Inner curmudgeon #4

A close companion to obnoxious narcissism in my list of grumps is:

chutzpah n. shameless audacity, utter nerve, effrontery.

The popular example is the man who murdered his parents and then pleaded for the court's mercy because he was an orphan.

We could add: Republicans starting two wars, giving huge tax cuts to the wealthy, and beginning the prescription drug entitlement -- without paying for any of it. Then blaming the Democrats for the ensuing deficit.

Another: The Chicago Tribune called it "The Utter Shamelessness of Reince Priebus."

With a name like Reince Priebus, you've got to be either a clown or a serious person. From his appearance, I would have guessed that the new chairman of the Republican National Committee is a serious person.

Reince does seem to be a more careful man than his predecessor, Michael Steele; but today he released a statement -- not an off the cuff verbal gaffe, like Steele -- that makes him seem every bit as audacious and shameless. He wrote, about President Obama:

Unfortunately his campaign politics and talk about birth certificates is distracting him from our number one priority – our economy.

Now that is just about as shameless chutzpah as the examples above. Republican nuts started the birther thing, then their media mouthpieces amplified it, and even some of their presidential wannabes took it up. Obama ignored it.

Then Donald Trump, with reckless abandon, flooded the airwaves with the birther thing; and he repeated it on every megaphone he could command, and the polls began to reflect a growing doubt. So Obama took a little time out of one day to put it to rest. He did what the Repubs had been demanding for months, even years. He made a special request and got a copy of his long-form birth certificate; and he showed it and talked about it -- a small part of one day.

So now it's Obama's fault for distracting us from all the problems we face by talking about his birth certificate ! ! ! !. That is really shameless.

Bah humbug.

Ralph

Birtherism is (unfortunately) NOT dead

Donald Trump used his full command of media attention and his shameless, stupid pandering to the lowest level of anti-Obama furor to get the world's attention focused on HIM. So much so, and it was beginning to show up in the presidential polls, that Obama felt it was time to throw the red meat to the dogs and release his "long-form" birth certificate.

What does it show that the other certificate didn't? And by the way, the "other one" is what anyone gets when they request a copy of their birth certificate. Obama wasn't hiding anything. He released what you get when you ask for a copy. So now the long form tells us the name of the hospital, and it's signed both by the doctor and by Obama's mother. And it is certified by an official as being authentic.

That should put an end to it. But it won't. Orly Taitz, the crazy "Queen of Birthers," has other thoughts, like: It lists the father's race as "African" rather than "Negro." So Orly wants to know why -- and thinks maybe there's something sinister about that. She says, in the 1960s you wrote "Negro," not "African." That sounds like something you would write today, she says, implying that this was not authentic but just made up today. Which of course would mean that the signatures are forged, because Obama's mother is dead.

The simple fact is that Barack Obama, Sr. WAS FROM AFRICA -- He was African. They don't use the term "negro" as a racial designation in Africa.

Of course, it's all really about the paranoid fear of the Other, the outsider who is going to change our way of life, who is going to take something away from you (guns, money, freedom). And at the bottom it is also about race.

Why else would Trump so facilely shift from the birth issue to the legitimacy of Obama's acceptance to Columbia and Harvard, saying he "wasn't qualified to attend Ivy League schools," and implying he got in . . . how? Affirmative action, perhaps? That's code for racism.

It's all very ugly, disgusting -- and a waste of time.

Ralph

Rampant narcissism

Is Donald Trump really that completely lost in his own world of ME, or is he just playing politics?

For the past few weeks he has chosen to out-do even Orly Taitz, that crazy woman dentist/lawyer who keeps suing (and getting fined by judges for filing frivilous suits) over Obama's "lack" of citizenship. Trump has trumped her in using the issue to gain media attention and street cred with the right-winger, paranoid crowd.

Now, Obama apparently decided that the time has come to put an end to this "silliness," as he called it. He has released copies of the "long form" certificate of birth that they have been demanding. Even sent his personal legal counsel to Hawaii to pick them up.

So what does The Donald do? Claims credit for being the one who finally did what no one else could do: force Obama to release his "real" birth certificate.

Never mind that said certificate reveals nothing of the sort of subversive things that he has been claiming Obama must be hiding.

No, it's perfectly straight-forward, nothing unusual.

But, to little donald, it's all about him. That, my friends, is the sound-bite definition of narcissism: everything is all about them. He qualifies -- and thereby, in my book, is disqualified from ever being President of the United States.

Ralph

Beating a dead horse #5 - more on DOMA case

As more leaks out about the King and Spalding decision to withdraw from defending DOMA for the House Republicans, it seems it may actually be about the discrimination itself, not about the constitutionality of the law, as I thought yesterday.

K&S has had a very progressive diversity stance, actively recruiting for gays and lesbians when hiring new lawyers; they have a diversity committee and domestic partner benefits; and they have done much pro bono work for the gay community. So you might argue that they were the very firm to take the case, because it would NOT be seen as just defending a lost cause for ideological reasons -- sort of like Nixon could go to China, where a more liberal president would have been suspect.

But this is not how it played out. There was reportedly "mayhem" within the firm, with threats of mass resignations from those who felt the firm would be betraying its principles. One of its major clients, the Coca-Cola Company, supposedly put pressure on them; the powerful Human Rights Campaign focused on the firm's clients and recruits, noting the hypocrisy of presenting oneself as a leader in gay causes, while working to harm gay families. There were threats of demonstrations.

On top of that, the coup d' etat: the contract with the House prohibited members of the law firm from engaging in any advocacy to "alter or amend" DOMA until the case is settled. This means that, for perhaps years, every lawyer in the firm -- including the gay and lesbian ones -- would be forbidden to speak or work against DOMA. This may have broken certain state laws and could be what the firm's chairman meant when he said their vetting had been inadequate.

Paul Clement's new firm, which was eager to take him in so he can continue representing the case, is more than happy to be associated with another conservative, high profile case. They will portray this as K&S bowing to political pressure from the gay community.

K&S will no doubt incur some tarnish from this, especially for "abandoning" a client. In his letter of resignation, Clement quoted the firm's giant presence Griffin Bell, Carter's Attorney General, as saying that a law firm is not required to take every case, but once you accept a client you do not abandon them.

But I think it will be tarnished more from taking the case in the first place than in bowing out when they looked more carefully at what it would do to their reputation and to their own internal relationships. In addition, they do have the more concrete issue of the gag order for all their lawyers on a highly controversial, hot topic.

All in all, I would say that this will move public opinion a notch closer to public acceptance of gay marriage, which is the ultimate goal. The trend is strongly in that direction all ready with polls recently showing a majority support for the first time; this will only speed it along, simply by calling attention to DOMA and its unfairness.

Ralph

Beating a dead horse #4 (this one's funny)

I'm not sure I can get this straight (pun intended):

Two years ago, Texas was one of the last states to change their law to allow a transgendered person to submit court-acknowledged sex change documents to obtain a marriage license. So, if John becomes Mary, Mary should be able to marry Joe. A heterosexual marriage, no?

But now the good people of Texas have waked up and realized that this is too close to allowing the marriage of two people of the same sex. After all, Mary was born John, and if John marries Joe, that's Gay Marriage. No, no, no way. . . . we can't have that.

So now a bill has been proposed in the Texas legislature to correct this unintended error. The new law would revert back to a 1999 state appeals court decision that says, when it comes to marriage, gender is assigned at birth and remains unchanged throughout life.

But here's another wrinkle they may not have thought of:

If, instead of wanting to marry Joe, Mary (nee John) wants to marry Susie, that would be allowed, because Mary is really still John according to the Texas appeals court and should be perfectly free to marry Susie -- a heterosexual marriage. No?

But isn't that even closer to same-sex marriage? Two women?

Go figure . . .

Ralph

Beating a dead horse #3

Last week, John Boehner announced that the House was hiring the presitious law firm of King & Spaulding to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court and would pay $500,000 of taxpayers' money. The attorney was to be Paul Clement, who was Solicitor General in the Bush administration and now a partner at K&S.

The decision followed a 3-2 party-line vote of the House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group to take up the defense of the law after Obama's Department of Justice declined to defend it when constitutional legal scholars advised them that parts of it were unconstitutional.

Get the picture? Legal opinion: it's unconstitutional; don't defend it; let the courts overturn it.

Also get this picture: Conservative are losing the battle over gay marriage (5 states plus DC allow it, DADT is dead, now DOMA is dead). Republicans need another way to pander to their anti-gay constituents, to keep the anti-gay meme alive.

So, despite public opinion that now supports gay marriage, and despite legal opinion that DOMA is unconstitutional, they will throw away half-a-mill that could go to reduce the deficit they're so determined to reduce.

But now, comes a new wrinkle.

King & Spaulding is withdrawing from the case,

. . . and Paul Clement has resigned from the law firm. The firm says they determined that the case had not been sufficiently vetted before they agreed to take it. Clement says he is resigning because he firmly believes that legal representation should not be withdrawn because of the unpopularity of the client's cause, and he will defend the case as a member of another law firm he is joining.

It's true that K & S might have suffered some loss of business because of this -- but this is a huge, highly respected law firm. They can weather protest over an unpopular case. My guess is that they looked further into the constitutionality and decided that there was no good defense to be made.

Taking an unpopular side in a case is one thing; mounting a stupid defense is another.

Ralph

Inner curmudgeon # 3

My inner curmudgeon's rant for today is this:

When I am in line at the grocery store, I do not want the cashier to ask, as my total mounts: "Do you want to give a dollar to the March of Dimes?" Or "Would you like to make a contribution to help save the Amazon rain forests?"

The answer, from me, is always going to be "No."

I have nothing against the March of Dimes or the saving the planet. I write checks to many non-profit, good-works groups. But I want to make my own choices -- and I hate the coercion of this increasingly common method that forces people to give -- or to say no for all in line behind you to hear.

No doubt it's effective, and those one-dollars add up. Many people find it hard to say no. I took my first step in not-giving years ago, when I began ignoring the Salvation Army bell ringers outside shopping malls. But that was because of the Salvation Army's anti-gay policies.

But now it's the contrarian in me -- the curmudgeon -- that makes me say no -- even if it's the same cause that I will write a generous check for next month.

It hasn't quite reached the level yet that I'm going to stop by the manager's office and tell them about my negative reaction. But I think about it; and, if this new trend doesn't stop, I will.

Bah humbug !!

Ralph