A Sea Slug Mindfuck

...literally:

If you're an aficionado of sea slugs, you're probably used to weird and cringe-worthy sex acts. When two of these hermaphrodite animals penetrate each other at the same time like an R-rated yin-yang symbol, you won't bat an eyelid. When several of them link up in a long mating chain, you'll have seen it all before. When one amputates its disposable penis after sex only to uncoil a spare, your only reaction will be, "Meh."
Still, when two sea slugs penetrate each other in the head while having sex, even the most jaded expert might do a double-take.

From Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science. 

The scientist who discovered this whopper now has all the cocktail party gold he or she will ever need.

The Best Hope for America

"Crazy, am I, Mr. Boehner? We'll see whether I'm crazy or not, after we hit the Debt Ceiling"
- Ted Cruz

... is that the Republicans shoot themselves in the foot.  

An NYT headline: G.O.P.’s Hopes to Take Senate Are Dimming.

The Washington Post: "After four national crises, what has the GOP gained?". The Wallstreet Journal: *crickets*. Fox News: Book: RFK stole JFK's brain after assassination (No, I'm not linking to that.) NRO: "Get Wise, GOP." (Then they go on to rail again Washington's dysfunction... funny how something is dysfunctional when it's not going your way.) The NRO also rants about Obama not negotiating on saving the credit and creed of America, which they supported, but also included McConnell: ‘We Have a Math Problem in the Senate’ which is hardly a shout out for GOP representatives.

 

The simple fact of the matter is that the GOP was expecting to take control of the Senate next election.  They were expecting to get even more seats in the House; the numbers were stacked again the Democrats in terms of what seats are up for election.

Now it appears that recent events, namely the 'shut-down-the-government-and-almost-sucker-punch-the-US-credit' plan didn't work, there may be a change in the wind.  Moderate republicans are facing the promised primary attacks from more conservative republicans.  Tea Party republicans are facing backlash from their business-constituents.  From the ever-insightful Molly Ball at the Atlantic:

Conservatives have declared war on the GOP.
...“Conservatives are either going to split [from the GOP] or stay home,” Erickson, the influential editor of RedState.com and a Fox News contributor, told me. “They’ll first expend energy in primaries, but if unsuccessful, they’ll bolt.”
...When [Glenn] Beck made his appeal to "defund the GOP," he told his listeners to stop giving money to Republican committees and give to FreedomWorks instead. "We kind of agree," Clancy told me. “Giving to the party committees is wasted money, because they’re just incumbent protection clubs .... Sometimes you have to beat the Republicans before you beat the Democrats. Just because they're 'our guys' doesn't mean they'll be our guys when it counts."
...In the Tea Partiers’ view, the clueless establishment hasn't yet internalized the seriousness of the threat to its supremacy. The grassroots has taken control, and it will have its way or secede. “This is where the wind is blowing,” Deace said. “I don’t think you can put Humpty Dumpty back together again. [Tea Party] People like me are not just taking marching orders anymore—they actually want something in return for a vote.”
It will not be possible, Deace predicted, for the two factions to coexist. “This is going to end in divorce,” he said. “One side is going to win control, one side is going to lose, and the losing side will go do something else. There will not be a reunification.”

This is a disaster of the Republican's own making.  The Tea Party made the current GOP coalition possible; it enabled the GOP to effectively block most of the Democrat's agenda for the last few years.  It has mostly been seen as a useful and benign tool by the GOP elite; funded by it's business elite and spurred to a frothing-anger by the Fox News echo-chamber.  But the cat is out of the bag now, and the Institutional Republicans are now looking on in horror at the monster they created.

A split between these two factions would spell doom at the ballot box for the next two elections.  Short of a political miracle, there is no way the conservative establishment would be able to avoid painful, costly and dragged out primaries, only to face emboldened democrats.  In many districts the Tea Party candidate would win, and possibly lose to a moderate democrat when the district realizes he's better than a lunatic.  Even if this is a seldom occurrence, the wasted advertising and disheartened activists would be a drain on the GOP.

It's a year of schadenfreude for the left.  Watching the crazies we've been trying to sound the alarm about for three years begin to destroy their own party is nothing short of a righteous 'I told you so".  And perhaps there is an element of bias in my desire for the razing of the Republican Party.

But I genuinely want a functional opposition party.  Even if it has views I hold distasteful, the country needs another party with the desire and ability to actually govern.  I would rather Obamacare be repealed than the country hit the debt-ceiling and plunge the world into another recession.  The right has no space to manage this now, and the most effective way for it to regain that would be for it to burn itself to the ground.

This is how the GOP falls, not with a bang but with a fiery, electoral defeat.

There is no possible outcome I can think of for the GOP to fix itself short of massive, widespread electoral defeat.  And for the good of the country I hope it comes soon.

Unions are Why Democrats are Losing the Country.

In response to an NRO article, which I shall avoid naming to give it some rest from the shame.

Apparently, the Democrats will lose in the future because they get all their support from the Unions.

Yes... Unions, the left-wing supporters whose declining political power has been shouted from the rooftops by everyone, this rag included; *they* are the reason for the democrats problems.  

Not that the GOP has fallen off the cliff of insanity.  Not that many see the Democratic party as actually trying.  It can't be that for the remainder of the country, in a battle between two evils they view the Democrats as the Nanny State with good intentions, and the GOP as the party to destroy All Government, that rails against everything ever proposed by the democrats. including the the Republican's own plans when adopted by the democratic. 

Not because the demographic the GOP caters to is increasingly being refined to white, bitter, fundamentalist culture warriors longing for an idealized 50's era world that is less complicated, less brown, and less modern.  The same people who live in a bubble - where Obamacare is a government take-over (Romney and the Heritage Foundation had nothing to do with it), where Ted Cruz and Rush Limbaugh are the authoritative voices in news, and where the GOP is a champion of fiscal responsibility; the deficit has been ballooning under democrats year by year (and not topped, then declined during the last four years).

Face it; the Democrats are winning because of three big reasons; they aren't the republicans, they actually stand for something beyond no-taxes, and the US is changing, as are it's needs.  This is not the Eisenhower administration anymore, much less Taft's.  

They've Got the Whole Wide World in their Hands, and they are Beginning to Sweat

John Boehner's Future Daughter
(Image Credit http://www.takemoto.com.br)

From the Cook Report:

"Somehow, though, Obama and congressional Democrats have to give Republicans, at least the ones who want to resolve this—and I would put Boehner in that category, regardless of what he has said in recent days—a place to land, some way to get to yes."

But how do the democrats give something to the GOP, without giving them something? How do you avoid setting a precedent for paying ransom money without paying any money? How can modifying the very law that the GOP was hopelessly gunning for this entire time be anything *but* paying ransom money?

McGregor mentions the often-referred to 'face saving' measure. But this is the whole crux of the problem; Republicans need more than just a window dressing to take home. The activist base threatening to primary these politicians want blood - actual blood. I think that they want to defeat, or more accurately politically destroy Obama even more than they want to remove Obamacare. You point out that Americans want Obamacare fixed. Of course they do. Now what part? What measure is significant enough to appease the horde of Tea Partiers? Contrary to popular belief, the ACA doesn't actually institute death panels. And as you certainly know most people like most of the things that are in Obamacare. Any fair estimation of the GOP's preference for a healthcare plan is that they don't have one; they will champion whichever weekly (and ever-increasingly laissez faire) idea the Heritage Foundation prints. And then when Obama says okay, the GOP will have to abandon it.

Because the Tea Party's priority isn't governing. They're often not very concerned with winning. They just want the other side to lose.

How do you negotiate with a kidnapper whose family is held hostage by fanatics?

Iranian Diplomacy Spoken In the Forrest

But will anyone hear?

From the NYT:

Iranian nuclear negotiators will offer a new proposal on Tuesday that is intended to persuade world powers that the country’s nuclear program has only peaceful aims, a top official said on Sunday.

On another day this would be exploding across the news boards, or so I would have thought.  The Washington Post had an Op-Ed below the front page.  CNN still doesn't have it.  Fox News puts it in fourth place in the world section, which is not exactly the most prominent focus of their website.  

Is this because of the (admittedly epic) drama going on in Washington, or an instance of "war sells" syndrome, i.e. we may avoid a stupid war, and this is not that important?

And if the West can broker a deal to relieve tensions, this may put a feather in the cap of the sanctions-as-diplomacy folks.  A big, shiny feather.

The War President

From the New York Times;

 President Obama abruptly changed course on Saturday and postponed a military strike against the Syrian government in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack so he could seek authorization first from a deeply skeptical Congress.

...“I’m prepared to give that order,” Mr. Obama said in a hurriedly organized appearance in the Rose Garden as American destroyers armed with Tomahawk missiles waited in the Mediterranean Sea. “But having made my decision as commander in chief based on what I am convinced is our national security interests, I’m also mindful that I’m the president of the world’s oldest constitutional democracy.” 

Should we attack the Syrian government?  Punish them for their murder?

The only honest answer that I can come up with is that I don't know. Anyone who says they can predict what will happen is misguided at best, and an ideologue at worst. Rawanda or Kosovo, Libya or Iraq; we can make historical references till we run out of breath, but in the end the future in unknowable. We are the most powerful country in the world, and as such have taken our role as hegemon to intervene militarily many times - for good and for bad. I have no CIA briefings to go on, no DoD snakes whispering lies in my ear, no secret footage of Assad's forces pushing the button or otherwise. How can I know? How can anyone know, the President included?

Don't believe anyone who says they know. Period. Arguments can be made, predictions cast, but there are no good options here, and Obama could have decided to attack or ignore the situation without consulting anyone; such is the ungodly power of the President these days. But he has chosen to honor the principles of the this country as it was founded. Though the rules of war have been violated by Presidents time and time again, he has stuck with the rules of the flag, tattered and torn they may be. Whatever the result, I can only say one thing, as someone who is as proud to be an American citizen as I ever have;

Bravo Mr. President.

Letter to the BLM about fracking

Includes depressing realism.

"Dear Secretary Jewell,

I'm fully aware that the BLM will probably not ban fracking on its lands, though I wish it were otherwise.  But please consider restricting it as much as possible; we are playing with fire, fire we barely understand (at least outside of the offices of Exxon), and this is nothing but a great danger to the lands that the BLM is tasked with caretaking and conserving.  These lands belong to every citizen of United States. They belong to the oil companies and their employees as well. But how can a rational person believe that breaking up shale and sediment in a haphazard way will not result in contaminating groundwater?  When we need that water for farming, or drinking, or when the land itself starts to die and wither where will Chevron and Shell be? How will they replace this land?  Shall we just tell our children and grandchildren that the need for cheap oil and gas was more important than having vast forests and canyons and beautiful untouched land?

Please consider the interests of the country before those of a few companies, no matter how massive and profitable they are.

Sincerely, 

Renny Young"