Moral Centers

I had actually started a post this morning -- got about halfway through, as it happens -- when my wonderful antique computer froze up and I lost it. I haven't been commenting (combination of intentional hiatus and unintentional intestinal bug), but I have been reading. A couple of stories stuck out as illustrating one of my ongoing contentions about the anti-gay, Christianist right: they have no morals to speak of.

The first was the conviction of Scott Roeder for the murder of Dr. George Tillman. From LA Times:

Reporting from Wichita, Kan. - In a trial that never became the referendum on abortion that some abortion foes wanted, Scott Roeder, a 51-year-old airport shuttle driver, was convicted Friday of murdering George Tiller, one the nation's few physicians who performed late-term abortions.

When he was slain in the vestibule of his church last May 31, Tiller became the fourth doctor since 1993 to be killed by antiabortion extremists. In June, his family announced that his clinic would close permanently.

The jury of seven men and five women deliberated for only 37 minutes before finding Roeder guilty of premeditated murder. He faces life in prison.

Roeder has supporters:

"I don't condone what Scott Roeder did, but I cannot condemn the consistency of his logic," said Randall Terry, a founder of antiabortion group Operation Rescue. "George Tiller killed 60,000 innocent human beings in barbaric ways, and Scott felt the way to protect more babies from a grisly death was to kill Tiller."

Jan Holman, an elderly antiabortion activist, drove from Iowa for the trial. She came in a truck covered with photographs of aborted fetuses. "I support Scott Roeder," she said. "I guess you might say he's my hero."

First off, Terry's lying -- of course he condones it. He's one of the people whose inflammatory rhetoric and thuggish tactics made Tiller's murder, or something like it, inevitable. Then that Holman person -- her hero is a cold-blooded murderer. Without getting into the pros or cons of abortion itself, what's at issue here, as far as I'm concerned, is the arrogant assumption that someone like Scott Roeder or Randall Terry has the right to make other people's decisions for them. In spite of the "pro-life" rhetoric ( you know -- the "life begins at conception and ends at birth" crowd), being pro-choice is not necessarily being pro-abortion. It's recognizing that certain decisions are best made by those directly involved.

The other one I liked this week is the ongong saga of Andrew Breitbart's fair-haired boy, James O'Keefe, of ACORN scam fame. For some nice insights on the whole ACORN episode, see this summary (PDF). His latest little frat boy prank involves entering a federal facility under false pretenses with the intent (at this point still only "alleged") of compromising telephone equipment maintained by the federal government. Jonathan Turley has a good run-down on the whole thing here.

They have been charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony. However, that is likely only the first charge. There are a host of additional charges, particularly if the prosecutor support the widespread speculation of an alleged conspiracy to wiretap the office of a federal official. It is not clear if the authorities confirmed an effort to wiretap or found such equipment — as opposed to another prank-like video. Moreover, I would expect other possible arrests. Usually there are other individuals with knowledge of such a boneheaded plan.

That's just the tip of the iceberg.

As John Amato points out, this is part of a fine old "conservative" tradition.

In the autumn election season of 1970, a cherubic, bespectacled teenager turned up at the Chicago campaign headquarters of Alan Dixon, a Democrat running for state treasurer in Illinois. No one paid the newcomer much attention when he arrived, or when he left soon afterwards. Nor did anyone in the office make the connection between the mystery volunteer and 1,000 invitations on campaign stationery that began circulating in Chicago's red-light district and soup kitchens, promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing" for all-comers at Dixon's headquarters.

That was Karl Rove.

And to bring it a little closer to home, Jeremy Hooper notes this little item from the indefatigable Maggie Gallagher:

A new government study just came out that looks at child abuse.

Question: What kind of family structure best protects children from child abuse?

Answer: Married biological parents. (see page 5-25).

Being the reality-challenged bigot that she is (and I realize it's no longer PC to call someone a bigot, even if they are), she tries to fold that into an argument against same-sex marriage, especially the Perry vs. Schwarzenegger trial in California. There's only one problem:

All the other family structures studied (which does not include same-sex parent families probably because these are such a small part of the population), but does include solo parents, other married parents (remarried primarily), single parents living with a partner, cohabiting parents, and no parents.

The big gap is between the intact married biological family and every other family form. Children living with both their mom and dad united by marriage have one-third the rate of serious child abuse, compared to children in any other family structure. (Emphasis added)

In other words, the study doesn't cover the population she's using the study to argue against.

In other words, she's full of shit. And she knows it. Gallagher, like most of the anti-gay crowd, is deliberately using "studies" that don't address the question to target gays. It's the Paul Cameron "faith-based science" school of argument, which is intrinsically dishonest. Which sort of define Gallagher and her crusade: dishonest.

Is it any wonder that when these people talk about morality, I tune out?

MIA

I know. I've been on hiatus, and then was felled by a very bad intestinal bug for a week and am only just coming back. I have been following the testimony in the Prop 8 trial as much as I've been able, though (except for that lost week), and now that the defendants have started fielding their "expert" witnesses, it's starting to look enough like a slam-dunk to scare me.

The pro-8 side's first witness, Prof. Kenneth Miller, imploded. It quickly became obvious that he's no expert on discrimination against gays and lesbians, doesn't know the context of the gay rights movement or its history, has only the fuzziest idea of how widespread institutionalized discrimination is, and basically doesn't know what he's talking about.

The next witness is David Blankenhorn, due to take the stand this afternoon. This is the one I wish I could see. He's to testify on gay parenting. (Remember, this is the man who claimed that the UN Convention on the Rights of Children said that every child has the right to be raised by his/her biological parents, which it doesn't say.) I really want to see what he brings up as testimony. The plaintiff's team is good enough and on top of things enough that I expect them to reduce him to pulp in short order, simply because he's a blowhard who makes things up.

I may be back from time to time. I'm really busy writing right now,and the news is the same -- but then, what can you expect, when the White House and Congress are still controlled by the Republicans? So I don't have much to say about that.

It Just Keeps Getting Better

Via Andrew Sullivan this choice bit:

This afternoon, during the cross-examination of the psychologist Letitia Anne Peplau in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial, the Alliance Defense Fund tweeted, “Witness admits same-sex couples not similarly situated to opposite sex couples, same sex couples cannot have unintended pregnancies.” Now, why, you might ask, does that matter, and why was this an “admission” worth noting for the anti-gay-marriage side?

Sullivan quotes the supposed rationale:

In a 2005 case called Morrison v. Sadler, an appellate court in Indiana concluded that same-sex couples with children did not need marriage because they were already so stable—it was so expensive and complicated for them to adopt or conceive a child that they were bound to stay together. “By contrast,” the court observed, “procreation by ‘natural’ reproduction may occur without any thought for the future.” The stork could come calling on heterosexual couples without invitation, and when it did, marriage helped ensure that the surprised progenitors would stay around to raise the children.

This is almost as good as the "marriage is to insure continuation of the species" argument. Aside from the light it casts on heterosexual relationships -- i.e., gays are ready and willing to undertake the responsibility of raising a familiy, but straights have to be forced into it by the law -- it completely sidesteps the whole question of rights and protections for the parents and children.

And it's a decision from Indiana, for crying out loud. Given Indiana's profile on civil rights, both historically and currently (remember that Indiana was the point of origin of the KKK), I'd hardly look there for cogent reasoning on these issues.

One can't begin to imagine (at least this one can't) what the pro-8 side expects to make of this. It should be fun to see, though.

No TV on Prop8

The Supreme Court has spoken. I found this comment instructive:

"Not only did it ignore the federal statute that establishes the procedures by which its rules may be amended, its express purpose was to broadcast a high-profile trial that would include witness testimony about a contentious issue."

Gods forbid that the American public should be able to witness first-hand the testimony about a contentious issue. Why, the world would come to an end by Thursday afternoon at the very latest. We certainly need to be protected from such things. (By, according to best guesses, the likes of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. No surprises there.)

(Aside: Anthony Kennedy has been making great capital out of being the swing vote. Has anyone told him that's just another term for a weak reed?)

That, of course, is the very reason this trial should be broadcast. The New York Times has the same attitude about this decision that I do:

The trial that started on Monday in San Francisco over the constitutionality of California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage could have been a moment for the entire nation to witness a calm, deliberative debate on a vitally important issue in the era of instant communications. Instead, the United States Supreme Court made it a sad example of the quashing of public discourse by blocking the televising of the nonjury trial.

The court blocked the public broadcasting of the proceedings by its familiar 5-to-4 split. In a vigorous dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer correctly objected to the court’s highly unusual intervention. He concluded, “The public interest weighs in favor of providing access to the courts.”

I think the American public should be entitled to witness testimony like this:

After the cross-exam, Therese Stewart, attorney for the City of San Francisco, asked Professor Chauncey to analyze some of the messages used in the Yes on 8 campaign. Stewart focused on statements made by one of the official proponents of Prop 8, Dr. Hak-Shing William ("Bill") Tam. Stewart played excerpts of Dr. Tam's deposition, featuring some extraordinarily inflammatory messages in campaign documents authored by Tam.

One of Dr. Tam's publications claimed that if Prop 8 did not pass, other states would "fall into Satan's hands." The document also claimed that "more children would become homosexuals," and that the next item on the "gay agenda" would be to "legalize having sex with children." Prof. Chauncey connected these messages, delivered by one of Prop 8's official sponsors, with the long history of fear-mongering and demonization of lesbians and gay men that he eloquently described yesterday.

This is from Shannon Minter's summary of Day 3 testimony.

And also be sure to check out the Prop8TrialTracker live blog. It's fascinating (at least, for a law geek like me).

Another Must-Read

Live-blogging of Perry vs. Schwarzenegger, Day 1.

Fascinating stuff. I see that the pro-8 side intends to use David Blankenhorn as an "expert." I hope the Boies/Olson team has been fact-checking him, because in his writings against same-sex marriage are not only logically fallacious, but openly contra-factual, as I've noted before. I really want to see Ted Olson make mincemeat of him, publicly.

And here's Olson's opening statement, as prepared.

Here's Prop8 Trial Tracker, the site that's providing all this information.

Another Must-Read

This one is an OpEd in Newsweek by Ted Olson, one of the attorneys arguing Perry vs Schwarzenegger and, as he puts it, a "veteran of the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations" -- hardly a wild-eyed leftist.

Some have suggested that we have brought this case too soon, and that neither the country nor the courts are "ready" to tackle this issue and remove this stigma. We disagree. We represent real clients—two wonderful couples in California who have longtime relationships. Our lesbian clients are raising four fine children who could not ask for better parents. Our clients wish to be married. They believe that they have that constitutional right. They wish to be represented in court to seek vindication of that right by mounting a challenge under the United States Constitution to the validity of Proposition 8 under the equal-protection and due-process clauses of the 14th Amendment. In fact, the California attorney general has conceded the unconstitutionality of Proposition 8, and the city of San Francisco has joined our case to defend the rights of gays and lesbians to be married. We do not tell persons who have a legitimate claim to wait until the time is "right" and the populace is "ready" to recognize their equality and equal dignity under the law.

Citizens who have been denied equality are invariably told to "wait their turn" and to "be patient." Yet veterans of past civil-rights battles found that it was the act of insisting on equal rights that ultimately sped acceptance of those rights. As to whether the courts are "ready" for this case, just a few years ago, in Romer v. Evans, the United States Supreme Court struck down a popularly adopted Colorado constitutional amendment that withdrew the rights of gays and lesbians in that state to the protection of anti-discrimination laws. And seven years ago, in Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court struck down, as lacking any rational basis, Texas laws prohibiting private, intimate sexual practices between persons of the same sex, overruling a contrary decision just 20 years earlier.

It's a good strong statement. Read it.

Reviews in Brief

are on hiatus with everything else. Writing reviews right now is worse than pulling teeth, and I just don't see putting myself through that right now if I don't have to, and the nice thing about having your own blog is that you don't have to.

However, I'm getting new goodies, so this particular hiatus probably won't last all that long.

Of Note

First, a couple of good posts by David Link at Independent Gay Forum, one about the Prop 8 trial and the arguments the supporters have at their disposal, and one about religion and sex.

And Timothy Kincaid has one at BTB on the real reason the Church opposes gay marriage.

Looking at these again, they really do all tie together. Kincaid notes an article by Deacon Keith Fournier in Catholic Online. The core of Kincaid's piece is the demand that heterosexual relationships continue to receive favored status. Quoting Fournier:

They want the State to treat homosexual partnerships as the equivalent of marriage, thereby denying real marriage and the family founded upon it, the favored legal place it has long held as the first society.

That is telling enough, but I want to point out the very first sentence of Fournier's sadly slanted commentary on the Jenkins/Miler custody case:

This tragic custody case sets up what is called a conflict of laws issue, pitting the law of one State against another as a part of a homosexual advocacy agenda.

Right off the bat, I'd like to point out that this is not the situation at all: the court in Virginia has agreed to abide by the decisions of the Vermont court in this case, which at this point is that the child, Isabella, should be in the sole custody of Janet Jenkins. Lisa Miller has taken Isabella and disappeared. This piece is so scurrilous that I was moved to leave a comment, in which I was unfortunately only able to scrape the surface of the cesspool. The gist is that this Catholic deacon is coming out strongly in support of a woman who shows no moral compass herself, has reneged on her contractual obligations and disobeyed a court order to observe them. This hit-man thinks this is praiseworthy behavior.

The core of this, of course, is anti-gay bias. This is brought sharply to light by Link's second post, which has a very entertaining section on how acceptance of gays as real people is an assault on Christianity:

The CADC insists that the mere presence of openly gay people is not just wrong or even intolerable, but an attack on Christianity. And the fact that other Christian religions accept openly gay people is, itself, a further affront, an exacerbating act of prejudice and defamation against the non-accepting.

The key issue, of course, is same-sex marriage. I've been over the "arguments" (see -- we can use quotes, too) against, and Link makes an important point on this in regard to the Prop 8 trial:

But the rejection of a constitutional principle for a very small minority, a principle that is generally applicable to everyone in the majority, is not only not the solution to the problem being presented, it is, itself, the problem which the equal protection clause was supposed to address. Why would an equal protection clause be necessary if it was only there to protect the majority?

The Prop. 8 case will be addressing that question head-on, and the witnesses opposing same-sex marriage will have to present the kind of arguments that the New Jersey senators were not obligated to offer. The question is a focused one: What justification does the government have for treating same-sex couples and opposite sex couples differently in light of the fact that the federal constitution does include a provision that explicitly says all citizens should be treated equally under the law?

The fact that we have historically discriminated between those groups is not an argument. The fact that many voters have a predisposition to favor their own relationships at the expense of the minority’s is not an argument.

Finally, and most importantly, the fact that many religions believe that homosexuality is a sin is also not an argument – or at least not one the court will be able to properly assess. There are many religions and many theologians who think homosexuality is not a sin. No secular court could competently resolve that theological dispute. Nor should it. Ours are not religious courts, and the damage they would do if given the authority to decide what is sin and what is not, what God intends for us and what he (or she) does not is immeasurable.

I suggest you read all three posts, and even Deacon Fournier's screed (on an empty stomach, that one). They make some good points.

Health Care Link Dump

That's all I have the stamina for on this issue -- it's gotten so murky that I can't take a position any more.

First, this one from Lindsay Beyerstein, one of the few journalists left. It's largely about the kabuki, but that's what we've got left. She does note this from Kevin Drum, including what's still there to negotiate after Lieberman and Nelson got done gutting the Senate bill:

Warts and all, we're on the cusp of passing a bill that provides all of this:

* Insurers have to take all comers. They can't turn you down for a preexisting condition or cut you off after you get sick.

* Community rating. Within a few broad classes, everyone gets charged the same amount for insurance.

* Individual mandate. (Remember how we all argued that this was a progressive feature back when John Edwards and Hillary Clinton were championing it during the primaries?)

* A significant expansion of Medicaid.

* Subsidies for low and middle income workers that keeps premium costs under 10% of income.

* Limits on ER charges to low-income uninsured emergency patients.

* Caps on out-of-pocket expenses.

* A broad range of cost-containment measures.

* A dedicated revenue stream to support all this.

A trillion dollars in benefit for low and middle income workers. 95% of Americans insured. Medical bankruptcies on the verge of disappearing. And for the first time ever, an acknowledgement that decent healthcare ought to be universal in the United States.

One can dream -- my guess is, the good parts won't survive the Senate. Check out what Mark Sshmitt has to say on that score:

Instead, by passing a compromised but complete bill with 60 votes, Democrats will have plenty of room to expand its provisions, and even add ideas like the Medicare buy-in for older workers, using the budget reconciliation process in the future.

Schmitt is more optimistic than I am -- I have no confidence in the Democrats to do, or even attempt, any such thing. There will certainly be no push from the White House on it.

Digby has a discussion of the role Ben Nelson (D-National Right to Life Committee) is likely to play in scuttling the conference report. And he'll try, if there is any deviation from the Senate bill.

I'm not hopeful, but I could be wrong. I just don't think there is the political will among the Democrats to fix it. I think we're going to have to wait until certain incumbents have been discarded before we're going to see any meaningful health care reform in this country. And I think the Democrats will come back to us at the midterms this year crowing about their D-, when they could have had a B+.

01/01/10

It's very quiet this morning.

This is a little late, but it seems like a good way to start the year:



May your year be filled with love.

Another Hiatus

Unless I find something I really need to comment on.

See you next week. Until then:

Turning Al Qaeda Into a Punchline

Via Andrew Sullivan, this post from Plunderbund on the Detroit panty-bomber:

Under George W. Bush, or John McCain, the media narrative would already be settling on whether or not to invade Yemen. Now, the narrative is about soft power – how to reach these wealthy sons of bankers to stop them, how to tighten up our security at airports, how to support reform minded Muslims, how to give alternatives to potential Al Qaeda recruits who are not poor villagers but wealthy intellectuals with an axe to grind.

In other words, Republicans would be doing the terrorists work for them, by spreading more terror. Barack Obama is doing America’s work, by addressing the problem calmly, quietly, confidently. That leadership will translate into confidence in the American public the same way the panicked leadership of the Bush administration translated into fear. . . .

Make no mistake – in the Muslim world to which Al Qaeda attempts to speak, this episode is a total humiliation, seen as such, and will hurt Al Qaeda. I can’t think of a more effective way to scupper Al Qaeda recruitment than to turn one of their attacks into a worldwide joke. Yes it will enrage them. Yes, they will try harder to hit us again.

And yet, of course, the right is frothing at the mouth over the fact that the bomber is being given pain relievers, medical attention, a lawyer, and a trial. You know, those sorts of things that Americans do as a matter of course. (Well, most of us, because most of us are decent people.)

Most of these rightwingers are as laughable as the panty-bomber. The problem is, the rightwingers are ours.

And what you're not going to hear about from the right is the way that the Republicans are hampering efforts to improve the TSA:

As it turns out, DeMint was really trying to deflect attention away from the fact that he voted against TSA funding earlier this year and has put a hold on Obama's nominee to head the department - hampering the agency's ability to put leadership in place.

You have to wonder.

Reviews in Brief: Mieko Koide's After School in the Teacher's Lounge (anime)

After School in the Teacher's Lounge is one of those YouTube finds that I happened across by chance and was captivated by. I dont know if I can honestly call what follows a "review," but I'm going to try to give you an idea of what it's like.

It's a short piece, two episodes, all taken up with the somewhat surreal courtship between two middle-school teachers, Kawase Mitsuro, who teaches art, and his older colleague Kazawa Toshiaki. The story opens with Kawase staring out the window after classes at Kazawa, who is swimming in the school's outdoor pool. Kawase's students, who all seem to be girls, are ribbing him about his fascination, which he vehemently denies. But in flashback, we learn that on his twenty-third birthday, Kazawa asked him out to dinner and proposed that they have a relationship. Kawase, not taking him seriously, said "Sure. Why not?"

The tension in this story all comes from Kawase's refusal to believe that Kazawa is serious and Kazawa's determination to prove that he is, even in the face of the principal's matchmaking efforts with Kazawa on behalf of a friend's daughter and a bit of jealousy from Kawase's brother. Characters are vivid -- Kawase is somewhat shy, quiet, fairly innocent, and quite passive. He finds it difficult to trust Kazawa. Kazawa comes off as quite self-confident, breezy, casual, and direct about his feelings, even though Kawase can't take him seriously.

The graphics are highly stylized, which I think is one thing that appeals to me. It's worth noting that the feel of the drawing in the second episode is much different than the first, a little softer, a little more finished, although I found the drawing in the first half perfectly acceptable and even appealing. The artists have used a fairly exaggerated bishounen type for the men, tall, very thin (but also muscular, as we see from Kazawa in his very brief swimsuit), with extraordinarily broad shoulders.

The music makes a great contribution to the feel, I think. It's also fairly unusual, at least in terms of the anime I've seen, in which titles are likely to be pop-song-inspired and the incidental music generally occurs only as needed. In After School, one is given an almost constant soft-jazz piano accompaniment which blends right into the title music and is quite beautiful in itself. It adds, I think, to the dreamlike quality of the piece and, in its sparse angularity, adds a sense of open space, even in intimate interior scenes, which, with the spare and sometimes elliptical dialogue and fragmentary scenes, reinforces the feeling of a dream.

I think it's the dreamlike quality that appeals to me the most. It's a work that could very easily seem choppy, confusing, and unfinished, but -- and perhaps it's the music acting as a constant here -- instead I read it as episodic, inferential, elliptical, and fairly powerful. There's a dream sequence at the beginning of episode two that encapsulates my feelings about this anime: rendered in green, black and white, it portrays a conversation between Kawase and Kazawa that is repeated in real life later in the episode. It plays a key part in both incarnations in bringing Kawase to the realization that Kazawa is, indeed, serious about him and sets up the final resolution, and it's stunning -- abstract, spare, intense, and very beautiful.

I have to give this one high marks -- it's unique and, to me at least, very appealing. The one drawback so far is that, as is too often the case with YouTube, you take what you can get -- in this case, the middle section of episode two is only available subtitled in Spanish, which is not a language in which I have a great deal of facility.

Not licensed in the U.S., unfortunately, and old enough (1994) that it's not likely to be. It's available online via AnimeGLore.com and, I believe, Aarinfantasy.com, and there is a manga series, also not licensed in English, but also available, at least in part, online.

Crew:

Director: Kazuyoshi Hirose
Music: Norihiro Tsuru
Original creator: Mieko Koide
Producer: Masaru Fukuda

Cast:

Hikaru Midorikawa as Kawase Mitsurou
Kiyoyuki Yanada as Kazama Toshiaki
Jun'ichi Kanemaru as Natsuhiko
Toshiyuki Morikawa as Kawase Hitoshi
Niina Kumagaya as Shizuka

Honesty

Here's a very good post from David Link at Independent Gay Forum. I usually stop by there to see who I can disagree with (and am usually rewarded), but this time I have to agree wholeheartedly:

It all begins and ends with the closet. But for this anachronistic social convention that is as useful today as a hitching post, Thomas would not have needed to try and convince first himself, and then someone of the opposite sex that he was straight. It is not enough, in this scheme, that we deceive ourselves; heterosexuals, too, have to be equally and everlastingly drawn into the fraud, some of them at the most intimate level.

This is really what the Maggie Gallaghers, the Joseph Nicolosis, the James Dobsons are encouraging: that we be fundamentally dishonest about who we are, and use that dishonesty to live our lives the way they think we should. They don't really seem to care very much about the damage they are doing, not only to us (and given their attitude toward gays, which, fine words notwithstanding, is unremitting and contemptuous hostility, I can't see that they could be expected to care about hurting us), but to those who, whether knowingly or not, get sucked into the charade.

(Oh, and in case I haven't said so in so many words, forget about "preserving marriage." NOM, the Catholic Church, the LDS Church, and their fellow travelers have offered nothing that actually preserves marriage, nothing of any help to married couples. Their program is entirely negative, entirely directed toward exclusion.)

I am truly looking forward to the day when we can consign the "pro-marriage" forces to a sardonic footnote and be as honest as humanly possible about who we are.

Something to Think About

Belssings to all.

If You're Going to Practice Magic

learn to do it right.

When I read this story, my jaw dropped:



CALLER: Yeah doctor. Our small tea bag group here in Waycross, we got our vigil together and took Dr. Coburn’s instructions and prayed real hard that Sen. Byrd would either die or couldn’t show up at the vote the other night.

How hard did you pray because I see one of our members was missing this morning. Did it backfire on us? One of our members died? How hard did you pray senator? Did you pray hard enough

HOST: Senator Barasso, he was referring to Senator Inhofe, who was not part of the round of voting this morning.

BARASSO: The votes today, they needed 60 votes in favor of the bill. Senator Inhofe is opposed to the bill, and whether he was there or not didn’t make any difference. There was no way that Jim Inhofe was going to vote for the bill, the senator from Oklahoma. So that’s why he wasn’t there this morning.

HOST: Do you know where he was, senator, why he wasn’t able to make the vote this morning?

This was after Sen. Tom Coburn (R-The Scary Place) called upon Christians to pray that a senator would miss the vote on health-care reform.

Speaking against the health care bill on the Senate floor just moments ago, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) expressed his hope that a Senator of the majority caucus would not be able to make the vote:

What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can’t make the vote tonight. That’s what they ought to pray.

OK -- how sick is that? First, it's pretty sick to pray that some senator is going to miss a vote, by whatever means, but then to pray that somebody dies? And then get all weepy because you think you missed your target and one of your guys bought it?

I had a huge argument with my sister once about prayer versus spellwork -- she's a fairly fervent Christian, or was at the time, but not a whackjob like the person in that story. At any rate, she insisted that prayer and spellwork were in no way the same thing or even similar. I don't see all that much difference -- you're using words to focus energy in an attempt to influence events. Seems pretty straightforward to me. (And if you've got a whole group praying together for the same thing, how is that different than a coven doing a working?)

Full disclosure: I don't do a whole lot of magic. That's not the point of being a Witch, as far as I'm concerned. I have, however, done enough spellwork to know that it just doesn't work that way. And Witches at least know enough to know that whatever you send comes back at you, whether you believe in the Three-Fold Rule or not: even coming back at the same strength is bad enough, so don't go sending out bad shit, much less death wishes.

(Sidebar: Interestingly enough, it's exactly that sort of thing that leads to the first crisis in the first volume of Ze -- one of Konoe's spells comes back at him and tears his arm off. Seems the Japanese have the same understanding of magic workings that Western Witches do.)

And the moral of this story is, once again, the Christianist right has no morals. As if we had any doubt. And apparently, some of them are pretty stupid.

Update: From TPM, some concern that the phone call may have been a hoax.

In the Land of the Clueless

Peggy Noonan stands head and shoulders above the rest. In what is rumored to be her last OpEd for WSJ, that bastion of fairness and equality, Noonan proves once again that she just doesn't get it.

But we are concerned about other things, too, and there are often signs in various polls that those things may dwarf economic concerns. Americans are worried about the core and character of the American nation, and about our culture.

It is one thing to grouse that dreadful people who don't care about us control our economy, but another, and in a way more personal, thing to say that people who don't care about us control our culture.

She offers no support for this -- is this a majority who are concerned about "people who don't care about us" controlling our culture? Or is this an extension of polls reflecting concern about torture, unaccountability, greed in high places, a Congress that seems to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of (insert favorite corporate complex here), and a president who doesn't seem to believe in anything that actually requires action.

No, actually, it's all about Adam Lambert.

For years now, without anyone declaring it or even noticing it, we've had a compromise on television. Do you want, or will you allow into your home, dramas and comedies that, however good or bad, are graphically violent, highly sexualized, or reflective of cultural messages that you believe may be destructive? Fine, get cable. Pay for it. Buy your premium package, it's your money, spend it as you like.

But the big broadcast networks are for everyone. They are free, they are available on every television set in the nation, and we watch them with our children. The whole family's watching. Higher, stricter standards must maintain.

This was behind the resentment at the Adam Lambert incident on ABC in November. The compromise was breached. It was a broadcast network, it was prime time, it was the American Music Awards featuring singers your 11-year-old wants to see, and your 8-year-old. And Mr. Lambert came on and—again, in front of your children, in the living room, in the middle of your peaceful evening—uncorked an act in which he, in the words of various news reports the next day, performed "faux oral sex" featuring "S&M play," "bondage gear," "same-sex makeouts" and "walking a man and woman around the stage on a leash."

People were offended, and they complained.

I think what upset people was not that such actions occurred, but that they occurred publicly and without shame. It's one thing to participate in these sorts of things in private (even as a voyeur), is the thinking, but to be open and honest about it is unforgivable. And to be quite honest, most people could care less. She cites 1500 calls to ABC about the show. My first question is, out of how many viewers? Answer that, and if the percentage is significant, I might listen to you.

And then the Great Conflation:

All these things—plus Wall Street and Washington and the general sense that most of our great institutions have forgotten their essential mission—add up and produce a fear that the biggest deterioration in America isn't economic but something else, something more characterological.All these things—plus Wall Street and Washington and the general sense that most of our great institutions have forgotten their essential mission—add up and produce a fear that the biggest deterioration in America isn't economic but something else, something more characterological.

A few things apparently haven't occurred to Noonan. These people are participants in this culture. They watch these programs, they buy the newspapers and magazines that trumpet the latest indiscretions of celebrities -- indiscretions that are only indiscreet because "journalists" are busily digging up dirt to publish for the voracious appetites of the moralists in Middle America. Nothing is being forced on anyone, but it's a good excuse to avoid taking responsibility for watching what you watch and reading what you read. This stuff is happening, being broadcast, being written up in newspapers and magazines, because there's a market for it.

The purpose served by the bread and circuses is simply to draw attention away from Wall Street, away from Washington, away from the bullshit that is passing for governance in this country these days. And it's because of these distractions that the bullshit has become so firmly entrenched. (And let me point out that Peggy Noonan is part and parcel of this endeavor, making her as big a hypocrite as anyone else in the media. The alternative explanation, of course, is that she really is an idiot.)

Let's give Ms. Noonan some other numbers to work with: the parts of the county with the highest divorce rates, the highest rates of teenage pregnancy, the highest consumption of pornography, are the areas that are most "offended" by Adam Lambert.

Maybe Peggy Noonan should open her eyes, find the last shreds of her integriy, and write a piece about that.

TARP For Insurance Companies

Also known as the Senate Health Care Bill.

McJoan at DailyKos has a summary of some of the provisions in the bill. It's the good, the bad, and the ugly all over again, and by my take, the bad and the ugly far outweigh the good.

McJoan makes one good point:

Bottom line, Americans are still going to be forced to buy insurance that for too many people will be unaffordable. As long as that's the case, and until there's a true alternative public option that provides people real choice, the insurance companies shouldn't get that one thing in the legislation they want: the mandate.

I defy any sitting senator to explain with a straight face why I should be forced to participate in a non-competitive market for health coverage at prices set by the industry and policies regulated by the industry.

By the way, it's not just the insurance companies who have Obama hornswoggled. Drug manufacturers have set him up for extra duty as a ping-pong ball. David Sirota has a good run-down:

The good news is that the furor seems to have exacted a commitment out of the White House for future action:

Speaking on CNN's "State of the Union," David Axelrod, Obama's top political aide, said the White House still favors drug re-importation and wants to move forward on it.

"Let me be clear. The president supports re-importation. As he said, safe re-importation of drugs into this country. There's no reason why the Americans should pay a premium for pharmaceuticals that people in other countries pay less for," Axelrod said. "We will move forward on it."

Substantively, this is still dishonest - as I noted in past reporting on this, if the administration really wanted to do importation, as Axelrod claims, it has the statutory authority right now to allow it via a certification by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. We're all somehow supposed to ignore that reality - as if we're all idiots. We're all also supposed to ignore Obama's campaign commitment - Axelrod offers up no explanation as to why Senator Obama co-sponsored the Dorgan amendment he worked to kill nor any explanation as to why candidate Obama's campaign promise to support it was broken.

I don't believe it. More nice words from an administration that can't seem to come up with anything else.

My first impulse is to say "Kill the Senate bill." The House bill isn't nearly as bad, but Ben Nelson (D-National Right to Life Committee) is threatening to kill any compromise that doesn't include an outright ban on abortion -- or as well as. Maha takes a a look at the realities:

Think of this bill as a foot in the door. Once provisions begin to go into effect, once people realize their lives are less in jeopardy, there are no death panels, and Soviet tanks don’t appear in the streets, most Americans will support it, and more reforms will be possible. Yes, I agree with Digby that a large portion of Americans are so lost in their mythic fantasy land they wouldn’t recognize reality if it showed up with fireworks and a brass band. But I think that while most Americans can be confused and bamboozled about new or foreign things, once they have direct experience with something they are not so easily fooled. They saw through George Bush’s Social Security privatization scheme, for example.

I'm not nearly so confident that we'll be able to improve on whatever mess the Congress and Obama come up with. There is as much likelihood that health-care reform will get worse rather than better as they tinker. Obama can't be counted on to fight for anything, and the Republicans and those Senators who are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the insurance industry (Max Baucus, Olympia Snowe, Joe Lieberman -- for some reason those names leap out at me) will do their best to weaken anything that does anyone besides their main constituents -- that is, those insurance companies (and drug manfacturers -- don't forget the drug manufacturers) that are paying for their campaigns -- any good.

You reach a point where you just have to junk it and start over. I'm almost there with health-care reform. I'm way past that with the Congress.

Update:

Jane Hamsher comes up with ten reasons to kill the bill:

Top 10 Reasons to Kill Senate Health Care Bill

1. Forces you to pay up to 8% of your income to private insurance corporations — whether you want to or not.
2. If you refuse to buy the insurance, you’ll have to pay penalties of up to 2% of your annual income to the IRS.
3. Many will be forced to buy poor-quality insurance they can’t afford to use, with $11,900 in annual out-of-pocket expenses over and above their annual premiums.
4. Massive restriction on a woman’s right to choose, designed to trigger a challenge to Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court.
5. Paid for by taxes on the middle class insurance plan you have right now through your employer, causing them to cut back benefits and increase co-pays.
6. Many of the taxes to pay for the bill start now, but most Americans won’t see any benefits — like an end to discrimination against those with preexisting conditions — until 2014 when the program begins.
7. Allows insurance companies to charge people who are older 300% more than others.
8. Grants monopolies to drug companies that will keep generic versions of expensive biotech drugs from ever coming to market.
9. No re-importation of prescription drugs, which would save consumers $100 billion over 10 years.
10. The cost of medical care will continue to rise, and insurance premiums for a family of four will rise an average of $1,000 a year — meaning in 10 years, your family’s insurance premium will be $10,000 more annually than it is right now.

. . .

The Senate bill isn’t a “starter home,” it’s a sink hole. It needs to die so something else can take its place. It doesn’t matter whether people are on the right or the left — once they understand the con job that’s about to be foist upon them, they agree. That’s why Harry Reid and President Obama are trying to jam it through as fast as they can, before people get wise.

Reviews in Brief: Linkin Park's Meteora

A young friend of mine just the other day said that Linkin Park managed to bring hip-hop and metal back to hard rock I think I'd add punk and maybe even goth metal to that group. Meteora is the most consistently good album of theirs I've run across so far.

I can't say that I like the entire collection, nor that I think the entire collection is consistently good. And I'll readily admit it took me a while to get figure out what they were doing. The song that first drew me to them was "Breaking the Habit," which as usual I found as the sound track to a yaoi AMV on YouTube. I went looking for the CD.

The first cut on this group that serves as a good example of what they are doing is "Somewhere I Belong." It's a fairly simple combination of metal, rap, and hard rock that starts to develop that kind of synergy between the elements that makes a good song. It gives a bare hint of what Chester Bennington's vocals can do, and the wall of sound behind him pushes the lyrics -- which are honest and poignant -- right at you. "Easier to Run" has my vote as one of the two best songs on the disc, and to be honest, it wasn't an easy call. In fact, that one leads into a long sequence of very strong songs that occupies the last half of the disc. "Faint," "Figure.09," "Breaking the Habit," "Nobody's Listening," and "Numb" are all, now that I've gotten used to the idiom, very good.

I think one reason I find Linkin Park appealing is, believe it or not, the lyrics. I'm not one to be a stickler for lyrics that make sense in rock music, but these do, consistently and with a solid punch: they're songs about being young and angry (and man, I remember those days very well). Take "Easier to Run":

It's easier to run
replacing this pain with something numb
it's so much easier to go
than face all this pain here all alone.

I remember feeling like that, way too often. And in this song, all the elements come together: the spoken portions suddenly include two voices, but one of them is singing in monotone when the melody come in. And Bennington shows just how flexible a singer he is in this one -- the raw screaming gives way to a lyrical line delivered with a great deal of expressiveness.

This is not "cool" music -- it's not distanced, it's not ironic -- at least not self-consciously so -- it's flat out teenage angst on a very deep level, with no apologies and no posing. I think it's the combination of honesty and artistry on this album that draws me. And it seems to be a characteristic of the band overall.

It's really easier to let you see/hear it. Here's the official music video from "Breaking the Habit," which I've just found and which is terrific:



And since "Breaking the Habit" is not typical of Linkin Park, here's an AMV of "Easier to Run." The anime is Kingdom Hearts.



A note: Meteora is an enhanced CD that comes with a note that some computers may not be able to read the enhanced portions. My computer can't read any of it, which is a pity. If I manage to overcome that, I'll update this review.

Oh, Lord -- Spare Me

Ran across this piece of snark disguised as a report while looking for something else. It's pretty sad.

Nickelback is the top group of the decade, according to Billboard magazine. . . .

Readers of the U.K.'s Word Magazine recently voted Nickelback the worst band in the world, with Kroeger and company locking down an impressive 20 per cent of the vote. Looks like not everyone is a fan of greasy, bleached hair and enlightening, philosophical song titles such as Something in Your Mouth and S.E.X.

Sample lyrics: "Maybe in the parking lot / Better bring your friend along / Better rock together / Than just one at a time / S is for the simplety / E is for the ecstasy / X is just to mark the spot / 'Cause that's the one you really want."

Someone's agenda is hanging out.

I did leave a comment, to the effect that this little gem of an "article" wasn't even tabloid-worthy. It's not -- it's a hit piece disguised as journalism. Looks like the American media aren't the only ones who can't to their jobs.

(Full disclosure: if you read this blog, you already know that I think Nickelback is a very good band. Maybe not the "best" -- that's too much a matter of personal taste -- but up there.)

My thoughts on some of Nickelback's music:

All the Right Reasons

Dark Horse