Homer: Not a bear in sight.  The Bear Patrol must be working like a
       charm.
 Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
 Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
 Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
 Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
 Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
        [Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money]
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.

Well, the Republican House majority is now the magic rock protecting us from the socialism/fascism/tyranny/etc. of the evil Obama administration.

-AR

As for the sour grapes, watching Keith Olbermann and the MSNBC crew grasp for reasons why last night was actually bad for the Republicans–now they have to show they can govern, given the sorry state of the economy their gains should have been much greater, etc.–made me realize how absurd that is.  Perhaps it’s true that the Republican majority will provide the perfect foil for President Obama and the weak class that was just elected will allow for massive Democratic wins in 2012.  But the time to write about such things is as they develop over the coming months and years.  For the moment, things unqualifiedly suck.  Just two and four years after elections that seemed to signal that the country was heading in a more progressive direction, and two years after an economic crisis which should have rallied public opinion behind the need for strong government action, we’ve turned power over to crowd that thinks that policies which twenty or thirty years ago were considered centrist signify the erosion of American freedom.

-AR

(Despite the doomsday tone of this post, I do think it’s important not to overreact.  Such as, say, asking how Democrats can stay relevant when we still control the White House and the senate.)

One annoying species of meritless hypocrisy charges are those that involve neutral categories being treated as something you either favor or oppose.  For instance, both left and right have been hurling charges of hypocrisy at each other for taking different stances on the anti-war protests of the Bush years and the Tea Parties of the past year.  “Whatever happened to dissent being patriotic?”  But nobody is claiming that the Tea Partiers have no right to protest.  Rather, the Tea Partiers are criticized because they are 1) wrong on the merits, 2) using violent, racist, and homophobic rhetoric, and 3) displaying a level of hysteria and fear of the president so detached from reality as to suggest that it is at least in part motivated by a certain characteristic that makes our current president unique from all of his predecessors.  (And in case anyone got lost in the run-on end to that sentence, yes, I’m calling them racist.)  By criticizing the Tea Parties for these reasons, I am not preventing myself from taking to the streets and denouncing the president next time someone takes us to war for illegitimate reasons.

A prime example of a surface-level hypocrisy charge that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny is this post from “The Corner,” in which the tragic Jonah Goldberg endorses a reader’s condemnation of liberals for invoking the Constitution in opposing the Patriot Act but dismissing concerns that the health care bill is unconstitutional.  The argument has some superficial appeal:  liberals loved the Constitution when Bush was making laws, but now that it’s Obama they don’t care!  But with any knowledge of history and consideration of context, it’s obvious that the difference between liberal reactions to the Patriot Act and the health care bill (and conservative reactions, for that matter) is not a change in opinion over the importance of the Constitution, but rather a difference of opinion in how the Constitution applies in a given situation.  Liberals have long interpreted the Constitution to give strong protections to civil liberties while giving the government wide discretion to regulate economic matters.  The different reactions to the Patriot Act and the health care bill are perfectly consistent with such an interpretation.

-AR

Personally, I think I got the better of this exchange, but that might just be because that’s what the chip that George Soros implanted in my brain wants me to think.  One thing I will say for Mr. Been:  he’s definitely been paying attention when Glenn Beck breaks out the chalkboard.

-AR

Both halves of Rep. Nunes “totalitarian tactics justify hate speech” rationale are incorrect.  For one, a democratically elected legislature passing a piece of legislation by majority vote is not a “totalitarian tactic.”  And even if the Democrats’ behavior was illegitimate, it would not justify racist or homophobic hatred.

The absurdity of Rep. Nunes statement is made clear by the fact that one of targets of the slurs was Congressman John Lewis of Georgia.  Rep. Lewis knows something about actual totalitarian tactics.  In the face of  the actual totalitarianism of the Jim Crow south, John Lewis, Martin Luther King, and the rest of the Civil Rights movement sang hymns, preached non-violence, and responded with protests based in peace and love.  In face of the fictional [totalitarianism/fascism/socialism/whatever the hell they want to call it] of Barack Obama, the Tea Party crowd has held a series of protests marked by hatred and violent rhetoric.  I’ve never had fewer doubts that I’m on the right side.

-AR

Of course, ignorance of the beliefs of the founders is nothing new in Texas, at least if former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey is any indication.  When asked why he was basing opposition to the “government takeover” of health care on the Federalist Papers when their principal author, Alexander Hamilton, “was widely regarded then and now as an advocate of a strong central government,” Armey replied:  “Widely regarded by whom?  Today’s modern ill-informed political science professors? . . . I just doubt that was the case in fact about Hamilton.”

Armey’s comment that “I just doubt that was the case”  is telling, and makes the Texas effort even more disturbing.  The Republican take on the founders isn’t based on an alternate reading of history.  It’s not based on any reading at all, but rather an unwavering faith that our history conforms with their current political aims.

Right-wing nutcase extraordinaire Rep. Steve King of Iowa (even more here!) combined the efforts to lie about the past and present, both exaggerating the implications of the health care bill and downplaying the oppression under Communist regimes by calling for a “Velvet Revolution” to respond to the Democrats’ health care efforts.  This is not the first time that Republicans, apparently unaware that one of the features of democracy is that sometimes your side loses, have compared themselves to victims of totalitarianism.

But perhaps the most disturbing Republican take on history last week came from Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia, who said that if health care reform passes, people’s “free insurance cards” (whatever the hell that means) will be as worthless as Confederate currency after “the Great War of Yankee Aggression.”  Really?!?  Still?

But I suppose that, even in the context of an intense, often race-based hysteria caused by the election of our first black president, I shouldn’t be too concerned about an elected official trying to undermine the legitimacy of the Civil War.  I mean, it’s not like Republican leaders are running ads imploring good God-fearing Americans to take the country back from scary black men.

-AR

OK.

-AR

I recognize that looking for meaning or worrying about impact is giving the movie more credit than it seeks or deserves.  I also recognize that being socially responsible isn’t really Hollywood’s job.  That said, I don’t think that a time when the election of our first black president has driven right-wing, anti-government hysteria to a point that is leading to violent acts is the best time to make and release a movie about shadowy government figures terrorizing a small town of simple white farmers.  The movie includes tropes of the lunatic fringe such as black helicopters and a poisoned water supply.  There’s even a shot of a pregnant woman being gassed.

A brief scan of reviews of the movie makes it seem that I’m alone in my concern, but I couldn’t shake a strong feeling of unease through the entire movie.  I’ve never been more tempted to walk out on a movie, but I stayed in hopes that there would be some twist, an alternate explanation that it wasn’t the U.S. government torching innocent farmers.  Alas, the movie just gets worse as it goes on.

-AR

DailyKos recently commissioned a poll to gauge just how of touch rank and file Republicans are with reality.  And the answer is:  very.  Only 42% of Republicans say President Obama was born in the United States, compared to 36% who say he was not and 22% who aren’t sure.  Twenty-three percent of Republicans believe their state should secede from the Union, 39% believe Obama should impeached (which isn’t suprising, since 63% believe he’s a Socialist, 31% believe he’s a racist who hates people, and 24% believe he wants the terrorists to win), and 21% believe ACORN stole the 2008 election.

But there’s one number in the poll that’s been getting a lot of attention that strikes me as being surprisingly low.  Fifty-three percent of Republicans believe that Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama.  Obviously, I disagree with these people on the relative qualifications of Obama and Palin.  But my disagreement is more with the simple fact that they’re Republicans and not how they judge qualifications for elected office.  On the latter issue, I’m probably more in line with the Republicans who answered Palin than the Republicans who answered Obama.   While there are many seemingly objective factors by which one could say President Obama is more qualified than Sarah Palin–intelligence, temperment, worldliness, etc.–none of these matter as much to me as the fact he’s right and she’s wrong on the major issues a president has to deal with.  If I were a Republican who conceded the objective grounds for Obama’s superior qualification but agreed entirely with Palin on matters of policy, I would no doubt be among the 53% of my party saying she is more qualified than Obama.

To give an extreme example, even after the absurd revelations of the past few weeks, if a pollster were to ask me who I considered more qualified to be president, John Edwards or a generic but respectable Republican like, say, Orrin Hatch, I’d have to go with Edwards.  From my perspective, thinking about issues in the right way, starting with the correct baseline assumptions and principles and reaching the correct results, is the single most important qualification for an elected official.

-AR

First, a nice cross-section of the diverse crowd.  Young angry white people and old angry white people!

I’m not really sure what this guy was going for.  My guess is he just couldn’t quite take notes fast enough during one of Glenn Beck’s chalkboard sessions.

This struck as vaguely similar to another flag. . .

Less family friendly stuff after the jump.

I’m assuming these people came to protest the escalation in Afghanistan.

God, that’s terrifying.  But they’re probably unstoppable, if their supporters are passionate enough to hurriedly scrawl their names on the back of whatever sign they really wanted to bring.

This poor kid never had a chance.

One can dream, right?

-AR