This post typifies why I'm about to take Andrew Sullivan off my bookmarks. I don't know whether it's a matter of my greater awareness of the insular mentality afflicting the Washington establishment -- of which he certainly is one -- or that Sullivan has just become more and more irrelevant. Here is his response to some justified criticism of his attacks on the Clintons:
No. I'm not objective on the Clintons. But it's an opinion gained from many years of observing their cynicism, shallowness, self-serving machinations and self-righteousness. And, no, I do not believe that Bill Clinton is doing what he's doing out of marital duty either. Please. We all know what Bill Clinton believes he owes his wife as a wife. But what he owes her as a political device to regain power for the two of them is another matter. And the truth is: former president Bush never trashed his son's rivals as Bill Clinton has Obama; and has kept an admirable arm's length distance from his son's administration. Bill Clinton is campaigning for himself as well right now, his own future power. He'll be in a Clinton White House, ready from Day One. And if they get there for a third term, the marital psychodrama they inflicted on us for eight long years will be with us once again.
This is just so blindly wrong that it's hard to know where to start. He criticizes the Clintons' cynicism, shallowness, etc. to start, and this is a man who supported Bush -- possibly the most cynical, most shallow, and most self-serving occupant of the White House ever -- until 2004, and then reluctantly -- very reluctantly -- withdrew his support. He still thinks the war in Iraq is justified. So Bill Clinton will have a major role in an HRC White House. When it was his White House, he did a pretty damned good job, so what's the problem there? Certainly we were better off than under the Rove White House. As for the "marital psychodrama," excuse me -- who inflicted that on us? It wasn't Bill Clinton's idea. You can thank a Republican Congress out to grab power by any means available for that one, aided and abetted by a corporate Republican press, of which Sullivan appears to be a member in good standing.
And so Andrew Sullivan is revealed as just another Republican Establishment pundit, blinders firmly in place, who expounds profoundly on things he knows very little about (his commentaries on William Saletan's race/intelligence bullshit are prime examples) because, apparently, he has an entitlement to "shape" public opinion. And, like so many others of his class, he reveals only ignorance and arrogance.
Sullivan has just lost it.
Footnote: I'm not crazy for Hillary Clinton as a possible president, but I think she'd be effective. I just don't think she's progressive enough to suit me.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Of Note: On Morality
Fascinating post at Mahablog on the neurological basis for morality. I don't have time to go into it right now (I've about used up my blogging allotment for the day), but it's worth a read.
Thanks to the marvels of modern technology
I lost this morning's posts when my system froze while trying to open a video clip. Following is a reconstruction of one of them.
Evangelical Democrats?
This one comes via Steve Benen at Crooks and Liars, from Faith in Public Life:
They did it again! Just as in Iowa, yesterday’s media-sponsored Election Day poll failed to ask Democrats in New Hampshire if they were evangelical. Voters from both parties were asked about their church attendance and if they were Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, Other Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Something else, or None. But only Republicans were asked if they were born-again or evangelical Christian.
This is something that has sort of bothered me subliminally for some time -- the idea, pushed by the Republican Christianists, that the only people of faith in this country are on the far right. On its face, that's ridiculous, but it permeates the discourse at this point, not least, as the writer here points out, because of the press.
It would be informative to know the percentage of evangelicals who voted for Democrats yesterday. It would be informative to know which Democratic candidates were helped or hurt last night by Democratic evangelical turnout.
It certainly would, and I would guess there would be some surprises. However, don't look for any such reports from the MSM, unless it turns out the Britney Spears is a left-wing evangelical.
However, there is a bit of overreaching here:
No party can own any faith. Evangelicals have broadened their agenda to include care for the planet, the poor and the stranger, and as a result are increasingly independent politically. Exit polls need to abandon the hidebound frames of the culture war -- evangelicals already have.
Well, not exactly. I don't know if you remember, but I certainly do, that when one of the leaders of the American Evangelical Association (I believe that's the name -- having a small senior moment here) recommended that the Association broaden its agenda along just those lines, the Dobson Gang immediately wrote his superiors demanding that he be relieved of his duties and his recommendations ignored, lest the shift in emphasis take resources away from fighting the real enemy -- gay men and lesbians. I haven't heard that Dobson has become a tree-hugger of a sudden.
So, it's not a done deal, and I'm not going to greet evangelicals as a whole with open arms to the ranks of social progressives. They still need to demonstrate that they are willing to listen as well as to talk.
Footnote: As an illustration on how the conservative/evangelical Christian agenda has not changed appreciably, see this post at Pam's House Blend.
They did it again! Just as in Iowa, yesterday’s media-sponsored Election Day poll failed to ask Democrats in New Hampshire if they were evangelical. Voters from both parties were asked about their church attendance and if they were Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, Other Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Something else, or None. But only Republicans were asked if they were born-again or evangelical Christian.
This is something that has sort of bothered me subliminally for some time -- the idea, pushed by the Republican Christianists, that the only people of faith in this country are on the far right. On its face, that's ridiculous, but it permeates the discourse at this point, not least, as the writer here points out, because of the press.
It would be informative to know the percentage of evangelicals who voted for Democrats yesterday. It would be informative to know which Democratic candidates were helped or hurt last night by Democratic evangelical turnout.
It certainly would, and I would guess there would be some surprises. However, don't look for any such reports from the MSM, unless it turns out the Britney Spears is a left-wing evangelical.
However, there is a bit of overreaching here:
No party can own any faith. Evangelicals have broadened their agenda to include care for the planet, the poor and the stranger, and as a result are increasingly independent politically. Exit polls need to abandon the hidebound frames of the culture war -- evangelicals already have.
Well, not exactly. I don't know if you remember, but I certainly do, that when one of the leaders of the American Evangelical Association (I believe that's the name -- having a small senior moment here) recommended that the Association broaden its agenda along just those lines, the Dobson Gang immediately wrote his superiors demanding that he be relieved of his duties and his recommendations ignored, lest the shift in emphasis take resources away from fighting the real enemy -- gay men and lesbians. I haven't heard that Dobson has become a tree-hugger of a sudden.
So, it's not a done deal, and I'm not going to greet evangelicals as a whole with open arms to the ranks of social progressives. They still need to demonstrate that they are willing to listen as well as to talk.
Footnote: As an illustration on how the conservative/evangelical Christian agenda has not changed appreciably, see this post at Pam's House Blend.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
OK: Time To Bash the Press Again
An interesting commentary by echidne on one of my favorite targets, the press. Interesting, I should say, as far as it goes, which is, like most of the commentary I see on the MSM, identifying symptoms. I tend to take a slightly darker view of life, apparently, and tend to zero in on the personal and sometimes seamy.
This article at Politico is quite a good summary of many of the criticisms the blogs have directed at the way the mainstream media covers politics. It defines three problem areas for political reporters: seeing election campaigns as horse races (or as theater performances), living in an echo chamber, and having personal biases influence the reporting. And oh boy but are those problem areas!
The Poliltico piece she cites essentially covers the same points in more detail. What I'm seeing underlying this is a sort of double-barreled motivating force: the "in-group" mentality, and power -- what the blogosphere has begun to call "the Village." The Village, of course, is the Washington insiders -- the press, pundits and politicos -- who honestly do seem to think that the rest of us out here should just go back to sleep and let them make all the decisions. The problem is, they're doing a really crappy job of it. It's symptomatic of the whole syndrome that William Kristol, who has not been right about anything in so long that everyone's forgotten when he went off track -- if he was ever on it -- is now an NYT OpEd columnist. As if thh Times didn't have enough problems with credibility. The point is, of course, that the whole situation there is a joke, and the only ones who don't get it are the Times
The whole power thing started with the Reagan presidency, simply because reporters who got out of line lost access. That phenomenon has transformed itself into a true in group -- what some on the left (most notably Atrios) call "the kewl kids." That's a sobriquet that may be more accurate than even Atrios realizes: remember how the high-school in group was so sure of themselves, at the top of the food chain as they were, while the rest of us thought they were jerks (even though we secretly wanted to be them)? And remember when we realized just how irrelevant they were?
Guess what?
The New Hampshire call (and the reporting on the presidential race to date, as disgraceful as it's been) is merely the latest in a long list of egg-on-face moments that by right should be shaking up the press establishment. Know what? It won't. It will be swept under the rug along with the other things that the press doesn't want to think about.
In the meantime, they still think they are molding public opinion. The problem with that is, as much as the idea gives them a collective woody, the public doesn't seem to be buying it any more.
But that's the syndrome: they are the kewl kids, and they're the kewl kids because they tell everyone what to think. The only way they manage to maintain that idea is that they don't listen to anyone but each other. Meanwhile, the rest of us aren't paying attention very much any more.
Something in the back of my head is saying "emperor, clothes."
This article at Politico is quite a good summary of many of the criticisms the blogs have directed at the way the mainstream media covers politics. It defines three problem areas for political reporters: seeing election campaigns as horse races (or as theater performances), living in an echo chamber, and having personal biases influence the reporting. And oh boy but are those problem areas!
The Poliltico piece she cites essentially covers the same points in more detail. What I'm seeing underlying this is a sort of double-barreled motivating force: the "in-group" mentality, and power -- what the blogosphere has begun to call "the Village." The Village, of course, is the Washington insiders -- the press, pundits and politicos -- who honestly do seem to think that the rest of us out here should just go back to sleep and let them make all the decisions. The problem is, they're doing a really crappy job of it. It's symptomatic of the whole syndrome that William Kristol, who has not been right about anything in so long that everyone's forgotten when he went off track -- if he was ever on it -- is now an NYT OpEd columnist. As if thh Times didn't have enough problems with credibility. The point is, of course, that the whole situation there is a joke, and the only ones who don't get it are the Times
The whole power thing started with the Reagan presidency, simply because reporters who got out of line lost access. That phenomenon has transformed itself into a true in group -- what some on the left (most notably Atrios) call "the kewl kids." That's a sobriquet that may be more accurate than even Atrios realizes: remember how the high-school in group was so sure of themselves, at the top of the food chain as they were, while the rest of us thought they were jerks (even though we secretly wanted to be them)? And remember when we realized just how irrelevant they were?
Guess what?
The New Hampshire call (and the reporting on the presidential race to date, as disgraceful as it's been) is merely the latest in a long list of egg-on-face moments that by right should be shaking up the press establishment. Know what? It won't. It will be swept under the rug along with the other things that the press doesn't want to think about.
In the meantime, they still think they are molding public opinion. The problem with that is, as much as the idea gives them a collective woody, the public doesn't seem to be buying it any more.
But that's the syndrome: they are the kewl kids, and they're the kewl kids because they tell everyone what to think. The only way they manage to maintain that idea is that they don't listen to anyone but each other. Meanwhile, the rest of us aren't paying attention very much any more.
Something in the back of my head is saying "emperor, clothes."
Liberal Fascism
Jonah Goldberg, a prime example of nepotism run amok, has been the major target of the left blogosphere lately (when they're not going after Hillary Clinton and/or the entire Republican stable) for his new book, which so far seems to prove something, but not, I think, what Goldberg had intended. John Cole sums it up nicely:
First there was Godwin’s Law. Then we had the less noticeable Kevin’s Law and Cole’s Law. Now, after reading the Jonah Goldberg interview in Salon, our commentariat has come up with the “Goldberg Principle”:
There you have the key concept in right wing discourse.
Update:
Dave Neiwert has concise and deadly review of Goldberg's magnum opus, as well as comments on Goldberg's response. Regrettably, Neiwert is holding off on any further substantive commentaries until Goldberg actually addresses the basic issue in the review, which he has not done -- and will not do. He can't. He doesn't seem to be equipped intellectually to deal with substantive questions, nor, apparently, emotionally to deal with disagreement (another key element in right wing discourse). What will happen is that Goldberg will slough off the criticism and loudly proclaim that, because Neiwert is not responding to his response (inadequate and beside-the-point as it is), that proves the invalidity of Neiwert's original comments. This is a standard tactic, and one that Neiwert should be aware of. After all, it's this kind of projection that has fueled the right wing noise machine for a generation or more.
Actually, Neiwert has several posts on Goldberg's book, here, here, and here. You might wonder why I -- and more important, Neiwert -- am spending so much time on a logically challenged piece of right-wing propaganda. Neiwert's purview is tracking hate groups and their doings in America. That's mostly what he and Sara Robinson report on. I'm interested in the overall effect of the semantic distortions by the right and left and how they affect our understanding of the reality of our political context. (You may have noticed that I have much more to say about distortions on the right; that's because, as far as I can tell, there are more of them and they are more serious.) So Goldberg's book, as ludicrous as it is, is important because it's another effort to warp the public discourse toward an extremist position. The fact that Goldberg's thesis and his arguments in support of it are so much bullshit simply won't register with most of his readers -- and, since they're likely to be on the right to begin with, that will be because they don't want to think critically about this sort of thing. It is, however, ammunition: it's published, it's out there, and so it becomes justification for their position, no matter that it has no real substance.
First there was Godwin’s Law. Then we had the less noticeable Kevin’s Law and Cole’s Law. Now, after reading the Jonah Goldberg interview in Salon, our commentariat has come up with the “Goldberg Principle”:
You can prove any thesis to be true if you make up your own definitions of words.
There you have the key concept in right wing discourse.
Update:
Dave Neiwert has concise and deadly review of Goldberg's magnum opus, as well as comments on Goldberg's response. Regrettably, Neiwert is holding off on any further substantive commentaries until Goldberg actually addresses the basic issue in the review, which he has not done -- and will not do. He can't. He doesn't seem to be equipped intellectually to deal with substantive questions, nor, apparently, emotionally to deal with disagreement (another key element in right wing discourse). What will happen is that Goldberg will slough off the criticism and loudly proclaim that, because Neiwert is not responding to his response (inadequate and beside-the-point as it is), that proves the invalidity of Neiwert's original comments. This is a standard tactic, and one that Neiwert should be aware of. After all, it's this kind of projection that has fueled the right wing noise machine for a generation or more.
Actually, Neiwert has several posts on Goldberg's book, here, here, and here. You might wonder why I -- and more important, Neiwert -- am spending so much time on a logically challenged piece of right-wing propaganda. Neiwert's purview is tracking hate groups and their doings in America. That's mostly what he and Sara Robinson report on. I'm interested in the overall effect of the semantic distortions by the right and left and how they affect our understanding of the reality of our political context. (You may have noticed that I have much more to say about distortions on the right; that's because, as far as I can tell, there are more of them and they are more serious.) So Goldberg's book, as ludicrous as it is, is important because it's another effort to warp the public discourse toward an extremist position. The fact that Goldberg's thesis and his arguments in support of it are so much bullshit simply won't register with most of his readers -- and, since they're likely to be on the right to begin with, that will be because they don't want to think critically about this sort of thing. It is, however, ammunition: it's published, it's out there, and so it becomes justification for their position, no matter that it has no real substance.
Vote Fraud
Amanda Terkel comments on the real voter fraud, which the ID laws don't touch, and a concise discussion of the ID laws and what their effect is going to be if the Supreme Court, as expected, supports the Indiana voter ID law.
Keep in mind that the Indiana law is only one facet of a nationwide Republican effort, led by the Republican Party's Department of Justice, to crack down on nonexistent "vote fraud" cases while ignoring corruption among office holders. The real fraud has been in the lack of paper trails from electronic voting machines, questionable counting procedures, placement of voting machines, hiding polling places, understaffing -- all things that will discourage working people from voting.
It occurs to me that the right to vote is one of those rights, like habeas corpus, that conservatives find questionable, especially the "strict constructionists" on the Court. After all, it's not mentioned specifically in the Constitution, so by their thinking, it doesn't exist. (Actually, I sort of take that back. Paragraph 2 of Article I says that Representatives shall be "chosen every second Year by the People of the several States," although it doesn't specify a direct vote. Amendment XIV, however, does specifically refer to the "right to vote." So it is in the Constitution. Sort of.)
Keep in mind that the Indiana law is only one facet of a nationwide Republican effort, led by the Republican Party's Department of Justice, to crack down on nonexistent "vote fraud" cases while ignoring corruption among office holders. The real fraud has been in the lack of paper trails from electronic voting machines, questionable counting procedures, placement of voting machines, hiding polling places, understaffing -- all things that will discourage working people from voting.
It occurs to me that the right to vote is one of those rights, like habeas corpus, that conservatives find questionable, especially the "strict constructionists" on the Court. After all, it's not mentioned specifically in the Constitution, so by their thinking, it doesn't exist. (Actually, I sort of take that back. Paragraph 2 of Article I says that Representatives shall be "chosen every second Year by the People of the several States," although it doesn't specify a direct vote. Amendment XIV, however, does specifically refer to the "right to vote." So it is in the Constitution. Sort of.)
Platinum Parachutes
I don't often comment on economic issues, because to be perfectly honest, the
economy is a different world for me. I can understand that things are either bad or good, but the subtleties of the mechanisms escape me. However, I can smell the shit in the corner, and with the economy taking over as the number one issue among voters, it's worth comment. This is just one aspect:
Bush is not the first to reward failure. It's been going on in corporate America for quite some time. John Aravosis at AmericaBlog has some comments on one of the latest examples -- CEO Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide Financial, up to its neck in the subprime fiasco, which has just been bought out by Bank of America. From LA Times:
Steven Castello, a maintenance worker in Salinas, Calif., says he believes in accountability.
After running up thousands of dollars in debt on nine credit cards, he didn't file bankruptcy. He didn't try to dodge his obligations. Instead, Castello, 57, went to a credit counseling service and, patiently, painfully, paid his bills.
"This was my foolish mistake," he told me. "I had to take responsibility."
Compare Castello's situation with that of Angelo Mozilo, the well-tanned chief exec of mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp.
After driving his company to the brink of bankruptcy (or so the rumor mill had it last week), Mozilo now stands to make as much as $115 million in severance-related compensation if an acquisition of Countrywide by Bank of America goes through, which it almost certainly will.
I suppose the difference is that Mr. Castello was screwing up his own finances. Mozilo was screwing up other people's. The consequences are a little different, obviously:
So what sort of consequences will Mozilo face for his managerial failure?
Aside from nearly $88 million in cash, he'll have to make do with not one but two pensions, accelerated payment of stock options, free rides on the company jet and his country club bills being paid until 2011.
Man, that has to sting.
"This is another clear example of pay for failure," said Fred Whittlesey, principal consultant with Compensation Venture Group in Seattle. "How many more examples of this will we have to see before this gets fixed?"
This seems to be the reigning paradigm in corporate America: reward failure, and reward it big. It's no surprise that our corporate president is following the same pattern. After all, every business he was ever involved with went belly up. Now he's working on the country as a whole. It's the same pattern:
One problem is that big companies' boards are frequently dominated by senior execs from other companies, who have little interest in drawing the line on runaway pay.
And who is the administration dominated by? People who have no interest in accountability because they're the ones who should be accountable.
I knew I should have become a CEO of some company -- I'd be just as bad at it as the ones who are raking in millions. Then I could run for president.
Footnote: This is not an isolated incident. Merrill Lynch is in deep doo-doo, and Aravosis reports that former CEO Stanley ONeal walked away with $161 million as his share of the debacle.
economy is a different world for me. I can understand that things are either bad or good, but the subtleties of the mechanisms escape me. However, I can smell the shit in the corner, and with the economy taking over as the number one issue among voters, it's worth comment. This is just one aspect:
Bush is not the first to reward failure. It's been going on in corporate America for quite some time. John Aravosis at AmericaBlog has some comments on one of the latest examples -- CEO Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide Financial, up to its neck in the subprime fiasco, which has just been bought out by Bank of America. From LA Times:
Steven Castello, a maintenance worker in Salinas, Calif., says he believes in accountability.
After running up thousands of dollars in debt on nine credit cards, he didn't file bankruptcy. He didn't try to dodge his obligations. Instead, Castello, 57, went to a credit counseling service and, patiently, painfully, paid his bills.
"This was my foolish mistake," he told me. "I had to take responsibility."
Compare Castello's situation with that of Angelo Mozilo, the well-tanned chief exec of mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp.
After driving his company to the brink of bankruptcy (or so the rumor mill had it last week), Mozilo now stands to make as much as $115 million in severance-related compensation if an acquisition of Countrywide by Bank of America goes through, which it almost certainly will.
I suppose the difference is that Mr. Castello was screwing up his own finances. Mozilo was screwing up other people's. The consequences are a little different, obviously:
So what sort of consequences will Mozilo face for his managerial failure?
Aside from nearly $88 million in cash, he'll have to make do with not one but two pensions, accelerated payment of stock options, free rides on the company jet and his country club bills being paid until 2011.
Man, that has to sting.
"This is another clear example of pay for failure," said Fred Whittlesey, principal consultant with Compensation Venture Group in Seattle. "How many more examples of this will we have to see before this gets fixed?"
This seems to be the reigning paradigm in corporate America: reward failure, and reward it big. It's no surprise that our corporate president is following the same pattern. After all, every business he was ever involved with went belly up. Now he's working on the country as a whole. It's the same pattern:
One problem is that big companies' boards are frequently dominated by senior execs from other companies, who have little interest in drawing the line on runaway pay.
And who is the administration dominated by? People who have no interest in accountability because they're the ones who should be accountable.
I knew I should have become a CEO of some company -- I'd be just as bad at it as the ones who are raking in millions. Then I could run for president.
Footnote: This is not an isolated incident. Merrill Lynch is in deep doo-doo, and Aravosis reports that former CEO Stanley ONeal walked away with $161 million as his share of the debacle.
Reality Check
Steve Benen at Crooks and Liars sort of puts his foot in it in this
commentary about a possible Bush surge in the polls:
I was especially amused by the notion that the White House is anxious to work with his “GOP congressional allies” on “continuing his tax cuts.” They do know the Dems are in the majority in both chambers, don’t they?
They probably do. The problem is, the Dems don't.
commentary about a possible Bush surge in the polls:
I was especially amused by the notion that the White House is anxious to work with his “GOP congressional allies” on “continuing his tax cuts.” They do know the Dems are in the majority in both chambers, don’t they?
They probably do. The problem is, the Dems don't.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Voting
It seems likely that the Supreme Court is against it. From NYT via Crooks and Liars:
The justices’ questioning indicated that a majority did not accept the challengers’ basic argument — that voter-impersonation fraud is not a problem, so requiring voters to produce government-issued photo identification at the polls is an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote.
The tenor of the argument suggested, however, that rather than simply decide the case in favor of the state, a majority of five justices would go further and rule that the challenge to the statute, the strictest voter-identification law in the country, was improperly brought in the first place. Such a ruling could make it much more difficult to challenge any new state election regulations before they go into effect.
There you have it: when you've lost the Court, you've lost the country. This is some of the real damage that the radical right has done. And it's going to take decades to fix it.
Here's an interesting post on the mechanics of SCOTUS decision-making by Sandy Levinson at Balkinization. Read the comments as well -- very interesting discussion. And here are comments by Scott Lemieux that point out some fo the implications of the Court's likely decision:
Rather, indigent voters would have to wait until they've been disenfranchised (although the state can burden their rights in order to address a non-existent problem) before filing a lengthy and expensive lawsuit after the results of the election have already been entrenched. This doesn't make any sense unless you just don't care about poor voters being disenfranchised, so you can see why it's so appealing to the Court's conservatives. Trying to do away with facial challenges irrespective of how illogical the result would be is likely to be a major weapon of the Roberts Court -- this could also be used to gut constitutional protections of reproductive freedom, for example.
The Court as presently constituted is not friendly to ordinary citizens. That's been amply proven already. It seems obvious to me that the Court will decide on ideological (i.e., party) lines. After all, that's why Roberts and Alito are there.
The justices’ questioning indicated that a majority did not accept the challengers’ basic argument — that voter-impersonation fraud is not a problem, so requiring voters to produce government-issued photo identification at the polls is an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote.
The tenor of the argument suggested, however, that rather than simply decide the case in favor of the state, a majority of five justices would go further and rule that the challenge to the statute, the strictest voter-identification law in the country, was improperly brought in the first place. Such a ruling could make it much more difficult to challenge any new state election regulations before they go into effect.
There you have it: when you've lost the Court, you've lost the country. This is some of the real damage that the radical right has done. And it's going to take decades to fix it.
Here's an interesting post on the mechanics of SCOTUS decision-making by Sandy Levinson at Balkinization. Read the comments as well -- very interesting discussion. And here are comments by Scott Lemieux that point out some fo the implications of the Court's likely decision:
Rather, indigent voters would have to wait until they've been disenfranchised (although the state can burden their rights in order to address a non-existent problem) before filing a lengthy and expensive lawsuit after the results of the election have already been entrenched. This doesn't make any sense unless you just don't care about poor voters being disenfranchised, so you can see why it's so appealing to the Court's conservatives. Trying to do away with facial challenges irrespective of how illogical the result would be is likely to be a major weapon of the Roberts Court -- this could also be used to gut constitutional protections of reproductive freedom, for example.
The Court as presently constituted is not friendly to ordinary citizens. That's been amply proven already. It seems obvious to me that the Court will decide on ideological (i.e., party) lines. After all, that's why Roberts and Alito are there.
St. John McCain
is going to clean up everyone's act. From Crooks and Liars:
“I’m going to raise the level of political dialog in America,” McCain, R-Ariz., said at a campaign rally in central Michigan, “and I’m going to treat my opponents with respect and demand that they treat me with respect.”
After he's elected, of course.
By the way, this story is a couple days old, but very revealing, I think, of the level of leadership we could expect from a McCain presidency:
As for pulling out of Iraq, McCain said there is only one man who will determine when that is appropriate and the name he mentioned was not his own.
“There is only one man who should decide when to withdraw from Iraq and that is (General) David Petraeus,” the Arizona Senator said.
Excuse me -- just who is supposed to be Commander-in-Chief?
“I’m going to raise the level of political dialog in America,” McCain, R-Ariz., said at a campaign rally in central Michigan, “and I’m going to treat my opponents with respect and demand that they treat me with respect.”
After he's elected, of course.
By the way, this story is a couple days old, but very revealing, I think, of the level of leadership we could expect from a McCain presidency:
As for pulling out of Iraq, McCain said there is only one man who will determine when that is appropriate and the name he mentioned was not his own.
“There is only one man who should decide when to withdraw from Iraq and that is (General) David Petraeus,” the Arizona Senator said.
Excuse me -- just who is supposed to be Commander-in-Chief?
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Comment Moderation
I've been forced to enable comment moderation on this site because of a spate of spam. I do try to get here every day, so there might be a slight delay in seeing your comments posted, but not, I hope, an awful one.
Thank the armies of the brainless who think that my site is their soapbox. It's not. It's my soapbox.
Thank the armies of the brainless who think that my site is their soapbox. It's not. It's my soapbox.
What Digby Said
Digby has a series of highly entertaining posts, here, here, and this one by dday.
I really don't have much to add to these, except to note that one thing about the blogosphere (at least the Hullabaloo, Orcinus, etc. wing of it): we get it.
I really don't have much to add to these, except to note that one thing about the blogosphere (at least the Hullabaloo, Orcinus, etc. wing of it): we get it.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Impeachment
I don't understand why Nancy Pelosi has taken impeachment off the table. Down With Tyranny draws heavily on an OpEd by George McGovern to bring this question up again.
I have to say that I'm terrifically disappointed in Pelosi as Speaker, almost as much as I am in Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader. We were hoping for some opposition to the White House in 2006, in case no one noticed. Sadly, it seems the Republicans are still in control of Congress, no matter what the numbers say.
I have to say that I'm terrifically disappointed in Pelosi as Speaker, almost as much as I am in Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader. We were hoping for some opposition to the White House in 2006, in case no one noticed. Sadly, it seems the Republicans are still in control of Congress, no matter what the numbers say.
Felafel Boy
I honestly don't understand the appeal of a thug like Bill O'Reilly. My father used to watch him, mostly for laughs, I think. I happened to be visiting and O'Reilly was on the TV. My only comment was "He almost makes sense." My dad answered, "Almost."
He's gotten more extreme, from everything I hear. But I don't get the compulsive reporting in the left blogosphere on the doings of O'Reilly. He easily eclipses Malkin, Limbaugh, and Coulter as the featured wingnut on any given day. Maybe it's just another instance of O'Reilly continually insisting that he's important and people who shoul dknow better buy into it. His ego seems to have gotten completely out of hand, however. (It really amazes me that this story has showed up on every blog on my daily read list. Every one. Why? The man is a nonentity with a soapbox.)
He's gotten more extreme, from everything I hear. But I don't get the compulsive reporting in the left blogosphere on the doings of O'Reilly. He easily eclipses Malkin, Limbaugh, and Coulter as the featured wingnut on any given day. Maybe it's just another instance of O'Reilly continually insisting that he's important and people who shoul dknow better buy into it. His ego seems to have gotten completely out of hand, however. (It really amazes me that this story has showed up on every blog on my daily read list. Every one. Why? The man is a nonentity with a soapbox.)
The Anti-Populists
This is one of the most astonishing pieces of tripe I've ever seen -- fully the equal of William Saletan's racist screeds on intelligence. I guess it's true: if you think the country ends at the Potomac, you're missing something.
Obama
Barbara O'Brien at Mahablog has an excellent commentary on the way the MSM is spinning Obama's relationship with the left blogosphere. Obviously, people like Joe Klein and Dean Barnett, who might, after serious coaching, be able to construct an intelligent piece of writing if they worked together, never read blogs. The reality of the situation, as O'Brien points out, is simply thus:
The truth is, our greatest fear is that Barack Obama will turn out to be another Hillary Clinton — all centrist caution and status quo bias. (Note that Clinton now is attacking Obama for being too liberal.”)
I've been hearing about how inspiring Obama is as a speaker, but then so was Ronald Reagan, who was, mythology aside, at best a mediocre president (although he, unlike the present incumbent, had the wit to raise taxes when his tax cuts didn't work). the problem is, he may be charismatic as hell, but his message isn't. It's more of the same, sugar-coated. He's not particularly progressive, as Ezra Klein points out:
On the down side, some of his closing-weeks attacks are a bit, err, worrisome. Going after trial lawyers, for instance? Flooding the radio with ads claiming “Clinton would force people to buy insurance even if they can’t afford it” and “Barack Obama will cover everyone”? Suggesting that nominating Al Gore was a mistake and suggesting, wrongly, that Kerry was a divisive figure when he was nominated? Some of those statements are simply conservative arguments being uttered by a progressive. Some simply aren’t true.
Granted, politics is working here, in a tough primary race, but add to Klein's list the Donnie McClurkin debacle, and you see why I'm lukewarm. We really don't need Democrats parroting Republican talking points. We have enough of those in Congress.
The new tack seems to be hauling out Obama's record in the Illinois legislature. Look, he was not high profile. Yes, he got some fundamental laws passed that should have been no-brainers. But that's the point -- they were no-brainers, and if our legislature weren't so completely dysfunctional (and I don't think that's all bad), they would have been enacted ages ago.
I'm still lukewarm.
The truth is, our greatest fear is that Barack Obama will turn out to be another Hillary Clinton — all centrist caution and status quo bias. (Note that Clinton now is attacking Obama for being too liberal.”)
I've been hearing about how inspiring Obama is as a speaker, but then so was Ronald Reagan, who was, mythology aside, at best a mediocre president (although he, unlike the present incumbent, had the wit to raise taxes when his tax cuts didn't work). the problem is, he may be charismatic as hell, but his message isn't. It's more of the same, sugar-coated. He's not particularly progressive, as Ezra Klein points out:
On the down side, some of his closing-weeks attacks are a bit, err, worrisome. Going after trial lawyers, for instance? Flooding the radio with ads claiming “Clinton would force people to buy insurance even if they can’t afford it” and “Barack Obama will cover everyone”? Suggesting that nominating Al Gore was a mistake and suggesting, wrongly, that Kerry was a divisive figure when he was nominated? Some of those statements are simply conservative arguments being uttered by a progressive. Some simply aren’t true.
Granted, politics is working here, in a tough primary race, but add to Klein's list the Donnie McClurkin debacle, and you see why I'm lukewarm. We really don't need Democrats parroting Republican talking points. We have enough of those in Congress.
The new tack seems to be hauling out Obama's record in the Illinois legislature. Look, he was not high profile. Yes, he got some fundamental laws passed that should have been no-brainers. But that's the point -- they were no-brainers, and if our legislature weren't so completely dysfunctional (and I don't think that's all bad), they would have been enacted ages ago.
I'm still lukewarm.
Saturday, January 05, 2008
In Memoriam
Andy Olmsted, who posted occasionally at Obsidian Wings as G'Kar, has been killed in Iraq. He provided some of the most intelligent commentary on the war that I've seen. I didn't agree with a lot he said, but dammit, the man was willing to talk about it and make me reevaluate my own attitudes. That's become too rare a quality, which makes this loss even more grievous. My heart goes out to his wife and family, and to those who knew him: I've only lost the delight of finding an intelligent and thoughtful commentator. Their loss is much the greater.
He left a final post, which hilzoy has posted. Read it.
He left a final post, which hilzoy has posted. Read it.
The Lower Depths
If the cogs in that corporate phenomenon known as "the press" have any questions about why the majority of Americans think their output is a waste of trees, they should read this post by Jon McKay at archie.
I mean, can you say "pathetic"? This makes Katie Couric look like the McNeil/Lehrer News Hour. (Remember when you could get actual journalism on TV?)
I mean, can you say "pathetic"? This makes Katie Couric look like the McNeil/Lehrer News Hour. (Remember when you could get actual journalism on TV?)
Playing
I've been fiddling around at Hero Machine and came up with an avatar for Hunter:
Kind of rudimentary, but maybe I'll spend some time playing on the site. I may also try to figure out how to get this image into my sidebar. Ha! Just had an idea.
YeeHa! It worked.
Kind of rudimentary, but maybe I'll spend some time playing on the site. I may also try to figure out how to get this image into my sidebar. Ha! Just had an idea.
YeeHa! It worked.
Friday, January 04, 2008
Aftermath (Yawn)
OK -- Iowa's over. They can go back to raising corn again.
New Hampshire's next in the spotlight, and I ain't going to try to call it. My instinct says Edwards will have more appeal there, Obama not so much. Huckabee will get the cold shoulder, and if New Hampshirites are as gullible as everyone else, McCain will pick up some energy.
But don't quote me on it.
New Hampshire's next in the spotlight, and I ain't going to try to call it. My instinct says Edwards will have more appeal there, Obama not so much. Huckabee will get the cold shoulder, and if New Hampshirites are as gullible as everyone else, McCain will pick up some energy.
But don't quote me on it.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Scary Picture
This is a graphic representation of the degree of surveillance under which citizens in various countries live, including the US and Europe, via Wired. Do follow the link and read that post. Greece and Romania score significantly higher on privacy protections than the US. Hell, Argentina is significantly better than the US.
And just keep all this in mind the next time you use your preferred customer card at the grocery store. It's not just the government -- in fact, the government is probably the least of it -- it's your phone company, your bank, your employer, your city government -- and your local Jewel.
Not very reassuring, is it? Especially for those of us in the land of the free.
Image: Privacy International and EPIC
I'm Actually Endorsing a Candidate
Here's a post that summarizes a lot of why I favor Edwards. He's the only real Democrat with substantial prospects, and I'm pretty tired of Republican-lite.
And here are further thoughts on it from Amanda Marcotte. My favorite comment so far, however, is by BooMan:
Perhaps because his wife is such an avid reader of blogs, Edwards' campaign tapped right into our zeitgeist. He came out with our insight front and center. You want Edwards' message? Here it is: 'Fuck David Broder, fuck Joe Klein, fuck Chris Matthews, fuck FOX News, fuck Tim Russert, fuck Mitch McConnell, fuck Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Defense. We don't need them. They won't negotiate in good faith. They're stacking the deck against us. And we can beat them by telling the truth and getting organized.' That's Edwards' message, and that is the message we have internalized both through our successes and our failures.
My sentiments exactly.
It's interesting, looking at my own thinking about the election, how I go on the basis of instinct, and that instinct usually turns out to be right. My former boss used to bank on it -- she was known to defer policy decisions until I figured out why I was uneasy with them. I've learned to trust those instincts, usually -- not that I close off the input, but I generally turn out to agree with myself as I accumulate more information.
So, it's Edwards.
And here are further thoughts on it from Amanda Marcotte. My favorite comment so far, however, is by BooMan:
Perhaps because his wife is such an avid reader of blogs, Edwards' campaign tapped right into our zeitgeist. He came out with our insight front and center. You want Edwards' message? Here it is: 'Fuck David Broder, fuck Joe Klein, fuck Chris Matthews, fuck FOX News, fuck Tim Russert, fuck Mitch McConnell, fuck Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Defense. We don't need them. They won't negotiate in good faith. They're stacking the deck against us. And we can beat them by telling the truth and getting organized.' That's Edwards' message, and that is the message we have internalized both through our successes and our failures.
My sentiments exactly.
It's interesting, looking at my own thinking about the election, how I go on the basis of instinct, and that instinct usually turns out to be right. My former boss used to bank on it -- she was known to defer policy decisions until I figured out why I was uneasy with them. I've learned to trust those instincts, usually -- not that I close off the input, but I generally turn out to agree with myself as I accumulate more information.
So, it's Edwards.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
2008: Further Thoughts
An interesting post -- a forecast of future posts, actually -- by Sara Robinson at Orcinus. What stopped me, though, was the quote she used to lead off, from Yeats' "The Second Coming":
....And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Seems an apt characterization of the year to come.
....And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Seems an apt characterization of the year to come.
That Real Big, Dirty, Smelly Elephant in the Room
A post by Jack Balkin on the candidates' rsponses to limits on executive power. It's particularly useful because it contains links to the candidates' answers to a series of questions on the issue.
It's also worth noting that the Democrats answered the questions; the Republicans, for the most part, did not.
It's also worth noting that the Democrats answered the questions; the Republicans, for the most part, did not.
Antidote to the Powerful
From Digby.
One of the biggest capital punishment cases to come before the U.S. Supreme Court in a generation was put together largely by a young, fresh-out-of-law-school member of Kentucky's overworked and underpaid corps of public defenders.
David Barron, 29, filed an appeal on behalf of two Kentucky death row inmates, arguing that the three-drug cocktail used in lethal injections across the country can cause excruciating pain, and thus amounts to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. . . .
"There's something to be said about representing the people who society casts aside," Barron said. "They are the ones often left to fend for themselves."
There are still heroes in this country.
One of the biggest capital punishment cases to come before the U.S. Supreme Court in a generation was put together largely by a young, fresh-out-of-law-school member of Kentucky's overworked and underpaid corps of public defenders.
David Barron, 29, filed an appeal on behalf of two Kentucky death row inmates, arguing that the three-drug cocktail used in lethal injections across the country can cause excruciating pain, and thus amounts to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. . . .
"There's something to be said about representing the people who society casts aside," Barron said. "They are the ones often left to fend for themselves."
There are still heroes in this country.
Obama
This story illustrates another reason why I have no enthusiasm for Obama:
In an argument about his electability, Obama compared himself favorably with Sen. Hillary Clinton who is viewed negatively by nearly half the country. Obama is viewed far more favorably by independents and Republicans.
Then he said, per ABC News' Sunlen Miller, "I don't want to go into the next election starting off with half the country already not wanting to vote for Democrats. We've done that in 2004 and 2000. 47 percent of the country on one side, 47 percent of the country on the other . . . We don't need another one of those elections."
This whole idea of Democrats being "divisive" is one of those wft? memes that oozes regularly out of the right. I mean, give me a break. Any Democratic candidate who's going to campaign in the primary on Republican talking points is not going to inspire great confidence in me regarding his ability to effect change. It's like having Harry Reid in the White House.
Thanks to Digby.
In an argument about his electability, Obama compared himself favorably with Sen. Hillary Clinton who is viewed negatively by nearly half the country. Obama is viewed far more favorably by independents and Republicans.
Then he said, per ABC News' Sunlen Miller, "I don't want to go into the next election starting off with half the country already not wanting to vote for Democrats. We've done that in 2004 and 2000. 47 percent of the country on one side, 47 percent of the country on the other . . . We don't need another one of those elections."
This whole idea of Democrats being "divisive" is one of those wft? memes that oozes regularly out of the right. I mean, give me a break. Any Democratic candidate who's going to campaign in the primary on Republican talking points is not going to inspire great confidence in me regarding his ability to effect change. It's like having Harry Reid in the White House.
Thanks to Digby.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
2008
is here. I don't really have any thoughts on it. In fact, today is going to be devoted to catching up -- laundry, cleaning, some necessary writing.
At any rate, health and happiness for the coming year.
At any rate, health and happiness for the coming year.
Molding Opinion
A post from BooMan that highlights one of the key elements in the '08 election, and perhaps it's the one that bothers me the most: the role of the press.
It's one that's been bruited about since Clinton's presidency: the press didn't like Bill Clinton, and we're all paying the price. They did their part to throw the 2000 election to Bush by their treatment of Gore, and did it again in 2004 with Kerry. Now they're taking on Edwards and Huckabee, and it's become a litte too obvious:
You know it's coming and yet it's always somehow a surprise when it arrives. Joe Klein spent New Year's Eve blasting the front-running populists of both major American political parties. It's not just Klein. A healthy percentage of the Washington opinion writers have put their nose to the grindstone over this holiday season to slam John Edwards and Mike Huckabee for their populism. Populism seems to be a genuine fear that the Washington Establishment attacks without any regard for facts.
See also this comment on Joe Klein of Time, for whom I have no respect at all, and on Stuart Rothenberg, who makes no good showing at all. BooMan does an excellent job of dissecting the spin on both these turkeys.
Taylor Marsh does a nice summary of their treatment of Hillary Clinton. They favor Obama, Giuliani, and to a lesser extent Romney -- all fairly tame examples of the establishment. (OK, Giuliani's not so tame, but he's colorful, unlike the other two, who are bland to the point of ennui.)
The press decided early on that Dodd, Richardson, Biden, Paul, et al. are non-contenders, and so we never hear about them.
That makes me even more nervous than Bush's repeated power grabs. No so angry, considering that Bush was aided and abetted by both the Republicans and Democrats in Congress, but just as nervous: if you can't rely on the press for independent reporting, how can you make a decision about anything?
It's one that's been bruited about since Clinton's presidency: the press didn't like Bill Clinton, and we're all paying the price. They did their part to throw the 2000 election to Bush by their treatment of Gore, and did it again in 2004 with Kerry. Now they're taking on Edwards and Huckabee, and it's become a litte too obvious:
You know it's coming and yet it's always somehow a surprise when it arrives. Joe Klein spent New Year's Eve blasting the front-running populists of both major American political parties. It's not just Klein. A healthy percentage of the Washington opinion writers have put their nose to the grindstone over this holiday season to slam John Edwards and Mike Huckabee for their populism. Populism seems to be a genuine fear that the Washington Establishment attacks without any regard for facts.
See also this comment on Joe Klein of Time, for whom I have no respect at all, and on Stuart Rothenberg, who makes no good showing at all. BooMan does an excellent job of dissecting the spin on both these turkeys.
Taylor Marsh does a nice summary of their treatment of Hillary Clinton. They favor Obama, Giuliani, and to a lesser extent Romney -- all fairly tame examples of the establishment. (OK, Giuliani's not so tame, but he's colorful, unlike the other two, who are bland to the point of ennui.)
The press decided early on that Dodd, Richardson, Biden, Paul, et al. are non-contenders, and so we never hear about them.
That makes me even more nervous than Bush's repeated power grabs. No so angry, considering that Bush was aided and abetted by both the Republicans and Democrats in Congress, but just as nervous: if you can't rely on the press for independent reporting, how can you make a decision about anything?
Another WTF? Moment
Courtesy of Rick Santorum:
At one point, though, he opted for prose over accuracy by saying "freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom." Sociologist Os Guinness said it better, that "freedom requires virtue, virtue requires religion, and religion requires freedom."
Virtue - a person's ability to control his desires and order his actions according to the Golden Rule - makes freedom and democracy possible. For most, virtue is derived from religion, but that hardly means a man without religion cannot reason his way to virtue. Witness the ancient Greeks.
That could be the howler of the month: yes, indeed, some classical philosophers, most notably Socrates, made the attempt to establish a basis for moral behavior in purely secular terms (and quite successfully). This was a radical departure (let us not forget that Socrates was executed for, among other things, atheism).
The fact is that religion permeated the lives of the ancient Greeks to an extent that probably exceeds even that in contemporary America: religious observance was not only pervasive -- household shrines were ubiquitous, public shrines and temples were equally so (witness the scores of herms, votive figures that graced roads and streets, dedicated to Hermes, the god of travelers, that dotted the countryside -- it was one of the centers of civic life. Mark Kleiman has more analysis.
At one point, though, he opted for prose over accuracy by saying "freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom." Sociologist Os Guinness said it better, that "freedom requires virtue, virtue requires religion, and religion requires freedom."
Virtue - a person's ability to control his desires and order his actions according to the Golden Rule - makes freedom and democracy possible. For most, virtue is derived from religion, but that hardly means a man without religion cannot reason his way to virtue. Witness the ancient Greeks.
That could be the howler of the month: yes, indeed, some classical philosophers, most notably Socrates, made the attempt to establish a basis for moral behavior in purely secular terms (and quite successfully). This was a radical departure (let us not forget that Socrates was executed for, among other things, atheism).
The fact is that religion permeated the lives of the ancient Greeks to an extent that probably exceeds even that in contemporary America: religious observance was not only pervasive -- household shrines were ubiquitous, public shrines and temples were equally so (witness the scores of herms, votive figures that graced roads and streets, dedicated to Hermes, the god of travelers, that dotted the countryside -- it was one of the centers of civic life. Mark Kleiman has more analysis.
Monday, December 31, 2007
My First Real Comment on the Election
It's gotten to the point where Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish is of much more value for the dissents he publishes than for anything he says himself. (I finally figured out that he is, indeed, one of the Beltway insiders. I thought he was just a shallow poseur.) (This one encapsulates a lot of what I find lacking in Sullivan's approach: he just doesn't understand Democrats, he doesn't understand leadership, and he doesn't understand what is necessary in a president right now. I think he just doesn't really understand American politics at all -- at least, not the way it's done in the heartland.
The real key to understanding the difference between Republicans and Democrats is in their reactions to the previous two Presidents. In fact, Bill Clinton was the best damned Republican policy President of the past half century. Republicans hated his slippery personality, the way he played fast and loose with the truth, and his personal approach to life. Democrats hate what George Bush has done to the country. There's a real difference, and Republicans as well as so-called (conservative) independents, project their feelings about the Clintons on ours about George Bush. To analogize, Michael Moore is not Michelle Malkin, but people like you can't see the difference.
Like I keep sayin' -- Sullivan just doesn't get it.
I will probably support Edwards in the primary. As this writer notes, he's an old-style Democrat with a strong program who is not afraid to take a position -- even when it's one that many of his constituency don't agree with -- and is willing to learn. I have never favored Obama, for many of the reasons the writer notes: first and foremost, he's not a leader. He might be an effective facilitator, but that's not what we need. Clinton is too far to the right on most issues for my taste, but I will probably support her in the general election if she wins the nomination. The alternative is unthinkable.
The real key to understanding the difference between Republicans and Democrats is in their reactions to the previous two Presidents. In fact, Bill Clinton was the best damned Republican policy President of the past half century. Republicans hated his slippery personality, the way he played fast and loose with the truth, and his personal approach to life. Democrats hate what George Bush has done to the country. There's a real difference, and Republicans as well as so-called (conservative) independents, project their feelings about the Clintons on ours about George Bush. To analogize, Michael Moore is not Michelle Malkin, but people like you can't see the difference.
Like I keep sayin' -- Sullivan just doesn't get it.
I will probably support Edwards in the primary. As this writer notes, he's an old-style Democrat with a strong program who is not afraid to take a position -- even when it's one that many of his constituency don't agree with -- and is willing to learn. I have never favored Obama, for many of the reasons the writer notes: first and foremost, he's not a leader. He might be an effective facilitator, but that's not what we need. Clinton is too far to the right on most issues for my taste, but I will probably support her in the general election if she wins the nomination. The alternative is unthinkable.
Bipatisanship
Here is an excellent piece by Matt Stoller that nails the "bipartisanship" mantra right to the wall.
As Chris Bowers and Matthew Yglesias among many others have pointed out, what this bipartisanship is really about is undermining the public's ability to participate in policy-making. . . .
Clearly, we are dealing with an extremely conservative set of decision-makers in DC within both parties and a public that is completely cut out of the process. That is bipartisanship, by the numbers. The vote authorizing the war in Iraq was a bipartisan vote, and partisanship would have stopped it. Five years later, wiretapping authority has been expanded and legalized by a bipartisan majority; partisanship would have stopped it. The Military Commissions Act which destroyed habeas corpus and legalized torture passed by a bipartisan vote; partisanship would have stopped it. Every attempt to reign in the national security authoritarian state has been beaten back by a bipartisan majority; partisanship would have pushed to roll it back. In fact, if we could just get Democrats to consistently vote the way the public would like on issue after issue, this would be a progressive country. Partisanship in other words would mean a progressive country responsive to the public, and bipartisanship means an authoritarian country where the public is cut out.
The idea of the Village elders running the country is becoming more and more obvious, if you read the likes of Broder, Brooks, Sullivan, et al. will any regularity: this is their stance, because it's their turf. It is, of course, essentially a Republican idea, and always has been, at least as party ideologies have been constituted for the past century.
Bipartisanship is an operating paradigm is nothing more than a shell game. Here's Digby's analysis:
It was inevitable. I wrote about it right after the 2006 election --- as soon as the Republicans lost power, I knew the gasbags would insist that it's time to let bygones be bygones and meet the Republicans halfway in the spirit of a new beginning. GOP politicians have driven the debt sky-high and altered the government so as to be nearly unrecognizable, so logically the Democrats need to extend the hand of conciliation and move to meet them in the middle --- the middle now being so far right, it isn't even fully visible anymore.
Today we have none other than the centrist drivel king, David Broder, reporting that a group of useless meddlers, most of whom who were last seen repeatedly stabbing Bill Clinton in the back, are rising from their crypts to demand that the candidates all promise to appoint a "unity" government and govern from the the center --- or else they will back an independent Bloomberg bid.
Except the one party is called the Republican Party. When was the last time the Democrats blocked anything?
I don't really have anything to add to that. It's a pathetically self-serving in-group tactic to maintain power in the hands of those who are "qualified" to wield it. That anyone with eyes can see that they've been wrong consistently for years doesn't penetrate because they never look outside their own small circle of mutual back-strokers.
These people really disgust me.
As Chris Bowers and Matthew Yglesias among many others have pointed out, what this bipartisanship is really about is undermining the public's ability to participate in policy-making. . . .
Clearly, we are dealing with an extremely conservative set of decision-makers in DC within both parties and a public that is completely cut out of the process. That is bipartisanship, by the numbers. The vote authorizing the war in Iraq was a bipartisan vote, and partisanship would have stopped it. Five years later, wiretapping authority has been expanded and legalized by a bipartisan majority; partisanship would have stopped it. The Military Commissions Act which destroyed habeas corpus and legalized torture passed by a bipartisan vote; partisanship would have stopped it. Every attempt to reign in the national security authoritarian state has been beaten back by a bipartisan majority; partisanship would have pushed to roll it back. In fact, if we could just get Democrats to consistently vote the way the public would like on issue after issue, this would be a progressive country. Partisanship in other words would mean a progressive country responsive to the public, and bipartisanship means an authoritarian country where the public is cut out.
The idea of the Village elders running the country is becoming more and more obvious, if you read the likes of Broder, Brooks, Sullivan, et al. will any regularity: this is their stance, because it's their turf. It is, of course, essentially a Republican idea, and always has been, at least as party ideologies have been constituted for the past century.
Bipartisanship is an operating paradigm is nothing more than a shell game. Here's Digby's analysis:
It was inevitable. I wrote about it right after the 2006 election --- as soon as the Republicans lost power, I knew the gasbags would insist that it's time to let bygones be bygones and meet the Republicans halfway in the spirit of a new beginning. GOP politicians have driven the debt sky-high and altered the government so as to be nearly unrecognizable, so logically the Democrats need to extend the hand of conciliation and move to meet them in the middle --- the middle now being so far right, it isn't even fully visible anymore.
Today we have none other than the centrist drivel king, David Broder, reporting that a group of useless meddlers, most of whom who were last seen repeatedly stabbing Bill Clinton in the back, are rising from their crypts to demand that the candidates all promise to appoint a "unity" government and govern from the the center --- or else they will back an independent Bloomberg bid.
Boren said the meeting is being announced in advance of Thursday's Iowa caucuses "because we don't want anyone to think this was a response to any particular candidate or candidates." He said the nation needs a "government of national unity" to overcome its partisan divisions in a time of national challenge he likened to that faced by Great Britain during World War II.
"Electing a president based solely on the platform or promises of one party is not adequate for this time," Boren said. "Until you end the polarization and have bipartisanship, nothing else matters, because one party simply will block the other from acting."
Except the one party is called the Republican Party. When was the last time the Democrats blocked anything?
I don't really have anything to add to that. It's a pathetically self-serving in-group tactic to maintain power in the hands of those who are "qualified" to wield it. That anyone with eyes can see that they've been wrong consistently for years doesn't penetrate because they never look outside their own small circle of mutual back-strokers.
These people really disgust me.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Case Studies in Immigration
The Flight into Egypt.
This comes from Pastor Dan, in a post on Mike Huckabee's latest inflammatory nonsense quoted at Down With Tyranny:
It's true that those 660 Pakistanis may have brought surface-to-air missiles with them. Given that most illegal immigrants overstay visas rather than swim the Rio Grande, it seems unlikely, but anything's possible.
Or they may have been like Joseph and Mary, frightened young parents fleeing a dangerous, chaotic situation to protect their lives and the life of their child. It may have even been that two of them were toting a new messiah with them.
Who knows? Anything's possible.
I want to be surprised that Huckabee, the Southern Baptist pastor, could miss such obvious symbolism. But I'm not, and for the very reason that underscores the importance of this lesson: while privileged men work their games of power, it is the children of the poor and dispossessed who get stuck with the tab.
If Mr. Huckabee were much of a Christian, he would have drawn the obvious line between anti-democratic violence in Pakistan and instability outside its borders. He could have articulated the faith claim that God has and does act decisively to establish peace and justice, and calls his disciples to do the same. He might even have said that stable, peaceful, democratic regimes around the globe are not only consistent with the Christian faith, but in the best interests of our own nation.
But apparently, that would have provoked a hostile response. He would have been deluged with accusations of being "soft" on illegal immigration and "not serious" on foreign policy. Both those charges seem to translate into being insufficiently bloodthirsty, or at the least not punitive enough to salve the hardened hearts of many Americans. Collateral damage be damned, we want to be safe at any cost, and if a few hundred brown children more or less get greased, well, it's their own fault for being born into such a f***ed-up part of the world. Which means, unfortunately, that Rachel will continue to weep for her children. Today - and every day - is Holy Innocents' day.
The link to the original post is no good, apparently because the original post is no longer up at Street Prophets.
I'm so sick of these snake-oil salesmen hiding behind their Bibles.
This comes from Pastor Dan, in a post on Mike Huckabee's latest inflammatory nonsense quoted at Down With Tyranny:
"The fact is the immigration issue is not so much about people coming to pick lettuce or make beds. It's about people that can come with a shoulder fired missile and can do serious damage and harm to us, and that's what we need to be worried about. And the unsecure borders that we have pose a real national security threat."
It's true that those 660 Pakistanis may have brought surface-to-air missiles with them. Given that most illegal immigrants overstay visas rather than swim the Rio Grande, it seems unlikely, but anything's possible.
Or they may have been like Joseph and Mary, frightened young parents fleeing a dangerous, chaotic situation to protect their lives and the life of their child. It may have even been that two of them were toting a new messiah with them.
Who knows? Anything's possible.
I want to be surprised that Huckabee, the Southern Baptist pastor, could miss such obvious symbolism. But I'm not, and for the very reason that underscores the importance of this lesson: while privileged men work their games of power, it is the children of the poor and dispossessed who get stuck with the tab.
If Mr. Huckabee were much of a Christian, he would have drawn the obvious line between anti-democratic violence in Pakistan and instability outside its borders. He could have articulated the faith claim that God has and does act decisively to establish peace and justice, and calls his disciples to do the same. He might even have said that stable, peaceful, democratic regimes around the globe are not only consistent with the Christian faith, but in the best interests of our own nation.
But apparently, that would have provoked a hostile response. He would have been deluged with accusations of being "soft" on illegal immigration and "not serious" on foreign policy. Both those charges seem to translate into being insufficiently bloodthirsty, or at the least not punitive enough to salve the hardened hearts of many Americans. Collateral damage be damned, we want to be safe at any cost, and if a few hundred brown children more or less get greased, well, it's their own fault for being born into such a f***ed-up part of the world. Which means, unfortunately, that Rachel will continue to weep for her children. Today - and every day - is Holy Innocents' day.
The link to the original post is no good, apparently because the original post is no longer up at Street Prophets.
I'm so sick of these snake-oil salesmen hiding behind their Bibles.
Puff Pastry
This bit of fluff from WaPo on Bush and global warming is just choice. This nails it:
"There's no question the profile has changed in a pretty dramatic way," said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change and a leader of a coalition of corporations and nonprofit groups called the United States Climate Action Partnership, which has been lobbying Bush. "But the policy prescriptions haven't changed at all."
I found this pretty telling, too:
Business figures, led by former Exxon Mobil executive Arthur G. "Randy" Randol III, launched what lobbyist Michael McKenna called a "soft lobbying campaign" to prod the White House to address climate change, if for no other reason than a plan from Bush would be less onerous on industry than one written by the Europeans or by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "We couldn't fight something with nothing," said the former Bush adviser. "We had to have something."
The spin on this article is amazing -- the whole tenor is to cast Bush as moving aggressively on global warming when, in fact, nothing has changed. One wonders why WaPo feels the need to cater to a failed president.
"There's no question the profile has changed in a pretty dramatic way," said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change and a leader of a coalition of corporations and nonprofit groups called the United States Climate Action Partnership, which has been lobbying Bush. "But the policy prescriptions haven't changed at all."
I found this pretty telling, too:
Business figures, led by former Exxon Mobil executive Arthur G. "Randy" Randol III, launched what lobbyist Michael McKenna called a "soft lobbying campaign" to prod the White House to address climate change, if for no other reason than a plan from Bush would be less onerous on industry than one written by the Europeans or by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "We couldn't fight something with nothing," said the former Bush adviser. "We had to have something."
The spin on this article is amazing -- the whole tenor is to cast Bush as moving aggressively on global warming when, in fact, nothing has changed. One wonders why WaPo feels the need to cater to a failed president.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Recovery
Somehow, I managed to survive the latest infestation of the Gut Bug. Still not much energy, but I'm getting better -- by increments.
I will, I'm sure, be back to form within a week or so, now that I'm eating again.
Patience.
I will, I'm sure, be back to form within a week or so, now that I'm eating again.
Patience.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
From the Deeps
I have pretty much spent the past three days in bed with round two of the Intestinal Bug from Hell. (As if there were any other kind.)
Still a bit spaced out, and not much of an attention span, although I feel almost normal again -- just really, really tired. I was, however, able to read for more than five minutes at a time yesterday afternoon.
I also ate some real food yesterday -- and then lay in bed last night with my gut going through a roller coaster ride trying to deal with it. Interesting.
The one very clever thing I did was not to go to work. I was all ready to try it, and finally just sat myself down and said "Who are you trying to kid?" Called in, went back to bed. Probably the smartest thing I've done all week.
At any rate, now that I've missed Yule, belated wishes for a blessed season as the wheel turns yet again toward sun and warmth and life in the new year.
Still a bit spaced out, and not much of an attention span, although I feel almost normal again -- just really, really tired. I was, however, able to read for more than five minutes at a time yesterday afternoon.
I also ate some real food yesterday -- and then lay in bed last night with my gut going through a roller coaster ride trying to deal with it. Interesting.
The one very clever thing I did was not to go to work. I was all ready to try it, and finally just sat myself down and said "Who are you trying to kid?" Called in, went back to bed. Probably the smartest thing I've done all week.
At any rate, now that I've missed Yule, belated wishes for a blessed season as the wheel turns yet again toward sun and warmth and life in the new year.
Nataline Sarkisyan
From Richard Blair at All Spin Zone, a discussion of how health insurance works:
She was ready for a liver transplant (a relatively routine procedure in this day and age), but even though hers had failed, her family’s insurance company would not approve the procedure by claiming it was “experimental”. In other words, a bean counter at Cigna made the decision that since they had already shelled out a lot of cash for the bone marrow and kidney transplant, that the cost of a liver transplant and followup care was just too high.
The actual costs?
According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), estimated charges for liver transplantation are:
Estimated First-Year Charge: $314,600
Estimated Annual Follow-up Charge: $21,900
With a life expectancy after the transplant of 62 years, follow-up care for Nataline would have cost Cigna about $1.3 million. Seems like a lot, doesn't it? Until you notice that Cigna's CEO has an annual compensation package of almost $29 million.
Does it look like someone's priorities are just the least little bit screwed up?
Insurance began as a way of spreading risk among a larger pool of participants, the same way corporations did. Now that it's proven to be a cash cow for its investors (mark you, "investors" does not include policyholders), the risk management, as Blair points out, is all about not exposing the company to the possibility of actually having to pay claims.
This is another area in which it appears that the American public is ready for a change but that interlocked complex of business and political interests known as our "government" isn't too enthusiastic about the idea. (How odd!) And of course, the insurance industry operates behind a screen of invisibility.
John Edwards is far and away the favorite on this issue -- he's the only one who has given any indication of being ready to back the insurance companies into a corner and start taking them apart.
Footnote: The family's attorney is referring the case to the prosecutor's office for possible criminal charges.
Footnote 2: Where are the Terry Schiavo-niks? The senate resolutions? The legislation giving federal courts the authority to interfere in the decisions of insurance companies?
She was ready for a liver transplant (a relatively routine procedure in this day and age), but even though hers had failed, her family’s insurance company would not approve the procedure by claiming it was “experimental”. In other words, a bean counter at Cigna made the decision that since they had already shelled out a lot of cash for the bone marrow and kidney transplant, that the cost of a liver transplant and followup care was just too high.
The actual costs?
According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), estimated charges for liver transplantation are:
Estimated First-Year Charge: $314,600
Estimated Annual Follow-up Charge: $21,900
With a life expectancy after the transplant of 62 years, follow-up care for Nataline would have cost Cigna about $1.3 million. Seems like a lot, doesn't it? Until you notice that Cigna's CEO has an annual compensation package of almost $29 million.
Does it look like someone's priorities are just the least little bit screwed up?
Insurance began as a way of spreading risk among a larger pool of participants, the same way corporations did. Now that it's proven to be a cash cow for its investors (mark you, "investors" does not include policyholders), the risk management, as Blair points out, is all about not exposing the company to the possibility of actually having to pay claims.
This is another area in which it appears that the American public is ready for a change but that interlocked complex of business and political interests known as our "government" isn't too enthusiastic about the idea. (How odd!) And of course, the insurance industry operates behind a screen of invisibility.
John Edwards is far and away the favorite on this issue -- he's the only one who has given any indication of being ready to back the insurance companies into a corner and start taking them apart.
Footnote: The family's attorney is referring the case to the prosecutor's office for possible criminal charges.
Footnote 2: Where are the Terry Schiavo-niks? The senate resolutions? The legislation giving federal courts the authority to interfere in the decisions of insurance companies?
Friday, December 21, 2007
Instant Replay
Of that really nasty intestinal bug I had over Thanksgiving. The pain has stopped, but I'm sore and just a little bit out of it. So of course, I have no brains today, so I guess you'll have to do without a post.
Later.
Later.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Keep Digging
Common sense says that when you discover you've dug yourself into a hole, you should stop digging. Apparently, politics operates on a different paradigm. This is funny. I love watching press secretaries flopping around trying to paint over their bosses' grafitti.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
There Is a Leader in the Senate
And it's not Harry Reid. Via AmericaBlog, this story from AP:
The Senate late Monday delayed its consideration of a vote on a new government eavesdropping bill until January.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid delayed the bill because there were more than a dozen amendments planned, and not enough time left on the legislative calendar to manage them.
"Everyone feels it would be to the best interests of the Senate that we take a look at this when we come back after the first of the year," said Reid, D-Nev. . . .
"For the last six years, our largest telecom companies have been spying on their own American customers," said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.
Dodd spoke for several hours and threatened a filibuster, vowing to use "all the tools" at his disposal to prevent the bill's passage. After Democratic leaders pulled the bill, he issued a statement saying, "Today we have scored a victory for American civil liberties and sent a message to President Bush that we will not tolerate his abuse of power and veil of secrecy."
I think Dodd just got my vote. If he's not on the primary ballot in Illinois, I'm going to write him in.
The Democrats made a miserable showing on this. Here is the vote tally on cloture. I think my senators, Durbin and Obama, are going to get a nasty letter.
In fact, here's the letter I just sent Dick Durbin:
Dear Sen. Durbin:
I am very disturbed at finding that you voted for cloture on S. 2248, the new FISA bill that contains provisions for retroactive immunity for telecom companies. I find any bill that contains this provision completely unacceptable, and I am extremely disappointed that you did not support Sen. Dodd's filibuster of this atrocious piece of legislation.
Perhaps you or someone on your staff -- or perhaps Sen. Reid's -- can answer a question for me: Given the results of the 2006 general election, why is Congress still a rubber stamp for the White House?
I look forward to your response.
Obama got a similar letter, with an additional paragraph about his lack of leadership on this issue in light of his presidential aspirations.
I can be a real bitch, sometimes.
I have to confess, I'm not real enthusiastic about my senators, and I think I've just turned over a new leaf. I'm like most Americans, I think -- I sit here and read the news and get pissed off but never say anything except to bitch at work (a toally liberal/progressive environment). I have now set up a bookmarks folder for congressional contacts, -- my senators, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and my congresswoman, Jan Schakowsky (who votes right on everything) -- with contact information. They will be hearing from me more regularly, I think.
I urge you all to do the same.
Update: Here's Ted Kennedy's speech, enumerating the faults of the Senate bill.
The Senate late Monday delayed its consideration of a vote on a new government eavesdropping bill until January.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid delayed the bill because there were more than a dozen amendments planned, and not enough time left on the legislative calendar to manage them.
"Everyone feels it would be to the best interests of the Senate that we take a look at this when we come back after the first of the year," said Reid, D-Nev. . . .
"For the last six years, our largest telecom companies have been spying on their own American customers," said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.
Dodd spoke for several hours and threatened a filibuster, vowing to use "all the tools" at his disposal to prevent the bill's passage. After Democratic leaders pulled the bill, he issued a statement saying, "Today we have scored a victory for American civil liberties and sent a message to President Bush that we will not tolerate his abuse of power and veil of secrecy."
I think Dodd just got my vote. If he's not on the primary ballot in Illinois, I'm going to write him in.
The Democrats made a miserable showing on this. Here is the vote tally on cloture. I think my senators, Durbin and Obama, are going to get a nasty letter.
In fact, here's the letter I just sent Dick Durbin:
Dear Sen. Durbin:
I am very disturbed at finding that you voted for cloture on S. 2248, the new FISA bill that contains provisions for retroactive immunity for telecom companies. I find any bill that contains this provision completely unacceptable, and I am extremely disappointed that you did not support Sen. Dodd's filibuster of this atrocious piece of legislation.
Perhaps you or someone on your staff -- or perhaps Sen. Reid's -- can answer a question for me: Given the results of the 2006 general election, why is Congress still a rubber stamp for the White House?
I look forward to your response.
Obama got a similar letter, with an additional paragraph about his lack of leadership on this issue in light of his presidential aspirations.
I can be a real bitch, sometimes.
I have to confess, I'm not real enthusiastic about my senators, and I think I've just turned over a new leaf. I'm like most Americans, I think -- I sit here and read the news and get pissed off but never say anything except to bitch at work (a toally liberal/progressive environment). I have now set up a bookmarks folder for congressional contacts, -- my senators, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and my congresswoman, Jan Schakowsky (who votes right on everything) -- with contact information. They will be hearing from me more regularly, I think.
I urge you all to do the same.
Update: Here's Ted Kennedy's speech, enumerating the faults of the Senate bill.
Profiles in Punditry
Andrew Sullivan has endorsed Ron Paul. I know he's been favoring him, probably as a knee-jerk reaction to the label "libertarian." Here's his rationale:
More than all this, he has somehow ignited a new movement of those who love freedom and want to rescue it from the do-gooding bromides of the left and the Christianist meddling of the right. The Paulites' enthusiasm for liberty, their unapologetic defense of core conservative principles, their awareness that in the new millennium, these principles of small government, self-reliance, cultural pluralism, and a humble foreign policy are more necessary than ever - no lover of liberty can stand by and not join them.
Here's Paul's record, from a post by the indispensible brian_igo at EA Forums. Take a look at Paul's legislative activity: he opposes any form of birth control or family planning, and introduced legislation at the federal level to ban it. He favors legislation defining a zygote as a person. He wants to remove the courts' ability to hear discrimination cases. He wants to repeal OSHA, opposes the minimum wage, and wants to make unions more vulnerable to decertification. He also wants to repeal the Davis-Bacon Act and the Copeland act, which apply federal labor standards to workers under government contract and prohibit kickbacks. He wants to make it harder to register to vote. He wants to repeal the bulk of antitrust laws. He favors open, legal discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities -- by constitutional amendment, no less. He wants to repeal most environmental protections, and favors an increase in offshore drilling and opening ANWR to drilling.
It goes on and on and on. This is Sullivan's "true conservative"? (Do please note that this is all legislation that Paul has introduced or co-sponsored at the federal level -- so much for "federalism.") The man's a nightmare -- the worst of the right-wing nutjobs. I seem to recall a post by Sullivan in which someone brought this record to his attention -- that was the version compiled by David Neiwert, I believe -- and he dismimssed it as "liberal whining." All this means to me is that Sullivan is willfully blind to Paul's deficits, which are many, and has no sense of what this country is really about. It amazes me that someone as fundamentally clueless as Andrew Sullivan is so influential. But then, considering what we're seeing from the Beltway insiders, maybe not.
More than all this, he has somehow ignited a new movement of those who love freedom and want to rescue it from the do-gooding bromides of the left and the Christianist meddling of the right. The Paulites' enthusiasm for liberty, their unapologetic defense of core conservative principles, their awareness that in the new millennium, these principles of small government, self-reliance, cultural pluralism, and a humble foreign policy are more necessary than ever - no lover of liberty can stand by and not join them.
Here's Paul's record, from a post by the indispensible brian_igo at EA Forums. Take a look at Paul's legislative activity: he opposes any form of birth control or family planning, and introduced legislation at the federal level to ban it. He favors legislation defining a zygote as a person. He wants to remove the courts' ability to hear discrimination cases. He wants to repeal OSHA, opposes the minimum wage, and wants to make unions more vulnerable to decertification. He also wants to repeal the Davis-Bacon Act and the Copeland act, which apply federal labor standards to workers under government contract and prohibit kickbacks. He wants to make it harder to register to vote. He wants to repeal the bulk of antitrust laws. He favors open, legal discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities -- by constitutional amendment, no less. He wants to repeal most environmental protections, and favors an increase in offshore drilling and opening ANWR to drilling.
It goes on and on and on. This is Sullivan's "true conservative"? (Do please note that this is all legislation that Paul has introduced or co-sponsored at the federal level -- so much for "federalism.") The man's a nightmare -- the worst of the right-wing nutjobs. I seem to recall a post by Sullivan in which someone brought this record to his attention -- that was the version compiled by David Neiwert, I believe -- and he dismimssed it as "liberal whining." All this means to me is that Sullivan is willfully blind to Paul's deficits, which are many, and has no sense of what this country is really about. It amazes me that someone as fundamentally clueless as Andrew Sullivan is so influential. But then, considering what we're seeing from the Beltway insiders, maybe not.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
More on Free Trade
Joe Murray at Paleo Place has an interesting post on free trade and what it's costing us. He starts with a question:
With one in every five manufacturing jobs having vanished since 2000, the Big 3 automakers awaiting a visit from Jack Kevorkian and Michigan an industrial bone yard, one would think that the folks in Washington would be starting to feel the headache from the free trade hangover that has left America's manufacturing base decimated and her economy vulnerable.
But why is economic nationalism, the creed espoused by Alexander Hamilton, the man who provided America with her economic blueprint, to be discouraged? Why is it deemed such a radical idea? And, more importantly, why are free traders willing to abandon an economic policy that turned a colony into a superpower for an economic ideology that has been the ruin of empires?
From my perspective, the answer is fairly simple: free trade advocates are laregely multinational corporations and those who have a strong stake in them. The collapse of the American economy is not going to affect them, except insofar as it affects the world economy, and in terms of nuts-and-bolts manufacturing of goods, it won't that much. (And note that it's not only that manufacturing sector jobs have deserted the country, but that now the service sector is being shipped overseas. When's the last time you called a customer service number and actually spoke to someone in the US?)
And yet, it's not as though these overseas profits are going to be any sort of long-term resource for our major corporations. They leave themselves vulnerable to restrictions by other governments -- we've already seen that happening with China and Europe. But then, no one ever accused American business of long-range vision. In their terms, that translates as next quarter's forecast.
Couple that with the newfound ability of foreign corporations to dictate our domestic laws and regulations and you have probably the best indication that the patriotism of the corporatist wing is pointed at their own pockets and nothing else.
The question is not "Why is economic nationalism being discouraged?" That's fairly obvious. The question is, "What are we going to do about it?"
With one in every five manufacturing jobs having vanished since 2000, the Big 3 automakers awaiting a visit from Jack Kevorkian and Michigan an industrial bone yard, one would think that the folks in Washington would be starting to feel the headache from the free trade hangover that has left America's manufacturing base decimated and her economy vulnerable.
But why is economic nationalism, the creed espoused by Alexander Hamilton, the man who provided America with her economic blueprint, to be discouraged? Why is it deemed such a radical idea? And, more importantly, why are free traders willing to abandon an economic policy that turned a colony into a superpower for an economic ideology that has been the ruin of empires?
From my perspective, the answer is fairly simple: free trade advocates are laregely multinational corporations and those who have a strong stake in them. The collapse of the American economy is not going to affect them, except insofar as it affects the world economy, and in terms of nuts-and-bolts manufacturing of goods, it won't that much. (And note that it's not only that manufacturing sector jobs have deserted the country, but that now the service sector is being shipped overseas. When's the last time you called a customer service number and actually spoke to someone in the US?)
And yet, it's not as though these overseas profits are going to be any sort of long-term resource for our major corporations. They leave themselves vulnerable to restrictions by other governments -- we've already seen that happening with China and Europe. But then, no one ever accused American business of long-range vision. In their terms, that translates as next quarter's forecast.
Couple that with the newfound ability of foreign corporations to dictate our domestic laws and regulations and you have probably the best indication that the patriotism of the corporatist wing is pointed at their own pockets and nothing else.
The question is not "Why is economic nationalism being discouraged?" That's fairly obvious. The question is, "What are we going to do about it?"
Winter
It doesn't seem to have gone away yet. We got another 3-4" of snow, and now it's blowing around. Choice.
I think it might be a good day to reinstall Photoshop (yes, I'm still reinstalling software after the last reinstallation of Windows, necessitated by the fact that hooking up my DSL modem fritzed both my browsers), hook up my scanner, and work on the landscape galleries for a/k/a Hunter. I'm sort of burned out on reading right now -- that last review was a real pain. Two collections by the same poet, and it wound up being the same damned poem over and over again.
OK. Today I will not-read.
The More Things Change. . . .
From Dan Eggen at WaPo:
The exchange followed a letter earlier in the day from Mukasey that rebuffed congressional demands for details about the joint Justice-CIA inquiry into the tapes' destruction and rejected calls for the appointment of an independent prosecutor. Mukasey said that providing the information to Congress would make it appear that the department is "subject to political influence."
He's joking, right? Everyone knows DoJ is subject to political influence. That's why so many of Bush's top hacks had to leave -- somebody blabbed about their practice of hiring only loyal Bush Republicans for non-political jobs. That's one of the reasons that Gonzo lost his job.
As Barbara O'Brien puts it at Mahablog: "So stonewalling Congress makes them look all principled and aboveboard?"
Uh -- did we expect any different from Mukasey?
And just exactly what to we expect the DoJ/CIA internal investigation to find? Yeah, I think you're probably right.
Related: See this from Salon. I suppose it's only a matter of time until detainees are considered evidence that can be disposed of. Considering that the only evidence we have that any of this is working is the repeated assertions of a known liar . . . well, do I really have to say anything?
The exchange followed a letter earlier in the day from Mukasey that rebuffed congressional demands for details about the joint Justice-CIA inquiry into the tapes' destruction and rejected calls for the appointment of an independent prosecutor. Mukasey said that providing the information to Congress would make it appear that the department is "subject to political influence."
He's joking, right? Everyone knows DoJ is subject to political influence. That's why so many of Bush's top hacks had to leave -- somebody blabbed about their practice of hiring only loyal Bush Republicans for non-political jobs. That's one of the reasons that Gonzo lost his job.
As Barbara O'Brien puts it at Mahablog: "So stonewalling Congress makes them look all principled and aboveboard?"
Uh -- did we expect any different from Mukasey?
And just exactly what to we expect the DoJ/CIA internal investigation to find? Yeah, I think you're probably right.
Related: See this from Salon. I suppose it's only a matter of time until detainees are considered evidence that can be disposed of. Considering that the only evidence we have that any of this is working is the repeated assertions of a known liar . . . well, do I really have to say anything?
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Now They Get It
The Christianist enablers are finally catching on. Andrew Sullivan provides an intelligent and sometimes passionate post:
The theocon consensus that front-runners Romney and Huckabee both reflect is that religion is intrinsic to public life and public debate, that it is a necessary component of any political discussion - and that this does not merely mean rote invocations of Nature's God or Providence or the kind of inclusive, vague language that the Founders believed in. It means a very thick, constant and inviolable recourse to religious argument in secular politics. If you haven't noticed this development in the past decade, you have had blinders on.
This is nothing more than what many of us have been saying for a while. In my own words, private motivations for supporting a particular public policy may very well spring from religious belief. The policy itself, however, must be formulated in rational, nonsectarian, secular terms. Sullivan's ongoing example is torture, which I also find morally repellant. My arguments against it are similar to his, with the basic one being that it simply doesn't work. My real motivation for supporting a ban on torture is that it more or less reflects the only real definition I have of evil: the abuse of power. (If that sounds somewhat simple, I suggest you reflect on it for a while, and consider what the exercise of power without restraint actually means.)
This is why I consider someone like Mike Huckabee not only an unsuitable candidate for public office, but a very dangerous man.
Here's Charles Krauthammer, from the OpEd that Sullivan cites:
This campaign is knee-deep in religion, and it's only going to get worse. I'd thought that the limits of professed public piety had already been achieved during the Republican CNN-YouTube debate when some squirrelly looking guy held up a Bible and asked, "Do you believe every word of this book?" -- and not one candidate dared reply: None of your damn business.
Instead, Giuliani, Romney and Huckabee bent a knee and tried appeasement with various interpretations of scriptural literalism. The right answer, the only answer, is that the very question is offensive. The Constitution prohibits any religious test for office. And while that proscribes only government action, the law is also meant to be a teacher. In the same way that civil rights laws established not just the legal but also the moral norm that one simply does not discriminate on the basis of race -- changing the practice of one generation and the consciousness of the next -- so the constitutional injunction against religious tests is meant to make citizens understand that such tests are profoundly un-American.
This is no more than I've been saying for a looong time. It's ironic to see Krauthammer, who has been one of the most vocal enablers of the Christianist wing of the Republican party, suddenly freaking out. It's fairly entertaining to see him finally take his head out of the sand and realize just what he's been touting.
Barbara O'Brien at Mahablog also has some comments on the phenomenon:
But this is a monster of the Right’s own creation. They’ve spent years cultivating the Christian Right as a political force, and now it’s a political force. What did they expect?
Footnote on Pundits:
They really are out of touch. It seems that everyone else has already caught on to the fact that the Christianist Republicans are out of control -- even clergy.
The theocon consensus that front-runners Romney and Huckabee both reflect is that religion is intrinsic to public life and public debate, that it is a necessary component of any political discussion - and that this does not merely mean rote invocations of Nature's God or Providence or the kind of inclusive, vague language that the Founders believed in. It means a very thick, constant and inviolable recourse to religious argument in secular politics. If you haven't noticed this development in the past decade, you have had blinders on.
This is nothing more than what many of us have been saying for a while. In my own words, private motivations for supporting a particular public policy may very well spring from religious belief. The policy itself, however, must be formulated in rational, nonsectarian, secular terms. Sullivan's ongoing example is torture, which I also find morally repellant. My arguments against it are similar to his, with the basic one being that it simply doesn't work. My real motivation for supporting a ban on torture is that it more or less reflects the only real definition I have of evil: the abuse of power. (If that sounds somewhat simple, I suggest you reflect on it for a while, and consider what the exercise of power without restraint actually means.)
This is why I consider someone like Mike Huckabee not only an unsuitable candidate for public office, but a very dangerous man.
Here's Charles Krauthammer, from the OpEd that Sullivan cites:
This campaign is knee-deep in religion, and it's only going to get worse. I'd thought that the limits of professed public piety had already been achieved during the Republican CNN-YouTube debate when some squirrelly looking guy held up a Bible and asked, "Do you believe every word of this book?" -- and not one candidate dared reply: None of your damn business.
Instead, Giuliani, Romney and Huckabee bent a knee and tried appeasement with various interpretations of scriptural literalism. The right answer, the only answer, is that the very question is offensive. The Constitution prohibits any religious test for office. And while that proscribes only government action, the law is also meant to be a teacher. In the same way that civil rights laws established not just the legal but also the moral norm that one simply does not discriminate on the basis of race -- changing the practice of one generation and the consciousness of the next -- so the constitutional injunction against religious tests is meant to make citizens understand that such tests are profoundly un-American.
This is no more than I've been saying for a looong time. It's ironic to see Krauthammer, who has been one of the most vocal enablers of the Christianist wing of the Republican party, suddenly freaking out. It's fairly entertaining to see him finally take his head out of the sand and realize just what he's been touting.
Barbara O'Brien at Mahablog also has some comments on the phenomenon:
But this is a monster of the Right’s own creation. They’ve spent years cultivating the Christian Right as a political force, and now it’s a political force. What did they expect?
Footnote on Pundits:
They really are out of touch. It seems that everyone else has already caught on to the fact that the Christianist Republicans are out of control -- even clergy.
Speaking of Values
Paganism teaches respect for and stewardship of the earth, much more than the Abrahamic faiths do -- when you look at it, in spite of recent efforts to bend Christianity, especially, toward some form of environmentalism, they actually condone exploitation of the earth and its creatures. This post from Down With Tyranny gives some reasons why I can't really support the Democratic front runners. Here's a summary of the Democratic candidates' positions on energy, which is the major environmental issue of the day. (For everyone but George W. Bush -- for him it's turning into another international embarrassment.) Interestingly enough, the link is from Edwards' campaign site, and he doesn't come off all that well compared to, say, Chris Dodd. And here is a summary of candidates positions and past records on various environmental issues.
Friday, December 14, 2007
The Genetics of Intelligence
Amanda Marcotte graces us with this post on the racial basis of IQ nonsense most recently resurrected by William Saletan (who, it seems, is the best example contra his own arguments). And Atrios has this to say about it:
I suppose this round is over, but let me just finish it off with a hearty simelsesque "blow me" to all the people who excuse Saletan's racism by pretending it's merely knee-jerk contrarianism. If you make the claim that black people are stupid, assert that anyone who denies this is equivalent to a creationist, rely on the junk science of explicit racists to make your claims, and manage to studiously avoid the vast numbers of very smart people who have repeatedly pointed out that this stuff is bunk, then the conclusion is unavoidable. Will Saletan may be a perfectly lovely person who has lots of black friends, but his only "contrarianism" here was his eagerness to embrace junk theories of racial superiority. While issues of race and racism manifest themselves in complex ways in our society, the belief in the innate inferiority of one culturally defined racial subgroup relative to another pretty much is the root definition of racist thinking.
I suppose this round is over, but let me just finish it off with a hearty simelsesque "blow me" to all the people who excuse Saletan's racism by pretending it's merely knee-jerk contrarianism. If you make the claim that black people are stupid, assert that anyone who denies this is equivalent to a creationist, rely on the junk science of explicit racists to make your claims, and manage to studiously avoid the vast numbers of very smart people who have repeatedly pointed out that this stuff is bunk, then the conclusion is unavoidable. Will Saletan may be a perfectly lovely person who has lots of black friends, but his only "contrarianism" here was his eagerness to embrace junk theories of racial superiority. While issues of race and racism manifest themselves in complex ways in our society, the belief in the innate inferiority of one culturally defined racial subgroup relative to another pretty much is the root definition of racist thinking.
Brothers
The latest antt-LDS flap seems to revolve around the idea that Jesus and Lucifer are brothers. Here's Matthew Yglesias on the controversy, quoting from the LDS website:
On first hearing, the doctrine that Lucifer and our Lord, Jesus Christ, are brothers may seem surprising to some—especially to those unacquainted with latter-day revelations. But both the scriptures and the prophets affirm that Jesus Christ and Lucifer are indeed offspring of our Heavenly Father and, therefore, spirit brothers. Jesus Christ was with the Father from the beginning. Lucifer, too, was an angel “who was in authority in the presence of God,” a “son of the morning.” (See Isa. 14:12; D&C 76:25–27.) Both Jesus and Lucifer were strong leaders with great knowledge and influence. But as the Firstborn of the Father, Jesus was Lucifer’s older brother. (See Col. 1:15; D&C 93:21.)
Frankly, as a Pagan, I find the adoption of this concept, and the controversy around it, somewhat amusing. Considering that early Christianity adopted so much from Paganism -- including the date and most of the trappings of Christmas, not to mention the idea of the Sacrificed God -- it's not such a far stretch to find the idea of the Divine Twins, good/evil subset, working its way in.
As for anteceents, shall we start with Set and Osiris?
On first hearing, the doctrine that Lucifer and our Lord, Jesus Christ, are brothers may seem surprising to some—especially to those unacquainted with latter-day revelations. But both the scriptures and the prophets affirm that Jesus Christ and Lucifer are indeed offspring of our Heavenly Father and, therefore, spirit brothers. Jesus Christ was with the Father from the beginning. Lucifer, too, was an angel “who was in authority in the presence of God,” a “son of the morning.” (See Isa. 14:12; D&C 76:25–27.) Both Jesus and Lucifer were strong leaders with great knowledge and influence. But as the Firstborn of the Father, Jesus was Lucifer’s older brother. (See Col. 1:15; D&C 93:21.)
Frankly, as a Pagan, I find the adoption of this concept, and the controversy around it, somewhat amusing. Considering that early Christianity adopted so much from Paganism -- including the date and most of the trappings of Christmas, not to mention the idea of the Sacrificed God -- it's not such a far stretch to find the idea of the Divine Twins, good/evil subset, working its way in.
As for anteceents, shall we start with Set and Osiris?
Conservative Values
I've touched on this idea several times in passing over the past few years, but Digby highlights it:
We on the left are being chastized daily for being terrorist sympathizers. Former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are said to be on the other side. Any criticism of the government is Unamerican. And all of this is based upon the idea that liberals are rejecting Western values and putting ourselves in league with Islamic fundamentalists. This is literally nonsensical.
In point of fact, the argument could much more easily be made that it is the other way around. It grows more and more likely that the right, who wholeheartedly supported the war and are currently supporting the political handling of the occupation, deposed a totalitarian dictator to install a repressive fundamentalist theocracy in its place. I fail to see how that advances the cause of our country or western civilization. Indeed, it is a betrayal of everything we stand for.
If you actually look at the philosophies here, the Christianists in America and the Islamists in the Middle East are quite obviously sympathizers. The real values demonstrated by our own right wing fit neatly with those espoused by the militant wing of Islam: authoritarianism, intolerance, distrust of reason, demonization of outsiders, militarism -- you can just go right down the list.
Either, of course, would be appalled to be confronted with something like that. The only thing that saves the rest of us from real problems is that they hate each other worse than they hate us.
Footnote:
This, also from Digby, raises another question: these are the people who are passing themselves off as "values voters." What kind of values are they talking about? Is this how they raise their kids?
We on the left are being chastized daily for being terrorist sympathizers. Former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are said to be on the other side. Any criticism of the government is Unamerican. And all of this is based upon the idea that liberals are rejecting Western values and putting ourselves in league with Islamic fundamentalists. This is literally nonsensical.
In point of fact, the argument could much more easily be made that it is the other way around. It grows more and more likely that the right, who wholeheartedly supported the war and are currently supporting the political handling of the occupation, deposed a totalitarian dictator to install a repressive fundamentalist theocracy in its place. I fail to see how that advances the cause of our country or western civilization. Indeed, it is a betrayal of everything we stand for.
If you actually look at the philosophies here, the Christianists in America and the Islamists in the Middle East are quite obviously sympathizers. The real values demonstrated by our own right wing fit neatly with those espoused by the militant wing of Islam: authoritarianism, intolerance, distrust of reason, demonization of outsiders, militarism -- you can just go right down the list.
Either, of course, would be appalled to be confronted with something like that. The only thing that saves the rest of us from real problems is that they hate each other worse than they hate us.
Footnote:
This, also from Digby, raises another question: these are the people who are passing themselves off as "values voters." What kind of values are they talking about? Is this how they raise their kids?
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Outrage Allowance Used Up
And I'm on deadline for a really knotty review.
The president has vetoed childrens' health care again, and is now trying to gut improved mileage standards. The fed wants to bail out mortgage lenders, not the homeowners who are losing their homes. The polar ice cap will be gone in five years. We don't have enough soldiers to prosecute the war against the people who actually attacked us on 9/11 because of Iraq. New Orleans is still a mess.
And the Democratic leadership has managed to turn Congress from a rubber stamp to a clusterfuck.
I'm not going to provide links -- these stories are all over the place.
It's something when post-Apocalypse science fiction seems cheerful.
The president has vetoed childrens' health care again, and is now trying to gut improved mileage standards. The fed wants to bail out mortgage lenders, not the homeowners who are losing their homes. The polar ice cap will be gone in five years. We don't have enough soldiers to prosecute the war against the people who actually attacked us on 9/11 because of Iraq. New Orleans is still a mess.
And the Democratic leadership has managed to turn Congress from a rubber stamp to a clusterfuck.
I'm not going to provide links -- these stories are all over the place.
It's something when post-Apocalypse science fiction seems cheerful.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Choice
Scott Lemieux points out something that I should have thought of:
From a liberal standpoint, the correct answer to the question of whether sexual orientation is voluntary or not is "who the hell cares?" To argue that gays and lesbians "have no choice" or whatever is to implicitly accept the frame of bigots; the underlying assumption seems to be that if people did choose to have sex people of the same gender then legal discrimination would be perfectly acceptable.
And of course, he's absolutely right. In light of the landmark decisions in the past couple of generations on the right to personal autonomy, beginning with Griswold and going all the way through Lawrence, it's obvious that "nature or nurture" is irrelevant. I've sort of skirted around the logical inconsistencies of the anti-gay position -- after all, religious belief is a choice, and they don't seem to have any problem with laws protecting that (at least for themselves) -- but I never quite made that jump. Thanks to Lemieux for pointing it out.
So the correct answer to the next bigot you meet who's spouting off about "choice" in sexual orientation is "So what?"
Read the post Lemieux links to by M. Leblanc at Bitch, Ph.D. It's brilliant.
Here's Alex Blaze of Bilerico Project weighing in on the question at Pam's House Blend.
From a liberal standpoint, the correct answer to the question of whether sexual orientation is voluntary or not is "who the hell cares?" To argue that gays and lesbians "have no choice" or whatever is to implicitly accept the frame of bigots; the underlying assumption seems to be that if people did choose to have sex people of the same gender then legal discrimination would be perfectly acceptable.
And of course, he's absolutely right. In light of the landmark decisions in the past couple of generations on the right to personal autonomy, beginning with Griswold and going all the way through Lawrence, it's obvious that "nature or nurture" is irrelevant. I've sort of skirted around the logical inconsistencies of the anti-gay position -- after all, religious belief is a choice, and they don't seem to have any problem with laws protecting that (at least for themselves) -- but I never quite made that jump. Thanks to Lemieux for pointing it out.
So the correct answer to the next bigot you meet who's spouting off about "choice" in sexual orientation is "So what?"
Read the post Lemieux links to by M. Leblanc at Bitch, Ph.D. It's brilliant.
Here's Alex Blaze of Bilerico Project weighing in on the question at Pam's House Blend.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
A Letter from the Birthday Boy
As the War on Christmas heats up again, thanks to those meek, humble Christians such as Bill O'Reilly, William Donohue, and their ilk, I thought it would be nice to address that issue a little bit. This one is making the rounds and showed up at EA Forums
Letter from Jesus about Christmas --
Dear Children, It has come to my attention that many of you are upset that people are taking My name out of the season. Maybe you've forgotten that I wasn't actually born during this time of the year and that it was some of your predecessors who decided to celebrate My birthday on what was actually a time of pagan festival. Although I do appreciate being remembered anytime.
How I personally feel about this celebration can probably be most easily understood by those of you who have been blessed with children of your own. I don't care what you call the day. If you want to celebrate My birth, just GET ALONG AND LOVE ONE ANOTHER.
Now, having said that let Me go on. If it bothers you that the town in which you live doesn't allow a scene depicting My birth, then just get rid of a couple of Santas and snowmen and put in a small Nativity scene on your own front lawn. If all My followers did that there wouldn't be any need for such a scene on the town square because there would be many of them all around town.
Stop worrying about the fact that people are calling the tree a holiday tree, instead of a Christmas tree. It was I who made all trees. You can remember Me anytime you see any tree. Decorate a grape vine if you wish: I actually spoke of that one in a teaching, explaining who I am in relation to you and what each of our tasks were. If you have forgotten that one, look up John 15: 1 - 8.
If you want to give Me a present in remembrance of My birth here is my wish list. Choose something from it:
1. Instead of writing protest letters objecting to the way My birthday is being celebrated, write letters of love and hope to soldiers away from home. They are terribly afraid and lonely this time of year. I know, they tell Me all the time.
2. Visit someone in a nursing home. You don't have to know them personally. They just need to know that someone cares about them.
3. Instead of writing George complaining about the wording on the cards his staff sent out this year, why don't you write and tell him that you'll be praying for him and his family this year. Then follow up. It will be nice hearing from you again.
4. Instead of giving your children a lot of gifts you can't afford and they don't need, spend time with them. Tell them the story of My birth, and why I came to live with you down here. Hold them in your arms and remind them that I love them.
5. Pick someone that has hurt you in the past and forgive him or her.
6. Did you know that someone in your town will attempt to take their own life this season because they feel so alone and hopeless? Since you don't know who that person is, try giving everyone you meet a warm smile; it could make the difference.
7. Instead of nit picking about what the retailer in your town calls the holiday, be patient with the people who work there. Give them a warm smile and a kind word. Even if they aren't allowed to wish you a "Merry Christmas" that doesn't keep you from wishing them one. Then stop shopping there on Sunday. If the store didn't make so much money on that day they'd close and let their employees spend the day at home with their families
8. If you really want to make a difference, support a missionary-- especially one who takes My love and Good News to those who have never heard My name.
9. Here's a good one. There are individuals and whole families in your town who not only will have no "Christmas" tree, but neither will they have any presents to give or receive. If you don't know them, buy some food and a few gifts and give them to the Salvation Army or some other charity which believes in Me and they will make the delivery for you.
10. Finally, if you want to make a statement about your belief in and loyalty to Me, then behave like a Christian. Don't do things in secret that you wouldn't do in My presence. Let people know by your actions that you are one of mine.
Don't forget; I am God and can take care of Myself. Just love Me and do what I have told you to do. I'll take care of all the rest. Check out the list above and get to work; time is short. I'll help you, but the ball is now in your court. And do have a most blessed Christmas with all those whom you love and remember : I LOVE YOU, JESUS
'Nuff said.
Letter from Jesus about Christmas --
Dear Children, It has come to my attention that many of you are upset that people are taking My name out of the season. Maybe you've forgotten that I wasn't actually born during this time of the year and that it was some of your predecessors who decided to celebrate My birthday on what was actually a time of pagan festival. Although I do appreciate being remembered anytime.
How I personally feel about this celebration can probably be most easily understood by those of you who have been blessed with children of your own. I don't care what you call the day. If you want to celebrate My birth, just GET ALONG AND LOVE ONE ANOTHER.
Now, having said that let Me go on. If it bothers you that the town in which you live doesn't allow a scene depicting My birth, then just get rid of a couple of Santas and snowmen and put in a small Nativity scene on your own front lawn. If all My followers did that there wouldn't be any need for such a scene on the town square because there would be many of them all around town.
Stop worrying about the fact that people are calling the tree a holiday tree, instead of a Christmas tree. It was I who made all trees. You can remember Me anytime you see any tree. Decorate a grape vine if you wish: I actually spoke of that one in a teaching, explaining who I am in relation to you and what each of our tasks were. If you have forgotten that one, look up John 15: 1 - 8.
If you want to give Me a present in remembrance of My birth here is my wish list. Choose something from it:
1. Instead of writing protest letters objecting to the way My birthday is being celebrated, write letters of love and hope to soldiers away from home. They are terribly afraid and lonely this time of year. I know, they tell Me all the time.
2. Visit someone in a nursing home. You don't have to know them personally. They just need to know that someone cares about them.
3. Instead of writing George complaining about the wording on the cards his staff sent out this year, why don't you write and tell him that you'll be praying for him and his family this year. Then follow up. It will be nice hearing from you again.
4. Instead of giving your children a lot of gifts you can't afford and they don't need, spend time with them. Tell them the story of My birth, and why I came to live with you down here. Hold them in your arms and remind them that I love them.
5. Pick someone that has hurt you in the past and forgive him or her.
6. Did you know that someone in your town will attempt to take their own life this season because they feel so alone and hopeless? Since you don't know who that person is, try giving everyone you meet a warm smile; it could make the difference.
7. Instead of nit picking about what the retailer in your town calls the holiday, be patient with the people who work there. Give them a warm smile and a kind word. Even if they aren't allowed to wish you a "Merry Christmas" that doesn't keep you from wishing them one. Then stop shopping there on Sunday. If the store didn't make so much money on that day they'd close and let their employees spend the day at home with their families
8. If you really want to make a difference, support a missionary-- especially one who takes My love and Good News to those who have never heard My name.
9. Here's a good one. There are individuals and whole families in your town who not only will have no "Christmas" tree, but neither will they have any presents to give or receive. If you don't know them, buy some food and a few gifts and give them to the Salvation Army or some other charity which believes in Me and they will make the delivery for you.
10. Finally, if you want to make a statement about your belief in and loyalty to Me, then behave like a Christian. Don't do things in secret that you wouldn't do in My presence. Let people know by your actions that you are one of mine.
Don't forget; I am God and can take care of Myself. Just love Me and do what I have told you to do. I'll take care of all the rest. Check out the list above and get to work; time is short. I'll help you, but the ball is now in your court. And do have a most blessed Christmas with all those whom you love and remember : I LOVE YOU, JESUS
'Nuff said.
On the Inheritance of Bourgeois Virtues
It gets worse. Via Andrew Sullivan, this travesty from Tim Worstall:
The inheritance of acquired characteristics is, in evolutionary terms, referred to as Lamarckian: and as above, with reference to genes, it’s wrong. However, with reference to culture it most certainly is not wrong.
No, I’m not going to try and prove that culture is transmitted in a Lamarckian manner. Rather, I’m going to prove that you and everyone else already believe it is. . . .
So we believe this about our society now: that attitudes, mindsets, extended networks, are indeed transmitted across the generations, not via Darwinian evolution, but in a way that can best be described as Lamarckian. The inheritance by the next generation of characteristics acquired by the previous one.
It goes downhill from there. It's really just a matter of sloppy thinking based on sloppy terminology. (Well, thinking about it, maybe it is more than that -- note the comment about "we all believe it is." We're back to the "belief trumps reality" meme.) Sure, we refer to our cultural heritage as an "inheritance" all the time, but that's a very different meaning of the word than that used to descibe our genetic heritage. It's really no different than the creationists' use of the term "theory": They shuffle back and forth between different meanings in order to fuzz the argument. I can't really tell if Worstall is doing it deliberately, or whether he really doesn't know what he's talking about.
The central flaw, again, is using the term "evolution" to describe the development of culture without any apparent awareness that in that context, the term must be taken as a metaphor. When you start dragging Darwin into discussions of cultural transmission, what you wind up with is a big mess. Adding Lamarck only makes it worse.
The irony here is that there's no reason for Clark or Worstall (or Sullivan, for that matter) to drag in Darwin or Larmarck, or any of it. No one is describing an evolutionary phenomenon. I don't know why any of these people muddied it up like that, except that in Clark's case it's a way to get some attention for a book that has probably been written by several other people at various times with cogently structured arguments based on the real phenomena and mechanisms of the transmission of culture. And yes, we even have a term for it there -- the one I just used. Maybe not as sexy as "evolution," but a hell of a lot more accurate.
Worstall's piece is titled "Getting Greg Clark Wrong." It should be "Getting Everything Wrong."
The inheritance of acquired characteristics is, in evolutionary terms, referred to as Lamarckian: and as above, with reference to genes, it’s wrong. However, with reference to culture it most certainly is not wrong.
No, I’m not going to try and prove that culture is transmitted in a Lamarckian manner. Rather, I’m going to prove that you and everyone else already believe it is. . . .
So we believe this about our society now: that attitudes, mindsets, extended networks, are indeed transmitted across the generations, not via Darwinian evolution, but in a way that can best be described as Lamarckian. The inheritance by the next generation of characteristics acquired by the previous one.
It goes downhill from there. It's really just a matter of sloppy thinking based on sloppy terminology. (Well, thinking about it, maybe it is more than that -- note the comment about "we all believe it is." We're back to the "belief trumps reality" meme.) Sure, we refer to our cultural heritage as an "inheritance" all the time, but that's a very different meaning of the word than that used to descibe our genetic heritage. It's really no different than the creationists' use of the term "theory": They shuffle back and forth between different meanings in order to fuzz the argument. I can't really tell if Worstall is doing it deliberately, or whether he really doesn't know what he's talking about.
The central flaw, again, is using the term "evolution" to describe the development of culture without any apparent awareness that in that context, the term must be taken as a metaphor. When you start dragging Darwin into discussions of cultural transmission, what you wind up with is a big mess. Adding Lamarck only makes it worse.
The irony here is that there's no reason for Clark or Worstall (or Sullivan, for that matter) to drag in Darwin or Larmarck, or any of it. No one is describing an evolutionary phenomenon. I don't know why any of these people muddied it up like that, except that in Clark's case it's a way to get some attention for a book that has probably been written by several other people at various times with cogently structured arguments based on the real phenomena and mechanisms of the transmission of culture. And yes, we even have a term for it there -- the one I just used. Maybe not as sexy as "evolution," but a hell of a lot more accurate.
Worstall's piece is titled "Getting Greg Clark Wrong." It should be "Getting Everything Wrong."
Monday, December 10, 2007
Darwin, Interrupted
I cant really comment on this with any depth, because I'm working from a book review, but it seems to be another case of the woefully ignorant building castles of smoke and mirrors.
Gregory Clark is an economic historian who has written a book explaining the distribution of rich and poor in terms -- yep, you guessed it -- of Darwinism. (snicker). To wit:
n “A Farewell to Alms,” Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California, Davis, suggests an intriguing, even startling answer: natural selection. Focusing on England, where the Industrial Revolution began, Clark argues that persistently different rates of childbearing and survival, across differently situated families, changed human nature in ways that finally allowed human beings to escape from the Malthusian trap in which they had been locked since the dawn of settled agriculture, 10,000 years before. Specifically, the families that propagated themselves were the rich, while those that died out were the poor. Over time, the “survival of the richest” propagated within the population the traits that had allowed these people to be more economically successful in the first place: rational thought, frugality, a capacity for hard work — in short the familiar list of Calvinist, bourgeois virtues. The greater prevalence of those traits in turn made possible the Industrial Revolution and all that it has brought. (A lacuna in the argument is that Clark never says just how prevalent this Darwinian process made the traits he has in mind. Would an increase from, say 0.05 percent of the population to 0.50 percent have mattered much?)
Of course, he doesn't seem to mention that it is the poor who have more children, both within a society and across societies -- birthrates in Africa and South America are astronomical compared to Europe and the US, while within the US, the birthrate among the wealthy is paltry compared to that among the poor.
I have serious reservations toward looking at culture and societies in evolutionary terms -- "survival of the fittest" simply doesn't apply, and it annoys the hell out of me when people who obviously do not understand the mechanisms of evolution try to apply them inappropriately.
The heart of Clark’s analysis consists of a detailed examination of births, deaths, income and wealth in England between 1250 and 1800, as evidenced primarily by wills. Although the records are scant, he finds that on average richer people were more likely to marry than poorer people, they married at earlier ages, they lived longer once they were married, they bore more children per year of marriage, and their children were more likely to survive and to bear children themselves. The result was centuries of downward mobility, in which the offspring of richer families continually moved into the lower rungs of society. Along the way, their behavioral traits and attitudes became ever more dominant.
Point: until the nineteenth century, poor people mostly didn't bother with formal marriage -- they simply moved in together, announced that they were married, and all the neighbors said "Fine." Poor people seldom left wills -- they generally did not own much in the way of property, were more likely to be tenants than freeholders, and thus they had little to leave their children. Depending on circumstances, there might be baptismal records -- and there might not be, particularly in rural areas, which was where the poor were concentrated. The whole data base is suspect, simply because formal marriage was essentially a contract dealing with the disposition of property. Those who didn't have any property didn't bother.
To cast an argument like this in evolutionary terms really misses the point. Evolution operates through a combination of chance and necessity: the creation of offspring is, initially, a matter of the random combination of the two genetic heritages of the parents (and within the set of available genetic material, it is really random). Survival is a matter of the viability of that combination against the necessities of environmental demands. Cultures tend to follow a pattern of growth and decay, but there's no evidence that any sort of "evolutionary" mechanism is at work there, except in a metaphorical sense, and using "evolution" as a metaphor is dangerous, at the very least. In this case, it seems to misrepresent both evolution and the development of culture. (If you want to go whole-hog Richard Dawkins sociobiologist on the issue, I suppose there might be the possibility that evolution is a valid paradigm to describe cultural development. I can deal with the idea that Beethoven's Ninth is the product of biochemistry, but what operates on an individual level doesn't necessarily operate on a larger level and vice-versa -- Beethoven does not equal nineteenth-century Vienna. I think the random factors become too overwhelming to accept that idea without severe scrutiny. This, however, seems much more to be "Oh, look! Development equals evolution!" Not.)
One thing that seems to be missing here is the idea that the transmission of culture, one of humanity's strong points, assumes, given the fact that people have brains and some of us even tend to use them, that we build on what we inherit. That's not the same as evolving, which is the replacement of not-quite-optimum organisms by those that are closer to optimum for a given environment. We simply took Euclid and came up with engineering.
Frankly, from the review the book sounds like the kind of thing I don't even want to review myself any more because I hate wasting my time on garbage, and this looks to be one step short of Holy Blood, Holy Grail. This sort of nails it down:
One frustrating aspect of Clark’s argument is that while he insists on the “biological basis” of the mechanism by which the survival of the richest fostered new human attributes and insists on the Darwinian nature of this process, he repeatedly shies away from saying whether the changes he has in mind are actually genetic. “Just as people were shaping economies,” he writes in a typical formulation, “the economy of the preindustrial era was shaping people, at least culturally and perhaps also genetically” (emphasis added). Nor does he introduce any evidence, of the kind that normally lies at the core of such debates, that traits like the capacity for hard work are heritable in the sense in which biologists use the term.
Q.E.D.
Brought to us by the staggeringly uncritical Andrew Sullivan.
By the way, if you want a very clear if slightly technical exposition of what evolutionary theory says and how it works, I recommend Ernst Mayr's What Evolution Is. Probably the best one-volume description available.
Gregory Clark is an economic historian who has written a book explaining the distribution of rich and poor in terms -- yep, you guessed it -- of Darwinism. (snicker). To wit:
n “A Farewell to Alms,” Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California, Davis, suggests an intriguing, even startling answer: natural selection. Focusing on England, where the Industrial Revolution began, Clark argues that persistently different rates of childbearing and survival, across differently situated families, changed human nature in ways that finally allowed human beings to escape from the Malthusian trap in which they had been locked since the dawn of settled agriculture, 10,000 years before. Specifically, the families that propagated themselves were the rich, while those that died out were the poor. Over time, the “survival of the richest” propagated within the population the traits that had allowed these people to be more economically successful in the first place: rational thought, frugality, a capacity for hard work — in short the familiar list of Calvinist, bourgeois virtues. The greater prevalence of those traits in turn made possible the Industrial Revolution and all that it has brought. (A lacuna in the argument is that Clark never says just how prevalent this Darwinian process made the traits he has in mind. Would an increase from, say 0.05 percent of the population to 0.50 percent have mattered much?)
Of course, he doesn't seem to mention that it is the poor who have more children, both within a society and across societies -- birthrates in Africa and South America are astronomical compared to Europe and the US, while within the US, the birthrate among the wealthy is paltry compared to that among the poor.
I have serious reservations toward looking at culture and societies in evolutionary terms -- "survival of the fittest" simply doesn't apply, and it annoys the hell out of me when people who obviously do not understand the mechanisms of evolution try to apply them inappropriately.
The heart of Clark’s analysis consists of a detailed examination of births, deaths, income and wealth in England between 1250 and 1800, as evidenced primarily by wills. Although the records are scant, he finds that on average richer people were more likely to marry than poorer people, they married at earlier ages, they lived longer once they were married, they bore more children per year of marriage, and their children were more likely to survive and to bear children themselves. The result was centuries of downward mobility, in which the offspring of richer families continually moved into the lower rungs of society. Along the way, their behavioral traits and attitudes became ever more dominant.
Point: until the nineteenth century, poor people mostly didn't bother with formal marriage -- they simply moved in together, announced that they were married, and all the neighbors said "Fine." Poor people seldom left wills -- they generally did not own much in the way of property, were more likely to be tenants than freeholders, and thus they had little to leave their children. Depending on circumstances, there might be baptismal records -- and there might not be, particularly in rural areas, which was where the poor were concentrated. The whole data base is suspect, simply because formal marriage was essentially a contract dealing with the disposition of property. Those who didn't have any property didn't bother.
To cast an argument like this in evolutionary terms really misses the point. Evolution operates through a combination of chance and necessity: the creation of offspring is, initially, a matter of the random combination of the two genetic heritages of the parents (and within the set of available genetic material, it is really random). Survival is a matter of the viability of that combination against the necessities of environmental demands. Cultures tend to follow a pattern of growth and decay, but there's no evidence that any sort of "evolutionary" mechanism is at work there, except in a metaphorical sense, and using "evolution" as a metaphor is dangerous, at the very least. In this case, it seems to misrepresent both evolution and the development of culture. (If you want to go whole-hog Richard Dawkins sociobiologist on the issue, I suppose there might be the possibility that evolution is a valid paradigm to describe cultural development. I can deal with the idea that Beethoven's Ninth is the product of biochemistry, but what operates on an individual level doesn't necessarily operate on a larger level and vice-versa -- Beethoven does not equal nineteenth-century Vienna. I think the random factors become too overwhelming to accept that idea without severe scrutiny. This, however, seems much more to be "Oh, look! Development equals evolution!" Not.)
One thing that seems to be missing here is the idea that the transmission of culture, one of humanity's strong points, assumes, given the fact that people have brains and some of us even tend to use them, that we build on what we inherit. That's not the same as evolving, which is the replacement of not-quite-optimum organisms by those that are closer to optimum for a given environment. We simply took Euclid and came up with engineering.
Frankly, from the review the book sounds like the kind of thing I don't even want to review myself any more because I hate wasting my time on garbage, and this looks to be one step short of Holy Blood, Holy Grail. This sort of nails it down:
One frustrating aspect of Clark’s argument is that while he insists on the “biological basis” of the mechanism by which the survival of the richest fostered new human attributes and insists on the Darwinian nature of this process, he repeatedly shies away from saying whether the changes he has in mind are actually genetic. “Just as people were shaping economies,” he writes in a typical formulation, “the economy of the preindustrial era was shaping people, at least culturally and perhaps also genetically” (emphasis added). Nor does he introduce any evidence, of the kind that normally lies at the core of such debates, that traits like the capacity for hard work are heritable in the sense in which biologists use the term.
Q.E.D.
Brought to us by the staggeringly uncritical Andrew Sullivan.
By the way, if you want a very clear if slightly technical exposition of what evolutionary theory says and how it works, I recommend Ernst Mayr's What Evolution Is. Probably the best one-volume description available.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Profiles in Cowardice
Another faith-based candidate for president. From WaPo:
Mike Huckabee once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could "pose a dangerous public health risk."
As a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated Press. Besides a quarantine, Huckabee suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than federal health agencies. . . .
At a news conference in Asheville, N.C., on Saturday, Huckabee said he wanted at the time to follow traditional medical practices used for dealing with tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.
"Medical protocol typically says that if you have a disease for which there is no cure, and you are uncertain about the transmission of it, then the first thing you do is that you quarantine or isolate carriers," Huckabee said.
When Huckabee wrote his answers in 1992, it was common knowledge that AIDS could not be spread by casual contact. In late 1991, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there were 195,718 AIDS patients in the country and that 126,159 people had died from the syndrome.
Contrast this passage on the reaction of Fr. Mychal Judge. Andrew Sullivan, quoting himself:
We forget how terrifying HIV was in the early and mid 1980s, how patients would be quarantined in dark rooms, abandoned by their families, with their meals rolled into their rooms on trolleys. From the beginning, Mychal did as Jesus did and walked right in and kissed these frightened souls on the lips. If they recoiled from the sight of a priest - gay men at that time saw the church as an alien, hostile entity - he would persist in silence. He would simply bring holy oils, take a chair to the bottom of their hospital beds, and massage their bony, cold, pain-racked feet. He seemed to express no anger, just a kind of suspended joy in the moment, a joy he found resuscitated by the fact of the resurrection and the intercession of Our Lady.
Let's consider that the stance of someone like Huckabee -- and those to whom he is trying desperately to appeal -- embodies not only ignorance but a deep-seated cowardice. To proclaim oneself a "Christian" and react to the needy by demanding that they be shut away sort of misses the point, doesn't it? This of course applies not only to Huckabee, but to the entire complex of those who have fastened on a grotesque mockery of the lessons of a teacher whose compassion, love, and courage was far beyond what we can really understand to push a mean-spirited agenda that reveals only the smallness of their souls.
And on that score, read Sullivan's whole piece on Judge. It reminds me of something the patriarchal monotheisms have forgotten -- or suppressed: throughout history, and probably before: those with "aberrant" sexual orientations have been seen almost universally as persons of great spiritual power, a bridge between male and female and between the spirit world and the mundane -- conduits, if you will, for the grace of god. We see it again in people like Mychal Judge. I think that's why we scare the right so much.
Mike Huckabee once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could "pose a dangerous public health risk."
As a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated Press. Besides a quarantine, Huckabee suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than federal health agencies. . . .
At a news conference in Asheville, N.C., on Saturday, Huckabee said he wanted at the time to follow traditional medical practices used for dealing with tuberculosis and other infectious diseases.
"Medical protocol typically says that if you have a disease for which there is no cure, and you are uncertain about the transmission of it, then the first thing you do is that you quarantine or isolate carriers," Huckabee said.
When Huckabee wrote his answers in 1992, it was common knowledge that AIDS could not be spread by casual contact. In late 1991, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there were 195,718 AIDS patients in the country and that 126,159 people had died from the syndrome.
Contrast this passage on the reaction of Fr. Mychal Judge. Andrew Sullivan, quoting himself:
We forget how terrifying HIV was in the early and mid 1980s, how patients would be quarantined in dark rooms, abandoned by their families, with their meals rolled into their rooms on trolleys. From the beginning, Mychal did as Jesus did and walked right in and kissed these frightened souls on the lips. If they recoiled from the sight of a priest - gay men at that time saw the church as an alien, hostile entity - he would persist in silence. He would simply bring holy oils, take a chair to the bottom of their hospital beds, and massage their bony, cold, pain-racked feet. He seemed to express no anger, just a kind of suspended joy in the moment, a joy he found resuscitated by the fact of the resurrection and the intercession of Our Lady.
Let's consider that the stance of someone like Huckabee -- and those to whom he is trying desperately to appeal -- embodies not only ignorance but a deep-seated cowardice. To proclaim oneself a "Christian" and react to the needy by demanding that they be shut away sort of misses the point, doesn't it? This of course applies not only to Huckabee, but to the entire complex of those who have fastened on a grotesque mockery of the lessons of a teacher whose compassion, love, and courage was far beyond what we can really understand to push a mean-spirited agenda that reveals only the smallness of their souls.
And on that score, read Sullivan's whole piece on Judge. It reminds me of something the patriarchal monotheisms have forgotten -- or suppressed: throughout history, and probably before: those with "aberrant" sexual orientations have been seen almost universally as persons of great spiritual power, a bridge between male and female and between the spirit world and the mundane -- conduits, if you will, for the grace of god. We see it again in people like Mychal Judge. I think that's why we scare the right so much.
Hate Crimes
Catching up on this one. Dave Neiwert has a couple of posts (here and here). He summarizes it better than I can:
There's a pattern here: Democrats -- either through spinelessness or surreptitious mendacity -- have a history of refusing to take the fight over hate crimes to the carpets. Every time they have the votes to pass one, they attach it to another piece of legislation, which renders it vulnerable to the seemingly inevitable euthanasia in committee. This either reflects an unexpressed wish to kill a hate-crimes bill, or a failure to recognize bias crimes as an essential matter, and write it off as a fight they can't win.
Indeed, it's mind-boggling that congressional Democrats seem incapable of connecting the big bright fluorescent dots in front of them when it comes to bias crimes -- that they lie, in fact, at the heart of the national cultural divide. This bill isn't just about gay rights. It's about the Jena 6 and noose incidents. It's about the tide of anti-immigrant hate crimes being committed against Latinos.
Bias crimes lie at the black beating heart of everything progressives have historically fought: injustice, bigotry, exclusion, and violence. These things are the enemies of democracy itself, and that is why we fight them. Effectively confronting and addressing them is an imperative: politically, ethically, morally.
So the sad if utterly predictable fate of the latest federal bias-crimes law really represents an act of cowardice. I suppose we can look forward, fifty years from now, to seeing subsequent generations of politicians finally step forward and recognize that this abysmal failure to adequately confront bias crimes was a gross historical mistake for which many thousands of Americans paid the price. After all, it's what the Senate did not long ago in confronting the legacy of a previous generation's purposeful failure to act against its version of hate crimes, lynching.
Read both posts -- as always, excellent analysis, although the conclusions are pretty depressing.
Update:
If anyone has any doubts that hate crimes legislation is necessary, read this post by Pam Spaulding.
There's a pattern here: Democrats -- either through spinelessness or surreptitious mendacity -- have a history of refusing to take the fight over hate crimes to the carpets. Every time they have the votes to pass one, they attach it to another piece of legislation, which renders it vulnerable to the seemingly inevitable euthanasia in committee. This either reflects an unexpressed wish to kill a hate-crimes bill, or a failure to recognize bias crimes as an essential matter, and write it off as a fight they can't win.
Indeed, it's mind-boggling that congressional Democrats seem incapable of connecting the big bright fluorescent dots in front of them when it comes to bias crimes -- that they lie, in fact, at the heart of the national cultural divide. This bill isn't just about gay rights. It's about the Jena 6 and noose incidents. It's about the tide of anti-immigrant hate crimes being committed against Latinos.
Bias crimes lie at the black beating heart of everything progressives have historically fought: injustice, bigotry, exclusion, and violence. These things are the enemies of democracy itself, and that is why we fight them. Effectively confronting and addressing them is an imperative: politically, ethically, morally.
So the sad if utterly predictable fate of the latest federal bias-crimes law really represents an act of cowardice. I suppose we can look forward, fifty years from now, to seeing subsequent generations of politicians finally step forward and recognize that this abysmal failure to adequately confront bias crimes was a gross historical mistake for which many thousands of Americans paid the price. After all, it's what the Senate did not long ago in confronting the legacy of a previous generation's purposeful failure to act against its version of hate crimes, lynching.
Read both posts -- as always, excellent analysis, although the conclusions are pretty depressing.
Update:
If anyone has any doubts that hate crimes legislation is necessary, read this post by Pam Spaulding.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)