I can’t really blame the Republicans for getting excited about last night’s election results. Lord knows they are desperate for some good news after getting their clocks cleaned in the last several elections. But one thing should be made clear about this election. While Republicans may have won two big gubernatorial contests in Virginia and New Jersey, the clear losers in this election were the Teabaggers. No matter how they want to spin this on rightwing radio, Nancy Pelosi now has an even bigger majority in Congress than she did the day before. Democrats won a congressional district in upstate New York (23rd) that they had not won since the Civil War. They also held onto a Democratic district in California, replacing a moderate-conservative Democrat with a decidely more progressive Democrat. The California contest got hardly any attention at all because all eyes were focused on the NY23 race after Sarah Palin swooped in an annointed independent Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman as the Teabagger favorite over the mainstream Republican nominee Dede Scozzafava. The Teabaggers then went to work villifying Scozzafava because of her pro-choice views and her position on gay unions. Things got so bad that Scozzafava ended up dropping out of the race three days before the election and endorsed her Democratic opponent Bill Owens. But all the fawning media attention, the gobs of money (95 percent from out of the district) and the backing of nearly every prominent rightwinger in the country was not enough to lift Hoffman to victory on election day. For some reason, the voters in the 23rd District did not support a candidate who lived outside the district, knew nothing about the issues impacting the district and got most of his financial support from outside the district. Imagine that!!! But Republicans can still celebrate their victory in Virginia where conservative Republican Robert McDonnell trounced his hapless Democratic opponent. And there was no question that McDonnell was a conservative, however, he did not invite Palin or any of the other Teabagger crowd to come out and campaign for him and he made every effort to downplay his far right views and hew to a more mainstream position. In New Jersey, where Republican Chris Christie ousted the unpopular Democratic incumbent John Corzine, it would seem to be another big victory for the GOP. But before the Teabaggers start celebrating, they ought to check out Christie’s positions on some of their key issues. On abortion, Christie says he is “pro-life,” but then goes on to stress that he will not force his views onto anyone else as governor. Not exactly the kind of message Teabaggers like to hear. Then, on gun rights, Christie says he fully supports and backs New Jersey’s gun laws. I will let everyone guess how those might compare to laws in Texas and Oklahoma. Finally, on illegal immigration, Christie says he does not think it should be a criminal issue, only a civil one. Oh, and he supports civil unions for gay couples too. Sure sounds like the Teabaggers could have condemned Christie just as harshly as they did Scozzafava. The fact that they did not is probably due to either ignorance or hypocricy or both.
New biographies are out about Ayn Rand just as her objectivist philosophy is becoming resurgent within the rapidly shrinking Republican Party. I first heard of Rand when I was in college working with a group of liberal, idealistic students in the Students Against Apartheid group at Texas A&M. One of the girls in the group had recently become intrigued by Rand after picking up one of her novels and showed it to the rest of us. Someone else in the group immediately dismissed Rand as the “Goddess of Greed.” It is not hard to understand why Rand’s philosophy - expressed in her novels “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead” - would be popular among rightwingers today. Just like rightwing talk radio, it tells them exactly what they want to hear - that they (the readers) are privileged and special and that they should spend all their time and energy advancing their own interests and not worry about or bother with anyone else. It is the ultimate paen to greed and selfishness and that is pretty much what much of Republican political philosophy boils down to today. But there is one big problem with this Republican infatuation with Rand and her objectivism philosophy. It is not in any way compatible with their supposed Christian beliefs. Ayn Rand was an atheist who was basically disdainful of Christian philosophy. Here is what she had to say on the matter in a letter from July 9, 1946:
There is a great, basic contradiction in the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was one of the first great teachers to proclaim the basic principle of individualism -- the inviolate sanctity of man’s soul, and the salvation of one’s soul as one’s first concern and highest goal; this means -- one’s ego and the integrity of one’s ego. But when it came to the next question, a code of ethics to observe for the salvation of one’s soul -- (this means: what must one do in actual practice in order to save one’s soul?) -- Jesus (or perhaps His interpreters) gave men a code of altruism, that is, a code which told them that in order to save one’s soul, one must love or help or live for others. This means, the subordination of one’s soul (or ego) to the wishes, desires or needs of others, which means the subordination of one’s soul to the souls of others. This is a contradiction that cannot be resolved. This is why men have never succeeded in applying Christianity in practice, while they have preached it in theory for two thousand years. The reason of their failure was not men’s natural depravity or hypocrisy, which is the superficial (and vicious) explanation usually given. The reason is that a contradiction cannot be made to work. That is why the history of Christianity has been a continuous civil war -- both literally (between sects and nations), and spiritually (within each man’s soul).
So Rand rejected the core teachings of Jesus without any equivocation. At least she was honest. Most “Christian conservatives” reject his core teachings as well, but they are either too ignorant to realize it or pretend that they do not. Many simply ignore all the parts of the Bible that have to do with helping the poor and loving your neighbor - which takes up a sizable chunk of the New Testament - and instead focus on things like abortion and gay bashing which are hardly even mentioned in the Bible if at all. There are also a lot of people who rush out and embrace Rand without any real understanding of what it means. It is not as if you can be a Randian and a Christian at the same time, kind of like being a fan of both Star Wars and Star Trek. These are two completely divergent philosophies that are opposed to one another. One says love your neighbor as yourself, the other says love yourself and screw your neighbor. The way that many Republicans and conservatives today embrace Christ’s image while ignoring his teachings is similar to the way that they embrace the images and symbolism of America, but ignore or reject the actual workings of the government - the hard-fought, messy compromises, the diversity of races and cultures, and even the bloated bureacracy, without which there would be no country of which to speak.
Frank Rich's column in Sunday's NY Times is a must read this week. One can't help but wonder if we are witnessing the disintegration of the Republican Party. The wingnuts and the teabaggers who are taking over the Republican Party forced the Republican nominee in the race for the 23rd Congressional District of New York to drop out because they deemed her to be insufficiently conservative. Instead, they are backing the Conservative Party nominee - someone who doesn't even live in the district and has no clue or interest in the issues impacting the district. Now the Republican nominee, after having been forced out, is endorsing the Democrat in the race. Whether or not the Democrat wins - and no Democrat has won this district since the Civil War - this is a win-win for the Democrats as the Republicans continue to run off moderate (and sane) voters and continue to shrink into electoral insignificance.
Ever since Ronald Reagan declared that “government is the problem, not the solution”, the Republican Party has slowly devolved from being a conservative governing party to an anti-government party. This devolution has nearly reached its zenith with the rise of the “tea party” protestors now taking control of the party. Just witness the spectacle in the 23rd Congressional District in New York where Republican Party candidate Dede Scozzafava is being blindsided by the teapartiers because she is deemed too “liberal.” The teapartiers are throwing their support to a third party candidate, Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman, knowing full well this could mean that the Democratic candidate could wind up winning in a traditionally Republican district. But they don’t care because they just want to make an ideological point and besides, they aren’t interested in governing anyway. When Hoffman was recently questioned about local issues by the editorial board for one of the largest newspapers in the district, he demonstrated that he had no clue, no care and no concern for what was happening locally. His whole point in running for Congress is to represent a national anti-government agenda. Witness too the unprecedented level of obstructionism currently underway in the U.S. Senate where Republicans are blocking nearly every one of President Obama’s judicial picks and many of his nominees for important positions in the administration. It is almost as if the Republicans WANT the government to be dysfunctional. They are doing everything they can to make sure that the government cannot operate effectively and efficiently. We are in the midst of a healthcare crisis over swine flu and Republicans have held up confirmation of Obama’s Surgeon General nominee for months. The core philosophy of the Tea Party protesters, such that there is, is essentially radical anarchism. They are anti-anything that has to do with the government (unless it benefits them directly). Needless to say, this is not good for the long-term health of our country or our democracy. The movement is being supported by certain segments of the business community that view the government as an impediment to their ability to pillage and plunder the American economy, kind of like Enron, Worldcom and GlobalCrossing did early on in the Bush years after government regulations were slashed and like the financial sector did during the latter part of the Bush years right up until the big crash that we are still digging out from under. Why people would want a return to policies that led to these economic disasters in the first place is beyond my comprehension. I can only figure that they have been fed too many lies by talk radio and Fox News and can no longer sort out truth from fiction.
Here in this video we see Republican presidential nominee John McCain reverently quoting his hero "Chairman Mao" and acknowledging him as the inspiration for continuing his bid for the presidency. Using Mark Harden/Jonathan Gurwitz standards, this would make McCain and anyone who supported him for president suspect as possible communist dupes.
I finally got a CD copy of Raiders Collage, the first rock album I ever purchased as a kid. It is hard to explain the feeling of nostalgia this brings back. I remember being at the store at Grissom Air Force Base in Indiana. I was probably 6 years old at the time. And my parents let me look through the record section and pick out an album to buy. I had no clue what I was doing. I picked out Raiders Collage because it looked neat. I didn’t know anything about who they were or what kind of music they played. As it turns out, Collage was a concept album by the band formerly known as Paul Revere and the Raiders as they desperately tried to change their image and keep up with the times. They had been a popular act during the ‘60s when they would dress up in Revolutionary War uniforms and play spirited rock-pop tunes. They became the featured band for one of Dick Clark’s TV shows and got wide exposure for several years. But in 1970, when Collage was released, that was all behind them. They were already becoming dated and on the verge of becoming a nostalgia act. Several of the original band members had left and lead singer Mark Lindsey was trying to pull the band into the new decade. They ditched the old uniforms, let their hair grow longer, replaced missing band members with new people and shortened their name to Raiders. But the biggest change was the music. It now had a harder edge to it. They incorporated a brass section with fuzzy, distorted guitar licks and a heavy rock beat while Lindsay’s vocals were interspersed with howls and screams and more distortion. They went from sounding like an American version of Herman’s Hermits to sounding like Deep Purple. Of course, I didn’t know any of this at the time. But I did like it and I listened to the album over and over again. Unfortunately for the Raiders, Collage was a commercial failure. And even though just one year later they would have their biggest hit of all time - Indian Reservation - even that could not keep them from fading into obscurity. So there I was, a kid who is totally entranced with an album by a fading rock band, and then one day I picked up the album and the record slid out, fell to the floor and broke off about a one-inch piece that cut into the first tracks on either side. I was devestated because those were also two of my favorite songs. I found that if I could set the needle right next to where the break was and start the record just right, I could hear the end of the scream in the middle of “The Boys in the Band”, which was my favorite part. Sigh. I never thought to ask my parents to replace the broken album. I just moved on to other music. But years later, I decided to see if I could pick up a copy of the album on CD only to find it had never been issued on CD by any major label and the small independent labels were out of stock and out of print. The best I could do was buy a Greatest Hits compilation of Paul Revere and the Raiders which only had a couple of the songs from Collage - and not the ones that had broken on my record. Then, last month I saw on the Raiders’ Facebook page that Collage had been reissued on CD and packaged together with the subsequent album that featured Indian Reservation. I was delighted! I quickly found one on eBay and within a week had my copy in the mail. Now that I’ve had a chance to listen to the whole album straight through again I am impressed with how good it is. Don’t get me wrong! It’s not the Beatles by any means. But it is pretty good. Too bad the album didn’t sell better than it did. In their subsequent albums they dropped their new musical style and went back to the pop-rock approach that had worked for them in the ‘60s. Today, you can still see Paul Revere and the Raiders (I think Paul Revere is the only remaining original member) perform as a full-blown novelty act at the Andy Williams Theater in Branson, Missouri.
Here is a video I found on Youtube for Dr. Fine, probably the hardest, loudest song on the album....
Why I don’t like Rush Limbaugh (or Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly, etc.)
I first heard Rush Limbaugh on the radio in 1988 when I was still living in College Station. He immediately reminded me of the loud-mouthed TV demogogue Morton Downey Jr. From the very first time I heard him until this day, my impression has not changed. He is the epitome of the schoolyard bully. He is like the kid who tries to build himself up by picking on and beating up the weakest, most unpopular kids in school. And the legions of “dittoheads” who listen faithfully to Rush everyday? They are like the kids who would stand around squealing and cheering everytime the bully would start attacking some other kid. Rush Limbaugh and his army of clones have always been like this. They may cast themselves as the outsiders and the defenders of the little guy, but they are in truth on the side of the rich and the powerful and the well connected. Just look at Limbaugh’s political agenda and how it stacks up to the army of lobbyists in Washington, D.C. The most powerful lobby groups in D.C. - The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the NRA, the AIPAC; the largest and best funded think tanks - Heritage Foundation, AEI, Cato Institute.... None of these groups ever have much conflict with Limbaugh. He supports their agenda and promotes their positions. The groups that receive Limbaugh’s wrath and ridicule are the least popular, least powerful groups that are most often marginalized in Washington. These include minorities, the poor, gays, feminists, immigrants, environmentalists and just about anyone who fails to fall in lockstep behind the conservative agenda. Over the years, Limbaugh has come to dominate the Republican Party and much of the political discourse in this country. And in so doing, he has come up with a successful formula that has been copied and imitated by nearly everyone in the conservative movement - that is to make up for a poor defense by having a good offense. The conservatives are currently weighed down with tired, old ideas that have been tried and failed (in some cases multiple times). So how is it that they can continue to tout these ideas and gain the support of the electorate? Simple. They don’t even bother trying to defend or explain the rationale for the ideas. They just skip the defense and go straight to the offense by attacking the person or persons who leveled the criticism, thus changing the parameters of the debate. Was there a story in the newspaper that exposed major flaws in Republican policies? It’s the “Liberal Media” trying to tear down the country once again! The Liberal Media can’t be trusted! The Liberal Media wants the terrorists to win! And so forth. A deputy communication aide for President Obama stated the obvious fact last week that Fox News is essentially the propaganda arm of the Republican Party. Does Glenn Beck try and defend Fox News and demonstrate how it is really an objective (fair and balanced) news operation? Of course not! Instead, some of his flunkies dig up a speech that the communication aide made some time ago in which she quotes Mao Tse Tung. She’s a communist!, Beck shrieks. Nevermind that Republican GOP presidential nominee John McCain quoted Mao in speeches as well. The terms of the debate are now reset to where we talk about how horrible Mao was and not about Fox News and its bogus news gathering operation. Works like a charm everytime.
Steve Benen calls attention to an initiative by a Jerry Falwell group to urge its members to "Adopt-a-Liberal" and pray for them. I'm assuming their prayers are meant to turn the individuals more conservative. But what if these liberals are like me and are liberal BECAUSE of their Christian beliefs? Are these Falwellians praying that they will become less Christian?
"Dear Lord, Please cause this person to turn inward and become more self-focused. Let them see the light that turning their backs on the poor and downtrodden is the true path to righteousness. Have them recognize that starting wars, promoting torture and supporting capital punishment is the true path to the Prince of Peace. Amen."
Obama called for the repeal of the ban on gays in the military -- the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. "We should not be punishing patriotic Americans who have stepped forward to serve this country," he said. "I'm working with the Pentagon, its leadership and the members of the House and Senate on ending this policy, legislation that has been introduced in the House to make this happen, I will end 'don't ask, don't tell.' That's my commitment to you." The president said he backed the rights of gay couples, saying they should have the "same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple in this country." He said he has urged Congress to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and to pass the Domestic Partners Benefit and Obligations Act.
I'm wondering if having the Nobel Peace Prize under his belt won't spur Obama to push this along and may even help him to get it through. The Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy has long outlived its usefulness as a transition period and needs to be eliminated. And the Orwellian "Defense of Marriage Act" is simply reprehensible and will one day be looked back on by history in the same light as the Jim Crow laws.
President Obama's Nobel Peace prize in unquestionably coming sooner than anyone would have expected. I don't think anyone can really avoid calling the honor premature. I liken it to having the Academy Award for Best Picture awarded to a movie while it is still being filmed. Or inducting a baseball player into the Hall of Fame after his rookie season.
Still, I would rather have the world tossing premature Nobel Peace prizes at our president rather than throwing shoes at him.
