What's "Christian" about it?

The Church as thug

Nothing epitomizes right-wing Catholicism like the media ministry of Church Militant. Its principals (like the amazing Michael Voris) diligently churn out their rigorously medieval perspectives on current events as they fight the evil heresy of modernism. An excellent example of Church Militant's approach to Christianity was poured out on June 30, 2016, in a 40-second clip that fairly brims with vitriol.

In case you have any difficulty with the video, here is a word-for-word transcript:

A 30-year-old Utah man has become the country's first transgender Senate nominee from a major party. Referred to as "Misty Snow," the Mormon from Salt Lake is challenging Sen. Mike Lee for the U.S. Senate seat as the nominee of the Democrat Party. As self-described "conservative" Democrat currently working as a marriage therapist, Snow began acting as a woman in 2014, and believes his identity as a transgender will assist him in the upcoming election. Similarly, another man, thinking he's a woman and also named "Misty," clinched the Democratic nomination for Congress in Colorado Tuesday.

Several items stand out. First of all, spokesperson Christine Niles lays it on with a trowel as she refuses to use the gendered pronouns appropriate to Snow, who is deemed to be merely “acting” as a woman. Also, as a true disciple of the Prince of Peace, Niles makes a point of referring to the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Party,” using a ploy made famous decades ago by Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Finally, note how she closes her report, referring to the successful transgender candidate in Colorado as “another man.”

I suppose it's fortunate that the people of Church Militant fancy themselves a beleaguered remnant, standing together bravely for their one-dimensional version of Christ while the forces of Satan assail them from all sides. For one thing, their unremitting nastiness is scarcely likely to swell their ranks. For another, this way they can glory in their martyrdom of being ignored as insignificant.

Bernie-Bot math

Examine your assumptions

Did you know that Bernie Sanders is all but assured of a contested Democratic convention? The Bernie Bots tell us so by a startlingly naive application of simple math. One example is embodied in a picture post that the senator's fans have been passing around and sharing. Its most basic claim is that “In order to prevent a contested convention with Bernie Sanders, Hillary needs to win 65% or more of the vote in every future state.” While I agree that Sanders has enjoyed a remarkable degree of success in the campaign to this point, the supposed reversal of fortune for Clinton seems a bit of a stretch. And it is.

The New York Times keeps a running tally of the delegates in each candidate's camp. As of today, the Times reports that Clinton has 1,307 pledged delegates and 469 unpledged delegates for a total of 1,776 (a nice patriotic number). Sanders by contrast has 1,087 pledged delegates and 31 unpledged delegates for a total of 1,118. The successful candidate will need 2,383 delegate votes to secure the Democratic nomination for president. Thus it's a simple matter to determine that Clinton needs 2,383 − 1,776 = 607 more delegates while Sanders needs 2,383 − 1,087 = 1,296.

Per the Times, there are evidently 1,959 delegates up for grabs in future primary elections and caucuses. Therefore, Clinton must secure 607/1,959 = 0.310 = 31% of the remaining delegates while Sanders has the more formidable task of rounding up 1,296/1,959 = 0.662 = 66.2% of them. How can the Bernie-Bot picture post be so wrong? Easy!

First, assume that all unpledged delegates (the notorious “superdelegates”) are undecided free agents. After complaining bitterly for months that superdelegates are Clinton minions who have “rigged” the nomination contest, Bernie's supporters are now pretending they can be ignored and omitted from Clinton's delegate count. If one insists that the 1,307 formally pledged delegates are all she has, then she needs 2,383 − 1,307 = 1,076. That's a whopping 1,076/1,959 = 0.549 = 54.9%. That's not as dramatic as the Bernie-Bot claim that she needs 65%, but it would still indicate that Hillary needs a majority of outstanding delegates to win the nomination! She's at a disadvantage! Or so we can pretend.

Remember how shocked Mitt Romney was when he lost the election in 2012? He and his campaign team had been taking all too seriously the “corrected” polling data from partisans who insisted that professional pollsters had biased their population samples against the Republican nominee. If you assumed that there would be a lot more GOP voters at the polls than the national pollsters were finding in their sampling, the results for Mitt were great! But wrong.

The power of an unwarranted assumption is great. And it gets even greater when you can't do the math.

Truthiness

Like lying—only better

Perhaps you have heard we are now living in a “post-truth” era, but it hasn't disturbed you too much because it's merely a manifestation of the low quality of today's politicians. Sure, Donald Trump spouts random nonsense all the time, but he's as undisciplined as a spoiled toddler, so no one is surprised. Carly Fiorina is, by contrast, a conscious liar, but she's an unimportant fringe candidate without credibility, so who cares? Ben Carson's relationship with truth seems pretty strained, but he's always a little spaced-out and detached from reality; besides, his star is fading.

I could go on in this vein, but I think the problem is worse than a simple matter of our candidates being worse than usual during this unfortunately prolonged election season. (It's not even election year yet, dammit!) The post-truth virus is spreading among us. I've seen this post-truth attitude affecting mere mortals, too. People I used to know as classmates, back when they seemed sane and responsible, are in its grip.

One of them posted an inanely patriotic meme from a website she follows. She was sharing a Facebook post:

It was clearly a specious quotation: “When government takes away citizens' right to bear arms it becomes citzens' duty to take away government's right to govern.” How could anyone take seriously a claim that George Washington ever sounded like a spokesperson for the NRA? I looked it up, verified it was false, and let her know with a simple declarative statement:

These words were never spoken or written by George Washington.

She soon replied with a charming lack of concern:

Ah, but they are so true!

I thought she was missing the point:

I think false attributions should be discouraged. Mainly because they're false.

She remained serenely unfazed:

But truer words were neer spoken, no matter by whom.

See? True or not, it doesn't matter. The fundamental lie at the heart of the statement is irrelevant because she agrees with the statement. We have a problem.

And that's the truth!

NPR's memory hole

Dr. Google has a remedy

Although we now have more news sources than ever, we don't seem to be getting more information. In their eagerness to contribute to the news glut, media outlets generate increasing amounts of fluffy bits of non-news. It's extremely disappointing to find National Public Radio getting in on the act. On October 15, 2015, NPR's “lead digital reporter” Jessica Taylor posted a shallow item titled New Clinton Spanish Posters: Hillary or Evita? Although Taylor took the trouble to learn that Clinton's staffers disclaimed responsibility for the Spanish-language posters and images appearing in Texas, she used the rest of her short article to muse about resemblances to icons of Eva Peron, Madonna (as Eva Peron), fashion designer Carolina Herrera, and Shepard Fairey's 2008 Hope poster. The mystery of the poster's origin remained unsolved.

Perhaps it was too much trouble to do the minimal amount of research required to uncover something about the poster's origins. The earliest example I found with a quick Google search was in December 2012, when a site called “The Right Perspective” (not exactly friends of Hillary) ran a very similar image (only the background differs) with an article about Clinton's expected presidential campaign. Essentially the same illustration appeared in May of last year on the “Bearing Arms (Guns & Patriots)” site with an opinion piece mocking Clinton's position on gun control.

Who cobbled together the original image? Who switched the background of wavy red and white stripes to a burst of sun rays? These deep questions remain unanswered. The pictures have, of course, spread throughout the Internet, as memes are wont to do. Zazzle has it on posters and other paraphernalia. Politico reports that a copy was posted in Clinton's Brooklyn campaign office, although that falls a bit short of establishing it as officially sanctioned by the campaign, especially given its non-campaign antecedents.

Yes, it's a tiny little non-story. And it's something a “lead” reporter for NPR wastes time on—and not very well.

A balmy in Gilead

My modest proposal

When it comes to irrational right-wing extremism, Joseph Farah lives in a surreal bubble of his own special brand of derangement. He is the founder of WorldNetDaily, a Web-based journal almost impossible not to cite as WorldNutDaily. WND serves up regular heaping helpings of paranoia, propaganda, and crackpottery.

Farah has been wringing his hands over the fate of traditional biblical marriage. (Please note: “Traditional” marriage means the one-man/one-woman definition from the Bible exemplified by Adam and Eve—and not the one-man/two-women example of Jacob with Leah and Rachel nor the one-man/seven-hundred-wives/three-hundred-concubines example of good old King Solomon.) In his WND column of June 3, 2015, Farah proposes secession from the United States if the Supreme Court allows same-sex marriage throughout the nation.

Is there one state in 50 that would not only defy the coming abomination, but secede in response? The rewards could be great. I would certainly consider relocating. How about you?

The founders of this country found a place of refuge in America and shaped it into the greatest self-governing nation in the history of world. Just think what one state could do if it simply stuck to the principles that made this country great? Americans wouldn’t have to cross an ocean to rediscover what brought most of our ancestors here. We could simply drive.

Are any states so inclined?

I haven’t heard this question raised by anyone else. So I’m raising it now. We don’t have much time before the nine high priests in black robes decide to follow Baal instead of the One True God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Okay, that mention of Jacob is a trifle unfortunate, but at least his wives were of the opposite sex.

Farah calls his proposal an “Exodus strategy.” Commenters on sites like Crooks & Liars have been quick to suggest that Texas is the state that should secede (or be thrown out) to serve as a haven for Farah and his followers. I think this is much too generous. Abandon Austin? Dump Dallas? Leave Houston high and dry? (Actually, I guess they might appreciate that right about now.)

I have a counter-proposal. Let Farah and his crazies colonize the Texas panhandle. Let's carve out a nice rectangular space for an independent nation named Gilead. (There's a nice literary reference for you.) Amarillo and Lubbock would probably fit in just fine. While saner people might flee to the greater portion that remains as Texas, there should be plenty of opportunities to obtain good deals on the residences left behind by the flight of Farah's adherents (especially in Plano). A plebiscite could determine whether Oklahoma's panhandle should be included for good measure. (Those who think Panhandler would make a good name for this new nation should take into account that the imbalance between taxes paid and federal dollars received would no longer be an issue—unless the new nation demands a lot of foreign aid from the US, in which case Panhandler might be exactly right.)

There are other aspects to this win-win situation: (1) Texas goes blue more quickly. (2) Jobs are created in the border patrol and border-crossing stations will have to be constructed. (This would be true in New Mexico and Oklahoma, as well as in the new Texas. Possibly in Colorado and Kansas, too.) (3) Other parts of the United States would improve as their nutcases emigrated to Gilead. (4) Ted Cruz would lose his political base (unless he moves to the new country to become its Priest-King).

I'm not certain what would support the economy of Gilead, though it's likely that Lubbock's cotton industry and Amarillo's meat-packing would remain mainstays. However, opportunities to promote tourism might be sketchy. Would Americans be eager to visit a nation based on a Christian version of sharia law?

Econ 101

Teabaggers are experts

A special interest group called the California Drivers Alliance is sounding the alarm. We in the Golden State are in imminent danger of assault:

On January 1, 2015, a new hidden gasoline tax will go into effect. ... There is still time to stop it, but we must act now. Contact state officials today and urge them to put the brakes on this new hidden gas tax!

A “hidden” tax? Scandalous! I did some research.

First of all, the California Drivers Alliance is one of those industry-funded “astroturf” organizations. The faux grassroots movement is bankrolled by the California Independent Oil Marketers Association. Second, the so-called hidden tax is nothing more than the state's cap and trade program, administered by the California Air Resources Board. I could not resist posting a snide comment on the California Drivers Alliance's Facebook page:

How can a gas tax be “hidden” if was enacted by Assembly Bill 32, a 2006 measure that is public record and was defended by the voters' overwhelming rejection of Proposition 23? Besides, oil companies who are eager to compete in the free market could choose to trim their profits a bit to maintain the attractiveness to consumers of their product.

People hastened to educate me. Here are some paraphrases, edited to correct misspellings and delete expletives:

Why can't stupid libtards understand that corporations don't pay taxes? They pass them on to us and we pay them!

Tax, tax, tax! That's socialism for you.

The tax is hidden because people don't know about it!!!!!

Take an econ class, you idiot! Higher taxes kill jobs!

Taxes on gas producers are taxes on drivers!

The immediate lesson I learned is that we should do away with the personal income tax and stick it to the corporations. It shouldn't matter, since we're going to pick up the tab anyway when we purchase goods and services from those corporations. Right?

I also learned that the free market doesn't function very well. The members of the California Independent Oil Marketers Association have no choice but to pass along the entire 10 cents per gallon (usually misstated by the California Drivers Alliance as 16 cents to 76[!] cents per gallon). If anyone dared attract more customers and more revenue by eating part of the AB 32 surcharge, evidently it would not be enough to restore their profits, which can never be high enough.

That's econ for you.

Waste water

Drought denialism?

The Porterville Recorder is a local newspaper down in my home turf of Tulare County. You may have heard of Porterville. The New York Times featured it prominently in a story about the great California drought and its impact on the Central Valley. The situation is grim, with wells running dry and people limited to bottled water for the necessities of life. Farmers with crops had already been told that irrigation water would not be available from the state's interconnected water projects. Hundreds of thousands of acres lie fallow, waiting for the uncertain return of water in this third year of intense drought.

Last month the Recorder published a guest editorial by pistachio grower Lee Cohen that fingered a popular culprit: radical environmentalism.

Water issues seem to have been hi-jacked, ransacked, and co-opted in California by the environmentalist radicals. There is a cavernous, endless void of common sense.

Let me explain. Two hundred percent of the entire Central Valley’s annual agricultural water needs are being flush[ed] straight to sea for a variety of different esoteric environmental reasons. The Central Valley is reeling from the devastation this policy hath wrought.

Anyone who drives down U.S. 99 or Interstate 5 will have seen the signs demanding an end to the “Congress-Created” drought. It's an article of faith among many down in the valley that the water shortage is all some kind of extremist environmentalist plot to coddle a tiny fish.

This water is being diverted to save nonindigenous smelt in the San Francisco Bay. Hundreds of millions of gallons went to this cause. Zero gallons to the Central Valley’s people and farms.
There are pumps at the top of the Central Valley water canal infrastructure which are restricted from running due to an old Endangered Species Act ruling, an outcome crafted, championed, and orchestrated over decades by the environmental movement to protect these minnows.

If only the pumps could be turned on, the Central Valley drought would be over! Those stupid little fish would die, but farms would live!  But “diverted”? No, it's the natural flow through the Delta. Diversion occurs when it's pumped elsewhere. Nevertheless, Cohen reiterates his key point:

The immediate water crisis has been fomented by the environmentalists since there is plenty of water in the north (Remember the 200 percent outflows to the Pacific ongoing today?). The current crisis in the Central Valley could be mitigated immediately if the pumps were turned on and the canals filled.

Apparently Cohen believes that half the water currently being “flushed” into the sea could be diverted from Northern California's abundant supply and shipped south to thirsty farmland. What would happen to the San Joaquin Delta and the San Francisco Bay Area if the water flow were cut in half from its currently drought-depressed levels?

Salt-water incursion, of course. The Delta would die. The Pacific Ocean waters that currently mix in the bay would move further into the Delta. Would it reach the pumps and cause them to start shipping saline solution to the south? I don't know. The damage might not extend that far, although the Delta would suffer severe degradation. But quite apart from the fate of the tiny smelt, the Bay Area fisheries could be taken off life-support because they could not survive with the flow cut in half.

No one should understate the suffering of California's farms and farmers under the continuing drought. Livelihoods and family traditions are being destroyed and only the strongest manage to survive. But the debate over remedies for the drought has been poisoned by paranoid fantasies.

The environmentalists are trying to, in their own words, return the Central Valley to the natural condition it was 200 years ago—a vast ecological basin. They are trying to dry the place up, starve it, reverse the development—a form of radical anti-progress, if you will.

Cohen does not share with us “their own words,” the words of the extremists who supposedly have the state legislature and the court system at their beck and call. If he dredged up a quote—and surely one could be found somewhere—espousing a radical return to “unspoiled nature” before the advent of farming in the valley, Cohen would necessarily find himself citing some fringe figure of minimal authority and negligible influence in today's debates over water policy. The real issue is that water is in catastrophically short supply and farmers are in competition with many others who want and need Northern California water. Cohen says “there is plenty of water in the north” even as the north state's reservoirs have fallen to record lows in water storage.This delusion will not advance the state of the debate.

They take our water and say we can’t dig for more. They care not about the people. They care not about the communities. They care not about the jobs. They care not about the farms. And by dumping water to the sea, they care not about the water. Indeed, environmentalists even care not about the trees.

Cohen rings the changes on his talking points to make sure we don't miss them: “our water,” he says; “dumping water to the sea.” Any drop that makes it to the San Francisco Bay is evidently wasted.

And lest we miss Cohen's qualifications to speak on behalf of “small family farms, which represent more than 90 percent of agriculture in California,” he drops this nugget on the table:

I, a true environmentalist, who grows and cares for 1.5 million pistachio trees, say to all, indeed, these radicals, care not about the trees.

Thank you, small farmer, for enlightening us.

Fingers crossed

The Eighth Suggestion

In the Roman Catholic numbering of the Decalogue, No. 8 is the commandant that forbids lying: Thou shalt not bear false witness. However, this unambiguous rule can apparently be overcome by the higher law of “the means justify the ends.” Catholic Vote has sent me a questionnaire that amply demonstrates its zealotry in doing God's work is not impeded by minor considerations like honesty. First of all, the survey's outcome is foreordained: “[T]he purpose of this survey is to send a strong and clear message to every politician running for election or re-election in the 2014 mid-term Congressional Elections, that the overwhelming majority of Catholic voters demand ObamaCare be repealed.” (By contrast with the predestined conclusion, the superfluous comma is merely a venial sin.)

It has been frequently observed—often with gnashing of teeth—that American Catholics differ little from their Protestant brethren when it comes to attitudes relating to abortion and contraception. The laity is scarcely ready to enlist in an anti-abortion jihad at the behest of the clergy. Nevertheless, Catholic Vote is willing to make it look like they are. The survey questionnaire is replete with leading and misleading questions. For example,

ObamaCare regulations now require all Americans—including Catholic and pro-life Americans—to purchase health care insurance plans that include abortion-inducing drugs. In other words, under ObamaCare, pro-life Catholics are required to pay for abortions in violation of Catholic doctrine and moral teachings.

This statement insists on construing as abortifacients many contraceptives that physicians deny induce abortions, but doctors avoid speaking in absolutes, so Catholic Vote seizes upon the loophole to declare, “Aha! They do cause abortions!” (Not that most Catholics agree or even care.)

Other statements are even less defensible. One question seeks to inspire outrage over the president's proclivity for baby-murder:

As a state lawmaker in Illinois, Barack Obama voted twice to deny life-saving medical care to babies born in botched abortions.

An outright lie. It is not legal in Illinois to deny care to a survivor of a mishandled late-term abortion. There was an attempt when Obama was a state senator to enact legislation to amend and strengthen the pertinent provisions of law. Although initially inclined to support the measures, Obama ended up opposing them when concerns were raised that anti-abortion activists were waiting for the opportunity to use the enhanced language to accuse doctors of infanticide when inadvertent live births did not survive. Obama did not vote to deny care to inadvertent survivors because that remained illegal under Illinois law. Despite the legislative record, political opponents have not hesitated to accuse the president of aiding and abetting infanticide (which rather makes the point that motivated his vote in opposition).

Catholic Vote and Priests for Life are two anti-abortion organizations that work the same turf. Priests for Life mailed out a similar questionnaire during the summer. The surveys had several questions in common and all were devised to produce a desired outcome, no less mendacious than any other politically motivated campaign document. Catholic Vote gives its respondents the opportunity to check off such answers as these:

• the pro-abortion movement wants to maximize the number of abortions in America
• ObamaCare is a weapon President Obama and the Left are using to attack America's moral and religious heritage
• [Obama and his allies] are mostly using the government takeover of health care in America as a way to expand government and move America in the direction of Socialism
• I believe President Obama knew about the crushing cost of ObamaCare for families across America, and was just lying about the shocking cost to get ObamaCare passed into law

The “crushing cost”? Catholic Vote declares that health care insurance costs for “the typical American family” has risen by $3,000 per year. Where did they get this number despite Congressional Budget Office reports that ObamaCare costs are falling below original projections? The likely source is a Kaiser report on premium increases from 2008 to 2012 (a period during which the Affordable Care Act was only starting to get off the ground and the soaring health care costs that motivated it were still in full swing). The latest version of the Kaiser report notes that premium increases had moderated significantly in recent years, falling below the double-digit increases that had been typical in the past. Catholic Vote either hasn't caught up with the latest news or prefers to pretend it doesn't exist.

Happy Nixon Resignation Day!

Pretending to draw lessons

It's the 40th anniversary of the resignation of our much-unloved 37th president, the only one of the nation's chief executives to have departed in this manner. Therefore it's natural to look back on Nixon's shameful example and attempt to draw lessons that we might usefully apply today. Of course, if you're a right-wing pundit you might prefer to distort things beyond all recognition as you declare that Nixon's crimes are ever-so-similar to what Barack Obama is currently doing. Here's how Ben Boychuk does it:

Public opinion all but guaranteed Nixon’s impeachment and ouster 40 years ago. Public opinion all but guarantees Barack Obama won’t be impeached today....

Whether Obama deserves impeachment is another matter. Here Nixon’s case remains instructive.

Cue the imaginary scandals!

Nixon broke his oath of office. He disregarded “his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” He “repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens.” In particular, Nixon used the IRS, the FBI and the Secret Service to harass and punish his political enemies, alleged the second of three articles of impeachment that the House Judiciary Committee approved in 1974....

Perhaps the same could be said of Obama. His IRS singled out tea party and other conservative groups for excessive scrutiny, although nobody so far has managed to turn up the proverbial “smoking gun” linking the president to those abuses.

That's right. Boychuk is flogging the multiply-discredited “IRS scandal,” neglecting its origins in the cherry-picked factoids disseminated by the deliberately dishonest Darryl Issa. As a result of a deluge of new political groups claiming 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status, the IRS gave a lot of attention to so-called “tea party” groups—and liberal groups, too, though you wouldn't hear that from mission-driven Issa.

Obama has been lax, at best, about taking care that “the laws be faithfully executed.” From waivers to the Affordable Care Act’s mandates for unions and politically connected businesses to invoking “prosecutorial discretion” to exempt 1 million illegal immigrants from deportation, Obama has pushed executive authority to the limit.

Now the president is mulling an executive order that could, in effect, grant amnesty to some 6 million illegal immigrants. Yet the Constitution clearly reserves the power of “naturalization” to Congress, not the president. Does that matter anymore?

Boychuk spins the notion of “waivers” from the ACA as if they are exemptions handed out as political favors, rather than executive decisions based on easing the implementation process (something President Bush also did for Medicare Part D and which the Supreme Court deems within the president's executive authority).

Note also Boychuk's invocation of the N-word: naturalization. Whether or not Obama issues executive orders affecting the status of undocumented residents, he will certainly not be offering them “naturalization,” which entails citizenship and voting rights. That, however, is what Boychuk wants to imply, causing tea-partiers to clutch their pearls and swoon. Given complete inaction by the House of Representatives while a continuing crisis percolates on our southern border, the president will have to act without the assistance of the derelict legislative branch. It is well within his authority to declare that no one will be denied due process and summarily deported.

Although Boychuk claims that the president is pushing his authority “to the limit,” it is an obvious and necessary perquisite of his position to set priorities. Shall we haul the so-called Dreamers into court and prosecute them as illegally residing in the country where they've spent their lives since childhood and deport them back to native lands many of them don't even remember because of their youth when their parents brought them across the border? The Department of Justice has enough to keep it busy without also taking on foolish and unfair prosecutions of life-long residents.

Violating the oath of office? Usurping congressional authority? Using the might of the presidency against political foes? Not trivialities. Or, at least they weren’t 40 years ago.

And they're not trivial today, either. They're merely nonexistent.

Hard data

Make up your own numbers!

My in-box is an unending source of delights. I really should unsubscribe from right-wing mailing lists, but how else would I learn shocking facts about the Muslim Marxist Dictator in the White House? For example, The Political Insider breathlessly informed me that Speaker John Boehner has boldly moved to bring President Obama to account—by filing a lawsuit accusing him of exercising his executive authority. In the comments section the most common response ran along the lines of “about time!” and “I'd rather have impeachment!” Of course, these comments were accompanied by solid, reality-based arguments and supporting evidence:

Jim: He has what well over 1,000 executive orders now? While the most any president before him had like what 45? Which I think was FDR, in his 16 year term.. It took congress long enough.. Talk about being asleep behind the wheel…

Since I am aware that Obama has been remarkably self-restrained in his use of executive orders, I knew immediately that “Jim” was full of crap. I clarified the matter for him:

Zeno: The reality is a little different. Obama has issued fewer executive orders than any president in the 20th century except for one-term presidents Ford and Bush. Obama has 180 to date. Reagan, for example, issued 381. More recently, George W. Bush had 291.

I included a link to the Wikipedia page where a tally of presidential executive orders is displayed. Nevertheless, I was quickly put in my place:

Mitch: Wrong Zeno.

(I presume he meant “Wrong, Zeno,“ but the appositive comma has fallen on hard times, so perhaps “Mitch” was merely being conventionally illiterate.) A most excellent and compelling refutation, no?

Whence came Jim's egregiously wrong but confidently cited numbers? It was as easy to discover that as it would have been for Jim to learn that he was ridiculously incorrect, but that would have ruined his argument. I got the details from Snopes, the indefatigable debunker of Internet nonsense:

The President signed 923 Executive Orders in 40 Months. It is all over the net. These sites include commentary on what the executive order is for and what it does. If this is the truth, I'm scared to think about it. Most of the past presidents have allegedly signed around 30 of them. At the end of the day an executive order circumvents the congress and senate. Fill in the blanks. Someone credible needs to research and report on this.

[Here follows a list of specific executive orders attributed to Obama, but almost all of them were actually issued by John F. Kennedy in 1962. —Z]

Feel free to verify the "executive orders" at will ... and these are just the major ones ...

EXECUTIVE ORDERS ISSUED:

Teddy Roosevelt: 3
Others Prior To FDR: NONE
FDR: 11 in 16 years
Truman: 5 in 7 years
Ike: 2 in 8 years
JFK: 4 in 3 years
LBJ: 4 in 5 years
Nixon: 1 in 6 years
Ford: 3 in 2 years
Carter: 3 in 4 years
Reagan: 5 in 8 years
Bush 1: 3 in 4 years
Clinton: 15 in 8 years
Bush 2: 62 in 8 years
Obama: 923 in 3+ years!

During my lifetime, all Presidents have issued Executive Orders, for reasons that vary, some more than others.

When a President issued as many as 30 Executive Orders during a term in Office, people thought there was something amiss.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT 923 EXECUTIVE ORDERS IN ONE PART OF ONE TERM?????? YES, THERE IS A REASON.

IT IS THAT THE PRESIDENT IS DETERMINED TO TAKE CONTROL AWAY FROM THE HOUSE AND THE SENATE.

Even some Democrats in the House have turned on him, plus a very small number of Democrat Senators question him.

HE SHOULD BE QUESTIONED. WHAT IS HE REALLY TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH????

DOES THIS SCARE YOU AS MUCH AS IT DOES ME?

This is exactly the sort of Internet spam that credulous right-wingers like my father immediately swallow whole and proceed to pass it along to their e-mail lists of fellow travelers and family members (although usually not me anymore, since I tend to respond with unappreciated but detailed refutations that irk my male parental unit). Although it's a tissue of lies, this denunciation of the president appeals enormously to those who have already decided that he is some kind of evil mastermind and would-be dictator, so it is not subject to any sort of critical examination before being further disseminated via the Intertubes. And thus the lies spread.

I think it's fair to quote Ronald Reagan, that great conservative icon, in this context: “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.” Turnabout is fair play, right? Reagan said this in 1964 while campaigning on behalf of Barry Goldwater (who in retrospect doesn't look half so insane as today's teabaggers).

Of course, Reagan stole it from Josh Billings.

The Tea Party is not dead!

Just very, very sick

One of the joys of Facebook is stumbling across long-lost friends or relatives and renewing acquaintances. The downside is the discovery that an old friend or cousin has gone completely around the bend. Last year I ran into an nth cousin I hadn't seen since we were both teens. It was nice to swap family photos and do some catching up. But what do I find on her Facebook timeline? Stuff like this:

 Now THAT was a commander in chief

Yeah, one hell of a commander-in-chief, all right. Did he also hug the many widows and widowers he created with his military adventurism?

Of course, my cousin pays tribute to our current president, too:

Hilarious! This implies, of course, that Obama's economic record is nothing to brag about. His job-creation record must be much worse than that of his glorious predecessor, right? Funny thing, though, about reality. George W. Bush took two terms to eke out a job increase of 0.21%. (Actually all the growth was in the second term, because it was 0.0% for Bush's first term.) Obama managed 0.23% in a single term, and it's still increasing during his second term.

This naturally inspires a question: Who from among the GOP's leading lights could be as great a president as the much-missed George W.?

Who would you like to see as a presidential candidate?

Frankly, the gray silhouette strikes me as the most qualified and inspires the most confident. Of course, my cousin wants a Republican president who will finally get to the bottom of the Democratic president's many, many scandals. Like Benghazi:

It would be much too easy for the GOP merely to accept the many answers they've already received. Besides, they didn't like those answers. Obama and Clinton have simply refused to cooperate. They stubbornly won't admit that they deliberately arranged to have Americans killed by Muslim terrorists. If they would just confess and volunteer to go to jail, we could finally put Benghazi behind us. So clearly it's the Democrats' fault that this just keeps grinding on.

It appears that my cousin is concerned that her children are targets for terrorists—probably foreign, but possibly domestic. You can also tell, quite clearly, that the guards in the photo are packing heat. I presume it's merely a detail that these guards (a) are not at the Sidwell Friends school attended by Obama's daughters and (b) Sidwell guards do not carry firearms. My cousin, you see, has a strong aversion to fact-checking, which is likely to destroy an otherwise perfectly good story, just like most of the other posts that my cousin “liked” and “shared” from The Tea Party page on Facebook. (Today's special treat: Nutcase Allen West calls for Obama's impeachment. What? Again?)

My cousin intersperses saccharin pieties among the right-wing memes. Apparently God loves us (at least since 1954) and wants us to be happy, which is in odd conflict with the many miseries he's visited upon us, all “documented” by the right wing. Perhaps we're in the End Times!

One Nation, Under God

The end.

God's not at all well

The belabors of Hercules

Yes, I slipped in to see God's Not Dead the other day, looking about suspiciously at my fellow movie-goers. It soon became apparent they were there for the Kool-Aid. When Josh Wheaton asks Professor Radisson, “How can you hate someone who doesn't exist?”, the guy a few seats over from me went “Oh, yeah!” Because, you know, it was such a brilliant and devastating riposte to the professor's expressions of disbelief. Theists refuse to believe that anyone actually lacks belief in God; atheists are all sort of pretending, I guess.

The movie has already undergone many trenchant analyses and deconstructions and, yes, it really is an awful piece of tripe. Its cloying earnestness seems to me to be unselfconscious, indicating that the movie's creators are genuinely shallow and lacking in the power of self-reflection. Smug certainty has destroyed their capacity for critical thought.

Since there's no great need for me to add redundant criticisms, let me instead offer some points related to my personal perspective as a college professor, the false notes that regularly pulled me out of the motion picture and made me keenly aware that I was watching a religious tract.

Kevin Sorbo depicted Professor Radisson as a self-important authoritarian, a dispenser of “truth” who hates to be questioned. Such professors are not unknown in academia, but they are rare. Most of us like students to think about what they are told, to question dogma and to discuss these matters with classmates and instructors. Of course, the movie could have merely chosen to depict one of these curmudgeonly professors as a device for conveying a lesson—except in this case it's less of a lesson and more of an unrelenting harangue.

I nearly laughed out loud at the end of the scene involving the first day of philosophy class. The professor adds Bertrand Russell's Why I am not a Christian to the reading list for the next session. Apparently the students had already been assigned David Hume on “The Problem of Induction” (presumably an excerpt from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding) and Discourse on the Method (Discours de la méthode) by René Descartes. How often does the class meet? This is a daunting reading list even assuming the students have a week in which to plow through it. Perhaps Radisson had distributed a syllabus in which only certain pages were indicated for the week's reading, but his addition of Russell to the list carried no such limitation. I can imagine the screenwriter congratulating himself on using Russell's book as Radisson's shot across Wheaton's bow: “Heh, heh. This'll raise the audience's hackles! Even though most of them won't know who Russell is, the title will do the trick!”

No one has commented, to my knowledge, on Radisson's office. Although it's made clear that he is considered the prohibitive frontrunner for the position of department chair, he has yet to achieve that status. Nevertheless, his office is large enough to serve as a hangar for a 747 and his desk is long enough to land jet fighters. Radisson must work for one of the most prestigious and most richly endowed universities in the western world. It's like those television sitcoms where impoverished young people live in deluxe apartments while subsisting on ramen and cheap beer. I was most impressed.

Dean Cain's character could have been ripped from the pages of an Ayn Rand novel. Unbelieving and self-absorbed, “Mark” has no time for altruism. He is a “superman” who rapidly sheds any inconveniences that arise between him and his goals. His girlfriend develops cancer? Ex-girlfriend! His mother descends into the fog of Alzheimer's? Time to forget her just as she's involuntarily forgotten him! (Of course, when Mark is hectored by his sister into paying Mom a visit in the nursing home, Mom manages to emerge from her dementia just long enough to deliver a lucid little sermonette to shame her unbelieving son. A miracle!)

The subplot depicting the Arab girl who converted to Christianity was especially disturbing. Of course, her Muslim father beat her and ejected her from the house. We got to see him cry afterward, so I imagine the movie producers felt they had gone the extra mile in humanizing the devout believer in a false religion. (See, kids! This is how you behave when you follow Allah instead of Yahweh!) I managed not to hoot aloud when a close-up revealed that the girl had been listening to lessons recorded by Franklin Graham. Franklin! A pale imitation of the real thing, but apparently good enough to cost a young woman her family and her home.

I won't dwell on the ghoulish ending, which was embarrassing in the extreme. When the preachers were crouching over the dying Professor Radisson, I was half-expecting them to sprout vampire fangs, they were so eager to sink their teeth into him. Instead I want to point out the ridiculousness of the final scene in Radisson's philosophy class. Since it was foreordained that Wheaton had to win, humiliating his atheist professor, it was impossible that the end of the debate would offer any surprises. And it didn't. Right on cue, the Asian boy who had befriended Wheaton was the first to rise to his feet to declare “God's not dead!” and Wheaton the winner. But then every single student stood up and joined the chorus. Really? Every student? I watched closely, looking for the students who would stubbornly keep their seats, rolling their eyes at their suddenly faithful classmates—all of whom had been willing only a few weeks before to scrawl their names on God's obituary. I didn't see a one.

Fake, fake, fake. Nothing short of a fire drill or the end of class will get every student to pop up from his or her desk. My neighbors in the movie theater may have noticed I was chuckling, but so were some of them. Perhaps they thought I was participating in their joy at Wheaton's David-vs.-Goliath triumph.

Nope.

Bearing false witness

A liar for Jesus

Michael Voris has made a career of being more Catholic than the pope. You'd think, however, that so religious a person would hesitate to break the commandment against bearing false witness. I daresay he thinks it's okay because his lies of in the service of his imagined savior. Yet I wonder: How effective can the lies be when they are so transparent. In one of his typical rants, Voris castigates the president on the occasion of Obama's visit to the Vatican and an audience with the pope. Voris would have us believe that Obama wilted under the pontiff's glowering disapproval.

[T]he pope is the leader of the church militant and there is no more powerful organization on earth than the Catholic Church. Only it can consign the diabolical to the furnaces of hell. Perhaps that's why, when the pope encounters one of hell's agents, he doesn't have much of a smile on his face.... [The pope] doesn't like being a prop, especially for political leaders advancing evil, and his usual ebullient smile was missing from all the official photos, sending a clear message.

In a word, Voris's statement is untrue. The official photographs are readily viewed on the Vatican website. It does not take too long while scrolling through the voluminous archive of images to discover that Pope Francis managed to smile several times in the presence of our evil president and even while greeting Secretary of State John Kerry (often denounced by arch-Catholics for being a pro-choice member of the Church). See for yourself how readily Voris is refuted:

No further words are required.

It's the law!

Can't anybody here play this game?

My lack of interest in sports is well-nigh complete. Please don't bother making small talk with me by asking whether I “saw the game last night.” Nevertheless, even I remember Casey Stengel's lament about his wretched New York Mets: “Can't anybody here play this game?” Stengel's question sometimes echoes in my head whenever I see another fumble by the Obama administration. (Yeah, I know: “fumble” is football. Did you forget that I don't care?)

Obama and company could stand to be a little more aggressive in the face of constant carping, petty backbiting, and outright lies. The president has been largely content to allow tea-stained critics to denounce him for “lying” about his statements that the Affordable Care Act would allow individuals to keep health insurance plans they liked. A little push-back would have been a good thing, instead of stoically accepting so much abuse and then apologizing.

In particular, I'm thinking Obama should have cited chapter and verse from the healthcare reform legislation itself. Yes, the measure is big and unwieldy (and Republicans like to pretend that no one knew what was in it despite months of delays and debates), but it's not impossible to look things up if you have specific questions. Have you ever read Sec. 1251? Did you even know it exists? Check it out:

SEC. 1251. PRESERVATION OF RIGHT TO MAINTAIN EXISTING COVERAGE.

(a) NO CHANGES TO EXISTING COVERAGE.
    (1) IN GENERAL.—Nothing in this Act (or an amendment made by this Act) shall be construed to require that an individual terminate coverage under a group health plan or health insurance coverage in which such individual was enrolled on the date of enactment of this Act.
    (2) CONTINUATION OF COVERAGE.—With respect to a group health plan or health insurance coverage in which an individual was enrolled on the date of enactment of this Act, this subtitle and subtitle A (and the amendments made by such subtitles) shall not apply to such plan or coverage, regardless of whether the individual renews such coverage after such date of enactment.

(b) ALLOWANCE FOR FAMILY MEMBERS TO JOIN CURRENT COVERAGE.—With respect to a group health plan or health insurance coverage in which an individual was enrolled on the date of enactment of this Act and which is renewed after such date, family members of such individual shall be permitted to enroll in such plan or coverage if such enrollment is permitted under the terms of the plan in effect as of such date of enactment.

(c) ALLOWANCE FOR NEW EMPLOYEES TO JOIN CURRENT PLAN.—A group health plan that provides coverage on the date of enactment of this Act may provide for the enrolling of new employees (and their families) in such plan, and this subtitle and subtitle A (and the amendments made by such subtitles) shall not apply with respect to such plan and such new employees (and their families).

That's right. The provisions of the healthcare act expressly establish a person's right to keep a health plan! The language is clear and explicit. In what way, then, did the president lie? Why, then, are people losing their current plans despite Sec. 1251?

Simple. Nothing forces the insurance companies to continue to offer those plans. Sec. 1251 has an invisible and unanticipated qualification: You can keep your current plan if your insurance company doesn't cancel it! The Obama administration cared enough to put the language of Sec. 1251 in the bill, but it failed to anticipate how many insurance companies would use the measure's enactment as an excuse for immediate cancellation of plans that don't meet Obamacare standards. Are we grandfathered in for a period of time? Who cares? We insurance companies sure don't!

Perhaps the president needs a little help in rebutting his critics, but it's probably too late for him to deliver the following short speech I just drafted:

My fellow Americans, you have heard many critics accusing me of having lied to you when I said, ‘If you like your health plan you can keep your health plan.’ Most of them know that accusation is false. In fact, that provision was expressly written into the Affordable Care Act. I quote word-for-word from Section 1251: ‘Nothing in this Act ... shall be construed to require that an individual terminate coverage under a group health plan or health insurance coverage in which such individual was enrolled on the date of enactment of this Act.’ So what happened? I'll tell you. Many insurance companies decided to cancel policies anyway, abandoning their clients despite the fact that the Affordable Care Act does not require it. Perhaps healthcare reform needed more mandates rather than fewer, but we did not require insurance companies to maintain their existing policies during the transition period. We should have been stricter.

Let me remind you again that nothing in the Affordable Care Act requires anyone to terminate a current health plan that does not initially meet the requirements of healthcare reform. They were grandfathered in. Unfortunately, the many people who were tossed aside by their insurance companies have not had ready access to a fully functioning health care website in order to seek out their most affordable alternatives. We are committed, however, to rectifying the situation and improvements are being made every day. We will stay the course and get the job done. In the meantime, whenever you hear someone screaming about the supposed lies and failings of healthcare reform, be sure to ask them what they are doing to help, besides just making baseless accusations. Thank you.

The GOP wants you!

In your place, of course

When the August recess arrives, members of congress will (in most cases) return to their districts to ingratiate themselves with the constituents who will be deciding their fates in November's general election. Naturally enough, many of them look to the organs of their political parties for support in this endeavor. We recently learned that the House Republican Conference has the backs of the GOP representatives in congress, providing them with a 31-page manual for maximizing their effectiveness during the crucial days of August. The manual is titled Fighting Washington for All Americans, which clearly implies that the Republicans have nothing to do with Washington (“doing nothing” is arguably true) and that voters must choose Republicans to fix all of the things that Republicans have wrecked in the last several years (like the economy and employment).

Fighting Washington is replete with the sort of subtle and sophisticated strategies that you would expect from the party of Boehner, especially when it comes to outreach techniques that bring women and minorities into the fold. (The “fold,” as with sheep, right?) Since each picture is worth a thousand words, let's take a look at the most eloquent part of the Republican play book. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for women in leadership positions and black and brown people in any role at all. (Hint: These latter appear almost as often as Waldo.) First, though, the textual preamble.

The women do at least start off strong in the text, where the one-named “Cathy” (like “Cher,” I presume) provides a full-page introduction whose third paragraph is

We know that Washington is broken. It spends too much, borrows too much, and takes too much. It targets people for what they believe. It chokes out jobs with more red tape, blocks new energy resources and makes our health care crisis worse. Our government is out of control.

A killer argument. (Don't forget now: The GOP has nothing to do with Washington's failures.) On the next page, Republican House members are exhorted to submit op-ed pieces to their local print media. A complete sample draft is provided for Republicans too dim to write their own. What's the lead? This:

As we conclude another busy legislative session in Washington, I look forward to working hard at home for the month of August. Each day I am grateful for the opportunity to represent you in our nation’s capital because Washington is broken and needs to be fixed.

It spends too much, borrows too much, and takes too much. It targets people for what they believe and punishes them for their political ideologies. It chokes out jobs with more red tape, blocks new energy resources, and makes our health care crisis worse.

Washington is out of control.

Hey, if it works on the members themselves, why shouldn't it also work on their dim constituents?

Let us now consider the importance of ginning up support from those “potentially targeted by the IRS.” This is ideal, because everyone is at least potentially subject to enhanced IRS scrutiny. One may as well start with the biggest real-life bogeyman of them all!

Check out the IRS's potential victims. That could be a token woman in the pink shirt, with her back toward us. The pants aren't very feminine, though, so we can't be certain. At least youth is represented by the teenage boy in the far corner. No doubt the revenuers are threatening his 501(c)(3) organization. Fortunately, the authority figure of the balding middle-aged man is present to instruct them on anti-IRS self-defense.

We can make a smooth segue from the IRS to the dangers of ObamaCare, which —as we all know—is merely a way to let the tax people threaten our health just as they do our wealth. The scruffy and rumpled doctor needs to be warned that the Obama administration's obsession over drug abuse (they really are rather over the top there) will threaten his easy access to prescription drugs for his recreational use (or energy boosts during long hours on duty in our understaffed socialist health system). That might be a woman there in the back, wearing purplish-blue and framed against a window. No doubt this is subliminal messaging that lets women know they're not entirely forgotten (just mostly ignored unless they're dangerously fertile).

A representative's constituency contains more than dissolute doctors and frightened IRS targets. To embrace the wide, wonderful world of one's district in all of its delightful diversity, organize a meetup! Be sure to salt the crowd with your hand-picked minions (“This will strengthen the conversation and take it in a direction that is most beneficial to the Member's goal.”)

This is the illustration the minions of the House Republican Conference chose to represent a typical meetup. Three white guys and one white gal. (Seen any minorities yet?) The woman is appropriately demure and quiet, listening with a docile demeanor to the guy in the middle. Observe the clasped hands of sincerity. Doesn't this look like fun?

One must be certain to use the August recess to argue in favor of people getting jobs (as distinct from actually passing job-stimulus legislation; this long-discredited socialist approach has been anathema since it was last done for the Bush administration). Fighting America—oops!—I mean Fighting Washington recommends a live YouTube Roundtable to boost jobs and fight (or at least whine) about unemployment.

As seen in the picture, a job roundtable need not be a roundtable at all. It can actually be as simple as a white guy haranguing people who are trying to have lunch in a cheap diner in an unidentified war zone. See the pensive lady in this one? (She's wondering if she's getting paid enough for this soul-killing posing job.)

Did you know that the Republicans favor family leave? It's another perfect topic for a roundtable! Your Republican representative can single the praises of the Working Families Flexibility Act, which empowers employers to rearrange your hours so as to avoid overtime pay. But don't worry, if you end up working overtime anyway and don't get a chance to take compensatory time off, you will eventually get paid. (Please don't think of this delayed compensation as an interest-free loan of your wages to your employer. That doesn't sound nearly as good as “flexibility.”)

As before, no roundtable is actually necessary. It's just an expression. Since we're talking about working families, it's important to run a photo with an unambiguous female in it. There's actually three or four in this one, and the nice lady in the blue top is congratulating a morbidly obese Tea Party member on his recent eating contest victory. Note the subtle way it reminded the reader about health issues and the dread impact of ObamaCare! And a bonus: There's a black guy in the back! Hi, black guy! (We're done with you now. Bye-bye!)

It's important to never stop hitting the jobs issue. (Remember, it's all Obama's fault that no jobs measure had gotten through the House of Representatives since the GOP took control in 2011. But what else could you expect from a shiftless black guy?) But let's stay on topic. Jobs!

The compassionate conservative congressman will find time to at least shake the hands of people waiting in an unemployment line. (Most of them are overweight, so look into cutting the food-stamp program some more.) There are one, two, maybe three women in this picture. A high point!

Now on to the job fair! Representative Bucshon managed to get his job fair on the local NBC affiliate. (Time to call up the local Fox affiliate and scream threats at them. Didn't Murdoch's check clear?)

There's something funny about this video-capture photo. Notice how the mix of men and women begins to approach societal norms when a real-life event is captured? Quite a contrast to the default choices of Republican operatives. Did any of them scratch their heads and think this picture was somehow “wrong” and out of place in their play book? I guess they decided to use it to please Rep. Bucshon. But it is a little jarring. (Hey! Is that a minority in the back? Or is he only in a shadow?)

The Republicans have a big demographic problem. Not only do minorities refuse to vote for them, so do most young people. But never fear! Having recognized this deficiency in their recruitment program, the GOP is highlighting the predatory impact of ObamaCare, which will force millennials to pay for healthcare while they're young and healthy, thus helping Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa to stay alive while the youngsters could be using that cash to improve the quality of their partying. Vile redistributionist policies! If young people can be inveigled into destroying ObamaCare today, they can live happier, wealthier lives right now and not be concerned about it till much, much later (which is another matter altogether and not part of the current discussion).

Oh, look! Helping young people understand the wickedness of ObamaCare apparently involves old white-haired guys giving a talk to groups of young, pretty, nubile females. Hey, man, do you really want a camera in the room? (Oh, okay. I hadn't thought of that.) Big progress, though, for female representation in Fighting Washington. We have three young women listening submissively to an older man (just as God intended).

I know from personal experience that farmers love the Republican Party. It appears to make no sense, but they do. (Something about rugged individualism and subsidies for agribusiness.) Certainly the GOP will not fail to address farm issues during the August recess.

As we all know, women have nothing to do with agriculture. Neither do minorities. They're just no good at it (unless, of course, they're under the supervision of an overseer).

Much of the same is true with energy production. That's an engineering problem, and there's the rub. Women don't like hard hats because they muss their hair. The GOP understands this.

Also, there are no young or minority engineers. Get over it if you don't like it. The Republicans accept reality just the way it is!

Hey! Just one doggone minute here! Where did that picture of award-winning black engineering students from Clarkson come from? (It sure wasn't from Fighting Washington, I'll tell you that much!)

Sorry. We got a little off-topic there. Let's turn instead to the GOP's concerns about fuel and food. According to the GOP play book, the August recess should be used to tour gas stations and grocery stores (with the members acting like they've actually been in those places in recent years and not just during childhood). After making sure that the station owners and grocers “are comfortable with the overall messaging them” (that is, ensuring that these people understand that Obama is evil incarnate and responsible for all their problems), the congressman can stage a series of events where he stops off at each business to decry the horrible things Obama has done for them while the owner nods and/or wrings his hands.

This is yet another occasion where womenfolk are irrelevant. When it comes to grocery shopping or gassing up the car, all you need is a couple of white guys. Message received!

Another good topic is higher education, where you can address major concerns like student loans (and the importance of letting interest rates fall too low), lack of available jobs (because of Obama's destruction of the economy during 2008, before he was president), workforce training (which community colleges should provide more efficiently to compensate for budget cuts imposed by Republican governors), and keeping education affordable (see “student loans” and “workforce training” again).

And what says “higher education” more than a white guy lecturing at a white audience? Nothing, of course! (It is just possible that an Asian or two has slipped into this group, but that's okay because Asians are a good minority. Especially in math class.)

It's not enough to tour through farms, warehouses, gas stations, and schools, of course. You have to get out there among the little people. Like the good, honest folk who work in mom-and-pop outfits in strip malls that GOP policies are putting out of business via tax breaks to more efficient megacorporations with off-shore labor forces (where the miracle of the unfettered free market enable young people to find employment opportunities that would be denied them in the US [at least until they are teenagers]).

For a common touch, wear jeans under your sports coat. Commoners will relate to that. It's not clear that women were required in this picture, but perhaps they do the cleaning up. They seem friendly enough to their oppressor, suggesting that it must be hard cider in those plastic jugs. The wine is probably another reliable sales item in depressed economic sectors.

Republicans hate red tape (except when it comes to regulating abortion clinics), so  naturally Fighting Washington suggests yet another roundtable discussion on government over-regulation. A congressman can wander into a convenient factory and bring production to a total halt while he delivers a sermonette on the importance of efficiency through deregulation. He can demonstrate this by refusing to wear a safety vest while lecturing the employees.

If he lives through the experience, he can then visit a senior citizen center, part of his reliable support base as he promises to protect Social Security and Medicare from his party's policies.

The woman in the picture is just posing. She's got her flag pin on her lapel and is probably an example of the female of the Republican congressional representative species. She's a nice lady and probably won't be pushing the old man down the escalator in the background after the camera goes away. Legislation takes longer, but has fewer fingerprints.

When a GOP member of congress gets tired of going walkabout on these various roundtable tours, he can always cede the heavy lifting to local talk-radio hosts. Most of them are always willing to carry water for the GOP. You can read almost any dreck you like from cue cards cut from the party platform (or Fighting Washington!) and they'll run with it. They already feed their listeners several hours every day of right-wing cant. Rest assured that they know your talking points even better than you do!

This photo depicts a model talk-radio station. See the man's arm in the lower-left corner? He's undoubtedly the guy who has the cut-off switch in case the female host is having her time of month and goes off the reservation.

Broadcast media are dominant these days, but it's important not to neglect the surviving print media, which can be important in certain key demographics (like the old people who subscribe so they can keep up with Peanuts). Remember that op-ed stuff. You can get newspapers to run articles that align with your interest if you schmooze sufficiently ingratiatingly with the paper's editorial board.

As shown in the picture, modern editorial boards are made up exclusively of old white guys. These people are the GOP's core constituency and hardly even need an excuse to pitch their stories the way the local congressman would like.

Townhall meetings are lot like roundtables and all the previous tips and rules apply. Don't forget to salt the audience with shills who have the questions you'd prefer to answer. Get free media from your minions inside talk radio and newspaper editorial boards. Then you're on solid ground.

If you're a member of congress who wants to impress people at a townhall meeting, don't leave your visual aids immobile on an easel. Wave them around. That makes it harder to read anything that they can reconsider later, but people will remember your passion. Also, if you have an assistant with a semi-dark complexion, tell people he's of Indian descent (like Bobby Jindal!) and not Mexican (which will make people think he's illegal, or at least his parents were). Call him “Raj” or “Apu.” These are media-tested acceptable exotic names and will make your audience give themselves credit for their fake open-mindedness.

Republican candidates who learn the lessons of Blighting—I mean, Fighting Washington can be certain to reap the votes of their palest and most gullible constituents. Their success will continue until the dwindling supply of such constituents reaches a certain critical level. Fighting Washington is Exhibit A in the argument that the Republican establishment thinks that critical level is many cycles away.

Please prove them wrong in 2014.