Craziest Republican of the Day: Rand Paul

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So what are Republicans doing after that "shellacking" of the Democrats in last November's midterms?

Well, they watched lamely while the lame-duck Congress did some amazing things (passing New START, repealing DADT), and while President Obama's popularity rose steadily, they voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, purely a symbolic vote in the House that was widely ignored or ridiculed, and now they're just failing about in search of something, anything to hang their extremist right-wing hats on.

And that doesn't even include committing political suicide in Wisconsin as they watch their popularity plummet over their assault on labor (and on working people everywhere), not to mention throwing up what is, so far, a fantastically lame 2012 presidential field.

Oh, and they're complaining about toilets. Yes, toilets:

Senator Rand Paul's toilets don't work, and he blames the Department of Energy.

At a hearing of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on Thursday, Mr. Paul lambasted Kathleen Hogan, deputy assistant secretary for energy efficiency at the Energy Department, telling her that the department's "hypocrisy" and "busybody nature" has "restricted choices" for consumers rather than made life better for them.

"You don't care about the consumer really," Mr. Paul said. "Frankly, my toilets don't work in my house, and I blame you."

Boo-freakin'-hoo. Consumers have more than enough choice and the concern here is the environment, which under Republican rule would simply be exploited to the very last drop of all remaining natural resources. What is wrong with trying to conserve water, with using technology to make our use of natural resources somewhat more efficient, more responsible and sustainable? Please. It's just a low-flush toilet, not some high-tech gizmo, and they work pretty damn well.

Not that Paul gives a shit. He just wants to freedom to rape the environment with as much recklessness as he desires.

But this isn't isolated Republican craziness. The entire GOP is anti-environment -- oh, sure, they'll go out into nature, but only to drill for oil and kill defenceless animals -- just as it is anti-science. Indeed:

The hearing was called not to examine toilet policy, but to consider two proposed bills, one that would update energy efficiency standards for appliances and a second that would repeal a measure passed in 2007 to phase in new efficiency standards for light bulbs beginning next year.

The new standards would make the current form of 100-watt incandescent bulbs obsolete. Those bulbs have long been known to be particularly inefficient, emitting far more heat than light.

Conservatives have taken up the cause of the incandescent light bulb, saying the government is trying to dictate to Americans what kind of light bulbs they can use in their homes.

This is also incredibly stupid. Again, it's not about consumer choice, let alone about freedom, it's about being responsible environmental stewards. And it's also about innovation, about technological progress, about jobs. There will continue to be more than enough choice; indeed, innovation will open up more choice than ever. Besides, how much choice will there be when there's no fresh water left, or when there's so little that we'll need to ration it?

And, seriously, defending inefficient (and dangerous) light bulbs? Is that really the great Republican issue of the day? I get that they're trying desperately to frame this anti-environmentalism as pro-freedom (and anti-government), but no one outside of their base really buys their "nanny state" fearmongering and all they're doing, as they flail about like this, is coming across as incredibly ignorant and remarkably crazy.

Which of course they are. Just add this to the list.

Dictatorships 101, in 2011

Guest post by Ali Ezzatyar

Ali Ezzatyar is a journalist and American attorney practising in Paris, France.

(Ed. note: This is Ali's second guest post at The Reaction. In January 2010, he co-wrote a post on Iran with Bryan Tollin. -- MJWS)

As Egypt moves ever closer to life without Hosni Mubarak, governments and analysts everywhere ponder the important question of what will come next. The conventional and clichéd wisdom pronounced by pundits and politicians the world over focuses on the risk of a dramatic rise to power for the Muslim Brotherhood and the inevitability of a new Islamist, and implicitly dictatorial, ruling establishment. Disaster for the U.S., for Israel, and for the future of Egypt, right? If the events of recent weeks demonstrate anything, however, it is that dictatorship is increasingly difficult to manufacture in the age of modern communications.

Let's take a step back and acknowledge exactly what these Twitter and Facebook "revolutions" have managed to overcome in just Tunisia and Egypt so far (bearing in mind events in Jordan and Yemen as well). Former president Ben-Ali ruled over Tunisia, with the help of a highly-trained secret police force (among other levers of control), for over 20 years. Just weeks before he fled the country, few a Tunisian would have ever imagined a day where he and his cronies would not dominate the landscape of politics and life in Tunisia for as long as he lived. What had largely been considered one of the most stable and pacified populations in the Arab world, however, took to the streets in large numbers, rendering the president's apparatus of control inoperable against the masses of people from which it was drawn. Increasingly facing the possibility of internal betrayal and what that would mean for his own head, Ben-Ali fled. What happened afterwards, however, was in many ways more remarkable than his being deposed.

The government that immediately replaced the Ben-Ali regime was largely made up of his associates. And while that new government immediately pledged and took concrete steps to dismantle the means of censorship and develop democratic institutions, the Tunisian population, well-informed, continued to protest. Staging demonstrations and continuing to put pressure on a still-infant government, remaining elements from the old guard were purged from the new interim regime. All the evidence suggests that Tunisia is on its way to democratic institution-building and free elections. From communication to coordination, it is hard to imagine how such an historic sequence of events could have happened without the Internet tools that have only become widely used in the region in the last few years.

Events in Egypt are, in the most important ways, following a similar trajectory. While such events are impossible to predict, it is reasonable to hypothesize that, as in Tunisia, no group that fills the potential power vacuum in Egypt will have the clout, influence, or muscle that Mubarak developed over the last 30 years to implement his dictatorial rule. With the tools at the disposal of the world's citizens today, the fear of new dictatorships springing out of such well-established ones -- former dictatorships that had decades to harness accountability from their repressive systems -- seems almost far-fetched. The protesters and the press, emboldened by the information and images they see and transmit in seconds, are already focusing their rhetoric on a post-Mubarak era and the avoidance of a failed transition to democracy.

The world's governments that have been criticized for becoming more dictatorial in the last decade seem to have done so through reform, not revolution. Take Venezuela, for example. The specter of an Iranian-type genuine revolution turned radical Islamic regime also seems unlikely in the Egyptian context. The lack of a unified and charismatic Islamic front (with the Muslim Brotherhood being rather late to the game), coupled with the modern means of communication that are helping to topple Mubarak, will threaten to make the consolidation of power for a new dictatorial regime untenable unless it is extremely popular.

Most importantly, though, let's acknowledge that democracy's growing pains, whatever they may be, deserve the opportunity to play themselves out. It is not the business of entities foreign to Egypt to try and divine the potential makeup of a future government, and then exercise preference over whether or not Egyptians have a right to their own destiny. Foreign influence (short of intervention) should be designed to help strengthen populations and countries that seek to take destiny into their own hands, in the model of Tunisia (with the U.S.' encouragement of Ben-Ali's stepping down), and not in the old model of Iran. Note that the undermining of Iran's popular and democratic movements of yesterday are thought to have contributed to the radicalism and anti-Americanism of its revolution and its government today.

U.S. policy suggests it is frantically trying not to be on the wrong side in Egypt, and in the region generally. We should consider, though, the monumental reputational damage the U.S. will sustain if it stands on the side of autocracy or even ambiguity as it has done in the last two weeks. The specter of loss of interests should yield to the realization that only democratic partners in the region can protect our interests permanently, and that those democratic partners had better be our friends.