Okay, I’ve been hard on Rand Paul. I’ll own it. I’ve called him a Bodineism suffer and been called out folks saying he must be smart if he is a doctor. Well, there is the issue that he is self certified, he did set up a certification board so he could be board certified. Then there is the issue of how good was the medical school? Where did he graduate in his class?

But all of that is aside. Maybe he was smarter before he came into the public eye. Still seeing is believing. Take a look at this video

In it Senators Sanders and Franken try, really, really try to explain the concept of spending money in the front end to avoid the back end costs which are much higher. The issue is hunger for seniors. There is a program that costs $2 billion that gets food to the elderly who can’t drive or are just old and confused.

The way this program saves money is that being malnourished is one of the major ways that older Americans wind up in the hospital. Not being able, for whatever reason, to get good food is one of the major reasons that people wind up in nursing homes. By providing this modest service we save a ton of money on nursing homes by letting people stay in their homes and another ton of money by not having emergency room visits and hospital stays.

The very epitome of the phrase “Penny wise, Pound foolish”.

Senator Paul, does not seem to grasp this very clear idea. Sadly he is not alone in the Republican ranks of Bodineism suffers. Cutting Medicare to save it, cut regulatory agencies to make our food and work places safer, let the “markets” decide what health care should cost.
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Rand Paul - Caricature by DonkeyHotey,

To my great chagrin no one in the national media has picked up the Bodineism meme, but they are starting to get the picture that there are some elected officials, particularly Republican elected officials, are about as dumb as sack of hammers.

The particular Jethro that I am talking about today is Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. Of all the folks that I have compared to Jethro Bodine, Sen. Paul is probably the closet to the mark. By all accounts he is a pretty genial guy with a good smile and a nice manner. He is also so clueless as to be a text book (given that all books are printed in text, wouldn’t that make them all text books?) example of self-satire.

Most recently Sen. Paul (gods greater and lesser that gives me chills just writing it, ugh) has managed to trample the 1st Amendment with his “ideas”. Some of us on the Left side of the Blogasphere were more than a little happy that he was holding up the PATRIOT act renewal, by wanting to insert some amendments that would lessen the ability of the government to spy on its own citizens.

That was a good thing, but it does not mean that he was doing it from a deep understanding of the Constitution. You see after his ploy failed he went on Sean “The Manatee” Hannity’s radio show and said the following:

I’m not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they’ve been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they’ve been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. It wouldn’t be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that’s really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison.

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It has been a while since we had an edition of “Jethro Bodineism in the Republican Party” but today brought such a bumper crop of mind blowing idiocy that I just could not resist.

Let’s kick things off with Rep. Joe “I love BP” Barton. In and interview with ABC News he was pressed on the idea of the billions dollars in annual subsidies that the Oil Industry enjoys and why we are not looking at cutting these, if there is really such a pressing need to reduce our deficit and debt. What was this Republican Jethro’s reply:

“Over time if you put so many disincentives against any U.S. manufacturing or production company, or oil and gas exploration company, they’ll go out of business,” Barton said.

That’s right, if we don’t incentivize the most profitable business sector in the world, the sector that has 4 of the top five biggest companies on the planet (Walmart rounding out the top five) they will go out of business.

I understand that Joe Barton is a Rep of very little brain but you would think that someone who so in love with the idea of free markets would understand that when you are the producer of a commodity that every one on the planet wants and there is a limited supply you are going to produce it where ever it is available./

One a related note one of the all time prize Jethro’s Sen. James “I just know that climate change is a lie” Inhofe wants us all to know that he is the master of oil prices and he can explain the pain at the pump lately. Is it the fact that Libya is busy bombing its oil ports? Is the fact that speculators like it when there is instability and run up the price to make a buck? Oh you poor child, no!

Here let Sen. Inhofe (Jackass –OK) explain:

“A lot of people are saying that the gas prices that are going up are a result, partially, of what’s happening over there,” said Senator James Inhofe, his party’s senior member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and a vocal climate change skeptic. “That isn’t the real problem.”

Inhofe said that “the real problem” was Obama’s efforts to enact a cap-and-trade plan to curb emissions of greenhouse gases blamed by scientists for global warming.

“My message today simply is the higher gas prices are simply a product of this administration’s goal,” said the lawmaker.

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There are times when anyone involved in politics should be more concerned with governance than crass political advantage. After all there is always the peoples work to for any Congress or other political body to be about. Still there are times when it is worthwhile to make sure that you opponents are in such disarray that they can’t function and thus can not hold on to power in the future. This seems like one of those times to me.

As fractious a the Democratic Party can be with its liberals, moderates, and FSM help us all, conservative members right now we are not the party with the most fissures in our coalition. The Republican Party has multiple clear divides within itself right now. There are the Establishment Republicans like Senate Minority Leader McConnell and soon to be Majority Leader Boehner (Hey John! Where are all those jobs?) then you have the Tea Party fueled whack jobs like Rep. Michele Bachman and Rand Paul. There are folks who even try to straddle the divide, purely for reasons of power, like Sen. DeMint.

This is just in Washington of course. Out in the wider nation there are some number (I think it might be Pi) of small Tea Party groups , and the old guard Religious Right are all out there thinking they are suddenly going get all the items on their wish list and a pony as well. The fact that some of their core goals are contradictory to each other has not quite penetrated and this is where we and crass political considerations come in.

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One of the things that kills democracies is political violence. When outright violence and more aggressive forms of intimidation become the norm in politics there is very little chance that the will of the people, any people, can be accurately heard. While there will be those who are so in love with the idea of government by the people that they will not be cowed, larger numbers of people will think of their families, their children and their own health and well being and bow to the fear of violence.

We in the United States have been witness to a set of trends which have been edging us closer and closer to political violence. Just last night some supporters of Rand Paul knocked down a MoveOn.org activist as she tried to give a mock employee of the month card to the radical Republican Senatorial Candidate. They then head locked her and one of their members stomped on her head and neck. At this time it is unknown exactly how injured she is, but this kind of assault could have maimed or even killed her. Being held down and kicked is no little scuffle, it is serious assault.

If this were the only instance of this kind of thing, it would still be disturbing. Sadly it is not. We have seen the “arrest” of an Alaska journalist by the security detail for Tea Party backed Republican Senatorial Candidate Joe Miller. We have seen Carl Paladino screaming in the face of a reporter and saying that he would “take him out”. We have seen Sharon Angle muse about “2nd Amendment remedies” if Republicans are not elected. We have seen Stephen Broden, a Tea Party candidate for House in Dallas say and defend the idea that armed revolution should be on the table.

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Let’s start with an issue that comes up every time I do one of these Bodineism in the Republican Party posts, the complaint is I am doing Jethro a disservice by comparing him to the radical Republicans. I love Jethro. He is gormless in the extreme and while his lack of self-awareness and intelligence gets him in a peck of trouble, it is never ever done out of malice. That said, the ability of radical Republicans to spout the most blatantly stupid lines and say them with a straight face has no better analog in pop culture than dear old Jethro, hence the term Bodineism.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

There have been a couple of glaring examples of Republican Bodineism in recent days that I just could not let lay. The first comes from “The (Orange) Man Who Would Be Speaker” Minority Leader John Boehner. On one of the Faux News Sunday programs Rep. Boehner was asked by the host, Chris Wallace about the fact that several reputable economists are saying that we need more stimulus spending to bring the nation out of its jobless recovery. To which Rep. Boehner replied:

“"Well, I don’t need to see GDP numbers or to listen to economists; all I need to do is listen to the American people."

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I don’t really have a lot of use for conventional wisdom. In the first place it is not really very wise, more like moderately informed. Second relying on it makes one intellectually lazy. When you have this back log of anecdotal evidence which shows a patter, you tend to rely on that pattern. This leaves you open to making a prediction that misses the new variables and then being surprised by the result. The 2002 elections where a little like that. That CW (admittedly supported by 100 years of history) was that the Republicans would lose some seats in first midterm of the Bush 41 presidency.

We all know that the results not even close. The combination of the 9/11 attacks and the Republican continued fear mongering and, frankly, some pretty shrewd political maneuvers led them to re-take the Senate and widen their majority in the House. If you look at the indicators, the CW says that Republicans should be able to win many seats in both the House and Senate this year.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

For the fist time the President has a higher disapproval rating than approval. The generic Congressional ballot is giving the Republicans a slight advantage of 1.8%. The unemployment rate is persistently in the high 9% range and nothing, even a massive jobs bill (which is not going to happen) is going chance that before election day. All of these things are conditions that could lead to a rout like we saw in 1994.

However, the Republicans have a gigantic problem. They are ugly. I am not talking about their personal appearance, but the face of what they represent. One of the knocks (and the knocks are legion) against the Republican Party is that they are mean and heartless. They were able to move this meme to being strong and tough during the early days of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The thinking was that we needed warriors, and warriors are hard men and women, they aren’t always going to take the time to be nice, they are defending the country after all.

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To set up a wave election you need a compelling national reason to fire the party in control of the Congress. Republicans have been looking for anything to make this happen. They believed that the Health Insurance Reform bill would be the ticket, however, as time has gone by and popular things like the end to pre-existing conditions for kids and the end of rescissions have started this issue has faded with the independent voters. They might still find something; after all there have been scandals like Rep. Eric Massa of New York and ethics problems like Rep. Charlie Rangel also of New York.

The thing is none of these have lead to a meme that suggests that the Democrats should be fired. A big part of this is that the Republicans candidates are making a habit of self-immolation.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

It can happen at anytime in a campaign. Things are going along great, you are ahead in the polls then someone looks up, sniffs the air and asks “Do you smell smoke?” Then before you know it; Whoosh! Your candidate has said or done something that makes their candidacy burst into 70 foot tall flames. Self-immolation is an occupational hazard of running for office, but it seems the there is a rash of it in the Republican Party this cycle.

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By now it just about everyone in the left side of the blogosphere has heard about Rand Paul’s near self-immolation on the Rachel Maddow Show last night. The Tea Party darling and newly minted Republican Senatorial candidate from Kentucky was pushed hard, but politely by Ms. Maddow about his position that part of the Civil Rights Act should be repealed. Lots of folks have pointed out how bad this will be for him politically, what struck me is how wrong-headed his political point of view is.

Dr. Paul won his primary by energizing the far Right in Kentucky but that is not going to work for him in the general election. In his appearance last night he defended his position by saying that he thought the 1964 Civil Rights Act was good in all the areas where it circumscribed discrimination at the governmental level, but thinks it goes too far when it tells private business that they can not discriminate.

The crux here is the idea that private business is completely private. This is a fallacy. Every business in the country is licensed at some level or another. There is no such thing as a truly private enterprise. Which is the way we want it, but not the hard core Libertarians like Doc Paul. He would like to make this about discrimination, and the First Amendment. That is the tactic he used last night. He made the point that while discrimination was abhorrent, we should not limit peoples right to say abhorrent things.

He is right on that, but this ignores the fact that limiting who you will sell to based on race is not really speech in the sense that the Framers would have recognized it. They were talking about being able to say things about the government and how we are governed. Commerce was separate from the Free Speech part of the Constitution on purpose.

However this is a smoke screen or a strawman. What Doc Paul is really interested in is unregulated commerce. He objects to the idea that the federal government can impose rules of any kind on business. He is a true believer in the myth of the Free Market and its ability to correct any ill. Doc Paul would end the Americans with Disabilities Act as well, for the same reason he objects to one Title of the Civil Rights Act; namely it imposes requirements on business.

Doctor Paul is an idealist. He really believes the myth of the rational actor. He thinks that if we did not have the ADA businesses would choose to give workers who were in a wheel chair first floor office space. The reality is that they would just not hire workers who require any kind of special accommodations. His statement also ignores the fact that even if they had a first floor office, they would not be able to go to other floors of the building without an elevator anyway.
Watch for Doc Paul to try to keep this small bore, going forward, but there are bigger implications to the “hands off business” philosophy. We have seen what lax regulation can lead us to with the BP oil disaster. Imagine if they had no regulation at all, no oversight even if name. Does anyone think that there would be a better outcome than what we have now? Me either.

One of the things that is really frustrating about the whole Libertarian political view is the way that it aims to overturn decades of case law and legislation. While they may have a point that the original intent of the Constitution is different from what we have today, the fact is we have evolved to this point by consensus of the people of the nation. As a whole the people of this country find it is good thing that business is constrained from discrimination, that there is a check on restaurants serving tainted food, that the rights of property owners is balanced by the overall needs of the nation.

This is where Dr. Paul should be really in trouble, not the idea that he is standing up for racists by wanting to overturn the public accommodation portions of the Civil Rights Act, but that he wants to dismantle the federal governments policing business altogether. The question we should be asking him is not should business be able to discriminate but should it be able to do things like serve tainted food or sell products that contain lead or melamine?

His argument is that there is too high a cost imposed by the ADA and the Civil Rights Act on business. Well keeping products safe is expensive too, should business be turned lose to do as they please, with the mythical Free Market left fix it? The problem with this is it assumes a level of enlightened self interest that just does not exist in reality. Would it have been better for BP to keep the drill mud in the drill line until the final cap was poured? The cost of doing that is nothing compared to what they will be paying out for this spill, yet even with the known risk of a disaster they chose to try to save the 10 million. We see the same kind of thing in the Financial products industry, the inability to stay away from risk when there is money to be made.

In Doc Paul’s world view these things would not happen. Since that does not match with reality, it is clear that his policy prescriptions are not suited for our nation. We don’t want them as a people, and we can not afford the very easily predictable consequences of them. It is hard to see how anyone who has not come from privilege can hold the point of view that business rights trump the rights of the citizens. All this is just goes to show why Dr. Paul is unsuited for members in the United States Senate.