Sunday Stupidity: The Takes One to Know One Edition

I'm a subscriber to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and although it's a pretty good newspaper, it leans pretty conservative. Credit where credit's due: the editorial staff is usually pretty balanced with its opinions. However, the right-wing loons seem to come out of the woodwork on Sundays with letters to the editor filled with dumb opinion and asinine commentary on current news item.

In response to that, I'd like to start what will hopefully become a regular feature on this blog: the Sunday Stupidity, in which we examine the cream of the crap and address the letters, columnists and naysayers I have to endue in my local paper.

Today we're featuring two luminaries of conservative opinion: George Will and Victor Davis Shithead Hanson.

Now, I must be honest: George Will can occasionally be a pretty good columnist. But as my Dad has pointed out: he often gets so enthralled with his own erudition and sophistication that he becomes insufferable. This is one of those times.

Link: Obama The Adolescent

In the above column - posted for your reading displeasure - Will sneers about Obama arguing like an "adolescent" because the president dared to use the term "stinkburger" to describe Rep. Paul Ryan's recent budget "plan".

To be fair, it could be argued that Obama shouldn't have said that. Perhaps presidents should be slightly above the name-calling.

On the other hand, for Will to accuse the president (and his supporters) of being "adolescent" is nothing short of hilarious considering the Republican party's recent history. This is a party whose leaders have practically called Obama every name in the book; who show the president so much disrespect that they can't resist shouting out "you lie!" during the State of the Union; who have pouted, folded their arms across their chests and refused to do any work because they didn't get their way in previous general elections; and who have wasted time trying to repeal "Obamacare" over fifty times.

But please, George Will -  tell me how Obama is the one acting like an "adolescent".

Not only that, but for conservatives to pretend that their oh-so-delicate sensibilities were offended because Obama (gasp!) said "stinkburger" is absolutely ridiculous. Cheney tells people to "go f- [themselves]" on the floor of Congress, but it's supposedly a Major Scandal when Biden says "big f-ing deal" or Obama says "stinkburger".

Please.

Next on the list is Victor Davis Hanson, whose columns regularly read like a crotchety old man's laundry list of Things I Think Are Wrong With The World. In his latest column, Hanson argues that Harry Reid is a "corrupt bully":

Link: Harry Reid, Corrupt Bully

Some of what Hanson says about Reid, if true, could count as scandalous. An example is Reid supposedly using campaign funds to buy jewelry for donors. Of course I don't support the misuse of funds specifically earmarked for campaigns to reward donors and friends!

What really gets me from this column, however, is this passage:

Reid is back in the news for denigrating the peaceful supporters of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, a popular critic of the Bureau of Land Management policy, as “domestic terrorists.”

McCarthy in the 1950s became infamous for smearing his opponents with lurid allegations that he could not prove, while questioning their patriotism. Reid has brought back to the Senate that exact same McCarthy style of six decades ago — and trumped it.

Let's talk about Cliven Bundy's "peaceful supporters", shall we? Are these the same "peaceful supporters" who arrived to point guns at federal officials for trying to do their jobs? Or perhaps these "peaceful supporters" are the ones who planned to use their wives and children as human shields if the Bundy standoff devolved into a shooting match.

Yes, they certainly sound peaceful to me...

Not only that, but accusing Harry Reid of being another Joe McCarthy is ridiculous on its face. McCarthy was an attention-whoring Senator who threw out Communist accusations like some people throw candy to children. He is almost universally reviled nowadays (except by far right-wingers who think he's a poor, misunderstood soul) as a dirty-dealing, red-baiting jerkoff who is recognied as being a face of one of this country's darkest and most paranoid eras.

I don't necessarily stand by everything Reid has said during his tenure, but to call him another McCarthy is a stretch. Simply calling people names is not "McCarthyism" - it's ruining livelihoods with unfounded hearsay in an attempt to garner attention for oneself. Neither Petraeus nor any of the other people mentioned as being Reid's victims ever lost their careers and good reputations because of anything Reid said about them.

To claim otherwise is to completely miss the point of the McCarthy era and to disrespect those who did lose their livelihoods.

Obamacare Is Working...Republicans Are Not

The idiots can't even keep their story straight!

On Faux News recently, Steve Doocy had his hair on fire about "Obamacare":

The CBO said yesterday at the end of this year, 42 million people will still be uninsured. 42 million! We blew up everything for one or two million while 42 million are still going uninsured? That’s not what we were sold.

So...wait a minute: now Republicans are trying to argue that the law doesn't go far enough?

This sure is a change from the line we've been hearing about how so-called "Obamacare" is "Socialism" because it goes too far in helping the uninsured. Bereft of any actual policy to improve the health care law or bring new ideas to the table, Republicans seem willing to attack Obamacare from the left.

Quite an awkward position for the party who has never seemed to give a damn about the uninsured - until it's politically convenient.

Happily, there is evidence that cynical Republican policy isn't working - even in states that are receptive to the GOP:

Despite strong dislike of President Obama’s handling of health care, a majority of people in three Southern states – Kentucky, Louisiana and North Carolina – would rather that Congress improve his signature health care law than repeal and replace it, according to a New York Times Upshot/Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

The poll also found that a majority of Kentucky residents – and a plurality in a fourth state, Arkansas — said they thought the health care marketplace in their state was working well, even as they expressed strong disapproval of the health care law. More than twice as many Kentuckians say their state exchange is working well than say it is not.

 Source: NY Times

It's pretty pathetic when even voters who are sympathetic to your views just aren't listening anymore. But then again, that's what happens when you have no ideas other than "Obamacare bad. Repeal Obamacare" - the voters get sick of hearing it and want to hear policies that will actually benefit the country.

Republicans have lost this fight. Time to move on.

The American Judicial System

Sometimes, it's almost like the self-professed "patriots" and worshipers of the American Constitution don't actually understand how the system works.

Remember Debo Adebgile, Obama's nominee for Assistant Attorney General? A little over a month ago, the idiots that be in Congress, responding to fearmongering "reporting" on Faux (Fox) News for reasons beyond my understanding, decided that it was a Major Scandal that Adebgile represented bad guys in court:

The Senate voted 47-52 Wednesday to reject controversial nominee Debo Adegbile as an assistant attorney general.

 

Seven Democrats voted against moving forward with President Obama’s nomination of Adegbile, which the Fraternal Order of Police and other groups opposed because of his involvement in the defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981.

 Source: http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/199979-senate-rejects-obama-nominee-who-defended-convicted-cop-killer

Never mind that John Adams himself represented a British soldier in the wake of the Boston Massacre, an act he later called "one of the most gallant, generous, manly, and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country" (Source). Never mind also that the Constitution specifically requires that everyone - regardless of their crime(s) - receive a speedy, fair and impartial trial with legal counsel.

No....Adebgile was a "brown" who represented one of "them" in a court trial. Therefore, he's guilty by association.

They say that they're not racists - that in fact, liberals overuse the so-called "race card" to quash debate. But when you're this willfully dense about the American judicial system, and it involves a black man with a funny name, it tends to make you look like a reactionary bigot.

Cliven Bundy and the Culture of Entitlement

Let's talk about Cliven Bundy.

As soon as I saw the story reported on Nightly News, I knew it was going to bring out the anti-government wingnuts from the woodwork.

Turns out I was right. Responding to allegations that the federal government has "seized" his property, right-wing militia groups swarmed to Nevada to turn what should have been fairly routine and peaceful into a tense stand-off.

The government backed off, not wanting bloodshed (which would have only fueled the fire), so they backed off - for now. Bundy and his supporters are claiming victory.

At first blush, it certainly looks like the wingnuts are right - that this is "big government" seizing a private citizen's property by force. But when you dig deeper, Bundy begins to look less and less like a put-upon citizen and more like a leech:

This conflict arises out of rancher Cliven Bundy’s many years of illegally grazing his cattle on federal lands. In 1998, a federal court ordered Bundy to cease grazing his livestock on an area of federal land known as the Bunkerville Allotment, and required him to pay the federal government $200 per day per head of cattle remaining on federal lands. Around the time it issued this order, the court also commented that “[t]he government has shown commendable restraint in allowing this trespass to continue for so long without impounding Bundy’s livestock.” Fifteen years later, Bundy continued to defy this court order.

Last October, the federal government returned to court and obtained a new order, providing that “Bundy shall remove his livestock from the former Bunkerville Allotment within 45 days of the date hereof, and that the United States is entitled to seize and remove to impound any of Bundy’s cattle that remain in trespass after 45 days of the date hereof.” A third federal court order issued the same year explains that Bundy did not simply refuse to stop trespassing on federal lands – he actually expanded the range of his trespassing. According to the third order, “Bundy’s cattle have moved beyond the boundaries of the Bunkerville Allotment and are now trespassing on a broad swath of additional federal land (the “New Trespass Lands”), including public lands within the Gold Butte area that are administered by the BLM, and National Park System land within the Overton Arm and Gold Butte areas of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.” The third order also authorizes the federal government to “impound any of Bundy’s cattle that remain in trespass.”

Source: Ian Millhiser

To sum it up: Bundy has been illegally grazing his cattle on federal land for decades - even after receiving a court order to stop. Even a court order wasn't enough to stop him, though, and he just continued trespassing on federal land - perhaps hoping for a confrontation so that he could become the next braindead conservative hero.

There are several ironic points here. The same right-wingers who are constantly screaming about personal property rights are some of the same people now gleefully trespassing on federal property to prove some "point" about big gubmint. One wonders what the effect would be if I bought several head of cattle and allowed them to graze in a Tea Partyer's front lawn.

It's the gubmint, though, so it's totally different, right?

Even more striking, though, is the sense of entitlement that these people - who prattle endlessly about the so-called "culture of entitlement" - seem to have. They're trespassing on federal property, but they expect the government to just let it happen because...they're "sovereign citizens" or some bullshit like that. The rules apply to everyone else, but not Cliven Bundy.

But it's not just this issue; take the "controversy" over IRS tax-exempt status. Many conservative groups are virulently anti-IRS ("abolish the IRS!" and "audit the fed!") and openly political. And yet they expect the same government agency they endlessly denigrate to just hand them tax-exempt status, no questions asked.

To do otherwise would be the gubmint out of control!!!111

Perhaps conservatives who rail against "entitlement" see something of themselves in those that they criticize....

"Disliking" The Wealthy

Add Kathleen Parker to a growing list of "people who should know better".

In her most recent column, which ran in today's Richmond Times-Dispatch, Parker addressed the recent back-and-forth between Harry Reid ("The Kochs are unamerican") and the Koch brothers ("collectivists strive to discredit and intimidate opponents"). That in itself isn't the problem; this is:

Reid suffers no remorse and fired back that he was delighted if people now knew who those un-Americans are. The more who despise the Kochs, the better. The Kochs aren’t just leaders of the Republican Party, as Democrats are proposing; they are the face of the Haves. To dislike the Kochs is to dislike the wealthy in general.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kathleen-parker-democrats-try-to-make-the-koch-brothers-the-new-face-of-the-gop/2014/04/04/3aab84da-bc28-11e3-96ae-f2c36d2b1245_story.html

Now, to be fair, I like Kathleen Parker. I don't always agree with her viewpoints, but she's usually more reasonable and fair than many of the right-wing columnists that my paper runs (*cough* Krauthammer *cough*). In this case, however, I have to seriously take issue with the contention that Democrats "dislike the wealthy" because of Reid's spat with Charles Koch.

I understand what Parker is trying to say: that the Koch brothers have become the face of the wealthy. To a certain degree, she may have a point: to Democrats already upset with Supreme Court rulings that have allowed unlimited, unregulated money to flow freely into our political system, the Kochs have become a demonstration of everything that's wrong with politics in the year of our Lord 2014.

To say, however, that it's an indication that Democrats "dislike the wealthy" is absolute bullshit that should not go unchallenged!

After all, it's not like the Kochs are innocent lambs who are suddenly facing unfair criticisms from the Democratic establishment. For decades, these men have spent millions of dollars to discredit, malign and misrepresent politicians who don't toe the line and run on a platform that benefits billionaires like them. Through Koch-funded groups like "Americans For Prosperity" and others, we've seen numerous commercials attacking "Obamacare" with misleading ads purporting to tell the stories of "victims" whose health coverage has suffered since the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

So when Charles Koch whines about opponents that engage in "character assassination", it's like the pot calling the skillet black. Apparently, the Kochs can dish it out, but they can't take it when their political opponents grow a spine and begin to fight back.

Is this an indication of Democrats like Harry Reid "disliking the wealthy", or simply having an issue with the wealthy having a disproportionate ability to influence the political system? Why is it that whenever issues concerning the wealthy come up, there is a tendency of some to immediately jump to accusations that disapproval of the existence of an uneven playing field (tilted towards the rich) is the same as "disliking" or "hating" or "being jealous of" the rich?

I don't necessarily agree with Reid's decision to label the Koch brothers as "unamerican". That's a strong accusation to level against anyone, and it brings to mind the paranoia-fueled McCarthy hearings of the 1950s. The Kochs are clearly not unamerican.

Thanks to the Supreme Court, however, they do have too much control over the political process as they pour billions of dollars of "speech" into the system, drowning out the "speech" of average Americans like me who don't have the means to buy a Congress that's favorable to their agenda. If the Kochs don't want politicians to say "mean" things about them publicly, perhaps they should not thrust themselves into the limelight.

No, Parker - Harry Reid does not "owe the Kochs an apology".

Excuses, Escuses

Boehner has an excuse for why he and his caucus are dragging their feet on immigration reform:

House Speaker John Boehner blames President Barack Obama for Congress’s inability to pass an immigration reform bill, saying that it’s a lack of trust in the president that keeps members of the GOP from getting it done.

 

“The American people want us to deal with immigration reform,” Boehner said on Fox News’s “Kelly File” on Monday. “I’ve tried to get the House to move on this now for the last 15 or 16 months. But every time the president ignores the law, like the 38 times he has on Obamacare, our members look up and go, ‘Wait a minute: You can’t have immigration reform without strong border security and internal enforcement, how can we trust the president to actually obey the law and enforce the law that we would write?’

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/john-boehner-obama-immigration-105467.html

"Gee...we'd like to do our job, but the president is so untrustworthy that we can't seem to give enough of a damn to do it".

This has to be one of the laziest excuses for slacking off that I've ever seen.

Let's leave aside the fact that the president has not "ignored the law" when it comes to Obamacare. The ACA is settled law. I'm sure Boehner doesn't forget the Supreme Court ruling from last year or the year before that ruled the individual mandate Constitutional?

I also hasten to point out the fact that Obama has been far more severe with deportations than even his predecessor - a fact that has caused the president to receive criticism from those on his side of the aisle.

Whether or not Obama is trustworthy or has followed the law, however, is beside the point. House Republicans bear the onus of passing a comprehensive immigration bill, and whether they end up doing so or not has absolutely nothing to do with Obama whatsoever. Republican failure to reform our immigration laws will be a failure on the Republicans' part - not Obama's.

This is a pattern for Congressional Republicans: a litany of excuses for why they can't or won't do their job, and little if any actual work. If I, as a current college student, did that, I'd have failed out of my classes several semesters ago.

It's time for Republicans to dispense with the excuse-making and start with doing their job.