A Lose-Lose Proposition

So, we're back from the brink. At least for another three months, then the whole cycle of madness starts again. I am, of course, talking about the debacle that was the Republican attempt to destroy the Affordable Care Act and threatening to wreck the economy if they didn't get their way. I don't know what I can say about it that hasn't already been said by someone somewhere, but I just have to vent because keeping all that impotent rage bottled up always messes up my digestive system, which can prove embarrassing to everyone around me.

I don't know that I should expect any better of them, but I can't help but be utterly repulsed by things like John Boehner, shortly after the vote, going on some stupid radio program to babble nonsense about how Republicans fought the good fight but didn't win, then going on to say, "We did everything we could to get them to the table to negotiate… They just kept saying no. No, no, no." 

Of course the Democrats said no! Is Boehner too stupid to understand why? Actually, he probably isn't. But he clearly thinks you are. And he may be right. I went to get my hair cut today, and one of the barbers was going on and on about how bad it's going to be for everyone when the ACA kicks in fully on Jan. 1, though he wasn't able to articulate any specifics. Ironically, this is a guy who had a quadruple bypass a couple years ago and might be facing a cap on benefits and an inability to get different insurance elsewhere, were it not for the provisions of ACA that now prohibit such insurance company practices. But that's just the way we think in this country, especially if we rely on sources like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News for "information". (As an example of the latter, see this article exposing Sean Hannity's extremely misleading "reporting" on the ACA on Fox News.)

Let's replay what happened here. In a nutshell: Obama put his Affordable Care Act before Congress. Congress approved it. Obama signed it into law. The Supreme Court confirmed it, with a few exceptions. A minority of House Republicans, egged on by the idiot Senator Ted Cruz, demanded that the ACA be defunded before the House would approve a continuing resolution on the budget and approve an increase in the debt ceiling. Boehner, fearing that it would cost him his job as Speaker if he did, refused to let the CR come to a vote, even though it was clear that enough Republicans would vote with the Democrats to pass it without any problem. The Democrats, following the principle that one should not negotiate with terrorists, refused to budge, and Boehner & Co. ultimately had to back down. So what do the Republicans have to show for this whole circus?

Well, they got a couple of very small face-saving concessions, like a requirement that the Department of Health and Human Services report to Congress on procedures to verify income of people who would get subsidies for health insurance. There was a guarantee to pay back pay to federal employees who were forced to work without pay while the government was partially shut down. Oh, and some pork. Who doesn't like pork? The Republicans can be glad they got anything, since at some point they themselves apparently didn't even know what they wanted any more, as illustrated by Representative Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind., with Tea Party backing), who famously told the Washington Examiner, “We’re not going to be disrespected… We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.”

And what did the rest of us get? Well, we eventually got the government reopened. Also, according to Standard & Poors we got a reduction in GDP equivalent to around a $24 billion cost to the US economy—exactly the sort of thing we need right now. Remember when Boehner said this?

“Helping Americans get back to work is our number one priority, and we’re going to do everything we can to help create jobs and to boost our economy."

That was back in May, 2011. It's good to know that Boehner's job creation plan includes temporarily putting thousands of people out of work, threatening all the small businesses that depend on their patronage, creating the threat of a global financial crisis, and generally shoring up international investors' faith in US Treasury Bonds by demonstrating to the rest of the world that our government is capable of financial management on par with the governments of Greece or Cypress. It's a novel strategy. Good work, John.

Why didn't you just smack him with that thing while you had the chance?

For The Bible Tells Me So

I read earlier today that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has declared California's Proposition 8, which sought to outlaw same-sex marriage, to be unconstitutional. Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who authored the text of the decision, wrote, "Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples." I have little doubt that this decision will eventually end up in the Supreme Court, that is, is if the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case.

Here in the People's Republic of Massachusetts, we've had legalized gay marriage since 2004. Oddly enough, in all the intervening years fire has so far not rained down from heaven, nor have we been afflicted by plagues of frogs or locusts or boils. I don't think anyone in my circle of friends and acquaintances has left his or her opposite-sex spouse to take up with a member of the same sex because now it's legal. Basically, nothing has changed in any way that I can discern, other than that I am told that there are people whose life has been made a little more humane because they can do things like visit their life partner in the hospital with the privileges accorded to a legally recognized spouse.

The whole debate around gay marriage really kind of baffles me. I started out as a vessel of the same received wisdom as pretty much any other non-gay kid of my generation that men who prefer men, or women who prefer women, in, er, that way were weirdos and perverts who bring it upon themselves to be ridiculed and ostracized through their own deviant behavior. And then a funny thing happened—I grew up. Along the way I met and, in some cases, befriended people who were just like me in pretty much every way except that they were just sort of wired to want a same-sex rather than an opposite-sex partner. Sure, there were the occasional over-the-top-flamboyant guys or militantly butch women who were just kind of caricatures of themselves, but I have known at least as many straight people who were equally annoyingly in your face about their perpetual lust for members of the opposite sex. So at this point I am neither anti-gay nor pro-gay, I just really don't care who some friend or acquaintance or stranger prefers to spend his life with because I can't see how it affects me in any way. By the same token I fail to see what interest the government should have in depriving such people of equal protection under the law.

Now, you knew I wasn't going to get very far without somehow turning this into a rant against our Republican presidential candidates, right? Well, I don't want to disappoint you. I won't bother with Paul or Santorum, since they're kind of out of the picture at this point (although Santorum's perplexing interpretation via Twitter that "7M Californians had their rights stripped away today by activist 9th Circuit judges" is worth mentioning); I'll just pick on Romney and Gingrich, as usual.

But first, in the interest of equal time, I'll note that President Obama has been hedging his bets in a way that I find kind of irritating. His approach is to try to sidestep the topic entirely by treating it as a matter of states' rights while generally presenting himself as supportive of gay rights. Saying that his views on the matter of same-sex marriage are "evolving" is an obvious and ridiculous ploy to buy time and not have to come out explicitly for or against it before the next election. The word "hypocritical" may not be an exact fit in this context—maybe "disingenuous" is better here—but it certainly comes to mind.

Romney has predictably condemned the Ninth Circuit Court decision, saying, "Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people of California who voted to protect traditional marriage". He then went on to demonstrate his amazing capacity for holding two entirely incompatible opinions at the same time by saying, "as president, I will protect traditional marriage and appoint judges who interpret the Constitution as it is written and not according to their own politics and prejudices". So if the unelected judges are your unelected judges and decide accordng to your politics and prejudices, it's OK?

And then there's Newt, who never fails to disappoint with his special brand of professorial-sounding hyperbole. Newt says, "With today's decision on marriage by the Ninth Circuit, and the likely appeal to the Supreme Court, more and more Americans are being exposed to the radical overreach of federal judges and their continued assault on the Judeo-Christian foundations of the United States". Newt's been on something of a crusade against the judicial branch in general and the Supreme Court in particular, saying things like, "If the court makes a fundamentally wrong decision, the president can in fact ignore it" and pledging to provoke a constitutional crisis on his first day in office: "I will issue an instruction on the opening day, first day I'm sworn in, I will issue an executive order to the national security apparatus that it will not enforce Boumediene and it will regard it as null and void because it is an absurd extension of the Supreme Court in to the commander in chief's (authority)." (The Boumediene decision was a ruling that prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay can challenge their detention in US courts.) So there's an interesting idea for you—let's elect a president who will swear to uphold the Constitution, except for the parts he thinks are really dumb.

Newt's aversion to same-sex marriage is apparently theological in nature, as put forth in an explanation quoted here: "It's pretty simple: marriage is between a man and a woman… This is a historic doctrine driven deep into the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and it's a perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism. The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors, but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization." I'm sure that the infamous serial adulterer Gingrich, bible scholar that he apparently is, is also familiar with Mark 10:11: "And he [Jesus] saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her." Seems like an open and shut case… for the Bible tells me so.

Bet you won't be smiling when you're burning in hell!