I'm blogging today from a midtown Starbucks, where every available electrical outlet is being used by displaced downtowners. The atmosphere around me is probably like rush-hour in Calcutta. I want to thank my colleagues, all of whom have electric power, for doing such an amazing job yesterday and today. And my love to New York City, which has instantly plunged me from the developed world into a pitch black and increasingly cold Halloween. I keep saying to myself: It Gets Better.
Well, it cannot get any worse, can it? Can it?
Sullivan has recently moved from the "developed world" (and I'm not sure if, to Sullivan, that's D.C. or P-Town) to the wilds of NYC. Poor dear is having a difficult adjustment.
And I just love that description of the undue hardship he's having to endure in the aftermath of Sandy. I can't remember the last time I read something that reeks of privilege like that, unless it was the last time Mitt Romney opened his mouth.
Dude. Your new home town just experienced a four meter storm surge on top of a full-moon high tide driven by hurricane force winds sweeping through a low lying port. That doesn’t happen very often. When it does bad things follow…but it’s not personal. God—not yours, not anyone’s—doesn’t actually care about you enough to gin up a regional disaster just for the comedy gold to come from watching you kvetch about New York.
This "opinion" piece by Greg Hampikian, from NYT. Titled "Men, Who Needs Them?" it attempts to make the case that women don't need men for bearing or raising children. You can tell he's operating from Neverneverland:
If a woman wants to have a baby without a man, she just needs to secure sperm (fresh or frozen) from a donor (living or dead).
Um, excuse me -- where does he think the sperm came from? Alpha Centauri?
He also tries to make the case that single-parent households are just fine and dandy -- noting that "the data for children raised by only females is encouraging. As the Princeton sociologist Sara S. McLanahan has shown, poverty is what hurts children, not the number or gender of parents." And how many single mothers are wealthy? (Note, he provides no link or citation for McLanahan's work.) I'm going to have to come down on the side of those studies that indicate that two parents are better for children than one, if only because they are less subject to the stresses that result from trying to go it alone. (I have known more than one woman who elected to raise a child without a father. It was hard on them.)
This is a fairly frivolous piece. I wish I could say I'm surprised to see it at NYT, but you know what? I'm not.
Various reports on Obama's speech to HRC last night. Louise has posted videos of the speech at Pam's House Blend. (Which I've decided to post here as well):
See if you can spot anything that anyone else has missed.
There are two realities, the Beltway reality, a myopic view that is so disconnected from the lives of everyday LGBTs (particularly Ts) that has us setting such low expectations. The reality outside the Beltway doesn't exist, the focus is on cultivating the relationships with power brokers with the secondary focus on obtaining "what's possible" politically, which of course is pretty subjective and dependent on whether there is professional peril in rocking any boats.
The reality outside the Beltway is often too impatient about the logistics of moving legislation in many respects, but the impatience is borne of the peril of losing a job, losing custody of children, or myriad other problems that will not be solved in their Red state any time soon. To see such inaction and promises and action delayed or deferred is disheartening -- and very personal. For activists in this sphere, a speech like this is a reality check of its own -- beautiful, empty prose telling us we are on our own for who knows how long. (Emphasis in original.)
It's a good post, one of her best -- read it.
As for realities on the ground, get this exchange from the comments to that post (edited for cleanup only):
# Thank you for posting this.
I was outside picketing. My signs and those around me called for real action and for Obama to keep his promises. Just before his motorcade came by, the Secret Service had the MPD force us back from where we had our premit. It seems that our fierce advocate can't stand the heat. by: TrumpetDC @ Sat Oct 10, 2009 at 21:24:21 PM CDT
# P. S. I did two on camera interviews. Pam, I don't know how you do it. I felt like I was going to hurl. by: TrumpetDC @ Sat Oct 10, 2009 at 21:25:38 PM CDT
# How far back did they move you? What was the excuse?
Or didn't they bother to offer one?
"In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant." The Colbert Report by: Lev Raphael @ Sun Oct 11, 2009 at 03:55:19 AM CDT
# They tried to move us two blocks away to the other side of the convention center. That way we would have been out of site from the motorcade.
We moved about 30 feet (1/4 down the block) and then sat down. We had filled out all the propper paperwork for a permit, so we used that motivate us and them. by: TrumpetDC @ Sun Oct 11, 2009 at 07:22:16 AM CDT
# As to why...
One police officer pulled one of our organizers aside and appologized. He said that they were being pressured to do it by Obama's Secret Service detail. by: TrumpetDC @ Sun Oct 11, 2009 at 07:23:23 AM CDT
Somehow, sadly, I have to say that I'm not surprised -- it seems to have become the norm to insulate the president from anything that might cause him to actually notice people's reactions to what he says and does.
Barack Obama just promised us that if he becomes president, he's going to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell, the Defense of Marriage Act, and get ENDA passed. It was a bit surreal. I'm sitting at a fundraiser for the No on 1 effort in Maine (that Obama didn't even bother to mention), and we were all just speechless (actually, hardly speechless - and I thought yelling at the TV was long since over). Obama repeated his campaign promises. That was it.
This speech offered less than the cocktail party speech for the A-listers back in June.
The expectations were very high. The president spoke for approximately 25 minutes. And, tonight, he did not deliver anything new or exciting. He did not assuage our concerns.
I'm sure HRC is happy. This was a big night for the institution. But, I'm not sure what it did for the movement -- or HRC's actual mission of full equality.
8.56 pm. More campaign boilerplate. This speech could have been made - and was made - a year ago.
8.53 pm. His major achievement - the one thing he has actually done - is invite gay families to the Easter egg-roll. (Ed. note: So did Dubyah. Does that make George W. Bush a "fierce advocate" for gay civil rights?)
8.51 pm. Again, more of a campaign speech. I've called on Congress to repeal DOMA. Does he think we're fools? He has done nothing to advance this.
8.50 pm. Now we get the campaign speech on Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Does he not realize he is now in office? "I'm working to end this policy. I will end Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Solmonese has given us the timeline: 2017. This is bullshit. .
When he becomes President, he’s going to sign the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act, he’ll sign the Employment Non-Discrimination Act if it ever sees the light of day, and sometime during his presidency he’s going to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Oh, and he’s gonna appoint a gay ambassador or two, and we’re all invite to the big Easter Egg roll.
The president does not deserve a standing ovation on anything involving our relationship recognition unless and until he comes out for FULL marriage equality. He did not do that. On this issue, let's not rise to our feet (in a supportive way) until he does.
A polite applause? Sure. Even a standing O when he vows to repeal DOMA? Okay, fine. But when the official position is still "one man, one woman = marriage," his support for our bonds really has no other way to fall but short.
I think you get the idea -- there is, after all, a recurring theme in these responses -- and I'm sorry, once again, that Obama has fully met my minimal expectations. What's left to say? Has he made any real progress on gay civil rights? No, he hasn't. I'm afraid I'm of the camp that says extending benefits that were already available to gay government employees is no big deal. Neither is appointing a gay ambassador. When there are substantive issues, embodied in actual pieces of legislation, that have widespread public and institutional support, across party lines, and he can't be bothered to push for them, why should I listen to a rehash of his campaign speeches? Yes, I am talking about DADT. I am talking about the HIV ban on overseas visitors. These are no-brainers. Look, everyone has their favorite bit of "most important" on gay civil rights, and some are going to be easier to get done than others. Certainly DADT is one of those. As I believe Pam Spaulding put it, the face of opposition to DADT reform is Elaine Donnelley, for crying out loud! And you will remember that her last testimony before a Congressional committee hearing on this issue sparked outright laughter.
And yet, what reaction are we getting to questions on DADT repeal? Somehow, that timeline keeps getting longer and longer. Not good enough.
(Stray thought: If, as seems to be the rationale, gay issues are too likely to bring fire from the right [and the thinking there, if you can call it that, just floors me], it would appear that the administration is really not cynical enough to use them to draw fire away from the stimulus and health-care reform. Bunch of tyros.)
that Camille Paglia is a self-absorbed idiot, look no further:
Marriage is a religious concept that should be defined and administered only by churches.
(And yes, the link is to the right page -- the rest of the piece is a wandering, toothless, bad-tempered ramble that doesn't make a whole lot of sense in any context, so don't waste your time looking for the beginning of it. It's not worth the trouble.)
Well, OK -- so in one declarative sentence Paglia demonstrates that she doesn't know history, doesn't know how America works, and is given to ridiculous decrees. Please note that marriage has always been much more a civil institution than a religious one, even within the modern West, as Andrew Sullivan points out. It's even less a religious institution as you go farther back and spread the net wider, so basically Paglia's full of the brown stinky on that score.
As it happens, clergy who perform marriages do so as agents of the state: in all states, I believe, they are granted the courtesy of acting as magistrates and justices of the peace for that purpose -- and that prupose alone. They have no inherent right to do so, and any marriage performed without an authorized signature on that state license is not recognized.
And no, marriage is not a religious concept. It is a social/cultural concept. You can just as easily, and with just as much accuracy, if not more, call it a business arrangement, at least in the 5000-year-old "tradition" so often cited by the rabids.
And, big surprise! In the rest of that section of her screed, Paglia falls right into line with the "gay" conservative position that we should just STFU and go back in the closet.
In any event, my enjoyment of the [Harry Potter] books is enhanced by the knowledge that it also drives the fundamentalist right nuts. Ever since the books gained great popularity, they've been on the warpath against Harry Potter, as you can see from the excerpt from Jesus Camp above, in which we see the head of the camp telling children that Potter should be put to death. (Talk about Republicans for Voldemort!)
It's worth remembering just how deep that animus runs, as CLS at Classically Liberal explains in painstaking detail:
[I]t seems that when someone is campaigning against the book or the films, the leader of the campaign is invariably a fundamentalist Christian. For instance, fundamentalist Laura Mallory, of Lawrenceville, Georgia, tried to ban the Potter books from the public school library. She says the books have “evil themes” because they speak of witchcraft and spells. And the Bible clearly teaches such things are immoral. One child who opposed her efforts saw things more clearly. He said, “never at any time did I think the books are true.” But fundamentalists do think that there is truth in these books. Unlike most rational people, they do believe that witches and spells exist. They have no choice since the Bible condemns such things. To say they don’t exist questions the infallibility of Scripture. Most people are not offended by the theme of the Potter series because they don’t believe the “dark forces” actually exist.
Read the full post -- it's hysterical.
The degree of ignorance in the fundamentalist position is staggering, or it would be if I sxpected them to know anything about others' religions. I guess it's OK just to repeat that they're all false, so you don 't really have to know anything about what they teach. I find particularly annoying the conflation of Witchcraft and Satanism -- sorry, honey, but as far as I'm concerned, Satan is a Christian deity, not one of ours. Of course, they don't recognize Witchcraft as a religion, but then, they don't recognize the Pope as Christian.
And, of course, since the Bible says it's bad and the separation of church and state is a myth, there's no problem with demanding that public schools censor them.
I realize it's grossly politically incorrect, but as far as I can determine, anyone who thinks any sacred text is factual is missing a few screws. Fundamentalists of any stripe obviously have limited imaginations and have no idea of metaphor at all. One wonders how they function in this world.
Ann Althouse has a post that has some interesting tidbits in it. A discussion of the validity of conservatism as proved by Darwinism, according to Larry Arnhardt, who apparently knows less about Darwin than he does about history:
Darwinists and conservatives share a similar view of human beings: they are imperfect; they have organized in male-dominated hierarchies; they have a natural instinct for accumulation and power; and their moral thought has evolved over time.
The institutions that successfully evolved to deal with this natural order were conservative ones, founded in sentiment, tradition and judgment, like limited government and a system of balances to curb unchecked power, he explains. Unlike leftists, who assume “a utopian vision of human nature” liberated from the constraints of biology, [political scientist Larry] Arnhart says, conservatives assume that evolved social traditions have more wisdom than rationally planned reforms.
There are some assumptions in these statements that don't quite hold up to examination.
(Reading his comments in light of what conservatism has become in the last generation is the irony of the day -- maybe of the month. His arguments don't have a lot to do with the Bush-league stuff we're seeing these days. Limited government? Gone. Checks and balances? Anathema. Male-dominated hierarchies and accumulation and power are still going strong.)
Darwinism has periodically been invoked as a paradigm for social organization, and it always comes a cropper. The only area outside of biology I've ever seen that can make use of the concepts of evolution is linguistics. (I think I've discussed Merritt Ruhlen's excellent The Origin of Language in that context.) Darwinism vis-a-vis society generally works out as a rationale by the top of the food chain for maintaining the status quo. I haven't read Arnart's book (and I have no intention of doing so -- it would probably give me fits), so I'm simply going to focus on the implications of what Althouse has quoted.
The most glaring flaw is the first sentence of the second paragraph. Cart, horse. Arnhart arbitrarily designates historical institutions as "conservative." It's not even a complete list. How about infanticide? Is that a conservative institution? It has ample historical and biological precedent. Polygamy and harems? Lots of them in many societies, and that's an institution that also appears in our nearest relatives. What about the institution of the berdache in North American societies and similar institutions elsewhere? What's his conservative/Darwinian explanation for that? Representative democracy? That's certainly anti-Darwinian. What about those societies that have been matriarchal or matrilineal, such as the early Celts and the Pelasgian peoples (pre-Indo-European) of Greece?
He also, I think. misrepresents the liberal view of human nature. He leaves out two of our most salient characteristics: we as a species are highly adaptable and easily educable. (I know, the "easily" part is open to debate, but comparatively speaking, we can learn faster and more completely than any other species.) That is really what the "utopian vision" is founded on. The Founders, of course, were the products of classical liberalism, so I could make the argument that he is arguing against the American system of government here. It certainly has some utopian features.
OK -- that's just from a paragraph and a half of Arnhart's thought, and I'm not even pursuing some of his points.
The more I think about this, the more I'm inclined just to throw up my hands. What a putz.
(PS -- Looking at this again, I didn't really mean this to be a "But what about. . . ?" post, but it seems to me that Arnhart is being very selective in his examples of "conservative" institutions that are the product of evolution, and drawing sweeping generalizations based on a highly edited survey of the evidence. In other words, I think my examples are bigger than his examples. Read that as you will.)
I'm borrowing a title from Atrios. My version has a few additions, though.
I just finished Octavia E. Butler's Lilith's Brood (also published as Xenogenesis), which actually turned out to be a subtle and damning examination of do-gooders, those who are out to save us from ourselves. I'm not sure that was intentional, but the aliens who rescue humanity operate on the same basis as the people in this post from Digby. They are going to fix things in the way they "know" is best, because they "know" we're not capable of doing it ourselves. That includes making our decisions for us, because we're not capable of doing it right.
Digby's post focuses on anti-evolutionists and forced birth advocates, who are largely on the right side of the aisle (not entirely, especially the latter). Don't think that syndrome is exclusive to the right, however. I'm reminded first of the politically correct assholes who want to scrub the n-word out of Huck Finn lest someone be offended by reading what is perhaps the greatest work of American literature. They're the same people who have children arrested for being jerks, which kids are on the average of about once an hour.
And they all lie about it. The worst are the Christanist-jihad organizations like American Family Association and Traditional Values Coalition, who don't consider factual accuracy as a legitimate tool of public discourse, but PETA has had its moments. (It is remarkable, though, that the right seems to have the least problem with making shit up.)
PS -- I didn't like the book. Butler is (was -- she died last year) a highly regarded writer, mostly of science fiction, and I suspect, after reading this trilogy and her duet, the Parables books, that is largely due to feminist/post-colonialist critical theory. I could be wrong, but quite frankly, her work seems to creak along under the weight of its own seriousness, and I have never encountered a writer as humorless, ever. Even Hemingway could be light from time to time. I mean, one of the things about entertainment is that it should be . . . well, entertaining. (The review will be up at GMR on May 6.)
I should say, all over David Brooks. I don't understand why anyone reads David Brooks to begin with, much less pays attention to him. The man's an idiot.
Read Greenwald's post, especially if you have any familiarity with Brooks' writings. It's right on target.
Brooks doesn't speak for me, that's for damned sure, and last time I checked, I'm still an American.
Sara Robinson over at Orcinus reminded me of this travesty from the late, great 109th Congress. You see, they did manage to pass a law or two:
We all know that whenever the 109th Congress was faced between a choice between fear and common sense, common sense was always the loser by a knockout. One of the greatest monuments to their casual relationship with reality has to be the federal Real ID act -- a Congressional done deal that's going to have all 300 million of us tagged for surveillance like feedlot beef within the next few years.
Looks like the states, where there is still some contact with reality (well, in most of them, anyhow), are digging in their heels:
The Rebel Alliance is forming -- and has begun to strike back. Last Thursday, Maine's legislature fired the first shot over the bow, telling Congress point-blank just where they could stick the whole idiotic idea. According to the Times, both houses voted -- unanimously in the Senate and 137 to 4 in the House -- to reject the act wholesale. They're also formally asking Congress to repeal Real ID. The ACLU confirms that several other states, including Georgia, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Washington, may soon fall in behind Maine's lead.
This is one of those rare situations where an important national civil liberties battle can successfully be fought at the state level. Given the short deadlines they're under, most states are going to be working out their policy responses to Real ID between now and this summer. Fortunately, it’s usually a lot easier to get the attention of a state legislator than it is to get through to a Congressperson -- so these people, in every state, need to be hearing loudly from us that Real ID is an unreal idea. It's going to be up to the individual states to hold the line, and refuse to cave in and do the dirty work of a federal government that has lost all sight of its own Constitutional boundaries.
Let's hear it for Maine. Now if Illinois will jump on the bandwagon. . . . (yeah, right.)
Come to think of it, write your congresscritter, too. Especially if it's a Republican.
A very good post by Josh Marshall on Congress' control of the purse strings and why Congress must exercise it.
. . . we have a president who has a basic contempt for our system of government and the rule of law and that the normal rules of inter-branch comity simply aren't in effect.
Nancy Pelosi has taken exactly the right tack on this, with her declaration that Congress will not fund the president's escalation of the war in Iraq -- and please note that critical point: will not fund the escalation.
"If the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have to justify it," said Pelosi, speaking to host Bob Schieffer. "And this is new for him because up until now the Republican Congress has given him a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no conditions. And we’ve gone into this situation, which is a war without end, which the American people have rejected."
"If the president chooses to escalate the war, in his budget request we want to see a distinction between what is there to support the troops who are there now. The American people and the Congress support those troops. We will not abandon them."
Barack Obama, of whom the more I hear the less I like, seems to be coming down on both sides of the question. On the one hand, he's opposing the "surge." On the other hand, he's claining the Congress can't stop it. (I've seen him quoted on both sides of the question in the past couple of days -- I'll post the links if I can find them again.)
Joe Biden, whom I have never considered presidential material, screwed it up even worse:
MR. RUSSERT: ...there’s really little Democrats can do. Why not cut off funding for the war?
SEN. BIDEN: I’ve been there, Tim. You can’t do it.
MR. RUSSERT: Why?
SEN. BIDEN: You can’t do it. It’s—what—because it made sense in the Constitution when you said you could cut off funding when you had no standing army. We have a standing army with a budget of hundreds of billions of dollars. You can’t go in and, like a tinker toy, and play around and say, “You can’t spend the money on this piece and this piece and”—he—able—he’ll be able to keep those troops there forever constitutionally if he wants to.
It's unconstitutional to tell the president no? As John Murtha pointed out, that's bullshit.
UPDATE:Mary Lederman pretty much demolishes Biden's position"
Even if there were a prohibition in the Constitution against so-called congressional "micromanagement" of a war -- and there's not -- this wouldn't be that. There would be no congressional officials here overseeing the President's discretionary responsibilities; no requirement that the President get approval of one or both Houses before taking certain actions. There would, instead, simply be limitations on a war imposed by statutes passed with the President's signature or by supermajorities of both Houses of Congress over the President's veto.
