While the fires burn more homes due to a severe lack of moisture and highly unseasonable weather (and while everyone ignores the obvious cause), I decided to take the time to describe a read through my Sunday paper here in the heart of Republican crazy land, the great OC (Orange County, Calif.) I've lived here all my 47 years and have had to watch their lunacy in local, state and federal politics, in addition to keeping my party affiliation to myself in most situations.
The crowning jewel of OC nuttery is the OC Register newspaper. Now, 20 years ago they were still owned by the Hoiles family and forced reporters to refer to public schools as "tax-supported" schools. The editorial pages are still crazy but the rest of the paper long ago gained some respectability, even if it's readership is now in steep decline (mostly because of you pajama-clad bloggers, I suppose).
But today's paper reminded me again how funny OC conservatives are, and also how screwed up we are as a nation.
The first story that caught my eye was on page 22 of the front section. It was on climate change, which always gets put in the back. The syndicated story from the Kansas City Star talked about how climate change will result in many horrendous war possibilities, according to U.S. military planners.
The sentence that caught my eye was this one:
Although still controversial in some circles — Congress has split along partisan lines over whether the military should plan for global warming — the scientific consensus is that the Industrial Revolution increased greenhouse gases that set off an unprecedented rate of climate change.
It's amazing to me how that little matter-of-fact footnote is continually dismissed by the Register's crack editorial department.
In the business section, the Register then dutifully runs the Wall Street Journal story on the "upside" of the economic downturn -- surprise -- oil prices have come down. Shocker. Instead of seeing this for what it is -- a drug dealer lowering the street price to keep the addict hooked when he has no money -- we're supposed to celebrate that once again we won't move toward clean energy because oil prices have been lowered for the time being. We know they'll go up again and the oil hostage situation will continue, wrecking our politics, our environment and our foreign policy yet again.
But the final folly is the hilarious election post-mortem with the Register's with Steven Greenhut and the OC's Republican Party chair Scott Baugh. Here's some choice quotes:
Baugh noted Dubya had a "trifecta" of support – social conservatives, military hawks and economic conservatives. That's very much the old Reagan coalition, but that coalition has been wrenched asunder as Bush "systematically implemented policies wholly inconsistent with conservative values. He has a legacy a liberal Democrat would be proud of," including the further nationalization of education policy, the nationalization of the nation's financial system, the expansion of Medicare entitlements and out-of-control spending.
Bet you didn't now W's record was that of a liberal Democrat, eh?
Then there's this:
Baugh comes out of the libertarian wing of the party, and he recognizes the Bush administration's approaches to war, nation-building and civil liberties also are a problem for traditional conservatives and libertarians.
They were? I don't remember any of them standing up for the Dixie Chicks, do you? Everyone against the war wasn't a true-blue American, is what I recall.
Most Republicans acknowledge that the national party has strayed on fiscal and government-expansion issues, which means there is hope to rein in those tendencies. But few recognize that Bush's executive-power and war policies are the heirs of progressivism rather than conservatism, so it's good to hear a prominent Republican offer some rebuke to the party's neoconservative tendencies.
So "pre-emptive" war against a sovereign nation that was no direct threat to us was the progressives' fault. Got it.
In any case, it's a fun read just for the denial and the stupidity. If they really were for small government, no foreign wars, and civil liberties and cut their ties completely from theocrats and corporations, they'd be on the road to a fine party. But we all know that ain't gonna happen. All they're really trying to figure out is find some BS issues and a person to deliver them so they can once again give money to their fatcat friends.