Blogging From Bedlam

Well, frumps, things are definitely starting to look up for Democrats and the Obama administration if my Lunatic Fringe barometer can still be trusted.  I’ve discovered, over the past year, that there is a quantifiable inverse relation between the fortunes of the Obama White House and threats of violence from the far-right reaches of the blogosphere.  None too stable at the best of times, these folks have a tendency to fly around the room backwards whenever Obama shows signs of succeeding at advancing his domestic social policy agenda.

Obama has an interesting way of achieving his ends.  He allows debate to rage unbridled, allows people to act out vent melodramatically until we are all simply exhausted by the topic.  Then, as we mentally move on, he quietly administers CPR and, next thing you know, dead-in-the-water issues are moving apace toward realization.  It’s a pretty impressive strategy, to me, at least.

Just think about the health care reform battle.  A year went by while we raged and fumed on our various sides of the issue.  As Obama put it in his Health Care Summit, last week, “everything that could be said, had been said.”  Gray-haired grannies duked it out with the local teamsters in Town Halls.  Conspiracy theorists pumped up the volume and warned us all of The New World Order and/or Socialism/Fascism that lie just around the corner. 

Gun nuts decided to pack a little heat as long as we were all taking stands.  Constitutionalists called for either a Second Revolution or a Second Civil War (take your pick, but the Civil one has better costumes) causing a world-wide shortage of small arms ammunition.  Some were ready to chuck it all and just plain secede.  All because Obama and Co. got the wild idea that the American people might benefit from some help with the insurance industry that was eating their lunch and bankrupting millions.

Clearly Obama hasn’t learned yet to never underestimate the ignorance and paranoia of “just plain folks.”  And before anyone decides to whack me with the nasty stick, I’m not saying that I think Americans are stupid – gullible, perhaps and intellectually lazy, almost certainly – but not stupid.  It takes a lot of intestinal fortitude just to be an American in the 21^st century.  It’s no simple thing to be a member of one of the most technically advanced capitalistic empires on Earth.  It’s a 24/7 job just to keep up – why else would we need so many Iphones and Smartphones and Droids, websites and apps and such, if life was free and easy?

Since we are harried and over-stimulated and overcommitted in every way, it’s no surprise that determined people, with their own agenda, can make us believe that up is down and left is right.  We spend our days in a cacophonous illusory echo chamber that very few of us choose to completely opt out of, for whatever reasons.  Living in such an environment, it is little wonder that the loudest, shrillest, scariest voices are the ones that imprint the heaviest — especially on the relatively young because they literally do not have the bandwidth to fact check, mull over or otherwise process the information blared at them and they have never known anything else.  Besides, when you’re young and immortal, it’s kind of sexy and fun to get scared out of your mind, every once in a while, and to live as if every moment is a life-altering crisis.

Bipartisanism is For Sissies

So it is that the Right Blogosphere is currently seething, once again, with righteous indignation, Revolutionary fever dreams and pure hatred whipped up by fat and happy influence peddlers amping up a pack of recycled, long-debunked lies that never fail to get the “celebrity thinkers,” from the shallow end, foaming at the mouth with blood in their eyes.

Whenever this happens, it invariably means that the Armies of the Right fear defeat – and it’s then that my heart sings.

This time it started out slow, predictably and anti-climactically after last week’s “bipartisan” health care summit.  The following day, a solicitous Liz Cheney, showing a rare glimpse of her nurturing side, warned Democrats that proceeding with passing the Health Care Reform bill will “destroy your career.”

She said:

“Speaker Pelosi this morning is out there saying that — “You know, go ahead and vote for this, even if it’s going to destroy your career,” which it will, because the American people do not support it.”

This came in one of Chris Wallace’s Sunday in the Park with Liz sessions, which is always entertaining in a grotesquely prurient way – watch:

I have to suppose that Liz Cheney comes by her blogging cred,  her Sunday Morning mouth-off rights and her political career advisory role on the basis of the gene pool she slithered out of.  One has to wonder if her Daddy had been an astronaut would NASA now have her flying the space shuttle?  Enough of Liz, she’s predictably boring with a soupcon of venom thrown in.

A little further “out there” was Bill Kristol who preceded his analysis of the Health Care Summit by admitting that he “has a life” and didn’t watch it — clearly not an obstacle when your analysis of anything Obama consists of parroting fourth-grade-level all-purpose Republican talking points.  Kristol went on to make this cogent remark:

“you compared it at the beginning of the hour to a dog-and- pony show, and I thought to myself, ‘That’s really an insult to dog-and- pony shows, you know? Those are pretty — I like the dog shows there on the Animal Planet.’”

Getting down to serious analysis, Kristol added: 

“ . . . many people were impressive. The president showed his usual professorial ability to sort of say certain things and highlight certain facts or alleged facts.  Paul Ryan and Lamar Alexander and some of the Republicans did fine.”

Paul Ryan is the Boy Wonder who came up with the GOP’s alternative budget that proposes doing away with Social Security and Medicare but not a word about doing away with War.  Lamar Alexander was just, well . . .  wrong about so many things.  Obama patiently explained to him why he was wrong only to have to listen to Lamar regurgitate the same wrong stuff later in the day.  So, those were Kristol’s Health Care Summit Heroes.

Moving right along, Michelle Malkin is always good for a laugh and certainly didn’t disappoint on the subject of the Health Care Summit.  Her article perpetuated the dumb-ass notion that the Senate reconciliation process is one and the same as the “nuclear option.”  It’s embarrassingly wrong to conflate the two but “nuclear option” sounds so much scarier than reconciliation.  Here’s that in Malkin’s blogging-best verbiage:

“It’s official. After months of threatening to push the button on the so-called nuclear option, reconciliation — the parliamentary maneuver that Harry Reid said “nobody” is talking about and that President Obama said Americans didn’t care about last week — is a go.”

Now, I know as well as anyone that it’s hard to break bad habits but, you know, Republicans, you’re just making yourselves look ignorant throwing this “nuclear option” thing around willy-nilly.  If you don’t understand the difference between reconciliation and the nuclear option, then why should anyone listen to anything else you have to say?

Once and for all, in terms that a bright eight-year-old can understand here it is:

“In U.S. politics, the nuclear option is an attempt by a majority of the United States Senate to change the body’s rules by invoking a point of order to essentially declare a particular Senate procedure, such as the filibuster, unconstitutional, rather than seeking formal cloture with a supermajority of 60 senators or invoking reconciliation. Although it is not provided for in the formal rules of the Senate, the procedure is the subject of a 1957 parliamentary opinion and has been used on several occasions since. Senator Trent Lott (Republican of Mississippi) first called the option “nuclear” in March 2003; proponents later attempted to rebrand it as the constitutional option.  Other names have included the ExLax option, the Turnip-truck option, and the Byrd option.”

“The maneuver was brought to prominence in 2005 when then-Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) threatened its use to end Democratic-led filibusters of judicial nominees submitted by President George W. Bush. In response to this threat, Democrats threatened to shut down the Senate and prevent consideration of all routine and legislative Senate business. The ultimate confrontation was prevented by the Gang of 14, a group of seven Democratic and seven Republican Senators, all of whom agreed to oppose the nuclear option and oppose filibusters of judicial nominees, except in extraordinary circumstances.”

Rachel Maddow, equally exasperated, did a great job of shining a light on this particular piece of GOP puffery.  Watch:

Even the ever-loving National Republican Congressional Committee  got into the act with their new website with the doomsday title of CODE RED,  where terrified Republicans can learn just what phony aspects of health care reform to be most afraid, to wit:

A Government Takeover of Health Care: Why Do We Fight?

“The Democrats who run Washington are determined to ram their government takeover of health care through Congress regardless of the cost, the consequences, or the opposition of the American people. We’re fighting this reckless proposal because – just like the bills already passed by the Democrat-run House and Senate – the latest plan by President Obama will:

• Radically Increase Government Spending
• Raise Taxes on Families and Small Businesses
• Destroy Jobs
• Cut Medicare for Seniors
• Force You Out of Coverage You Like
• Allow for Taxpayer Funding of Abortion”

“Republicans have a better solution focused on driving down health care costs without a government takeover.  In fact, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the Republican bill will actually lower premiums by up to 10 percent and expand access to high-quality coverage for all Americans [to 3 million of the 46 million uninsured – woohoo]. The GOP alternative to the Democrats’ big government takeover reins in junk lawsuits, lets Americans buy coverage across state lines without new federal bureaucracy, encourages state innovations to lower costs, exempts small businesses from jobs-killing tax hikes and penalties, and more.”

Under the circumstances, I knew I could count on Grassfire Nation’s Steve Elliott for some apocalyptic bold-type, heavily underlined ranting.  Steve has been firing out letters, almost daily to his ResistNet cult now that it appears health care reform is still alive.  This one particularly tickled me because of its uncharacteristic truthfulness:

Dear Resistors:

I just received word from a trusted contact on Capitol
Hill that the Left’s strategy of flooding Congress with
“Pro ObamaCare” phone calls is working.

But here’s the kicker:

This contact also relayed the following on the prospects
of ObamaCare passing…

“The person who has been our main contact said…last week
she would have thought 20% [likelihood of ObamaCare passing]
now thinks 50%…. They also have polling data that each
piece of health care reform when polled line by line has
support and that Americans will love it after they do it.
My sense is that we really need the TEA party to bombard
the House members or this is going to happen.”

So.  If I’m getting this right, Elliott is urging his followers to mobilize and kill legislation before it can be enacted because – HORRORS – if it does pass — Americans will love it??

Well, that’s just Steve being Steve, he specializes in eleventh-hour grassroots efforts because, you see, one of the “actions” he always prescribes is that his followers click right over and avail themselves of his FaxFire service where, for a measly $15, Steve will fax a forceful statement to numerous legislators of your choice (or, if he’s in the District, he’ll hand carry them for the same price; and save on his phone bill).

As is my habit, I’ve saved the very worst for last; today’s winner in the Deranged Tighty-Righty Blogorama has to go to Dan Riehl of the ironically named Riehl World View blog – a gothic little cyber cul-de-sac whose denizens, steeped in testosterone and existential angst plot the overthrow of everything while proving they’re not gay.  Here’s what goes on in Riehl’e fevered brain:

“That this inexperienced travesty of a chief executive, Obama, more a byproduct of timing and media collaboration, than his own worth, or accomplishment, is personally advocating for the so-called nuclear option is the final straw.”

Riehl then goes on to lift a bit from Malkin’s screed on the subject (without proper attribution, I might add).  The important thing is, of course, to keep that “nuclear option” meme alive.:

“It’s official. After months of threatening to push the button on the so-called nuclear option [see how popular this ignorant meme is?], reconciliation — the parliamentary maneuver that Harry Reid said “nobody” is talking about and that President Obama said Americans didn’t care about last week — is a go.”

“Reconcile this, you distasteful, malevolent little quisling punk – a timely reminder of some words I never thought would have such import during my lifetime.” 

At which point, our intrepid blogger indulges in a histrionic bit of Constitutional spell-casting — don’t they all sooner or later?  For whatever esoteric reason, Riehl found this bit relevant to the rest of his rant:

“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Funny how the Constitution has become an inarguable justification for behaving badly . . .

Riehl finally delivers his sophomoric Big Finish (imagine the Battle Hymn of the Republic playing softly in the background):

“It is time to stop this government in its tracks, take it back democratically in the fall, or it then becomes time to bring this government down.”

“This neophyte, this joke we have in the White House has absolutely no idea of the force and the rage he is about to unleash on him and his entire political party. If there are not enough responsible adults left within his party to rein in this accidental, affirmative action jerk, this self-styled, extremely flawed little man, then his party is worthless to America. It deserves to be marginalized electorally and, ultimately, utterly destroyed, before being relegated to the dung heap of history with the rest of the marxist, socialist clowns Americans have dispatched before.”

“Reconciliation for this disaster of a destructive health care bill I doubt anyone on the Hill can fully define means all out war. The only question remaining is, whose side are you on?”

Somebody needs to unplug this bad boy and send him back to school before he and his nincompoop followers get hurt or hurt someone else for no reason other than that they’ve bought a misguided bill of goods delivered by some senile Republican spin-meisters with more money than brains.  Erick Erickson, of RedState fame, shared that he thought that Riehl’s post was one of the best blog posts he’s ever read.  Figures . . .

Well, there you have it frumps, make of it what you will; but I for one get a spring in my step these days when I see stuff like this buzzing around.  It means that Republicans and associated obstructionists have their panties in a wad because none of their tried and true, greedy methods of control are working well.

Cheers!

Technorati Tags: Bill Kristol, Liz Cheney, Michelle Malkin, Dan Riehl, Steve Elliott, GrassFire Nation, ResistNet.com, Chris Wallace, Erick Erickson, Health Care Reform Summit

Tagged as: Bill Kristol, Chris Wallace, Dan Riehl, Erick Erickson, GrassFire Nation, Health Care Reform Summit, Liz Cheney, Michelle Malkin, resistnet.com, Steve Elliott