Could Be Worse. You Could Have Nominated One Of The Unelectable Ones.

LEAVE us now consider Mitt Romney. Or just why we should consider him.

First: is there some reason anyone should be surprised, or feign surprise, that fourteen-year-old Mitt behaved like a prep school son of privilege? Isn't "organize gang of snotty, well-off bullies to torment the less fortunate" pretty much a description of the man's business career? And isn't he proud of that?

Or is this another Republican Presidential nominee whose youthful indiscretions extended into his forties?

Second, about the "youthful indiscretion" defense: I did a lot of stuff in my youth I wouldn't want publicized, too, but most of that is because of various statutes of limitation. None of it ever included picking on children younger or smaller than myself, and certainly not joining or organizing gangs to do so. Because I knew that was wrong. Because I'd been taught it was wrong. And because it is wrong. And a mark of cowardice. Most Vietnamese are smaller than Mitt Romney, too. Just a fun fact.

Finally: that "the boy later turned out to be gay" routine seems designed to induce empathy in the modern reader. I happen to believe Romney's FOX defense--what I could hear of it through his Haw-haw-hawing--that homosexuality had nothing to do with it. This was Ur-Hippie punching. As such, it's precisely the same, and a damned fine lasting metaphor for Romney, his party, and their economic policies.

Should this be an issue in a Presidential campaign? In a sane and sensible time and place, no. Does that answer the question?

Yeah? And…

YOU'LL forgive me if I'm less than impressed by the President's Big Reveal, even if it was masterfully done.

Has "masterfully done" applied to anything the Republicans have done or said in living memory? How has that hurt them, exactly? "That was a nifty 'White House watermelon patch' gambit"? "Wow, Frank Luntz is quite the wordsmith"? Nope. Those motherfuckers pander to their base, unashamedly, unabashedly, and unapologetically. Why isn't it a fucking given that a "liberal" politician supports marriage equality? Who, exactly, are we no longer afraid of offending that we were afraid of offending two weeks ago?

Sure, sure, the game is still politics, but maybe if Democrats weren't so afraid of drawing distinctions between themselves and the rabid horde across the aisle they'd find that large numbers of "Undecideds" might decide to agree with them.

Dick Lugar read the polls. Enough said.

Yeah, And?

LET'S say this apropos of Dick Lugar's defeat: so far as I can tell, the only thing that can be understood, politically, in this country is complete disaster.  That is, the slow-motion train wreck cannot be grasped until the last piece of debris comes plummeting back to earth.

And, unfortunately for the people who want easy answers or else none at all, that's not going to come from an underwear bomb. They say it's the bullet you don't hear that gets you. Well, it's the bullet the public has refused to listen to that's gonna get us. Incontinent tax-cutting, education "reform", unfettered corporate power, money as speech, the idea that 40% of the Budget--and Social Security and Medicare, which aren't even part of the Budget--miraculously contains 100% of the deficit. These aren't bad ideas. They're proven disasters. And they're not going away. We couldn't even reform the financial system when it came within a hair of bankrupting the globe--and would have, without the massive government intervention the Party of the Banks now runs against--let alone throw anyone in prison. (It's a shame Haley Barbour couldn't pardon Bernie Madoff, and complete the Circle of Life.) Is there anyone out there who seriously doubts that the Beltway insider calls for Bipartisanship (as in, "Dick Lugar was willing to reach across the aisle") will, ultimately, be listened and responded to by one party, and one party only? Anyone who doubts which one?

And Dick Lugar got topped by the whizzing, NRA-approved, cop-killer bullets that he and his party have been ignoring at least as long as Lugar's been in the Senate. Dick Mourdock is Dan Burton minus the produce. So far. You remember the time Moderate Dick Lugar excoriated the wingnuts in his party, right? Yeah, me neither.

What I do remember, now that Indianapolis Public Schools have descended into a "crisis" so profound that auctioning them off to for-profit charter school operations is the only possible solution, is that Moderate Dick Lugar is the reason one can live in Indianapolis, pay property taxes in Indianapolis, and send one's children to public school in Indianapolis, and have nothing to do with Indianapolis Public Schools. Lugar wasn't Nixon's Favorite Mayor for nothin' (although it was a source of endless amusement in those days that Nixon always called him LOO-gar, not looger); he's the guy who helped bring the Southern Strategy north of the Confederacy. (The takeovers are a disaster in the works; look for accountability to disappear in 3…2…. Meanwhile, I'd like to thank the New York Times for yesterday's update on Joel Kline, once Mike Bloomberg's know-nothing Education Czar. Kline thoughtfully came to town last year to pitch in for the private takeover. Kline, it turns out, is now heading Rupert Murdock's attempt to take over education publishing. Rest easy, Murrica.)

Inside inside the Beltway the punditasters have been quick to bemoan the loss of Lugar's statesmanship; they, just as he did in his concession speech (in which Dick Lugar suddenly became a moderate again, after running as a Conservative), point out his remarkable outreach to former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn, the Liberal's Liberal, an historic act which led to the United States Congress denouncing the Soviet military. I guess it was Lugar's statesmanship and bipartisan outlook on national defense which caused him to vote for every Defense bill that's come down the pike for thirty years. I guess it was his sage and seasoned wisdom which caused him to warn that we were rushing too quickly into Iraq War II, before voting for the resolution, and the blank-check funding, then, two years later, when the whole thing was unquestionably a steaming pot of shit gumbo, reminding everyone that he'd warned us about it.

The Senate loses Dick Lugar. What has the Senate accomplished because of Dick Lugar, exactly?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Senator Mourdock* won't vote to confirm "liberal" justices. So he's gonna end Obamacare, and abolish the Environmental Protection Agency. So the Club for Growth bought itself a US Senator, which it couldn't have if Lugar's President, and his party, hadn't ended the Fairness Doctrine and limitations of media ownership in the 80s. So go piss on George Eff Will's bowtie collection. We're not getting out of this until the next global financial market manipulation is allowed to proceed to Zero, the point of Ultimate Freedom, when the teeth of US Senators will be highly regarded as currency.

____________

 * Assuming you're the sort of person who looks at this and feels some small stirring of hope that Indiana will now elect a Democratic Senator, the answer is "we don't have any".

For The Love Of Dick

LATE last week the local teleprompter readers were touting a poll that purported to show superannuated Indiana Senator Dick Lugar with a small lead (less than the "margin" of "error") over Teabagging challenger Dick "He's Won Two Statewide Contests" Mourdock.

(Wait, sorry. I apologize for the fact that as part of my typical, if not knee-jerk, attitude about polls I almost never pay attention to who conducted them, and I'm rarely, if ever, interested enough to go back to look.)

The next day a new poll came out showing Lugar roughly 10 pts down. I know the source for this one, since every report was careful to tell me right at the top that it came from The Respected Howey/Depauw Indiana Battleground Poll. [on edit: it turns out that it's actually just the Howey/Depauw Indiana Battleground Poll, not The Respected, etc. Honest mistake. That's the only way anyone referred to it, for some reason. Interesting that "respected" means "academic, and not for rent". We have a real propensity in this country for saying what we know about Business only when we think no one's listening. Or else when there's a buck to be made.]

Anyway, not only were we supposed to believe Howey, it seems as though we should. Lugar seems to. He gave an interview Saturday which basically ran: "Help me! Please! Democrats should cross-over and vote for me next Tuesday, although I want to go on record as saying that I never said Democrats should cross over."

I may have mentioned, once or twice, but it bears repeating: the Lugar campaign is the gosh-darned stupidest thing I ever saw, and I live in Indiana. The longest-serving Senator in Indiana history is now in danger of losing a Republican primary to a Teabagger nutjob two years after junior Senator Dan "Carpetbagger" Coats managed to defeat one two weeks after moving back to Indiana. He's losing despite the "support" of "wildly popular" Indiana Governor Mitch "RV" Daniels. He's losing despite Mourdock's clear and wide slime trail in Indiana Republican politics.And Lord knows I'm no expert, but I think saying "I need your help" to Democrats and independents at the eleventh hour might have been a little more effective if you hadn't just spent the past four months, and untold thousands, on campaign ads that spit out "Obama" the way you might say "Gonorrhea" to the person you just learned had infected you.

I'm not sure why Lugar took this guy seriously in the first place, and I really don't understand how a guy who's been in the Senate since Cicero was Chairman of the Armed Services Committee couldn't have him crushed at the local level, before it got to those unfortunate campaign ads. (Speaking of which, Mitch Daniels may be about as honest as he is power forward material, but his commercials have certainly been effective. Until he made some for Lugar, anyway. Lugar's staff didn't have the phone number?) He ran in fear of being called moderate. So now the national punditasters are bemoaning how There's no room in the Republican party for Dick Lugar anymore. Well, fuck. If you listen to his campaign ads he's just slightly to the left of Jim DeMint. In fact their voting records are really all that different.

Why didn't Lugar just come out and tell the truth? Why in the world do you even care to keep a job where you can't? The Congress can't get anything done. Replacing Lugar with a Teabagger isn't going to change many votes, it's just going to give you a Senator with no influence, to match the other one. Why not say so?

I don't think the problem is there's suddenly no room for a "moderate" Republican. I think the problem is that for the last thirty years, anyone who might've qualified has been too afraid of his own electorate to open his mouth.

Let The Pre-Postmortemizing Begin!

I admire him [Cecil Rhodes], I honestly do. And when his time comes I shall ask for a piece of the rope as a souvenir. 

 --Mark Twain 

NOTHING is ever going to change my perception of Dick Lugar. As long as I live he's the man who--five years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and four years after the Voting Rights Act--spearheaded his party's (successful) efforts to re-disenfranchise African-American voters in Indianapolis, by moving the city's boundaries to accommodate White Flight and Republican majorities.

Hey, Robert Byrd apologized for his Klan membership. If Lugar's said anything to the black community in Indianapolis in forty years I don't know what it might've been. You can shove all that intervening "statesman" crap into a tricorn hat.

Lugar turned his status as Richard Nixon's favorite mayor into a losing Senatorial campaign in 1974, and a landslide victory in 1976. Which, to paraphrase the Republican country chairman in this Roll Call piece, was the last time we saw Dick Lugar in Indiana. It is, without question, the last time he lived here. Or owned a home here. Or voted from a legitimate address. And, of course, that guy from Morgan county voted for him seven times after that 1970 rubber chicken deal. Lugar's absentee landlordism, his thirty years of self-aggrandizement, came as a result of his Republican sinecure, and came at the expense of Indiana issues. (Do we really need "statesmen" in the U.S. Senate?) What have Indiana Republicans said about this in the preceding thirty five years: a) Zip; b) Zilch; c) Nada ?

If he's gone he's got himself--and his staff--to blame; I found this impossible as little as six months ago, but Lugar used whatever masses of money he'd accumulated by not being challenged since Jimmy Carter was president to go negative early, loudly, and incessantly. The bright boys are talking about what a mistake that was--now they're talking about it--but none of 'em was asking why Lugar didn't come out and defend his vaunted "moderation" in the first place. Because, y'know, everybody knows screaming "Repeal Obamacare" is a certified winner. Unless you're talking to the general public.

No way I'd be sorry to see him go, just sad to have to hear about the "resurgence" of the Teabaggers for the next six months (and the magic of that Sarah Palin endorsement, made a week ago), in addition to watching the inevitable Democratic fumblefest in response. These guys can scream all they wanna; in the end they're going to replace Dan Burton with another nutjob, and Lugar--maybe--with another reliable vote for the ACU, while replacing Lugar's Washington insider with a Club for Growth automaton. As Doc Johnson once said the fellow seems to possess but one idea, and that a wrong one.

We can't let this go without mentioning minute Indiana governor Mitch "Friends Like These" Daniels, whose entire political career is Lugar's fault. Mitch turned up a couple weeks ago in ads shot on the Lugar farm, where he looked almost as out of place as Lugar would've. Daniels's spiel--it was bruited about that he'd written it himself--talked about backing Lugar "not for what he's done, but what he will do". Which I believe in known in literary circles as "damning with faint praise the geezer who refused to retire this year and let you ascend to his seat". Daniels--who really is P.T. Barnum without the showmanship--had this to say to Roll Call:

“Richard Mourdock is a credible guy,” Daniels told Roll Call. “He’s not somebody who appeared from nowhere on the fringe of politics. He’s a two-term official elected statewide.”

He's a slimy opportunist who somehow managed to turn a career as an also-ran into a nomination for State Treasurer. The last time the Indiana Treasurer wasn't selected by straight-ticket voting for the governor's party, Corydon was the state capital.

I sure won't be sorry to see Lugar go. Too bad he didn't leave eighteen years ago, when an assembly of Hoosier voters expressed their hatred of the sitting Democratic president by helping him crush the late Jim Jontz.

Slam Dunk, James Taranto!

James Taranto, "Obama the Unseemly". April 27

ONE of my recurring ideas--and one I'd be glad to discuss with Norman Ornstein--is that the American Right, not exactly the paragon of collating data from diverse sources to begin with--its modern fucking intellectuals claim to read three authors, fer chrissakes, fewer than your average fundamentalist--stopped talking to, listening to, or basically acknowledging the existence of, anybody who disagreed with it around the time that "Watergate was a third-rate burglary" became inoperable. And not to the good, just in case anyone had any delusions of Jesuitical competence:

There's been a lot of talk of late about how "cool" Barack Obama supposedly is. But people are starting to notice the man has no class. "Blue collar Democratic voters, stuck taking depressing 'staycations' because they can't afford gas and hotels, are resentful of the first family's 17 lavish vacations around the world and don't want their tax dollars paying for the Obamas' holidays, according to a new analysis of swing voters," reports the Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard. 

A group of Republican pollsters conducted focus groups of swing-state swing voters, mostly Democrats and independents, and John McLaughlin "handled blue collar and Catholic voters" in Pittsburgh and Cleveland. He found that they tend to think Mitt Romney is "too rich," but "there is a start of resentment of the government." In Bedard's words, "voters were also lumping in the president's vacation spending in with the General Services Administration's Las Vegas scandal and federal spending for those who aren't looking for work."

Okay, so let's be charitable and assume that part of what grammarians call the "utter fucking incomprehensibility" above is the result of bad editing or balky cutting-and-pasting. Else, let us allow that, if your point is as flaccid as Taranto's, maybe incomprehensibility is a reasonable ploy. But, please, you base a conclusion on "an analysis of swing voters" in the Washington Examiner? You think the working poor are going to flock to the Republican party because the President stays in nice hotels? The results certainly are unassailable. But only in the sense that you can't argue with the reflection in the cracked Funhouse mirror of James Taranto's mind. Wait, it's going to get better. Count to twelve:

Obama is also notorious for his golf outings.

No, he isn't.

Blogress Ann Althouse,

I believe they prefer to be known as "blogerettes".

another swing voter

Notorious.

(she has admitted supporting Obama in 2008)

"Swing voters" have to admit supporting a candidate?

notes that George W. Bush was "savaged" for going golfing "when Americans were fighting and dying."

We are, as much as possible, going to leave the practice of using Ann Althouse as a source, let alone accepting the Choking Hazard-level ruse of Ann Althouse, independent political thinker, without comment. But, frankly, sometimes the broad side of the barn deserves hitting. George Bush wasn't "savaged" for golfing "when Americans were fighting and dying." He was savaged for golfing while, according to him, and his party, and his party's hacky mouthpieces, the fate of Civilization Herself hung in the balance. And for showing a Patrician insensitivity to it ("Watch this drive.") which makes Mitt Romney look like Helen Keller.

Michael Moore made hay of it in his 2004 agitprop film "Fahrenheit 9/11," notwithstanding that Bush had given up golf in 2003 on the ground that it was unseemly: "I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong message."

Y'know, it's too bad (for y'all) that he didn't think of this until after there was an uproar.

Althouse opens her post with a story about the latest casualties in Afghanistan.

I'm sure she does. Listen, this country's political situation would be improved considerably if "much of the distance between Ann Althouse and how far off the mark she is" was the new centrism. Which is not saying much for this country, I know.

This is highly reminiscent of the willful misunderstanding of the term "chickenhawk" from, not surprisingly, the same era, by, not surprisingly, the same people. Nobody expected, nor wanted, Jonah Goldberg to volunteer for the Marine Corps. No one expected George W. Bush to avoid golf, nor vacations altogether. In fact, the only people demanding a "serious" presidency are people who voted for Bush twice. Nobody ambushed George W. Bush. He was speaking to reporters; it's they he recommended admire his drive. At the time, the public had been subjected to a full year of fear mongering over 9/11, and twenty months of PR reassurances that George W. Bush, Commander-in-Chief, was not the overripe frat boy his every appearance suggested.

Context matters. If you don't understand this, then perhaps political punditatin' is not for you. If Barack Obama on the Jimmy Fallon show gives you the fantods, maybe you just don't like Barack Obama. Maybe you should work to raise the voting age to 65. Maybe you've forgotten that Nixon went on Laugh In, Clinton went on Arsenio, George W. Bush went to the Daytona 500, and Ronald Reagan went to Bitburg. If you're silent when your own do it, when Bush II breaks Reagan's vacation record, then could you at least be a little circumspect about your outrage? I got no problem with you being partisan; hell, what value would there be in measured responses from James Taranto or Ann Althouse? But constantly insulting everyone's intelligence just so you can fail to make a point? If that doesn't tell you anything, maybe it's time your friends did.

Let's Just Say It: Thirty Years Late Is Not "Current"

Thomas E. Mann and Norman Ornstein, "Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem". April 27

FIRST, via Pierce, do not click this link, unless you--unlike the author--find a picture of Rachel Maddow schmoozing Sarah Palin and Andrea Mitchell something other than a suitable replacement for the lost syrup of ipecac.

 (It's okay, Progressives, Madow wore jeans!

Sock it to the Man. Palin, meanwhile, was simultaneously drinking for free and endorsing Richard Mourdock in the Indiana Republican primary, despite the fact that what she knows about Indiana politics in general, Dick Lugar specifically, or anything and everything which can be described as an "issue" is what you can see from the Rat Islands.)

 Speaking of which:

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

Pfui. Both of you have punditological careers dating to the Carter administration. Did you sleep through the Reagan presidency? Miss the rhetoric of the Nixon years? Tricky Dick didn't deliver the famous "Silent Centrist Majority" speech, y'know. Though he might've, since it's you guys who remained silent while the Republican party went from cabal of 19th century capital pirates to cabal of 19th century capital pirates cosseting Nixonian lunatics, to cabal of Nixonian lunatics who revere 19th century capital piracy in thirty years. Fer chrissakes, a guy trapped in Arctic ice in 1950, and thawed out last week, would have a tougher time recognizing the policies of the Catholic Church than he would the Republican party.

It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.

The GOP hasn't "moved from the mainstream". It's gained more power. The "center of power" hasn't gone much of anywhere. It may have followed Goldwater West and South, thanks to the evil genius of Nixon, but it's not exactly a seismic shift from Joe McCarthy to Jesse Helms, from John Wayne to Glenn Beck. When th' hell was it Chuck Hagel's party? When was it Nelson Rockefeller's, for that matter? They called Truman a commie, for chrissakes.

The post-McGovern Democratic Party, by contrast, while losing the bulk of its conservative Dixiecrat contingent in the decades after the civil rights revolution, has retained a more diverse base. Since the Clinton presidency, it has hewed to the center-left on issues from welfare reform to fiscal policy. While the Democrats may have moved from their 40-yard line to their 25, the Republicans have gone from their 40 to somewhere behind their goal post.

Question: is all of this designed to palliate the conscience of the American centrist, or is it really what it purports to be, the slowest recognition of the extent of a brick wall since the Mogols? Eisenhower had to name Richard Fucking Nixon as his running mate. The contemporary Republican party was born in 1964, not coincidentally the same year the Johnson administration decided that black people could have some rights. It's the party of Bill Buckley's racism, and of Pat Buchanan's, as well as Steve King's, of Carl McIntire's religious mania and Pat Robertson's, as well as Rick Santorum's. It's the party which wrapped every little adventurist foreign excursion from Korea to Iraq II in patriotic fervor, and which found it necessary to rewrite the history of every last one (excepting, maybe, the Glorious Liberation of Grenada); Nixon's traitor hunt of 1946 was little different than Andrew Sullivan's in 2001, and, no, he's one of yours. No one with eyes and ears could possibly have missed this, apart, somehow, from the DLC and today's tiny island leper colony of sadder-but-wiser centrists.

What happened? Of course, there were larger forces at work beyond the realignment of the South. They included the mobilization of social conservatives after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the anti-tax movement launched in 1978 by California’s Proposition 13, the rise of conservative talk radio after a congressional pay raise in 1989, and the emergence of Fox News and right-wing blogs. But the real move to the bedrock right starts with two names: Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist.

It's the virus causes the wart. Not vice-versa.

 Okay, sure: the Republican party has become increasingly dilatory and obtuse in the halls of power, but that's not a change of the last four years. Had Republicans had the power in 1981 they would have dispensed with all the Reagan sainthood bullshit and just rammed through their radical agenda, instead of getting Democrats to agree to do it for them. And there's no question this has been facilitated, both by a venal and cowardly Democratic party, and a venal and cowardly Press. But, really, enough of this stuff. I'm not gonna make common cause with Democrats, or rueful Republican centrists, who suddenly notice what the GOP has become, and expect a medal for saying so. The time to speak up was thirty years ago, when this stuff was just as plain, and was being covered by a transparent rewrite of unpleasant history, and a clear retrenchment on individual rights. Y'know, when Reaganism was the Wave of the Future the Republican platform had no more chance of actually governing than it does today. David Stockman was just as big a liar as Paul Ryan. I'm going to settle for having been right about this shit all along, and hope we don't kill too many innocents when it all blows up. Don't offer to help me shovel now. You've already done enough.

Maybe You Gotta Live Here

BUT trust me; I've been watching Indiana politics since Dick Lugar was Nixon's favorite mayor. I watched the eight year governorship of Kindly Doc Bowen, the Bremen Physician, who oversaw a scandal in every major department of state government and still retired as Everybody's Good Old Gramps. I remember when Dan Burton was a philandering state legislator with several screws loose. I remember election night, 1988, when Birch Bayh's kid turned into Ronald Reagan at his own victory party. Hell, I've chronicled a lot of the sports-shirt-wearin', tendeloin-eatin'-RV-ridin' governorship of Mitch "Jes Folks" Daniels, including that kabuki Presidential Non Campaign which was the most laughable dishonest thing I've seen since the Reagan Library opened. So trust me, this is the funniest thing to hit Indiana politics since we tried to legislate the value of pi:

Indiana's foray into school takeovers continues to be fraught with confusion, bickering and accusations of dirty tricks.

But the latest back-and-forth involving Indianapolis Public Schools, the Indiana Department of Education and the two private operators hired by the state to take over four IPS schools has taken things to a new level.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett thinks IPS' lack of cooperation with the turnover operators is such that it could warrant withholding state money from the district.

No, that's not the funny part, but it does explain the eagerness of the General Assembly, and the Daniels administration, to have the state take over funding of public education a few years back.

In short, it's a mess -- and one created, at least in part, by the lack of any strict rules in Indiana governing what is an unprecedented process in the state: transferring schools from a school district to private operators.

"Our goal was to be as flexible as we could be," said Stephanie Sample, a spokeswoman for Bennett's office. "We've never done this before, and the law is ambiguous."

No, that's not it, either, although it is funny, in a "Well, who th' fuck wrote the law, and who enacted it in such a big fucking hurry so they'd have time to throw around the repercussions and the largess on their watch?" sorta way. Not to mention the fact that Bennett has had a little difficulty previously following black letter law. Leave us just mention that the "flexibility" Bennett was looking for in this case was his opponents', and it involved the ease with which they could grab their ankles.

Bennett and the private operators, as well as some others, contend that IPS is taking full advantage of those ambiguities -- and not always in the best interest of students. Almost since the outset, the operators -- Florida-based for-profit Charter Schools USA and local nonprofit EdPower -- have complained that IPS has withheld information such as student disciplinary records and contact information, recruited current students to transfer to other IPS schools and mischaracterized the private operators' programs.

Funny, really, since all of them have had nothing but good things to say about the public schools. But not funny ha-ha.

This was supposed to be a transition year, Sample said, in which the takeover organizations spent time at the schools, evaluating the staff, getting to know the community.

"Unfortunately, it turned into a situation where (the operators) have to fight for everything they need," Sample said. "It allows the district some flexibility to obstruct instead of allowing the turnaround school operators and the community to adjust."

The legal doctrine established by S'pose ta Be v. Kiss My Ass, pure comedy gold. But that's not it.

It's to a point, Bennett said, that he is ready to order that the district follow the rules or face sanctions, which could include withholding state money.

"The state board will act if the requirement to provide for children is not met by IPS," he said. "Our interest is never litigation; it's education. I hope IPS has the same attitude."

Sample, however, declined to say whether IPS is considered out of compliance with any state law or how the state will respond if it is.

"It's not in our best interest," she said, "to share our legal strategy to adversaries who are working to obstruct the process."

Concern for students being so six paragraphs ago.

After the April 4 state board meeting, an incensed White sent a four-page letter disputing complaints aired about the district to the board. He has since followed with a letter from an IPS attorney demanding explanations for 11 specific charges made against IPS in the state board meeting.

White said the state board hasn't heard the whole truth, and he aims to set the record straight Wednesday when the board meets again.

"I think the state board is getting bad information," he said.

More broadly, IPS' main contention is that it is now officially in competition with the takeover operators -- both of whom have announced plans to open new charter schools in the community, as well -- and feels no obligation to benefit them.

White said, given those circumstances, that the district has only been practical and that it must protect its competitive interests, such as the contact information for elementary school families.

There ya go. Who's been goin' on about the sacred benefits of Competition for the last three decades? And, look, I have very little use for Eugene "Cufflinks" White; he spent five years burnishing his personal image, which anyone who'd paid the slightest attention to his career could have predicted. It's taken him until about a month ago to notice that his district is the second poorest in the state; when he ascends that pulpit he's so comfortable in to denounce the selective disenfranchisement of the IPS voter--the same people Lugar disenfranchised forty-five years ago--I'll let you know. But: Competition! though it probably won't be a winning hand--although there's not much left of IPS to take away, and then the state and its profiteering and "not for" profiteering pals will have to actually work miracles, not just demand them of some voting group they don't like--but it is, somehow, the single work of political genius this state has seen since Wendell Willkie decided to keep his mouth shut in 1940.

I ♥ Charles Pierce, Vol. Six Hundred Thousand Something

Charles Pierce, "The Great Surrendering: How Cabal Became Our Politics" April 26

Scott Mendelson, "Why I don't care if today's kids know about the Titanic…" April 16

I SAW Mendelson's piece the other day, shortly after I'd stumbled over my Poor Wife watching the umpteenth recapitulation of the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic, which prompted me, for the umpteenth time, to say, "The boat sinks." Yes, it was a ship. Yes, the illiteracy is intentional. She was watching the History Channel, which, in the most poignant illustration of the degradation of our educational system in the country I know of, her students refer to as "goin' to college". I was reasonably sure that if I stuck around Nostradamus would make his appearance. Or Morgan Robertson, if the producer was a stickler for accuracy. So I didn't.

I think we had a brief conversation about it later, which is how I describe one of my monologues when they're delivered in her presence: "It's not fucking History, it's spectacle, and if it is History it's to the extent that 1) it represents the point at which we took seriously the need for standardization of parts and materials, which hundreds, if not thousands, of rail-accident deaths and boiler-explosion maimings hadn't quite accomplished, since none of them collected any Astors of note; 2) we get an unintended glimpse at how social stratification is really intended to work; and 3) it represents a clear intersection of hubris with the artificial legal limitations of corporate responsibility. Apart from that, I hope the next time James Cameron goes down there someone adds a really big rock to his cargo."

So anyway, I ran across Mendelson's piece, wholly unprepared for the fact that America was somehow up in arms because Twittering Facebook juveniles (but I repeat myself!) don't know that Titanic was a true story.

In other words, we make fun of kids who think the 1997 Titanic film is a work of 100% fiction even while we fail to acknowledge that the only reason most of us know so much about it is because of the various entertainments based around it.  Moreover, it is a perfect example of generational snobbery.  We are stunned and amazed that today's kids don't know about an event that happened 100 years ago.  Well, let's say you're 30, can you tell me everything of importance that happened 115 years ago (that would be 1882)?  We whine about how kids today don't know about World War II, yet how much do most of us really know about World War I (or the already forgotten Korean War)?  We whine that 'kids today' don't know their history, when in fact we're pissed because they don't know their history AND our history.  Yes in a perfect world every American would be an A+-level AP history student who could write a volume of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader all by themselves.  But there is a cultural narcissism at play when we pretend that today's kids are stupid or ill-informed because their historical memories don't stretch back longer than ours.

Okay, two things: yes, there's a difference between the historically significant and the detritus of pop culture, but it doesn't actually excuse someone not knowing what th' fuck he's watching, or talking about, even on Twitter. Second, I think I was eight when I opened a Bazooka Joe comic, and somebody says to Joe, "Gee, I wish I was born fifty years ago." "Why?" asks Joe in the second panel. "Because then I wouldn't have to learn so much history!" Which I think caused Joe to sprout an exclamation point over his hat. The purpose of teaching history shouldn't be to catch the youthful up on the frame of reference of their elders, but to teach them about the forces which shaped the world they know little if anything about. I say should, of course, because I've actually seen a high school History text, and what's going on there is something, but History it ain't.

Equating the First World War with Korea as misplaced historical footnotes is part of the problem. The Great War shaped modern geopolitics; it's the reason what those who will not learn from History are condemned to enlisting in the Army. Korea, sure, we can go on and on about the half-literate, half-snake oil of US foreign policy and proxy wars against the Evil Empire, and perhaps we should. But in such an approach WWII will always overshadow its predecessor, and Vietnam will grab the spotlight from Korea. While in terms of analyzing the problem it's probably the other way 'round. Personally, I'd settle for the little bastards learning that WWI means something to them today. We sure as fuck don't say the Mayflower was too long ago to bother with. (And, just as a personal note: Like I care if kids know who Paul McCartney is. But I'd appreciate it if the educational system at least took note of the fact that people find it reasonable that Elvis, with his four-year career of making hits of other people's songs, followed by twenty years of making the worst movies ever filmed, should invade every skull thanks to marketing.)

Anyway, just because I can, Professor Pierce:

It, of course, began to happen in the 1960's, when the Democrats allied themselves with the civil-rights movement and lost the South and those parts of the North where people thought the South had a point. But it really accelerated in the 1970's, when the Democratic party overreacted to what happened to George McGovern and began whoring after corporate money, an effort that required them to abandon at least partly their traditional allies in the civil-rights and labor movements, and to soften their positions on a number of important issues, and basically inculcated into the party a permanent instinct for accommodation and surrender that was only strengthened after the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. The rise of the Democratic Leadership Council was, in its own way, one of the largest white flags in the history of American politics. In fact, one of the most dismal weekends of my life came at the 1982 Democratic "Mid-Term" Convention, where it became plain that great progressives like the late Billie Carr of Texas were no longer welcomed by the party's serious people. At that point, the Republican fringe was empowered by the simple fact that there now was no political entity pushing back at them with a force equal to theirs in the opposite direction. At the very least, the Democrats could be counted upon to give them some of what they wanted, at which point they would scream and holler and nobody noticed that the "Center" was drifting in their direction. And when they overreached — the Clinton Impeachment, Schiavo, the entire Bush presidency — they didn't have to regroup. I've often used Stalin's order to the Red Army to describe this — Ni shagu nazad: Not one step backwards — and it's true. They fight like they do not care what happens to the country either way. They fight as though they don't care if they burn their party down. The Democrats fight like they care about both things. The Democrats stopped taking risks 30 years ago. Faced with nihilism, they reach for the olive branch, which is generally sent back to them in ashes.

Events which predate today's high schooler by almost the exact same amount the First World War and its aftermath preceded my own public education. Subtraction is for math class.

All Downhill From Here

YOU can't swing a cat at local television these days without hitting a Republican primary campaign ad [and if you did, the screeching would pretty much be indistinguishable, except for OBAMACARE! and SOCIALISM! (yes, socialism!)]. The Lugar-Murdock war--now joined by Armchair General Mitch Daniels, who, provided you didn't know enough not to take him at face value, you would be convinced actually believes he can talk some sense into his party--has been elbowed aside enough to allow in several House hopefuls, including the egregious DC resident David McIntosh (imagine, assuming anyone can, a more self-righteous version of Rick Santorum).

(There's a particularly nice touch in this: Daniels appears to've done his promos from the Lugar farm, which is where Lugar was forced to move his voting address a month ago so it corresponded to some property he actually could claim, however tenuously. And Mitch is attired in his Hoosier get-up, the open-collared sports shirt he cannot possibly have worn a single working day in his life. It's like Sincerity! is the new fragrance from the Cato Institute.)

All of these bozos are going to Repeal Obamacare!, and Cut Federal Spending!; one in particular is gonna make the Federal deficit disappear like he helped Mitch Daniels make Indiana's deficit disappear. Which should be some trick. One really wishes for the opportunity to sit Daniels down, look him in the eye, and ask what his plans are for when this jig is up.

Two things should be borne in mind: one, these guys are all seeking to replace retiring Dan Burton, so there's no net effect on the Beltway's insanity quotient, and probably only a small one on some caddy's tip earnings. And, two, these people are vying for the right to run with Mitt Fucking Romney, and so are pledging their troth to preventing him from doing anything that isn't doubling the Defense budget. Mitt Fucking Romney, now "pivoting" to the center, who, regardless of how the national Press tries to sugar-coat it, is a colossal doofus. And who, if he has any sense, will make certain not to pick a VP candidate attractive to the meatheads of his party. If Romney is now made to appear semi-appealing by virtue of the fact that it's either him or that black guy, just remember there's seven months of him to go.

If You Really Wanted To Honor Your Heritage You Shoulda Made A Prom Dress Out Of A Teevee

NOT again (via Wonkette:)

Gibson County High School senior Texanna Edwards was — like many of her classmates — looking forward to her prom last Saturday. But Edwards didn’t get to attend because of her attire — a knee-length red dress decorated with bright blue stripes and white stars inside the stripes. The school’s colors are red, white and blue, but the dress resembles the controversial Confederate battle flag.

Pull quotes, in case you haven't already made up your own:

“We kept asking people walking inside — black and white — and everyone said they loved it. Two black women even went off on the principal. They were upset with the principal. No one was upset with me.”

“I didn’t talk with administration because we wore rebel flags all through my four years at Gibson County,” she said.

Edwards said, in a way, she wanted her dress to look like the Confederate flag because she lives in the South

Okay, so first, that someone can go through four years of high school without knowing the distinction between the "Confederate flag" and the Confederate battle flag is bad enough; that she could do so while missing the distinction between "offensive behavior" and "behavior that might offend somebody in an informal poll taken at the door" is, well, to be expected in a society where the newspaper calls it the "controversial" Confederate battle flag. Second, maybe it's long past time to teach people the meaning of reverence. If you wanna honor Treason in Defense of Slavery, the U.S. of A., or your Italian heritage you do not do so by turning a flag into a handkerchief. It's not a goddam advertising logo. At least it shouldn't be. Teach the difference. Finally, I don't know where school administrators learn management, but everything I ever hear suggests "on the fly". Students don't have an absolute right of Free Speech--neither do the rest of us--but they ought to be given as much as is consistent with a functional education environment (or whatever it is we're substituting for that), and they deserve to have the difference explained. If Ms Edwards was told her dress would be unacceptable, the teacher/prom advisor who did so should have done so it writing, had her sign it, and sent a copy home. And if a Confederate flag getup is unacceptable at the prom, then it's unacceptable on everyday school attire as well. Can't we use some sense? If we can't teach her, in twelve years, about the Rich Man's War and the Poor Man's Fight, or about the institution of chattel slavery, the nearly-as-despicable century that followed, and the use of the battle flag as a rallying point for racism, can't somebody at least tell her Lyyynnnerd Skkkkyynned sucked? Couldn't they have just let her in, and made sure someone mentioned that diagonal stripes made her butt look even bigger?

Monday Olio: Evidently This Is The Best We Can Do Edition

• I'd like to thank every news outlet in the country for noting--inevitably at the top of the story--that the bailed-out George Zimmerman will be stashed somewhere in secret "because of threats on his life". Like there are people out there who might shoot him for absolutely no reason?

(This morning, BTW, one of my local teleprompter readers caught herself calling Zimmerman a "watch captain" and changed it to "watch volunteer". Apparently when you're arrested they demote you.)

 • Chuck Colson's in Hell, being walked over by ten thousand grandmothers in golf shoes. Right-wing evangelism didn't save his sorry ass. The whiny little punk went Christian before he went to prison (but after he testified under oath.) As soon as his "prison ministry" routine took, he was back hawking Nixonian politics. G. Gordon Liddy is more deserving of respect.

 • This reminds me of how much I've missed Karen Hughes: none.

Second, Romney specializes in turnarounds — and Washington is in desperate need of a dramatic turnaround.

"The country could sure use a Hail Mary completion right about now, and Doug Flutie…"

 "Jerry Seinfeld made a show about nothing, and today's economy…"

 "America is waking up with a bad hangover, which is why George W. Bush…"

 Jesus Christ. Does the stick come with the purchase of that shit, or is it extra?

• Battered and deep fried, just 5¢ more:

The time when members of Congress could wave their chairmanships and pork-barreling prowess at constituents to win re-election is coming to an end. Washington is so discredited that almost no one cares anymore.

Sure, there are a few places where clout and seniority still matter to voters. But not many.

Hatch highlighted the prospect of his ascension to the Finance Committee chairmanship but it barely moved the dials for convention delegates. Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar’s heavyweight resume hasn’t saved him from a tough intra-party challenge this year either.

Think back to 2010. Among the powerful losers: the Senate Agriculture Committee chair and, in the House, the chairmen of the Budget and Armed Services committees.

Democrats in Arkansas, South Carolina, and Missouri lost in the most heavily Republican election since Reconstruction. Like the man said, if present trends continue, next Wednesday we'll get six feet of rain. Hatch and Lugar, on the other hand, are old, feeble, and they've been around too long; there're few people I'd personally enjoy seeing hoist on his Nixonian petard than my senior Senator. But, bullshit. This is about crackpots running loose in the Republican party. Conservatives Against Orin Hatch? Really? How far d'ya think that's gonna fly? Lugar could win 65% of the vote as a write-in candidate. Personally, I doubt that it matters which species of idiot Republicans choose. But the idea that the content-free Teabag Party is about to stage a coup is like the idea that Borkian Originalism was about to sweep jurisprudence. Sure, sure it is. Just as soon as they figure out what th' fuck they're saying.