Bob Herbert, Blaming the Victim

There was an interesting article by Bob Herbert in which he is fairly accurate in his portrayal of the Republicans. Unfortunately the nuts on the left are guilty of the same excesses which takes all the wind out of the sails of his argument.

While I agree with many of of these points, the Democrats are equally to blame for poisoning the atmosphere of political discourse. The consequence of this from both sides is the outrageous behaviour of some fringe tea party activists. What we have here is two viewpoints that are irreconcilable. Because neither side will give on any points, increases in temperature in the political discourse will result in the pot starting to boil. What we now have are a hard core remnant of Republicans facing a hard core remnant of Democrats, leavened by a handful of Democrats from swing states. Those will be swept from power in the next election replaced with a handful of Republicans from swing states. There is really no middle ground on issues like slavery, abortion or the right of women to vote. And now apparently nationalized healthcare. Americans are AFRAID.

The parties occupy the leftmost and rightmost fringes of the discourse. Everyone in the middle feels disenfranchised. The tea party people, libertarians an technocrats, even scientists are all being used as grist for the mill for one party to gain a temporary advantage of over the other party.

Disenfranchised people get angry. Angry people are easy to manipulate and angry people can become violent.

We need to re-evaluate who we are as a nation, and give those in the center a voice. Otherwise the republic will fail and our liberal democracy will be replaced with a bureaucratic dictatorship with trappings of democracy just like Rome.

Annie Get Your Gun

The House may try to pass the Senate health-care bill without voting on it.

OK, now that's called taxation without representation. I guess if they do that the republic is dead and it's time for a new revolution. Annie get your gun.

There are numerous articles on the internet about how the house may try to pass the Senate health-care bill without voting on it. Now clearly this is unconstitutional and illegal. I guess we'll need some flags and uniforms. I wonder how much bloodshed a new civil war would cause. Hopefully not more than the civil war as a percentage.

618,000 out of 31 million or so, roughly 10 times that today. So the question is:

Is socialized health care worth the lives of 6-10 million Americans (or more)? I would advise Nancy Peolsi to tread carefully. They're called tea parties for a reason.

Chill Out

Some more fun climate related entries:

http://physicsworld.com/blog/2010/02/physicists_are_modellers_too_b.html

http://physicsworld.com/blog/2010/02/would_researchers_entering_the.html

http://people-press.org/report/556/global-warming