Right Wing Nut House

I’m with the left all the way on this one. What Joe Wilson did by screaming, frothing at the mouth, and rabidly drooling while accusing the president of lying is the most destructive, the most ill mannered, the MOST UNPRECEDENTED occurrence in the history of this planet or any other.

“YOU LIE! the crazy man screeched at the top of his voice. Only his colleagues holding him back prevented him from assaulting the president in the House chamber with a bloody ax he had just used on his child.

What has happened to our country when Republicans, who obviously knew what he was going to do before hand, failed to stop this goober chewing yahoo from interrupting Jesus Christ on the cro…oh, wait. I mean President Obama during his VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY, important speech on socialized (oops! sorry) I mean government mandated health insurance?

Surely we must come back to civility in our public discourse. Surely forms of etiquette must be preserved. Surely it should be a crime punishable by 20 lashes to not stare in doe eyed worship and hang on every word that our Glorious Leader imparts to us masses.

Absolutely. But please don’t call me Shirley.

I fully back efforts to investigate this rogue, this roue, this dunderheaded clodsop of an inbred Congressman who thought he was at a Gamecock football game and not the Sermon in the House Well. (”Blessed are the bureaucrats for theirs shall be the Kingdom of Obama.”).

How dare he? No one has ever, ever, ever interrupted another president or booed him, or called him a liar, or accused him of going to war for bloodlust and oil. What political party could possible countenance such evil?

If it were up to me, I’d banish him. Exile the fool. Send him to another country like…like…Utah or Montana or some other foreign country where his discourteousness would go unnoticed and he could mingle with those other bible thumping, straw eating, sister loving, gun toting, immigrant hating yahoos.

And while we’re at it, let’s send his friends with him; you know, the ones whose fear mongering and lies about GL’s perfect health care reform bill are causing the rubes out in rubeland to scratch their balls, spit, and then scream at their Democratic Congressman?

This kind of demagoguery is outrageously unacceptable. We shouldn’t stand for it - not for a second. DON’T THEY KNOW THAT PEOPLE ARE DYING BECAUSE OUR GLORIOUS LEADER - WHO TRULY LOVES US ALL AND WISHES ONLY THE BEST FOR US - CAN’T GET HIS HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL PASSED? It’s a crisis, I tell you. A crisis. Forget war. Forget Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Floods, Wrack and Ruin. Forget Manmade Natural Disasters that we used to call acts of terrorism but don’t anymore because Our President has banished that scourge - or at least the word - from the face of the earth.

This is a REAL crisis - not a made up one like that other fellow had.

Perhaps we should consider executing Wilson. Hanging’s too good for him of course. Tar and feathering is environmentally unfriendly (Didn’t you know that tar is made from the Devil’s Brew - OIL? Besides, little birdies might eat the feathers and be unable to crap. Horror!). Waterboarding is illegal (but wouldn’t it be fun?) And guns…EWW!

I think Wilson should be sentenced to listen to our Glorious Leader’s inauguration speech - 10,000 times. It wouldn’t be torture. We’d give him one hour’s sleep every day and only make him stand for 12 hours at a time. Cheney said that kind of thing works wonders.

And after all, he’d be transformed. I’ve listened to it about 500 times and there’s nothing wrong with me - fit as a fiddle and twice as twangy. Listening to GL’s words of emptiness and nothingness fills the soul with sublime hollowness. It’s done wonders for my digestion and my bowels are as right as rain. Better than a high colonic in cleaning out the system. You should try it.

People like Wilson need to get out of the way and let our Glorious Leader fulfill his destiny. All of this talk is worthless and should be outlawed somehow. After all, we won, didn’t we?

John Cole of the blog Balloon Juice and I used to have a rather cordial relationship back in the day. A few angry back and forths later - not so much anymore.

Cole’s party switch over torture and the mismanaged Iraq War (along with GOP corruption and the excessive ideology of the base) endeared him to some on the left but I think even they may be uncomfortable with his demonstrated independence from orthodoxy from time to time. Sadly, his blog has morphed by and large into a collection of bitter denunciations directed at most conservatives who fail to meet his rather stringent ideological standards for relevance and correct thinking.

That said, now that he is a self-identified Democrat, Cole himself can be guilty of being as nasty a partisan as any on the left:

Rick Moran is a libertine the same way Glenn Reynolds is a libertarian. They are both Republicans. Moran occasionally chastises some of the obviously crazy nonsense on the right, but only when he can also include a false equivalency about the Democrats. It sometimes seems like he is making sense, but ignore his schtick of not being a party man. Ask him if he voted for McCain or Obama? For Bush or Kerry? For Bush or Gore? For Clinton or Dole?

I read him for years and finally gave up reading him regularly, because the only core principle I could ever find from him was “The Democrats are worse.”

First of all, I am a libertine the same way the dictionary defines the term:

1. One who acts without moral restraint; a dissolute person.
2. One who defies established religious precepts; a freethinker.

adj.  Morally unrestrained; dissolute.

The first definition could certainly have been applied to my behavior in my dissolute youth. And my atheism would meet the definition of defying “established religious precepts.”

But it is a large part of my self image that I consider myself, and strive to be, a “freethinker.” I make an effort to eschew a dogmatic approach to life and politics - not always succeeding but finding that it is in reaching for the goal that we learn the most and better ourselves. Some may glimpse sophistry in such an admission - nothing I can do there. You either take what I write as being what I think and feel or not.

In Cole’s case, he views my writing through the prism of partisanship. By dismissing my attempts at fully vetting a subject by presenting both sides, or pointing out that whatever nuttiness has been perpetrated on the right finds an equal or almost equally loony counterpoint on the left, Cole himself is guilty of dogmatic thinking.

It is the idea that I am guilty of “false equivalence” that betrays Cole as a less than neutral - and honest - observer. I will admit that there are times that I may, in fact, stretch to make the equivalence point. But does that make it “false?” Only if you have an agenda beyond trying to be objective. I have never knowingly perpetrated a fraudulent analogy and don’t think I ever have. Sometimes, it’s not possible to find an exact counter to the idiocy one side has engaged in. I expect if you were to really examine my 3,200 posts, you would probably find some inexact correlations on both sides. Demanding perfect symmetry is unrealistic and proof that Cole is unwilling to accept the fact that the excessive ideology and hatred of the opposition he so rightly condemns is a mirror image of the same idiocy found among his friends on the left.

Any reasonable analysis of “movement conservatives” and “movement progressives” would find a vast kinship in paranoia, the use of logical fallacies, slippery slopes, strawman arguments, as well as a quest for ideological purity, and other manifestations of a kind of absolutism regarding their political opposites that has infected our politics and made it extraordinarily difficult for presidents over the last 20 years to get anything done.

Guilty as charged, on occasion. I am not immune to emotionalism and spite and I apologize for being human. But it is dishonest for Cole to issue a blanket condemnation of my writing based on his idea of “false” equivalence when I take both sides to task for acting idiotically or saying insane things. You can nitpick my analogies and no doubt find differences in the examples I utilize to make my point. But substantively, I don’t believe you can argue that there isn’t at least a rough symmetry involved in my analyses. Denying such marks one as a partisan more concerned with scoring minor points in disagreement than in taking a hard look at the actions and beliefs of one’s own side to discern the truth.

By the way, why not voting for Clinton makes me a party man is beyond me. And Holy God almighty what conservative in their right mind would have voted for Kerry? Cole certainly has a limited idea of what does or does not constitute blind party loyalty. Perhaps John hasn’t voted much in his life. Most ballots I’ve marked in the polling booth have contained dozens of candidates for dozens of political offices. If Cole’s end all and be all definition of “party man” starts and stops with who I voted for president, that is pretty shallow indeed.

I did not vote for president in 1972 or 92, I wrote in Reagan’s name in 1976, did not vote in 88. I voted for Paul Simon twice because he was the most honorable politician I ever saw (Wellstone runs second there). I have voted for local Democrats for town and township races in the past although not in the last couple of election cycles. I vote for Democratic judges every few election cycles based on the theory that judges should not be career politicians.

I may vote for Rep. Debbie Halverson if the GOP runs Ozinga again (”Everyone in America has health care. All they have to do is go to an emergency room.”). She seems harmless enough and is thought highly of here in Streator, IL. She got on my good side when she introduced legislation when she was state senator that would have effectively killed the white elephant of an airport out in Peotone being pushed by Jesse Jackson Jr.

No, I am not a party man. I am a nominal Republican in that the GOP fields candidates more regularly who reflect my views. Give me a Democrat who does so and I will seriously consider voting for him/her as I have in the past.

For Cole, it would be interesting to find out the last Republican he voted for since he switched sides.

I could have just as easily titled this piece “Ideologues vs. The Realists” or some other descriptive caption for what boils down to a debate now fully underway among conservatives about the best way back to power.

Are the ideologues in the movement correct? Is a lack of “passion” regarding opposition to the left, as well as a less than 100%, strict adherence to their idea of conservative “principles” responsible for the right’s slaughter at the polls in 2006 and 2008?

Or are the pragmatists correct that the demand for “purity” by the ideologues coupled with the prominence of a conspiracy mongering, angry, paranoid base has connected conservatism to an unsavory, and unelectable politics?

At stake, a battle for the soul of conservatism in America and perhaps even the preservation of republican virtues given the left’s ascendancy and their first real opportunity in 40 years to “remake” America in ways that are an anathema to the tenets of modern conservative thought.

In the midst of this fight, a book by Sam Tanenhaus called The Death of Conservatism has been published which has already added fuel to the fire. Tanenhaus’s thesis is that movement conservatism has undermined the Burkean roots of conservative philosophy and that rather than trying to preserve and “conserve” institutions, movement-cons, who he terms “revanchists,” seek to destroy that which has been carefully built up over centuries.

The book is based on a shorter essay Tanenhaus published in The New Republic (no longer available) that I wrote about in depth here. I found that the essay reflected some of my own beliefs about where conservatism had gone off the rails, but was seriously flawed in its analysis of what Tanenhaus believed were “excesses” of the movement.

In reviewing the book, Garry Wills pointed to the classic tension between Burkeans and the movement personified by one of the most intellectually productive relationships in American history; the friendship and mutual admiration society that existed between Whittaker Chambers and William Buckley:

Tanenhaus is a deep student of modern conservatives. He wrote a biography of Whittaker Chambers, a self-professed Beaconsfieldian (Disraeli was the Earl of Beaconsfield), and he has been working for some time on a biography of William F. Buckley Jr. This short book is a kind of bridge between his two great projects, and it fits his revanchist–Burkean paradigm. Chambers and Buckley, though friends, began at opposite ends of the “conservative” spectrum. Buckley, who admired Chambers’s witness against communism, tried with all his lures and charms to recruit him as an editor of National Review when it began in 1955. But Chambers thought Senator Joseph McCarthy, whom the magazine championed, would doom Republicans. Besides, he was loyal to his ally in the Hiss case, Richard Nixon, and to Nixon’s meal ticket Dwight Eisenhower, while the magazine opposed them both as impure compromisers. (In 1956, only one National Review editor, James Burnham, endorsed Eisenhower for reelection.)

But Buckley finally wore Chambers down—in 1957, with great misgivings, Chambers joined the magazine. Murray Kempton wrote that Chambers finally went to work for a boss he could respect—which was not saying too much, since “Chambers’s former employers happened to be Colonel Bykov of the Soviet Secret Police, the late Henry Luce, and John F.X. McGohey, ‘then United States Attorney’ for the Southern District of New York.”[2] Chambers soon had to withdraw from the magazine for health reasons, but he and Buckley stayed in constant communication, Chambers advising, Buckley deferential. Tanenhaus makes the case that Chambers finally converted Buckley from a revanchist to a Burkean. Kempton, who studied both men closely, doubts that Chambers’s advice ever really took: “Buckley worshiped and did not listen: the Chambers of his vision is a saint whose icon stands in a Church where his message is never read.”

So close, yet so far apart. What we should take away from that extraordinary exchange of ideas between two brilliant men is that it was done amicably, with great respect for each other, and the debate was carried out with the recognition that both were working toward a common goal.

I don’t see that being possible today. With the absolute refusal of the ideologues to abandon their purge of who they consider less than ideologically pure conservatives, and with the pragmatists fighting what amounts to a rear guard action to marginalize the crazies who are, if not embraced then certainly tolerated by the revanchists, there is no “common purpose” that could lead to any amicability or respect.

Indeed, the revanchists look with askance upon most attempts to criticize conservatism at all, believing that “intellectual elites” are simply playing into the hands of the enemy by taking fellow conservatives to task for their idiocy, or paranoia. Relatedly, any criticism of conservatism coming from the left is automatically dismissed - usually without even reading it - because that would be allowing your enemy to define you.

As for the former, the idea that honest criticism is rejected outright because we’re at war with the left reveals a sneering anti-intellectualism among the revanchists that flies in the face of conservatism’s most cherished and important virtue; a duty to the truth above and beyond loyalty to ideology.

And while I sympathize and agree to a certain extent about not allowing your political foe to totally define your philosophy, that shouldn’t preclude anyone from exposing themselves to ideas with which you may disagree or close one’s mind to looking at the world from a different angle.

Tanehaus is a man of the left (former editor of the Times Book Review section) but he has also immersed himself in the history and personalities of modern conservatism more than most. He is a sincere critic of the right, a thoughtful man who wants to engage in serious discussions about the issues he raises. And while there is precious little empiricism on which you can hang your hat in his writings, some of his analysis will ring true with students of history who have given some thought to what ails the right today.

When Tanenhaus points to the very un-Burkean beliefs of many movement-cons, he is questioning how these revanchists can square their conservatism with the more traditional school of thought represented by Buckley, Hayek, Kirk, Arnold, and others who believed that preserving society’s institutions was the right’s highest calling. A reverence for our past has morphed into a psuedo-reformist mantra that seeks to destroy rather than build upon, tear down instead of conserve. Hence, liberals should not be defeated, they must be annihilated, along with the Great Society, the New Deal, and other “socialist” ideas. Supporting anything less calls into question one’s “true conservative” credentials.

The recent efforts by Jon Henke and Patrick Ruffini to counter these destructive beliefs are instructive. Henke’s call for advertisers and the Republican party to boycott World Net Daily for their enthusiastic coverage and endorsement of the Birther nonsense (among other idiocies) and Ruffini’s defense of Jon, along with a general criticism of the revanchists that is both trenchant and on point:

As a fiscal and social conservative, I happen to think Jon is completely in the right here, both substantively and strategically. Don’t raise the canard that we ought to be attacking Democrats first. Conservatives are entirely within their rights to have public debates over who will publicly represent them, and who will be allowed to affiliate with the conservative movement.

The Birthers are the latest in a long line of paranoid conspiracy believers of the left and right who happen to attach themselves to notions that simply are not true. Descended from the 9/11 Truthers, the LaRouchies, the North American Union buffs, and way back when, the John Birch Society, the Birthers are hardly a new breed in American politics.

Each and every time they have appeared, mainstream conservatives from William F. Buckley to Ronald Reagan have risen to reject these influences — and I expect that will be the case once again here.

But there is another subtext that makes Jon’s appeal more urgent. As a pretty down-the-line conservative, I don’t believe I am alone in noting with disappointment the trivialization, excessive sloganeering, and pettiness that has overtaken the movement of late. In “The Joe the Plumberization of the GOP,” I argued that conservatives have grown too comfortable with wearing scorn as a badge of honor, content to play sarcastic second fiddle to the dominant culture of academia and Hollywood with second-rate knock-off institutions. A side effect of this has been a tendency to accept conspiracy nuts as a slightly cranky edge case within the broad continuum of conservatism, rather than as a threat to the movement itself.

In addition to “the trivialization, excessive sloganeering, and pettiness” exhibited by those in the movement, one might add the curious and debilitating attitude of equating thoughtfulness with “elitism.”

Stacy McCain, who can be brilliant when the mood strikes him, wrote this about Henke’s and Ruffini’s efforts at marginalizing the crazies:

Grassroots conservative activists are, by their very nature, not engaged in the political process as a career. They tend to be older, well-established in non-political occupations and less concerned about the Big Picture questions than in finding immediate, practical ways to oppose the menace of liberalism. The question one hears from the grassroots is not, “Whither conservatism?” but rather, “What can I do?”

The Tea Party movement — which will host a major rally in Washington next weekend — has given the grassroots something to do, so that joining en masse to voice their opposition to the Obama agenda, they are actively engaged in the political process.

However, grassroots activism has consequences. One of the consequences of a ressurgent conservative grassroots is that their concerns, beliefs and attitudes are sometimes not in sync with the concerns, beliefs and attitudes of smart young Republican activists like Patrick Ruffini.

Stacy, who later goes on to say that the Birthers “are diverting attention from more valid critiques of the Obama administration and its liberal policies. So they should be discouraged or ignored…” fails to see the Birthers as a symptom of a larger problem; movement-cons rejecting criticism - even of Birthers - as “elitist” and ascribing dissent from their closed, ideological worldview as the critic having insufficient attachment to conservative principles.

McCain doesn’t engage on quite that level but doesn’t mince words when it comes to taking down those he believes have “elitist” attitudes toward the movement (”rubes”). And while he makes some valid points about “careerism” and its deleterious impact on what passes for “acceptable discourse,” methinks he paints with too broad a brush at times. The Ruffini-Henke critique is hardly born out of a desire to advance or augment those two gentlemen’s standing with other conservatives or the Republican party but rather - and I think this fairly obvious - the practical, and pragmatic calculation that we can’t get there from here. Changes are in order so that the public face of conservatism has a smile, rather than a snarl, and promoting the idea that one can vigorously oppose Obama without descending into the fever swamps of conspiracy and hate.

The road back to political power and intellectual relevance for the right will not be found in the rantings of Birthers, the false accusations of apostasy directed against conservative critics, a dogmatic and ideological approach to defining principles, nor an unrealistic and unattainable political agenda.

Nor should we count on the self destruction of the opposition which, at this point, seems well underway. What we do when we achieve power is as important as how we get there. For that, Jon Henke, Patrick Ruffinini, and others like them should be heard out and their call for a return to reason heeded.

The left is discovering that unhinged speech directed at Obama is a very bad, very destructive thing.

Wow. I mean, like, Wow.

This is surreal. If Joe Klein really believes that this is some kind of recent phenomenon, then we must assume that he agreed with the vast majority of the Democratic base when they accused Bush of going to war for Haliburton and oil, for being like Hitler, for wanting to kill black people in New Orleans by deliberately withholding aid, for plotting to take over the government and set up a dictatorship…

Since Klein (and the rest of the hand wringers on the left who are currently upset at the idiocy being demonstrated by right wing talk radio listeners who think Obama is a commie) didn’t write similar warning screeds when the kind of talk above was not only commonplace, but accepted as part of the lefty narrative against Bush (and supported by many, many Democrats on the Hill who fed these nutters by hinting that they were right), it makes bullsh*t like this ring hollow indeed:

The amazing thing remains not only the unwillingness of responsible Republicans–a term that is in danger of becoming an oxymoron–to call bull– on this, but also the willingness of many prominent Republicans to join in the slinging of garbage. Michelle Cottle reports that there are Republican-sanctioned efforts afoot to have parents not send their children to school on September 8 because the President is scheduled to address the nation’s school-children that day and they are afraid that he will fill their little heads with socialist propaganda. That is somewhere well beyond disgraceful.

Could I just say that the intensity of this getting pretty scary…and dangerous? We are heading toward a cliff and the usual brakes of civil discourse are not working. Indeed, the Republicans have the pedal to the metal–rushing us toward a tragedy far greater than the California health care forum finger-biting Karen describes below. I’m usually not one to panic or be overly worried about the state of our country–even when we do awful things like invade Iraq and torture people, we usually right our course before long–but I have a sinking feeling about where we’re headed now. I hope I’m wrong.

WHERE HAS JOE KLEIN BEEN FOR THE LAST 8 YEARS? “Stolen elections” ring a bell, Joe? That one was advanced not only in 2000 (despite massive evidence to the contrary) but also in 2004 - to the point that Members of Congress actually challenged the electoral vote! Talk about intensity!

I am at a total loss in understanding such blindness. The left spends fricking 8 years in refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the Bush Administration, and then Steve Benen has the gall to write crap like this?

Birthers, Deathers, Tenthers. Beck, Palin, Limbaugh. Bachmann, Inhofe, DeMint, King, and Broun. A scorched-earth campaign intended to tear the country apart, questioning the legitimacy of the president, the government, and the rule of law. It’s all very scary.

Allow me to substitute: “”No blood for oil” conspiracists, Diebold rigging voting machines, Bush-Hitler, agents of Israel running government, re-instituting the draft, Bush a tool of the Saudi Royal family, HALIBURTON!, a staged terrorist attack so that the 2008 elections would be canceled, FEMA built sites to house anti-war protestors…and on and on.

Not to mention McKinney, Conyers, and half the Democratic caucus who worked tirelessly to undermine the Bush presidency, attacking him in the most vile personal manner, tearing the country apart with their unhinged opposition to anything and everything he did. And while legitimate criticism of our war effort in Iraq could have been tolerated, very few of the rhetorical bombs tossed at Bush from the left was of the “legitimate” variety and much of it was gross exaggeration, hyperbole, dishonest, and deliberately provocative.

Yes Steve, It’s scary now and it was equally scary back then.

There is no excuse for the unhinged nature of dissent on the right - something I have written about at great personal and professional cost for years. But when lefties like Klein, Benen, and their hand wringing ilk invade the public discussion with their weeping about how extreme the opposition is without even acknowledging the dangerous, delegitimzing, depressing, maddening, and yes, scary rhetoric coming from their cohorts during the Bush years, one can not only question their judgment but their sanity as well.

Who are they trying to kid? I will continue to assault irrational, and shallow conservatives like Beck, Limbaugh, and their rabid listeners. But I expect to see a little context from the opposition as well. Nothing in politics happens in a vacuum. For every action, there is an equal or greater reaction.

These vacuous, easily misled talk show adherents spent 8 years listening to the opposition say the most outrageous, the most putrid stuff about their president. And I have seen it more than once in comments on various blogs (and some have taken me to task for writing against the idea), that now it’s our turn for a little payback.

My response has always been “Why ape the absolute worst in your opponents? How dumb is that?” Of course, such logic doesn’t seem to get anywhere except that these same fruitcakes accuse me of being a liberal.

I see very little difference in how unhinged the opposition is acting towards Obama and those who pilloried Bush. Klein, Benen, and the rest are just being drama queens, solemnly informing us how frightened they are at such rank emotionalism in politics, while intoning warnings of these times being the “worst” this, or the “most dangerous” that. It’s pure poppycock. They either slept through last 8 years of the left’s assault on decency and rational discourse or they have the balls to ignore it in order to make a political point.

Get real guys. You’re still part of the problem. The overwhelming number of people who oppose Obama do so in a rational, respectful manner. They are not birthers, or deathers, or any other unhinged faction. They are ordinary Americans and for you to lump them together with the wild eyed fanatics brands you as being equally culpable for the state of political discourse in this country.

Try the truth. It would be a nice change after 8 years of bombastic lies.

So Van Jones is a Truther. A guy who was once, by his own definition, a fervent communist, morphed into a sort of free market enthusiast (with the understanding of a three year old of what free markets are), signed a petition in 2004 asking the New York Attorney General to investigate the notion that George Bush knew of the 9/11 attacks in advance but allowed them to happen so that he would have a pretext for war.

Jones denies he knew what he was signing, that he didn’t read it very well.

I’d take him at his word - that he’s stupid not crazy - except according to Jim Hoft, even if he didn’t read the petition carefully, the guy is a died in the wool, out of this world, Truther nut anyway. He participated in a demonstration all the way back in 2002 which claimed government involvement in the 9/11 attacks:

Yesterday, news broke out that Barack Obama’s communist Green Czar was a 9-11 Truther. The administration much later in the day released a statement saying Van Jones was “not now or ever” involved in the 9-11 Truther movement.
Jones said the petition he signed in 2004 did not reflect his views and that he did not carefully review the language in the petition before agreeing to add his name..

Not true.
This article at Rense.com from 2002 links Van Jones to the 9-11 Truther movement at its infancy…

Perhaps it’s not surprising that presidents misfire on occasion in their hiring and end up with nutters in high places. I documented plenty of this kind of idiocy during the Bush Administration. The appointment of Paul Bonicelli to be Deputy Director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) - who taught at Patrick Henry College which made faculty members sign a “statement of faith” declaring the earth was created in 6 days among other goofy beliefs - is just one of a series of appointments of radical Christian conservatives, anti-science Luddites, and other kooks that populated the Bush administration.

It’s just that Jones is one of Obama’s beloved “Czars” with his fingers on $30 billion of our tax dollars. Those who lack basic critical thinking skills and substitute belief in rational thought for adherence to paranoid conspiracy theories do not belong in government.

What’s more, lying about it when you’re caught dead to rights should disqualify you from public service period.

It perplexes me that people like Jones, whose radical past is filled with racist, bigoted, statements against white people as well as nutty beliefs that corporations are trying to kill black people, are even seriously considered for important posts in government. It says something worrying about politics and government that constituencies like Bush’s Christian conservative base and Obama’s radical left supporters must be appeased by appointing high ranking managers or bureaucrats who sympathize with or believe the ideas of the most extreme fringes of both parties.

Jones isn’t the only nutter in the Obama administration. Zeke Emanuel’s relationship with Paul Ehrlich, he of the “Population Bomb” pseudo science, whose Malthusian theories may go down in history as the most spectacularly wrong predictions from someone that important people still take seriously, has never been adequately explained.

True, Emanuel’s relationship with the quack goes back 30 years, but I would love to get ‘ole Zeke in front of a Congressional Committee and ask him if he believed at the time that the world would run massive, cataclysmic food shortages in the 1980’s, or that China and India would have hundreds of millions starving to death, or that we would be rationing food in the United States. That’s pure nutter territory - even for back then. It calls into question Emanuel’s judgment as well as his ability to think critically. A lot of the scare quotes from Emanuel are from papers he wrote with Ehrlich that posited absolute worst case scenarios for rationing health care in an overpopulated world.

Might also want to ask Emanuel if he still believes in compulsory birth control and forced sterilization as Ehrlich does.

I don’t know if Emanuel’s views from 30 years ago should disqualify him from being health care Czar. I think it a legitimate question of Emanuel’s ethical grounding if he believed in stuff like shorting health care for the old in order to give it to teenagers. Unlike scientific views, how someone arrives at an ethical conclusion are formed in childhood and very rarely can change.

As for Jones, it may be that he doesn’t really believe in anything except what can advance his career. When it was cool to be a communist after the Rodney King verdict, he embraced it. When he saw a chance to get in the good graces of the far left after 9/11 by touting Truther theories, he leaped at it. And when the tide turned toward green, he jumped on that gravy train as well.

Is it too much to accuse Van Jones of being a cynical opportunist, playing on white guilt, catering to a radical constituency, while dressing himself in respectability by riding the green bandwagon all the way to the White House?

Or does he really believe all that crap?

Either way, Obama should dump him. And soon.

Ezra Klein, blogger for the Washington Post, appears to be a conduit for the Obama administration to both Congress and the American people as he apparently has gotten information on what the White House wants us to believe they are thinking regarding how they are going to rescue health care reform.

There are wheels turning within wheels here, so it is as important to note what isn’t being said as much as what message the White House wants Klein to be sending.

According to Klein there are two camps in the White House on what kind of reform package the president will actually put down on paper and highlight in his joint session speech next Wednesday:

The first camp could be called “universal-lite.” They’re focused on preserving the basic shape of the bill. They think a universal plan is necessary for a number of reasons: For one thing, the insurance market regulations don’t work without universality, as you can’t really ask insurers to offer standard prices if the healthy and the young don’t have to enter the system. For another, it will be easier to change subsidies or improve the benefit package down the road if the initial offerings prove inadequate. New numbers are easier than new features. Creating a robust structure is the most important thing. This camp seems to be largely headed by the policy people.

The second camp is not universal at all. This camp believes the bill needs to be scaled back sharply in order to ensure passage. Covering 20 million people isn’t as good as covering 40 million people, but it’s a whole lot better than letting the bill fall apart and covering no one at all. It’s also a success of some sort, and it gives you something to build on. What that sacrifices in terms of structure it gains in terms of political appeal. This camp is largely headed by members of the political team.

Both camps accept that the administration’s proposal will be less generous than what has emerged from either the HELP or House Committees. The question, it seems, is how much less generous.

For the administration to admit that there is a split into two camps probably means that there are not only more than two but that reform is causing the Obama administration to slowly unravel. There seems to be a rift between the far left, and the practical left, with the ideologues more numerous, but lacking the clout of the Rahmbo wing in the administration.

It is also significant that the ideologues are still pushing a strong public option. I referred to the public option as a “Zombie” on my radio show because it’s still walking around, not realizing it has been killed. The numbers are just not adding up in the Senate for any kind of a public option, but it continues to be pressed because the ideological base of the Democratic party refuses to sign off on any reform that doesn’t include it.

The bottom line is that it is a very difficult uphill climb for Obama to achieve any kind of legislative success on health care reform. At the moment, he just can’t get there from here. The practical left realizes that but will have an enormously difficult time convincing the ideologues to drop the public option and go for more modest reforms.

A couple of thing are certain; Obama going before Congress means that the process will not be shut down, that there will be bills emerging from both the House and the Senate, that there will almost certainly be votes on those bills, and that passage in the House of a more liberal bill is almost assured.

The senate process apparently hinges on one lone senator - Republican liberal Olympia Snowe - who has taken it upon herself to negotiate for the entire party:

The answer appears to hinge on Sen. Olympia Snowe. “I’m a Snowe-ite,” joked one official. Her instincts on health care have proven quite a bit more liberal than those of many Democrats. In the Gang of Six meetings, she joined Sen. Jeff Bingaman in focusing on affordability and coverage - putting her, in practice, somewhat to the left of Conrad and Baucus. The problem is that Snowe is scared to be the sole Republican supporting this bill, not to mention the Republican who ensures the passage of this bill. The reprisals within her caucus could be tremendous.

If Snowe drops off the bill, using the budget reconciliation process will probably be a necessity. The bill then goes through Sen. Kent Conrad’s Budget Committee, giving him much more power over the product. The absence of any Republicans repels at least a couple of conservative Democrats. Passage becomes much less certain, which means a scaled-back bill becomes much more likely. This is the irony of the health-care endgame: The bill becomes much more conservative if it loses its final Republican.

I don’t think Snowe will still be a Republican by the end of the year - especially if she is responsible for the passage of the kind of reform being contemplated. Even on judges, she has become an unreliable vote. The question is going to be asked why she didn’t leave sooner.

At this point, it appears the senate will use reconciliation to pass their version of health care - a considerably more “conservative” version than will be passed by the House. At that point, the real headknocking will begin and we’ll see some blood on the floor in the Democratic caucus. I’d say the chances are no better than 60-40 for any kind of bill by the end of the year. I base this on the fact that the president has failed to show leadership on the issue to this point, and expecting him to suddenly acquire the skills to ram this thing through Congress when he has shown no such ability previously is taking a lot on faith.

A couple of other things.

1. Cost “savings” in any White House package will be nothing more than smoke and mirrors. They will try to sell their version of reform as almost revenue neutral through dishonest accounting, hiding some costs in out years of the budget, as well as grossly exaggerating the dollar amounts that would be saved in specific provisions. Any CBO estimates will be ignored. Even in a scaled down version of reform, it will be the only way to fulfill Obama’s promise of not signing a bill that adds to the deficit.

2. The chances of the White House and the Democratic party imploding over reform are fading as Obama becomes more engaged on the issue. Differences will be papered over to the extent that they can because all sides realize the enormous stakes involved. The president’s defenders may dismiss the idea that his administration would be castrated by a failure to vote out a reform bill, but  the rest of Obama’s agenda is in deep peril unless he can deliver. He is asking his party to go far, far out on a very thin limb. There are enough vulnerable members who would likely not forget being left to hang if the president can’t get anything done.

The posting at Obama’s “Organizing for America” website that referred to conservative opponents of health care reform as “Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists who are subverting the American Democratic Process, whipped to a frenzy by their Fox Propaganda Network ceaselessly re-seizing power for their treacherous leaders” has, unfortunately been taken down. No explanation has been forthcoming for why it was allowed to go up in the first place but, hey! Stuff happens, right? Forgive and forget, eh? No harm, no foul.

But I must confess to being a little disappointed. Not because the opposition sees conservatives as “Right Wing Domestic Terrorists.”

We are.

But because I haven’t been whipped into a frenzy yet by that famous television network Fox Propaganda Network. (Did anyone else notice the weird, bizarrely haphazard manner in which the author capitalized letters? “American Democratic Process” but not “treacherous leaders?”)

Given how boring my life has been lately, a little frenzy would be a welcome break. I could really dig getting all lathered up, foaming at the mouth, ranting incoherently at the Communists who are trying to impose Marxist-Leninist ideals and programs on America.

I guess I’ll have to settle for a night of passion with my Zsu-Zsu. And although I often foam at the mouth and get lathered up when in the throes of connubial bliss with my love, I draw the line at ranting incoherently about Communism. Kinda kills the mood, if you know what I mean.

Frenzy or no, the attraction to being a domestic terrorist lies in the sublime effect that the terrorist lifestyle has on one’s outlook toward political opponents. No need to argue logically, or even call liberals dirty names. Just blow the bastards up if they disagree.

Simple, but quite effective judging by the reaction by many to the Mohamed cartoons. Nobody cares if you suspend Jesus on the cross in a glass jar full of urine. But put a funny hat and a comical beard on the Prophet (PBUH) and KABOOM! No more critics of Mohamed. Note the extreme care Yale Press just took to avoid such a fate when they decreed a book about the reaction to the Mohamed cartoons would be published without…the Mohamed cartoons.

Roger Kimball writing at PJ Media a few weeks ago:

I’d like to second the desideratum expressed by the British journalist Charles Moore at the time: “I wish,” Moore wrote in the Telegraph, “someone would mention the word that dominates Western culture in the face of militant Islam — fear. And then I wish someone would face it down.”

Is Yale stepping up to the plate? “Good idea!” you say. “About time someone had the courage to investigate that episode of insanity. I mean, really: you publish a handful of satirical cartoons and then adherents of the ostentatiously misnamed ‘religion of peace’ go postal, start burning down Danish embassies across the globe, issuing death threats to the cartoonists, etc.”

How great would it be to strike that kind of fear in the breast of liberals every time they felt like writing some nonsensical screed about conservatives? The effect a little terror would have on their delicate psyches would be positively delicious.

Unfortunately, I know nothing of explosives and, given my coarse mechanical aptitude, I’d probably end up blowing myself up like Bill Ayers’ terrorist buddies back in the day. Back then, we had real domestic terrorists - or at least they played one on TV. The whole Weather Underground thing always had the stink of sanctimony about it rather than the religious fanaticism, and belief in a higher cause that al-Qaeda demonstrates on a regular basis.

Lefty terrorists at that time were not suicide bombers. It is doubtful the idea even occurred to them. They were too selfish, too self centered to die for anything greater than their own heroic image of themselves. Spoiled rich kids throwing a tantrum with home made dynamite and C-4 instead of flinging their Erector Set through the window. Lethal, but something of a bizarre parody of dedicated Marxists or wacko Islamists.

No matter. I must report that real right wing terrorists are equally pathetic creatures. McVeigh and his buddies may have had a better idea of what they were doing thanks to their military training, but demonstrated similar cluelessness about how to be truly terrifying. Yes, blowing up the federal building in Oklahoma city was a heinous crime but Clinton didn’t blame the bombers, he blamed Rush Limbaugh. I wonder how McVeigh felt about that?

I guess we better face it. We Americans just don’t do terrorism very well. We’re not ignorant enough to be as fanatical, dedicated, and determined to die as al-Qaeda. Apparently, however, the OFA believes that we on the right may indeed possess the right stuff to at least approximate what Islamists pulled off on 9/11. Their confidence in us is inspiring and if they’re very lucky, like those liberals who try to appease the Islamists by not trying to annoy them, we will blow them to smithereens last.

I only hope I can live up to their expectations.

I suggest rather than waiting until we right wing terrorists make it to heaven to enjoy those 72 virgins, we skip the formalities of killing ourselves and indulge our fantasies today. Think of the inducement to recruiting fellow right wing domestic terrorists that would have! We’d be beating potentials off with a stick. I daresay even conservative women would want to get in the act if they had the opportunity to enjoy 72 young, studly men.

Except with all that taking our heavenly reward here on earth, there would barely be enough time left over to blow anything up. I mean, how long would it take you to make your way through 72 virgins? And forget our conservative women terrorists. They’d want to be wined and dined, insist on foreplay, want to cuddle and have a cigarette afterwards, and maybe even go another round with their boy toys. Some of them may even want a second date! The horror.

I want to thank OFA but thinking about it, I think it best to decline the honor of being designated a right wing domestic terrorist. Fox Propaganda Network will just have to muddle through without me. I am much too old and far too large to be playing the internationally wanted, dangerous and desperate terrorist.

I suppose I could always make myself into a terrorist mouthpiece…

Winston Churchill is quoted as saying, ““There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.” Indeed, many have the wrong idea about conservatism in that they assume we don’t believe in “change” as it is generally understood.

Nothing could be further from the truth, as those of us who have read and understand Russell Kirk know:

The conservative is not opposed to social improvement, although he doubts whether there is any such force as a mystical Progress, with a Roman P, at work in the world. When a society is progressing in some respects, usually it is declining in other respects. The conservative knows that any healthy society is influenced by two forces, which Samuel Taylor Coleridge called its Permanence and its Progression. The Permanence of a society is formed by those enduring interests and convictions that gives us stability and continuity; without that Permanence, the fountains of the great deep are broken up, society slipping into anarchy. The Progression in a society is that spirit and that body of talents which urge us on to prudent reform and improvement; without that Progression, a people stagnate.

Therefore the intelligent conservative endeavors to reconcile the claims of Permanence and the claims of Progression.

Careful, prudent change, solidly based on tradition and “permanence”, is a positive good, says Kirk.

I might add that Edmund Burke had a lot to say about “change” as well. His critique of the French Revolution (and his support for the institution of the British Monarchy) made it easy for his critics to denounce him as a reactionary. But one of Burke’s most famous quotations - “A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation” - makes the valid point that change is necessary when the institutions and traditions of the state are at risk. Preserving them at the cost of change is necessary and good.

Why all this blathering about “change?” First, it gives me a chance to quote Kirk and Burke and aren’t you mightily impressed at that, dear reader?

Secondly, it serves as prologue to my sad experience from yesterday after I posted my piece “Angry Ideologues vs. The Statists” on my diary page at RedState. The reaction to the piece from Moe Lane, who is a regular poster and one of the site’s moderators, as well as other commenters flummoxed me.

A brief background: I used to cross-post my RWNH pieces quite regularly at RedState, having joined the community there almost as soon as I began blogging nearly 5 years ago. It was a good way to promote me and my blog and it was good exposure for my writing.

A about a year ago, I virtually stopped cross posting basically because I got lazy about the promotion thing and rarely visited after that unless directed by a link on Memeorandum or some other blog.

Recently, it occurred to me that my laziness about promoting myself and my writing was costing me potential readers (as well as potential revenue) so I decided to make an effort to learn the Twitter thing, and rededicate myself to get out of the rut I’ve been in since the election.

Hence, my triumphant re-appearance at RedState - or not. Many of my diary posts had been heavily criticized in the past so I was not unused to the notion that I was not a popular poster there. And the diary in question was heavily critical of some conservatives - “angry ideologues” - so I expected the usual mindless name calling from, who else, angry ideologues.

Enter Mr. Lane into our little drama. Here is a comment exchange between the two of us that made me realize that RedState was not a very conservative site anymore - at least not so far as I understand the meaning of conservatism:

Lane: That’s nice, Rick. What did your local GOP chair say…
Moe Lane Monday, August 31st at 3:22PM EDT (link)

…when you explained this to him or her?

Me: “Conservative” not “Republican”
Rick Moran Monday, August 31st at 4:28PM EDT (link)

If I mention the party at all in the piece - and I don’t reference it specifically - it is as a vessel to carry conservative principles.

I am not a party man. I am concerned with conservatism. As far as Republicans are concerned, I feel if I can help reform conservatism, that helps the party.

Lane: In other words, you didn’t.
Moe Lane Monday, August 31st at 4:50PM EDT (link)

Now, did you have anything useful to contribute, or are you just going to waste my site’s bandwidth some more with complaints that do nothing but annoy actual activists and drive down their diaries?

If Mr. Lane’s intent was to give me a pep talk about getting with the program and cheerleading for our side, I’m afraid it fell rather flat.

But I don’t think that was his intent, do you? Trotting out the old “chickenhawk” argument used by the left against Iraq War supporters was surprising enough (if I haven’t told my local GOP chair that he’s a raving, right wing ideologue, then my critique is worthless). But then, to actually set a standard for acceptable speech about whether something is “useful” or not was the real kicker. And I told him so:

Me: I believe my views are indeed useful
Rick Moran Monday, August 31st at 5:18PM EDT (link)

And I’m afraid annoying people is the price paid for revealing unpleasant truths that many conservative ideologues resist believing.

So I’m sure you welcome all viewpoints that are reasonably argued, and can be responded to in a reasonable way. Thank you for that.

Mr. Lane chose not to answer - as he also failed to address any single point made in my diary that he considered “useless” or that “annoy[ed] actual activists” - and proceeded to remind me of blog policy about cross posting:

Lane: That would be another “No,” then.
Monday, August 31st at 5:24PM EDT (link)

So noted.

PS: I note that this is a reprint of something that was originally from your site. While RedState permits full reproductions of posts and articles by the author, we expect the post to link back to the original source. Please do so in the future.

Obviously, a man of few words - and little else. Of course, he needn’t worry about the future since after this post hits the tubes, my name will be mud at RedState and even if I were allowed to, the prospect of posting on a site with such anti-conservative moderators and commenters (read the rest of what passes for criticism) has lost its allure.

What drives a person to close off their mind so completely, so determinedly, to where challenging orthodoxy is a transgression worthy of such contempt? No, I possess no thunderbolts of truth and wisdom to hurl at my detractors and open their eyes to new vistas, new ways of thinking. All I have are opinions that differ from theirs.

I suppose I should be used to it by now, but it never fails to amaze me how truly remarkable is our capacity as humans to subsume our natural ability to think, and slavishly, doltishly, mindlessly allow our critical thinking skills to fall into slothful disuse. I am not immune from committing this sin as my regular readers know. It takes real effort to break through the clutter of your own lazy thought processes, and thankfully, the few readers I have left at this site never let me go for long without letting me know of my backsliding.

Not challenging your own beliefs by constantly re-energizing and reinvigorating the underlying assumptions that form the bedrock of your thinking by exposing yourself to alternative viewpoints leads to the kind of knee-jerk nonsense espoused by Mr. Lane and most of his fellow RedState commenters who never engaged me on the substance of what I wrote, choosing instead to simply try and outdo each other with their invective.

It is a decidedly unconservative attitude to hold and proves to me that, although there are many fine conservative writers still at the site - Eric Erickson, Warner Todd Huston, and Pejman Yousefzadeh to name just a few - the community that is RedState has degenerated into a barbarous brew of angry yawpers.

A pity, that. What was once a vibrant, stimulating place has become a gray ghost of its former self - a place where orthodoxy trumps almost all and where new ideas go to to die.

As my regular readers know, I have written in the past that I believe the actions of the Bush Administration in authorizing torture broke American and international law and some accounting is necessary in order for us to confront what the government did in our name.

I will not rehash the arguments for and against torture. Suffice it to say, I reject the notion that the ends justifies the means for a variety of reasons, and that I believe those who are sincere in their support of Dick Cheney’s rationale for “enhanced interrogation techniques” have lost sight of one of the things that makes us an exceptional nation; our respect and reverence for the rule of law.

That said, I have also rejected the idea of torture prosecutions - not because I believe the guilty should get off scott free but because any reasonable and fair minded person looking at the matter knows that the administration believed they were acting in the best interests of the nation, and that they honestly believed they had finessed the treaties and statutes by their stretched, and ultimately legally incorrect justifications for torture. Was it wrong for the Bushies to try to extend a fig leaf of legality over what turned out to be serious violations of domestic law and international agreements? I believe they felt they had little choice. To my mind, that doesn’t make it right, nor am I convinced (nor are interrogation experts) that non-torture techniques couldn’t have elicited the same information.

Yes, torture was probably responsible for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed spilling some secrets. But what we’ll never know is if the professional interrogators would have been able to break him down using legal methods. Rejecting the “ticking bomb scenario” as unrealistic, I and many others - including many in the military and intelligence communities who interrogate for a living - have come to the conclusion that the plots broken up because of our waterboarding KSM would probably have been foiled using perfectly legal means of interrogation.

But this doesn’t answer the question about prosecuting or not prosecuting offenders - including high level officials who ordered underlings to break the law. Fred Hiatt, writing in WaPo today, has a thoughtful, but ultimately flawed analysis and recommendation:

On the one hand, this is a nation of laws. If torture violates U.S. law — and it does — and if Americans engaged in torture — and they did — that cannot be ignored, forgotten, swept away. When other nations violate human rights, the United States objects and insists on some accounting. It can’t ask less of itself.

Yet this is also a nation where two political parties compete civilly and alternate power peacefully. Regimes do not seek vengeance, through the courts or otherwise, as they succeed each other. Were Obama to criminally investigate his predecessor for what George W. Bush believed to be decisions made in the national interest, it could trigger a debilitating, unending cycle.

By attempting to navigate between these two principles, Obama has satisfied neither. Last week his administration took another step down a path of investigation and recrimination, without coming any closer to truth-telling or justice as most Americans would understand it.

Even with the best of intentions - and I do not grant the Obama administration that desire based on the rank partisanship they have demonstrated from top to bottom - any prosecution would necessarily be perceived as being politically motivated. The same holds true for any congressional hearings. The idea that the Democrats could conduct anything approaching non-partisan, or at least fair hearings on this issue, involving the Bushies, is laughable. The pressure on Democrats in Congress to turn the hearings into an inquisition from their rabid, partisan base would be overwhelming.

Hiatt suggests a presidential commission:

There is a better, though not perfect, solution, one that the administration reportedly considered, rejected and should consider again: a high-level, respected commission to examine the choices made in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, and their consequences.

Such a commission would investigate not just the Bush administration but the government, including Congress. It would give former vice president Dick Cheney a forum to make his case on the necessity of “enhanced interrogation techniques.” It would examine the efficacy of such techniques, if any, and the question of whether, even if they work, waterboarding and other methods long considered torture ever can be justified.

Some on the left would object because the goal would not be prosecution and punishment; as in South Africa, amnesty might be promised in exchange for truth-telling. Some on the right, and some in government now, would worry about damaging national security with public airing and rehashing of past misdeeds.

Hiatt bases the idea for this commission on what he believes is a pre-requisite for such a body to be effectve: that “the two political parties compete civilly…” I don’t know where Mr. Hiatt has been spending his days these last couple of decades but it certainly hasn’t been in Washington if he truly believes what he wrote.

There is no civility between the parties. It is all out partisan warefare on any and every issue of consequence - and usually on trivialities as well. Both sides blame the other for this state of affairs, which would be amusing in any other context. The parties are locked in a death grip, driven to hold on with bulldog tenacity by their rabid, uncompromising, unforgiving bases of support whose influence is all out of proportion to their numbers.

But these hysterical party men are also their most reliable voters, as well as being a significant source of volunteer campaign help, and a wellspring of donations for the member’s re-election. It doesn’t take much for the base to turn against a member and given how organized they have become, can turn out a primary candidate to challenge the member on a whim.

For civility to return to politics, there must be a basic recognition by both sides that the other side has the best interests of America at heart. This does not seem possible when the leadership of both parties toss around epithets like “evil mongers” or “culture of death” to describe the other side.

A presidential commission of the kind suggested by Hiatt might succeed in gathering relatively non-partisan members, but couldn’t help being caught up in the vortex of partisan wrangling. Every finding, every witness, every statement made would be filtered through the unique prism found in the base of both parties. It would be marginally different than a select congressional committee and much better than prosecutions. But it would ultimately fail to satisfy either side because it’s mandate would not be to score political points but to find some elusive “truth.” Rather than serve to illuminate what happened and heal the nation, such a commission would eventually be seen by both sides as favoring the opposition.

We live in a different country than existed at the time of the 9/11 Commission. The undisguised hatred of President Bush and the virulent reaction of his supporters to defend him by trashing the opposition over the last 8 years has made the atmosphere in Washington worse than it was in 2002.

It may be that Hiatt’s idea will turn out to be the best option in a universe of bad choices. But it is not a solution as long as neither side trusts each other enough to put aside the massive distrust each holds for the other and see the wisdom of trying to come to grips with this unique, and to my mind, tragic interlude in our nation’s history.

After feeling SO left out of the Twitter revolution because it all looked so…so…geeky, I found myself with some time on my hands this morning (I am on vacation from my PJ Media job), and decided to gird my tech loins and enter the dank, overpopulated, incomprehensible Twitter Universe.

I had signed up for Twitter back in April but contented myself with using the social networking button on my blog to update all 170 or so of my followers about my brilliant blog posts.

I didn’t know what the hell I was doing of course. I just discovered today that a few people actually responded to these whispers in the Twitter wilderness, which REALLY made me feel like an idiot. A dozen or so Twitterers actually took the time to Tweet back about what I had posted.

For those of you who so kindly tweeted me these last few months only to have that response summarily ignored by a technological pea brain, I apologize. I plan on using the Krell mind expander a little later just so I can figure out how to get back to you.

For these last months, I was using the handle “roddy mcorley” instead of my name because when I signed up, the computer told me that someone else was using my name (imagine the gall!) and that I had to come up with another one. It never penetrated my vacuous skull that I could use a variation of my name and people would then be able to recognize my tweets.

(It should tell you something that I thought there was only one other “rickmoran” in the Twitter world and that I actually believed I might be able to buy the guy off and take my rightful place in Twitterdom, proudly using my real name. Today, using a simple search, you can imagine my surprise when I discovered about 50 “Rick Moran”s, most using variations of my name, all tweeting away happily, secure in the knowledge that people knew who they were.)

Who was roddymcorley? Roddy McCorley was an Irish patriot, who fought during the rebellion of 1798, and was later captured by the British and hung. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem recorded a ballad about McCorley that was written at the turn of the 20th century, and is not only one of their more well known selections, but has also been a staple at Moran family gatherings for more than 40 years of campfire/living room songfests.

The song is both tragic and uplifting - as only the Irish can do it:

Up the narrow streets he stepped
Smiling proud and young
About the hemp rope on his neck
The golden ringlets clung
There is never a tear in his blue eyes
For glad and bright are they
As young Roddy McCorely goes to die
On the bridge of Toome today

Today, I killed off Roddy McCorley as my handle and adopted “rickmoran_rwnh.” In exploring the Twitter site, I accidentally found out how you can change your username. Imagine my sheer delight when I discovered I could use my real name so that my legions of blog fans can now follow me on Twitter.

Maybe sometime this weekend I will peruse the instructions (also discovered by accident today) so that I can actually get in on the conversation. No promises though. If it is any more complex than pointing and clicking, faggetaboutit.

Maybe I should just give it up. Readers of this site are probably giggling at the thought that I can say anything meaningful using 140 characters. Or 140 words for that matter. I am well aware of my propensity to babble, to digress, to wax poetic when simple declarative sentences will do. But then, how would you get to sleep at night without my somnolent scribblings to make your eyes glaze over and get heavy with sleep? I am better than Sominex and cheaper than Halcion, and I challenge anyone to a “sleep-off” to see which blogger - Andrew Sullivan or me - is a better sleep aid. I will bet $50 dollars that I can put you to sleep faster than Andrew.

Yeah…I still don’t get Twitter. And probably never will.