This torture thing during Easter Week

I have been involved in a long and contentious debate on torture. A lot of it is about the difference between Bush and Cheney's policies and those Presidents who preceded him. Some of it has to do with the partisan divide in our country and the inability for our political elites to rise above that on something as ethically challenging as torture. I am more aligned with Eugene Robinson's suggestion that the information is out there, and we have to prosecute these people. I kind of wonder what kind of political world we have created places us in a position where no matter what the crime is, the claim of partisanship can over-ride that.

Part of the conversation turned angry yesterday when we turned to the subject of Easter and torture. I was reminded of how conservative Christians seemed to find Mel Gibson's Passion film meaningful mostly because of the ill-treatment that Jesus suffered during and before the crucifixion. I found it very interesting that those who pointed to the Roman's mistreatment of Christ were the most silent or even approving of Bush's torture regime. Not a new observation, but in yesterday's conversation, this idea was articulated most clearly when some one noted that perhaps conservative Christians saw a difference between torturing the Son of God and torturing someone who openly wanted to kill innocent people. I think that statement reflects a lot of the belief in conservative America.

Today is Good Friday. I have always had a pretty weird connection to Easter and one that I cannot quite explain (I have written about that here), and the conversation yesterday is still running through my head. Sometimes I don't know what I believe. But what I do know, is that these stories have meaning, and that meaning is important. A lot of the power in Christianity is embedded in this annual reflection on the death and resurrection story.

Thinking about these two thoughts--the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, and the issue of how we respond to others (yes, even those who profess to do evil)--and I have to say that I think the conservative theology is missing a pretty key element. I am no theologian, but isn't the power of the Easter story that Jesus gave himself as a sacrificial lamb for all of humanity? Isn't it based on the idea that he didn't deserve to die, but we all do? That we do not deserve grace or salvation, but he extends it to us anyway?

To go from that story to suggesting that it might be ok to mistreat others based on what they "deserve" strikes me as missing the point. I truly wonder if American conservatives have so conflated faith and country that they can no longer tell the difference between their own faith and their national arrogance. This week, many conservatives exploded in anger when Obama told the world that we were not a Christian nation--yet so many of them defend Bush's torture regime. Is that how it works?

I hope not.

Sigh

As I have been going to the chiropractor in the afternoons, I have had more time to catch NPR during the drive. Listening to part of the story on the Israeli barrier in the West Bank has just been depressing. I understand, to a point. I certainly understand the concerns about suicide bombers, and the need to protect people at weddings and pizza parlors. That I get.

I also get the political failures of the Palestinian leadership, and the desire for certain people in Syria and Iran to stoke fires that the rest us (and probably most in the region) would prefer were not stoked.

But when I hear about places like Ariel, a settlement in the West Bank, it just makes me both sad and angry at the same time.

I certainly don't begrudge people wanting better for their life. But this little oasis in the desert is not that. It is people purposefully wanting to stop the peace process. It is American evangelicals who fully expect the Jews to either convert to Christianity or perish in order to facilitate the secret code that hastens the end times--sending money to secular Jews to build an olympic size swimming pool in contested lands. All justified by some reading of the OT, no doubt. Something is wrong here.

The worst part of the story came at the end, when they were discussing the mayor of this illegal settlement (Nachman) and his approach to the issue of the Palestinians.

"People like Ron Nachman are bringing the end to the two-state solution possibility," Sfard says. "And then we will have to face a different dilemma: that is, between a ... democratic, one-state, binational state, which I'm sure Ron Nachman doesn't want. And the other option, that Ron Nachman probably would support, is a real apartheid!"

Asked about the efforts by Sfard and other Israelis to help Palestinians protest the barrier, Nachman replies, "In some countries, they would have hanged those people by now."

Sigh. [Bang head on table] Sigh.
Sigh.

Jon Stewart on the crazy right

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Tuesday

The trickle of information on our torture policy continues. The International Red Cross has released its complete report, and Mark Danner has a right up of it here. It is always shocking for me to realize that our Christian president authorized policies taken from the Gestapo and KGB that were intended to produce false confessions.

And the former Vice President is still out there defending torture as essential. I found this quote from Colonel Wilkerson to be the most troubling:

Simply stated, this philosophy held that it did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance.... All that was necessary was to extract everything possible from him and others like him, assemble it all in a computer program, and then look for cross-connections and serendipitous incidentals—in short, to have sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified.
Thus, as many people as possible had to be kept in detention for as long as possible to allow this philosophy of intelligence gathering to work. The detainees' innocence was inconsequential.

Glenn Greenwald notes:

Note how warped our political culture is: Sen. Dick Durbin was forced to tearfully apologize on the Senate floor for accurately comparing our treatment of detainees at Guantanamo to the techniques used in Soviet gulags and by Gestapo interrogation squads, but those who perpetrated these war crimes have apologized for nothing, remain welcome in decent company, and are still shielded by our Government from all accountability.

****

One bit of good news is the way our current President speaks about our history and religious tradition. As Rob Boston notes, Obama told a Turkish audience that we are not a Christian nation:

" "I've said before that one of the great strengths of the United States is - although as I mentioned we have a very large Christian population - we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation," Obama said. "We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values."
A few second later, Obama went on to praise the concept of "a secular country that is respectful of religious freedom, respectful of rule of law, respectful of freedom, upholding these values and being willing to stand up for them in the international stage.""

Doesn't mean that Christianity has not played a critical role in our history (though not always positively), but it simply means that we are a secular nation. Secular, as Boston notes, does not mean the same thing as being hostile to religion. And the right wing should stop acting as if it does.

Christians and torture

Obviously, the big question about why goes to George "Jesus is my favorite philosopher" Bush, but as Steven Waldman points out, the question of how a Christian could allow torture goes very much to the very visibly Christian John Ashcroft, who made a big point of leading Bible studies and arguing that he was only interested in doing what was right in God's eyes. Yet, there is no evidence so far, and none argued by Ashcroft himself, that he ever stood up and tried to stop the torture.

"On one of the greatest moral questions of the administration -- and arguably one of the greatest challenges to Christian ethics of the last decade -- he has nothing to say.

For sake of argument, let's say Ashcroft shouldn't have brought his religious beliefs into his decision-making. Perhaps we want our Attorney General to completely submerge his religion when dealing with policy. Indeed, on other occasions Ashcroft apparently went against his personal beliefs in order to enforce the law -- as when he had federal marshals protect doctors who perform abortions.

But if that's the case, I'm left wondering: what is the value of having a religious person in office? I don't mean that as a snarky rhetorical question. I'm honestly perplexed: if ever there was a situation when we actually could have benefited from having a self-righteous, moral, Bible-reading, God-fearing Christian in the room to morally challenge utilitarian thinking, the discussions about torture would have been it."

I am with Waldman here (though his reference to Richard Land as a "moderate" leaves me puzzled), if people like Bush and Ashcroft are not expected to actually act like Christians, then what is the point of electing them?

I would further add that this not only goes to Ashcroft, but the large population of conservative Christians who praised Bush's faith and reelected him--all without ever questioning the man on torture.

And people wonder why I have lost respect for the GOP

They are now holding Obama nominees hostage in order to keep Bush torture memos secret. I know too many Republicans who are offended by torture, but this kind of action makes it very hard to believe that the institutional GOP and leadership don't really support it. They have done everything in their power to help Bush and Cheney torture. Holding up nominees is political theater, and Democrats have done that as well. And the winning side, as Hilzoy notes, gets to say that they won and should get the nominees the President wants. But the bigger issue is why the GOP is threatening war on these nominees--to defend torture. It should make the grownup Republicans feel just a little ill.

And while I am reading Obsidian Wings, let me note this other great post by publius on our lost decade. It isn't just that Bush invaded Iraq and tortured people--something we may never dig our way out of. But all of the things that Bush and the Republicans refused to do and squandered. Work on climate change, health care, etc. Goes back to my continual rant that these particular Republicans have no interest in investing in anything for the public good, and have no interest beyond cutting taxes for the rich and regulations for the corporations. And we have seen just how well that has worked. Our lost decade.

Let's hope it is just a decade. I would like America back, thank you very much.

Sunday night feminist rant

I am making dinner and getting ready to watch the OU women play in the Final Four. They are a lot of fun to watch and I am hopeful they can make the finals.

But one of the OU players is Carlee Roethlisberger. ESPN keeps running this little thing about her and her older brother (Ben Roethlisberger of the Steelers). I am fine with that, though I still resent Ben crediting Jesus with his starting job in college. Stupid theology just effects me that way, I guess.

But this ESPN coverage bothers me nearly as much. Here is a very good college player, and all they can talk about is her big brother, and the piece is about her watching Ben win the Super Bowl. Nothing about her 3 point shot, or how she contributes to OU's great team.

That just pisses me off. Ben gets his due all the time, and deserves it (in that sports context, mind you), but his little sister is pretty good on her own. To present her just as a fan of her older brother is demeaning and chauvinist. I am just tired of that stuff. Women are not defined by the men they love or share a family with. Get with it, ESPN.

Ah, family

A great essay by one of Rush Limbaugh's less conservative cousins.

The Official George W. Bush Presidential Librarium

The Official George W. Bush Presidential Librarium.

Brilliant

And she could have been Veep

Palin, Ruedrich call for Begich resignation: Former Sen. Ted Stevens | adn.com. The entire GOP continues to surprise me with their stupidity right now. "Spending freeze?" Have any of these people read any history?

But Palin and JTP take the cake, and they are the people the "base" of the Republican party just loves. What more can you say about that "base?"

New Blog to read

Our good friend Sara Leader now has a blog, and I am thrilled to see her online. She is a really thoughtful and talented artist, and is now showcasing some of that talent here with her photos and writing.

Drop by and show her some love.

Annoying

Watching OU lose to UNC, which is not that big of a deal as the Tarheels are a pretty good team and OU is underperforming. Those are the joys of competition.

But what annoys me to no end are the stupid ads that we see during sporting events. The Howie Long homophobic ads for trucks. Or the unbelievable Burger King ads--either for using a little person to sell breakfast meals, or for the stupid and sexist ads for their little burgers using buxom women.

But the taker of the cake was the Guitar Hero ads that featured NCAA coaches Krzyzewski, Pitino, Smith, and former coach Bobby Knight. Fine. Do a take off from Risky Business, I really don't care. But when Bobby Knight throws the equipment in a tantrum, we really see how tolerant the American people are of abusive personalities. No wonder we have problems in this area.

That's right. The guy is an abusive asshole who threw chairs at refs and potted plants at secretaries. He even choked a player one time. And he is elevated to spokesperson and icon.

Pass.

Woohoo

Wilco // New Album Slated For Summer Release

John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales may not want to travel overseas

Unless they want to be arrested and tried for torture.

Cold Saturday

I had another weird Facebook moment this week. FB has a bit of a blogger feel--the interaction and comments, but the world-colliding part makes for very weird political connections. Here at the blog, everyone knows I am a liberal (except that troll who accused me of being some kind of Republican apologist), but on Facebook (even though my profile lists me as liberal) not everyone seems to get it. The other day, I received an invite to a group to oppose stem cell research, and to organize letter writing to pressure Obama to move away from a pro-choice stance.

Yeah. Like I said, all of you here know that while I may not be a big fan of abortion, I am essentially pro-choice, and I thought Bush's ban on federal stem-cell research was pure politics, and very little science. Like I said, my profile says that I am proudly liberal, so I was a bit surprised to get this invite from this old high school (and church) friend.

But no big deal. I declined the invite and then sent him a short (and nice) note telling him that I certainly didn't mind the invitation, but I was no longer a conservative, and had in fact supported Obama during the campaign. Trust me. I was nice.

And the response? Nothing.

While being spammed with right wing stuff didn't bother me, the lack of polite response bothered me a lot. Frankly, it pissed me off. I have been very close to firing off another email and not being as nice this time. Talking through it with SOF, however, I realized that she was probably right (duh) that this guy was not the real target of my ire. I have had this happen before, however, and the wounds are rather deep. Friends from the past, and even some of my relatives (more distant) have reconnected with me in the last 15 years, but when they discovered that I was *gasp* a "liberal" they just stopped talking to me. One sent me an email riling up support for the beleaguered Boy Scouts in their battle with the gays. I wrote back and said, "you do remember that I am your liberal relative, right?" His response? "I didn't think you were that liberal." And that was the end of that email exchange. Not sure I have heard from him since.

I don't mind people disagreeing with me, but I do sorely object to being treated as some kind of pariah or defect. Those wounds are still a little painful, and have not helped my view of conservative Christianity. I am grateful for those family (my parents and nieces and nephews, in particular) who have kept in relationship with me despite political and theological differences, and I have a few friends (really just one) from the old days who have done so as well. But those who have dropped me really have some answering to do about their faith and how their faith asks them to treat others.

Anyway. Long story, but one I needed to get out. I have not responded to this latest one, but am still considering a less angry and more inquisitive version of the "take off" email I initially drafted in my head. (Actually, it wasn't "take" in my head!) He certainly doesn't need to to pay for those old debts, and perhaps no one can.

*****

One more item, not necessarily related, but I saw this from George Packer at the New Yorker that reiterates what I have been arguing about radicals on the right v. radicals on the left.

Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck have far more power in the Republican Party (it sometimes seems to include veto power) than Klein, Lee, and Moore have in the Democratic Party. The views of right-wing commentators in the grip of the paranoid style (Obama is a stealth radical, the Democrats are imposing socialism) are much closer to mainstream conservative and Republican belief than the views of their counterparts on the left (the levees in New Orleans were blown up by the government, the White House had something to do with 9/11) are to mainstream liberal and Democratic belief. The reasons are complex, but I would list these: the evangelical and occasionally messianic fervor that animates a part of the Republican base; the atmosphere of siege and the self-identification of conservatives as insurgents even when they monopolized political power; the influence of ideology over movement conservatives, and their deep hostility to compromise; the fact that modern conservatism has been a movement, which modern liberalism has not.

This is not to say that the more destructive forms of populism and outright paranoia can’t appear on the left. They have, they do, and they will, especially in times of extreme distress like these. It’s only to say that the infection has been more organic to the modern right.

Perhaps I have run headlong into that "deep hostility to compromise" in my own life too much. :)

*****

Anyway. It is a little (emphasize little) snowy here in Norman, and a perfect day for my latest experiment in sourdough bread. Hope you are all well.

My productive Spring Break week

So often Spring break is either spent skiing (which is cool) or not getting stuff done and not relaxing either. This one has not been the most restful break I can recall, but it has been pretty productive. So, here are my accomplishments for the week:

1) As already mentioned, cleaned out some of the very messy garage. Still a long way to go, but made progress.

2) Placed the order for a shed to replace our garage space.

3) Attended three sessions with my new chiropractor. Jury is still out, but so far, so good. Also made it to two yoga classes.

4) Came up with name "socialized nature" to describe stupidity of current discussion on socialism. Perhaps greatest accomplishment of the week.

5) Filed application for remodel permit. It did take me too trips, and my first trip had me in front of man probably ten years my junior rolling his eyes at my ignorance. Can't fight city hall, but did have the instinct to give him the time honored gesture indicating his number one status. Did not give into that instinct, and my second visit went much better.

6) Removed a few more rocks from my pond water feature.

7) Bottled my IPA this afternoon (tasted really good coming out of the secondary).

Now to make dinner and get ready for the OU/Michigan game. Tomorrow, I make gumbo and am planning on making the darkest roux I can possibly muster. Hmm... roux.

Later.

Yeah, I am still here

Though it has been a weird week.

After a fabulous visit last week with our fabulous niece, I faced spring break and the need to clean out the garage. I have not mentioned it here, but we are trying to remodel that space into something useful--well, more useful than the storage of random crap ... and a lawnmower.

The weird part of the week, however, began Saturday night when we attended a film about and concert with Wanda Jackson--the Oklahoma contribution to women in rock. Most of this was pretty cool, but there was also a fairly weird quality to this evening that I can't quite untangle. Parts tent meeting and altar call, and parts 1050s bad girl dating Elvis, mixed with parts current performer and forthcoming member of the Rock Hall of Fame. The entire thing had me feeling like world's were colliding in some way that unsettled me a little.

Monday, I started working on the garage with a borrowed truck (used to be my truck) and giving away some of the crap from the garage. Along the way, I had a great coffee with my friend JS, and even had a great little connection to an electrical contractor who has done a lot of work for us over the years, and with whom I feel a friendship.

That was cool.

Tuesday, I made my first visit to a chiropractor's office. I grew up with the sense that they were not legitimate, but have just had so many friends who tell me how much help their chiropractor has been to them. After a month or so of nagging back pain, I broke down and went to one in the city that came highly recommended. He is a pretty nice guy, and uses this cool little computerized tool to stimulate the muscles in the back. I went back yesterday, and am scheduled to go again tomorrow. Not terribly convenient, but so far, it has been intriguing and even helpful. We shall see.

Last night, I enjoyed a few beers with a history colleague from Germany. My favorite moment, I think, was when I mentioned the conservatives talking about Obama leading us into socialism. I believe he nearly spit out beer, and then became a little irritated at this nonsense. I told him that I had decided to start referring to our National Parks as "Socialized Nature," and will now accuse everyone who uses our Interstate Highway system at all as "socialists."

Well, it amused me.

Larry Wilmore on being white in today's climate

Wilmore is brilliant most of the time, but this one is just amazing.

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Louis CK on just how spoiled we all are

H/t to my guitar buddy for this one.

Jon Swift on Bristol Palin

Brilliant as always.

Why Bristol Palin Is Different: "We should have the courage of our convictions and not play the liberal game of moral equivalency. Instead of trying to explain away Bristol's pregnancy we should be defending it, holding her up as an example of the difference between liberal teenage unwed mothers and conservative teenage unwed mothers. Because just as it is true that, as Richard Nixon once said, 'When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.' when a good Christian conservative has a child out of wedlock, that means it's not immoral."

Jon Stewart as real journalist

We turned on the The Daily Show to watch the interview with Jim Cramer, and both of us watched in amazement. We both expected fluff, and instead watched Jon Stewart absolutely lay into Cramer and CNBC. This was one of the most interesting news events I have yet to see. You won't see David Gregory do this. And you won't see Brian Williams do it. It took a comedian doing fake news.

Couple of take-aways: one, that Republican deregulation allowed much of this to occur, with Democratic complicity, btw. From 1999-2007, the market increased at a 30% rate, and everyone got greedy. That happened to me as well, and I am well aware that, as I said, Democrats were complicit in this. But this is what happens when you assume that CEOs and Wall Street have our best interest at heart. Deregulation and lower taxes have been the repeating mantra of the right, and this is what you get. Cramer talked about indictments for these people, but I really wonder if they broke many laws in robbing from the 401ks. Republicans have made a sport out of elevating the rich and convincing the poor that their interests are the same.

That was the second takeaway, that Jon identified the central disconnect between the interests of the very rich and the interests of the average investor. CNBC (and Republicans and Democrats in Congress) catered to the interests of the very wealthy, and assumed that would help everyone out. When some of us point that out, we are accused of "class warfare" but the reality is that, as Jon points out, there are two economies. And one is a game played with little morality or ethics that is funded by the investment economy of ordinary people playing by the rules.

This was one of those watershed events, I think, where Jon Stewart dared to point out the naked emperor. He did so with humor and anger, at one point telling Cramer how angry it made him to hear him describe how to game the system.

Here is a clip from the uncensored edition:

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Jim Cramer Interview Outtake Pt. 3

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The Thin Line Between Socialism and Capitalist Nirvana

Interesting graph showing how socialist Reagan really was.

Couple of things--with update

On the religious front, InternetMonk has suggested that evangelical Christianity is on the verge of a major collapse. I am not terribly convinced that this is so (primarily because of the next item), but this point is very interesting:

Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.

This seems to be an accurate assessment (at least the first sentence) but whether that leads to people identifying badly with evangelicals remains to be seen. As I noted, consider the following item, on the number of self-professed non-believers in this country. They now constitute some 15% of the population, and as Uygur notes, much more than the 1.4% that Mormons comprise. It has always struck me that for all the whining about Christian persecution, no one ever runs for office as an atheist (well, mostly never, and certainly not for President). Let's just say that this is just one reason It is hard for me to believe that the American people will associate evangelicals with enough bad things to cause a major collapse. Hell, conservative evangelicals essentially supported a torture regime in the White House.

Sigh.

Update--Just saw a discussion on this poll on non-believers that noted that the number 15% was 8% in 1990. That seems like a pretty quick uptick. It also seems that many believe that "non-believer" in this context is no the same as atheist. At least it seems that way to me.

***

Chuck Norris' open call for revolution against Obama seems to be a trend among the wackjob right. A friend asked me yesterday if I was arguing that liberals are more moral than conservatives because I don't acknowledge the idiots on the left. I noted that we do have idiots on the left, but they just don't have the following that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity (who also called for a resistance from conservatives) who have millions of listeners and followers. I have made this analogy before, but it is if the right's center, or mainstream, is now around the 10 yard line (football field metaphor, with mythic middle of the road American at the 50 yard line), while the left's equivalent 10 yard line wackjobs are firmly outside the liberal mainstream. In that setting, Chuck Norris may be a little extreme, but not so much that it really bothers the average conservative listener. But again, the average conservative listener was not bothered by torture, so why should an American celebrity calling for armed resistance to Obama?

Frank Schaeffer finds the modern right appalling, and as he notes in this angry letter to "the Republican Traitors (From a Former Republican), the Republican party wasn't always like this. I am not completely sure I buy his entire view of Reagan and Goldwater, but it does strike me that the party has shifted dramatically to the right, while so many Republicans seem to not have noticed. Their own allegiance is to the party (even if that allegiance is not very firm) and to a few code words about low taxes and less government (even if that second part has never been true) as well as a few nods to those worried about the gays and abortion-seeking flag burners. I have argued to my conservative friends for the last 8 years--that their party no longer represents their values. Mostly, this argument has fallen on deaf ears.

And finally, this item (can you tell I was reading through the Huffington Post this morning?) on the so-called Obama "class warfare". (After all, he is a socialist, right?) I have always been annoyed with the language of those critical of higher taxes, because it so often includes phrases like "punish the rich" or "it takes away incentive to make more money." I have never been convinced that our taxation policy turned rich people into not-rich people. And this piece very clearly notes that difference. He links to a Chait article on an unbelievable ABC piece on a dentist so upset by Obama's "war on the rich" that she will purposefully make $70,000 less to come in under the $250,000 cut off for the higher rate. Similar to the Ayn Rand people calling for some kind of "going Galt" response, I guess, but equally stupid. As Chait points out, those who make more than 250K don't all of a sudden pay that higher rate on their entire income, they just pay that higher rate on that those dollars they make over that threshold. And when you factor in deductions, that dentist would be foregoing an additional $70,000 to avoid paying $2,100.

I am clearly no financial wiz--I could never get a stock show on CNBC, for example--but even I see the problems with that kind of math. Perhaps the wealthy dentist needs to return to school for a little remedial math. Perhaps she can then take a class on basic civics and see if she can get Chuck Norris to join her. Perhaps either one of them might consider taking their head out of their ass.

Speaking of CNBC, here is Jon Stewart once again going after Jim Cramer--

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In Cramer We Trust

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Wow

Gee, I wonder how the right would respond if someone on the left spoke this way?

Chuck Norris claims thousands of right wing cell groups exist and will rebel against U.S. government

I think Ann Coulter would include them in one of her books. But since it is Chuck Norris, they will just grin and move on.

Live Music Sunday

Saw Horseshoe Road at our local concert venue this evening and it was a pretty amazing show. As several of us noted, we have not heard many fiddle players better than this guy, and the guitar player was pretty phenomenal as well.

As I have said many times, there are live shows that never quite achieve the magical. This one made it, perhaps for me, with one of the more stirring versions of "Amazing Grace" I have ever heard. The fiddle player channeled a bagpipe in the opening and the harmonies were just stunning. The encore was a similarly stirring version of "The Sound of Silence."

Magical live music.

Literary fib list

Anglican will love this.

Jon Stewart's CNBC takedown

And it is a classic. Anglican had it on his blog earlier this week, and I decided to post it here for any who haven't seen it. As Will Bunch notes, it is something that we should hear from actual journalists. Watch and laugh and cry. The fact that Jim Cramer is still on TV telling anyone what to invest in--hell that any of these people are advising on economics is as ridiculous as the fact that people still tune in to hear what Pat Robertson says about the future.

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CNBC Gives Financial Advice

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Deregulation with extra Salmonella

Reading this story just furthers the rage at Republican public policy. Food producers in this country are essentially left up to their own devices to determine food safety. They can hire independent inspectors, and then ignore their recommendations. The only thing that makes them change (unless they are a good company) is bad media attention. But if the media never hears about their bad policies, they keep doing them.

In the case of our peanut producer, they hired a guy who was an expert in produce, and didn't even realize that salmonella was a problem in peanuts. He gave the plant an excellent rating. And he is not the problem, of course. He did the best he could, but was simply the wrong guy for the job. The plant had already done some testing and knew they had salmonella, but had decided to send out the tainted goods anyway.

This is what deregulation leads us--the grocery store as crap shoot. Thanks, Republicans. Sure love the "let corporate interests regulate themselves" stuff.

Hoping for failure

Limbaugh seems to have succeeded in making it ok for Republicans (well, not elected officials) to openly hope for Obama's failure. They are doing so based on a tricky little bit of rhetorical fakery as David Neiwert points out here. Liberals did not wish for failure in Iraq. I, for one, remember very clearly how I felt when it was clear that Bush was invading. I hated it with every fiber of my being, but hoped that it would work. I was glad when the surge (or the Sunni Awakening, whichever) led to reduced violence in Iraq, and think that Petraeus deserves a lot of respect for getting to the villages and homes in a positive way. I hoped, I must say, that the lessons learned out of Iraq not be that we should do this again, but I certainly never hoped that we would lose.

The analogy is actually very interesting, in that it would make more sense for Republicans to have said that they hoped the stimulus bill would fail in Congress. But now that it has passed, they are hoping that it fails to help the economy? They are much closer to wishing economic disaster on the country for political purposes than liberals ever came close to wishing for failure in war.

And, btw, just so we don't lose sight of the facts, when Democrats criticized the Bush plan, they were called traitors and unamerican by the same idiots who got up at CPAC to wish for failure and insurgency.

I keep saying this, but it is still true. There are a lot of grownup Republicans out there, and it is time for them to wrest their party back from the racists, hatemongers, and frankly stupid people who now run it. Those grownup Republicans watched in horror as a racist drug addict forced the newly elected African American head of the RNC to bow and scrape. It is sickening to watch.

Conservative Christianity

As requested:

"Are we as Christians ready to state, without embarrassment, that many conservative media voices are either not Christians--and do not pretend to be--or do not represent anything close to the Christian worldview? 'What would Jesus do?' and 'What did Hannity say today?' are not always one and the same thing. Are we OK with saying Anne Coulter is sharp, but her manner cannot be our manner, for it is seriously lacking what we know matters in the witness we bear to others?"

Sigh

Youth Pastors Encouraged to Learn Self-Defense, because, after all, Jesus said to kick ass and take names.

It is somewhere toward the back. Trust me.

Just a couple more

I loved Robert Gates invoking one of the greatest understatements of recent history when he told David Gregory that Obama was "somewhat more analytical" than President Bush. Yeah. But just somewhat, right?

I missed this from Obama's fiscal responsibility summit where even Republicans acknowledged that Republican outsourcing and privatization may have not saved us anything:

"In one rare example of consensus, incidentally, GOP Rep. Darrell Issa told Obama: 'Mr. President, it was kind of a surprise in the procurement group that was together, we had almost universal recognition that over the last decade or so, we've overdone, in some cases, outsourcing of critical federal requirements, and that means that in many cases we spend more to hire a contractor or a non-federal worker than we would pay to invest in federal workers.

'And so there was universal -- Republican, Democrat, House and Senate, even -- (laughter) -- that during this administration we need to assess where we can re-federalize some parts of the workforce, particularly when it came to people who do get procurement and oversee the procurement.'"

I just love that. The very logical outcome of 25 years of bashing government as the problem has resulted in us spending more money to do the same thing because conservatives believe that private enterprise magically makes better decisions.

As I keep saying, Government is not the answer to all of our problems, but it can reflect the desire to build community and provide some solutions for the common good. Much of that can then free the entrepreneurs to truly innovate, as we saw during the 1950s. What is more, I think Republicans have forgotten or ignored that the great middle class of the 40s, 50s and 60s was created by all those things that Republicans now loathe and demonize. Strong unions, progressive taxation, and government taking a role in infrastructure, education, and even (positively) housing. Since Reagan, Republicans have taken a hatchet to all of those things and then expressed horror at the erosion of the middle class.

Dictatorship

Via Sully:

"'We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship. The constitutional rights we learned about in high school civics were suspended. That was thanks to secret memos crafted deep inside the Justice Department that effectively trashed the Constitution. What we know now is likely the least of it,' - Scott Horton.

Sullivan adds:

The Fourth Amendment was suspended indefinitely. And they said we were paranoid."

Bush's Christian values sure helped us, didn't they?

As bad as we thought

But perhaps not as bad as it could have been. As some of you may know, the Justice department just released some old OLC memos from the John Yoo days, and one at the very end of the Bush admin that tries to cancel the worst of it.

Turns out that his legal people told Bush that he could use the military on targets inside the US, and that he would not have to worry about the 4th amendment or Posse Comitatus. Further, he could limit speech and press and not worry about the First amendment.

It could have been worse, clearly, in that Bush could have tried to act off these memos, and as far as we know, besides declaring Padilla an enemy combatant, he did not. But it shows just how little respect these people had for the Constitution, and just how dangerous they really were.

On Iran

Not the Iran the warmongers want to see.

Holy Cow

That was fast:

"Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says he has reached out to Rush Limbaugh to tell him he meant no offense when he referred to the popular conservative radio host as an “entertainer” whose show can be “incendiary.”

“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”"

Monday afternoon silliness

First and foremost is the apparent rift in the Republican party between the adults and Rush Limbaugh and Limbaugh's idiot followers. Seriously, how can you sugar coat that guy or the people who listen to him? Evidently, Michael Steele called Rush's show "ugly" and Limbaugh responded with more of his crap this afternoon. Grownup Republicans watching all of this do so with a shaking head, wondering where the GOP is headed if the guy most admired by the base says that Republicans can't beat the Democrats with ideas, and should just work for them to fail?

And speaking of that base, they are absolutely convinced that Obama is a socialist. According to the base at CPAC:

Minutes later, out in the halls, few would argue that Obama was anything less than the rebirth of Karl Marx. "He is a fascist, socialist, and a Marxist," said Pat, a female attendee from Philadelphia. "He is well beyond European style socialism. I'm not going to sugar coat it.

Only if you know nothing about socialism, of course. But this should not surprise us, I think. After lecturing today on the first Red Scare, I was reminded of how easy it has been for conservatives to go to the fear card, and to use that to accuse the rest of us of being subversive or unAmerican.

It strikes me, however, that the "red scare" card might not work as well today. When we trade with the biggest communist country, and in fact borrow money from them to keep our own economy afloat, how do you raise the specter of Communism? When Olympic athletes from both China and America wear Nike equipment, how do you return to the days of McCarthy?

I am sure they will try, but I am just wondering how much that old trick will work.

And finally, this just makes me sigh:

"Retired barber Joe Godlewski says that when television chefs recommended kosher salt in recipes, he wondered, 'What the heck's the matter with Christian salt?'"

They are coming out with Christian salt. Sigh.

The faces of the Republican party?

At CPAC:

"“This is probably too strong,” said Doug Haney, the city attorney in Carmel, Ind. and a Republican precinct committeeman, “but Hitler also gave great speeches.”

Attendees and speakers at the three-day event were nearly unanimous in their fear that President Obama and the Democrats were turning America into a socialist state. Political Media, a conservative public relations company, passed out faux “stimulus dollar” bills printed by “The Socialist State of America.” Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the former presidential candidate who’d been roundly attacked by fiscal conservatives for approving tax increases, appeared shortly before 2 p.m. to give a red meat speech about the new president’s red menace.

“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics may be dead,” said Huckabee, “but a Union of American Socialist Republics is being born.” Democrats, according to Huckabee, were packing 40 years of pet projects like “health care rationing” into spending bills. “Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff.”"

Then there is the "plumber" who simply will not go away.

Back in the day, really, when people would talk about our military in a poor way, somebody would shoot ‘em. And there’d be nothing said about that, because they knew it was wrong. You don’t talk about our troops. You support our troops. Especially when our congressmen and senators sit there and say bad things in an ongoing conflict.

Not to mention Michelle Bachmann's "you da man" response to Michael Steele.

And how about this from Bobby Jindal's home state?

Louisiana's transportation department plans to request federal dollars for a New Orleans to Baton Rouge passenger rail service from the same pot of railroad money in the president's economic stimulus package that Gov. Bobby Jindal criticized as unnecessary pork on national television Tuesday night.

Heh.

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In the "bad ideology turning into bad policy" department we have Texas as the poster child for abstinence only and rising STDs. As I have noted, abstinence is a good personal decision, but horrible public policy that leaves kids actually less safe.

Daily Show on Obama and Jindal

And just too funny, which I think is a good way to start a Friday morning.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Optimist Prime

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

And then this.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Bobby Jindal's Republican Response

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

And back to the other GOP Candidate

According to Sarah Palin she isn't paranoid for thinking that the media was out to destroy her:

"Palin said she believes the media made a decision that “we’re going to seek and we’re going to destroy this candidacy of Sarah Palin’s because of what it is that she represents.”"

Honestly, this woman amazes me. She really is the heir to Bush. Nothing is her fault, it is the media, or a particular interviewer. They asked her tough questions, after all.

Sigh.

Hey, it wasn't just me

From Sullivan (re: Jindal's speech):

Close your eyes and think of Kenneth from 30 Rock

Or from Yglesias::

"Bobby Jindal apparently believes it’s appropriate to address the citizens of the United States in a tone that suggests we’re all nine years old."

But my favorite line--this about Obama's speech, also came from one of Sully's readers:

"Sitting here watching the speech I have been thinking that something is wrong. My first thought was that he is talking too fast. Then it dawned on me: he knows what he is talking about and expecting me to keep up. After eight years of being talked to like a child (or an idiot), my president is speaking to me like I am an intelligent adult. This is going to take some getting used to."

Indeed. Complete sentences, even. And, as Yglesias also pointed out, no concerns about human-animal hybrids.

Post Non SOTU speech reaction

I have to chuckle at our stupid troll. I have been called a lot of things over the last few years at this blog, but being called a Republican is not one of them. You have to give him credit for that. He may not be able to read, or construct a coherent sentence or paragraph, but he can produce wingnuttery of impressive proportion.

Ok, I watched this speech, and I must say that I was very impressed. Yeah, there were a few silly things in there (the mentioning of "clean coal") but I was stunned at Obama's political ability to frame issues. Rachel Maddow called it "post partisan" and I think, for the most part, that she is right on.

On the other hand, am I the only one who thought that Jindall's speaking style was patronizing and overly simplistic? "Americans can do anything?" Seriously? Not only that, but invoking, as an example of government corruption, the response to Katrina? And then saying that tax cuts are still the answer? Perhaps then Governor Jindall should turn down all the stimulus money coming his way.

Yeah, I doubt that.

And finally, this as my most recent challenge. Obama mentioned several ways that government has actually invested in something bigger than ourselves, and how that investment has paid off in such huge ways. GI Bill. Interstate Highway. Going to the moon. Any idea, off the top of our heads, how many millions in jobs or homes or new technologies that have come from those investments?

Where are the Republican investments? Since Reagan, we have not seen a willingness to invest in anything save the military (which has, to be fair, also produced new (and peaceful) technologies) and instead have spent the last 25 years blaming government. If the Republicans in leadership today, were in charge during all of those previous investments, where would we be today? Would we have interstates? Anything?

Fafblog on the Israeli/Gazan situation

As only Fafblog could do it. Click over to see the great photo caption:

"Israel has stood up for its right to stand up to other people's rights by forming its most hawkish possible government. A lesser nation might have wavered in the face of a merciless Palestinian onslaught of pleading and stump-waving, but Israel realizes this is a war between good and evil, right and wrong, civilization and those too poor to afford civilization. True, it's far from a fair fight - Israel has a mere three hundred nuclear warheads while the Palestinians have countless rocks to throw - but somehow the pluck and determination of this scrappy regional superpower has prevailed over the deadly horde of orphans, beggars and amputees who threaten to live next to it."

Wild West capitalism

Yeah, maybe that doesn't work.

To paraphrase Churchill, capitalist market economies open to trade and financial flows may be the worst economic regime--apart from the alternatives. However, while this crisis does not imply the end of market-economy capitalism, it has shown the failure of a particular model of capitalism. Namely, the laissez-faire, unregulated (or aggressively deregulated), Wild West model of free market capitalism with lack of prudential regulation, supervision of financial markets and proper provision of public goods by governments.

There is the failure of ideas--such as the "efficient market hypothesis," which deluded its believers about the absence of market failures such as asset bubbles; the "rational expectations" paradigm that clashes with the insights of behavioral economics and finance; and the "self-regulation of markets and institutions" that clashes with the classical agency problems in corporate governance--that are themselves exacerbated in financial companies by the greater degree of asymmetric information. For example, how can a chief executive or a board monitor the risk taking of thousands of separate profit and loss accounts? Then there are the distortions of compensation paid to bankers and traders.

This crisis also shows the failure of ideas such as the one that securitization will reduce systemic risk rather than actually increase it. That risk can be properly priced when the opacity and lack of transparency of financial firms and new instruments leads to unpriceable uncertainty rather than priceable risk.

It is clear that the Anglo-Saxon model of supervision and regulation of the financial system has failed. It relied on several factors: self-regulation that, in effect, meant no regulation; market discipline that does not exist when there is euphoria and irrational exuberance; and internal risk-management models that fail because, as a former chief executive of Citigroup put it, when the music is playing, you've got to stand up and dance.

Furthermore, the self-regulation approach created rating agencies that had massive conflicts of interest and a supervisory system dependent on principles rather than rules. In effect, this light-touch regulation became regulation of the softest touch.

Saturday musings

Today has been a slow and marginally productive day. We went to a couple of stores to look at stuff for the house and two were closed after noon on Saturdays. I guess that tells you how often we do that kind of shopping on the weekend.

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Facebook weirdness continues. I had lunch with a non-facebooking friend this week--one who knows some of my Facebook friends. He relayed that one of them had expressed surprise to him that my profile listed my religion as "Christian." She was sure I was an atheist. Where that came from, I have no idea.

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In the news, some really half-funny and also sad items. Sad in the "I just can't quite believe this is where we are" sad. Item 1, as Tony reminded me, is a big "duh" moment when Bristol Palin agreed that abstinence only was not realistic. Well, she also says that kids should abstain. I really feel for this young woman. Through no fault of her own, she was thrust into the national spotlight by a celebrity seeking mother who was quite willing to use her kids as political fodder, even when she knew that Bristol was pregnant out of wedlock. None of this should really matter to the rest of us, but her mother's insistence on abstinence only public policy made it a national issue. And given Sarah Palin's popularity nationwide, her grasp on such public health issues continues to make me scratch my head and wonder where in the hell the Republican party is headed.

Speaking of that, this story made me scratch my head. One Republican Congressman promised that if the Republicans win the House back in 2010, they will cancel the stimulus bill.

Hmm. Let me get this straight. People actually like the stimulus bill. They may not love it, but they like it. And they don't like Republicans in Congress. Yes, even less than the Democrats in Congress, and way less than Obama. So the Republicans are promising that if you will give them back the majority, they will promise to gut everything you like.

That seems like a winning ticket. It is just a mystery why Republicans are in the minority right now.

Monday morning

And I am not quite with it yet. SOF is a little under the weather this morning with a persistent sinus thing, and I am trying to get going for the week. I think I am going to need more coffee today...

Facebook continues to puzzle me. And actually, it has very little to do with Facebook, but everything to do with the past, and how I see myself then and now. 90% of those I connect to from the past are completely innocuous. We exchange a few "what are you doing?" emails, comment on the other's pictures, and then it is done. A couple have just made me feel bad, because even when I look them up in my yearbook, I recognize their name and face, but cannot muster up any personal memories. Some of those were on sports teams with me. And a few of those connections have reconnected me with jerks from the past--but in one case, he was a jerk that I had forgotten was a jerk. :) In that sense, despite a quick flashback to high school angst, it has been largely a positive. Spared the attempt to reconnect in person, and survive that awkward dinner/coffee, I have been able to make sure this person is still doing ok, say hi, and move on.

But then there are those connections that mean more. I recently found someone who really was so very good to me in high school. She graduated well ahead of me, but always found time to take me out for coffee or lunch when she came back from college. She served as a mentor and an encourager, and I always regretted letting that relationship slip by the wayside. So, I was thrilled to see her on Facebook. Her response was the same, but I felt oddly uncomfortable. With the rest of these connections, I really don't care if they look at my profile and scoff at my music tastes, the state of Oklahoma, or my liberal politics. It matters not to me what they think. But this last connection--it matters. Why is something I have to figure out, but she is the first connection on Facebook where I have really felt a bit of insecurity, and hoped that she would still think well of me.

My sense is that these things are largely positive. Those past relationships that meant little then, are just casual, yet manageable niceties. Those past relationships that meant something have the opportunity to either still be meaningful, or transition gracefully out of nostalgic hope into the past. As SOF and I have discussed, many relationships have expiration dates. People change and the relationship sometimes ceases to make sense. Finding that out isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Anyway....

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Just a couple of news items that caught my eye. First, is this interesting discussion on patriotism:

"But our precious opportunity to revitalize true patriotism was hijacked by a war-mongering administration and our own complacent fear. In the years that followed, hollow patriotism -- appeals to God and American values -- played on a loop that echoed with deadly hypocrisy. Over the last couple of years we began to collectively rise up in response to the Bush administration's infuriating policies and demand a more complex, more honest definition of patriotism from our nation's leaders. And finally, more than seven years after September 11, we got to experience rare unity in the form of Obama's landslide election, made possible by the efforts of average Americans.

Now here we are. After September 11 and its long fallout, after the most drawn-out campaign in history, after the inauguration of a new president, who are we? Improbably, we are less economically stable yet more hopeful than ever. We are the most racially diverse population in the history of the United States. We are wealthy and we are struggling, with not much in between. We are still shockingly segregated from one another -- socially, economically, interpersonally."

An interesting little article, and worth thinking about.

And related, especially given how congressional Republicans often defined criticism of Bush as some kind of lack of patriotism, is Andrew Sullivan's longer column of the Republican decision to declare war on Obama--not out of defined ideological principles, but out of simply not wanting Democrats to do well.

And this after eight years in which they managed to turn a surplus into a trillion-dollar deficit and added a cool $32 trillion to the debt the next generation will have to pay for. Every now and again their chutzpah and narcissism take one’s breath away. But it’s all they seem to know.

John McCain gives you the flavour. Fresh from a dinner in his honour hosted by Obama, he abruptly dismissed the stimulus package as the “same old” spending of the distant Democratic past. His closest Republican ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, declared: “This bill stinks.”

Pete Sessions, chairman of the Republican congressional committee, explained that the Republican strategy was going to be modelled on jihadist insurgency. “I’m not joking,” he added. “Insurgency we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban.”

I think it is hard to say that Obama has not tried to reach out to Republicans. And the polling data suggests that they are tone deaf on this one--the country is not interested in a repeat of their war on Clinton. (Those who saw SNL last week, there was a pretty funny sendup of the Republican leadership thinking it was time for impeachment and that the country was tired of the Obama daughters getting a free ride.)

And finally, a bit of humor courtesy of Shaun at Upper Left, this pretty funny reminder of what appears to be GOP economic thought.

Sigh, and they will know us by our hatred

Jessika noted that our Oklahoma legislature is now emboldened by Republican majorities to start pushing their religious agenda. We can expect to see a lot of batshit crazy from these people, to be quite honest. Guns for everyone, anti-gay legislation, and anti-evolution legislation (all from people who couldn't explain evolution at the point of one of their own beloved guns). Jessika's post was about wanting to post the Ten Commandments on the state capitol grounds. I suggested that this was one of those battles that I am tired of fighting. If Christian conservatives really think that posting their own idol will make us more moral or more Godly, then let them. This kind of magical thinking masquerading as "faith" drives me crazy, but if that is how they think, I can't stop them. And that Ten Commandments statue will not harm me. And if these people actually believed the Bible they use frequently as a weapon, it might make us a better people.

Jessika argued in the comments (along with several of her friends) that we need to oppose the Religious Right at every turn. Once they get their way with the monuments, then they will want more. This response to Scott Jones prayer makes me think that Jessika and her friends are right. Reverend Jones offered a prayer before the session, and 20 of these right wingers voted to not include the prayer in the House Record. Yeah, didn't want it in the record. The words "petty" and "stupid" come to mind. One of them, of course, said he did so based on his faith. He was joined, of course, by the great Sally Kern, who once famously said that gay people were a bigger threat to America than terrorism.

Ah, Oklahoma, and Ah, the RepublichristianNRA party. Doesn't it just fill you with the love of Christ?

Sigh.

BTW, Scott has a nice blog that I forget to read. He is a super nice guy, and usually responds to this kind of nonsense with a lot more grace and compassion than I do.

The Republican attack on Obama continued

Sully's take:

"The GOP has passed what amounts to a spending and tax-cutting and borrowing stimulus package every year since George W. Bush came to office. They have added tens of trillions to future liabilities and they turned a surplus into a trillion dollar deficit - all in a time of growth. They then pick the one moment when demand is collapsing in an alarming spiral to argue that fiscal conservatism is non-negotiable. I mean: seriously.

The bad faith and refusal to be accountable for their own conduct for the last eight years is simply inescapable. There is no reason for the GOP to have done what they have done for the last eight years and to say what they are saying now except pure, cynical partisanship, and a desire to wound and damage the new presidency."

Just a reminder that Sullivan is a conservative who voted for Bush in 2000, so it isn't as if he has no concerns about fiscal responsibility. But he is dead on here. Those who followed the Cheney model of "deficits don't matter" when times were good have very little if any credibility to speak to this issue. Judd Gregg could have been the guy to reform some of the problems with entitlements to really address our long term fiscal health. Republicans, as I continue to argue, and stress that these are the Republicans in charge, not the Republicans as a whole--are more ready to allow economic disaster than to give democrats any credit for finding any kind of a solution. All due respect to LB. I really respect that there are conservatives of conscience and principle. Those in Washington right now are not those.

And if these people weren't bad enough, the man who would have been President is chiding Obama for not being bipartisan enough. SOF heard a Republican on NPR say today that the problem was that Obama spoke to Democrats and "consulted with them" but did not compromise. At that point, I believe I let loose a string of expletives thinking of how even the Republicans admit that Bush didn't consult with anyone on his objectives and can't think of an example where he even considered compromising. After all, he was the decider, and Republicans loved that. Obama took out spending, dropped aid for contraceptives, added more tax cuts, and he doesn't compromise?

Republicans are not acting in good faith, and should not be considered as intellectually honest brokers in this fight. They are more interested in political games than addressing issues in our economy. That is clear. If I ever hear a Republican accuse Democrats of being unAmerican, I believe I will remind them of this moment. And then throw up on their shoes.

How we think and speak about politics

Anglican alerted me to Roger Ebert's blog, and specifically to this post about, well, a lot of things, including film, politics, and how we understand our culture. (This one includes spoilers about the film, "The Reader" btw. I haven't seen it, but just thought I would add to his warning.) But at the beginning, Ebert connects some disparate issues about how we learn about politics and religion, and how we talk about them. Two points that caught my attention. The first, about the "Rush Limbaugh effect:"

"These people, usually friends of mine, are gentle, sweet and very nice, except when they drift into a certain tone I interpret as 'listening to Rush Limbaugh too much.' Then their voices take on undercurrents of anger, resentment and frustration. It is the dittohead voice, and they've learned it off the radio. If you listen to Rush, you quickly realize that it isn't what he says but how he says it. He has an unending capacity for counterfeit astonishment. It has been very effective in long-distance behavioral modification.

This counterfeit astonishment is also effective at forcing a zero sum game in politics. It isn't just the right who practices this, of course, though they seem to have it perfected the tactic. And we see it now, from some, though certainly not all, of those Republicans opposing the stimulus.

The second point is about how we know what we know:

That wise man Mark Twain told us: 'In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from others.'"

As Ebert notes, that is true for him in some areas, and also for most of us (in some capacity). What bothers me to a great extent is the numbers of people in office who seem to have very little understanding or thought about their approach to government. That applies to the left as well, but I have to say that glaring contrast between conservatives who defended every tax cut, and every dollar spent in Iraq (without oversight, I might add) but who now claim fiscal responsibility as their governing principle--well that contrast is just too much to take right now.

The other part of Twain's quote is most annoying to me right now, and something I have written about before. I don't have a problem with people having half-assed opinions about stuff. We all do that. We all opine on how the government should work, or how the referee missed that call, or how the recent warm spell in February relates to climate change. None of that may be true, or factual, or knowledge based in any way, but we do that. What seems different to me, is that assertion of that same quality of knowledge as justification to govern, or as an assumption of proven fact.

This is partly due to dealing with people who have no understanding of science telling me that evolution is false, or those with no understanding of history telling me about God's unique relationship with our American founders. But it is partly related to LB's thoughtful comment in the last thread. I simply do not believe that most conservatives have really thought through their supply-side (not conservative=supply-side) economics through. Their adherence to the deregulation, lower taxes, smaller government mantra is repeated as a faith -based assumption, with no or little recognition of the historical reality. I am not saying there are not some arguments to be made on this economic philosophy--but I am saying that most people who repeat the "less government/lower taxes" mantra have not though through the salmonella in their peanut butter or their economic system failing through mismanagement.

Anyway.

More on Republicans and Obama

Apropos of Monk's most recent comment, this story about Judd Gregg suddenly withdrawing at Commerce supposedly over disagreements over the stimulus (which is essentially the same as when he offered himself for the job) and a difference of opinion on policy.

All due respect to Steve and LB (and any other conservatives reading this) but I don't buy it. I don't buy that Gregg didn't know what he was getting into when he signed up for this job. What I (and a lot of other people) think is that Gregg signed up for the job when bipartisanship was supposedly something that Republicans wanted to do. But since then, the Republicans seem to have decided they would rather let the economy tank than give credit to a Democrat. They have declared war on the new President, despite the fact that they lost the last election and Obama's poll numbers remain high. They have declared war on the President despite an economy on the brink of collapsing. They have put their own petty party loyalty ahead of the country.

Sorry, but this pisses me the hell off. And it pisses me off especially because I know a lot of Republicans who are more responsible and ethical than this, and I have no clue why they allow this kind of bullshit to represent their interests.

Personally, I hope the Republicans relegate themselves to a minority party for the rest of time. That would make me very happy right now. It wouldn't be best for the country, but then again, what do Mitch McConnell and Rush Limbaugh care about that?

Feh

Shorter Republican message

"Perfectly glad to see the economy tank as long as we win seats."

Oh, and by the way, can someone tell me how the Republicans would have responded (and how the MSM would have echoed it) had a Democrat compared their resistance to Bush to that of the Taliban?

Ring of Fire

Last night, I was on the phone with my niece having a great conversation, and the door bell rang. I had been in the kitchen, and SOF was busy and focused on her computer. SOF got the door, and only then did we realize that the yard across the street was on fire. It was a very freaky sight, I can tell you. At the point we saw it the fire was a circle on the lawn and looked quite eerie, as if someone had purposefully set it in a circle. We suspect it was just an errant cigarette, but it looked eerie in the night. Even as this passerby alerted us to the fire, we heard sirens in the distance, and within a few minutes, the fire was out. It later rained, which made us all feel a little better.

You can see the burnt part in this photo.

Friday and stuff

Someone asked me what I had been up to this week, and I blanked. I have been busy, but when I think back, have a difficult time listing what I have done, or tried to do.

I guess that is how it goes. I realized I have also been rather bitchy with some of my conservative friends. Or rather, snippy and angry. I am not sure why, but think I am still trying to recover from the last 8 years of Bush and Republican rule. I am annoyed, to a point, that my conservative friends want to stop talking about Bush, as if his legacy ended on Inauguration day. So despite the fact that his assh*&e vice president is still out there scaring people and defending torture, that somehow I am supposed to act as if everything today is all the Democrats fault.

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Ok, enough of that. I have to get off to class here in a bit, but thought I would mention a few things that are fun and good.

First, our friend Zalm has a photo-blog, and it is one of my daily reads. Check out today's entry here. I urge you to subscribe, because it is always good. (No pressure, Zalm).

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If anyone out there is looking for new music, I can't recommend the new Andrew Bird enough. His last two albums are just spectacular. I am also enjoying the new Gaslight Anthem (thanks Ubub) and looking forward to the new Jason Isbell album coming out the 17th.

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I am not doing a very good job of updating twitter. Perhaps I just don't get it, but since I have been on Facebook, the status update takes about all the creativity I can muster for that kind of phrase.

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One of my favorite blogs is Mark Bittman's food blog. I read it every day, and have found several recipes that look great. The other day, I found this variation on Ma-Po Tofu and made it for dinner last night. It was spectacularly good (even though I read in the comments that it is not authentic). Easy to make, and just very tasty.

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Hope you all have a good Friday and a good weekend.

Quote of the day

Because I am so tired of the tax cut mantra from the right, it is so nice to hear this from Barney Frank:

"But beyond that, the notion that everything is solved by a tax cut, of course there are sensible tax policies you could have. But there are public needs we have in this society...that cannot be accomplished by a tax cut. No tax cut builds a road. No tax cut puts a cop on the street."

He also points out the obvious elephant in the room--the nearly trillion dollars spent invading Iraq and undermining our military. Republicans, or at least these in power, love to spend money on the military and had no interest in checking Bush's power or ambition, but now are complaining about trying to jump start a nearly moribund economy.

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Btw, I have noticed that Amity Shlaes is everywhere promoting her revision of the New Deal, and using that to argue for more supply-side economic response to the current crisis. I am fine with her making her argument, don't get me wrong, but it strikes me that no matter how far out of the mainstream a conservative idea is right now, it will get equal billing with the more accepted knowledge. Not as big of a problem with Shlaes, because there have always been critics of the New Deal, but I was just at the bookstore and noticed the prominence that absolute wingnuts like Coulter and Hannity get, as if their ideas have any legitimacy at all.

Anyway.

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So, I am going to make some turkey chili and watch the Super Bowl. It is often enjoyable to watch a game where I have no real preference for who I want to win. Not a huge fan of Roethlisberger, but then again, Kurt Warner bugs me for a lot of the same reasons. But I do admire the skills of people like Fitzgerald and Ward. So, I am cheering for a good game.

Perhaps the coolest Aquarium ever

The Aquarium Phone Booth | thepirata.com