The Nature of Things

The implementation of the Affordable Care Act this week along with the government shutdown orchestrated by the tea party Republicans has surely brought out some of the most world class stupid reactions recently seen on our political stage. When you consider all the vast stupidity that has occurred in the political arena in recent years, you begin to get a true idea of just how insane this week's actors on the stage have shown themselves to be. I think the one who tops my own personal list - and, admittedly, he has lots of competition - is Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R. - Texas, of course!) berating a park ranger at the World War II Memorial and telling her that she should be ashamed of herself because the memorial was closed. As if she personally had made the decision to close the memorial when, in fact, it was Neugebauer and his fellow tea party posse members who locked those gates. Neugebauer and other tea partiers, like Michele Bachmann, who showed up to have their pictures taken wi...

We had planned to visit Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge this week for a spot of autumn birding. It is one of my favorite sites along the Texas Coast to see birds. Ted Cruz and his delusional band of bomb throwers put a stop to those plans. They've put a stop to vacationers' and sightseers' plans all over the country . Trips that people have planned, in some cases, for months, perhaps their only vacation of the year, have been disrupted by a bunch of tantrum throwers who can't accept the decisions of voters, because they don't really believe in democracy. Like a two-year-old, they are going to hold their breath until they get their way, even if it kills you! National parks and monuments and other such federal facilities are popular places for travelers, not just from this country but from all over the world. Imagine someone who has traveled halfway around the world and wants to visit the Statue of Liberty or Yosemite National Park while he is here, but when he goes ...

The Republicans really, really don't like Mitt Romney. The tea party Republicans positively despise him. If the tea partiers had a single candidate, they could swamp Romney and chase him out of the race, but they don't. They are fragmented, squabbling among themselves over which candidate offers them a chance to win. So far they have tried out Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum, but they haven't fallen in love with any of them - at least not for more than a few weeks. Meantime, the inevitable Mitt Romney rolls on and looks to be unstoppable. Will they finally, grudgingly, get behind Mitt? Well, if there is one man they despise more than Mitt, it is Barack Obama. For these people, he will always be the illegitimate, Kenyan, socialist, Muslim, privileged, elite, black man who usurped the White House. The fact that the truth is that he is none of those things - except a half African-American, half white man which makes him black in the...

The tea party movement in this country is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Koch Brothers, et.al ., money men who are the real power in the country, who bend government to their will by means of money, gifts, intimidation, and incessant lobbying.  Until the American people realize that and rise up in disgust at what their country has become, there seems little hope for political reform. But while the tea partiers are owned and financed by the Koch Brothers and their allies, the origins of their political philosophy, such as it is, have long been perfectly clear to me and, I suspect, to many people who grew up in the South.  An article in Salon.com today delineates those origins in graphic form.  It traces the roots of the tea partiers' radical political beliefs to "white Southern extremism."  It's an extremism that has its beginnings in racism and intolerance for anyone who isn't "one of us."  I grew up with it and I can smell it like mendacity on a po...

Our country is in trouble.  There is a very real financial crisis.  We're engaged in two wars - three if you count Libya.  We have 9.2% unemployment and in many places it is much higher than that.  Our infrastructure is old and falling apart.  We have some of the highest health care costs in the world and the outcomes of our health care are poorer than in very many places in the world.  Our educational system is in ruins and is failing our children.  So, which one of these major, intransigent problems do you suppose the tea party contingent in Congress is eager to tackle?  Light bulbs!   That's right, light bulbs. The tea partiers are incensed that in 2007 a law was passed that calls for the beginning of a phaseout of the old-fashioned incandescent bulbs beginning in January 2012.  Those bulbs waste most of the energy that they consume and they cost households infinitely more in energy bills than the new energy efficient models....

There are certain groups in our country who seem to honestly believe that if they say a thing is true, no matter how outlandish it is, that makes it true. That, I believe, is clear proof of a faith in magical thinking that bedevils our national discourse this summer. You might also think of it as the "Tinkerbell philosophy." If I close my eyes and believe real hard and clap just as loud as I can, then I can make it true. Thus we have highly placed members of the Republican Party claiming with a straight face that reducing taxes for the richest people in the country will not increase the nation's deficit and that it will stimulate the economy. They make these statements in spite of the fact that all empirical evidence points to the conclusion that any tax reductions received by these people go straight into their own savings. They have no effect on the economy at large - except to depress it by increasing the deficit. Furthermore, it is self-evident to anyone who is...

So, Rand Paul, the Republican candidate for the Senate in Kentucky, is ready to fight the good fight to "take our country back." Take our country back from whom, I wonder? He celebrated his victory in the primary at an exclusive country club where most of his prospective Kentucky constituents would not be welcome. It would appear that he wants to take the country back and give it to the country club set that he "pals around" with, to coin a phrase. On Rachel Maddow's show last night , he professed to be leery of parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and of the Americans with Disabilities Act, so I guess he wants to take the country back from folks who are covered by those acts. He doesn't think that private business owners, WHO OFFER SERVICES TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC , should be forbidden from discriminating against someone because of race, creed, color, national origin, sex, or gender. He also apparently does not believe that businesses, WHO OFFER SERVICES...

There is a meme that is perpetuated by every conservative organization, think tank, pundit, and man in the street in this country. That meme states that we are a heavily and unjustly taxed people. That meme is a total falsehood. In fact, ours is one of the lower taxed countries among western nations. Any member of the tea party movement, meanwhile, knows and will be glad to tell you in a very loud voice that taxes have been raised since Barack Obama became president. The fact that this, too, is totally false will never stand in the way of a true teabagger rant. In fact, taxes for most Americans were lowered in 2009. In actuality a USA Today analysis shows that taxes in 2009 were the lowest they had been since 1950 when Harry S. Truman was president. Yes, he was a Democrat, too. So much for the Republicans' constant harping about how taxes are always higher under a Democratic president. The USA Today story stated in part: Federal, state and local taxes — including income, pr...

We are in the final countdown to Congress' action on the Health Care Reform bill and the opponents of reform seem to be getting more and more desperate, hysterical, and unhinged from reality and the norms of common decency. Yes, indeedy, there was another tea party at the Capitol today and the partiers showed their true colors - not that there had ever really been any doubt about their colors. They run the full range of hues from white to - um - white. These party-goers today jostled and shouted abuse at Congressional Democrats entering the Capitol to perform their duties as elected representatives of the people. Many of them carried signs with entirely heinous slogans, some threatening violence. The obscenities shouted, as well as the signs, clearly revealed the homophobic and racist tendencies of the crowd and said a lot more about the shouters than about the recipients of the verbal and, sometimes, physical abuse. At least one of the representatives was spat upon. Really? ...