GOP: Officially Defunct

There is no serious dialogue between the Democrats and the GOP. How can you possibly form any governing coalition between groups when one half of those groups refuses to accept empirical reality?

This is a post about Joe Wilson, but not about him specifically. But let’s start there. He’s the one who lied when he called out “You Lie!” in reference to coverage of illegal aliens. Facts are troublesome things to the modern GOP; one need not read any further than the name of the appropriate subsection to see what’s what, but Politifact goes one further:

…health reform leaves in place the status quo on illegal immigration, and certainly does not provide any new benefits particularly for illegal immigrants

If this outburst were limited only to the sad fucktard that is Joe Wilson, that’d be one thing. But Dana Milbank lays out the entire sad situation:

Wilson was only the most flagrant. There was booing from House Republicans when the president caricatured a conservative argument by saying they would “leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own.” They hissed when he protested their “scare tactics.” They grumbled as they do in Britain’s House of Commons when Obama spoke of the “blizzard of charges and countercharges.”

When he asserted that “nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have,” there was scoffing and outright laughter on the GOP side. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Tex.) shook his head in disbelief. Several Republicans shouted “What plan?” and Rep. Louis Gohmert (Tex.) waved at Obama a handwritten poster he made on a letter-size piece of paper: “WHAT PLAN?” Gohmert then took that down and replaced it with another handmade poster that said “WHAT BILL?”

The essential outcome of all this is something the media seems to forget on a daily basis: There is no GOP anymore as a functional political party interested in governance. Full stop. All policy debate, healthcare or otherwise is being conducted by Democrats: liberal and conservative. They then have to pass said policy through a perfectly mysterious 60-vote supra-majority in the Senate that the media can never see fit to explain either. Just why is it that the Senate cannot move on 51-vote majorities? Why is that anti-democratic policy in place and ruling our worlds? Easier to repeat whatever it is Drudge is peddling, I suppose. But consulting the MSM, you will never, ever find out what’s behind those mysterious 60-vote requirements. But, rest assured, there is no dialogue, because there is no (functional) GOP. It seems more and more likely that the ultimate outcome of the current situation is a new third party that, over time, first relegates the GOP into a regional, state-level party, and then into Whig-town.

And but Obama is exactly right, though probably a few decades late, in issuing this warning:

[When] we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter, we don’t merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves.

One might add that we also lose the ability to govern the country at all.

You’d hope that the powers-that-be in the GOP (or the public at large) will see this sequence as a tipping point, and Joe Wilson will become the Joe McCarthy of his era (though, in his case, managing to be his own Joe Welch). Based on the various FOXnews reactions last night, I seriously doubt it. Things will only get much, much worse as Joe Wilson is held out as some sort of conquering hero and sets about creating a whole crew cast in the vapid image of Sarah Palin.

You Lie!

Your Liberal Media hard at work again. But one example from the link:

Politico’s Glenn Thrush hailed Wilson’s heckling as the night’s “defining moment” in a piece headlined, “Wilson’s rallying cry.” But was Wilson’s boorish accusation true? Did Obama “lie” when he claimed Democratic health care reforms would no offer up free care to illegal immigrants? On that count Politico remains politely silent.

You Lie!

Tablet Rasa Redux

Steve Jobs all but introduces the upcoming Apple Tablet (hopefully the upcoming Macintosh tablet, but time will tell) in these quotes from an interview with David Pogue of the NYT:

There are some things that I’m focusing a lot of attention on right now—to polish

[…]

We have some really good stuff coming up.

Keep in mind, Jobs has previously stated that he considers most tablet-type computers to be, uh, shit. Additionally, we know that a number of pre-iPhones (for lack of a better term) died on the vine because one SPJ deemed them unworthy (he’s occasionally referred to these as their “best product decisions” or some similar construction: better to shitcan something bad than put it out there prematurely and sully the brand. Witness the Newton.

Likewise, he presages that this doodad will be far more than a reader:

I’m sure there will always be dedicated devices [like the Kindle], and they may have a few advantages in doing just one thing,” he said. “But I think the general-purpose devices will win the day. Because I think people just probably aren’t willing to pay for a dedicated device.

Even if the tablet runs the iPhone OS, it will be a far more capable everything than Kindle is a reader. If it runs garden-variety Mac OS X, it will likely outperform many (or most) netbooks in terms of absolute utility. How could it not? People already get pretty good results hacking the Mac OS onto these devices. An optimized version, from Apple, would dominate the space assuming it was priced within, say, $100 of its most direct competitors (honestly, it’s hard to figure out what those are in a field pretty well suffused with crap).

Go to Queens

Sam Calagione, Dogfish Head’s founder and chief ideas-man (check this New Yorker profile for the rest of the story) apparently isn’t satisfied with exotic-wood-aged beers or ancient recipes beers. According to the NYT, he’s after the big banana: saliva-fermented beers. Well, partially saliva-fermented, anyway. Central American custom has one chew corn, spit it into a container, let said corn/spit ferment, and then: enjoy! Witness the true salesman in action:

“You need to convert the starches in the corn into fermentable sugars,” the always entertaining Mr. Calagione said by phone from his headquarters in Rehoboth Beach. “One way is through the malting process. But another way — there are natural enzymes in human saliva and by chewing on corn, whether they understood the science of it, ancient brewers through trial and error learned that the natural enzymes in saliva would convert the starch in corn into sugar, so it would ferment. It may sound a little unsavory. …”

And, of course, Dogfish Head is a reasonably large operation. Even a pilot batch for them requires a lot of, uh, chewing:

“We’re going to have an archaeologist and historians and brewers sitting around and chewing 20 pounds of this purple Peruvian corn,” he said. “You kind of chew it in your mouth with your saliva, then push with your tongue to the front of your teeth so that you make these small cakes out of it, then lay them on flat pans and let them sit for 12 hours in the sun or room temperature. That’s when the enzymes are doing their work of converting the starches in that purple corn.”

[…]

“It’s dismal, I’m not going to lie to you,” Mr. Calagione said. “I’d say everybody is deeply, unpleasantly surprised at how labor intensive and palate fatiguing this stuff has turned out to be.”

The article details the whole chewy denouement. Any homebrewers out there can likely use this important tidbit:

“It’s better if you drink water,” Mr. Calagione said. “I take a drink of water before every time I do it. It’s not as pummeling on my gag reflex.”

Noted.

They churned out a few kegs of this stuff and found some folks familiar with the traditional product to test it out for them:

This is not chicha,” Angel Marin (Ecuador) and two others said, almost simultaneously.

“It tastes like beer,” said Yanko Valdes (Chile).

“It’s supposed to be sweeter,” said Martin Estel (Peru). “It’s not bad though.”

Asked about the chewing and spitting method, Mr. Marin said that it was “old school — in the jungle.”

He also made a suggestion: “You want chicha, you should go to Queens,

Jeat? Really?

Really?

By way of cultural disambiguation, it turns out that a gaggah (at least out in Massachusetts’ variably scaled Cape) is a wicked lahdge quahog. That’s a clam. You snap a gaggah at your own risk.

Anywho, it would seem that little Rhody (and Providence Plantations) has a somewhat different spellings, definitions, and entire language. Down there, this functions as what we call “advertising.”

Whoa there, Trigger

Why are the Republicans so afraid of the Power of the Market? Here’s (extremely conservative) Democrat Ben Nelson saying why he’d support a so-called “trigger” option that would, at some hypothetical point in the future, activate a public plan built into some version of the forthcoming insurance reform (emphasis added):

“If, somehow, the private market doesn’t respond the way that it’s supposed to [to other aspects of health care reform], then it would trigger a public option or a government-run option,” Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, “but only as a failsafe, backstop to the process. And when I say trigger … I don’t mean a hair trigger. I mean a true trigger – one that would only apply if there isn’t the kind of competition in the business that we believe there would be.”

Naturally, the Republicans are against even this idea (emphasis in original):

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Republicans aren’t likely to be receptive to public option “trigger,” which would kick into effect only if private insurers fail to meet benchmarks.

“I don’t think so,” Gingrich said on Fox News Sunday.

[–]

Gov. Pawlenty says “all it does is delay the inevitable… if Republicans embrace the trigger, all  they’re going to do is shoot themselves in the foot.”

I see. I see. What we have here is the old accidental truth seepage. If you’re in front of cameras, lying, for long enough…eventually and by accident some truth will get out of you. The GOP leadership in charge of messaging knows damned well that the mythical “market” of insurance won’t work at all. Healthcare is not and has never been a traditional market. It’s the nature of it. Thus, they know, KNOW that a trigger option, no matter how non-hair-trigger it might be will, in fact, be triggered. In one fell swoop such a trigger would show both the inability of the markets to solve every problem on this Earth, and (b) implying a role for government in, you know, anything not abortion or gun-ownership related.

Fuck the general welfare and well-being of The Republic. This would undermine the fundamental, guiding principles of the GOP: government isn’t part of the problem, government is the problem. And, just like with S-CHIP, such things cannot be allowed, no matter what the human cost.

Tuesdays with Ronnie

Reagan or Obama?: As a wise Frenchman one wrote: “Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.”
Obama or Reagan?: I’ve talked a lot about responsibility. I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn. I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV
Reagan or Obama?: [O]ur revolution had already occurred “in the hearts and minds of the people.”
Obama or Reagan?: […] we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.
Reagan or Obama?: America is not yet complete, and it’s up to each one of us to help complete it. And each one of you can place yourself in that painting. You can become one of the those immortal figures by helping to build and renew America.
Obama or Reagan?: These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.