Bird Brains

Cat Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Seagull) — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 05:53:00 +0000

Gladys's Christmas present was the wrapping paper from everyone else's presents.

Cars and class warfare redux

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Seagull) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:24:00 +0000

I thought I should note this date down, because it's not often I can say these words: William Kristol agrees with me.

Cars and class warfare

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Seagull) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 05:26:00 +0000

There's been a lot of talk lately, both in Congress and in the media, about Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization as a strategy for General Motors. While this has worked well for airlines, I don't think it's an option for GM, for two reasons:

Buying a car is a long-term relationship. When people buy an airline ticket, they only care if the airline is around long enough to make the trip. When they buy a car, though, they want some reassurance that the company will be around long enough to make good on the warranty. If people hear that GM has declared bankruptcy, they will flee dealerships in droves, robbing the company of the income it needs to rebuild itself.
AIG issued credit default swaps on GM. A lot of credit default swaps, apparently; according to Forbes.com, estimates are that AIG's exposure is about 10 times the outstanding debt. If GM declares bankruptcy, AIG is on the hook for that money, and guess who currently owns AIG? That's right, the government. In a nutshell, if we let GM go bankrupt, we taxpayers are likely to end up paying out eight to ten times as much as if we bail them out.

While we're on the subject, I'm distressed at the level of classism that's hidden in this debate. One of the benefits being touted for bankruptcy is that it would allow GM to bust the United Auto Workers Union by eliminating its labor contracts. When insurer AIG was bailed out at a cost of more than twice what the auto industry is asking for, I don't recall anyone questioning what workers there earned; yet it's taken as given by everyone involved in this debate that auto factory workers are overpaid. We're apparently happy with white collar workers making whatever they can, but heaven forbid that a blue collar worker might make a middle class wage.

There's also a lot of deliberate misinformation going around about what auto industry workers are actually paid. For example, the $70/hour figure repeated by many conservative pundits is completely misleading. No factory worker makes that; in fact, UAW workers on average make about $28/hour, only slightly more than workers in Toyota plants, and wages and benefits for current workers are only 10% of GM's budget. The $70/hour figure includes money used to pay the pensions and health care benefits of retirees — effectively, deferred compensation for work done in the past, when GM had a much larger workforce. (This is a burden the UAW has agreed to take off GM's hands in 2010, in exchange for a lump-sum payment.) The much-maligned UAW "job banks" also make an easy target, but their cost to GM is minuscule — at present, only about 1,000 idle workers are drawing salaries this way, less than 0.3% of GM's total workforce. In any event, the job banks are likely to be one of the UAW's first concessions in any bailout plan.

The rhetoric we're seeing used against the middle and lower classes in this recession is really toxic. As Media Matters points out, the conservative media have blamed minorities and undocumented immigrants for the housing downturn, and union members for the auto industry's problems; groups that have little or no influence in the marketplace, and have benefited little and suffered greatly in the last eight years.

Marriage

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Seagull) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:59:00 +0000

I'm a bit late with this one, but a couple of weeks ago the NPR show On the Media had an interesting interview about marriage — how it became both a civil and a religious institution, and when the current ideas about "traditional" marriage formed. (Surprisingly recently, as it turns out.) It also touches on why civil unions will never really be an acceptable substitute for gay marriage. Well worth a listen.

Religion and morality

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Seagull) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:22:00 +0000

Religious conservatives are all worked up about some pro-atheism ads recently placed on buses by the American Humanist Association. The ads caused them to trot out the usual argument against atheism — the idea that morality can only come from religion:

"Codes of morality, of course, have always been grounded in religion. For those of us in Western civilization, its tenets emanate from the Judeo-Christian ethos. By casting this heritage aside, and replacing it with nothing more than the conscience of lone individuals, we lay the groundwork for moral anarchy." — Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League

"How do we define 'good' if we don't believe in God? God in his word, the Bible, tells us what's good and bad and right and wrong. If we are each ourselves defining what's good, it's going to be a crazy world." — Tim Wildmon, American Family Association

This is one of those arguments that people just accept as true without thinking about it; to people of a religious background, it seems obvious. I don't think it stands up to scrutiny, however.

First of all, religion itself often follows the lead of conventional wisdom. The Bible has always been interpreted in ways that reinforce existing social prejudices. When slavery was considered moral, Biblical passages were used to support it. The same was later true of segregation. When Henry VIII found Catholicism too binding, he simply created a new church with a moral code that he found more palatable. Far from being a solid grounding for society's moral code, religion is in fact more often used to rationalize and defend a set of values society has already agreed upon.

It's also false to assert that, without a set of moral rules handed down from heaven, it's somehow every man for himself. Nowhere in the Bible does it say "thou shalt not cut in line," but try it at your local supermarket checkout and see what kind of moral outrage you generate. Every society has a moral code, and no central authority necessarily needs to provide it. In fact, societies nearly always adhere to certain moral absolutes, like a prohibition on murder, regardless of whether or not their culture includes commandments carved on stone tablets.

The argument that religion is necessary for morality is a particularly pernicious one because it leads to suspicion of atheists. In one Pew Research poll, 47% of Americans indicated they believed faith in God was necessary to be a good person, and 54% had a negative view of atheists. This all stems from the idea that humans are incapable of following any moral code unless it comes from a deity. I find this a depressing, cynical view of humanity; it's as if we're a bunch of children who can't be trusted unless they know their parents are watching them.

Olbermann for gay marriage

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Eagle) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:26:00 +0000

As always, Keith says it so, so well.

I do not hate you (an open letter)

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Eagle) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:11:00 +0000

I got an e-mail from a longtime fan who is also a Mormon, who was deeply offended by my screed about Proposition 8 passing.

I did try to respond in a way that would walk the difficult tightrope of standing by my point and making it clear that my gripe was not with people like her, but I probably failed; I usually do in such situations.

But, to the rest of you, Mormons and everyone else, my gripe is never with you individually. I want that on the record. I mean, yes, as an atheist, I think what you believe is ridiculous and improbable, but there pretty much isn't a religion I don't think that about, which is how I wound up becoming an atheist in the first place. I'm not singling you out.

You know, I bet we atheists have to listen to more crap about our (lack of) beliefs than any other group. It's still considered basically okay, or at worst mildly offensive, to say horrible things about us, things you wouldn't dream of saying about even the most maligned religious groups in the country. I'm used to it, really.

So, to the woman I offended, well, I'm sorry I offended you, and I'm sorry for the crack about the underwear. But, it would seem you basically agree with me about proposition 8 passing. Understand that, whatever offense you felt reading a blog entry from a basically powerless person that said not-nice things about your church, it surely is nothing compared to the offense that I and millions like me felt when millions of supposedly decent and upstanding people voted like modern day George Wallaces last week.

And I suppose, what I want to know is, why doesn't that offend you more? Why aren't you livid with your church for having provided 40% of Yes On 8's funding, presumably the difference between passage and failure? You say you have gay and transgender friends...why are you, apparently, angrier with me for saying something you agree with in an intemperate way than you are with your church for doing something you seem to feel is a profound and terrible injustice?

Why I think GM is worth bailing out.

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Seagull) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:45:00 +0000

General Motors has warned that without a government bailout, they'll run out of cash by the end of the year. The idea of government intervention has been controversial because, frankly, lot of people would like to see GM die. The conventional wisdom is that the company is poorly managed, builds poor-quality cars, and bet its future too heavily on gas-guzzling SUVs. There is (or at least was) an element of truth to all of these criticisms, but I think GM is worth saving. When I look at GM, I see a company that's on the verge of a major turn-around.

First, let me say that I'm not a natural fan of GM. My own cars tend to be strange little things made in places with hard-to-pronounce names, like Osnabrück or Trollhättan. I grew up in a loyal Ford family. (Those of you from Michigan will know what I mean by that.) But there's some pretty interesting stuff going on at GM.

First, let's talk about quality. While people still often associate the brand with the frankly awful cars they built in the 1970s and 1980s, their quality is much improved. In the J.D. Power 3-year dependability ratings, Cadillac beats both Toyota and Honda, and the award for most dependable mid-size car went to the 2005 Buick Century. The J.D. Power initial quality study awarded two GM cars, the Chevrolet Malibu and the Pontiac Grand Prix, top honors in their categories. The Cadillac CTS has been getting rave reviews from the automotive press; it was Motor Trend's Car of the Year for 2008.

Then there's all those SUVs. While GM deserves some criticism for pinning too many of its hopes on this segment, it wasn't quite as short-sighted as it might first appear. The leadtime for GM to develop a new car, from concept to production, is three years. Three years ago gasoline prices were only beginning their steep runup, and small cars weren't selling; cash-strapped GM could ill afford to do what Toyota was doing — selling hybrids at a loss — so it's not surprising they've had to play catch-up in that segment.

Most importantly, though, GM has been doing some amazing R&D work, which may have them poised to leapfrog ahead of the competition if they survive the next year. The Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, for example — which I had initially dismissed as a PR exercise — looks to be close to production. Their experimental Equinox fuel-cell vehicle is, by all accounts, a polished and drivable vehicle that would be practical for day-to-day use if there were the refueling infrastructure to support it.

There's also the issue of what the failure of GM would do to our economy. In the short term, it would be a huge blow in terms of lost jobs, as well as lost pensions and health care benefits for retirees. In the long term, the loss of GM would probably be the beginning of the end for the U.S. auto industry, and that would be a major blow to our economic security. The recent financial collapse has shown the folly of basing an economy entirely on moving money around; countries are suffering in direct proportion to how much of their GDP comes from the financial industry. We need to remain a country that can make things. Cars are the most complicated mass-produced consumer products in existence, and a country that can build cars can build anything. The auto industry represents know-how we need to retain; the loss of it would inevitably lead to an engineering brain drain.

GM is an important part of the U.S. economy, and appears to be on the verge of turning itself around. They've made major changes already, but it takes a long time to turn around such a big company, and the one-two punch of high oil prices and an economic downturn will do them in before those changes can bear fruit unless the government gives them some short-term help. I think that's worth pursuing.

Pity the conservatives

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Seagull) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 07:50:00 +0000

I actually feel a little sorry for conservatives, right now. They're deeply scared. Talk radio hosts and campaign ads have been telling them for weeks that the man we just elected president is a Socialist terrorist who will destroy our economy, take away all of our guns, and allow us to be nuked by Iran. They're afraid for their country right now. They also feel trapped. As liberals, if we're feeling panicky about the state of the nation, we can always fantasize about emigrating to Canada or any number of other liberal democracies. Conservatives have no such safety valve; I mean, where would they go that's more conservative?

A lot of them are also feeling a sense of shock. They really thought they would win. Right-wing news outlets were talking up McCain's chances of victory, and so was McCain himself. People whose news came only from those sources didn't see this one coming.

It will take them a while to realize that Obama isn't a tenth as radical as they've been led to believe. You're going to see a lot of unhinged, intolerant ranting from the right for the next couple of weeks. It's best to pay it no mind. These people are venting because they're afraid of the imaginary monster the right-wing pundits have constructed and labeled with a nametag that says "Obama." I'm sure there will always be a strong, seething anger, like was directed at Clinton, because conservatives fundamentally believe that Democrats have no legitimate claim to power. The current level of venom, however, is not likely to last.

Memo to California

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Eagle) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:50:00 +0000

Or, specifically, to those Californians who just voted to snatch marriage rights away from a gay population that had had it for several months:

What the fuck is wrong with you?

You're supposed to be this bastion of progressive ideals, California. You're supposed to be our version of Texas. You're the biggest blue state in the country, for god's sake.

Granted, that reputation has always been a bit overblown--you do contain the most conservative county in the United States, and you gave the nation Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bob Dornan. And two of your last three governors have been Republicans.

But still. You're California. And you were, until yesterday, at the vanguard of the great civil rights issue of our time.

And it didn't have to be that way. Last summer, "no on proposition 8" was leading by a whopping 17 points. Clearly you had no problem back then with letting your gay neighbors have basic civil rights.

But then, the Mormons showed up.

The Mormons, politically last seen stopping the Equal Rights Amendment from making it into the federal constitution. Thanks a fucking lot, Joseph Smith. I'm starting to think we ought to just let them have polygamy on the condition that they stay out of everyone else's damn business until the end of time. That, or we just let Utah secede and try to forget it's there.

But even at that, you did not have to listen to them. I mean, let me get this straight: you're all for letting your gay neighbors continue to have the same rights you have, but then a bunch of out-of-state busybody religious assholes in magic underwear show up and start shrieking "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!!11!1!!1" and you actually find this persuasive?

I repeat: what the fuck is wrong with you?

I guess I should have expected it. You are, after all, the same voters who, five years ago, tossed out a governor you'd reelected less than a year earlier, in favor of Conan the Barbarian, whose entire campaign consisted of cheesy movie and SNL quotes.

It would seem that your entire political memory consists of whatever ad you saw on TV ten minutes before you went to the polls. Whether it made any fucking sense or not.

Give Governor Conan his due, though. He was against this. Maybe I underestimated him. But I think it's more likely I overestimated all of you.

There's also the sheer idiocy of a ballot initiative process that allows constitutional amendments to be introduced by absolutely anyone and pass by a simple majority vote. The entire point of constitutional government is to prevent passing whims of the electorate to be enshrined in stone if they cross certain lines, and to protect vulnerable minorities from the tyranny of the majority. You know, like protecting, oh, say, gay people from the panicky whims of idiots who listen to Mormons.

I know you're incapable of thinking long-term, or you wouldn't be so malleable, but I assure you, you had an opportunity to be thought of as a visionary state on civil rights, and you threw it away to join the historical company of the Jim Crow south. Congratulations.

Seriously. What the fuck is wrong with you?

The 44th President of the United States

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Eagle) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:19:00 +0000

Our long national nightmare is over.

Election Day

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Seagull) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:32:00 +0000

If you haven't voted already, this would be the time to go do it. Even if you're in a state that's not likely to swing the presidential race, there are a lot of important Senate and House races, not to mention local ballot issues, which may have a more direct effect on your daily life than the presidential race ever will.

A quick last round of predictions from various sites:

Electoral Vote is predicting 353 electoral votes for Obama, 174 for McCain, with 11 tossups. Their predicted Senate is 58 Democrats, 42 Republicans, and their predicted House is 249-184 with 2 tossups.
FiveThirtyEight.com, a new site for this election, is predicting 346.5 for Obama, 191.5 for McCain. They're predicting a 98.1% chance of an Obama win. For the Senate, they have 57.1-40.9.
Intrade, a political prediction market, will have trading open all day. But as I write this, they're predicting 364 electoral votes for Obama, 174 for McCain. 10 shares of Obama-to-win are selling for $93.50, up $2.20 from yesterday, and 10 shares of McCain-to-win are selling for $7.40, down $1.80. (Shares in the winner will pay out $10 per share, so people investing in McCain stand to make a considerable return if he wins.)

A Big Lie I'm getting really tired of hearing

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Seagull) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:53:00 +0000

"Obama wants to take your tax money and give it to people who don't pay taxes."

This is a fairly new one, so I might be going out on a limb by ascribing Big Lie status to it already. But I've been hearing it a lot lately, often from people who really ought to know better — people who are usually good at math, like Dave Ramsey.

The problem is, it's not true. Or rather, it's only true if you accept an unreasonably narrow definition of "paying taxes."

It's true that Obama's tax plan would give a refundable tax credit to some people who make too little to pay federal income tax. But those people still pay Social Security payroll taxes, so it's not true that they pay no federal taxes. They also pay state and local sales taxes, and sometimes state income tax as well.

McCain's math

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Seagull) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:27:00 +0000

Remember in 2006, when polls were showing the Democrats would likely pick up a bunch of seats, but Karl Rove said he had "the math" to show Republicans would prevail? In hindsight, his math was about as accurate as Superman's Super Math. Apparently Rove has learned from that experience, and now it's McCain's turn to have "the math":

“Those polls have consistently shown me much farther behind than we actually are,” Mr McCain said in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press. “We’re doing fine. We have closed [the gap] in the last week. We continue to close this next week. You’re going to be up very, very late on election night.” ....

But in an analysis of the state of the race on Fox News, Karl Rove, the architect of President George W. Bush’s election victories, said Mr Obama now had his biggest lead of the campaign, and was ahead in states with 317 electoral votes, compared with 157 votes for Mr McCain and 270 needed to win the presidency.

According to Mr Rove, Mr Obama was set to capture Ohio, Indiana, Colorado and Virginia. “In order for McCain to win, he’s got a very steep hill to climb,” he said indicating it would be extremely difficult for the Republican to turn round a national deficit of more than six points.

A McCain presidency is still possible, of course — but so is a snowfall in June. I don't have "the math," but here's some math to ponder. Based on state-by-state polls, Electoral Vote puts the current electoral college standings as Obama 375, McCain 157. It also shows that McCain is in a tough spot, behind in some must-win states. Unless he takes Pennsylvania, which looks unlikely, McCain needs Virginia to win; without it, even taking Florida and Ohio is unlikely to put him over the top. (He'd have to take every other state that's within the margin of error, and take Colorado, where Obama has been pretty consistently ahead.) And that means we may get to go to bed early after all, because Virginia's polls close at 7 pm Eastern time.

This doesn't mean we can get complacent, of course. While Obama currently has a 6% lead in Virginia, that state isn't normal Democratic territory, so it's hard to believe it could be anything but close. If McCain takes Virginia, then get-out-the-vote efforts in traditional swing states like Ohio and Florida become vitally important, and it's conceivable that final victory could hinge on smaller states like Indiana and Missouri. If you have some spare time and a pocket calculator, you might want to run through some of these scenarios, just for fun.

All hat no cattle

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Eagle) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 20:02:00 +0000

Not only has the McCain campaign spent $150,000 on clothes for Sarah Palin, but, apparently, Palin's makeup artist is the highest paid staffer on the McCain/Palin campaign.

Partly, of course, it's that there's a ridiculous double standard in politics. Male politicians can wear the same three medium-priced suits and three neckties over a whole campaign. A female politician runs a risk if she's ever seen wearing the same thing twice, and her wardrobe choices are inevitably going to be dissected. The appearance of a female candidate is a far bigger issue. Which is flat-out sexist, but it's reality.

But to me, there's something else going on here. Republicans have spent so long focusing on image and not on substance that, finally, they've actually forgotten the difference.

Once upon a time, it was a canny strategy. Reagan and his staff were masters of the art of overwhelming facts with image. There's the famous story about Leslie Stahl, back in the 80s, doing a story that was critical of Reagan's use of images that contradicted facts.

"I knew the piece would have an impact, if only because it was so long: five minutes and 40 seconds, practically a documentary in Evening News terms," Stahl later wrote. I worried that my sources at the White House would be angry enough to freeze me out."

That's not what happened. Reagan adviser Dick Darman called from the White House to tell her how much they had loved the piece.

Stahl replied, incredulously, "Didn't you hear what I said?"

Darman replied, "Nobody heard what you said. You guys in Televisionland haven't figured it out, have you? When the pictures are powerful and emotional, they override if not completely drown out the sound. I mean it, Lesley. Nobody heard you."

This, as much as anything, is how Republicans have done so well in the last 30 years. They figured out that it's not about good policy or even popular policy. It's all about pretty pictures. You go on TV, you look presidential, and it almost doesn't matter what else you do.

George W. Bush raised this almost to the level of camp. For beginning to end the man's presidency has been, as Michael Stipe might say, a simple prop to occupy our time, from the pretend ranch Karl Rove told him to buy for photo-op purposes (he bought it just before running for president and is selling it as soon as he leaves office) to the cowboy hats and other costume items (not only is Bush a rich kid from a prominent New England family, he's actually afraid of horses).

And I guess special mention does need to go to the ultimate campy joke candidate, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had a pothole dug in a street in San Jose so he could be photographed filling it in. Bonus for also wearing white pants for the photo-op (I'm no road maintenance expert, but I'm pretty sure tar is black and sticky).

Maybe it's just that, despite the press's best efforts, this election really does hinge on issues, not images. Maybe it's that Sarah Palin is so obviously a phony that no amount of spending on her appearance can make her seem otherwise. But the usual Republican distractions aren't working this time, it would seem.

And it would seem they've forgotten how to do anything else.

Friday cat blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Eagle) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:59:00 +0000

Gladys investigates a webcam.

Things that rhyme with "hope"

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Eagle) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:53:00 +0000

Equation 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Eagle) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:06:00 +0000

Why do Republicans hate America?

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Eagle) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 02:19:00 +0000

Apparently, Sarah Palin knows which parts of America are pro-America, and which parts of America are anti-America. In North Carolina, she said this:

"We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation."

I'm really damn tired of Republicans holding themselves up as the only ones who "love America" and, in doing so, ironically insulting and dismissing 50% of the country.

I'm tired of being told that the part of America I live in doesn't count because I vote wrong and don't drive a pickup and don't think the earth is only 6000 years old.

I might add that North Carolina, and most of the other states Sarah Palin thinks make up the "real America," weren't very "pro-American" when they tried to secede at gunpoint in 1860. Glass houses, anyone?

Cat fort

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Eagle) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 04:02:00 +0000

Seagull made Gladys a cardboard box fort. One of his more brilliant ideas.

They're going to lose

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Eagle) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 04:00:00 +0000

Are you registered? Are you sure?

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Seagull) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 22:34:00 +0000

A lot of states have purged inactive voters from their voter rolls. If you're planning on voting in November, especially if you haven't voted recently, you should make sure you're still registered. In some states registration deadlines have passed, but in others there's still time if you act soon.

Fear and loathing

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Eagle) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:57:00 +0000

You see a lot of false equivalencies in the media. It's sort of their creed: if you report that Republicans have done something that makes them look bad, you must immediately find a way to say that Democrats do it also. That is how you seem "fair." If the Republicans are, for instance, lying through their teeth, and the Democrats aren't, you're obligated to say something like "Republicans are claiming that Ted Kennedy is a serial killer, but Democrats today used a very generous interpretation of their tax plan, so both sides lie."

For instance, on ABC's "this week," Paul Krugman (who is brilliant) and Cokie Roberts (who is a complete tool) had the following exchange:

Krugman: This is not just about McCain and what he did. The fact of the matter is, for a long time we have had a substantial fraction of the Republican base that just does not regard the idea of Democrats governing as legitimate. Remember the Clinton years. It was craziness, right? They were murderers, they were drug smugglers, and the imminent prospect of what looks like a big Democratic victory would drive a lot of these people crazy even if Sarah Palin wasn't saying these inflammatory things. It's going to be very ugly after the election.

Roberts: On both sides that's true. I think that you've also had a huge number of Democrats who think that the Republicans are illegitimate, and that was particularly true after the 2000 election, and to some degree after 2004. And so you really do have at the core of each party people who are not ready to accept the verdict of the election.

Krugman: I reject the equivalence.

Jeez.

I'm just going to quote Hilzoy's response in full, because it's better than I could put it:

I do too, on two counts. First, there is no analogy between 1992 and 2000. In 1992, there was no question that Bill Clinton won the election. He had 370 electoral votes to Bush's 168. He got 5.6% more of the popular vote than Bush. It was not close.

In 2000, by contrast, Gore won the popular vote, and the electoral vote turned on Florida, whose results in turn were decided by the Supreme Court. And the decision in Bush v. Gore was very hard to explain as a principled decision: justices in the majority not only abandoned long-held positions on federalism, but announced that their decision should not be cited as a precedent in future cases. I really do not want to re-argue the 2000 election. But I think that the idea that there's some sort of equivalence between doubting the fairness of the 2000 and 1992 elections is absurd.

Second, while a lot of Democrats had deep concerns about the outcome of Bush v. Gore, the overwhelming majority of us accepted that the courts had the right to adjudicate questions of law. As a result, most of us accepted the idea that whether or not George W. Bush had actually won the election in straightforward common-sense terms, he was entitled under the law to be our President.

Or, in short: we had a lot more reason to regard George W. Bush as illegitimate than the Republicans had to regard Clinton as illegitimate. Despite that fact, most of us accepted the fact that, like it or not, he was our President. We did not go around claiming that he had killed one of his closest associates, or was a drug smuggler, or hung crack pipes from his Christmas tree.

There is no equivalency here. None at all.

Maybe next week I'll take on the (cough) challenging task of explaining why there is no equivalence between saying that Clinton was a murderer and saying that George W. Bush is a war criminal. Hint: it's the same reason there would be no equivalence between saying that Bush held up a convenience store and saying that Clinton was unfaithful to his wife.

Amen.

I want to add, though, that this seems, to me, to point out a distinct difference between the Democratic base and the Republican base.

I think, for the most part, we see politics as the clash of competing ideas. Which is why a lot of alleged Democrats and liberals were willing to give the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt for so long. Those of us on the "angry left" (the "dirty fucking hippies" to use Atrios's phrase) were left helplessly pointing out that Bush was lying us into war, that his administration was staffed with incompetent cronies, that his proposed social security policies were presented dishonestly and were actually a big gift to Wall Street at the expense of the least among us. Eventually, more and more people came around to our view, because it got really hard to avoid--Bush and his minions didn't just represent an alternate set of proposals we could battle honestly, they represented something much more insidious, dishonest, and destructive.

People who reached this conclusion did so almost entirely on policy grounds. Bush's policies, and their results, just got so hateful and disastrous that open-minded people could no longer ignore it, which is why Bush's approval ratings are now dipping to sub-Nixonian levels.

In short, it wasn't that we hate him and therefore we look for reasons to justify that hate. For the most part, we started out giving him the benefit of the doubt and found that his actions left hating him as the only honest option.

Contrast that to the way conservatives, even allegedly "mainstream" ones, treated Bill Clinton. From the very, very beginning, they accused him of having murdered Vince Foster, of being a drug smuggler, of operating death squads in Arkansas to whack his political enemies, of somehow having committed impeachable offenses in a 1974 Arkansas land deal on which he lost money. They hated him with a passion that bordered on psychosis.

And it clearly wasn't that they hated him because of his policies, or even because they'd heard that he was a murderer or a rapist or a drug smuggler. They hated him because he was THE ENEMY.

And this is my point. The conservative base doesn't see politics as a clash of competing legitimate ideas. It sees politics, and everything else, as a clash between good and evil. When George W. Bush said "you're either with us or you're against us," he wasn't just talking about that one moment in history. Conservatives think that about literally everything.

During the Cold War they were able to conveniently structure their worldview along capitalist vs. communist lines. When that ended, they had ten years to wait for al Qaeda to offer them a new group to hate. So they spent the 90s adrift. And, rather than adapt to newer, more complex realities and engage in an honest debate with Democrats and liberals about how to move forward, they just cast American politics in the same tribalist terms.

They hate Bill Clinton because, to them, the whole world is a Saturday morning cartoon, populated by Good Guys and Bad Guys. They see the world like I did when I was 5. And their identity as Good Guys requires them, at all times, to be fighting against some historic and unprecedented EVIL FORCE. After the cold war, they conveniently and suddenly had a Democratic president to hate. So, they believed all that shit about him not because they found it plausible, but because it conveniently fit into their need for the opposition not just to be the opposition, but to be THE BAD GUY.

In short, it had nothing whatsoever to do with policy (Clinton actually agreed with them on a number of issues, like welfare reform). They hated him because that's how they feel about the enemy, and all those ridiculous slurs fit neatly into their need to justify their hate.

So no, there is no equivalence. The difference is categorical. We feel that a lively and engaged and honest policy debate is essential to effective governance. They feel that He-Man needs to crush and defeat Skeletor.

Conservatism in the 1990s had a distinctly anti-authority slant. The fringe of that movement was utterly convinced that Clinton was a tyrant who was going to come take their guns away and make them bow down to the UN or something. Somewhat more "mainstream" conservatives, at the very least, felt that it was the epitome of patriotism not just to disagree with Clinton, but to absolutely loathe and detest him, to regard him as illegitimate despite his having twice been legitimately elected president.

And then, bizarrely, after a Republican got "elected" president, they did a 180, and became hardcore authoritarians, regarding any criticism of the new president, however mild, as not only unpatriotic, but treasonous. the "good guy/bad guy" lines were redrawn: Bush was the Good Guy. Al Qaeda was the Bad Guy--and so was anybody who said anything bad about Bush the noble hero and his quest to vanquish the Bad Guys.

As usual, there is no such thing as legitimate disagreement. It's always good vs. evil.

And the hateful, Munich-beer-hall style crowds at McCain/Palin rallies is a sign of how this is going to manifest in the Obama/Biden administration. It'll be the 90s all over again but with a "terrorist" flavor.

To these crowds of crazy-base-world conservatives, Barack Obama is the Bad Guy for the same reason Bill Clinton is--he's the opposition, and there is no such thing as legitimate opposition. He has a Muslim-sounding name, which feeds nicely into their preexisting framework of Muslim Bad Guys, but even if he didn't, they would still be calling him a "terrorist" because to them, "terrorist" is simply a synonym for "Bad Guy." And any Democrat about to be elected president would by definition play that role for them.

I don't know exactly why they always see things this way. Maybe tribalism is built into our genes by evolution (in ancient times it made us more likely to protect our own genetic line, and thus those genes survived). Maybe fundamentalist Christianity has something to do with it, casting the universe as it does in stark good vs. evil terms (witness the rumors that Obama might be the antichrist).

I suppose we can congratulate ourselves on having, to a much greater degree, transcended our tribalist evolutionary roots and come to see the world in more nuanced terms, as a clash of competing ideas rather than a war between GI Joe and Cobra. Because there is absolutely no equivalence. We are not like them. (And, to their credit, some conservative intellectuals, like David Brooks and Christopher Buckley, have begun to acknowledge that the intellectual conservatism of decades past has been replaced by lizard-brained reactionary ignorance--Buckley has even endorsed Obama).

They are the small-minded thugs. We strive to be ruled by the better angels of our natures. Keep fighting the good fight. This time at least, we're about to win.

The Road to Obama

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Eagle) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 01:58:00 +0000

Friday Cat Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Liberal Seagull) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 06:50:00 +0000

Disturbed in her slumber, Gladys responds with a cat's primary defense mechanism — extreme cuteness.