#laughingstock

In case you haven't been following the news, or just thought the latest headline couldn't be current and must have been some mistake that recycled old bullshit, we're about to collectively punch ourselves in the groin... again.  You think after we, as a nation, iced down our junk after all the past punches we gave ourselves, we'd want to stop.

And you would be right.  We, as a nation, do want to stop.  But there's about seven hundred people in Washington D.C. who don't share our sentiment.  Ironically, they are the elected officials we've sent to Washington in order to do the exact opposite of the things they actually do.

Here's a nice recap of what those seven hundred people have done to us all this time:

CNN Explains: Sequestration

The basic idea here is when Congress pulled the bullshit move of holding our debt ceiling hostage, the deal struck to avoid that particular punch to the junk involved $1.2 trillion in cuts over ten years.  Half the cuts come from social programs, the other half from defense.  The cuts were considered so widespread and ill-conceived that people in their right mind would never let them go through.  A Congressional "super-committee" convened to get down to brass tacks and finally get these economic stalemates behind us.  Sure, Congress as a whole couldn't get their act together but certainly this bi-partisan sub-section could.

Nope, they failed as well, dooming us to a fate that could only be avoided if Congress would just admit their plan is stupid and shouldn't be carried out.  But like two primates pounding their chests and flinging their own feces, the democrats and republicans have focused their attention not on the problem, but on the messaging.

"The Messaging" is one of those phrases that makes me throw up a little.  President Obama takes his side of the argument to the masses, giving rally speeches and meeting with state governors to get everyone to start yelling about how much this sequestration stupidity will needlessly hurt.  The president had his former republican congressman FAA head hit the circuit to talk up the damage.

LaHood: FAA furloughs will be necessary if sequester takes effect


Here's an example of the GOP's response:

Sorry, Republicans. #Obamaquester didn't do the trick. You're still losing sequester blame game

First, I have to get this picture out there from the Daily Kos article I just linked.

Here's a lot of what irks me in a nutshell.  First, a shameless photo op involving the stereotypical "standing together."  Second, the hashtag desperate rebranding of sequestration into the "we really hope this stupid made-up word catches on" Obamaquester (for what it's worth, the stupid made-up word didn't catch on).  Third, the doomsday clock for dramatic effect.  In the end, all the sound and fury signifying nothing isn't getting us closer to a solution, it's making sure one side smells slightly less worse when they crawl out of the sewage.

What's also interesting via total sadness... news sources are now covering the reaction to the story instead of the story itself.  It feels very postmodernist or "meta" but it also feels like a disservice.  That Daily Kos piece wasted ink on covering polls that tracked who the public perceives to be more at fault while dressing down the fact that just over 90% of people asked basically blame Washington.  Apparently the 10% with "no opinion" means that politicians must have been sampled as well given their lack of enthusiasm for solving the sequestration problem.

All of the political toilet flushes occurring right now dance around the fact that we have only a few days left before we are forced to eat our own bullshit perpetrated by these D-level drama clowns you see in the picture above.  Many current Congressional republicans should not be in office... they don't deserve the jobs they've been entrusted to.  Just look at the recent Chuck Hagel "Friends of Hamas" accusations that recently got kicked around.  Or this piece from the Rachel Maddow Show about Senator Ted Cruz and some of his cohorts:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

It's a long clip but worth it in my mind.  The shorter version comes from the New Yorker article that inspired the above clip:

Is Senator Cruz Our New McCarthy?

Essentially, Senator Cruz fabricates bullshit about someone and then demands that person responds to the damning bullshit allegations.  It got so bad when Cruz was questioning Hagel that even some fellow republicans thought Cruz veered off the path too far.  We deserve better representation to solve the real problems our country faces (and to not fabricate fake problems to distract from and compound the real ones).

Also, let's not forget that Congress wasn't in session - at all - last week... the last full week before sequestration kicks in.

What's tricky in this case is that both sides have a point.  Republicans want government spending to stop spinning out of control.  A lot of politicians talk about how that needs to happen and it never does, not in a smart, meaningful way (two things the sequestration isn't).  Republicans and Democrats both lack the stones needed to carry through on efforts to get our government budgets under control.  But a new breed of Republican is now taking over in Washington, and what they lack in smarts, they more than make up for in dedication to the idea that government is too big and wasteful.  The sequestration is their chance to finally have something happen that they truly believe in.

Of course, never mind that one of the easiest ways to shrink the national debt is through economic growth and the sequestration will most likely accomplish the opposite.  Sweeping the legs out from under a fragile economy may accomplish some degree of government fiscal restraint, but I bet the overall effect will push Tea Party elected officials further from their goals.  It's possible that borrowing interest-free and reinvesting in massive amounts of infrastructure projects would prove more successful even though it might seem counterintuitive on some rudimentary level.  

I don't know when it became required for elected officials to strap on blinders when approaching a problem, but here we are.  In the classic 1993 film, Rising Sun (based on the novel by Michael Crichton), Sean Connery says:

The Japanese have a saying, "Fix the problem, not the blame." Find out what's fucked up and fix it. Nobody gets blamed. We're always after who fucked up. Their way is better. 

I whole-heartedly agree.  Can we finally solve a problem instead of jumping through hoops to fix the blame?  Will the media please stop worrying about "the optics" or "the messaging" and get back to the business of holding Capitol Hill morons' feet to the fire?

The End Is Nigh... Again: The Gay Marriage Edition

Stumbled across this blog post over at Head Heart Hand (via the Free Republic forums).

Prepare For Gay Marriage

Gay marriage is coming to the United States.  It's not a matter of if, only when.  As the blog post starts off pointing out, England and France have recently passed gay marriage legislation and the author, Prof. David Murray over at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, sees the same inevitability coming to our shores.  In this post, Prof. Murray lays out six steps for "minimizing the carnage."

1. Prepare our children 

Most of us try to protect our children from sexual information until they are mature enough to handle it, without delaying so much that they end up hearing it first from someone else. We also want to lay a solid foundation of teaching them about God’s beautiful design for sexual relationships before eventually explaining the various perversions of God’s order. 

That privilege – of waiting until our children are old enough and of presenting the beautiful before the ugly – will be increasingly denied us by the normalization and display of homosexuality in the media, in schools, and in the malls. This is going to be tough, but we will have to teach our children much earlier and about much more than we would ordinarily choose.

I don't really have much to say on this one because part of being a parent is deciding what to teach your children when.  It's not my place to get between someone and his or her child, just like it's not someone's place to get between me and my children.  But I do feel like there might be more pressing perversions of God's order than two abstract people of the same sex wanting to get married.  Truth be told, I expect the issue of Gay Marriage will have very little impact on the child's day to day life unless the kid is gay, and then she gets to sit there and listen to Dad talk about how she's a perversion to God's order.  Granted, I'm assuming a young age for these kids (where presumably a lot of this might just go over their head except for the part where two abstract people are bad), but Prof. Murray states very young ages might be the right time given where we're headed as a culture.  Regardless, it seems like making sure your kid doesn't get hooked on prescription pills, or make an underaged sex tape, or drive drunk, or blow off school, or fail to use birth control responsibly would take precedence over two unrelated dudes who want to go to city hall and get some paperwork.

2. Prepare to love 

Though Christians are often accused of hating homosexuals, homosexuals harbor far more hate for Christians than vice versa. They really do hate us in a way I’ve never seen in any other group – way more than radical Muslims or even the secular humanist and communist groups of the 1970′s to 1990′s, and that’s saying something. They are our self-declared enemies and want to see our beliefs, words, and actions criminalized. They want to shut down our businesses, render Christians unemployable, and incarcerate our preachers. 

In response, we must love them. 

That’s going to be one of the hardest things we will ever do, as most of us will never have encountered such personal enmity from anyone. But we must beg for the spirit of Christ, who prayed, “Forgive them father, for they know not what they do.” We must graciously and gently good-news them and good-deed them, while being unflinching in our moral convictions. 

We don’t need to prove our spiritual manhood by condemning homosexuality in every sermon and prayer. Keep the focus on the saving love of Christ, no matter how tempting it is to get into constant condemnation mode. Remember, there are probably homosexuals in most of our congregations. Try to win them, not beat them.

This point seems all over the map.  First, I'm not sure homosexuals hate Christians the way this article claims.  Homosexuals don't kill in the name of homosexuality, they don't blow things up under the same pretense, but they are probably tired of seeing Christians butt into their homosexual perverted lives with signs and protests. I think what homosexuals might want most is to be left alone as normal people.  What makes them angry, I imagine, is how a lot of fundamentalist Christians actively try and block that goal when it doesn't impact their lives in any way (unless you believe Katrina was punishment for New Orleans debauchery... then yeah I guess homosexual sin might impact you).

So the question becomes, what form does your love take?  Does it take the shape of leaving them alone, being respectful and courteous in day to day interactions, and keeping your religious beliefs to yourself unless it somehow is appropriate to the moment?  Or does it come in the form of you very sweetly holding up signs and protesting civil benefits completely outside the church's jurisdiction with very real impacts on their lives (like denying half the couple health care usually afforded to a spouse) available to straight couples?  Do you condescendingly quote "they know not what they do?" to the homosexuals' faces with a loving smirk?  Or do you just beat the shit out of them, sometimes within an inch of their lives?  These are many forms of "love" that homosexuals have received from Christians.  Gay couples have probably had enough Christian love for the moment.

The real question here is would you teach your child to stand up for a gay kid getting bullied by a crowd?  That's the kind of love I could see Jesus dishing out, but it's never the kind of love I hear about in the news.

3. Prepare for jail 

I doubt most politicians really want lots of otherwise law-abiding citizens jailed for refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding, or for preaching that homosexuality is wrong. Many do, however, want to create a climate of intimidation that will deter Christians from doing such things. If the UK pattern is a model – and it looks as if US campaigners are using the same playbook – they will pass “hate-crime” legislation, press charges against us, shame us in the media, stigmatize our businesses and churches, threaten us with the loss of our children, and impose substantial fines, all in the hope to scare us into silence. But when none of these things move us, the legal penalties will intensify until eventually some of us, maybe many of us, will end up going to prison for it. We’d better get ready for that inevitable reality.

This point seems melodramatic, but maybe this is where things are headed... except for the part where preaching homosexuality is wrong gets you jailed since we have pretty open freedom of speech laws.  I think it belittles the victims of hate crimes to throw that phrase up in quotes, and it might push some people into some tough spots (like the Oregon bakery mentioned), but it also protects us from slippery slopes we've already been down, like the following:

Or:

The real question is just what actions are you planning to take that gets you imprisoned?  And how do those actions fit with the second point of love?

4. Prepare for betrayal 

This is going to be a sifting time. Some Christians will cave. Prominent preachers will compromise. Famous Christians will distance themselves from believers who have fallen foul of homosexual campaigners. “What’s the point in going to jail? We can still preach the Gospel without ever mentioning homosexuality. We must be wise….etc.” There will be major Judas-type disappointments. The mighty will fall. But many humble unknown Christians will suffer honorably and beautifully and know the blessedness of being persecuted for righteousness sake.

I guess I would fall into the camp of Christians that have already caved, as many probably already have, but not because of hypotheticals like questioning the value of going to jail.  It's because of things like the Golden Rule and not seeing a point to pushing my spiritual life onto someone else.  Beyond that, I thought this article might have some relevance here:

What Does The Bible Really Say About Homosexuality

I thought it was an interesting read that explores the seven passages that constitute the entirety of the Bible's coverage of homosexuality.  There's probably a lot to say just on that article, but I'll let it stand on its own and just point out that Christians have a tendency to take parts of the Bible that they want and ignore or explain away the parts that don't fit anymore.  It's very much possible to teach the Gospel without ever mentioning stoning your unruly children.

5. Prepare a refuge? 

This great nation was founded when a group of persecuted believers fled religious persecution to find and enjoy freedom of religion. It’s beyond ironic that the very same pilgrims would be among the first targets of this new “religious” persecution if they were alive today. If the current trajectory continues, we will look at one another and ask, “Where can we flee to?” Perhaps a State will come forward that will stand up to this tyranny and offer refuge to thousands of moral and spiritual refugees, aliens in their own land. Maybe another Mayflower will be required, perhaps many of them, this time to sail away from these shores in hope of finding freedom to worship and serve God according to His Word. But where to? Where is left? Russia? Which brings us to…

There's plenty of Islamic extremist groups that could also welcome you, but some of these extremists might kill you for being Christain.  Beyond that, this point feels more like hyperbole than anything else.  I'd be curious what persecution Prof. Murray feels he experiences, then he might want to compare that persecution to the legal obstructions and hardships gay couples experience every day.  Apparently that persecution Prof. Murray feels is growing to the point where he sees a possible need to leave the United States.  His point ignores the separation of church and state that evolved from the desires of those original persecuted pilgrims.  Our founding fathers had the wisdom to understand that freedom from religion falls into the same basic category as freedom of religion.  It might be considered ironic that Prof. Murray wants to impose beliefs through legal channels in ways similar to what inspired the original pilgrims to set sail in the first place.

And finally...

6. Prepare for eternity 

The Bible makes clear, and history backs it up, that when a people goes down this route, it’s close to it’s end. It has run out of moral ground, it’s already over the cliff, and falling into the holy wrath of God. As country after country passes gay marriage laws, the end is coming closer and closer. If the USA falls, how far behind will God’s judgment be? The time is short and shortening. We need mercy, we need prayer, we need to plead with our family and friends to flee the coming wrath by fleeing to Christ the only savior of sinners – yes even homosexual sinners – that will come to Him for salvation.

... the End of Times trump card.  Just in case you haven't been persuaded by Prof. Murray's points yet, just know that disagreeing with him will speed up the arrival of the apocalypse.  So how about you not be an asshole and bring about the end of the world by supporting gay marriage? 

My favorite line here definitely has to be "If the USA falls, how far behind will God's judgement be?"  You know, I could probably argue that the USA has already fallen in a number of more meaningful ways.  Not to harp on the subject, but just a few months ago we had twenty first-grade kids shot to death.  L.A. cops just wrapped up a manhunt for someone off on a shooting spree that the shooter claimed was motivated by deep-seeded corruption in law enforcement.  After that, L.A. cops found a woman's body in a hotel water tower.

We mistreat harmless children but call it a reality TV show and it's cool.  We have multiple reality TV shows that take dumps on marriage or follow teen parents... and then we follow the teen parents in gossip magazines reinforcing who knows what?  We make Kardashians and Hiltons rich.  We drop missiles from drones, we execute mentally disabled inmates, we elect representatives who then actively undermine our method of government...  

We've already fallen in the ways appropriate to our changing times, just as society has always found methods to fall in its own way.  And it's not that we fell, but got our religious act together only to fall again.  We're still falling and it makes you wonder if it's not really falling at all?  

For most of us, life is hard work.  For those of us lucky to be born here in the United States, it's much easier than in many places, but we still insist on self-imposed hardships.  Went broke from medical bills and your life was ruined?  Yeah we could do something about that but let's not.  More people die here from gun violence than anywhere else in the world?  Let's not touch that.  Two people love each other and want to be legally recognized as married and enjoy the same benefits but happen to both be dudes? Eat some Deuteronomy, gay couple!!

Really, the only point needed on Prof. Murray's list was the second one, applied much more broadly.  I would love to see what could be accomplished if we could recognize all of our fellow citizens as an integral part of society's team.  Somehow, I don't feel Prof. Murray's suggestions pass the WWJD test.

Right Person For The Job Edition

Elizabeth Warren finally got into her first hearing on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and thanks to this Gawker article, we get to see how it went.

Elizabeth Warren Puts Bank Regulators To Shame In First Senate Hearing

Here's the actual video:

So that's an example of what happens when the person with the right qualifications gets matched up with the right job.  This isn't some typical junior Senator testing the waters in the big boy pool with an outstretched toe, this is a banking expert looking at representatives of a flawed system and asking "Just what the hell are you doing?"

Here's what happens when you don't match up the skill set with the position, and in my bias, sometimes the Republican way (like anti-government Tea Party-ers getting elected to government or anti-UN Boltons becoming our Ambassador to the UN).

He is Representative Paul Broun, a physician, who chairs the oversight sub-committee in the House Science Committee.

An old favorite, but I think this clip begs the question... should he be allowed to keep his MD credentials if he's declaring in public that embryology falls under the Lies Straight From The Pit Of Hell heading.  I'd be curious to watch Rep. Paul Broun MD question someone on a committee...

Broun: We currently spend XX millions of dollars on research to map God's divine miracle, the human brain, just like we did with mapping God's divine cookbook with the human genome.

Scientist: Uh... I'm sorry, what?

Broun: I'm just saying that's a lot of money just to prove what we already know.

Scientist: I'm not sure what you mean, where is this heading?

Broun: To the pit of hell.

Scientist: I'm sorry, what?

Broun: You heard me.  To Hell's pits.  How do you respond?

Scientist: Respond?  I want to laugh but that feels somehow out of place.

Someday, I hope my children's children live in a country where the right people for governing are encouraged to contribute their public service in a system that doesn't drive away all hope or reason.  I wonder what country that will be and when we immigrated?

They Deserve a Vote Edition

Last night was the first State of the Union of Obama's second term and truth be told, it felt very similar to everything we've heard before, but there was one section that truly felt like a genuine, heartfelt moment.

Of course it was about gun control, the political topic that's been at the forefront of our national discussion since the tragedy at Newtown.  Put simply, President Obama stated that gun control measures should get the chance to be put to a vote, not killed in committee or filibustered or what have you.  He listed off names and places familiar to us, all affected by gun violence.  He told the personal story of Hadiya Pendleton, a star-student and band majorette who performed at President Obama's inauguration and then was shot a killed a short time afterward.

It was a simple, heartfelt, logical plea.  Even if people vote no on these measures, the victims of gun violence deserve the ideas to at least get voted on instead of dumped into the clogged toilet that often is Congressional politics.

While I absolutely agree with the President, I feel like "They deserve a vote" has such a wider application.  How many times has legislation that could have really helped people been filibustered for what seemed like arbitrary reasons while laws like the sequester deal get passed?  Or, Mr. President... why was the public option not even discussed at all during the health care debate despite widespread support across the country? We can only get something done when it's the equivalent of stabbing our own leg with a fork, or when it's stopping the bleeding from the last fork we stuck in our other leg.

Moving on... I know it's more complicated than how I'm about to present it, but that's where the fun is after all.  I get a weird kick out of seeing the President talking about paying our bills on time, not acting like coked-up celebrity train-wrecks at the national level, giving all kids a chance, and helping the middle class, and then watching Republicans sit there with sour looks on their faces.  I imagine that's the exact face the Grinch would make if he walked into a Target in early November and saw a Christmas display.  If there was ever a universal cause out there, it seems like it would be children, but nope, Republicans still manage to bring the full dyspepsia to the State of the Union.

Again, I know it's more complicated and in this case I don't even know who the person was that the broadcast cut to, but the woman disgustedly shaking her head while the President talked about getting a fair pay law going was also oddly fun.

There's some things I don't get about republican politics, namely the overwhelming desire they have for the economy to grow and the total unwillingness to look at domestic programs outside the military or bridges to nowhere that could make that happen.  Republicans must be like political super-tasters.  Investing in infrastructure, day care for our kids, technical research camps in economically depressed parts of the country, and getting jobs back home through tax reform seems all right to a layman like me, but it must actually be political cilantro to Republicans the way such ideas repel them.

Of course, I'm operating from the position that Congress wants to get stuff done that their constituents, nay, the very foundations of our democracy demand!!!!  Like how voting in this country is put to shame by the voting infrastructure of American Idol.  Voting is literally the first step to our whole process and we can't get it even in the ballpark of right.  If political slogans had any interest in accuracy, we wouldn't have "Forward" or Mitt Romney plagiarizing Friday Night Lights, we'd have "It's Time To Stop Sucking."

Of course, part of the State of the Union tradition is the response, and of course I mean Ted Nugent's reaction.

Ted Nugent Slams State Of The Union.  Why Did He Rip GOP, Too?

A couple of quick things... first, here's Mr. Nugent's response to last night's State of the Union:

My reaction? I’m not allowed to do that because I’m supposed to keep my pants on.

I know he's trying to make a joke here, but that's what Mr. Nugent brings to the table.  He's loud, bombastic, over-dramatic and a far cry from an intellectual.  So I'm always unclear why he's part of our national discussion except for the fact that he presents himself like a white trash reality TV star.  But there he sits on the board of the NRA, which hopefully is finally getting ostracized into the background noise as we speak.  One other funny but sad observation from that article:

As Slate’s perceptive Dave Weigel noted Tuesday, “If Nugent joined the Republican caucus, he wouldn’t even be its most conservative member."

On a related note, how about Chuck Norris?

These two are a joke, and Chuck Norris internet memes are tragic because they celebrate a moron.  Let Mr. Norris and Mr. Nugent fade away, they don't belong in our political discourse.

As for Mr. Rubio's response, I'm not sure it was actually connected to reality some of the time.  What he claimed President Obama's speech said is not quite what I heard literally five minutes earlier.  He talked about Obama-care's burden on business, but I know companies have skirted providing benefits to employees whenever they can, not because it might be marginally more expensive now, but because benefits have always been a real chunk of change, regardless of the system.  For a while, IBM had a plant where I lived in Upstate New York that relied on - essentially - full-time temps at the lower levels specifically to avoid providing benefits.

Mr. Rubio also spoke about the small business engine that elevates the middle class as if it was mutually exclusive from infrastructure investments.  Small business will not fix bridges or get the country wired for high-speed internet, but they will certainly benefit from such investments.  Can't have a thriving small-business atmosphere if our big government is doing its part to strengthen the workforce or providing the law enforcement that prevents said small-business from getting robbed...

The "no matter how many job-killing laws we pass, our government can't control the weather" comment was also fairly precious.  First, last year, our Congress dived to a new low for passing legislation.  Never mind passing these made up job-killing laws, our dysfunctional legislative branch isn't passing anything.  Second, there's a real difference between controlling the weather, and realizing we impact the weather.  The implied smirk and head-shaking at how stupid Democrats are for thinking
 the government can control the weather ignores the fact that no Democrat is stupid enough to make that suggestion.  Mr. Rubio, you have to do better than junior-high-debate-team straw men in your national moment in the spotlight.

Having said that, drink of water aside, at least he managed not to come off nearly as stiff as Gov. Jindal two years ago.  And he managed to look at the camera, which was more than Michelle Bachmann accomplished three years ago.