Unholier Than Thou

The closer we get to the 2012 general election in the United States, the more that the arrogant, the ignorant, and the unintelligent groups of people in the United States appear to be crawling out of the social woodwork. Sadly, there are some who match all three categories.

What caught our attention today were two different stories in the news, that both had a similar theme. Both involve some stunningly poor judgement.

The first news story is about former Romney spokesman Richard Grenell. Grenell appears to have been run out of the Romney campaign this week, in large part due to the response of the bigots in the GOP.

In case you didn't know - and obviously, many in the Republican Party didn't - Richard Grenell is an uncloseted gay Republican. He is what is and he makes no apologies for his sexual orientation. Frankly, we agree with Grenell on that part of his attitude. Unless you're intimately involved with someone else, what their sexual orientation is really shouldn't be your business. Obviously, those in Mr. Romney's campaign who advise the candidate on hiring also didn't think Mr. Grenell's sexual orientation should be a big deal.

On this, we completely agree with the Romney campaign's initial decision.

We frankly thought Grenell's misogynistic tendencies, and history of poor teamwork was a much greater problem than his being gay. The bigoted extremists on the far right, however, made it VERY clear that - to them - Mr Grenell's sexual orientation was the dealbreaker. From the sound of what happened at the Romney campaign, after the teabaggers screamed, Grenell was shut out of some important meetings - so he left, knowing he wasn't wanted.

In North Carolina, there wasn't nearly as much subterfuge.

The wife of a Republican state Senator made it known publicly that her husband authored North Carolina's controversial anti-gay law, Amendment One - which is on the ballot this year - because he wanted to "protect the Caucasian race" and save the U.S. Constitution from "activist judges".

In other words, her husband, North Carolina state legislator Peter Brunstetter, is attempting to put into law racial and sexual discrimination. In the South. In 2012. In America.

What angers and frustrates us so much about ignorant, arrogant, fools like the Brunstetters and those who ran off Mr. Grenell isn't the fact of their stupidity. This is, after all, America. If someone wants to be a racist, or a bigot - or both - they can certainly do that. In fact, we'll be more than happy to endorse the rights of groups like the KKK and the Westboro "Church" mutants to publicly display their biases. At least they have the REAL courage of their convictions.

The problem we have with the twits in these two stories is their false piety. They, and those like them, almost always attempt to claim that whatever version of religion they believe, allows - or even commands - them to act abusively to their fellow human beings.

Even if we were to agree with any of their skewed and faulty arguments, where in their religions does it say they get to be the ones that hand out the punishment? Further, where does it say that their religion gets to override the laws of mankind?

Since most of these folks claim to be Christian, and most of us are acquiainted with at least the basic tenets of Christianity, we can tell you - quite clearly - that there is nowhere in the average Christian Bible that says Christians can ignore the laws of man, and become judge, jury, and enforcer of punishments they judge others to deserve.

If a person wishes to judge others in a secular way, using logic and secular rules of debate, they may certainly do so in America - and we hope they do.

But using a false version of piety to defend bigotry and racism doesn't fly in America, or Christianity - no matter how big your megachurch's piggy bank might be.

The Difference Between Hype & Substance

As we pointed out Tuesday morning, modern Republican politicians don't seem to understand the difference between theory and practice these days. Nowhere was that more evident Tuesday than in the fake outrage reactions of right-wing media organizations and politicians to the President's comments about the anniversary of the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

In case you were busy Tuesday - maybe flying to Afghanistan like the President or members of the White House Press Corps - you may have missed the explosion of hypocrisy that permeated the media. In short, as we'd forecasted, it was a huge eruption of hypocritical organic fertilizer.

The sanctimonious idea the right wing was desperately clinging to Tuesday was that President Obama doesn't have the right to take some kind of credit for his gutsy decision a year ago, that was directly responsible for the death of Bin Laden. As we also pointed out Tuesday, that fallacy in thinking is laughable on its face. President Obama had to make a very difficult call - one that could have easily ended poorly, like the decision to rescue Iranian hostages that President Carter made in 1980.

Luckily for him and us, President Obama capitalized on the opportunity to get rid of the world's number one terrorist, and the mission was successful. The fact that Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, had at least two well-publicized opportunities to take out major Al-Qaeda figures, and capitalized on neither opportunity, didn't seem to matter those in the right-wing media.

Those same dogmatic media conservatives were insistent that President Obama's announcement of Bin Ladens' death last year, and his relatively few words this year about Bin Laden, were actually the real offense to the senses. The fact that President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" photo-op came eight years before the actual end of the Iraq war - and nine years to the day from yesterday - didn't seem to matter to them. They were outraged about hype, because - dammit, didn't liberals understand? In their minds, Republicans are always supposed to be better at this war and military stuff.

Meanwhile, President Obama was busy actually moving America's real foreign policy forward in a surprise trip to Afghanistan.

The White House kept most of the media in the dark about the trip, and was mostly successful, announcing with a flourish Tuesday afternoon, that President Obama was signing a new pact with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, signaling a real end to the Afghan War that Bush and company began over a decade earlier.

In short, on the anniversary of the day that President Obama announced that American servicemembers had killed Osama Bin Laden, President Obama signed the first of many official documents that will bring about the real end to the Afghan war. In a somewhat ironic twist, the agreement Obama signed with Karzai is similar to one that President Bush signed with Iraqi President Maliki, that began the American exit from Iraq.

The new agreement says that - as Mr. Obama had previously planned -  by next year, American military forces will be in full support mode of the Afghan forces, and by 2014 all U.S. combat military troops will be out of Afghanistan.

Then, for an undetermined period of time, 15,000-20,000 non-combat American forces will remain in Afghanistan. At that point, the U.S. will continue to help fund Afghanistan's anti-terrorism forces for a few more years - if the U.S. Congress can figure out how to get anything done.

That, of course, is the kicker.

If Congress - and especially the extremists on the far right - keep following the idea that hype is more important than substance, we doubt they'll follow the lead of President Obama.

They'll be too busy preening for their next media opportunity to say Mr. Obama never does anything of substance.

Theory And Practice

We know that today is May Day, a day commonly used to celebrate worker's rights all over the world. That topic is one we fully support, and hope to address again soon. [We also know that in some places, May Day is about giving candy and gifts to your neighbors, but that's another story.]

However, after the stack of columns, commentaries, and news items over the last 24 hours that all pointed to the same idea, we've decided to focus on the difference between theory and reality in politics today. That seems to be something modern Republican politicians don't seem to truly understand - even if many others, including many Republican voters, do.

The tip of the metaphorical iceberg surfaced with a column from this weekend's Washington Post by two centrist political scholars (one of whom works for a conservative think tank), entitled, "Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem." In short, the two political scienists agree that the slavish devotion to ideological theory that current Republican Party politicians cling to, has - in practice - ground our current political system to a halt.

It's not that most Republican voters want the kind of inaction our system now displays. On the contrary, Republican voters, in general say they want our legislators to make smart, sensible laws in a very efficient way. That's not what our current Republican political leaders seem to want, though.

As we mentioned on Monday, just like Newt Gingrich, modern Republican politicians only seem to care more about proving their political theories correct then they do actually governing effectively. Like the poorly planned attacks on Planned Parenthood in Texas, and the illegitimate "personhood" bill in Oklahoma, Republican politicians seem to bent on imposing their theories on those they serve. Sadly, because those legislators didn't consider the constitutionality or ethical nature of either bill, both the bill in Texas and the one in Oklahoma were struck down or halted in court on Monday - which will now cost the taxpayers in both states significantly more money, with zero benefit.

The mindless pursuit of ideology seems to have also found its way into action by Nebraska's State Board of Education. The Board appears set to attempt to force students in all Nebraska public schools, at all levels, to say the Pledge of Allegiance every school day. That a similar bill in Nebraska's legislature failed to pass earlier this year only seemed to be more of an incentive to the Republican politicians on the Board. It doesn't seem to matter that some voters - conservatives among them - agree that being forced to say words one doesn't believe or support won't be helpful to the kids or the schools.

For modern Republican politicians, these kinds of differences between theory and reality don't seem to matter. It doesn't even seem to matter when their theories have been proven to be wrong. For example, the entire conservative theory of budgetary austerity - which, in short, is the Ryan Budget plan - has proven a massive failure throughout Europe. Yet Republicans continue to insist if the rest of us would just try these failed theories, for the thousand and first time, it would be different than the thousand previous failures of the same plan.

GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney followed that same stubborn Republican pattern today, when Romney made an offhand comment about President Obama's decision to go ahead with the raid that lead to the death of terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden. Romney tried to frame the decision President Obama made last year as a theory, one that was no big deal, saying that, "even Jimmy Carter would have given that order."

However, as multiple people pointed out, Carter - like Obama - didn't just have a theory. Carter put into actual practice his decision in April of 1980, to rescue U.S. diplomats in Iran, a decision that was incredibly similar to Obama's decision to go after Bin Laden.

Unlike President Obama's decision however, President Carter's ended in tactical and political failure - and was likely a major reason Carter was not re-elected. As Romney's offhand comment makes clear, though, President Obama's call to go ahead with the Bin Laden raid was not just some pie-in-the sky theory, nor was it an easy decision. Obama's choice was a gutsy move, with calculated risks, that was a Presidential leadership move in practice.

For us, Yogi Berra summed it up best when he said, "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."