The Case Of The Shrinking Testicles

Senator Ben Nelson, the conservative Democrat from Nebraska, in a naked attempt to save his political keister in 2012, has said he will join a Republican filibuster involving one of Obama’s nominees to the National Labor Relations Board, Craig Becker.

This is not good news for unions or American workers.  And, of course, it’s not good news for Ben Nelson, who polls show would lose to Jesus in a head to Godhead contest.

The NLRB is an extremely important agency charged with administering the National Labor Relations Act, the federal firewall protecting unions from total annihilation at the hands of employers.  Thus, conservatives and libertarians generally hate the NLRA and are suspicious of anyone a Democrat might appoint to the Board.  

In any case, the five-member Board adjudicates cases involving labor/management disputes and currently has only one member and four vacancies.  Yes. Only one. And four vacancies.

My experience with the Board was this: Under President Clinton, it was pro-labor.  Under George Bush Part Deux, it was pro-management.  Why?  Because presidents, especially ones who indisputably win elections, get to appoint members of the board. So, each president will appoint members in line with his beliefs about the utility of unions.  Doesn’t that sound reasonable?  I mean, among the many things that happens when a candidate wins an election, is that he gets to put his people in positions like serving on the NLRB.

Except that’s not what happens now that Republicans have found some potential in using filibuster steroids. 

Just like the way we have decided to call the days when Mark McGwire was using his juiced-up biceps to crush baseballs, ”the steroid era,” these times will someday be known as the ”filibuster era” in Senate history, with all the associated ignominy.

And one of the famous side effects of steroid use—shrinking testicles—is now evident in the Senate: Someone check Ben Nelson’s ball sack.

It’s not that Craig Becker killed anyone or called Rush a retard.  It’s that, according to Nelson, he may actually believe in all that union stuff. He may even interpret the NLRA in ways conservatives don’t like.  Imagine that!

Nelson’s lame reasons for joining the filibuster, which can be found on his website, are an example of the kind of politics that conservatives—now including conservative Democrats—are playing these days.  Here is just one example, in which Nelson quotes a 1993 Minnesota Law Review article. I will supply the emphasis:

…Becker asserted that employees should be compelled to join labor unions: “…it could be argued that industrial democracy should be made more like political democracy by altering the nature of the choice presented to workers in union elections. Such a reform would mandate employee representation, and the question posed on the ballot would simply be which representative.”

Just like that, Nelson turned a passive, “it could be argued,” into a emphatic, “Becker asserted.”

At this point in our stagnant politics, I don’t care if  Mr. Becker has in his basement a freezer full of  conservative carcasses, carved like chicken chunks.  Democrats, including Obama, should put up a fight for him.  Make Ben Nelson become part of the steroidal filibuster tag team by actually forcing Republicans to conduct their filibuster. 

That way all would know he was juicing up with Republicans.  Who knows, maybe someday Nelson could become a hitting coach for the Cardinals.

Palm Reading

Now that we all know how Sarah Palin made it through college, it’s time to cut her some slack.

I mean, so what if she needed a hand-y cheat sheet to remind herself that her and her Republican Party’s raison d’être was to “lift American Spirits.” One can’t be expected to carry such stuff around in one’s head, right? It gets in the way of other important stuff.

And, if someone had told me that Ms. Palin needed a Sharpie-produced reminder of why she was at the National Tea Party, or why she was traveling about the country making appearances and basking in the adulation of angry, if hypocritical, teabaggers, I would have guessed it would have looked like this:

 

“Hood-draped Racists Turgid With Anticipation”

Perhaps I have been too hard on teabaggers.  

Perhaps my distaste for bone-headed, right-wing populist protests has clouded my vision and affected my objectivity.

Maybe the events in Nashville this weekend do represent a revival of Republicanism, injecting that party with a booster shot of bona-fide conservatism, provided by the likes of Tom Tancredo, who opened the National Tea Party Convention with remarks that, no doubt, made hood-draped racists turgid with anticipation. 

Maybe the Tea Party movement does portend a “counter-revolution” to come, sweeping away “big government,” including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other malevolent bastards of liberalism, replacing such things with free-market Darwinism.

Maybe I don’t know a darn thing about conservatism, despite spending most of my adult life claiming I was one. It’s possible that I don’t know the difference between genuine conservative thought, which I have contended has all but disappeared, and the current wave of reactionary populism being promoted by no-nothing right-wing broadcasters, who sell such nonsense as genuine ”conservatism.”

That could all be true.

But having read, among other things, George Will’s Statecraft as Soulcraft a long time ago, I thought I had a handle on all this stuff.  In that book, he wrote:

Conservatives rightly defend the market as a marvelous mechanism for allocating resources. But when conservatives begin regarding the market less as an expedient than as an ultimate arbiter of all values, their conservatism degenerates to the least conservative impulse, which is populism. 

Maybe George Will doesn’t understand conservatism either.

Next Time Try Free Wings And Beer

I will be the first to admit that getting 600 people to come to your event is pretty impressive.  I mean, if at your last birthday party you had 600 celebrants, I would say you were pretty damn popular—or you were giving away free wings and beer.

But it seems to me that if the teabagging phenomenon is more than just worried white folks blowing off a little cultural steam, then the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville would have attracted more costume-laden fans than a mere 600. 

Heck, I like dressing up in 18th-century drapery as much as the next guy, but if I were courageous enough to parade around in public in such attire I would want more support than that.  In fact, our own Joplin Tea Party last April drew more folks, of course that was because most of them gathered to see Thomas Jefferson’s fantastic impersonation of local Republican activist, John Putnam.

←Pretty good, isn’t it?

In any case, I think it’s may be a good sign that more people didn’t show up or weren’t invited.  It may mean the organizers suspected that a substantial number of sincere teapartiers would refuse to be exploited and would refuse to pay the steep fee to see Sarah Palin accept her $100,000 check.

Or it may mean that Obama’s strategy of trying to put as many teabaggers out of work as possible—through his Socialist economic policies—is working, thus the culture warriors couldn’t afford to pay the steep fees associated with teabagging on the national level.

I’m fairly sure it’s the former, but I’m hoping it’s the latter. 

Because I’d like to think Obama could do something to help the country.

The Road To November Is Paved With Molasses

From a PR Newswire report, here is just another day in Republican-controlled Washington, D.C.:

Nearly ten months after her nomination last April, the U.S. Senate today confirmed Martha N. Johnson as Administrator of General Services.

Upon assuming office, Johnson will become the first permanent Administrator of the General Services Administration in nearly two years.

Why, you ask, did it take so long?  According to HuffPo:

Earlier in 2009, Johnson was unanimously approved by members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. But a single senator, Republican Kit Bond from Missouri, has used his symbolic ‘privilege’ to hold up consideration of Johnson’s nomination since last summer. The delay was meant to pressure GSA administrators to approve a $175 million federal building project in Kansas City.

Oh, I see.

Well, anyway, since there was nearly a year-long delay, one might expect that Ms. Johnson received considerable opposition from Republicans once the vote commenced.  Nope.  She was confirmed 96-0.

Numerous nominees for positions in the Obama administration remain unfilled because of the Republican strategy to run out the clock until the next election, and likely beyond.  Republicans have obstructed the legislative process in every conceivable way, including Senator Bond’s hypocritical maneuver reported above. 

Such behavior has turned the United States Senate into something of a joke:  “Hell will freeze over The Senate will pass a bill before I ever loan my Uncle Ray another five bucks.” 

TPM published a story last week regarding the way Republicans have used the filibuster in the Senate.  It chronicled what it called “an explosion” of filibuster threats by the GOP:

“It is the most striking in history,” American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Norm Ornstein told TPM.

What happened, Ornstein says, is that during the last two years of President George W. Bush’s second term, Republicans offered “no initiatives to speak of.”

The initiatives were coming from the Democrats, and the Republicans wanted to kill ‘em, or slow things down.

Republican filibuster threats, Ornstein said, were “like throwing molasses in the road.”

These days, of course, Republicans have completely paved the road with molasses, so it’s hard to think up ways to do more damage to the process.  But, wait, here’s one:

Report: Shelby Blocks All Obama Nominations In The Senate Over AL Earmarks

The report, again from TPM,  explains yet another example of Republican recalcitrance:

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary “blanket hold” on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.

Why would the fiscally conscious, deficit-hating, small-government Senator do such a thing?

Shelby has been tight-lipped about the holds, offering only an unnamed spokesperson to reporters today to explain them. Aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid broke the news of the blanket hold this afternoon. Reid aides told CongressDaily the hold extends to “all executive nominations on the Senate calendar.”

According to the report, Shelby is holding Obama’s nominees hostage until a pair of lucrative programs that would send billions in taxpayer dollars to his home state get back on track.

Oh.  I see.

[Bond photo: Politico; Shelby photo: Blenn Baeske/Huntsville Times]

Kit Bond Apologize? Are You Kidding?

In a letter to President Obama, Kit Bond, our retiring Senator, lashed out at the White House for broadcasting “to the world” and to “our enemies” some “timely and sensitive information.”  In the letter, Bond stopped short of accusing Obama of secretly wanting the terrorists to win, but you get the point.

The issue was over the newly released fact that Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab, the panty bomber, has been giving up important information related to his terrorist activities, contradicting Republican hysteria that the administration erred by reading Abdulmutallab’s his Miranda rights.

Naturally, the administration didn’t take too kindly to accusations that the President would put politics above national security, as Republican right-wingers have done so often, and, according to ABC news, shot back today:

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs just now said GOP Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., owes people in the White House and in law enforcement an apology for alleging in a recent letter that the administration leaked classified information about Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab for political reasons.

No classified information was shared in the Tuesday night briefing for reporters, Gibbs said, and it was shared not for political reasons but to provide context for information that came out during that day’s hearing about Abdulmuttalab cooperating again with law enforcement.

The White House “would never ever knowingly release or unknowingly release information that could endanger an operation,” Gibbs said.

My guess is the President will wait a long, long time before he receives anything like an apology for Republican fear mongering. 

It’s just the way Republicans do things these days.

Gibbs wasn’t done with Bond, however. ABC News also reported:

He also noted that Bond, briefed Monday on Abdulmuttalab’s cooperation, continued to erroneously repeat that Abdulmuttalab stopped talking after being read his Miranda rights.

Now, I think it is ridiculous for Gibbs to insist on honesty from any politician whose modus operandi is to scare the hell out of the public related to Obama and national security issues. 

Telling the truth won’t scare anyone.

12 Minutes On Republican Obstructionism

If you have about 12 minutes, you won’t waste it by watching the following clip from Monday’s Rachel Maddow Show. It featured a brief survey of ongoing Republican obstructionism in Congress and an interview of Barney Frank, who outlined a very different version of recent political history from what you get from right-wingers on television, radio, and the op-ed section of the Joplin Globe.

As usual, Saint Rachel, a liberal, does a great job of presenting a cogent analysis of what is going on.  And, of course, conservatives will dispute her analysis and challenge Frank’s version of history.  I only ask that people listen to both sides of the debate and decide for themselves. 

It’s not that hard to figure out who’s telling the truth and who has something to hide.  

Ask, Tell, And Go To Hell

On Tuesday, during a segment on Hardball with Chris Matthews that discussed Obama’s pledge to repeal the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy toward homosexuals in the military, I watched this exchange between Chris Matthews and Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council, the Gestapo of American morality:  

Matthews: Let me ask you, Peter.  Do you think people choose to be gay?  

Sprigg: People do not choose to have same-sex attractions but they do choose to engage in homosexual conduct. And that’s conduct, also, which incidentally, is against the law within the military.  It violates the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  It doesn’t make any sense for us to be actively recruiting people who are going to violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  

Matthews: Do you think we should outlaw gay behavior?  

Sprigg: I think that the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas*, which overturned the sodomy laws in this country, was wrongly decided.  I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.  

Matthews: So, we should outlaw gay behavior?  

Sprigg: Yes! [laughs] 

Nevermind that Sprigg concedes that “same-sex attractions” are not choices, which is a monumental concession in itself for a member of the Religious Right.  Having so conceded, he then proceeds to argue that acting on one’s innate attraction to same-sex partners should be criminal.    

It’s as if he argued that even though one has a predeliction toward women, the government is within its prerogatives to outlaw sex with women. This, my friends, is a rare glimpse into the mind of a Talibanic zealot–and a major player in the Republican Party–who, if he had his way, would proscribe the sexual behavior of people based on his religious beliefs.

 Here is the segment transcribed above:

 *This case was decided 6 to 3. Kennedy, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer and O’Connor  were in the majority, and Scalia, Rehnquist, and Thomas were, predictably, in the minority.  I urge interested readers to read Scalia’s dissent, in which he ridiculed the majority’s inconsistent application of stare decisis, and then compare it to the conservative rationale in the recent case (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission) that gave corporations free speech rights.