How Not To Think About Ethics

This feature story at the United Methodist Church's website, discussing the sometimes hidden complexity of moral choice in a sinful world, is so far off the mark to this United Methodist, one wonders how it could possibly be more than a conversation starter on how not to do Christian ethics.

The first example offered, coming from the book Choices Under Fire: Moral Dimensions of World War II, written by Michael Bess, is the political decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II.

“We are presented with an impossible decision among courses of action that are all totally abominable,” . . . . “Either way we choose—kill 200,000, kill 340,000, kill 850,000, kill 1.8 million—we are in effect giving our assent to an abomination in which hundreds of thousands of innocents will suffer and die.

“Either way we choose, we cannot but be morally lessened, spiritually wounded, by the choice.”

Almost immediately, we come up against certain facts, unmentioned but pretty important. First and foremost, there was no real ethical debate over the use of the bomb, except for the insistence of the scientists who had both built and witnessed the test in New Mexico. Because the entire project was secret - even Harry Truman only learned of its existence after the death of Pres. Roosevelt - deliberations centered on the President and his military advisers, with input from the scientists being, for the most part, discounted. There were alternatives considered to actual combat use - a truce with a detonation to be witnessed by Japanese officials who could then decide whether or not to face such destruction was the only serious alternative offered, then discarded as unworkable - but in the end, the rationale for using the atomic bomb spiraled down to one point: we built it as a weapon, we might as well use it. The idea that ethical debate after the fact, whether by secular or sectarian ethicists, has any meaning whatsoever is ludicrous. We are faced with the terrible reality, and burden, that we Americans are the only ones to ever use a nuclear device as a weapon.

In the face of the reality that the circle of those who discussed whether or not to use the bomb was extremely limited, ethical agonizing two generations later is really quite meaningless.

Fast forward, and the article makes some other, equally wrong, observations.

The moral complexities involved in confronting a foe willing to employ mass murder of non-combatants to achieve its ends confront the United States once more as it responds to the threat of terrorism.

The temptation is to stand on the extremes of the left or the right, and escape from the difficult realities on the ground by condemning and judging those who would depart from ideals of human behavior. So, some liberals toss around the word “torture” with little discretion for the interrogation techniques involved or the underlying aims, and some conservatives see nearly all human rights concerns as secondary to national security.

--snip--

In the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, when thousands of civilians were murdered on U.S. soil, Americans know the seriousness of the terrorism threat. Real people have to make decisions in a way that often balances competing principles, such as the mandate to protect innocent life and the right of detainees to humane treatment.

--snip--

Sometimes those decisions seem impossible. Is it right, for example, to slap or push prisoners or make them stand in uncomfortable positions if it could prevent a suicide bombing? Is simulated drowning, or waterboarding, allowable if there is strong reason to believe it could disrupt a terrorist plot where hundreds of lives would be at stake?

But someone has to make those decisions. And those of us from religious traditions that prize the free will of an informed moral conscience, and have rich resources in Scripture and tradition to guide us along with experience and our capacity for reason, cannot avoid getting in the middle of these questions where the human condition leaves us with no good alternatives.

First of all, the framework within which such choices are to be made already exists - the legal statutes governing interrogation, including treaty obligations, which under the Constitution, are "the law of the land". Moral agonizing can be set aside precisely because it is only the breach of these legal standards that has created the moral questions examined.

Second, the fable of the ticking time-bomb, presented here, is a non-sequitur of the worst sort, a false choice offered that allows us the comfort of believing we are actually "saving lives" in the process of destroying others. Since there is not a single piece of evidence in the public record that torture has saved a single life, the idea that we are actually face with a real choice on whether to use it is nonsense. Furthermore, anyone with even a modicum of understanding and learning and access to information understands that torture, no matter whether it is named "enhanced interrogation techniques" or not, is outside the acceptable bounds of moral choice. Precisely because there is abundant evidence that it is actually counter-productive, producing worse evidence than other interrogation techniques, it should not even be on the moral radar at all. That we have recently shrugged off a political regime in this country morally vicious enough to offer it as a choice is does not mean, as the article suggests, that "real people have to make these difficult choices." Rather, it means that we as a nation have much for which to repent, including the thought that moral choice includes the immoral treatment of other human beings.

I would suggest that any Christian who believes that we have to face squarely the possibility of torture as a serious moral option needs to sit back and look at all the facts of the matter before offering moral cover to monsters.

Ricci v Stefano

Rather than summarize the case, someone has done it for me. Check it out.

Eugene Robinson Muffs It (UPDATE; UPDATE II)

I usually like Eugene Robinson's columns in The Washington Post. Today's, on the Republican screech-a-thon over Judge Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court, is quite good right up until the end.

Despite the best efforts of Gingrich, Limbaugh and others, Sotomayor's confirmation process probably won't be about race.

For the right, that is exactly what her confirmation is about. All one has to do is consider Newt Gingrich's twitter (which Robinson helpfully supplies): "White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw." All they have is their deep fear and loathing of non-whites; all the other stuff - judicial activism, "empathy", whatever else they toss at her - all comes back to their loathing of the simple fact that she is a puertoriquena. Since Mark Krikorian at National Review is already complaining about the pronunciation of her name being difficult for English speakers, I would like to know what, exactly, is substantive in their complaints.

Racism is all they have left. Since, as most people with a cerebellum seem to understand, Judge Sotomayor's qualifications are excellent, they use the only bit they can fling at her. While I feel very bad that she has to endure the slings and poo of outrageous racists attacking her character, I am beginning to see this as an even more canny appointment by Pres. Obama than before. As their true, hooded and sheeted, lack of color unfolds before the country in their limbic rage at this nomination, the politicians become even more separated from the base of the Republican Party, and opportunities for even more gains by the Democrats become clear.

UPDATE: Given my deepening admiration for the political acumen of Pres. Obama as I contemplate the nomination of Judge Sotomayor, this article at Politico.com, which quotes Lanny Davis, shows that there are some Democrats who really need to shut up.

“She misspoke,” said Lanny Davis, a White House lawyer and spokesman for President Bill Clinton. “Every day that goes by that they don’t say she misspoke and she used the wrong words ... they just feed it and give it life and give Rush [Limbaugh] and [Sean] Hannity more airtime unnecessarily.”

Now he's afraid of Limbaugh and Hannity, the Leopold and Loeb of talk radio? What a coward.

UPDATE II: If you think I'm kidding, check this out:

On MSNBC yesterday, Pat Buchanan repeatedly attacked Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor as an “affirmative action candidate,” echoing right-wing claims that she has “been the recipient of preferential treatment for most of her life.” On Bill Bennett’s radio show this morning, Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes argued “that she’s one of those who has benefited from affirmative action over the years tremendously.” When Bennett noted that she graduated Summa Cum Laude from Princeton, which he called “a pretty big deal,” Barnes dismissed it, saying “I guess it is”

The Power Of Faith In The Face Of Evidence To The Contrary

The most revealing line in David Broder's column today leads off his final paragraph.

I have to believe that many Republican senators will seize the opportunity Obama has provided and prove they are not as narrow-minded as their most extreme backers.(emphasis added)

Isn't that sweet? While I believe the bulk of his column is correct - to the extent that sitting Senators aren't suicidal enough to go after Judge Sotomayor the way their most vocal supporters have already done - that single phrase shows the power of Broder's on-going belief in the intelligence and prudence of the Republican Party. There is no evidence the Republicans have acted with either of those virtues in decades; the framework various groups and talking-heads have already created about Judge Sotomayor display a glaring lack of both. One wonders if his faith will be rewarded.

Prop 8 Ruling Creates Strange Bedfellows

Whoda thunk it?

Former U.S. solicitor general Theodore B. Olson and David Boies, who argued opposite each other in Bush v. Gore, are now teaming up to “represent two same-sex couples filing suit after being denied marriage licenses because of Proposition 8. Their suit, to be filed in U.S. District Court in California, calls for an injunction against the proposition, allowing immediate reinstatement of marriage rights for same-sex couples.”

I guess it isn't quite over yet.

"[H]urling ourselves off a cliff"

Watching the Republicans beat themselves up over how to go about destroying Judge Sotomayor without, you know, destroying her or themselves or whatever, is kind of fun.

The reality is quite simple. The limbic-brain Republicans will froth at the mouth, spout all sorts of nonsense about identity politics and empathy, threaten double-secret probation on any Republican Senator who votes in favor of her confirmation, and basically act like a two-year-old in a candy shop. Meanwhile, "sensible" Republicans will note the coming catastrophe as follows:

“If Republicans make a big deal of opposing Sotomayor, we will be hurling ourselves off a cliff,” said Mark McKinnon, a senior adviser to Mr. Bush and a long-time advocate of expanding the party’s appeal. “Death will not be assured. But major injury will be.”

Said hurling has already commenced, as noted in a couple prior posts.

"A Difficult Political Equation" UPDATE UPDATEII UPDATE III

I'm so glad we have reporters of the caliber of Shailagh Murray and Michael Shear to give us the following information:

An all-out assault on Sotomayor by Republicans could alienate both Latino and women voters, deepening the GOP's problems after consecutive electoral setbacks. But sidestepping a court battle could be deflating to the party's base and hurt efforts to rally conservatives going forward.

In the same edition the Post has the following, showing the Republicans being delicate.

First up, a discussion moderated by National Review's Ramesh Ponurru:

Here's some of what we know about President Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court:

--Judge Sotomayor believes that the courts are "where policy is made."

--She has Democratic colleagues who wonder if she has the intellect to be on the high court.

--She was picked by a president who has announced that he has a pro-abortion litmus test and that he wants judges who will rule with empathy, at least for some groups.

--She has a high reversal rate. In one case, the Supreme Court has voted unanimously to reverse her.

We will doubtless learn more about Sotomayor, both good and bad, in the days to come. But based on the early signs it appears that President Obama has made the crassest of political picks.

What do you think?

Fact-free columnist George Will:

Her ethnicity aside, Sotomayor is a conventional choice. The court will remain composed entirely of former appellate court judges. And like conventional liberals, she embraces identity politics, including the idea of categorical representation: A person is what his or her race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual preference is, and members of a particular category can be represented -- understood, empathized with -- only by persons of the same identity.

Democrats compounded confusion by thinking of the court as a representative institution. Such personalization of the judicial function subverts the rule of law.

Now that's just the mainstream Washington Post. A short foray in to the fever swamps shows the delicacy of Republican politicians in dealing with Judge Sotomayor's nomination.

LIMBAUGH: Do I want her to fail? Yeah. Do I want her to fail to get on the court? Yes! She’d be a disaster on the court.

Now I know that Obama has some very well-thought-out, or at least elaborate, arguments for his idea of a good justice. But isn't it possible that some of this is really just a rationalization for a more fundamental narcissistic projection? After all, it is hardly news that Obama thinks very highly of himself, and sees all sorts of major issues through the prism of Obama. Everything he says about what would make a great, ideal, Supreme Court justice is stuff he clearly sees in himself. I think that is at least interesting.

Yeah, I can see how tricky this is for Republicans, and how they are handling the pressure.

Of course, one could argue that Sotomayor has already received the kiss of death.

Since President Obama announced Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court this morning, conservatives — such as Karl Rove — have publicly questioned whether she has the qualifications and “intellect” for the job. Today on CNN, however, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said there is “no question” that Sotomayor is qualified

I'd want that endorsement sent back.

UPDATE: Man, I gotta keep reading sometimes. I just found this gem, from Robert Reich:

[N]ever underestimate the Republicans' capacity for taking big political risks that turn out badly.

UPDATE II: The following sentence is making the rounds to the right of Atilla the Hun, including here:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

The inimitable Digby provides the bulk of the entire speech within which this single sentence occurs.

In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment.

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.

UPDATE III: From tbogg:

I've spent the evening doing that thing I do, which is exploring the nooks and crannies of , if not the wingnut mind, at least its byproducts. And I just have to say that the nomination of Sonia Sotomayer to the Supreme Court has made these people, as my grandmother would have put it, 'lose their shit".

He uses an Ozzy Osbourne song title for his post. I was going to use Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine.

Among the many many many Republican miscues of the past eight years, I've always believed the one that made the American people sit up and take a long hard look at the Republican party was the Terri Schiavo case, when the elected members of the party became unwitting dupes of their own lunatic base. My sense is that, if they really want to go after and beat up on this Sotomayer, who presented herself very well this morning, they will pay for it at the polls for years to come. Not with Hispanics, who were lost to the party dating back to the Pete Wilson days ( not that the peck-sniffier elements of the right can help themselves), or with women, but with people for whom "empathy" and compassion aren't qualities to be sneered at.

Just This On Sotomayor (UPDATE)

While the attacks on Sonia Sotomayor predate her nomination today by Pres. Obama, it should be noted with all honesty that the political right is so morally corrupt that any nominee would suffer the fate she has, to whit, having her reputation, both personal and professional attacked and sullied by these idiotic grievance-peddlers and shrill bigots. Simply put, the currents of contemporary public discourse run through the sewage of the right before they come out in to the (relatively) placid ocean of the United States Senate. While I grieve for the damage already done to Judge Sotomayor by the likes of Jeffrey Rosen and various right-wingers, I believe that such would have been the case regardless of Obama's choice.

UPDATE: Having John Yoo criticize your legal reasoning should be ignored. The guy's a war criminal. Simple as that.

Bathwater Tossed, Baby Saved

Or, to mix metaphors, cake had and eaten:

In a six-to-one decision, the California Supreme Court upheld the state’s ban on gay marriage, the Proposition 8 referendum voters approved last November. The court ruled that Prop. 8 “constitutes a permissible constitutional amendment (rather than an impermissible constitutional revision).” However, the court declared that the 18,000 same-sex marriages conducted last summer, prior to the passage of the proposition, would remain legal and recognized.

So . . . they can't say they're married, but their marriages are legally recognized. But, any same-sex couples wanting the same privileges they have can't have them, because . . .

That thumping sound you hear is my head hitting a wall as I try to figure out the contradictions here.

Music For Your Monday

Some Alternative Patriotic Music for your Memorial Day.

Some Memorial Day Thoughts

Everyone wants to make sure we "thank a vet for our freedom." I would much rather thank the Constitution, to which all who serve swear an oath.

I would much rather we thank a vet, or a currently serving member of the armed forces for their sacrifice, not for our freedom, but for the vanity of our leaders. With the exception of the Civil War and the Second World War, the United States has not been involved in a war in which its very existence has been threatened (well, the War of 1812 probably counts, but I doubt the British would have known what to do with us had they conquered us, or managed to thwart our expansionist tendencies). The various wars against the native peoples, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, the Great War, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan, the various imperial occupations in Central America - tens of thousands of Americans killed and wounded on trumped up excuses, phony-patriotic slogans, outright lies, and fear-mongering.

I would thank a vet's family, or the family of a currently serving member of the military for the sacrifices they make, in lost time, lost love, lost wages, loneliness, single-parenthood.

Finally, I would make sure we remember there are 4500 dead who need not have died, and tens of thousands whose sacrifices have been neglected by the formerly-ruling party. Left to wallow in squalor and filth, their mental and physical anguish forgotten and even denied by a group of politicians not willing to demand any sacrifices for wars of choice. We will live with the damage wrought by shallow, venal politicians for decades. It is a shame that the ones who will pay the most are those most willing to put aside their lives for a country whose leaders aren't brave enough to have us all sacrifice.

If these are uncomfortable thoughts for you, I would apologize, but I cannot.

Acting On Fantasy

I saw this AP article last night, and knew I had to comment on it. Here's the money shot, as it were:

As President Barack Obama prepares to name his pick for the high court, the Senate's No. 2 Republican said the qualifications being discussed — "emotions or feelings or preconceived ideas," Sen. Jon Kyl called them — aren't enough to justify a lifetime appointment. The Arizona Republican on Sunday wouldn't rule out a filibuster to block an Obama pick that falls outside his definition of the mainstream.

How funny is this? First, the Republicans tell the world the President said something he didn't say. They repeat it. Now, Jon Kyl is planning on acting, prepared to keep Barack Obama from doing something he enver said he was going to do in the first place.

Back in the late 1990's, when Newt Gingrich was saying that Columbine and Susan Smith (the insane South Carolina woman who drowned her children after trapping them in a car and pushing it into a pond, then turned around and claimed it was done by a black man before admitting her guilt) were examples of Democratic policy and politicians, or the direct result of liberalism, if Trent Lott (then the #2 guy in the Senate) had been quoted as saying that he would block any Clinton Administration nominees who were willing to kill their children, or who would organize a mass killing, how seriously could he be taken?*

Next thing you know, Mitch McConnell will hold a press conference in which he insists that any bill to transfer our sovereignty to Muslim terrorists will be filibustered. These guys are ridiculous. I'm glad the press keeps quoting them, because the fun never stops.

*Actually, both then and now, such a statement would not only be quoted, but probably discussed in deep, thoughtful, pedantic terms by David Broder, while Chris Matthews wet himself on his program, wondering how the Democrats could survive such a political masterstroke by the brilliant Republicans. Which only shows how stupid our media is.

He Is Here

Worship began with this, from Amena Brown:

Doing Actual Research

In this rambling attack on the Rev. Chuck Currie (please note how the titular is encased in quotes, as if it weren't real; always classy), Neil baldly states the following:

Univeral health care is an awful idea and is being sold with lies.

The sentence includes a link to this post. Now, we can discuss the merits of various health-care-financing plans; yet the post to which Neil links only concerns the notion that the various Democratic plans will "destroy" private health insurance companies, a "fact" about which they "lie". Perhaps, perhaps not.

My point here is to ask the question - why not do some actual research on the issue of health care, health care financing, health care policy, and link to these research pieces if you are going to insist that universal health care is so awful? For example, there's this piece from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation comparing per capita health care spending between the United States and the OECD. The piece uses a number of metrics to examine the disparities between health care spending in the various countries, all of which clearly show the US spends far more per person on health care than those countries that have nationalized health care (the most important figure, for me, shows that we spend nearly 16% of our income, per person, via private health insurance, than those countries that support their public health care systems through public means, i.e., taxes).

Now, a consideration of cost would be moot if we in the United States were satisfied with health care, or our health care, on the whole, was managed both efficiently and comprehensively. As this 2004 article from WebMD.com shows, however, while there are few majorities that report favorably on health care delivery across the spectrum of industrialized countries, not just greater dissatisfaction in the US is reported, but certain facts are discussed that are pertinent.

"In no country is the majority of adults satisfied," says Cathy Schoen, a vice president at the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit group that conducted surveys of some 7,000 patients in the five countries.

The U.S. is the only industrialized country that does not offer government-sponsored health coverage for all citizens. Proponents of market-driven health care often point to long wait times for services in other countries when warning of the dangers of a government-run system.

Sixty percent of patients in New Zealand told researchers that they were able to get a same-day appointment with a doctor when sick, nearly double the 33% of Americans who got such speedy care. Only Canada scored lower, with 27% saying they could get same-day attention. Americans were also the most likely to have difficulty getting care on nights, weekends, or holidays without going to an emergency room.

Four in 10 U.S. adults told researchers that they had gone without needed care because of the cost, including skipping prescriptions, avoiding going to the doctor, or skipping a recommended test or treatment.

Meanwhile, 26% of Americans surveyed said that they had faced more than $1,000 in out-of-pocket health care costs in the last year, compared with 14% of Australians, and 4% of Britons.

"The U.S. stands out as the patients the most exposed to medical bills," Schoen says.

So, not only is the issue one of cost, it is one of availability. Related to cost is the willingness to undergo treatment due to cost.

While critics of publicly-run national health programs often point to what they call "rationing of health care" in such systems, it is pretty clear that health care in the United States is already rationed on a cost-basis; those who cannot afford it are far less likely to seek early treatment, and overall it is far more difficult to receive treatment at awkward times - nights, weekends, holidays - that is as (relatively speaking) inexpensive as an office visit (ER visits are outrageously expensive).

American dissatisfaction not only with cost, but with the delivery of services, and their general availability, is driving the move toward reforming the entire system.

Comparing actual deliver of services is a thornier issue, more difficult to quantify, yet still there is data available. First, there is this study, whose summary reads:

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: This presentation is part of a panel with 3 papers on international comparison of primary care delivery. This paper will focus on European countries. Objective was to study health care provision and patient experiences with primary health care, to determine differences between countries, differences between single handed and group practices and differences between practices in rural and urban areas. STUDY DESIGN: Practices in 9 countries were recruited (stratified sampling). Physicians and staff completed questionnaires developed by an international panel (EPA). Per practice a minimum of 30 patients visiting the practice completed validated written questionnaires (e.g. EUROPEP). A trained observer visited the practices to collect additional data. POPULATION STUDIED: 270 practices in 9 countries (U.K., Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and Israel) participated; over 8000 patients contributed. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: On average 87% of the patients were positive about their regular doctor (range 80-93% between countries), while 80% were positive about organisation of services (range 67-91%). There was a wide variation found in most aspects of care delivery between practices in different countries. Patients in single handed practice were more positive about both the physicians and the organisation of services than patients in group practices. CONCLUSIONS: This project was a first large scale test to see if good international, comparative data on practice performance and patient experiences can be collected in a reliable and practical way. It showed that the instruments and methodologies used were feasible and acceptable. Data interesting for European policy making were gathered. The project was the start of a European data base (TOPAS-Europe)with comparative data on different aspects of practice performance and patient experiences in primary health care in a large number of European countries (15-20), launched in the beginning of 2005 in Berlin. IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY, DELIVERY OR PRACTICE: The data collected by the different validated European instruments are valuable for individual practices (feedback, plans for improvement), for policy making at a national level as well as for policy making and comparison at an international level. Data will be linked to OECD data. New instruments (e.g. Commonwealth Fund study) will be added in the future.

What is important to note about the information I gathered for this post was these individual pieces were discovered using Google - it took me about 45 minutes to search, read, and aggregate this information. Not being up on the latest research, it took very little time to discover a whole host of available information.

Now, Neil is perfectly fine believing that universal health care is a bad idea. He is even fine believing that the Democrats secretly wish to destroy private health insurance. It might be nice, however, if he used actual research data, rather than link to a right-wing website, which in turn links to a Heritage Foundation presentation that hardly counts as scholarly research.

The Stupid's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades

Ugh.

Saturday Summer Rock Show

The day after the 1982 graduation ceremonies at Waverly High School - the day I became a senior - a friend of mine had a "Got To Hell, World, I'm A Senior" party at his house. A bunch of us got together, swam in the pool (most of us were also on the varsity swim team), and basically got up to all sorts of doings most of the day. It basically set the tone for the next 12 months of my life; if anyone else had as serious a case of the I'm-a-senior-so--screw-you's than I did, I didn't know him. That same summer, along with the abysmal "Eye of the Tiger", this song was everywhere, and while I don't like it all that much, it still reminds me of that party, that summer, and that sense of being on top of the world.

Eric Boehlert Asks The Question

"Who care what Newt Gingrich thinks?"

Duncan calls him "Disgraced Former Speaker", which is far more accurate.

As soon as there's an answer that makes sense, I'll get back to you.

Congress Doesn't Act, Then Whines

This story shows up one of the deep flaws of our current situation.

Dozens of lawmakers are challenging the authority of President Obama's auto task force, saying its swift restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler is unjust to investors, dealers and others.

--snip--

"We are asking President Obama to call 'time out' on his automobile task force," said Rep. Steven C. LaTourette (R-Ohio).

LaTourette was one of 36 lawmakers, mostly Republican, who reminded Obama in a letter a day earlier that Chrysler's bailout in 1979 was executed by Congress, not the White House. The lawmakers called for the return of Congress's "legislative prerogatives before it further disrupts the lives of people who work at Chrysler or live in communities that depend on it."

--snip--

The Obama administration inherited the auto crisis from former president George W. Bush after Congress last December failed to enact legislation to aid the automakers. Some of the lawmakers now crying foul have opposed government intervention from the very beginning.(emphasis added)

They have no ideas, no plan, nothing. The President does, and is acting to balance all sorts of interests - including the national interest - and these do-nothing dodos are complaining about it.

They should have sucked it up and acted. There may be nothing that states the President has the power to act as he has done. Yet, there is nothing that denies him the authority, either. Furthermore, there is plenty of precedent - that whole Great Depression thing - for the Executive Branch to act in the vacuum created by legislative immobility.

I work in a Chrysler town. The plant in Belvidere just laid off 1,000 workers and is down to one shift - an expensive proposition for a huge manufacturing plant, allowing all that machinery to sit idle for sixteen hours a day. Yet, it hangs on still. Any plan, no matter how much it offends the sensibilities of these mediocrities in Congress, that keeps those doors open and paying people, is fine by me.

I have no idea whether or not the auto industry will, or should, survive. My initial thoughts, last fall, were the whole thing should crumble and maybe, just maybe, if we had a chance to rebuild from the wreckage, our auto industry might end up better managed, more profitable, and more creative in its approach to designing and building cars (Aztec, anyone?). Part of the reason for restructuring is to allow this to happen by regulatory fiat; the inertia of the auto companies is famous, and part of the reason for the dismal failure. As stakeholders in the ultimate success of GM and Chrysler, the Executive has the duty to insist changes be made that make the companies not just survive, but become profitable entities again. For members of Congress who sat around whining, "What can we do? The market is in charge?", last fall to puff up their pigeon-chests now and insist that President Obama do nothing that might actually help these companies is not just political hypocrisy. It's short-sighted, stupid, and small-minded.

I do so hope President Obama tells them, in the politest political lingo, to STFU unless they have actual ideas.

On Love

I don't know that I've ever mused about this subject explicitly. How odd.

It's the most powerful, most unknowable, most dangerous human state. Love brings life. Love can kill. We are at our weakest and our strongest when we surrender to its lure. We should be on guard against all the trips and traps that lie down this path: that we can ever know what it is; that we can master it, rather than be mastered by it; that it is nothing more than a feeling; that the exquisite pain and promise are not always one and the same thing.

To love is to allow oneself the privilege of being as fragile as spin glass. We take the risk of stripping ourselves bare before another, giving them free reign in our lives. We can have no secrets, no walled-off areas, no restrictions. Herein lies both the joy and the gravest danger. The hole in our hearts when a loved-one leaves, or passes is the price we pay for allowing ourselves to be fully human.

Yet, all these words are nothing but sounds, meaningless in the face of the reality that is love as it is live out between two people. One can say so much, yet it all falls away in the silence that can bond two people. There is no "reason" for love; there is no explanation, no logic, no QED. It just is. If it's real, it never ends. Nothing - certainly not death, let alone physical separation, or such paltry emotions as anger, betrayal, resentment - can stop it from still sitting there, bleeding its life into our lives, keeping us going form one moment to the next when all we wish to do is stop the pain. We deny the pain as the lie to protect ourselves from the reality that the pain, like the love that is its source, is unquenchable. To live that pain is to embrace not the final word, but certainly the most impossible part of love.

Yet, there is more to love than this. The danger it poses - the threat to our own sense of ourselves, our equanimity, to our very lives - is every bit as real as the joy that comes from those fleeting eternal moments. To love is to live under the constant threat that it will ask of us more than we are prepared to give. To love is to live with the threat of change - real change - hanging over us.

Surrender is the only real option. Whether we stand before the throne of God, or looking in the eye of the one person who knows us better than we know ourselves, love steals choice from us, leaving us with only one recourse. There aren't enough tears of joy in the world for that moment, when we realize that, regardless of all our flaws, the pain, the pettiness and disappointment - not only who we are, but who we can be, is good enough.

A Talking Dick

The former Vice President offered more evidence in his war crimes/crimes against humanity today. At one time, the only American I wanted to sit in a dock at an International legal tribunal was Henry Kissinger. Thanks to eight years of Bush, the list has grown.

What an awful human being. What a horrible executive. No shame. No remorse.

If I were his lawyer, I'd advise him to STFU for a little while, because at some point, lawyers are going to take over.

Fear-mongering, small-minded, mediocrity. Ugh.

Darwinius masillae

Her name is Ida. She was a juvenile monkey, living 47 million years ago, who ended up dying, poor thing, her body settling on a lake bed. Lucky for her eons-distant ancestors, the entire outline of her body was preserved, so we could get a rough idea of what she looked like. Here she is.

At Science Blogs, PZ Myers writes the following on the discovery:

People have been using remarkable hyperbole when discussing Darwinius. She's going to affect paleontology "like an asteroid falling down to earth"; she's the "Mona Lisa" of fossils; she answers all of Darwin's questions about transitional fossils; she's "something that the world has never seen before"; "a revolutionary scientific find that will change everything". Well, OK. I was impressed enough that I immediately made Ida my desktop wallpaper, so I'm not trying to diminish the importance of the find. But let's not forget that there are lots of transitional forms found all the time. She's unique as a representative of a new species, but she isn't at all unique as a representative of the complex history of life on earth.

Just to be clear, what's important about this particular find isn't the whole "missing link" business; it isn't how detailed and complete her preservation has been. What's important is, quite simply, her age. This pushes back the existence of monkeys and millions of years. Little Ida may have had a short life, but her near-perfect preservation has allowed her to live on, telling all sorts of stories, and raising all sorts of possibilities, as we ponder her early existence.

Any creationist who posts a comment will be laughed at, but not deleted.

What If They Find The Key? (UPDATE)

The Republican reaction to the potential closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station is creating the wondrous spectacle of Republican politicians insisting our prisons aren't a safe place to put criminals. What makes this hysterically funny is that, for years, the Republicans have wanted to put prisoners away to keep America safe. The idea that our prisons are, suddenly, not a safe place to put criminals makes part of their public policy a joke, whether past or present, take your pick.

Now, today, the Senate voted to refuse to fund the closing of Gitmo, which makes absolutely no sense at all. What the hell is Gitmo but . . . a prison? I'm waiting, patiently or otherwise, for someone to explain to me, in a way that makes sense, why prison is alright for Charles Manson, Richard Rodriguez (the Night Stalker killer), and (until they were executed) Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacey, oh and of course Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings and the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. But the mostly innocent folks picked up off battlefields and plopped for years, effectively incommunicado in Cuba - nope, too dangerous.

Our politicians are silly, inconsequential folk who make no sense.

UPDATE: According to this post at TPM, the fault for this lies at the feet of the Obama White House.

On his first day in office, President Obama signed an executive order calling for the detention facility to be shuttered within a year. Four months later, strategists and Hill staffers say the White House didn't follow through. According to one strategist who advises Democrats on this issue, "things kind of got lost a little in the period between when the executive order was signed and today. There wasn't much direction from the White House to Capitol Hill. There was a breakdown between the White House and Congress."

What happened next will come as no surprise to students of Washington politics. Republicans rushed to fill the ensuing leadership void, and high-jacked the issue entirely. They have insisted for months now that closing the Guantanamo prison is the first step in a process that will result in terrorists walking American streets, and Democrats have met those charges with silence.(emphasis added)

First of all, what do you say to such profoundly stupid things as this? Now, it shouldn't surprise anyone that Democrats are running scared from crap like this; they got in the habit over the years, and rather than point and laugh, they puffed up their pigeon-chests and said, "You know, you're right! They might just stroll in to a 7-11 in my state and order a slushy!".

More revealing than the idea that the Republicans managed to play this issue so well in the absence of intelligent Democratic support and public relations, is the idea that the Senate Democrats got their tender feelings hurt by the White House.

a bigger problem, according to several sources, has been the White House's failure, for months, to co-ordinate strategy and messaging on the issue with Congress, where the bulk of opposition to the plan lies.

"Congress, on the legislative calendar, got ahead of Obama on this," says Ken Gude, who focuses on Guantanamo as associate director for the Center for American Progress."They've established their task forces they're working on their own timeline and the timelines didn't match."

According to Gude, "it's the kind of problem you have when you have two different tracks moving, but not at the same rate."

So, the White House is trying to figure out how to do this correctly, and in the meantime, the Senate, rather than wait, decided to vote on the issue. It seems to me they could have, and probably should have, waited. Getting their panties in a bunch, thanks to the typical Republican oogedy-boogedy, they ran away from Obama's plan, ironically casting the entire Federal Bureau of Prisons as some kind of sieve through which all these "terrorists" will soon pass, raping our men and killing our women, or something like that.

The performance of a few Democratic Senators today in defending both our Federal penal system, and the President's plan was a bit too little and too late. Too bad.

Summer Cruising Song, '09

The Allman Brother's Fillmore Concert CD. Bruce Srpingsteen's Born to Run. Joe Satriani's "Summer Song". All great songs to accompany a good long drive. I once drove from DC to my folks in a borrowed BMW - if you're gonna do something, do it in style, I always say - that had a five-disc CD player in the trunk (it was 1991, people, this was fancy!). The first two discs was an early, unremastered copy of the Allman Bros. Fillmore recordings. Carried me past Gettysburg, almost to Harrisburg.

I've discovered blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa, and all I can say is, listening to this puts me in the mood for a nice, long road trip somewhere on a sunny day, windows rolled down. This is totally self-indulgent, but if you have anything you like listening to, especially as you're dead-heading down a long stretch of blacktop - maybe through Slapout, say - you can add it in comments. Who knows, I might even add it to my car playlist.

Pointing And Laughing And Asking A Question

(h/t Matt)

ER points and laughs. Via Conor Friedersdorf, I have a question while I point and laugh:

How can [people] simultaneously insist that a country governed by [Pres. Obama] is well served by an executive branch given expansive powers during war time? How can they insist that he’ll end freedom in America, and defend the idea of warrantless wiretapping? Is it credible to argue that he is a radical opportunist who seeks the prosecution of political opponents, and that he should have the power to order waterboarding, “walling,” and other brutal interrogation tactics? It’s as if one moment they’re comparing him to Joseph Stalin, and the next they’re demanding that he wield all the power they helped afford him by arguing for its righteousness during the Bush era.

One quote one hears - and I don't remember who said it, or if it is even a real quote - about "genius" is the ability to hold two diametrically opposed ideas in one's head simultaneously. Thus, Mark, Marshall, Neil, Ozzie - the whole gang - a bunch of real geniuses.

Or the whole pack of them are dumber than carpet tacks.

Worried

I was told by a church member yesterday that Lisa might ask me to preach one Sunday this summer.

On music.

Believe it or not, I actually have a topic in my head already, and some ideas about how I might go about doing it.

Lisa hasn't asked me. Maybe I shouldn't jump the gun.

I worry when I preach.

So should everyone else.

Music For Your Monday

I was out stimulating the economy Friday evening, spending some hard-earned income at Best Buy, and I ran across a live DVD of David Gilmour. I must pronounce myself disappointed, because over half the program was a rehash of Pink Floyd tunes. Now, I won't begrudge Gilmour his desire to attract an audience by playing stuff they might just want to hear. Yet, Gilmour has a pretty impressive solo repertoire, stretching back to the 1970's. During Floyd's hiatus between Animals and The Wall, he gathered his old, pre-Floyd bandmates (one of whom had since become the bassist for Foreigner) and released a wonderful solo album. Then, after the band disintegrated thanks to Roger Waters' massive ego and the awful The Final Cut, he released About Face. In 1984, after releasing the second album, he toured, and filmed a concert at London's Hammersmith theater, a film broadcast on MTV back when it actually played music.

This first song - the film is missing, but the audio is from the show - is from Gilmour's first solo recording, a song written and performed with the ubiquitous Roy Harper. This is "Short and Sweet":



On About Face, he co-wrote two songs with Pete Townshend. This is "All Lovers Are Deranged":



The last cut on his first solo album, "I Can't Breathe Anymore", is very ominous, yet also mysterious. Always a good combination. Here's a rare performance video recorded in the late 1970's:

Trouble Makers And Pests

The President gave the commencement address yesterday at Notre Dame University. Much of the media hype about this has focused attention on the differing views on abortion rights held by, on the one hand, the President, and the other, the Roman Catholic Church. There have been many outspoken critics of ND's decision to invite the President; strangely enough, however, a student protest prayer vigil held the night before commencement was attended by about 150 students. None of those arrested outside the grounds of the campus (there were no protests on campus) were members of ND's faculty or staff, but included Obama's opponent for the Senate seat in IL, Alan Keyes, and Norma McCovey, the "Roe" of Rove v Wade infamy, now a pro-life advocate.

By way of contrast, there were roughly 12,000 people in attendance at the commencement ceremonies, with only 20 to 30 graduating seniors refusing to attend.

So, the entire controversy was, for the most part, fake. There was no groundswell against the President speaking at Notre Dame. Those who spoke out most loudly and most often, and ended up being arrested, weren't even members of the Notre Dame community. They were trouble makers, publicity whores, and - compared to the size of the overall university population - such a small minority as to be insignificant.

More On Torture

I really didn't get the whole bit about Nancy Pelosi. In fact, I still don't. I keep hearing on the news, "What did she know and when did she know it?", as if this has any relevance at all.

This isn't about whether or not then Minority Leader Pelosi was briefed about specific methods of interrogation, including the torture of some al Qaeda members. The "he said, she said" between Speaker Pelosi and CIA Director Leon Panetta is insiderism at its worst. No one believes Panetta that the CIA would never lie to the public. Very few on any side of the political debate really believe the Speaker. The most interesting aspect of this entire debate has been that there are Republicans with no vested interest in defending Speaker Pelosi who have said, unequivocally, that the CIA did not specifically address the issue of methods - including torture - or individuals. The only persons who have come out and called the Speaker a liar are those like Sen. Christopher Bond of MO, whose word isn't his last name.

More important, it seems to me, are the revelations that these "enhanced interrogations techniques" were used far earlier than have been revealed previously, including being used on political prisoners of war in Iraq to ascertain whether or not there was an al Qaeda-Iraq link which had previously not been uncovered. Now, anyone paying attention for the past eight or so years knows none existed. The CIA, military intelligence, anyone who knew anything kept telling higher-ups that it just wasn't the case. So, we hurt and hurt and hurt and simulated drowning and did all sorts of other horrible things to people for one reason - to cover Dick Cheney's flabby white ass. Period.

At this point, I don't care what Pelosi knew. I know that Cheney not only knew, but he and then-Defense Secretary ordered the repeated brutalizing of other human beings for no other purpose than to make sure they had some kind of cover. The attention being paid to whether or not Speaker Pelosi knew something is a distraction. How about some criminal proceedings against those who now only knew about it, but ordered it in the first place.

The time is long past. I'm tired of Republicans, conservatives, and other brainless people telling us that this was all OK, and especially now because Me. Pelosi knew about it and did nothing. I don't know if she knew, and no one else does either. I am far more concerned with the simple, plain, unadulterated fact that the sitting Vice President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense ordered torture for political cover.

They are despicable, horrible people.

Saturday Rock Show

Sunday, August 23, at the Chicago Theater, I will be enjoying an evening of music with the following bands. First, one of two bands from Sweden, it's Beardfish with "A Love Story (1 of 2)":



From Pain of Salvation's Scarsick release, a funny, angry rant against America under George W. Bush, comes "Disco Queen" (live in Istanbul):



Headlining, the greatest band out there, Dream Theater. Their new release is next month, so here's an old song, from 1992's Images and Words, this is "Under a Glass Moon":

Sign If You Are A United Methodist

The UM General Board of Church and Society is collecting signatures on a petition, "United Methodists do no torture". Sign here. Make a post, highlight it, spread the word.

Only Republicans Remember Sista Souljah

Like elephants, Republicans remember everything. And, usually, they remember it wrong. They blame Roosevelt for the Depression. They think Johnson micromanaged Vietnam. They believe Ronald Reagan won the Cold War.

When Bill Clinton criticized a little-known activist/rapper whose stage name was Sistah Souljah, the right was placated. Now, that happened . . . in 1992. Some of those who voted for Barack Obama, voting in their very first election this past November, were still in diapers when that happened. Yet, David Ignatius manages to dredge it up yet again. In the process, he comes off sounding really stupid (wow, what a shock!).

Please stop, for the love of all that's holy.

What It's About

I was going to do this post yesterday, got discouraged, but decided to try it again. . .

A friend of mine at work asked me last night, "What is Facebook?"

I said, "It's like MySpace for adults." In a way, that's true. At the same time, it works better than MySpace. Your profile isn't sitting there for anyone to see; only those you "friend" have access to it. There isn't a lot of froo-froo bling that makes the page look like it was designed by anime artists. As it becomes more popular, more and more people sign on; I've gotten in touch with a bunch of people from high school, people I haven't spoken to in 25 years. It's a wonderful way to reconnect.

It does have its downsides. Apparently, one person I know was actually booted off FB because something he typed in jest was deemed "offensive" by someone anonymous. Not only was the comment not offensive, I'm not sure how it could have been construed as such.

There are also an abundance of stupid little quizzes and other "stuff" that can clog your in box. Some of them are fun, most are really quite stupid. Fortunately, you can ignore these at your pleasure.

For me, though, the benefits outweigh the bad stuff. I keep it banal over there - no politics or religion (except for some music on Sundays) - and much prefer a good laugh to a good argument. Some regulars here are my friends there, but there are one or two - Alan, Feodor, Dan - who would be more than pleasant additions. You don't have to log in every day, or even every week. It is a good way to stay in touch, catch up, and be reminded that your life is far richer than you might think.

The Hound Of Heaven

I suppose this is a form of self-abuse (no, not that . . .), but I wanted to follow up my challenge yesterday. So, today, I found this. No explanation, no detail, no reference other than a previous post of Neil's.

Again, how about a reference. Elizabeth Johnson, perhaps? Edward Farley? Shoot, I'd settle for Schleiermacher at this point. Not that I think Neil has even heard of these folks, let alone read them enough to be able to quote them. There is this tool called "Google" and you can find a good quote from just about anybody who ever recorded a sentence.

I suppose this is Neil's way of responding without responding (and he calls me passive-aggressive).

Blog Straight Lines

I can't help myself . . .

If, as Dick Cheney's daughter says, Cheney's torture crusade is like Al Gore global warming activism, can't he hurry up and form his pro-torture organization and shoot his movie?

Because he'd shoot it in the face!

God, I'm glad I got that out of my system.

Sitting Down To Save Their Jobs

Sit-down strikes have a noble, wonderful history in the American labor movement. Because they work. So, it is heartening to see the 500 employees of this garment manufacturer in Des Plaines, IL deciding to fight the banksters to save their jobs.

"We are all upset that, they should give us another chance to make sure that somebody comes in who actually wants to bid," said Workers United Local President Ruby Sims. "Take the bid. Let us work. We deserve to finish paying those bills, paying for our houses, taking care of our children."

"We will not leave the factories if they move and push to liquidate it and close down our jobs," said Midwest Workers United Treasurer Joe Costigan.

We have reached a point where the labor movement needs to get back to some serious confrontation, organizing against corporate America, rather than with it. While it might be important to remind most corporations that, in the end, organized labor is a boon to profits, employee satisfaction and morale, retention, workplace safety, and the economy as a whole, right now workers need to be reminded that most corporations will quite willingly screw workers as much as possible. Without the protections provided by a unionized workforce, this will only get worse, especially in this economy. This is the moment for labor to get off its duff and, in the word of "Joe Hill" - organize.

A Challenge To (Gulp!) Neil

Yeah, OK, I admit it. I was reading . . . here . . . and in the little "Roundup" he does, he wrote the following, without links, without references, without anything. It's just a bald statement:

Liberal Christianity vs. orthodox Christianity: Real Christianity tells you that forgiveness for your sins is available in Jesus. Liberal Christianity will tell you that you don’t need forgiveness.

Now, being a Liberal Christian and also one who considers himself pretty orthodox (all that Trinity/Incarnation/Grace stuff, you know) I just want to know who, exactly, he is talking about. I challenge Neil to find a real liberal theologian - not John Shelby Spong or some other boogeyman, but a quote from, say, Paul Tillich, or Reinhold Niebuhr or Langdon Gilkey or John Cobb - that says what Neil says. Furthermore, I want to know what, exactly, are the differences between a "liberal" Christian and an "orthodox" Christian, in his mind.

American Exceptionalism, Moral Equivalency, And Torture

I could quibble with more than a few things in this post from Glenn Greenwald (when is our foreign policy ever perfect, Glenn? C'mon, that's not a standard, that's a cop out), but the best parts are actually quite good. Especially the linked and highlighted crap from some idjit from The New Republic (why is this magazine, with dwindling circulation, taken seriously?):

It's moral idiocy to equate the United States and Iran jailing journalists. It's moral idiocy to show in excruciating detail the ways the United States continues to jail journalists, without trial, without charges for years on end even as the entire journalistic establishment wails and gnashes their teeth over a three week imprisonment for an American journalist in Iran.

That is American exceptionalism in action, ladies and gentlemen.

Another example, you say? You mean, there's more?

Why, sure.

Why are the much less brutal methods used by the Chinese on Fischer called torture by the NYT, whereas much harsher methods used by Americans do not merit that term? Here we find what is clearly the single most predominant fact shaping our political and media discourse: everything is different, and better, when we do it. In fact, it is that exact mentality that was and continues to be the primary justification for our torture regime and so much else that we do.

Andrew Sullivan says much the same thing:

You will notice how the NYT defines torture when it comes to foreign governments - isolation, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation. Much milder than anything the US did to one of its own citizens, Jose Padilla. But the parallel is almost perfect: these are, after all, the exact Chinese Communist techniques that were reverse engineered from the SERE program. So you have a perfect demonstration of the NYT's double-standard. If Chinese do it to Americans, it's torture; if Americans do it to an American, it's "harsh interrogation."

I will challenge Eli Lake and say that, in fact, the US and Iran are not equivalent.

Apparently, Iran is a far better country than we are.

Music For Your Monday

I was listening to the PRI program Sound Opinions on Saturday, and they did an extended interview with Willie Nelson's latest biographer. It merely confirmed that this guy is quintessentially American, a marvelous national asset, ignored by the mainstream media because he's been tagged "country" (to my mind, he is even more important than Bob Dylan; blasphemy, I know, but I prefer Tom Waits to the sage from Duluth, so there you go). I love the story I read somewhere about this first song; blonde dimbulb Jessica Simpson, while filming the Dukes of Hazzard movie, asked Nelson if he knew the song "Crazy", and he replied that he co-wrote it for Patsy Cline. Too funny.



He did a concept album about an itinerant preacher who kills his wife (fun stuff, huh) called Red Headed Stranger. The album, and the first proposed single, were deemed "unreleasable" by the record company. Of course, it was his first major success, and the single, "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain", is a classic. I wonder if people at record companies have any brains at all.



After Waylon Jennings got artistic control, Willie came along and forced through the same contractual freedom. After that, they developed their "outlaw" persona, and while it was described as a marketing ploy, it also had a certain truth to it. Here they are doing "Good Hearted Woman"

Teh Funny

President Obama unleashes some serious LOL at the White House Correspondents' Dinner last night. Unlike his predecessor, he manages to take shots at himself, his administration, and most pointedly at his critics. Jokes at the expense of Bush, Michael Steele, the Dickster, and Rahm Emmanuel - too funny ("Rahm can't say the word 'day' after 'mother'.").

It Might Lead To Dancing

I saw this and I thought it too good not to highlight:

A student at a fundamentalist Baptist school that forbids dancing, rock music, hand-holding and kissing will be suspended if he takes his girlfriend to her public high school prom, his principal said.

Despite the warning, 17-year-old Tyler Frost, who has never been to a dance before, said he plans to attend Findlay High School's prom Saturday.

In honor (and you knew it was coming, didn't you . . .):

"There's no redemption where I'm going"

I saw X-Men Origins: Wolverine last night, and I really don't understand all the people who say it's bad. In fact, it is far better in many respects than any of the previous X-Men movies for one simple reason - it doesn't pretend to be anything more than it is, a fun, action-packed movie with a lot of people beating up other people, some funny one-liners ("It's OK! There are dead people in here!"), without the phony final victory that really isn't final because the sequel is coming (Stryker should have been made to eat that bullet, but that's just me).

Part of the problem, to my non-comic-fan mind, is that all these comic book fans actually believe there is something deep about the genre. No. Whether it's X-Men or Spiderman, or Batman, they are nothing more than ways for teenage boys to feel a vicarious thrill of identity, a way to take solace in their own sense of difference, and silently celebrate their own superiority over their "normal" peers. Like science fiction, comics return to the same themes again and again in ways that are destined to appeal to their primary target audience - adolescent males who feel estranged in one way or another from their peer groups.

The Wolverine film has the added benefit of an actual adult theme. Unlike the heavy-handed and repetitive "war between mutants and humans" of the first three movies (and why is it the humans always seem to need mutants to protect them from other mutants? Shouldn't this be a clue as to what is really going on?), the theme here is really quite simple - identity, including moral identity, is not identical with genetic predisposition. Unlike his half-brother Victor Creed, James Logan learns that, at some point, killing for the sake of killing is not who he is. His first taste comes in Vietnam, where he simultaneously fights his brother, and defends him against others. In Nigeria, the order to destroy a village becomes the breaking point.

Now, the nice thing about this theme - about the possibility of moral growth - is that, while it is there, you can leave it and just enjoy the movie for its good, old-fashioned fun. Yet, the line that is the title of this post comes as Logan is seeking revenge for what he believes is the murder of his lover. He sees revenge as unredemptive; yet, in the end, his revenge is both thwarted and voluntarily rejected, and so there is, in fact, redemption of a curiously Christian kind. In the Psalms, it is said that when God forgives, sin is removed from both us and God as far as east is from the west, and God no longer brings it to mind. Wolverine's inflicted amnesia is redemptive in that sense; as he starts down the road that will lead him to Charles Xavier, he is a tabula rasa, yet the morally complex character we meet in the first X-Men movie is already established. He has absorbed the lessons so deeply in to his psyche that no amount of amnesia can remove them.

So, I enjoyed the movie. I thought it did what it was supposed to do quite well. Unlike Yglesias, I think establishing Logan's backstory is important, and this cinematic version isn't the same as the comic version because, well, it isn't a comic book, but a film.

What I Take Seriously

It would be nice if someone would explain to Marshall Art that I might actually get upset by someone who argues the current Republican line, i.e., that we have never tortured but the bastards had it coming. Repeatedly. It might shock him back to reality to realize that, while I do not take myself seriously at all - anyone who knows me in the real world would know that - I do take seriously attempts to defend the indefensible.

Arguing that it's all in good fun and we all need to lighten up is not only lame, it's a dodge, an attempt to deflect attention from morally vacuous nonsense. Besides that, if all we're about here is bullshitting one another all the time, we might as well collect stamps. I take what I do seriously. I take Marshall at his word, that he really believes what he writes. For that reason alone, I consider him beneath contempt.

More New Ideas

In their endless search for new ideas and a fresh approach, the Republicans are . . . using the fear card.

All else having failed to score decisive political points against Obama, the GOP is going back to the tried and true scare tactics that will be the historical hallmark of U.S. politics in the 2000s. And, yes, 9/11 is the cudgel once again.

Today, the House GOP leadership unveiled its "Keep Terrorists Out Of America Act" (clever, right?) to try to prevent the closing of Gitmo by barring the moving of detainees to facilities on the U.S. mainland.

Over the weekend, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, and . . . somebody else . . . had a "town hall" at a pizza parlor in Arlington, VA where they trotted out all the talking points the Republicans have been spouting for years, and were summarily rejected by voters in two - count 'em, two - national election cycles. The funniest part was Mitt Romney, a former governor who is the son of a former governor, sitting next to Jeb Bush, a former governor who is the son and brother of two former Presidents, calling the Democrats the party of monarchists. Are they even trying?

So, fresh out of new ideas, they hoist the bloody shirt in hopes that a terrorist attack eight years ago will frighten enough people to forget that George W. Bush never even came close to catching Osama bin Laden, and in the meantime drove our country in to the ground in so many ways it will take years to repair. Good luck on that one.

National Day of Prayer

Today is the National Day of Prayer. I have to say I really don't know what that means; such public piety has no place in a secular republic, and didn't Jesus tell us to pray in our closets where no one can see us? Oh, right that's the part of the Bible that doesn't mention killing gay folk . . .

Seriously, though this is just crazy-nuts-lying:

President Obama will sign a proclamation recognizing today as a National Day of Prayer (NDP). Notably, the President will not continue former George W. Bush’s practice of holding a “formal White House event.” In response, conservative commentators in recent days have been suggesting that Obama is in some way attempting to downplay the significance of the NDP — and faith in general.

Limbaugh went so far as to suggest that Obama was trying to “cancel” the NDP, while the National Day of Prayer Task Force issued a statement suggesting that Obama was departing from historical tradition.

So the President signs a proclamation recognizing the NDP, and the head of the Republican Party says he's canceling it.

Is it any wonder we crazy liberals say that the conservative world-view is topsy-turvy?

They Got Nothing

It doesn't really pain me at all to point out to my right-wing friends that, for all their dogged determination and heroic efforts, the American people are no longer listening to them, their various self-appointed spokespersons, or interested in their positions on the issues. Now, to be sure, this has certainly not deterred them from pushing their crazy ideas and off-kilter world-view on an apathetic public. On the contrary, the more people either shrug and turn away, or point and laugh, the louder and more strident they become.

Like the Democratic Party of a generation ago, I do believe that it will be at least a little while before the Republican Party finds a new voice. In the meantime, we have the sad spectacle of the conservative movement imploding, the Republican Party bickering with itself, and Democrats forced to smile and accept Arlen Specter as a member in good standing of the party (I suppose you gotta take the bad with the good . . .).

Overall, though, their relevance to current political and policy debates? Null. Zero. The most interesting debates are within the Democratic Party.

As Maine Goes, So Goes Ohio . . .

Maine has made same-sex marriage legal. Expect some right-wing organization to start demanding a boycott of lobster. During a recession.

45 to go.

"A ticking bomb becomes a default assumption which in turn becomes a legitimization or justification for torture,"

As the discussion of torture continues - thank God - the whole "ticking time-bomb" BS has come under scrutiny, and, not surprisingly, been found wanting in the reality department.

"I've personally been told that they happen but I have to admit that in the years, in now the decade I have been told about it, I have become increasingly skeptical," says terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman.

--snip--

"A ticking bomb becomes a default assumption which in turn becomes a legitimization or justification for torture," Hoffman says today, nearly 10 years after he heard the story. "And in actual fact, even though people have told me about it, I have yet to see an actual documented case independently of what I was told."

To be "fair and balanced" (please sue me, FOXNews . . .)

Former CIA agent Michael Scheuer is convinced that there are times when torture is required. He recently spoke to NPR's Michel Martin and said that he happened "to know that at least until 2004 these activities were very productive, broke up plots aimed at our allies, and aimed against the domestic United States."

Except, of course, specifics aren't cited . . .

Details on what interrogators actually got from techniques like waterboarding are sketchy. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden has said that the first man the U.S. waterboarded, an al-Qaida operative named Abu Zubaydah, was unhelpful until the rough stuff began.

The FBI remembers it differently. The bureau says it took just two weeks for Zubaydah to provide information on Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, without the use of aggressive tactics. Rohan Guaratna agrees. He's an al-Qaida expert who has worked with both the CIA and the FBI and is very familiar with Zubaydah's case.

"Abu Zabaydah told the name of KSM before the enhanced techniques were used," says Guaratna.

All those people who pose hypotheticals derived from 24 and badly written French suspense novels (see the link for details) shouldn't be taken seriously. The issue isn't hypothetical. Indeed, precisely because both the FBI and military refused to torture, while the CIA did so, we have a classic experiment - with control groups and everything - and can test the efficacy of torture. So far not a single verifiable example of quicker, better, actionable intelligence gained through torture has come to light. The CIA officer who insists that potential attacks in the US and Europe were thwarted by torture refuses to discuss them. As far as I'm concerned, either put up or shut up.

BTW, Michael Hayden and that CIA guy who say that torture is sometimes necessary? Moral monsters. They deserve jail, to say the least.

This is the best line of the whole story:

"What I get most out of the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohamed is that any approach — I don't care what it is — if you have to do it 183 times, it is not working," says Matthew Alexander. He was the military interrogator in charge of the team that ended up finding al-Qaida's No. 1 man in Iraq, without resorting to torture.

Indeed.

Of course, we all bear responsibility for this, because it was done in our names. Any torture supporters want to go to Pakistan, say, and defend our right to torture people? Anyone?

Ha Ha. And Again I Say Ha

Now, I have yet to understand, exactly, what happened with Miss California USA and the whole anti-gay marriage thing. Honest. Nor do I care. At all. This, however, is something like just desserts.

Miss California Carrie Prejean has found herself disrobing her way through more controversy!

On Monday, photos surfaced on TheDirty.com showing a topless Carrie Prejean posing provocatively. However, Carrie quickly responded to the photos, claiming she was only 17 years old when the pictures were taken.

But was Carrie’s claim a strategic move since many media outlets would not likely air underage nudity?

Today, Access Hollywood uncovered evidence, which may put her age at over 18 when the photos were taken.

Now, being safer now than sorry later, I haven't put up the picture, which is nothing more than ad-copy from a Victoria's Secret catalog. What I find hysterical about all this is (a) this is a clear violation of Miss USA pageant rules (you can see the relevant portions in the linked post). Also, Ms. Prejean's claim that she is being targeted because she is a Christian is probably true; yet, what better reason than her holier-than-thou attitude to target her for something like this? Seriously.

I do so want to hear her reasoning behind the contradictory "I was only 17!" claim and "They were for a professional portfolio!" arguments. What modeling agency or potential photographer would be willing to take on a client willing to violate the law like that?

This is truly LOL-worthy.

May 5, 1970

Yesterday was the anniversary of the Kent State University killings. Today is the anniversary of near-universal college and university explosions in protest. For those too young or ignorant of history, members of the Ohio National Guard were on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio, and while the details are still murky - were they attacked with bottles? Were they just over-nervous kids who, for whatever reasons, were issued live rounds? - opened fire, killing four people, including a student walking across campus minding his own business (the photo of a young woman crying over his dead body won the Pulitzer for photojournalism that year).

Among the campuses that shut down was my alma mater, Alfred University. I was given the poop by a history prof I had, Gary Ostrower. Apparently, then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller had decided to preempt any attempt by students all over the state at trouble by sending in contingents of State Police armed with riot gear - whether at large schools like Cornell, or little tiny ones like Alfred. Now, it should be noted that Alfred was hardly a hotbed of radicalism, but this particular event triggered both rage and fear, a rage and fear compounded by Rockefeller's stupid decision. No one acquitted themselves well that day, but since the bulk of the power lay in the hands of police armed with shotguns and wearing helmets, I do believe there is a place we can at least glance at for responsibility.

One of the oldest buildings on our campus is Kanakadea Hall (named for the little creek that runs through town). It sits on the southern edge of the academic quad, and just to the southwest, there is a staircase that runs down to a little natural area with a walkway that runs to the street beyond. The campus was overrun by students, buildings were taken over, and a couple students were holed up in the attic of K. Hall. All they had to use against armed police were . . . water balloons. As a couple officers came up the stairs and crossed in front of the building, they opened fire.

Not smart.

Lucky for everyone involved, the cops were not nearly as tense or trigger happy as the young citizen-soldiers in Ohio, or it could have turned very ugly and very bad.

A year or so later, an investigation by Attorney General John Mitchell concluded that no one was to blame, the Guard units had acted properly, and the deaths were the unfortunate result of students behaving badly. Of course, Mitchell himself was behaving badly at this time, and ended up doing a little bit of time in the pokey for his own crimes. Hardly justice, but a little schadenfreude probably helped the ghosts of Kent State rest a little easier.

A Question

Is it possible for Newt Gingrich to speak in public and not give evidence that he is nothing more than a source of amusement?

Music For Your Monday

Jam-band extraordinaire Phish. "Bouncing Around The Room":



A standard cover they do, Edgar Winter's instrumental "Frankenstein":



I love this song! Found this from the 1998 Farm Aid concert, Neil Young doing his "Down By The River", with Phish as his backing band. Sit back and be amazed. . .

Prom Night

As I noted, I DJed a prom last night, for Depue High School. It was actually a lot of fun, a challenge in some ways, too. I got thinking, and while this is more ER's schtick than mine, I thought, "What the heck?"

My Senior Prom was the night before graduation. It was held at the VFW Hall in South Waverly, and I remember the band had a female lead singer (it was the time for that, what with Pat Benatar, Quarterflash, Martha and the Motels). My date was Lisa Montz from Sayre (I had taken her to her prom about a month before). She wore green, I recall. My tux, I am embarrassed to say, had ruffles. Lots of them (sigh).

Prom memories, please.

Supreme Choice

It is fascinating to watch the media-right-wing screech-a-thon begin with the announcement by Justice David Souter that he will be retiring from the Supreme Court once a replacement has been approved by the Senate. All the old tropes, memes, talking points, and other such things are trotted out, with the additional fun that Souter is almost universally despised by the right.

Pres. Obama has said that he understands the importance of this part of his job. That's about it.

The differences between the reaction of the right and the Obama Administration - indeed, of any Administration in recent memory - to the question of who will sit on the Supreme Court is telling. Obama understands that this is about appointing someone who will sit for life on the highest court of our country of laws. The right, already in meltdown mode, is beside itself with the thought that Obama might just appoint (gasp! grab chest in Red Foxx-style fake heart attack!) a liberal who might not be an old white guy. . . Heaven forbid.

Rather than make this another "test" of his Administration, it is nothing more or less than part of the job. I like that. It keeps everyone calm, and keeps the press from making every event a crisis or test or something earth-shaking. I like that.

Happy Birthday, Pete Seeger

Today, Pete Seeger turns 90 years old. He is an American treasure, Whitmanesque to the core, keeping alive a tradition of song that might just be lost with the ever-quickening urbanization and cultural destruction wrought by the ubiquity of satellite television. Here he is singing a great song by Malvina Reynolds, "Little Boxes". Such a simple song, but nails the kind of deathly social conformity that was bleeding America dry after the Second World War.



Here he is this past January at Pres. Obama's inauguration, along with Bruce Springsteen, leading the crowd in Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land". This song always makes me get a little teary; a much more fitting national anthem, as far as I'm concerned.