The End is Near

All of a sudden family and friends are sending good links.

Kris sent this link, which is a performance of the Hallelujah Chorus that is very clever. I think the introduction is overlong; you may disagree. I also didn't like the St. Francis of Sissies thing. What is that about? Are they saying something about monks, St. Francis, gays, or Roman Catholics? But if you can get past that, the performance itself is clever.

Brother Ted (a sibling, not a monk) sent this video of Congressman Shimkus from my former Congressional District in Southern Illinois, explaining why global warming couldn't be happening.



Lord, help us.

I try to be respectful of other people's beliefs, but if they're going to be spouting blather like that, they deserve to be challenged. Actually, Shimkus is a perfect representative for Southern Illinois. Unfortunately, he has a vote in Congress.

Do you ever have the feeling that you're living in a science fiction novel, where the decisions are made by people who don't believe in history or science, but instead worship strange idols that are not subject to any sort of empirical test, and that that leads to the destruction of human life? I have that feeling all the time now.

Hoovervilles -- No, Republicanvilles

During the Great Depression, shantytowns formed in many American cities where the homeless and jobless threw up shacks to live in. They were called "Hoovervilles."

It's happening again. Crooks and Liars collects reports of tent cities growing up in Sacramento, Seattle, Reno, and Nashville. To tell you the truth, the tent cities look like more precarious places to live than the Hooverville shacks.

Here's a video from MSNBC.

Bob Herbert has a good column about the general subject of conservative malfeasance here.

The seeds of today’s disaster were sown some 30 years ago. Looking at income patterns during that period, my former colleague at The Times, David Cay Johnston, noted that from 1980 (the year Ronald Reagan was elected) to 2005, the national economy, adjusted for inflation, more than doubled. (Because of population growth, the actual increase per capita was about 66 percent.)

But the average income for the vast majority of Americans actually declined during those years. The standard of living for the average family improved not because incomes grew but because women entered the workplace in droves.

As hard as it may be to believe, the peak income year for the bottom 90 percent of Americans was way back in 1973, when the average income per taxpayer, adjusted for inflation, was $33,000. That was nearly $4,000 higher, Mr. Johnston pointed out, than in 2005.

But, hey, they've got flat-screen TV's.

Brain Dead

Paul Krugman gets it right, as usual:

I’m as cynical as they come. Even so, I’m shocked by the total intellectual collapse of the Republican Party in the face of this economic crisis.

I suggested a little while ago that the GOP has become the party of Beavis and Butthead, reduced to snickering at line items in legislation that sound funny. And we’re not just talking about the usual crazies: we’re taking about Saint John McCain, cracking jokes about “Mormon crickets” and “beaver management” when a minute or two on Google reveals that these are, in fact, serious issues.

But it’s getting truly serious when the House minority leader — essentially, the nation’s second-ranking Republican (after Rush Limbaugh) — declares that the answer to the economy’s downward spiral is a spending freeze. That’s not a retrogression to Herbert Hoover; even Hoover knew better than that.

I’d really like to see some genuine bipartisanship in America. But that can’t happen until we start having at least somewhat sane partisans.

Wingnuts on Parade

What's left of the Republican Party are doing their best to make themselves even more politically irrelevant, and social pariahs, too.

Governors Bobby Jindal (Louisiana) and Mark Sanford (South Carolina) have announced they may not accept Stimulus funds targeted for extending unemployment benefits. To steal a line from the great Tom Lehrer, unemployed conservatives in Louisiana or South Carolina must feel like Christian Scientists with appendicitis.

Sanford, who is jockying with Jindal for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, will not be outdone. In addition to refusing funds for unemployment benefits, he will refuse $42 million targeted for making government buildings more energy-efficient. These are major players in one of our nation's major political parties, folks.

But wait, the conservative downward spiral picks up steam.

Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning (pictured) announced to his constituents that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was operated on for pancreatic cancer, will be dead within nine months.

Classy guy.

Update: Steve Benen appropriately calls Sanford "The Gift That Keeps on Giving."

February 24 Update: The NY Times editors take their cue from Sempringham:

What makes these bad decisions worse is that they are little more than political posturing by rising Republican stars, like Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina. This behavior reinforces the disturbing conclusion that the Republican Party seems more interested in ideological warfare than in working on policies that get the country back on track.

Fortunately, as President Obama prepares for his first address to Congress on Tuesday evening, voters of both parties have noticed. About three-quarters of those polled in a recent New York Times/CBS News survey — including more than 60 percent of Republicans — said Mr. Obama has been trying to work with Republicans. And 63 percent said Republicans in Congress opposed the stimulus package primarily for political reasons, not because they thought it would be bad for the economy.

Adding Insult to Injury

Republicans are caricatures of themselves:

The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

The article here.

Threat or Menace?

Okay, this is just too weird. What is it about the Republican Party that attracts people named "Tucker"?

There's Tucker Carlson, a Reagan-lover whose claim to fame as a network commentator was wearing a bow tie and getting a lap dance on Dancing with the Stars; Tucker Bounds, John McCain's spokesperson who had them handed to him by CNN's Campbell Brown; and Tucker Eskew, the slime ball who push-polled South Carolina for Bush in 2000, asking people if the "fact" that John McCain had an illegitimate black baby would change their opinion of him. [McCain, amazingly, has just hired the very same Tucker Eskew, which says something very disturbing about McCain.]

Can it just be a coincidence that there are three guys named Tucker in the Republican hierarchy? I don't think so. Here's why:

Fact One: All these guys are the same age. Okay, they may not actually be the same age, but they look the same age, don't they? Tucker Carlson was born in 1969. I've googled all over the universe and, for the life of me, I can't find the years of birth for the other two. That, in itself, is suspicious.

Fact Two: All three of these guys are not just your average white guy, they are very white guys, a special breed that is found only in the Republican Party.

Fact Three: Tucker was a rare name when these guys were born. According to the Social Security Administration's popular baby names site, it has become more popular recently. In 2007, it was the 243rd most popular name for boys. But Tucker didn't even make the list of top 1,000 boys' names until 1978! Before that, they don't think it's worth the computer's time to count them! So, more than 30 years ago, when these clowns were "born," Tucker was a rare name.

Fact Four: Tucker, as a name, doesn't really mean anything. Take a name like, oh, say, Robert, for example. Robert has a real meaning; it means "bright fame." But Tucker? What's that? "Someone who tucks." Yeah, that's what I'd want to name a son.

Fact Five: There were two significant UFO sightings in the USA in 1969: in the first, near the town of Dillsburg, Pa., a crowd of people watched a saucer hover over a diner then shoot off. But get this: the second significant sighting was by none other than future President Jimmy Carter. Ah ha. You thought I was going to get crazy, didn't you?

Fact Six: If you google "Tucker" and "UFO", you get 880,000 hits!

Fact Seven: None of these guys ever goes outside. I mean, just look at them.

Fact Eight: Each of these guys has a small tattoo behind his left ear. I'm not positive about this last item, but I'm pretty sure of it. I mean, it stands to reason, doesn't it?

So, put it all together and what once seemed a freak coincidence becomes something startlingly unsettling.

I'm just sayin'.

The Republican Extremist World View

Kevin Drum has some advice for Obama tonight:

In some simple way, he needs to make people understand that all the stuff they don't like about the past eight years isn't just the fault of one guy's idiosyncrasies, it's the fault of an entire worldview. And if you elect McCain, you're electing that worldview too.