Ad Hominem for Cro-Magnon Woman

I’m sorry – has there ever been a bigger whiner on the national stage of politics than Sarah Palin?  She literally believes that she’s Jesus on the cross – and all the meanies in the media are modern day Pharisees.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of people out there who agree with her.

The Dream Team

Palin/Bachman 2012.

Common Ground?

There might be cause for unity among right and left wingers in opposing “Cap and Trade” legislation. If Congressman Peter DeFazio of Oregon is right, Democrats have replaced Republicans now as the people handing out “big sloppy wet kisses” to both Wall Street and polluters.

Here’s a brief interview from July 1st from the Thom Hartmann radio show.

HARTMANN: Congressman Peter DeFazio is with us. And you, along with Dennis Kucinich and a few others were among the few Democrats who actually voted against the cap and trade legislation in the House of Representatives. It’s not yet come up in the Senate. Congressman, why?

DEFAZIO: There were three progressives at least – me, Dennis, and Pete Stark of California, who understands financial markets, because we felt it’s not going to effectively deal with greenhouse gases, it’s loophole-ridden, it’s subject to massive manipulation (we already have some great quotes from people on Wall Street saying this is going to be the biggest market the world has ever had, much bigger than financial services.) They’re already creating, in Europe, carbon-offset futures derivatives.

HARTMANN:: This is the new bubble.

DEFAZIO:: Yeah – they’re going to create carbon offset derivative futures. They’re already talking about – the guy who’s head of Friends of the Earth got his economist somehow into a meeting of people on Wall Street – and they’re talking about traunching them into junk carbon and good carbon and gourmet carbon, so they’re going to traunch them, and then the bill says that if you are doing these exotic instruments on offsets, you have to buy insurance. That brings in the credit default swaps. So what it might do is get us our money back. Maybe AIG can go into the business of doing these as collateralized debt obligations and selling credit default swap insurance, and if we get the taxpayer money back real fast, before they collapse the next bubble, and if we don’t bail them out, maybe we won’t come out so bad. But this is really a bad way to deal with the issue.

HARTMANN:: So you’re of the opinion that a bad bill is worse than no bill. I’ve been taking the position that, and you’re causing me to rethink it, that a bad bill is better than no bill because at least a) the government’s acknowledging that we’ve got a carbon problem, and b) it’s making the right wing hysterical (I listened to part of Shaun Hannity’s show yesterday, and he spent half an hour – he calls it “cap and tax” – he’s hysterical about this, and c) once we’ve got that door open, maybe we can fix it. You think it’s just going to get worse?

DEFAZIO:: Well, I like to drive the right wing nuts, and that’s always part of the reason to do something or say something. But here’s the thing and most people miss this detail. The Supreme Court ruled two years ago that the EPA can regulate carbon as emissions, greenhouse gases …

HARTMANN:: So we don’t need this bill.

DEFAZIO:Right. The Bush Administration refused to [inaudible], Obama earlier this year – the Obama EPA said we are going to begin the process to regulate greenhouse gases. This bill prohibits them from continuing that process.

HARTMANN:: Oh no.

DEFAZIO:: Yes. That is a specific provision in the bill that the polluters wanted. They said we don’t want the EPA going ahead with these rules and regulations like they did with clean water and clean air.

HARTMANN:: So this is not only a big sloppy wet kiss to AIG and Goldman Sachs, but also to the coal industry.

DEFAZIO:: Oh, it’s very coal-friendly. In fact, in the end it took away allowances for utilities that have a lot of renewable generation and, if they don’t have fossil fuels to spend them on, they’re taking their allowances and transferring them to the coal industry. That was a last minute Colin Peterson deal in the Ag section of the bill. I think it’s one of the most coal-friendly pieces of legislation since I’ve been in congress.

HARTMANN: : Amazing. …

True in 1990, True Today

The Democrats seem to be basically nice people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They’re the kind of people who’d stop to help you change a flat, but would manage somehow to set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy. The Republicans, on the other hand, would know how to fix your tire, but they wouldn’t bother to stop because they’d want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club. Also, the Republicans have a high Beady-Eyed Self-Righteous Scary Borderline Loon Quotient, as evidenced by Phyllis Schlafly, Pat Robertson, the entire state of Utah, etc.
Dave Barry, 1990

Eager to tap Iraq’s vast oil reserves, industry execs suggested invasion

As if I didn’t know it. What’s simply amazin’, is how something so obvious can be so muddled, obfuscated, ridiculed and disdained. It was so painfully obvious, as U.S. troops protected the oil ministry, put out the oil fires, and passively looked on while Iraq’s (and all of our) priceless heirlooms were looted in 2003.

But that’s the power of the Emperor in this supposed land of free thinkers. Name one mainstream talking head, one editorial writer in the past six years that has dared make the oil connection. One!

Anyway, the title of this post is also the title of an investigative piece from Public Record by Jason Leopold.

Insight into Right Wingers

I just finished the book “The Authoritarian Specter, by Bob Altemeyer, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Manitoba. It’s taken a while, I’ve read other books while I struggled through this one, but today I finally closed the back cover.

Altemeyer spends a great deal of time describing methodology, and then chapter after chapter detailing the results of various tests of students, their parents, legislators and and even Russian students. The implications of his work, controversial but replicable and defendable, are damning for the right wing.

The center of Altemeyer’s work is a test he developed over many years called the RWA. It’s a 34 question test with various statements to extract positive and contrait data from those who take it. The questions are answered on a -4 to +4 scale, to that there are nine possible responses to each statement. Only 30 of the 34 questions count in the scoring (the first four are table-setters), so that the highest possible score is 270 – anyone who scores that high is truly dangerous. (He says that a Texas Democrat and West Virginia Republican legislator each scored 257 – the highest ever. Eeek!)

I would put the test up here for observation, but since it is not available on the internet, I suspect it is proprietary. However, anyone wanting to see it can contact me via the comment section, and I will fax or PDF it it to you. I think that is legal.

Altemeyer has taken the scores on the test, and correlated them with attitudes of conservatives and liberals, progressives and right wingers. He found a very high correlation between Canadian conservatives and American Republicans and high RWA scores, and a lower one for liberals and Democrats. In other words, right wingers tend to manifest authoritarian traits, which I will list in detail below, while left wingers do not. The old saw that there are extremes of left and right, and that each side provides dictators, according to Altemeyer, is false. The right wing is providing the world its thugs …

… with one caveat. He uncovered an odd duck. He calls this person the “wild card” authoritarian, not a right winger, not a left winger, but standing at the ready to assume power. Altemeyer speculates that this is the origin of our Stalin’s and Pol Pot’s – non ideological psychopaths who like authority for its own sake, and kill and enslave people because they can, and because it pleases them. Pinochet was a right wing authoritarian, as is Cheney, but these men are also driven by right wing ideology.

Altemeyer studied Russian students (during the Cold War) to ascertain their attitudes, and found that those who supported the Soviet system were also … right wing authoritarians. Those in charge of the Soviet system were mirror images of American right wingers.

Anyway, here’s a list of traits exhibited by ‘most’ High RWA’s, and keep in mind that nothing is true of all, and to say that these traits manifest mostly on the right does not mean they do not exist on the left. It only means that they are far less prominent on the left.

Compared with others, right wing authoritarians are significantly more likely to:

Accept unfair and illegal abuses of power by government authorities.

Trust leaders who are untrustworthy.

Weaken constitutional guarantees of liberty, such as the Bill of Rights.

Punish severely “common” criminals in role playing situations, and admit they get personal pleasure from doing so.

Go easy on authorities who commit crimes and people who attack minorities.

Be prejudiced against many racial, ethnic, nationalistic and linguistic minorities.

Be hostile towards homosexuals and support “gay bashing”.

Volunteer to help the government prosecute almost anyone.

Be mean-spirited towards those who have made mistakes and suffered.

Insist on traditional sex roles.

Be hostile towards feminists.

Conform to opinions of others, and be more likely to “yea-say”.

Be fearful of a dangerous world.

Be highly self-righteous.

Strongly beleive in group cohesiveness and “loyalty”.

Make many incorrect inferences from evidence.

Hold contradictory ideas – cognitive dissonance.

Uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs.

Uncritically trust people who tell them what they want to hear.

Use double standards in thinking and judgments.

Be hypocrites.

Be bullies when they have power over others.

Seek dominance by being competitive and destructive.

Believe they have no personal failings.

Use religioin to erase guilt over their acts and to maintain their self-righteousness.

Be religious “fundamentalists”.

Be dogmatic.

Be zealots.

Be less educated.

Be conservative/Republican (U.S.), Reform (Canada) and have a conservative economic philosophy.

Believe in social dominance.

Oppose abortion.

Be ethnocentric.

Support capital punishment.

Oppose gun control.

Say they value freedom but actually want to undermine the Bill of Rights.

Do not value equality.

Not be likely to rise in the Democratic Party, but likely to rise among Republicans.

Phew! I should say that I got a queasy feeling as I typed many items on the list, as I am no slouch when it comes to failings regarding evidence, hero-worship, or dogmatism.

There are those who like to compare parties and ideologies and claim that all exhibit mirror negative tendencies. According to Altemeyer, it’s not true. It’s a Republican/conservative/right wing thing more than anything.

Most interesting: The book was written in 1996, long before 9/11 and Naomi Kleins’ “Shock Doctrine”. But Altemeyer claims that right wingers are very dangerous in troubled times, as they look to authoritarians to govern them. This, before Bush/Cheney. I think that prescient.

And, among his many warnings in the concluding chapter, we should be very careful when protesting certain behaviors and policies, such as pro-abortion or single payer, never to engage in violence. This sets off right wingers, and is counterproductive. I guess that’s obvious.

Pop Culture Does the Work of the Pros

Matt Taibbi’s article in the current Rolling Stone (The Great American Bubble Machine) about Goldman Sachs is very good. It’s not up on the RS website yet, but is worth the price of a paper copy.

It reminds me of a couple of things:

1. The Daily Show these days is doing NBC/CBS/CNN’s job, and Rolling Stone is doing NY TImes/WaPo/Wall Street Journal’s job. Pop culture has stepped in to fill a vacuum. Isn’t that interesting?

2. Years ago I was a victim of Goldman Sachs – I had invested for years in Montana Power for my kids. The price had skyrocketed, and I didn’t know what to do. I consulted a professional investment adviser who said that long-term prospects were very good. (I’ve never consulted one since – they don’t know any more than you or me, maybe even less.) I took a bath, and ended up buying out my kids at half of what the stock was worth at its high – the point where I should have sold.

Goldman Sachs was mentioned in a 60 Minutes piece on the demise of Montana Power, one of the stupidest business moves since New Coke. Apparently, Bob Gannon, CEO of MPC, used Goldman to sell of its power-generation assets and reinvest in fiber-optic cables. According to the 60 Minutes piece, Goldman was the “driver” of the deal, insisting it be done before the market for the MPC assets collapsed. Montanans took a bath (still do in the form of higher utility costs), employees of the once venerable institution were jettisoned, and retirees ate worms.

Gannon, in a boldface slap-in-the-face of everyone in the world, took a million dollar bonus. Goldman Sachs made $20 million on the deal.

Footnote: Check out Taibbi’s blog. He gets hammered pretty good by commenters.

When Purists Do the Strategizin’

I’ve built quite a reputation for myself over at Left in the West – I’m not much of a diplomat, I know. I don’t want to be, don’t try to be, but I do understand that there are situations where it pays to be nice, and where a small compliment now and then actually helps people understand an argument and maybe even inch an inch or two closer towards an opponent’s position. That’s generally how marriage works, and I’m very happily married, so I must know something about life.

But in politics, it’s a trap. I’ve been railing for years now against Senator Max Baucus, not because I think that’s the best way to deal with him, but rather because I think it’s the only way to deal with him. Years ago a man with Montana Wilderness Association whom I admired, Bob Decker, made an aside to me that was a little cryptic. Bob’s far smarter than me – no pandering, just true – and it took me a long time to understand what he was saying. It had to do with Max, and I can only approximate how he put it to me: Max plays a game. You’re either an insider or an outsider. If you are an insider, he owns you. If you are an outsider, you get nothing from him. (I may well be putting words in his mouth, and interjecing my understanding of what he said for what he meant to convey.)

Max is not a liberal, but he’s a Democrat, and that seems enough to satisfy Democrats. They feel they share common goals with him, and so endure his disinterested, symbolic maneuvering, and most recently, a face-slap in the form of jailed single-payer advocates at one of his “hearings”. (He as yet, so far as I know, to drop charges against them. He’s a petty, vindictive kind of guy, you know, a dick.)

So I have taken it upon myself over at LITW to single-handedly drive a wedge between Max and the Democrats. I’m not a good tactician, so I cannot see the long-term implications of what I am doing very well. The short-term fallout is that Jay and Matt and this cat called “Wulfgar” are very pissed at me. That’s not necessarily bad, as it forces them to examine Max’s behavior to be sure they are right in trusting him, and that I am a jackass and wrong. Even though their vision might be clouded, there is a chance they will break from him if they come to see that he is merely diddling them.

The subject at hand, by the way, is health care. The stakes are very high, and as I have said so many times over there, Democrats are the problem. We all know who Republicans are and what they stand for, and we cannot influence them. The problem comes about when the Clinton-era strategy of triangulation reappears with friendly new faces – Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and (the one whom Bernie Sanders matter-of-factly refers to as the “conservative” Chair of the Finance Committee) Max Baucus.

These people are not our friends. It would be better if they were known enemies, but they are worse than that – they are false friends. They will maneuver starry-eyed Democrats into supporting Republican objectives, and in the end, the “fix” for our health care system will be corporate subsidies, onerous regulations forcing us to buy overpriced products, and no public option. Single-payer was never anything more than a bargaining tool, and Max jettisoned it right away, indicating that he had other rules for the game.

Anyway, the reaction to me at LITW – the only way they can comprehend me since I don’t make my case well enough – is to say that I am a single-payer “purist”, and that I am unable to compromise. It’s Max’s game, and they are tripping over one another to play it.

So, anyway, two things happened last evening – in response to the purist argument, I put up a comment wherein I attempted to outline a rational position for health care reform that deals with the powers as they exist. I tried being rational with them, but felt obliged to underscore the real problem:

What I am fighting is a massive sellout by Democrats, like in the Clinton era, where they lead you guys along on a leash, keep you from organizing against them, and then screw you. You don’t like what I am doing, you call me names and suggest that I’m conspiratorial. If you do not understand that forces with common interests ally and work together, I cannot save you from yourself.

Anyway, I got a nice response from this person known as “Feral Cat”, and learned that she is also “Montana Maven“. I abandoned MM back during the campaign, as I thought her much too “bought in” on John Edwards*, who was much too conveniently and too late a liberal for my taste. But I had noticed this person, Feral Cat, before, and complimented he/she/it for insight in some of my previous trollings. My own bad judgment, in abandoning Montana Maven, comes back to bite me.

But at last I’ve found someone who gets it. MM goes back on my list of bookmarks this morning.

Nice not to be alone.

*Mainstream media refused to treat Edwards as a credible candidate, and instead focused exclusively on Obama/Clinton. That should have told me something. The fact that Edwards has been ‘outed’ for having an affair, and is political carrion, is also, as Max would say, ‘telling’.

Something Fishy in Tehran

From Pak Alert Press:

Former Pakistani Army General Mirza Aslam Beig claims the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has distributed 400 million dollars inside Iran to evoke a revolution.

In a phone interview with the Pashto Radio on Monday, General Beig said that there is undisputed intelligence proving the US interference in Iran.

“The documents prove that the CIA spent 400 million dollars inside Iran to prop up a colorful-hollow revolution following the election,” he added.

This is an open secret, but oddly not discussed here in the land of the free. Two years ago, George W. Bush approved black-op funds for regime change in Iran. Are we seeing the product of that investment now? It’s all very odd – Twitter and civilian snipers firing into crowds from rooftops. Whose snipers? Something fishy going on here.

It smacks of Venezuela, 2002. Anyway, I’ll just link to a really informative article and leave it at that. I’ve been arguing with Jay Stevens and Wulfgar tonight, and I’m tired.

Who said this?

“There are certain benchmarks that will be met, such as troops out of the cities by June of ‘09.

Oh, you know, you devil. You watch the Daily Show too.

Here’s a question no one is asking: Where did the troops go?

And, those ghost people: Where are the mercenaries?