Motley Moose – Archive

I’d like to open with Sarah Palin’s response:

Obama lied to the American people. Again. He said it wasn’t a tax. Obama lies; freedom dies.

– @SarahPalinUSA via web

My response?  Nothing new under the sun: Obama wins; Palin spins.

The only thing relevant about Palin and her devotees is the repeated demonstrations of their continued irrelevance.

But more to the substance of this, what is clear here is that this whole rigmarole has devolved upon the popular American distaste for the term “tax.”  All federal social policy in the near term will have to work by re-labeling taxes, an absurd semantic sleight of hand made necessary by a widespread impoverishment  of our command of basic civics terminology and its concerted ideological slandering by one special interest group, as the GOP should now be known.

What reveals this understanding of the GOP as a special interest group more than anything else is Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision.  Roberts clearly looked down the arc of history and did not want “his” court to be the one that capitulated to partisanship and undermined the institution’s integrity.  It’s that simple.  He understood that his name would become synonymous with partisan judicial activism.  As a Federalist, this was intolerable.  Hence he opened with a statement affirming that the court’s role is not to seek ways to overturn legislation, but to uphold it.  Only if there is no conceivable way to bring its rationale into accord with constitutional language should the court strike down the laws written by our elected representatives.  We could not get this bill passed by including the language of taxation, hence no single payer or public option.  But those are political conditions.  Roberts quite brilliantly (if wrongly) adhered to his own conservatism with regard to an unnecessarily narrow reading of the commerce clause, but latched onto US Solicitor General Verrilli’s back-up argument that the mandate could be considered a tax triggered by an individual’s lack of health insurance.  But his tacit acknowledgment of what he (I think correctly) believes will be the historical view of the court implicitly reveals the degree to which the GOP is a special interest group, uninterested in the substance of legality or the welfare of the US.  It represents a very narrow constituency’s interests and will do anything to serve them.  It’s nothing more than the political action committee of the Chamber of Commerce.

STRUM: Governor Romney, you argue that you know how to create jobs and that the source of jobs should be and must be the private sector.  If this is what you truly believe, and you believe that job creation is one of the most important challenges facing America, wouldn’t you be better positioned to serve this country from the private sector where you can put your prowess at job creation to work most effectively and beneficially?

MR: The problem we are facing is an administration that is in the way of job creation.  My administration will roll back the job killing regulations and inspire the confidence necessary for a true and robust recovery.

STRUM: By doing less?

MR: Yes.  By creating the conditions for recovery.

STRUM: But if what we need is a Government that does less so that those who know how to create jobs – and that is what you claim to be – can do so, shouldn’t we let someone else be the President who does less while people like you who claim to know how to create jobs put their expertise to work?

MR: Well, it’s not simply less, it’s which ways to do less.

STRUM: So you agree we need an active Government for job creation?

MR: Active in some ways and less active in others.

STRUM: So job creation depends upon Government?

MR: Job creation depends upon government policies that create the conditions where job creators can create jobs.

STRUM: Where their investments are assured of returns?

MR: Where they have incentive to take risks.

STRUM: So government should incentivize job creation?

MR: Yes, but by getting out of the way of the market, not by picking winners and losers, which government doesn’t know how to do and which is contrary to the American belief in freedom.

STRUM: Governor Romney, do you respect the US military?

MR: Well, of course.  It is the greatest fighting force in the history of the world.

STRUM: And it follows that you have great respect for the men and women who serve in our armed forces?

MR: Yes, of course.  We owe them everything.  

STRUM: And you agree that they put their lives at great risk and often sacrifice their lives?

MR: Yes indeed.  And we owe them an unpayable debt of gratitude.

STRUM: Why do you believe that they risk and sacrifice their lives?

MR: Because they believe in America.

STRUM: They are patriots?

MR: Yes.  Our finest patriots.

STRUM: And do they do so under optimal conditions?

MR: They do so often under the most difficult conditions.

STRUM: Even when the odds are against success?

MR: Especially then.  This is what is remarkable about them.

STRUM: So they are remarkable because they serve their nation patriotically even when the odds are difficult?

MR: Yes, of course.

STRUM: And do you think it a reasonable thing to hold them up as examples of patriotism that we should all strive to emulate.

MR: Well, that is setting the bar awfully high.

STRUM: Governor Romney, which is the greater risk, one’s life or one’s fortune.

MR: I think any decent person would value life above wealth.

STRUM: Governor Romney, do you consider yourself a patriot?

MR: I do.  I love this country.  That’s why I’m running for president.

STRUM: And this country needs jobs?

MR: Yes.

STRUM: And you know how to create them?

MR: If the conditions are right.

STRUM: Meaning if the conditions point to profitability of investment?

MR: Yes.  That’s how the market works.

STRUM: So this is what I’m trying to understand.  How many jobs have you created in the last 4 years?

MR: Well, I’ve been contributing in other ways.

STRUM: But haven’t you argued that job creation is your specialty and that right now our country needs jobs?

MR: Yes. But in the Obama economy, it’s very difficult to create jobs.

STRUM: Meaning that you believe the conditions for successful investment are difficult?

MR: Yes.

STRUM: So why not strive to be patriotic, though nowhere near approaching the level of those men and women risking their very lives, by trying to create jobs in the private sector even when the conditions are difficult?

MR: Because I believe I will have a greater effect by creating the conditions that will enable others to create jobs.

STRUM: But why haven’t you led by example?  Why should job creators be less patriotic than GIs who do so at infinitely greater risk for significantly lesser reward for themselves and for their families?

MR: The problem is that you don’t understand the way the economy works.

STRUM: And you do?

MR: Yes.

STRUM: And there are no ways you can create jobs in the current environment?

MR: Not on the scale we need.

STRUM: Have you tried?

MR: I’m trying by running for President.

STRUM: So if you lose, can we count on you to risk some of your fortune in the patriotic endeavor of job creation?

MR: I don’t intend on losing.

STRUM: But if you do?

MR: I’ll serve my country any way I can.

STRUM: By investing in job creating initiatives?

MR: If I think I can do it, I will.

STRUM: And why haven’t you been doing so now?

MR: I’m busy with the campaign, which will enable many others to come forward and create jobs.

STRUM: Without any risk to your own fortune, your Cayman Island holdings and Swiss Bank account?

MR:  See, this is the problem.  People like you want to penalize success.

STRUM: Thank you for your time.

MR: Thank you.

Maurice Sendak passed away at 83.  I call my 5 year old son “little bear” because he reminds me of Sendak’s illustrations of that series.  My older kids have both worn a Max costume (from Where the Wild Things Are) for Purim that my mother sewed.

He was an avowed atheist with no belief in any afterlife, but forgive me if I imagine him gnashing his terrible teeth and rolling his terrible eyes and shouting “LET THE WILD RUMPUS BEGIN!!!”

MCA and Sendak in the same week.  My youth seems to be slipping farther and farther into the past in fits and starts these days.

The Obama team is waiting far too long to respond to this orchestrated talking point.  Repetition makes it conventional ‘wisdom.’  By not responding with detailed and targeted ‘Hell yeah we can,’ it makes it seem as if Obama doesn’t want to.  It’s not the easiest of sells, given the economy.  But there’s got to be more to it than “GM is Alive and Osama is Dead.”  There needs to be a counter-punch.  I’d recommend every liberal pundit and every democrat with a mouth piece begin repeating:

They say Obama can’t run on his record because they can’t come out and say they want us to return to the Bush policies that got us into this mess in the first place.  No one will buy that.  And that’s what they want to do.  Not because it’s good for the economy.  Not because it’s good for the nation.  But only because it’s good for their elitist patrons.  Obama has worked hard to stabilize our economy for rich, poor, and middle class alike.  He’s shown willingness to include conservative proposals.  But they’d rather obstruct approaches that don’t serve their ideology and clientele and even those that do in order to paint him as a failure.  In the face of organized and zealous obstruction, this President has always sought to do what is right for the American people.  Cutting taxes even further on the so-called job creators will not get them to start investing the capital they are hording in the Cayman Islands and Swiss Bank accounts.  It will only give them more money to squirrel away in their tax shelters while the middle class continues to struggle.  What will encourage them to actually invest in job-creating endeavors is the stabilization of the middle class so that demand in the market will lessen the risk of new endeavors.  When the middle class is buying, investors will capitalize on that demand even if their tax rates are slightly higher.  President Obama’s record shows he supports the policies that will ensure opportunity for all Americans to prosper, from the top to the bottom.  Where he’s been able to implement those policies, we’ve seen success.  Far from a big government socialist bogeyman with a failed record, his record reveals a prudent, pragmatic, and principled American approach to an economy that only thrives when both the private and public sectors fulfill their functions.

Yep.  We’re going home, at least for the year.  Found out last week that I scored a post-doc fellowship at Hebrew University in Jerusalem for next year.  Dr. Ms. Dr. Strum has a sabbatical coming, so we’re taking the kids and going.  Not sure if we can make ends meet yet, but we’ll figure it out.  Lots to figure out over the summer (sublet house, find apartment, schools, how to get my music gear there, how to set up for the following year, etc.).  But for now we’re psyched.  Can’t wait to get arrested for protesting housing demolitions and other outrages against my beloved city’s non-Jewish neighbors.  And I’ll be writing about early modern fantasies of Jerusalem…in Jerusalem.

I don’t quite know what this will mean for my engagements with this election (though I wonder if it’s too early to get a ballot now).  I’ll be up to my ears in a political environment that makes this one seem like romper room.  But I can promise a moose eye view on the ground there.

Anyone traveling must certainly look me up.

As we say at the end of the Passover seder: Next year in Jerusalem!

Now that Mitt has been crowned:

I want Allen West

I fear Nikki Haley

You?

His atrociousness is only blunted by its banality.  He blathers on about Obama’s war on religion and claims that his administration has deliberated about imposing secularism on Americans (by which he means atheism and not its proper sense of separating civic and sacred institutions).  Then he accuses Obama of willfully mischaracterizing R-Money’s  positions to distract from talking about his administration’s record.  Of course, Obama talks about his record all the time.  And R-Money doesn’t ever specify when and where Obama has discussed and promoted his agenda to impose secularity on Americans as part of his war on religion, nor does he specify how any of Obama’s specific critiques of GOP policies and positions are erroneous.  

OK.  I’ll answer my own question right off the bat.  Yes.  Losing would be horrendous.  It would be horrendous for us politically and policy-wise.  It would validate those on the right who claim the mantle of The Constitution (along with God, Reason, History, Morality, etc.).  If the mandate alone falls, the whole thing becomes an economic albatross.  

How do we maintain the prohibition on exclusion of pre-existing conditions without maintaining the economic participation of the healthy?  [A caveat to Clintonians here.  You were right 4 years ago.  HRC was right.  I never mixed it up on this issue, in part because it made me uncomfortable, though I cringe to acknowledge that it was not enough to admit at the time that Obama was wrong.  What’s worse is that I think Obama knew even then that mandates were the key to economic viability.  So while some Obama supporters recoiled from Hillary Clinton as the professional politician who would say anything, as a caricature machiavel, she was the candidate bold enough to tell the controversial truth on this issue.  And this should be marked forever to her credit.]  And if the whole thing goes down, millions of Americans will lose their care and unfunded emergency services will continue to be a drain on the economy and the lack of preventive and timely care will exacerbate them.  One of Obama’s 3 undersold signal accomplishments (the other being the auto industry and killing OBL, though we might add the draw down in Iraq and prevention of a 2nd great depression as well) will be turned into a defeat.

Rubio?

Ryan?

Christie?

Daniels?

Jeb?

Who is most likely?

Who is scariest?

Here ’tis in full:

For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week.  In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke.

I think it is absolutely absurd that during these very serious political times, we are discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress. I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities. What happened to personal responsibility and accountability? Where do we draw the line? If this is accepted as the norm, what will follow? Will we be debating if taxpayers should pay for new sneakers for all students that are interested in running to keep fit?In my monologue, I posited that it is not our business whatsoever to know what is going on in anyone’s bedroom nor do I think it is a topic that should reach a Presidential level.

My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/da…

Now, let’s take his jackweedery point by point.