Disarming

The other day, the gunners descended on the New Mexico Capitol, the Roundhouse, and demanded that the legislature enact no more gun restrictions, no matter what. They pretty much got their way, too, as the committee considering a bill that would require background checks for all gun sales and transfers, including private ones between individuals, tabled the measure as it could not pass out of committee. The committee vote was tied, and at least for now, the measure is dead.

Meanwhile, the measure by secessionist Republican Nora Espinoza to make a felony of enforcement of Federal gun law in New Mexico doesn't seem to be going anywhere, although it is widely supported by gunners and it mirrors similar legislation introduced in Wyoming, Tennessee, Texas and so on.

The hot button notion of civil disarmament is hardly considered at all in New Mexico as the gunners really have the upper hand, and no one wants to cross them for fear of triggering something unpleasant. The implicit threat of mayhem from the gunners is, I believe, what has long prevented any sort of civil disarmament movement or legislation, and not just in New Mexico. It's nationwide.

When a member of Congress is shot down, as Gabby Giffords was in Arizona two years ago, and Congress fails to act at all on the matter of excessive gun violence in this country, you pretty much know they are in fear for their lives should they do anything to cross the gun fanatic community. The fact that a few are only now raising their voices and proposing legislative responses to the violence is hardly a badge of courage.

The idea that the excess of gun violence in this country is somehow protection from tyranny is one of the most absurd arguments there is, especially given the nearly complete abrogation of the other provisions of the Bill of Rights since the advent of the so-called Glorious Global War on (or of) Terror.

Tyranny in America -- though it may be "soft" at this point (well, depending) -- is a fact, and the gunners, for the most part eagerly support it now as they have from the outset. They aren't worried about preventing tyranny at all, they just want to be sure they are the ones to impose it.

And they're getting their way.

The excess of gun violence, in the United States which I have characterized as equivalent to that of a nation experiencing a civil war, is part of the process of tyrannizing the population: it's the tyranny of fear, fear of mayhem, chaos, random massacre and slaughter, fear of your neighbor, fear of strangers, fear of authority, fear piled upon fear. It is quite deliberate in my view.

More guns and more gunners simply leads to more fear and more violence. Guns pervade poor neighborhoods where often gun violence seems to be out of control -- and fear is rampant. Is it unintentional? I think not. The more fearful the downtrodden are, the easier they are to control. Yes?

The fact is, the High and the Mighty among us live in fear of gun violence just as everyone else does, but they believe they have the means to protect themselves from the random mayhem that afflicts everyone else. Barricades and armed guards and gate keepers and law usually keeps the gunners away from the rich and the powerful, but there have been exceptions. Oh, the assassination record shows there have been many enough exceptions, but the exceptions have typically been due to... strategic and ideological issues shall we say. Stray from the path of Righteousness and watch out...

Civil disarmament is another kettle of fish, to be sure, and it can't realistically take place until the civil war is ended. That may not happen in our lifetimes.

To end the civil war, either the combatants have to tire of the conflict or a faction has to declare or believe its victory.

The United States is the victim of an ongoing class war with many, many aspects, including the drug war. All of these aspects of the class war/civil war are meant to ensure that the People stay divided and thus more easily exploited and controlled. Random acts of murder, mayhem, and massacre certainly haven't hindered division and control of the masses, have they?

Consequently, though there will be continual hearings and debate over "gun rights" and "gun issues," I don't expect anything significant to be done. We are likely to stay on this path for another generation or two, simply because doing anything about gun violence can be destabilizing to those who benefit and profit from it...

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing is about to begin... Gabby Giffords vs Wayne LaPierre. Fireworks are guaranteed, eh?

On Leadership

versus Style.

I know a lot of folks are disbelieving the polls showing McCain even with or ahead of either Hillary or Obama, but I'll take a step over the edge and suggest that if anything, they understate McCain's election standing right now. If the election were held today, I suspect he would win handily, though for the sake of the children, let alone humanity in general, he absolutely should not.

And if things keep going the way they are going, he's going to win in November, too.

One of the reasons that he is doing as well as he is, despite his numerous handicaps, is the media love affair with their Warrior Princess. And I use that term advisedly. He is as fragile as a glass figurine, as haughty as a débutante, he is explosive if he isn't loved up all the time, and he is as exotic as a hot house flower in his constant "maverickism."

The media treats him as the Incumbent Princess, no less, one who is merely standing for "election" out of some silly sense of public duty, but who already holds the title. Neither Hillary nor Obama can compete on the Princess's territory. Sorry.

Another reason that McCain's pathway to the Palace seems to be getting smoother rather than rougher is that little matter of Leadership.

Now, of course McCain was a naval officer, a pilot (don't get me started) and his father and grandfather were admirals, so a certain, how shall we say, official "bearing" comes naturally to him. (Though if you saw him on The View coyly seated in the middle of those shrieking harpies, and imagined him in a Scarlett O'Hara gown saying "Oh, fiddle-dee-dee!" you'd have a somewhat different idea of his "bearing." But I digress.)

As an officer it is natural for him to take the lead in any number of endeavors, which he has done, and at least in some cases has done so admirably. In the Senate he is well-known and highly regarded for his leadership role. He has brought together coalitions, got them to sign on to measures and processes they might not have if he didn't ask them, he's gotten reforms passed, he's been all over the place, generally leading some faction or other or pressing some idea of what is "best."

He's had this reputation for years and years. People know him, and know him well, as a Leader. Whether his reputation is as deserved as he might like to think is for another discussion. We are talking about perception here.

Neither Barack nor Hillary can match his leadership in the Senate or anywhere else. Both have the potential to be leaders, perhaps outstanding leaders, but so far, neither has demonstrated it in the Senate where they have a platform, and where they could -- if they wanted to -- take a leadership role. Yes, it is actually possible for a Senator who is not in the Leadership to assume a leadership role on issues they believe in. McCain has done it many times. Barack and Hillary haven't.

That was part of John Kerry's problem with the voters. He'd been in the Senate forever, but what had he done? What issues had he led on? What programs, what legislation, what reforms had he set in motion and shepherded through the process of enactment?

Uhhh...

And McCain is perhaps the only Republican candidate who can be guaranteed to peel off a significant number of Democrats in the general election -- at least as things stand now. He's got a whole deck of cards to appeal to disaffected Democrats.

And the way the two Democratic candidates have been playing the primaries, essentially doing their best to alienate the other's constituents and partisans, driving them out of the electorate altogether or over to McCain, is breathtaking in its epic failure mode. This can't be happening. But it is.

Eek.

So. McCain starts off with a remarkable set of advantages, which the Democrats in their eagerness to demonize the other and the other's supporters merely reinforce.

And because McCain has been recognized by the public as a leader in the Senate for years, his "suitability" for the Presidency is already secure in most people's minds. They don't even question it, the way they might with regard to Obama or Clinton.

But Bob Dole had all those advantages, too. And he never made it to the White House, so there is hope yet.

I just wish the two Democratic candidates were better leaders on the issues, or had led at all, in the Senate.

It's So Easy!

My Man Chris Floyd over at Empire Burlseque has a post up about Chris Dodd's threatened filibuster of Harry and Dick's FISA "Reform" Bill.

In it, he makes the very cogent point that, all things considered, it was remarkably easy to derail this freight train, with the implication that all along, had there been any reasonable opposition to Bushevik misrule, many of the horrors we've lived through these last seemingly endless years couldn't -- or at least wouldn't -- have happened.

Where was Chris Dodd before now? And where will he be when Harry re-introduces the bill in January?

It's not just Dodd of course. Ask where any senator has been.

Floyd puts it this way:

For the moment, I'll skip the obvious caveats that bristle all around this minor victory, and just make this observation: look how very little it takes to throw some sand in the wheels of the vast authoritarian machine created by Bush and his very willing Democratic partners (and predecessors). All it took to turn aside the seemingly unstoppable juggernaut of the amnesty bill was a single senator who refused, this once, to go along for the ride, and the slightest bit of heat on Reid for his deceitful kowtowing to the presidential tyrant.

Then he contrasts it with the shameful turn around to fund Bush's ongoing wars without strings:

As we noted yesterday, even the slightest bit of moxie can gum up the works for the war-loot-and-tyranny machine. But this week's "hero," Chris Dodd, was nowhere to be found when the new war money was on the line. He was back on the campaign trail, with his fellow presidential aspirants from the Senate: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe "Ethnic Cleansing? Hell, Yeah!" Biden. Russ Feingold and Ted Kennedy made fine speeches, and Feingold did offer a troop-withdrawal amendment -- but again, there was no filibuster, no sand thrown in the gears. The bill had been constructed -- by the Democratic leadership, which is in charge of the Senate, after all -- in a way to make it almost impossible for the politicians to derail it: it was tied to an omnibus spending bill whose defeat could have risked a Gingrichian shut-down of some government services. ("If you don't vote for this war, poor children are going to go hungry and the national parks will close!")

The answer, of course, is to abolish the Senate.

Easy!

Harry! (Dos)

Earlier today, I posted about the Trouble With Harry (who is awaiting his hanging for Lack of Leadership) and I suggested the problem is as much Institutional as it is the general wussiness of Our Dems' Majority Leader.

The Rs are running roughshod over the Dems in Congress, particularly in the Senate, where the Democratic Majority is more illusory than real. Not only is Holy Joe a reliable Republican shill for just about anything the White House wants, there are 20-25 other Democratic Senators the White House can rely on in a pinch.

But even if that weren't the case, the White House through the Rs could -- and we don't doubt would -- control what gets passed and what doesn't, regardless. As of a few days ago, the White House (in the Person of Bush, but Cheney is probably behind the diktats) had threatened 53 vetoes if Congress did not send the bills the White House wants. It takes 67 votes in the Senate, 290 in the House to override a veto. Built in to the Constitution.

No presidency has ever been as adamant about having things its way or no way, and few Congresses controlled by the opposite party have been so hapless in the face of such executive intransigence.

Yet this situation is a built in consequence of the institutional parameters set by the Constitution and the hoary traditions of the elected bodies through which, in theory, the Constitution is implemented.

KagroX over at dKos has posted on this issue, as has Digby at her Other Place, and I'm sure we're going to see more discussion of the institutional failure in Harry's Hamstrung Senate and Nancy's Floundering House.

Much of what has gone wrong, or not gone at all, since the Dems took over the Congress has to do with the way the Founders set things up, not realizing, perhaps, that a political party would arise that would use the institutional impediments built in to the Constitution to... destroy it, and with it, the Nation.

That's not to give either Harry or Nancy much slack, tho. Neither of them are adept at using the Bully Pulpit to advocate Righteous Progressive Positions, but then, neither of them has a unified caucus who will stand with them if they were to try. The fractiousness and outright traitor-like ways of Democratic Electeds is one of the most consistent of their behaviors, and it would lead to routine R "victories" if nothing else did.

But the Institution of Congress vis-à-vis the White House allows just what's happening to happen, and can ensure there will be no change for generations. Even with a Dem majority, and potentially even with a Dem in the White House (cf: Clinton, Bill, who had a fractious Dem congress, couldn't get Universal Health Coverage to happen, among other things.)

But is it a feature or a bug?

Remains to be seen. Meanwhile, it's time for a scene from El Amor Brujo. See what folks working from the same page can accomplish.

Harry!

The fashion nowadays is to denounce Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for his lack of leadership on FISA "reform" among many other items before the August Body.

Indeed, Harry appears to have been operating as a tool of the Republican minority and the White House ever since they decided it was in their interests to obstruct all Democratic moves through endless invocation of the ancient rite of the filibuster. But Harry doesn't even force them to go through with it. All they have to do is say they will, and there's Harry, johnny-on-the-spot, asking unanimous consent for the 60 vote requirement and pulling bills that won't make it. Greenwald has documented the atrocities over at his place. But you can't stop anywhere in the more-or-less Lefty Blogosphere without encountering one or more calls for Reid's immediate or pending hanging.

Nancy Pelosi faces somewhat the same torrent of abuse and calls for her hanging over her lack of leadership in the House.

Harry was on the NewsHour last night, two days after practically the entire show was given over to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to praise him for getting the Republican agenda enacted in this ostensibly Democratic controlled Senate. Harry, as is his wont, made mush of it.

Harry's key quote was right at the top of his interview:

SEN. HARRY REID: Well, we've been able to accomplish quite a bit, but not very much...

Oh. Well. Never mind then.

He went on to babble incoherently for some minutes as ever patient Jim Lehrer did his nails and plucked his nose hairs. Read it for yourself at the link. Weeping is up to you.

All these calls for Harry's hanging are coming rather late, however. The man has been Democratic "Leader" in the Senate since Tom Daschle, another Wild-West Firecracker, lost his seat to the reprehensible John Thune in 2004. Just discovering Harry is a little punch drunk, are we? Hmm? Anyone who was paying attention knew it a long time ago.

Widely noted these days is the fact that on the central issues of Iraq and Giving the White House Anything It Wants, the current Democratic Leadership in the House and Senate (much more so in the Senate, but the House is not exactly slacking) is more willing to bend over and beg than even the Republicans were when they were in charge.

There are more troops in Iraq, war spending is far more costly, corruption is more rampant than ever, and human and constitutional rights are far more likely to be trampled with a Democratic Congress than was the case under Republican control (which weren't no picnic.)

There is a Problem. You bet.

And Harry isn't alone.

The Problem in the Senate is about 20-25 BlueDog/BushDog Democratic Senators who will almost always vote the White House Line when push comes to shove. This means that in effect, the Republicans have 70 votes for just about anything they really want passed, and the Democrats can't get more than 50 for what they want. Ergo, the Republican agenda is either enacted or the Democratic agenda is thwarted.

Is this due to Harry's incomparably bad Leadership, or is it something else?

We keep hearing calls for More and Better Dems -- which is all well and good, but...

I argue that Democrats and the bodies they serve in have institutional problems that can't be solved simply by electing more Democrats.

More about this later.

Meanwhile:

A little Amor Gitano to get your blood moving...