Ready for a government shitdown?

Anybody who thinks Tuesday's election doesn't matter, just consider what Mitch McConnell and his Tea Party tools have in store for Obama, the Democrats and the nation. Paul Krugman:

(The) era of partial cooperation in the 1990s came only after Republicans had tried all-out confrontation, actually shutting down the federal government in an effort to force President Bill Clinton to give in to their demands for big cuts in Medicare.
Now, the government shutdown ended up hurting Republicans politically, and some observers seem to assume that memories of that experience will deter the G.O.P. from being too confrontational this time around. But the lesson current Republicans seem to have drawn from 1995 isn’t that they were too confrontational, it’s that they weren’t confrontational enough.

Another recent interview by National Journal, this one with Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, has received a lot of attention thanks to a headline-grabbing quote: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

If you read the full interview, what Mr. McConnell was saying was that, in 1995, Republicans erred by focusing too much on their policy agenda and not enough on destroying the president: “We suffered from some degree of hubris and acted as if the president was irrelevant and we would roll over him. By the summer of 1995, he was already on the way to being re-elected, and we were hanging on for our lives.” So this time around, he implied, they’ll stay focused on bringing down Mr. Obama.

 Please, Democrats, don't be complacent.  We have plenty to complain about, and god knows we'll get the chance.  (Yes, Michelle Malkin, that's a small "g," as in "god help me you're an idiot.") But everything will come to a standstill if Republicans take over the House, the Senate, or both. The '90s will look like halcyon days of lollipops and sunshine compared to what looms for Obama and the Dems.  As Krugman reads it, and I agree, Mitch McConnell thinks the mistake Republicans made in the 90s was trying to push through actual programs.  How high-minded of them. It's clear now that that was just a frivolous indulgence -- they've done absolutely nothing over the past two years and they're being rewarded handsomely for it, that is, if we're stupid enough to allow it. No policy means more to them right now than toppling the O man, which is a bad omen for all of us. Now, if I had an asterisk thingy, I would have qualified that no-policy thing with tax cuts for the mega-rich. That's not frivolous, that's air, water and sunlight to them.

And speaking of sunlight -- or whatever technological marvel lends John Boehner his apricot hue -- do you want that giant orange boner man running the House? Pleaaaaaaase.

No, please. Vote. And if you live in the 19th District in New York, vote for John Hall.

Vote for John Hall in NY's 19th

Nobody has been a harsher critic of Obama and the Democrats than me over the past year, but the loss of either the House or Senate bodes ill for any progress we hope to make for the economy, particularly, but also on health care, Afghanistan and other issues.  Amid all my objections, though, the idea of not voting never crossed my mind, as tempting as it might have been. Now is the time for everyone to make calls and knock on doors for their local Democratic congressmen and senators.  Even if they don't deserve it, as Michael Moore has said, we do.  Do it for us.

But some congressmen deserve it, and mine, Rep. John Hall (D-NY), is one of them. Unlike many in the house, and far too many in the Senate, he has been a stalwart supporter of the issues Democrats campaigned for in 2008, and therefore has earned the full support of voters in New York's 19th Congressional District. He is a Democrat who hasn't run away from the things we care about, unlike those who claim to espouse progressive values but run at the first sign of a vote -- or a tweet from Sarah Palin. If only Obama had been as steadfast, we'd be in a lot better shape economically, among other measures of strength. Another sign? Democrats wouldn't be facing a cataclysm on Tuesday if they had fully enacted the stimulus (too small), the health care bill (too fraidy-cat conservative), and the bank bailout (they got help, we lost our houses). Instead, Democrats carried out a half-a-loaf agenda, whereby they determined what we needed to succeed, and divided it by two. Half measures don't work, in politics as in life, but particularly at a time of crisis demanding boldness and not, as Jon Stewart not-so-timidly pointed out, timidity.

That's why I'm for John Hall.  He took tough votes and did the right thing at a time when the world seemed to be coming to an end.  Just because his efforts died over in the Senate doesn't mean he should be punished or others like him who were looking out for us, and not their jobs.  Now his job is at stake, and it's our turn to look out for him.

I'd much rather lose the Senate, which has been next to useless these past two years, than lose the House, which has done what it was expected to do, taken on the thorny issues and gotten shafted for its efforts. No good deed and all that...

Here's what the New York Journal News had to say about Hall in its recent endorsement of him:

The choice for voters in the 19th Congressional District is fairly straightforward: They can pick the candidate who sees a measured and constructive role for the federal government in the framework of a free, civil and functioning society, or they can pick the candidate who, while on the campaign trail at least, appears to suffer from amnesia.

The former is John Hall, the two-term Democrat from Dover Plains, who has taken some tough — but wholly necessary — votes aimed at digging the nation out of a deep recession that was years in the making. The latter is Dr. Nan Hayworth, a retired opthalmologist from Mount Kisco, whose memory or understanding of what ails America seems to begin and end with the 2008 election. Our recommendation goes to Hall, for his broader world view, and because Congress can ill afford more of Hayworth's brand of forgetfulness.

And this is what they had to say about Hayworth, a Tea Party favorite who just happens to be my former eye doctor. Nice lady, good doctor, wack ideas.

Hayworth's prescription for what's wrong with America is right out of the simplistic GOP playbook being used in races across the nation: Stop spending, stop taxing, stop intervening in the economy — and ignore the roles played by two unfunded wars, deregulation and lack of oversight of financial markets. Hayworth said government cannot create jobs, not even in health care; she would "de-power and fund" the health care law, even though nearly 51 million people in the U.S. lacked insurance in 2008. And her serious concern about the federal deficit notwithstanding, Hayworth would extend the Bush tax cuts to all income groops, the super rich included. (Hall would extend them to 98 percent of all payers; individuals earning $500,000 and couples filing jointly and earning $1 million or more would see their rates revert to pre-2001 rates.)

The choice is abundantly clear:  Stand up for the guy who stands up for us.  Vote for Rep. John Hall.

Funniest -- and truthiest -- man in late-night.

Amid all the hubbub surrounding the Conan O’Brien-Jay Leno feud last winter, lost was the question of whether either man deserved the title of funniest man in late night.

Most of us sided with Conan, whose offbeat, irreverent comedy is better suited for the times than Leno’s outmoded one-liners and stupid-man tricks. 

But, as Conan returns to late night Nov. 8 at his new 11 p.m. berth on TBS -- with an online sneak preview on Monday -- the question arises again. My answer? No, neither is the funniest.  The true heir to the title, in my view, is Stephen Colbert, who is not just the best late-night comedian on TV, but the funniest person at any time of day.

With a glint in his eye and dagger on his tongue, Colbert sends up blowhards like Bill O’Reilly so thoroughly, conservatives can’t even tell he’s kidding.  He plays the part of a conservative flimflam man whose love for self – along with fame, wealth and rabble-rousing -- far exceeds his love for country, no matter what he says.  He rarely wavers from his persona, speaking fluent gasbaggery while weaving in digs, insults and insights no conservative would say, if he ever really thought about it. Which he wouldn't.

Colbert is as good today as he was four years ago when he skewered George W. Bush to his face at the White House Correspondents Dinner.  He looked straight at Bush, speaking with mock machismo and pretending to be of like minds while questioning if he had one at all:

It is my privilege to celebrate this president, ‘cause we're not so different, he and I. We both get it. Guys like us, we're not some brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We're not members of the factinista. We go straight from the gut. Right, sir?

That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. Now, I know some of you are going to say, "I did look it up, and that's not true." That's 'cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that's how our nervous system works.

Every night on my show, The Colbert Report, I speak straight from the gut, okay? I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the "No Fact Zone." FOX News, I hold a copyright on that term.

I'm a simple man with a simple mind. I hold a simple set of beliefs that I live by. Number one, I believe in America. I believe it exists. My gut tells me I live there. I feel that it extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and I strongly believe it has 50 states, and I cannot wait to see how the Washington Post spins that one tomorrow.

That took courage, even toward the reviled Bush.  Watching it live, like the C-SPAN geek I am, I alternately laughed and cringed as Colbert gave the most  literal expression of  "speaking truth to power" I've ever seen. Only, in his case, he spoke "truthiness to power,"  satirizing the right's belief that truth is in the eye -- or gut -- of the beholder, particularly if it's theirs. What a coincidence. The media wasn't spared, either, and the starchy reaction of reporters in that room only solidified the view of liberals that they are too close to their sources.  This is another frequent topic of Colbert.  If the media won't discuss it, he will.

Tomorrow's rally in Washington is of a piece with Colbert's correspondents' dinner appearance as well as the satirical bits he does nightly.  While Jon Stewart is hoping for sanity tomorrow, Colbert's alter-ego is counting on fear, not unlike his doppelgangers at Fox News who crave it just as much, though not as overtly. That's Colbert's genius.

Watch, in the upper right corner of this page, this segment from last night on the "Five Fear Groups."  (I haven't figured out how to embed web videos yet. Any clues?) Only Colbert could veer so close to bigotry without being accused of it himself.  (Daniel Tosh, I think, comes a little too close without the accompanying satire to leaven it.) Colbert doesn't believe the things he says but, sadly, all too many people do.

Turning my nose up at conservatives

Ah, Twitter. Both blessing and curse. It’s a great way to find out what’s going on in the world. It’s also a great way to kill time.

I was doing the latter not long ago when a tweet from filmmaker Errol Morris, director of "The Fog of War," lifted me out of my own fog and reminded me how I had ended up at Twitter in the first place.

Blaring “It’s better to be feted than fetid,” Morris set my mind racing through all the ways it may not be better. It may be worse.  It may be no different.  It may be a choice I'm not prepared to make yet.  Either way, it was a dare I took seriously – it's fun looking for connections between seemingly random words, and it's surprising how often there is one. But comparing a gala with a stink that won’t quit -- not as easy as it looks.

I thought a few moments then shot back “if it’s blue cheese, you can have both.” Ok, Colbert I’m not.  But Morris had now hurled me back, if you will, to the post I was writing on Tea Party crazyman Carl Paladino, who sent New Yorkers a mailer last summer that reeked of more than his usual bullshit – it carried the smell of said bullshit, or some other smell still to be determined. (His henchman, Michael Caputo, called it “landfill odor". Close enough.) My post was based on a New York Times piece by Peter Liberman, a political science professor at Queens College, and Cornell psychology professor David Pizarro on the “psychology of disgust” and conservative susceptibility to it.

Reading this story, the jokes, puns and metaphors had flown so fast I could hardly catch them.  That's why I had run to the warm embrace of Twitter:  to sort out the many ways I wanted to say, in essence – please stop me -- conservatives stink. As in:  Whenever something stinks in Washington, I think conservative. Who knew it actually made me think conservative? Or, conservatism is a rotting ideology, which may, ironically, be one of its strengths.  You get the idea.  Feel free to add your own below.

Many words in the “smell” family had already come to mind, including stench, rank, funk, foul, fumes, fart, shit, as well as the reactions they often evoke—sniff, whiff, gag, retch, pitch, puke, chuck.

And of course the ever-conjugable -- in the original sense --Stink, Stank, Stunk, a la The Grinch.

But somehow “fetid” had eluded me.  Thank you, Errol.

My twitterlude over, I sauntered back to Paladino and his smelly mailer, which, bearing the headline “Something Stinks in Albany,” was infused with an odor that made its figurative slogan real.  It was sent to 200,000 registered Republicans in September after Paladino won his primary against party favorite Rick Lazio.  It took a direct shot at seven Democrats who have been under investigation in New York at one time or another.  But its real aim was more subtle, even subliminal.

Research by Pizarro and others have shown that people who are exposed to foul smells or anything that elicits disgust are more likely to take conservative views immediately afterward than those who were not.  

One study found that people sitting in a room with a foul smell made harsher moral judgments about fudging a resume, say, than people sitting in an odor-free room.   But a smell wasn’t even necessary; just thinking of germs, or anything that fights them, drew  more conservative responses.  People standing near a hand-sanitizer in one study had more negative views toward gay men than those not near it.  Even cartoon germs were enough to evoke a negative response, this time toward immigrants, in another study.

Pizarro theorizes that early man learned to avoid outside groups that could expose them to germs for which they lacked immunity. This evolved over time into a “behavioral immune system” – not only feces, vomit or other germ-carriers caused disgust, but also the odors, images, behaviors and even people associated with them.  

Conservative yet?

In Pizarro’s research, conservatives scored higher on a “disgust sensitivity scale” than liberals, who apparently are less revolted by the thought of drinking a stranger’s soda can than conservatives are.  Simple observation would tend to bear this out.  Look at the dress, or desk, of a conservative, and no doubt the words “tidy” and “fastidious” would come to mind, with “OCD” not far behind.  Most conservatives I know are neat freaks who wouldn’t think of letting a dish tarry in their sink overnight.  My dishes, meanwhile, jockey for room. Often, there is blood.  My father, a Rush Limbaugh devotee, is about as neat as a man can be while remaining straight.  My mother, nearly as conservative, minus the Palin boner, thinks he’s a slob. No scale can capture her disgust.

Besides literal disgust -- and, no doubt, liberal disgust -- the most disturbing aspect of these studies is the xenophobia that seems to lurk in our genes.  It’s like Juan Williams in microcosm – it may be in our nature to fear people unlike us, and these fears may be exacerbated, even encouraged, by forces beyond us.  I’m talking to you, Fox News. Yet, as humans, we also have the ability to stuff them back in, override them with reason, tell ourselves not to heed all our fears, but think them through. Our lizard brains work for us, not the other way around. Yet, that’s something I rarely see conservatives do, at least today’s Palinized breed that exalts flame-throwing over fact.

That is an irony in itself. The party that disdains science – global warming, evolution, genetics  --  is not averse to championing it when needed, particularly the softer variety. Who can forget the famous “RATS” ad created by Republican pitchman, and CNN propagandist, Alex Castellanos that used subliminal advertising during Bush’s campaign against Gore in 2000? Or the brilliance -- and enduring legacy – of Frank Luntz’ crusade to engineer the language to Republican advantage? There’s also the ever-sophisticated data mining that blends what we do and say and buy with how we vote.

So it’s both impressive, and scary, that the Paladino campaign happened upon the psychology of disgust, and found a way to use it.  It's also unlikely. My bet is there's a Luntz link here as well  – the guy who massages conservative brains with words is just clever enough to have read this research and applied it. Still, it’s a mystery.

So, the next time you're near spoiling sirloin -- especially the fetid kind --  don’t be surprised if you start feeling like a red-meat conservative.

 With luck, it’ll pass. Like gas.

Is there a mosque I can protest somewhere?