I Forgot that I Had this Blog

Well, that's not entirely true. I knew that I had had it, but for the last god knows how many years, I've assumed that it must have been locked or deleted or in some other way rendered inoperable.

But so I guess not.

If only I had something to say. Maybe I can say something that will be politically toxic in 10 years and for which, at that time, I will then be fired by whatever the decade-from-now equivalent of #metoo is.

Meh, probably not. I'm not that imaginative.

It's Certainly Not the Christopher Walken

Everyone should follow christoFoWalken on Twitter. There was a time when the person was posting as 'cwalken' with a picture of actor Christopher Walken, but I guess that cover has been blown. Nevertheless, funny posts.

Over Two Years

That's how long since I last wrote an entry here. Time flies when you have a baby. Her name is Sandra. She's pretty frickin' cute.

Festival of Incompetence

I honestly wish I had time to blog seriously, but unfortunately, I don't have the time. So, for example, right now I have the seeds of what I believe could be a solid post about the need to emphasize competence in government, but rather than lay out evidence and present a persuasive case and contribute in my small way to the nation discussion, I have to content myself with merely sketching.

Much has been made over the course of the last 4 years of Bush Administration incompetence, and there's no surprise there. However, what hasn't really been discussed is the remedy. No, I'm not really talking about impeachment, not directly anyway, but I am talking about taking some steps rhetorically and possibly, legislatively, to make incompetence a punishable offense. It should be anyway, but as this administration has shown time and again, the People, absent any nudging by the media or the opposition party, are willing to cut people in power a lot of slack.

As but two examples, take the recent assertion by Karl Rove's attorney that "...Rove had no idea the e-mails were being deleted from the server, a central computer that managed the e-mail," and the leak of Valerie Plame's identity to the press in the run-up to the war.

• In the case of the Plame leak, there is a statute called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act that criminalizes any act that "intentionally discloses any information identifying" a covert agent. Unfortunately, "intentionally" gives the Bush Adminstration a lot of cover, which is being used effectively by both the Vice President and Karl Rove.
• In the case of Rove's e-mails, there is the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which requires that "the President shall take all such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented and that such records are maintained as Presidential records."

In both cases, it's clear that the Executive branch fucked up royally. However, in both cases, they are hiding successfully behind an incompetence defense, and this is what really needs to be addressed. We're talking about the President of the United States of America and his staff, not the night manager at Arby's; is "incompetence" really an adequate excuse for these people to escape the consequences of their actions?

And when did the conservative movement in this country, the movement of "personal responsibility" and "you'll go as far as your talent will take you" start settling for much less defending this kind of ineptitude?

When you're job is this important, shouldn't incompetence be just as criminal and just as disqualifying as deliberate acts of sabotage? The legislative remedy to this problem is to make no allowance for "mistakes". If Karl Rove was sufficiently afraid of the PRA, all he would have to do is make sure he saved every one of his emails; it's not that difficult.

Oh, and while I'm semi-on the subject, how is it we can even have these two simultaneous perceptions running around our national debate?

• Karl Rove is the genius who engineered sweeping GOP victoriees in 2000, 2002, and 2004...
• Karl Rove inadvertently deleted emails that he should have saved in violation of the PRA and only incidentally was using a non-White House RNC email server for 95% of his messaging, and only coincidentally do all of those emails appear to have something to do with one scandal or another, be it the firing of US Attorneys who did not sufficiently politicize their positions or the outing of a CIA operative whose husband was poking holes in your case for war...

Given that the first statement is almost universally accepted as true (even if Rove isn't a "genius", most people will still accept that he's a canny dirty-trickster, and that requires...well, being canny), it's almost impossible that the second one is true, so while the guy is innocent until proven guilty, let's all please accept that there is a massive case to be made against him.

The Dreadedness of the Dreaded Religious Right

The blogger Tristero at Hullabaloo has a seven-part (at least) series on, for lack of a better term, the Religious Right. He co-opts the word "Christianists", which I believe Dan alerted me to as an invention of Andrew Sullivan's. Still, everything comes back to the blogs these days, so it's not entirely absurd to think Sullivan stole it from Tristero. Anyway, Tristero's series is long and involved, but it's worth slogging through. Here are the links for the brave:

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII

Anyway, he mentions some tidbits that give you an idea just how powerful the RR is:

One other point. You may think Rushdoony’s ideas as to be beneath serious notice. Therefore, please note that a major funder of Rushdoony's Christian Reconstrucion, billionaire Howard Ahmanson, funded the “intelligent design” creationism initiative at the Discovery Institute (Ahmanson sits on the board). That's correct: Major funding for "Intelligent design" creationism is linked directly to the ideas you will encounter here.Ahmanson also funds the Claremont Foundation, a rightwing cultural thinktank, and funded the recall initiative of California's governor Gray Davis. These are only a few of the initiatives Ahmanson has taken to advance the rightwing, and often specifically Republican, agenda.

Intelligent Design, as you may or may not have seen, is a warmed over re-write of Creationism designed to give the appearance of scientific validity to theology which recently met with a satisfying court defeat in Dover, PA. It's good that it lost the case, but it's a testament to the power of the various octopus appendages of the RR that such junk even got that far. And this is really the kind of thing that I fret over when it comes to the RR. It's not just that they're assaulting the Constitution or even Enlightenment ideas; it's that they're assaulting the very concepts of reason and rationality, gradually and generationally eroding the capacity of the masses for critical thinking, thereby making the masses ever less able to resist their pernicious influence.

A few further notes on the question of their influence are:
(1) Monica Goodling, former senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales who recently took the Fifth in the Congressional Hearings regarding the not-going-anywhere-and-possibly-the-downfall-of-the-Bush-Administration US Attorney purge scandal, was a graduate of Messiah College and Regent University (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/27/74143/0793). Regent U. is operated by Pat Robertson, and according to their site, 150 graduates currently serve in the Bush Administration
(2) "The Republican War on Science" by Chris Mooney has some examples of RR folks being appointed to key positions in the Executive Branch under Bush who immediately proceeded to politicize their offices and disseminate scientific and medical misinformation in the service of their religious agenda. For example, (http://oversight.house.gov/features/politics_and_science/example_breast_cancer.htm) the National Cancer Institute removed a note from its website which stated the accepted medical community consensus that there is no link between abortions and increased risk of breast cancer and instead added a note suggesting that whether or not abortion causes breast cancer is still an open question.

In short, though the number of regular citizens who could be counted as among the RR may still be pretty small, their influence on the levers of power shouldn't be underestimated. They are, as zealots by definition are, determined, tenacious, well-funded, and well-organized and efforts to counter-act their pernicious influence should be high on the list of things that need to get done in this country over the next 20 years.

The Most Sinister Commercial Ever?

This gem from Budweiser came out somewhere in the early- to mid-nineties (I remember, because I was dating Earth Mother, and she and I were done by 1996). It's only 30 seconds, please watch.




Now, I remember being immediately fascinated that the ad had gotten on the air, because it was so blatantly sexual as to be almost vulgar. I mean, come on, the "bottle" upended into the "hole" followed by "Do a little dance. Make a little love. Get down tonight." ...not to mention the music causing a rhythmic pulsing around the bottle, moving the earth, even. The intercourse reference could only have been clearer if they had shown the neck of the bottle sliding slightly in and out of the hole in time with the music, and I'm willing to bet that in early cuts of the commercial, the bottle did just that. Could anyone possibly miss it? I remember being flabbergasted when Earth Mother's sister-in-law, RN, confessed plainly that she had "never thought of it that way." Christ, if the commercial had consisted of a guy going to the store to buy some bud, then going home, pounding one, and screwing his girlfriend, it couldn't have been more obvious what the message was.

But the vulgarity of the commercial doesn't stop with its thinly camouflaged sex-act. The real master-stroke is the use of the ants. Can you think of any way that the Establishment could more nakedly mock the Working Class? The ant is the epitome of mindless and tireless work in service of another, in their case, the queen or maybe the colony, and while RN interpreted the commercial as "You work hard; you deserve to let your hair down a little, and Bud can help you do that," it's hard for me to believe that the advertising executives were unaware that the logical extension of that subtext is "You are an indistinguishable peon laboring tirelessly for the benefit of others, but it will help you forget about the emptiness of your lot in life if you buy our beer, get drunk, and fuck."

It takes something special to craft a commercial that is so contemptuous of the demographic at which it's directed and yet still works on that demographic without them being aware of the insult. It's like it was fun for Budweiser to openly taunt its clientele and dare them to even notice, much less care, that they were being derided.

Congratulations Budweiser. This post's for you.

I Woke Up

I dreamt there was something in bed with me...us, my wife and I. It was small. Moving? The bedroom had a drop-ceiling, one of the tiles was gone. The thing in the bed, it occurred to me, was a rat. I kicked it from the bed. The room was very dark; in the ceiling, exposed by the missing tile, there was squirming. More rats. In the ceiling. The bed was alive with them. I didn't find it pleasant and thought it would be a good idea to get out of bed. They went into a frenzy, 6 or 7 biting me at once.

It woke me up.

Self-imposed Hiatus

I'm on one, so that I can concentrate better on that earning a living thing.

Victory by Default

Neither Doug nor Dan has responded to my last post, so I'm going to call that a victory for my thesis...which when I originally started was only as strong as "The Religious Right is bad for the country". I have no idea how I let myself get pulled into trying to argue that it's a threat to the existence of America as we know it. I mean, the case can be made, and I'm willing to try to make it, but it really wasn't my original thought.

My original thought was more on the lines of "The Religious Right promulgates ideas that are bad for America (frankly, for the very concepts of reason and rationality), and that they have become sufficiently politically strong that active steps need to be taken to resist them".


Whatever. I win until I hear different.

The Long Haul and the Arrow of Progress

For all of the no one following the comments in Religious Right: Credible Threat, it is clear that I can't skate through hoping that ballpark definitions will get us moved on to the second stage of proving or disproving my thesis - The Religious Right is a Credible threat to America - because Dan and Doug won't have it. Instead we're going to have to dig a little deeper into the premises. I am willing to do this, but let me just say, before we get into it, that, for my purposes, the ballpark definitions should suffice. We will probably spend an enormous amount of time describing and discussing minutiae about the terms I used in my original statement, eventually discarding most of those points as irrelevant until we finally agree that the mainstream, casual definitions of those terms were adequate and largely agreed upon, and that any confusion was caused by our arguing at cross-purposes.

So, on to the stickiness.

First, let me start off by admitting that I made a large mistake in the way I defined "this country". I concentrated on the founding documents hoping that the evolution of ideas, including the changing interpretation of the founding documents (Constituation, Declaration, Federalist Papers, even Common Sense, etc.) was assumed. A conversation on the evolution of American ideas of justice and its effects on American jurisprudence is exactly the kind of exercise that we could be lost in for several days, and I don't want to embark on that discussion at all, but if something like is the only way to move on, so be it.

So, Part I: The America We Live in and the America that We Want to Live In

America, as both a geographical area and as the amalgamation of the myriad currents of thought that characterize the people who live in it and who, by their actions and those thoughts, define it, is too complicated to be described in a 1,000 word blog entry.

Such a description of America is not necessary for a thoughtful evaluation of the proposition "The Religious Right is a Threat to America" to be entertaining and fruitful.

America has evolved greatly since its inception and, in its particulars, is very different from the America of 1776, which itself would be too complicated to describe in a 1,000 word blog entry.

Over its 230 year history, one current in the shifting waters of America's self-definition has dominated all others. There is an Arrow of Progress from 1776 to 2007 that has, without exception that I am aware of, expanded individual liberty. If there are exceptions, they are irrelevant, because the evidence of the Progress is evident everywhere.

So, America, for me, is defined as a coordinate on that Arrow of Progress.

I am not so concerned with the coordinate per se, but with the Arrow. America is a work-in-progress, but it has been making progress toward increased social justice, toward improving the quality of life for everyone, for 230 years.

So, my refined proposition is:
"The Religious Right would reverse the Arrow of Progress that defines America's evolution toward greater social justice."

Religious Right: Credible Threat

Last month or so, Dan asked me to make my case that the Religious Right is a threat to the United States. His contention was not that the Religious Right was good, but rather that, while an "embarrassment" and a "nuisance", they weren't sufficiently influential to merit the epithet "threat" . While considering how to make my case (and with the help of a little cross-examination by Doug), I became overwhelmed by how much of the debate Dan and I have left undefined, so before I make any case, I'd like to refine what the case is, just so's we can have a good platform to wrestle on. Who knows, once we've done that, Dan and I may even find that we agree.

So, here is a breakdown of my thesis, "The Religious Right is a threat to this country", as I understand it.

1) When I say "the Religious Right", I am talking about a group of pundits, politicians, and political organizations - as well as the ordinary members of the electorate in their sway - who attempt to influence policy within the United States with the intention of turning their specific, Christian morality into the law of the land.

2) When I say "this country", I am referring to the set of Enlightenment ideas (as I understand them) that the founders had in mind as they declared their independence from Britain and as they debated, wrote, and signed the Constitution that was ratified by each of the United States and is accepted as the legal foundation of those United States. Chief among those beliefs is the idea of Liberty, the idea that an individual has the right to do whatever s/he wants as long as those choices don't infringe on the rights of others, that consenting adults are best at determining what behavior is best for them.

3) When I say "threat", I am saying that I think the agenda of the Religious Right - banning abortion, keeping the morning after pill off the shelves, attempting to limit sex-education to abstinence-only, banning gay marriage - is antithetical to the ideas set forth in the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and the Constitution, not the least of which is that the strength of this country, of a Democracy, is a free, independent, well-informed citizenry.

Now, if Dan is in agreement with those premises, then I would say this:

Any national movement whose aim is to enact legislation which is fundamentally at odds with the principles on which its host nation was founded and which, if enacted, would fundamentally change the nature and character of its host nation is, by definition, a threat to its host nation.


Now, I think that's a pretty good case, and I'm not anticipating any argument with it, but let me just say at this point that I'm certainly open to debating any of what I've written above.

However, if there is no argument with what I've said above, that the agenda of the Religious Right is inherently threatening to Enlightenment Ideals and that those Enlightenment Ideals are, in my opinion, essential to the character of the US as we know it, then let me allude finally to my post title and recast the terminology of the debate: I think, for the purposes of this argument, that my position is better represented by the phrase "Credible Threat" and Dan's position is more accurately represented by the phrase "Empty Threat".

And if all of that is kosher, then I ask Dan to weigh in on what it takes to make a Credible Threat. Perhaps some examples of Credible Threats in other areas?

We await Dan's response via comment or his blog...

Time Magazine Should Redefine its "Man of the Year"

I realize this is way-old pre-Christmas news, but shouldn't Time Magazine redefine their criteria for choosing a Person of the Year? I have been scooped, so let me link: The Wussification of the Time "Person of the Year"

For those not interested in link-following, the crux of the article is that Time Magazine has been willfully disregarding their own criteria for "Person of the Year" for the sake of sales for a good long time. The most glaring example of this occurred in 2001. Consider their definition of the Person of the Year: The person, group, or idea who, "for better or worse, has most influenced events in the preceding year". Now think of 2001 and tell me if you were thinking of Rudy Giuliani. Exactly. Osama bin Laden was far and away the correct choice for 2001's Person of the Year, and Time copped out, because they knew it would be unpopular.

The article concentrates on the Person of the Year choices from 2001 to 2006, and perhaps that is when the cop-outs began to happen with predictability, but word on the street is that Time lost many subscribers after giving Ayatollah Khomeni the title in 1979.

I don't have a problem with Time making good business choices. They are, after all, a business. However, business or not, a news outlet should demonstrate some minimal standard of integrity. What does it say about Time when they can't even respect a definition that they themselves chose?

So, half of the blame to Time and half to the 2006 Person of the Year: You. If only you prized the truth above knee-jerk patriotism, you might have canceled your subscriptions in 2001-2 and Time might have had a reason to start making principled choices again.

Steal Your Own Sunshine

"More More More" sample or not, low budget video or not, I love this song:

Slackerama

I know I'm doing a terrible job keeping this site current. It's a good thing that only Dan and Doug read it. I am still working on the post that will convince Dan that the Religious Right is as much a "Gathering Threat" as Iraq was when Bush lied us into going to war with them, and since Dan supported that war, it stands to reason he should support this one too, rather than just writing off the antagonist as a "nuisance"....

But no time for that now. Mindless fun...about Washing-ton.

Religious Right: Mocked as They Deserve

What he said: Keep you Jesus off my penis...

Conservatism's Last Gasp

I have been arguing since George W. Bush's quasi-victory in the 2000 election that we are witnessing a decline of the modern conservative movement. People to whom I expressed this opinion, having witnessed that election as well as the two that followed it in 2002 and 2004, often gave me a puzzled look. Granted the 2002 election took me a little by surprise...and of course the 2004 election took me a lot by surprise...and neither really supported my thesis...which is to say that they appeared to entirely undercut it...But finally, finally, I think I'm on the road to my ultimate vindication.

As I've become such a slacker, this post is only going to cursorily present my arguments, but at least they'll be out there...6 years late...making me look like a band-wagon jumping pretender...but...well, screw you anyway.

The conventional wisdom for the last 10 years at least - to hear talk-radio and the news tell it - is that this is a conservative country. I disagree; I hold that it is a progressive country - I would even say "liberal" had the word not been so abused by the pundit class for the last 30 years - and here's why I say so: the Republican party has been barely beating the Democratic party in presidential elections and held the teeniest of margins in the House and Senate despite vastly superior organization, vastly superior financial resources, vastly superior political machinery, and a vastly superior propaganda machine (these things are easily verifiable by Google searches, so I'm not going to back them up unless forced).

In short, despite the apparent march of conservatism from the humiliating days Barry Goldwater to the triumphs of Reagan and Gingrich to its ultimate consummation under the Cheney/Bush, conservatism, has actually just barely been staying afloat. It has only been through intense discipline, enormous amounts of corporate money, an absolutely brilliant endless public relations campaign, and a willingness to lie unabashedly that the Republicans have managed to fool just enough of an already cynical electorate that they are responsible stewards of the public trust.

But finally, finally, the electorate is waking up. Credit what you want - the rise of the blogger class, the egregious incompetence of this particular conservative president and his administration, the natural swing of the pendulum - I personally choose to credit Jon Stewart, whose tour de force ass-kicking of Tucker Carlson provided the seed-crystal necessary to solidify public opinion against the woeful performance of the mainstream media for the last decade - but whatever the cause, people are finally demanding accountability, from politicians, yes, but more importantly, from the media. And under the strain of people questioning the spin, this loose collection of failing ideologies that banded together in a desperate bid for survival is finally falling apart.

Conservatism ain't over, and as a libertarian myself, I wouldn't want it gone, at least not the small "c" variety, but it's back on the defensive, and unless the Democrats do something utterly ham-handed, it should remain on the wane, and that's a good thing. I'm looking forward to my children growing up in a more reasonable zeitgeist than I did.

And because it makes me cry with patriotic joy, here is Jon Stewart brow-beating Crossfire to win Burke's "Man of the Decade" Award. Please watch this masterful performance:

Does Liking Wings Make You Gay?

There is some discussion of this topic in the comments section of this blog entry over at Doug's house. There wasn't room there for me to really engage the question, so I thought I'd do it here:

Does liking Wings make you Gay?

No.

Religious Right: Pernicious Threat

I've been having arguments with Dan (you will now see Dan poking around the comments...) through email since email was invented...by Al Gore. I decided that since I frequently argue the kinds of things with him that I'd like to write about on the blog, I might as well bring our fight public, streamlining my mental activity.

Thus, in an email yesterday, Dan called me a prig and posited the following¹:

I think that your characterization of this Christianity trend as a departure from the founders is only partially correct, though. One hears somewhat persuasive arguments the other way, that this was a nation politically steeped in Christianity and that godless pinko commies have leeched out all that wholesome goodness, leaving us desiccated and soul-less as a political society. I imagine the truth is somewhere in between, or rather, lots of sub-trends going in contradictory directions.

Here's what I say to that:

It's quite right to point out that Christianity is responsible for a great many wonderful things in the world, the abolition of slavery being one of those things. There are all kinds of Christian charities, and there are abundant examples of true Christians loving their neighbors and trying to help the least fortunate among us. Christianity in and of itself is not a bad thing at all.

However, I definitely think "this Christianity trend" - by which we mean a very specific contemporary ideology-cum-political-movement which exists separate from the general, traditional precepts of Christianity even while it co-opts those precepts for its own ends - embodies a "departure from the founders". *Not* because I think the founders were irreligious but because I think the architects of this movement are so misguided as to have no sense of the breadth of the founder's vision.

The contemporary Christian right has all but abandoned the Love Thy Neighbor and Live and Let Live aspects of the bible in favor of the fire and brimstone bigotry and the endless moralizing. Christianity in the hands of these charlatans has become a vehicle for authoritarianism, and that is as far from the ideals of the founders as you can get.

¹ At no point did Dan call me a "prig"

Busy Busy Busy

My life is a task-list that is constantly 20-items deep.

Chip away at a few now and then, but there's always a new one coming along... To some degree, I resigned myself to this when I bought a house. However, I didn't fully appreciate how much a wife augments the scenario. Now, it's not just me tripping over my toolbox on the way to the bathroom at 2 AM; it's also my wife...my pregnant wife. I'd put the toolbox away if I was done with it, but I need to screw the kitchen cabinet doors back on now that we've finished painting most of them. Of course, the toolbox probably wouldn't have been in the way in the first place had the all other available floorspace not been covered by drying kitchen cabinet doors. She really wanted those cabinets painted.

Of course, once we're finished with the cabinets, clearing valuable space on the living room and office floor, we'll immediately have to lay out all the baby clothes, so that we can organize them, plus there's the crib, and...oh yeah, we'll have to buy a trillion things for the baby; add items to the list for each car-seat, carriage, and hi-chair.

I don't know when the last time I paid a bill was. Thank god for the internet and auto-pay. Still, I should check the statements...as soon as I get out from all the other stuff...like getting rid of the cats that we can't keep (they're so cute). And God Damn! I'm starving.

Cortisone Went Well

This is a quickie. Those none of you who read my post about my back might be interested to know that I got a cortisone shot to my spine, and I feel significantly better. It doesn't feel as good as new or anything like that, but it's so far from the debilitating condition of the last few years, that I'm actually feeling hopeful about starting some exercises to help my back get and stay healthy, maybe take up yoga again, which kept me pretty healthy in the mid-90s.

The prognosis is this:

• The area from which my pain normally originates has become only a dull ache.
• A relaxed standing posture, that is, one in which I let my torso settle naturally onto my pelvis, causes no pain. prior to the shot, this position aggravated the entire left lumbar region of my back; there is now only a slight feeling of pressure.
• Standing with knees straight and feet together, I can bend forward to 90 degrees with only slight pain. For reference, my pain was so severe before the shot that I could not bend more than 15 degrees at the waist; getting further was not a question of fighting the pain; it was simply impossible.

In all, the overall feeling is all dull aches and no shooting pains. I'm still being very ginger about how I move, but I'm now very eager to ask the doctor about beginning a course of physical therapy to keep my back strong and healthy. When I return for my next shot on 20 December, I will do just that.

Happy days to all.