ThoughtCrimes.org

In a colloquy with Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Sen. Jeff Merkley, a freshman Democrat from Oregon, was pleading for Bunning to drop his objection, when the Kentucky Republican got fed up…

“Tough s—t,” Bunning said as he was seated in the back row, overheard by the floor staff and others in attendance.On the floor, Bunning leaned back in his chair, legs crossed, as he listened to a slew of Democratic senators talk about the bill he is blocking. From Politico

There’s nothing quite like the machismo of people courageous enough to square their shoulders and shrug off the suffering of others. Oh, the steel of their eyes, the rock-hard set of their jaws!

For instance, take Jim Bunning, Republican Senator from Kentucky, who singlehandedly prevented the extension of unemployment benefits this week. Does the fact that 1.2 million Americans may lose their unemployment benefits give him pause? Kentucky’s 10.7% unemployment rate? Not a bit of it! Yessir, Senator Bunning is perfectly willing for Americans to bite the bullet and scramble to figure out how to pay their bills, feed their kids, and in general avoid homelessness.

And lest anyone imagine the man’s some sort of superhuman, he’s admitted to a vulnerable side. “I have missed the Kentucky-South Carolina game that started at 9 o’clock” he said, as a way of illustrating the sacrifices he’s willing to make in order to block the extension of benefits.

The sheer manliness of the right wing, however, is proven by its willingness not to just endure, but laugh at other people’s adversity. It’s a measure of the sheer humorlessness of liberals that Louise Slaughter was unaware of the comedy gold she was offering with her story of the woman so unable to afford dental care that she was using her dead sister’s dentures. But as Rush Limbaugh, the man who once did such a knee-slapping imitation of a Parkinsons’ patient, asked, “what’s wrong with using a dead person’s teeth?”



What, indeed? They all fit the same, don’t they? And aside from causing pressure sores, severe pain, and the ridges of your mouth shrinking to the point where fitting dentures of your own will eventually be impossible, what harm could come from wearing false teeth fitted for somebody else’s mouth?

Besides, Rush asks, “if you don't have any teeth, so what? What's applesauce for?”

Because we all know that if Rush were to lose all his money, and then all his teeth (and God knows, we’d all just hate for that to happen to him,) he’d cheerfully live on apple-sauce for the rest of his life.

And, Mr. President, when you say with catastrophic plans, they
don't go for care until later, I say sometimes the people with
catastrophic plans are the people that are best consumers of health
care in using the way they use their health care dollars, because a
lot of people come in and say, my knee hurts, maybe I should get an
MRI, they say, and then they say, will my insurance cover it? That's
the first question. And if I say yes, then they say, okay, let's do
it. If I say, no, then they say, well, what isl it going to cost?
And what's it cost ought to be the first question. And that's why
sometimes people with catastrophic problem -- catastrophic health
plans ask the best questions, shop around, are the best consumers of
health care.

And he should know because he’s a medical doctor! See, the first question shouldn’t be, “is this test going to find out what’s wrong with me?” The first question should be “what’s it going to cost?” (Which, come to think of it, is exactly what the first question for many patients is these days. And to think we act like that’s a problem!)

Barrasso went on to invoke some examples of savvy medical shoppers, like “the premier of one of the Canadian provinces came here just
last week to have his heart operated on.” and “a member of parliament -- a Canadian member
of parliament with cancer came to the United States for her care.”

President Obama then politely asked Representative Barrasso the question I suspect was on the minds of most viewers:

Would you feel the same way if you were making
$40,000, or you had -- that was your income? Because that's the
reality for a lot of folks. I mean, it is very important for us --
when you say, to listen -- to listen to that farmer that Tom mentioned
in Iowa; to listen to the folks that we get letters from -- because
the truth of the matter, John, is they're not premiers of anyplace,
they're not sultans from wherever. They don't fly into Mayo and
suddenly decide they're going to spend a couple million dollars on the
absolute, best health care. They're folks who are left out.

Most descriptions of this exchange I’ve seen online describe Senator Barrasso as “silent” after this, but that’s not quite so. He tried again. And got firmly slapped down again with reality:

SENATOR BARRASSO: Mr. President, having a high-deductible plan
and a health savings account is an option for members of Congress and
federal employees --

THE PRESIDENT: If -- that's right, because members of Congress
get paid $176,000 a year.

SENATOR BARRASSO: -- 16,000 employees did take advantage of that.

THE PRESIDENT: Because they --

SENATOR BARRASSO: And so, it's the same plan --

THE PRESIDENT: -- because members of Congress --

SENATOR BARRASSO: -- that the Park Rangers get in the
Yellowstone National Park.

THE PRESIDENT: John -- John, members of Congress are in the top
income brackets of the country. And health savings accounts I think
can be a useful tool, but every study has shown that the people who
use them are folks who've got a lot of disposable income. And the
people that we're talking about don't.

This very simple fact, by the way -- that most Americans aren't making $100k a year -- is something the Republicans had to keep being reminded of, as when Senator Dick Durbin observed:

When I hear my friend John Boehner say we have the best healthcare in the world, I don’t dispute it for a moment. If I were sick, this is the country I’d want to be in, with these doctors, these hospitals, and these medical professionals. But step back for a second and look at who we are in this room. As was said many years ago, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids both the wealthy and the poor from sleeping under bridges.”…. If you think it’s a socialist plot and it’s wrong, for goodness’ sake drop out of the federal employees health benefit program.” Dick Durbin, Healthcare Summit, 2/25/10

"I don’t hear people complaining about the insurance policies they’re getting from the big companies.” Representative John Kline ( R ) , Health Care Summit, 2/25/10

This is a Boehner moment. As many will remember, last October John Boehner said he couldn’t find any Americans outside of Congress or the Obama administration who supported a public option. Now Representative John Kline has announced he hasn’t heard any of those complaints from people who’ve had their claims denied by those big insurance companies.

Nope. It’s news to him.

Moreover, women who engage in behavior that is perceived as “knowing” or “reckless” and who then suffer a miscarriage are potentially vulnerable to criminal investigation and prosecution under H.B. 12. For example, a woman who fails to wear a seatbelt and is in a car accident could be charged with reckless homicide, should she miscarry. Likewise, a preganant woman with a substance abuse problem is likely to forego necessary prenatal care out of fear that she could be prosecuted for “knowing” or “reckless” homicide by continuing to use illegal substances while pregnant.” ACLU Letter to Governor Gary R. Herbert, on House 12 Bill, “Criminal Homicide and Abortion Amendments”

Utah’s proposed “criminal miscarriage” law includes miscarriages in the definition of “illegal abortion” and opens the way to charging women deemed to have caused their own miscarriages by “knowing or reckless behavior.” It’s passed Utah’s House and Senate and is waiting for the governor’s signature.

We’ve already seen cases where women have been arrested for things like looking for a second opinion after a doctor recommended a caesarian, or falling down a flight of stairs while pregnant.

Think prosecutors in Utah, the state that recently proposed eliminating 12th Grade, will be any more rational and restrained?

At the press conference, the Rev. Joe Ellison, vice president of the Council on Biblical Principles, said that when he was in college, he paid for girlfriends to get abortions. He said he still feels guilty about that today. www.wtop.com 2/22/10

This is an excerpt from a story on the kerfuffle surrounding Republican Bob Marshall’s comment about disabled children being God’s punishment for abortions. That was weird enough, but this passage, with its plurals, really caught my eye.

He had to pay for abortionS?

He said that?

Tucker said one person joked if her husband has a heart attack, she’ll be tempted to light the kitchen table on fire to dodge the fees. Tracy Press

The town of Tracy, California. has decided to start charging residents $300 for every 911 call made that results in the fire department responding to a medical emergency. Households will have the option of paying a yearly $48 fee and waive the charge.

Non-residents will be charged $400.

One would think any rational and humane community would consider it desirable that people call 911 when there’s an emergency, but I guess not. Now, in addition to worrying about whether or not their insurance (if they have it) will cover them in the event of a serious medical problem, some people are going to have to worry about getting socked with a $300 or $400 bill if the fire department shows up before an ambulance does.

Visiting Tracy? Having serious chest pains? Gee – can you afford to do the sensible thing and call 911, or would you rather be able to pay your rent next month?

Maybe you’d better just grit your teeth and trust in your own ability to drive to the emergency room without passing out at the wheel on a busy street.

There is nothing magical about a military tribunal, they don’t have necessarily better lawyers than in a civilian sector. I think I have a lot more faith in our US attorneys who are nonpolitical than our colleagues on the other side of this debate do. We can try them, we should try them, that is precisely, Jay, what our law provides for, and when the first time we’re faced with a situation, we say, “Oh, we want to have them go to the military, let them torture a while…” It’s not “enhanced interrogation” techniques. Waterboarding is torture…”

(Shouts, boos)

Bob Barr, Being Shouted Down at CPAC for Calling Torture “Torture.”

This is unbearable.

I entered this world at the tail end of the baby boom. For many in my generation, the 20th century’s most graphic lessons about humanity and its capacity for inhumanity were a shadow cast over our present. My own reaction was to look at some photographs from the previous decades, and examine the faces of the people who were, for instance, gathered smiling around the still smoldering corpse of a lynching victim, or grinning at the sight of other people being forced to scrub a sidewalk, or laughing at men being frog-marched. Even in my own time I saw things that made me wonder, like grown people gathering around school buses of terrified black children and shrieking threats and obscenities at them.

What were these human beings telling themselves? I could – with effort – understand a single individual who, through some horrible inner quirk, got pleasure from imagining others being hurt and humiliated. Even then, surely, it would be recognized as shameful. It wouldn’t be put on display for a photographer or a news crew, as if it were virtuous.

How could an entire society, whether it was segregated America or the Third Reich, be so sick that this was seen as acceptable?

No, I’m not naïve. I know that there are many people who decide what is right and what is wrong by looking around and assessing how the crowed gathered around them is reacting. For people like that, right and wrong are not determined by a single, consistently applied ethic. Right and wrong is instead a list of self-serving rules driven by their own preferences. “Right “is what they can get away with, what they can do without their friends edging away from them. In their minds, it’s “wrong” to openly rejoice in the agony of someone who looks and thinks as they do. It’s “right,” even just, to openly rejoice in the agony of someone who does not.

And when people like that start influencing a country, when they become major players and major decision makers about policy, that country is in serious trouble.

Societies that embrace torture as policy are not, as a rule, remembered with affection. The cowardly sheep that gather in flocks to bleat their approval of sadism are not looked back on as anything but cowardly sheep.

Someday, this bit of video will be remembered – but not in the way these booing and baaing perverts imagine.

…We were sitting at home with our oldest son. He’s just finishing medical school, and he revealed to us that he had a goal when he went to medical school. And we said, “well, what is it?” And he said his goal was to persuade one liberal to become a conservative. Pretty good goal! And so, as fate would have it, his roommate was a San Francisco liberal. I’m not making this up. This is absolutely true! And so this conservative kid from Minnesota worked powers of persuasion, day after day, week after week, in between exams, in between the years, and he has now been so successful that he texted me last night and he said, “Mom,” his roommate’s name “just emailed me a Pat Buchanan column out of Worldnet Daily. I’d say that’s a success! Michelle Bachmann at CPAC

Via Media Matters



This is a story that cries out for more context. Was this roommate really a San Francisco liberal, or just a centrist from San Francisco who doesn’t consider Obama the anti-Christ? How is this presumed ex-liberal emailing a Pat Buchanan column proof that her son has converted a liberal to a conservative? For all we know, the Buchanan column was heavily annotated by the roommate with snarky comments and refutations. What form did this persuasion “day after day, week after week, in between exams, etc.” take? It sounds less like persuasion than relentless pestering.

And if this conversion is real, the fact that her son’s in med school gives a rather sinister cast to it. Is there something Michelle isn’t telling us? Did her son add, “You know, Mom, prefrontal lobotomies are a lot easier to do on the sly than you’d think…”

But it’s not enough that her son apparently badgered his roommate into “converting.” Bachmann wants to unleash her followers on the rest of us. … “I challenge everyone in this room to do what our son did,” she declares in that same speech. “If he can persuade a San Francisco liberal to flip and be a Pat Buchanan, Worldnet Daily reading conservative, you can do it too!”

Now that would be interesting, given the rhetoric I’ve seen coming out of CPAC. What are all these conservatives going to do when they discover that marching up to a liberal relative and co-worker and saying “You are a commie traitor. Stop being a commie traitor right now” isn’t persuasive?

“And there were some strong words spoken at Saturday’s Tea Party in Asotin…”
Stephanie Smith KLEWTV



The strong words being a speaker saying, to a cheering crowd of tea-partiers, that she wanted to see Democratic Senator Patty Murray “hung.”

There’s something a bit weird about both the videoed news story and the written coverage of this event by Stephanie Smith. The puff-piece, “covering a community event” perkiness that follows this quote is at odds with the image of someone invoking the execution of a public official. Maybe this was deliberate. Maybe Stephanie Smith is a crafty satirist.

Or maybe this kind of rhetoric has become so normalized…

“Is he not a great lover of books?”

They nodded.

“He’s very clever,” said Cora.

“But he reads it all in books,” said Clarice.

“Exactly!” Steerpike followed quickly upon this. “Then if he lost his books, he would be all but defeated….” From Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy.

If there’s one thing that caught my attention in the Mount Vernon Statement, the “conservative manifesto” released today, it was the following passage:

Each one of these founding ideas is presently under sustained attack. In recent decades, America's principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics.

Here is where the writers firmly tie themselves to the anti-intellectualism now driving American conservatism, that dislike of research and higher education inevitable among religious and political dogmatists. The right wing doesn’t like scientists because most scientists consider Global Warming a fact -- so scientists must be denounced as crooks trying to sell us all a bill of goods. As conservative Peter Robinson sums it up this interview:

So it fits the pattern of a group of intellectuals, science, climate scientists, who are, who have a very narrow competency, suddenly proclaiming that there’s a crisis, scaring the rest of us, thereby creating a demand for their services, not as climate scientists alone, but as a sort of high priestly class who can tell us all how to live and save the entire planet, and in the meantime generate billions of dollars worth of government programs to fund their research initiatives. It’s a racket!

Political and religious dogmatists don’t like historians either. Historians, after all, cannot trusted to play along with whatever form of historical revisionism the current dogma requires, whether it’s the fantasy of a master race (as in Germany in the 1930s) the presumed superiority of Communism, whether it works or not (As in the U.S.S.R. and Pol Pot’s Cambodia) or the presumed superiority of a laissez-faire free market system, whether it works or not (as in the American rightwing today. )

Currently, the drive is to revise 20th century history so that that fascism can be blamed on the left. The fact that the overwhelming majority of historians and contemporary observers of the Third Reich, whether sympathetic to Nazism or not, described the Nazis as “right wingers” is dealt with by denouncing them all as a bunch of leftists engaged in a monstrous socialist conspiracy that apparently encompassed journalists, historians, travel writers, diarists, and private letter writers. As Liberal Fascism author Jonah Goldberg said recently at NRO:

What I say is that American liberalism, infected by Frankfurt School Marxism (via Adorno, Hofstadter et al) as well as Popular Front leftism generally, has convinced itself that American conservatism is a close relative of fascism and that the further right you move in the American political system, the closer you get to fascism. This idea suffuses our popular culture, academia and a great deal of the liberal journalistic establishment.

You see, you can’t believe that enormous body of work about the Third Reich by journalists and historians because they were all socialists out to lie to the rest of us.

20th Century history is a liberal plot.

In Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy, that rambling, gothic metaphor for the rise of fascism in Europe, a pair of dimwitted twin sisters, Clarice and Cora, are inveigled into burning down the Earl of Gormenghast’s magnificent library. The vicious Steerpike incites this arson using simple and unassailable logic – their brother, the earl, is made “clever” and powerful by his knowledge, which he has acquired from books. The twins covet that power. They can take this power away from him by destroying the books.

It’s the rationale of anti-intellectuals everywhere, of people who regard advanced knowledge, not as an asset to be respected, but as an unfair advantage to be eliminated. Does science and history contradict their claims? Destroy science and history as we know it. Wipe it away and begin anew with one’s own version based, not on reality, but on what the dogmatist would like to be true.

This never ends well for anyone who’s involved. As I’ve observed, stupidity and ignorance tend to have a very short shelf life. They are rarely remembered by future generations with anything other than contempt. It would be interesting to see, thirty years from now, how the current right wing's stance on climate change and history will be remembered.

If we survive.