Something About Dignity and Filthy Mouths (Class Warfare Edition)

[#resist]

This is, thematically, more than simply important; it is basically the right-wing game:

Hatch had an opportunity to defend his proposal on the merits and/or explain why he disagreed with the non-partisan assessments, but he chose instead to make this personal. The Utah Republican is apparently under the impression that his upbringing matters, and factual descriptions of his legislation don’t.

(Benen)

This is standard Republican fare; they cannot defend the policy, so they pitch a fit about dignity, instead.

So damn old.

No, really, look, conservatives have this thing, like wanting to talk shit about other people but pretending offense at the notion they have a filthy mouth, and the thing is that in this dualistic society^α, people will line up to the tune of forty to forty-five percent, reflexively, just because. And the rest they can scrabble after, especially if forty-six percent, or so, will win.

What, does nobody remember when the wealthy bawled about class warfare just because Americans elected a black man?

Well, here’s the class warfare they wanted.

No, really, this is #WhatTheyVotedFor.

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^α Americans are post-Christian, and have thus always been polarized. Left/Right; Liberal/Conservative; Good/Evil; God/Devil; man/woman; white/nonwhite; binary/nonbinary (yes, really); Christian/Everybody Else (yes, really). What is that we hear? Americans are more polarized than ever? That pretty much means we are being ourselves. The functional question—(function/dysfunction)—has to do with juxtaposing the Constitution for ourselves and our posterity against the proverbial suicide pact.

Image note: Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT), left, is flanked by House Speaker Ryan (R-WI), right, while signing the American Manufacturing Competitiveness Act of 2016, on Capitol Hill, 18 May 2016, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Benen, Steve. “A senatorial clash that explains what’s wrong with the tax fight”. msnbc. 17 November 2017.

A Conservative Fallacy: Dualism (Bust It or Bust)

#ryancare | #trumpcare

This is a basic conservative fallacy:

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan is selling the Republicans’ health care bill the same way he did the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump. But on the health front, his pitch is falling flat with conservatives.

“Binary choice” is the phrase the Wisconsin Republican used during the presidential election to describe his reason for supporting Trump over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Ryan acknowledged throughout the campaign that both candidates were flawed but Trump was the better of two options, the only one who would help Republicans advance their legislative agenda.

“It really comes down to a binary choice,” the speaker said Thursday during his weekly press conference about moving forward with the GOP’s plan or leaving in place the 2010 health care law.

“This is the closest we will ever get to repealing and replacing Obamacare,” Ryan said. “The time is here. The time is now. This is the moment. And this is the closest this will ever happen.”

(McPherson)

The only subtlety about it is Speaker Ryan’s lack of subtlety.

What Jerry Decided

You know, this actually makes perfect sense. It’s a great lede, though, from the Associated Press:

Gov. Jerry Brown is allowing parole for a transgender inmate who is trying to force California to become the first state to pay for sex reassignment surgery.

Perhaps it’s the sense of dualism, and California really is running out of time. But this is a thirty year-old murder, the convict, Michelle-Lael Norsworthy, formerly Jeffrey Bryan Norsworthy, was actually diagnosed with gender identity disorder in 1999, and has been receiving treatment.

A federal judge in April ordered the state to provide the surgery, which had been scheduled for July. It was delayed after the state appealed.

The governor’s office said Friday that Brown was taking no action on the Board of Parole Hearings’ recommendation to release Michelle-Lael Norsworthy, which means her parole will proceed.

The decision makes it less likely that the 51-year-old will be able to have surgery funded by the prison before she is released. Parole board spokesman Luis Patino said it usually takes about a week for an inmate to be released after the governor allows a parole to proceed.

Brown decided Norsworthy is no longer dangerous, 30 years after she fatally shot Franklin Gordon Liefer Jr., 26, following an argument in a Fullerton bar in November 1985.

And, yes, it’s going to happen anyway, for a different inmate; California agreed to provide sex reassignment surgery for Shiloh Quine, 56, a lifer.

Despite that nagging sense of either/or, this really does make perfect sense.

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Image note: Inmate Michelle-Lael Norsworthy speaks during her parole hearing at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California, 21 May 2015. Gov. Jerry Brown is weighing whether to grant parole for Norsworthy, a transgender inmate who is trying to force California to become the first state to pay for a prisoner’s sex reassignment surgery. (AP Photo/Steve Yeater)

Associated Press. “Transgender Inmate Will Likely Get Parole Instead Of Court-Ordered Surgery”. The Huffington Post. 9 August 2015.

Christian Faith and Character in Idaho (One for You More for Me Makes for Equality Remix)

“Hindu is a false faith with false gods. I think it’s great that Hindu people can practice their religion but since we’re the Senate, we’re setting an example of what we, Idaho, believe.”

―Idaho State Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll (R-Cottonwood)

In one of those questions about the difference between words and actions, the Republican character once again emerges as a spirit of supremacism and hatred in Idaho.Three state senators, all Republicans, boycotted the chamber floor on Tuesday morning to protest the presence of a Hindu guest chaplain because he offends their Christian identity. Kimberlee Kruesi and Betsy Z. Russell bring the detail:

Three lawmakers refused to attend the Idaho Senate’s daily invocation after objecting to the offering of a Hindu prayer.Rajan Zed, guest chaplain, gave a lengthy prayer in both English and Sanskrit on Tuesday that focused on selflessness and peace. Senators from both sides of the aisle shook his hand and thanked him for coming.“Fulfill all your duties, action is better than inaction,” Zed said. “Even to maintain your body, you are obligated to act. Selfish action imprisons the world. Act selflessly, without any throughout of personal profit.”However three lawmakers, all Republican, only came back onto the floor once the prayer was over: Sens. Steve Vick of Dalton Garden, Sheryl Nuxoll of Cottonwood and Lori Den Hartog of Meridian.

It is about what you would expect; the only real redemption in this sad occasion is that it lays plain a spectre looming over conservative politics that for some reason many people pretend is exceptionally subtle or not even there at all.

Nuxoll says she declined to attend because she believes the United States is a Christian nation.“Hindu is a false faith with false gods,” she said. “I think it’s great that Hindu people can practice their religion but since we’re the Senate, we’re setting an example of what we, Idaho, believe.”Nuxoll added that she wished the Senate had conducted a Christian prayer along with the Hindu invocation.Vick had announced his objections the day before, saying that he would ask his colleagues to join him.Den Hartog said it would’ve been disingenuous to her Christian faith to attend.“It was a personal decision, I didn’t want to announce it prior to the event,” Den Hartog said.

Unfortunately, the morbid comedy of supremacism and cowardice doesn’t stop there. Mr. Vick’s objections, according to Russell,Sen. Steve Vick, R-Dalton Gardens, says he’ll walk out if a Hindu prayer opens the Idaho Senate on Tuesday morning.”They have a caste system,” Vick said. “They worship cows.”

Welcome to Idaho.

¡Godzilla! Oh, Wait … It’s Just Marriage Equality

And then there is this:

Today, November 19, U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris ruled in favor of the freedom to marry in Montana, striking down the ban on marriage between same-sex couples in the state.

The ruling is set to take effect “immediately,” the judge ruled, meaning that same-sex couples in Montana should be free to marry now.

The Attorney General said shortly after the decision that he will appeal the decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Attorney General could also seek a stay from Judge Morris, but as we’ve seen time and again this month – from the 4th Circuit, from the 9th Circuit, and even from the United States Supreme Court – judges have repeatedly rejected requests for stays, because there’s no good reason to delay the freedom to marry.

(Hiott-Millis)

Dan Savage gloats, of course, but here’s the thing:

Slog’s resident trolls would erupt every time I ended a Slog post about marriage equality with “We’re winning.” They LOL’d at my delusions, they sneered at my efforts to buck up supporters of marriage equality, they trolled a little harder. They called me a cockeyedmouthed optimist. That was then. This is now: 35 states, motherfuckers. And, thanks to a “loss” before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit—the only U.S. Court of Appeals decision that hasn’t backed marriage equality—we’re headed back to the Supreme Court.

Reading through the Sixth Circuit decision against marriage equality is a fascinating exercise in depression. We knew that a decision against same-sex marriage would require some degree of juristic contortion and acrobatics, but what the court gave us was the metaphorical equivalent of ceremonial magick.