State of the Union

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In President Obama’s State of the Union speech this past week, he continued some of the same themes of unity and bipartisanship from his speech in Tucson a couple of weeks ago.

“We are part of the American family,” he said. “We will move forward together, or not at all.”

But the greater challenge may be not just creating a unity of purpose between Republicans and Democrats but getting members of the two parties to get along with the people who are allegedly on their own side.

Rep. Paul Ryan was picked to give the traditional response from the loyal opposition. Ryan’s speech was, like all Republican rhetoric on the deficit, long on exhortations to cut ­spending but awfully vague on exactly which spending to cut. This may be because Ryan’s own plan, dubbed the “roadmap,” calls for severe cuts in Social Security and the dismantling of Medicare, two huge benefits paid to the GOP’s most loyal constituency: senior citizens.

It’s quite a balancing act the Republicans do. If they really tried to make the cuts that would be required to balance the budget without tax increases, their elderly supporters would storm the Capitol (albeit very slowly) and drag their congressman down the street by the heels behind their little Medicare-funded Rascal scooters.

But then, after Ryan’s response, something unusual happened. CNN broadcast another response from another Republican, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, who claimed to be giving the “tea party” reaction.

You can always depend on Bachmann to bring the crazy, and she didn’t disappoint. She delivered the whole speech staring off camera, as if she couldn’t bear to look the American people in the eye.

As it turns out, she was looking into another camera, the one broadcasting to the tea party faithful via the Internet, which was also the camera with the teleprompter. It seems that teleprompters, like everything else the right claims to despise, are just fine if you’re a Republican.

And what would a speech from Rep. Crazy-Eyes be without a heaping helping of paranoid fantasies and outright fabrications?

Fresh from her interview in which she asserted that the Founding Fathers “worked tirelessly to eradicate slavery,” Bachmann doubled down on the misinformation, repeating ­frequently debunked claims that “Obamacare” would result in “16,500 IRS agents in charge of policing” the bill and bizarre warnings about “government bureaucrats telling you what light bulbs to buy.”

CNN’s decision to air the speech drew criticism from some Republicans. One aide sent out an e-mail calling it “irresponsible journalism” for CNN to aid Bachmann in her quest to become the GOP’s loosest cannon.

The most surprising criticism, however, came from a tea party group in Bachmann’s home state.

“Please call Michele Bachmann’s office and tell her that she does not speak for the tea party,” the group said in a mass e-mail. “The Tea Party Patriots Organization is a grassroots organization. One person has no right to speak for the whole organization.”

Wow. Too crazy for the tea party. That’s pretty impressive.

On the other side of the aisle, the president got some ­immediate pushback from his own party. In response to his promise to veto any legislation that arrived on his desk with so-called “earmarks,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sniffed that it was a “great applause line” but that Obama “should back off and let us do what we do.” Which is, apparently, diverting as much ­government money as possible to their states or districts to keep the voters happy.

It’s another one of those dirty secrets closely held by ­lawmakers of both parties. Everyone pretends to deplore “pork” or “earmarks” or whatever they’re calling it this year, but every legislator knows their voters won’t keep loving them if they don’t bring some of that federal money home to them. It’s the one thing both parties have always seemed to agree on.

Even Republican Leader Mitch McConnell was resisting a proposed earmark ban until someone from the tea party put a severed horse’s head in his bed or something and caused him to reverse himself, at least in public.

It remains to be seen if this will continue, or if GOP lawmakers will revert to their traditional stance that it’s not “government spending” if the money’s going to their district or their big campaign contributors.

Meanwhile, the two parties continue to squabble, not just with each other, but also among themselves. Maybe what we really need is not just bipartisanship, but multi-partisanship.

Addicted to Drama

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First, a correction. Last week, I wrote that Sen. Rand Paul, son of Congressman Ron Paul, was named after 1950s novelist Ayn Rand, whose long-winded, preachy novels are big among what the tea party likes to think of as its "intellectual" wing. Ron Paul is an avowed fan as well, but Rand is not, it seems, named after her. It's just a coincidence. We regret the error.

Now on to your regularly scheduled column.

My friends, there is an epidemic of addiction sweeping America. It is, I firmly believe, the root cause of the angry and violent rhetoric that everyone's been talking about the past few weeks. This addiction has divided us, polarized us, and damaged our nation.

I'm talking about our addiction to Drama, with a capital D.

We've become a nation of hysterical teenage Drama queens for whom every issue is The Most Important Thing In the World to Me Ever, and every denial or obstacle triggers a tantrum in which it is tearfully asserted that You've Ruined My Life, I Hate You, and I Wish You Were Dead.

To a political Drama addict, everything is a Threat to America's Very Existence. The loss of a Senate election may require an armed insurrection (aka "Second Amendment remedies") to save the Republic from "tyranny," because if "ballots don't work, bullets will." If the presidential candidate you don't like wins the election, he's a "usurper" who's probably not even a real American, and we must fight him to Save the Constitution and Take Our Country Back Before Our Entire Way of Life is Destroyed. A health care bill you don't like means that your special-needs baby may be euthanized by order of shadowy "death panels." And so on.

Sad to say, there are those on the left who seem addicted to Drama as well. (I'm talking about the real Left, not the notch just to the left of center where the president actually resides, and which most right-wingers mistake for the real Left.) In the short time between the election of President Obama and his inauguration, I quit reading some of my favorite blogs in disgust because they were overrun with liberal Drama queens, crying out that there was No Difference Between Obama and Bush, that OMFG We Are Betrayed, and I'll Never Vote for a Democrat Again.

The catalyst for this overwrought opera of betrayal and electoral revenge? The selection of evangelist Rick Warren, who's said ignorant things about gay people, to deliver the invocation at the inauguration ceremony. Hey, I'm not crazy about the guy either, but I wasn't ready to write off Obama's entire presidency before it began over a two-minute prayer.

It's amazing that a country so addicted to Drama in its politics managed to elect as president a man who's famous for his abstinence from that intoxicant. He's made "No Drama" an ironclad rule for his staff. This, you may remember, drew no end of criticism from both right and left during the BP oil spill, when the president of the United States failed to break down and weep or to "yell and scream" as the press clearly wanted him to do.

It's hard to break ourselves of Drama addiction. For one thing, there are so many people pushing it, including a famous talk show host who only stops weeping long enough to feverishly sketch out history-spanning conspiracy theories on his chalkboard, spinning a web of Nefarious Threats to Our Way of Life that would make Dan Brown go "nah, too far-fetched."

Another titles a regular segment of his show "The Worst Person in the World." (The difference, I'll admit, is that Keith Olbermann, in his ham-handed way, is trying to be funny. I stress the word "trying.")

Like all pushers, they do it for the money. You don't get a fat contract with cable news or talk radio for being reasonable. You don't get a million views for your YouTube video by filming yourself saying "I respectfully disagree." Push a little Drama, though, and you can get millions to inject a big ol' hit of that sweet, sweet hysteria into their veins, and my Lord, how the money rolls in.

Maybe we need a 12-step program for Drama addiction, with meetings and everything. "Hi, my name's John, and I'm a Drama queen. Yesterday I burst into tears on camera over closing a corporate tax loophole."

Until that day, I'll just keep making fun of them.

Violent Talk In the Cross Hairs

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The carnage staggers the mind. Twenty people shot. Six dead, including a 9-year-old girl. A U.S. congresswoman in the hospital after being shot in the head.

Within 20 minutes of news of the shootings appearing on the Internet, the Good Americans over at the conservative site Redstate.com were attempting to pin the shootings on Nancy Pelosi and (of course) illegal immigrants, while simultaneously deploring the fact that the “libs” were going to try to “politicize this.”

On the other end of the spectrum, people began pointing out statements from some tea partiers about “Second Amendment remedies” and “watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants” and other such promises of violence if they didn’t get their way.

They took note of Sarah Palin’s now-notorious “cross hairs” ad and her exhortation after the health-care vote: “Don’t retreat — reload!” The Palinistas indignantly denied there was anything wrong with this or any connection with the shootings, even as as they scrambled to take the “cross hairs” website down.

So each side is trying to blame the other. The more I learn about this shooter, though, the more it appears he was piling crazy on his plate from the entire buffet line. He goes off about the gold standard like a faithful Ron Paulian, and lists as one of his favorite books one by Ayn Rand, who’s big among tea partiers (Rand Paul is named after her).

But then he also says he’s a fan of “Mein Kampf” AND the Communist Manifesto. He once told a fellow student that he thought abortion was murder, but he also smoked a lot of weed and didn’t believe in God. A friend who was interviewed shortly after the killings compared Loughner to the nihilistic Joker in “The Dark Knight”: “There’s no rhyme or reason, he wants to watch the world burn.”

So there’s no way to draw a bright line link between the violent rhetoric of Sarah Palin or Sharron Angle, or the radio talk show host in Florida who was about to become the chief of staff of a newly elected tea party candidate before a video surfaced of her shouting to a cheering crowd that “if ballots don’t work, bullets will.”

All that said, the Palinistas and their fellow travelers on the right can spare us the righteous indignation about how awful it is that people are criticizing their violent language.

As writer John Scalzi put it: “If your political messaging traffics in rhetoric heavy on gun imagery and revolution of the overthrow-y sort, then when someone shoots a congressperson who you opposed, then guess what: You get to spend some uncomfortable moments in the spotlight being asked if it’s not reasonable to suspect a connection between your rhetoric and the actions of a shooter targeting someone you’ve opposed.”

If, for example, I put up a website with cross hairs over John Boehner’s name, and Boehner, God forbid, gets shot, then I don’t get to be all indignant if people ask about a connection. The people who quote Barack Obama’s reference to the movie “The Untouchables” (“If they bring a knife to the fight, I bring a gun”) seem to have forgotten one essential difference: No one has actually put a bullet in John Boehner’s head.

The question of whether hateful right-wing rhetoric “caused” Jared Loughner to kill six people and grievously wound 14 others is a separate question as to whether it’s bad for the country to use the language of guns and bullets and shedding “the blood of tyrants” if a vote didn’t go your way.

Sure, you’ve got a right, absent a direct threat, to say any damn fool thing you want. But people also have the right to call you on it. In the words of former Bush speechwriter David Frum: “This talk did not cause this crime. But this crime should summon us to some reflection on this talk.”

If any good thing comes out of this tragedy, it may be that, despite the right wing’s belligerent insistence that “it wasn’t us,” they’ll start thinking twice before blithely deploying rhetoric that hints of bloodshed and killing over things like marginal tax rates.

I don’t think we’ll hear Barack Obama talking about “knives and guns” any time soon. Will Sarah Palin exercise the same restraint? We live in hope.

Quote of the Day

I'm not sure who Greg Knauss is, but he may just be my favorite person today, for this tweet:

"If crimes 'begin and end with the criminals who commit them,' I think Sarah Palin just endorsed a mosque near Ground Zero."

John Scalzi Nails it, Again

Giffords Shooting Follow-up:

If your political messaging traffics in rhetoric heavy on gun imagery and revolution of the overthrow-y sort, then when someone shoots a congressperson who you opposed, then guess what: You get to spend some uncomfortable moments in the spotlight being asked if it’s not reasonable to suspect a connection between your rhetoric and the actions of a shooter targeting someone you’ve opposed. You also get to spend time being asked if, in fact, your rhetoric isn’t overblown, simplistic and on balance detrimental to the nation’s body politic. Querulous complaints about the unfairness of this can be reasonably overruled by others; the time to complain about your bed is before you make it.

So quit whining, right wingers. You brought all this criticism on yourself.

Palin's Latest Weird Tangent

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Does Sarah Palin want American kids to be fat? It might seem like it, considering her reaction to First Lady Michelle Obama's recent campaign against childhood obesity.

Obama, among others, supported legislation for healthier food choices in schools and praised parents for thinking about what kinds of foods their kids stuff down their greedy little pie-holes (I'm paraphrasing, of course). In a speech advocating good nutrition, she noted that she tells her children "dessert is not a right" and makes them eat balanced meals.

This, to the half-term governor of Alaska, is apparently some sort of harbinger of commie-socialist-Islamo-fascism. Or something. Whatever she thinks it is, she's served it up as her resentment du jour.

On a recent episode of her reality show, "Sarah Palin's Alaska," the Resigning Woman made a big ol' helping of s'mores. And since Palin is incapable of missing a chance to turn even a sweet gesture into an opportunity for sneering, she told the recipients the s'mores were "in honor of Michelle Obama, who said the other day we should not have dessert."

Obama, it should be noted, never said any such thing. But Palin is, after all, the woman who railed against nonexistent "death panels" during the health care debate, so we already know she has, let's just say, a flexible approach to the truth.

Palin continued her media snit when she went on Laura Ingraham's radio program: "What [Obama] is telling us is she cannot trust parents to make decisions for their own children, for their own families in what we should eat."

Again, this is exactly the opposite of what Obama has actually said, which is: "We know that ensuring that kids eat right and stay active is ultimately the responsibility of parents more than anyone else," and further, that "parents have a right to expect that their efforts at home won't be undone each day in the school cafeteria or in the vending machine in the hallway."

To Sarah Palin, however, anything any Obama is in favor of, even healthy food, is something EEEvil, to be opposed with all her might and main, and one doesn't quibble over little details like the truth when one is fighting EEEvil.

Remember first lady Laura Bush's ongoing campaigns for literacy? Good thing she wasn't a Democrat, I guess, or Mama Grizzly'd be going on Sean Hannity, lying that Mrs. Bush was trying to "tell us what we had to read" and burning books.

It seems, though, that Mama Grizzly may have just gone a little too far for even some members of her own party, such as Mike Huckabee, another former governor and potential presidential candidate. He told a radio talk show host, "Michelle Obama's not trying to tell people what to eat or not trying to force the government's desires on people. She's stating the obvious, that we do have an obesity problem in this country."

Huck should know; he himself dropped an astounding 110 pounds after his doctors told him he was going to die if he didn't. Nevertheless, wingnut blogger Ann Althouse, showing the class for which the far right is so well known, sniped at Huckabee for daring to criticize St. Sarah of the Snows by playing the Fat Card: "He's running [for president] against Sarah Palin. ... Ironically, Sarah Palin is the one who's thin."

Well, Ms. Althouse, Huckabee's the one who actually finished a full term as governor without quitting, so what's your point?

Mississippi's Haley Barbour, (another Republican governor who, unlike Palin, managed to finish his job) also praised Obama's efforts, as did former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who called those efforts "a proper role for the first lady."

Meanwhile, Ben Smith at the website Politico.com has pointed out that, in her 2009 State of the State address, Palin seemed to be extolling the same things that Michelle Obama did, like nutrition and exercise.

So the answer to the question at the top of the column is: No, Sarah Palin does not want American kids to be fat. She's just a small and petty person, an unprincipled demagogue, a political hack who's willing to lie and even to contradict herself to avoid admitting that any Democrat, especially an Obama, might have a valid point about anything.

Matt Taibbi Is My New Hero

Matt Taibbi's latest offering at Rolling Stone is absolutely savage. Entitled "The Crying Shame of John Boehner" it contains some of the most scorched-earth political writing I've seen since the glory days of Hunter S. Thompson. It's a long piece, but absolutely worth the time it takes to read. Some of the tastier bits:

John Boehner is the ultimate Beltway hack, a man whose unmatched and self-serving skill at political survival has made him, after two decades in Washington, the hairy blue mold on the American congressional sandwich.

And that's just the first sentence! It gets better...

The Democrats have plenty of creatures like Boehner. But in the new Speaker of the House, the Republicans own the perfect archetype — the quintessential example of the kind of glad-handing, double-talking, K Street toady who has dominated the politics of both parties for decades. In sports, we talk about athletes who are the "total package," and that term comes close to describing Boehner's talent for perpetuating our corrupt and debt-addled status quo: He's a five-tool insider who can lie, cheat, steal, play golf, change his mind on command and do anything else his lobbyist buddies and campaign contributors require of him to get the job done....

After all, the modus operandi for Bush Republicans like Boehner has always been to talk a good game on spending cuts, so long as the cuts were coming out of the food-stamp program or aid to Katrina victims — but they would never go so far, or be so radical, as to cut overall spending, which would require scaling back the industry handouts they have spent so much time putting together on the golf courses of America...

This was always going to be the model of how Republican Party hacks would deal with the Tea Party: Bash the living hell out of hated blue-state Gorgons like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, jack off the mob by incorporating the Tea Party's Constitution-and-liberty rhetoric, hand the Tea Party those reforms that the GOP's big campaign contributors want anyway (most notably, tax breaks for the rich and deregulation of big business), and then cough up a note from the doctor or some other lame excuse when the time comes to actually cut spending.

Really. Read the whole thing. I think I need to buy this guy's books....

Grover Norquist: Secret Muslim Agent?

Anti-Muslim wingnuts, ever vigilant for the looming threat that is "sharia law", and keeping a sharp lookout for those Sekrit Mooslims infiltrating our society to pollute our precious bodily fluids, are now turning on each other:

WASHINGTON – Another headache has emerged for the largest annual gathering of conservatives slated for next month.

With the Conservative Political Action Conferenceunder fire for allowing participation by a homosexual activist group called GOProud and for a financial scandal in which some $400,000 was misappropriated under the watch of current leadership, Frank Gaffney, a leader of the conservative movement for the last 30 years, charges that CPAC has come under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is working to bring America under Saudi-style Shariah law.

Gaffney, deputy assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan...told WND that Islamism has infiltrated the American Conservative Union, the host of CPAC, in the person of Washington attorney and political activist Suhail Khan and a group called Muslims for America.

Wait, it gets better:

Gaffney also accuses another ACU board member, leading conservative political organizer Grover Norquist, of helping the Muslim Brotherhood spread its influence in the nation's capital.

Yes, you read that right. Grover Norquist, one of the Uber-wingnuts. the man who, very recently, was vetting potential RNC chairmen by asking them how many guns they own, is a Muslim Agent.

You cannot make this stuff up. It's like Roy Cohn suddenly accusing Joe McCarthy of being a Commie.

Year in Preview, Part II (with Reader Mail From the Party of Love)

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Happy Day after New Year's! I hope your post-celebration headaches have all subsided, because here it comes - the Year in Preview, Part II:

July: Members of the so-called "Birther" movement, in an apparent change of tactics in their crusade to prove that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, file a federal lawsuit to nullify Hawaii's admission into the Union. "If Hawaii was never a state," claims prominent Birther Andrew Martin, "then Obama wasn't born in America. So there." The lawsuit cites as grounds for invalidating the admission that there is no specific provision in the U.S. Constitution allowing admission of an archipelago as a state. "Besides," one paragraph reads, "the whole place is full of foreigners."

August: In an eerie echo of last year's Chilean mine disaster, 27 mine workers are trapped by an explosion at the bottom of a mine in Alberta, Canada. In contrast to the Chilean disaster, however, no major U.S. network or news organization sends reporters to camp out outside the mine, and the story is relegated to the back pages of most major newspapers and magazines. "Trapped miners are so last year," explains newly appointed NBC News President Michael Bay. "We need to go bigger. Got anything that's still actually on fire?"

September: Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a former health care company CEO who promised to run the state more like a business, announces that he has solved the state's budget crisis by selling it to an Indian corporation. "It just wasn't cost-effective to remain part of the Union anymore," Scott explains. Millions of shocked Floridians are given pink slips and ordered to clean out their homes by close of business before being escorted to the Georgia border by state troopers.

October: Self-proclaimed investigative journalist Andrew Breitbart releases a YouTube video that he claims shows Attorney General Eric Holder telling an NAACP meeting that "I hate America, love socialism, and wish all white people were dead." Conservative talk-radio hosts and TV commentators immediately demand Holder be fired. Bowing to the pressure, the Obama administration announces Holder's resignation "to spend more time with his family." Closer review, however, reveals that the video is a clumsily edited montage of words from various speeches, as evidenced by the fact that in the 10 seconds of the video, Holder is seen wearing five different suits in front of six different backdrops. "Well, we did edit the video," Breitbart admits. "And no, Holder didn't say any of those things. But that's not really the point. The point is that the Obama administration are the real racists."

November: Right-wing blogger and anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller goes ballistic when she finds out that the menu for the White House Thanksgiving dinner features crescent rolls. Noting that the flags of several Muslim countries contain a crescent symbol, Geller declares the dinner to be "yet another in a long series of capitulations to Islamofascism." Geller's campaign to restore what she calls "freedom biscuits" to the dinner is interrupted, however, when she runs off the stage shrieking in terror during a nighttime torchlight rally after looking up and seeing the moon.

December: Fred Phelps and his tiny flock at the gay-hating Westboro Baptist Church announce their plan to randomly protest pre-Christmas appearances by Santa Claus because, claims Phelps, Santa delivers presents to kids whose parents are (or might be) homosexual. The first demonstration, however, is disrupted when hordes of children charge the protesters and send them running for their lives back to Kansas. "I could've warned them," one parent tells the press. "My Brittany's a sweet little girl, but I'd walk into a threshing machine before I'd get between her and Santa."


Last week, in response to the first installment of predictions for 2011, an anonymous commenter on the paper's website added his own, which was that I would die in 2011 and everyone in my hometown would celebrate. Hey, you never know...

So I suggest that the Union Pines High School Band begin learning this song for the parade: