping travelers.

One witness told MSNBC that Ciancia asked people at the airport if they were TSA and, if they said they were not, moved on without trying to harm them.


So rightwing propagandists told Ciancia that TSA agents were sexually molesting passengers at airports and, being a typical empty-vessel 'bagger, he believed every word of it. And he can't possibly be the only one. If he was moved to terrorism by the lie, how many others are planning -- or on the brink of planning -- similar "strikes"?

And now Republicans, having learned absolutely nothing about the politics of smear from the death of an innocent public servant, are at it again. They're portraying people who are only trying to help as criminals, intent on stealing your identity -- just one of the many evil tentacles of Obamacare.

Or maybe instead of saying they haven't learned anything, it would be more accurate to say they just don't care. Have I used the word "nihilist" yet? I see I have. We don't even need to get into anti-abortion terrorism, do we? Republicans clearly don't care about the consequences of their hysteria-inducing, over-the-top rhetoric. If they did, the years of bombings and murder would've made them more cautious and less prone to apocalyptic hyperbole.

So if some United Way employee takes one in the chest from a gullible, terrified nutjob with an AR-15 and a gross misunderstand of his Second Amendment rights (a misunderstanding that Republicans promote, BTW), so what? All that matters is that Republicans get elected.

Any other consequence is irrelevant.

-Wisco

[photo by bixentro]

A 'Fix' for Obamacare -- Do Nothing

We can probably stop worrying about Republican Rep. Fred Upton's (R-Blue Cross) "Keep Your Health Plan Act of 2013" now.

Buzzfeed: President Obama threatened Thursday to veto a House bill that would allow insurance companies to continue offering existing health plans after millions received cancelation notices due to the Affordable Care Act.

The threat came hours after the president asked health insurance companies to allow individuals to keep their existing, canceled plans for a year.

The “Keep Your Health Plan Act of 2013,” sponsored by Republican Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, would allow insurance companies to continue to offer plans that were available before the new Obamacare rules took effect. The House is scheduled to vote on the bill Friday and a handful of Democrats were expected to support it.

Obama’s fix allows only individuals whose policies were canceled in 2013 to re-enroll in their plans next year, while the Upton bill would allow insurers to sell the plans to new customers and would not be limited to just one year.


Overriding a presidential veto is an uphill battle in even the best of circumstances, but the idea that enough Democrats would defect to create a two-thirds majority in both houses here doesn't seem at all likely. You can pass a bill in a hurried panic, but the president can sit on it a while and wait for everyone to cool off before he vetoes it. Seriously, this may get a lot of press because of a House vote on the bill today, but it is most probably dead.

And this veto threat throws some cold water on serial turncoat dem Mary Landrieu's companion bill in the Senate. If the votes aren't there to override, Harry Reid may not even bring it to the floor.

So this is how this could pan out: everyone freaks out over something that's a lot simpler than they're making it and backs an insane plan that can only make everything worse. This plan then falls apart and some people turn serious -- in the best case scenario, enough get serious to get something halfway constructive done.

And if they don't? Well, then you've got the status quo. Obamacare and the White House take a few political hits for the team (the President's done getting reelected, he can afford to be a political scapegoat), everyone argues over how terrible everything is, and eventually the whole problem resolves itself as the exchanges start working, people get better insurance, and the clamor fades away. This is the sort of problem that'll eventually fix itself if everyone stops poking at it.

Of course, that's not the best scenario. Those few who actually are having their policies canceled will remain uninsured through no fault of their own and someone really needs to cook up some sort of a Plan B, even if only to help this relative handful of people for a few weeks.

But that aside, this problem is a political one, not a logistical one. This dust up has a built-in shelf life. This is one issue where gridlock would actually work out well for everyone -- except Republicans, of course, who want to sabotage Obamacare at every opportunity. For them, the chance to "fix" Obamacare is a chance to break it. So they shouldn't be given the chance.

If we just sit right were we are, trapped in the stalemate of a broken political system, that's to the Democrat's advantage. Obamacare's rocky rollout won't be an issue in the 2014 elections, because by then everything will be working fine.

All Democrats have to do is to resist the urge to pick at it.

-Wisco

[image by DonkeyHotey]

Saving Obamacare from Democrats

For the most part, the insurance cancellation controversy is not firmly grounded in reality. Of course, there are the horror stories that don't stand up to scrutiny, but there is also the mostly unreported fact that those who are losing their insurance are doing so because the Affordable Care Act makes terrible insurance coverage illegal. It's not so much a story about Obamacare cancelling coverage, as it is one of insurance companies scrapping policies rather than fixing them to make them less of a rip off. This became apparent when the subject of one such ObamaScare story was presented with the sort of plan she would qualify for under the ACA; "I would jump at it," said Florida resident Dianne Barrette.

The problem isn't so much that people are finding their coverage plans canceled, the problem is that the website where they can shop for new insurance isn't working at the moment. For people like Barrette, the fact that better and more affordable insurance exists is cold comfort, since she can't actually apply for it. In other words, it's not the cancellations that is the problem demanding a fix, it's the website -- or, at least, the mechanism for shopping for insurance. Allowing people to continue to get insurance coverage that's highway robbery is no fix at all, since that was one of the big problems in the first place.

Still, that fact isn't keeping some panicky Democrats from threatening to buckle under the weight of the story.


The Hill: House Democrats on Wednesday expressed increasing frustration at the Obama administration’s inability to improve the rollout of ObamaCare.

Democrats said they’re worried about "being dragged into this non-stop cycle" of bad news about the ObamaCare rollout, rather than celebrating the successes of the law they helped to pass, a Democratic aide said.

"They're voicing those frustrations with the administration," the aide said following a Democratic Caucus meeting where administration officials got an earful from exasperated lawmakers.

With the House vote just two days away, many Democrats are urging the White House to come up with an administrative alternative to legislation sponsored by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) that would allow insurance companies to offer their old insurance plans.


Upton's bill would allow insurers to continue to offer this crap insurance until 2015 -- and this is supposedly a fix for a problem that will most likely be resolved in a matter of weeks. It is insane. And it would be bad for consumers. The ACA keeps costs down by getting nearly everyone into the risk pool with something at least approaching comprehensive coverage. By allowing insurers to continue to offer these cut rate plans that cover almost nothing, congress would be guaranteeing higher insurance premiums and screwing consumers by allowing insurers to screw other consumers. In the insurance economy, someone else's lousy or nonexistent coverage really is every one's problem.

And the politics. My God, the brainless and lousy politics...


Jonathon Chait: Undermining Obamacare in order to placate angry individual insurance holders makes no sense even on narrow political terms. People losing individual insurance they like are angry right now, but they’re a tiny minority of the market, and their anger will fade over time as the exchanges come online. Higher premiums would affect far more people, and their impact would be felt much closer to the midterm elections. Imagine it's next year, insurers are pulling out of the exchanges, rates are rising, all because of a law Congress hastily passed the year before — is that a better situation?


No, it's not a better situation. It's a boneheaded move that actually makes everything worse in the long run. Despite what the media is saying, Obamacare is not in a tailspin. Only congressional Democrats can put it into a tailspin. And fear of a plane crash is a really lousy reason to crash the damned plane deliberately.

What's needed is a fix for the purchasing problem. And that can't possibly be insurmountable. Computers haven't been around forever, you know, and people were buying things in exchanges long before the word "website" stopped being complete gibberish. If you want to fix the problem, then fix the real problem -- i.e., that of getting better and more affordable coverage to people who need it -- rather than address the pretend problem that the sensationalist media and Republicans want everyone to freak out over.

Congressional Democrats are going to need an alternative and they're turning out to be very bad at coming up with one themselves -- or of even recognizing a lousy one when they see it. The White House is going to have to step forward and provide some leadership. Otherwise panicked Democratic buffalo are in danger of stampeding themselves straight over a cliff.

-Wisco

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

2014 and the Virginian Microcosm

The President is facing record low approvals -- which makes him the most popular man in Washington. Observe:


NBC News' First Read: How low can President Obama and Congress go? We’re watching both continue to sink in polls. A Quinnipiac survey released yesterday found that Obama’s approval rating had dropped to 39%, which is his lowest point in that poll (we’re in Bush territory, folks). More ominously, just 44% said the president was honest and trustworthy -- yet another all-time low -- compared with 52% who disagreed.  Meanwhile, Gallup showed that Congress’ job-approval rating had declined to a mere 9%, which is the lowest mark in the poll’s 39-year history of asking that question. This race to the bottom isn’t new, of course. Our NBC/WSJ poll released late last month -- after the government shutdown, after the standoff over the debt limit, and after a month’s worth of reported problems with the federal health-care website -- also found Obama (42% approval) and the Republican Party (22%-53% fav/unfav) reaching all-time lows. But what these new polls show is that the slides don’t appear to be stopping.


So free falling Republican of free falling Obama? I think most thinking people would rather be in the President's position right now.  There's usually a second term slump, when the president becomes emblematic of the status quo -- and this is probably one of the more extreme examples of that -- but congress doesn't have that excuse. First Read speculates on what this means for the midterms and largely ends with a shrug, but there's a really good small scale experiment out there that's just concluded and is nearly a perfect representation of what many 2014 voters will face; i.e., given a choice between two candidates who suck and who voters hate, which would they choose?


USA Today: Top campaign aides to Virginia Gov.-elect Terry McAuliffe and his GOP opponent, Ken Cuccinelli, agreed Wednesday on two things about the just-concluded bitter campaign: that the federal government shutdown was a critical factor in Cuccinelli's defeat, and that political fact-checking has become so prevalent it is in danger of become irrelevant.

Chris LaCivita, who served as Cuccinelli's chief political strategist, and Ellen Qualls, McAuliffe's senior adviser, shared their insights on the race at a post-election forum organized by George Mason University and the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project.

LaCivita said that the shutdown "more than anything ... is what cost us the race" because it knocked the campaign completely off-message at a critical moment.


"We launched our first TV ad Sept. 25 leading up to Oct. 1 because we had everything geared toward Oct. 1," he went on. "That that was going to be the launch pad and then — boom — shutdown."

Cuccinelli tried to distance himself from the shutdown, but his close relationship to the Tea Party nuts responsible for it pretty much made that impossible. As Governor of Virginia, he would've been in no position to contribute to the gridlock in Washington and he wouldn't be shutting government down or crashing the economy with the debt ceiling or any of the other all-out assaults on the American economy that Tea Party Republicans have become so hated for. It wasn't that people were afraid he'd be a DC 'bagger -- because he couldn't be. But the endorsements by fruitpies told voters who he was. And who he was was someone that voters liked even less than gladhanding used car salesman Terry McAuliffe. Behind all the talk about liberty and freedom and how the Tea Party is all about what the founders had in mind, there's a closet full of molotov cocktails, ready to be thrown at anything or anyone they disagree with -- consequences be damned.

Now imagine it's 2014 and you're a Tea Party fruitpie running for reelection. How do you think that's going to work out? McAuliffe adviser Ellen Qualls said that internal polling showed a close race throughout, but that "we spiked during the shutdown. If the election had happened during the shutdown we would have had a bigger win."

Will the shutdown be a big issue with voters come November 2014? Maybe not. But how they behaved during the shutdown, which side they took, speaks to their character. If the government shutdown isn't going to be first and foremost in people's minds next year, they aren't going to like the shutdown any more than they do now, either. And, like Cuccinelli, it won't be so much about what they did as it will be about what kind of politician they are. Whether that's enough to give Democrats a good election night remains to be seen, but it won't hurt Democrats to remind people who these Republican Tea Party types are.

It won't hurt them at all.

-Wisco

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

2014 and the Virginian Microcosm

The President is facing record low approvals -- which makes him the most popular man in Washington. Observe:


NBC News' First Read: How low can President Obama and Congress go? We’re watching both continue to sink in polls. A Quinnipiac survey released yesterday found that Obama’s approval rating had dropped to 39%, which is his lowest point in that poll (we’re in Bush territory, folks). More ominously, just 44% said the president was honest and trustworthy -- yet another all-time low -- compared with 52% who disagreed.  Meanwhile, Gallup showed that Congress’ job-approval rating had declined to a mere 9%, which is the lowest mark in the poll’s 39-year history of asking that question. This race to the bottom isn’t new, of course. Our NBC/WSJ poll released late last month -- after the government shutdown, after the standoff over the debt limit, and after a month’s worth of reported problems with the federal health-care website -- also found Obama (42% approval) and the Republican Party (22%-53% fav/unfav) reaching all-time lows. But what these new polls show is that the slides don’t appear to be stopping.


So free falling Republican of free falling Obama? I think most thinking people would rather be in the President's position right now.  There's usually a second term slump, when the president becomes emblematic of the status quo -- and this is probably one of the more extreme examples of that -- but congress doesn't have that excuse. First Read speculates on what this means for the midterms and largely ends with a shrug, but there's a really good small scale experiment out there that's just concluded and is nearly a perfect representation of what many 2014 voters will face; i.e., given a choice between two candidates who suck and who voters hate, which would they choose?


USA Today: Top campaign aides to Virginia Gov.-elect Terry McAuliffe and his GOP opponent, Ken Cuccinelli, agreed Wednesday on two things about the just-concluded bitter campaign: that the federal government shutdown was a critical factor in Cuccinelli's defeat, and that political fact-checking has become so prevalent it is in danger of become irrelevant.

Chris LaCivita, who served as Cuccinelli's chief political strategist, and Ellen Qualls, McAuliffe's senior adviser, shared their insights on the race at a post-election forum organized by George Mason University and the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project.

LaCivita said that the shutdown "more than anything ... is what cost us the race" because it knocked the campaign completely off-message at a critical moment.


"We launched our first TV ad Sept. 25 leading up to Oct. 1 because we had everything geared toward Oct. 1," he went on. "That that was going to be the launch pad and then — boom — shutdown."

Cuccinelli tried to distance himself from the shutdown, but his close relationship to the Tea Party nuts responsible for it pretty much made that impossible. As Governor of Virginia, he would've been in no position to contribute to the gridlock in Washington and he wouldn't be shutting government down or crashing the economy with the debt ceiling or any of the other all-out assaults on the American economy that Tea Party Republicans have become so hated for. It wasn't that people were afraid he'd be a DC 'bagger -- because he couldn't be. But the endorsements by fruitpies told voters who he was. And who he was was someone that voters liked even less than gladhanding used car salesman Terry McAuliffe. Behind all the talk about liberty and freedom and how the Tea Party is all about what the founders had in mind, there's a closet full of molotov cocktails, ready to be thrown at anything or anyone they disagree with -- consequences be damned.

Now imagine it's 2014 and you're a Tea Party fruitpie running for reelection. How do you think that's going to work out? McAuliffe adviser Ellen Qualls said that internal polling showed a close race throughout, but that "we spiked during the shutdown. If the election had happened during the shutdown we would have had a bigger win."

Will the shutdown be a big issue with voters come November 2014? Maybe not. But how they behaved during the shutdown, which side they took, speaks to their character. If the government shutdown isn't going to be first and foremost in people's minds next year, they aren't going to like the shutdown any more than they do now, either. And, like Cuccinelli, it won't be so much about what they did as it will be about what kind of politician they are. Whether that's enough to give Democrats a good election night remains to be seen, but it won't hurt Democrats to remind people who these Republican Tea Party types are.

It won't hurt them at all.

-Wisco

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

Shutting Down Debate at Gunpoint

Here's a fun item from over the weekend. While you were doing whatever it was you were doing yesterday, a fine and not at all cowardly group of Texans who are not at all lunatics were busy doing this:


ThinkProgress: On Saturday, nearly 40 armed men, women, and children waited outside a Dallas, Texas area restaurant to protest a membership meeting for the state chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a gun safety advocacy group formed in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

According to a spokeswoman for Moms Demand Action (MDA), the moms were inside the Blue Mesa Grill when members of Open Carry Texas (OCT) — an open carry advocacy group — “pull[ed] up in the parking lot and start[ed] getting guns out of their trunks.” The group then waited in the parking lot for the four MDA members to come out. The spokeswoman said that the restaurant manager did not want to call 911, for fear of “inciting a riot” and waited for the gun advocates to leave. The group moved to a nearby Hooters after approximately two hours.

MDA later released a statement calling OCT “gun bullies” who “disagree[d] with our goal of changing America’s gun laws and policies to protect our children and families.” The statement added that the members and restaurant customers were “terrified by what appeared to be an armed ambush.” A member of OCT responded by tweeting, “I guess I’m a #gunbullies #Comeandtakeit.”


So, on learning that they'd panicked innocent people, Mr. Second Amendment Hero here thought, "Good!" Clearly, that was the intent. There are two words to describe someone like that -- a thug or a prick. One does not rule out the other.

On further thought, there are three words. You'll need to add "criminal." "Licensed gun owners are allowed to carry concealed weapons," the report continues, "but Texas is one of six states that prohibits open carry of firearms."

Being members of an open carry advocacy group, these people knew they were breaking the law. After all, they exist to change that law. They made a conscious choice to engage in criminal behavior. Just as they made the choice to carry all outward appearances of an angry lynch mob, come to punish some moms for the unforgivable crime of discussing ways to reduce gun violence. The Second Amendment Heroes from OCT weren't interested in discussing anything. They were interested in shutting down discussion literally at gun point. Because nothing says freedom like an armed goon putting a gun in your face and saying, "Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

But they won't succeed in shutting down discussion -- mostly because the average American is not so cowardly as they are. When one group of people feels the need to armed constantly and one thinks there are better, less stupid, and less insane solutions to violence, it's not hard to identify the more courageous of the two.

What's bothering me though is this, which happened just the day before:


KHOU: A massive house party advertised on Twitter turned violent when two teenagers were shot to death and 19 others were injured late Saturday in northwest Harris County [Texas], deputies said.

According to Harris County Sheriff's Office, the mass shooting happened just before 11 p.m. at a birthday party for 18-year-old Mariah Boulden in the 7300 block of Enchanted Creek Drive.

Sheriff Adrian Garcia described the scene from Saturday night as a “birthday party gone wild.”


"Two high school students, 18-year-old male and 16-year-old female, were killed, while 19 others were injured during the shooting," the report tells us. Just one of the mass shootings that have become such a daily occurrence in the US that they don't even make national news. The blood-soaked and bullet hole-ridden wallpaper of our daily lives -- so constant and ubiquitous that we don't even see it anymore.

There were no armed protesters at the scene the next day, demanding that people use their firearms responsibly -- no unspoken threat to gun down anyone who didn't. No, they were too busy getting ready to go harass a handful of unarmed moms who met to talk about the sort of things that Second Amendment Heroes would rather you just ignore. Things that constant repetition makes so easy for the media to ignore. Another day, another senseless mass shooting -- *yawn* are you sure there isn't some celebrity nip-slip out there someplace to report on?

So a group of armed psychopaths went to menace people who wanted to regulate firearms. In other words, the day after a mass shooting, a bunch of gun-toting cowards went to make sure that people like the shooters would always have easy access to plenty of firearms with plenty of ammo, so they could get hammered at a kegger and start using guns the way other people use firecrackers. And, if some kids are shot and some others are trampled? Tough luck.

That's clearly what the Founders intended. So sleep well, gun fetishists of America. Open Carry Texas is out there making sure your guns are safe.

Your children, not so much. But you've got to have your priorities.

-Wisco

[photo distributed by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America]

Rightwing Homophobes Going the Way of the Dinosaurs

If you were to ask any homophobic Christian right nutjob, the US Senate is Gaytopia. As the Employee Non-Discrimination Act, it faced almost no vocal opposition on the chamber floor. Sure, most Republicans voted against ENDA -- only ten finally voted to pass the bill -- but only one, Dan Coats, gave a floor speech trying to whip up votes against it. There was virtually no active opposition from Senators.

Needless to say, the religious right isn't taking this very well.


Buzzfeed: The silence from the Senate Republican caucus stunned social conservatives, who have been arguing that the legislation, which provides workplace protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender employees, will undermine religious liberty.

“I’m mystified and deeply disappointed, because there are profound constitutional issues at stake here,” said the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer. “The entire First Amendment is being put up for auction by this bill and it’s inexcusable that no Republican senators are willing to stand up and defend the Constitution.”

“I believe they have been intimidated into silence by the bullies and bigots of Big Gay,” Fischer added. “They know if they speak out … they will be the target of vitriol, the target of animosity, and very likely, the target of hate."


There's plenty more where that came from, if you really want to wallow through the piece, but suffice it to say that the anti-gay hate industry would very much like to know why Senate Republicans can't be more like their brethren in the House, where ENDA is likely headed to die.

The honest answer to that question would be something those terrified of the ever-progressing march of the Homosexual Menace are not going to want to hear; the Senate represents the opinions of the American people, while the House of Representatives does not. The current House majority is the product of snaky, wandering, gerrymandered district borders drawn around the craziest voters in many states. In other words, gerrymandering is a process wherein Republicans choose their voters, not where voters choose Republicans.

The House of Representatives has become a talk radio fantasyland, where Republicans represent a "real" America that is, in fact, manufactured entirely by unfairly drawn congressional districts. In the last election cycle, more people voted for Democrats, yet Republicans retained their house majority. Had those districts been drawn more honestly, the make up of the House would look a lot more like the voter turnout -- i.e., nowhere near as Republican.

And, as a result, nowhere near as crazy.

If people like Bryan Fischer want to know why the Senate isn't more like the House, there's the answer: A Senate seat is a statewide election that can't be gerrymandered. So the Senate isn't more like the House because Republicans weren't able to thwart democracy and steal that chamber.

And that's the bad news for the nutcases. People didn't speak out against ENDA because it wasn't safe to do so. The Senate represents America far, far better that the lunatic asylum of the lower chamber. If Republican Senators were "intimidated into silence by the bullies and bigots of Big Gay," as Fischer put it, it's because the average American voter is one of those bullies.

Outside of the entirely artificial environment of the gerrymandered district, institutional homophobia cannot survive. It's like an endangered creature, kept from extinction only by the population that still exists in zoos -- but in this case, there's only one zoo and voters are going to shut down the House Republican exhibit eventually. Eventually, their bones will be displayed next to other nearly extinct ideologies in museums, like segregationists and opponents of women's suffrage. Exhibit viewers will shake their heads and wonder how such absurd creatures ever existed at all.

The Senate looks like Gaytopia to the religious nutjobs because it reflects American reality. As Fischer and House Republicans fight against history, it seems they don't understand that history always wins and that they're already nearly extinct.

-Wisco

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]