Paulism, Applied

by Nance

Yellow for Paul
Green for Grayson

The Republican Primary victory of Rand Paul forced me to bone up on the man, his father, and Libertarianism.  Heretofore, conventional wisdom among liberals was that the Ron Paul and the Tea Party would not be serious threats in November. Or ever.  I wanted to believe that the portion of America that could be so confused was still small enough to be dismissed. Things might be different now.  I needed a little schooling and some exercises in applied minarchy.  I concluded that, in an arena as complicated and churned as America in 2010, simplistic ideas, rigidly applied , are simultaneously the most irrelevant and the most dangerous things on earth.

 I learned that the Pauls adhere to the Austrian School of economics, which originated in Vienna during the Austrian Empire and was influential in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  The core values were decentralization, and laissez faire market operations.  Contractual agreements and commercial transactions were held to be voluntary and only the most fractional government role was tolerated in the marketplace.

Libertarians try to extrapolate these economic policies to apply to all forms of social contract; they imagine a Libertarian Society...and it's right about here that the schisms begin.  The forms of Libertarianism include (this week):  Anarcho-Capitalism, Geolibertarianism,  Left-Libertarianism, Libertarian Conservatism, Libertarian Socialism (really?), Libertarian Transhumanism, Minarchism, and Mutualism. Isms scare me.  And I'd hate to think how many types of Libertarian Presbyterians there might be or what those transhumans look like.

I wonder if the history of the Austrian Empire has anything to teach us about Anarcho-Capitalism, or Minarchism, or...I guess Paulism, really.  The empire that was formed in 1867 collapsed about fifty years later, which makes it one of the briefest classical empires in history.  It essentially collapsed under the weight of trying to accommodate the ethnic individualities of Croats, Serbs, Czechs, Poles, Rusyns, Slovaks, Slovenes, Ukrainians, Italians, and Romanians--and started the first World War in the process.

After the war, in 1922, the League of Nations had to bail out the economy, which was bankrupted due to inflation, making Austria a ward of the League. Subsequently, Austria was subsumed by The Third Reich.  It's autonomy was eventually returned to it by the peaceful post-war withdrawal of NATO occupation.  Austria is a very rich nation today, but its wealth is largely due to its neutrality--no need for a standing army--rather than to any magical economic formula.  According to wikipedia.com,

Austria is the 12th richest country in the world in terms of GDP (Gross domestic product) per capita, has a well-developed social market economy, and a high standard of living . Until the 1980s, many of Austria's largest industry firms were nationalised; in recent years, however, privatisation has reduced state holdings to a level comparable to other European economies. Labour movements are particularly strong in Austria and have large influence on labour politics.

So much for the Austrian School of unregulated free market economic theory.

Meanwhile, back here at home, in just one day in the news last week, the need for greater regulation was invoked in response to three separate critical issues.  As an exercise in applied Libertarianism, as each of three issues came up in the news, I tried to imagine how Ron Paul and his Tea Party would handle them.  Keeping in mind that, in a debate setting, if asked how he would handle a given situation if elected, the standard Libertarian's dodge is to cite how the problem never would have developed in a society where government was small and interference in markets was nearly nonexistent.

Never mind that dodge.  Elections are real time, in the midst of the crises we're currently facing.  If Rand Paul wins a Senate seat, the Republican Party will think it has seen the direction of its destiny.  And, in that event, Ron Paul will run in 2012 and he will win many more than the 14 delegates he garnered in 2008.  That's a bid to inherit the kind of problems we've faced in the last week of May, 2010.

Try these exercises yourself, if you're so inclined.  I let the logic of the Libertarians apply as far as my imagination would take me.  You won't need my answers to get the picture.

************

The Gulf Oil Spill:  Given that the Ron Paul has asserted that Louisiana should not have received federal aid after Hurricane Katrina ( this, from a Representative whose 14th District stretches along the Gulf Coast from Galveston to Corpus Christi--are we supposed to believe that his call on Katrina aid is more pure somehow, since it could as easily have been Galveston hit hardest by Katrina?), his position on the Gulf and BP is predictable.  Son, Rand, had the following to say on BP and the spill on May 21st:

On the oil spill, Paul, a libertarian and tea party favorite, said he had heard nothing from BP indicating it wouldn't pay for the spill that threatens devastating environmental damage along the Gulf of Mexico coast.

"What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,'" Paul said in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America." "I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business."

"And I think it's part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it's always got to be somebody's fault instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen," Paul said.

The senate candidate referred to a Kentucky coal mine accident that killed two men, saying he had met with the families and he admired the coal miners' courage.

"We had a mining accident that was very tragic. ... Then we come in and it's always someone's fault. Maybe sometimes accidents happen," he said. 

From Nov, 2009: HeatingOil.com
"The surge of production from the Gulf of Mexico has led the US
to produce more crude oil than it has since 2004." 

The Exercise:  How would non-interference  and non-regulation in the business of offshore drilling play out ?  Would we, the buying public, make our displeasure with British Petroleum known by cutting up our BP cards?  Libertarians advocate local management of local problems; how would local be defined in this case?

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Johnson and Johnson's Recall:   The FDA had to pressure J&J for a massive recall of over forty kinds of children's medications, from Children's Tylenol to Pediacare this month citing bacteria buildup in the laboratories where the medications were produced.  Regulation is being discussed and criminal action is under consideration.  The FDA has been calling for accountability on J&J's OTC products since last September, but the drug manufacturer has been dragging its heels.  In a Congressional Investigation, (May 26, 2010, AP, Chicago Tribune) :

Colleen Goggins, J&J’s president for McNeil consumer products, told lawmakers the company has already taken steps to fix the problems, including shaking up its management structure.

But she had few answers to questions about an alleged “phantom recall” of more than 88,000 packets of Motrin, a pain reliever containing ibuprofen. According to FDA documents, J&J learned about a formulation problem in November 2008 that interfered with the pills’ dissolving action, causing them to lose potency.

J&J then hired an outside contractor to collect samples of the product — mainly sold in gas stations — and determine whether a recall was necessary.

But instead of sampling the product, the contractor began purchasing large quantities of Motrin and instructing its employees not to mention a recall.

A memo titled “Motrin Purchase Project,” distributed during the hearing states: “You should simply ’act’ like a regular customer while making these purchases. There must be no mention of this being a recall of the product!”

The Exercise:  How does this OTC pediatric medicine problem play out at the hands of a Libertarian administration that calls government interference of business "Un-American"?

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Facebook's Privacy Policy Problem:  The name is oxymoronic. Facebook isn't actually interested in your privacy; they are interested short-term in advertising income, which relies on your loosening attachment to privacy as a right and as a moral value.  They are also interested, longer-term, in turning their social network into a social utility as vital to your sense of well-being as telephones were, in their day, and as cell phones are, today.  Given how far Facebook has come in user population since its inception in 2004 (over 400 million active users by 2010), they are well on their way to meeting their goal.  In pursuing their own goals, Facebook periodically resets their privacy controls--on your account--to virtual zero, allowing advertisers to gather information with which to market you more effectively.  The only thing that prevents a default setting of No Privacy is the hue and cry of users who notice and complain.  After a couple of legal problems, Facebook  began informing users of changes to privacy controls...as far as we know. However, until recently, their privacy platforms were so complex that users couldn't exercise full privacy controls with confidence.

The Exercise:  Without regulation, what ultimate outcome would you predict for the future of sites like Facebook,  for their users, and for private information?

**********

So, take your pick.  I firmly believe that the apparent increase in the usual rate at which urgent issues arise is unprecedented. The tipping point has been surpassed for manageable population, viable climate, and available resources.  We have entered a maelstrom.  These are the most dangerous of times and such times give birth to the most dangerous of heroes.  A simple idea, desperate times, an angry power base, and a small man: it all sounds ominously familiar to me.

Empathy, Community and the Nature of Evil

I was leaving a comment on a blog post by my friend Nance, Mature Landscaping, when I realized that my comment was getting a bit long. Thanks, Nance for the inspiration for my own post.


I don't recall when it was that I first realized that there was a lot of meanness in the world. I do know that by the time that I read The Diary of Anne Frank, that I suspected that she was wrong, and that people were not really good at heart. I think that I was 12 years old when I first read Anne's diary.

Sometime during my twenties, I became absolutely certain that people are not essentially good at heart. I don't think that I'm a cynic, just a realist, and it's a realism born of experience.

Neither do I believe that we are essentially evil. I think that we are neutral until we choose to act on the specifics of our experiences and/or circumstances. Life is all about choices yet far too many of us consistently make those choices based on misinformation, prejudicial beliefs, and self-interests.

I think that we confuse aging with maturity, and make the fallacious assumption that empathy is an innate quality that develops as we mature. As children, we are all motivated by self-interests, by instant gratification. Small children are adorable but they are also inadvertently cruel in their actions. If you don't believe me, spend some time with a group of two-year-olds. Each wants whatever he or she wants when they want it. There's crying, biting, a blow here and there, and a lot of run by toy snatching. As we age, left unchecked, those desires continue to predominate. Empathy has to be taught and it has to be taught by example.

Empathy--the ability to identify with others, to put yourself in their shoes--is the most powerful force for good in the world; sadly, it is the emotion most lacking in so many of us. We're taught not to hit and to share our toys, but most of those lessons are narrowly applied to our immediate circumstances and we never learn to adopt the empathy model as defining our world view.

Listen to the tea partiers, they are obsessed with making certain that undeserving people do not receive a free ride. Who's undeserving? Anyone whom they deem to be so. Of course, that translates into anyone who doesn't look like them, or who speaks with a foreign accent. A free ride includes basic necessities like medical care. One of the biggest objections to the Health Care Reform Act was the belief that illegal immigrants would receive free health care at taxpayers expense. Even the terminology indicates the distancing from any identification with the perceived "other." Typically, the language refers to illegal "aliens," not people but creatures from another planet, inherently different and dangerous.

The recent anti-immigrant law passed in Arizona is further progeny of the empathy deficit. Angry supporters of the law insist that it is fair, secure in the knowledge that they will not be the ones stopped and challenged as to their legal right to be here. In their minds, the fallout from this law is not their problem.

The slide from disinterest in the well being of others into outright evil is accelerated by the fear mongers that appear in every generation. The Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs who nurture the fear and feed the hate. These people make conscious choices to ramp things up, to stir up a frenzy among the masses. They are not unique; history is full of these depraved folks who for profit and egoism disseminate malicious lies and half-truths designed to fuel the anger of those who believe that they have an entitlement that separates them from those they have designated as other.

I don't believe that there is some essential goodness in humankind that will simply win out. I'm not a total pessimist; to the contrary, I think that we have the ability to teach people to make more humane, informed choices. However, it means that we have to continually reiterate the need for change. We can't simply live locally and hope that the global issues will resolve if we build a sense of local community. Humankind is interconnected and we are global, regardless of what we may want to be. I understand the desire to withdraw from the larger world and to focus on one's community, but we do not live in isolation. There are no walls that can be built that are high enough to keep out the rest of the troubled world. Our local community is global.

An Open Letter To A Young Friend

by Nance

In the responses I received to my last post, The Wedding Bends, my young friend Jeffrey Johnson left one of his thoughtful, gentle comments that opened a heap of reflection for me. Jeffrey is kingcoyote, of Penny Candy & Shady Characters, whom I featured here in Allow Me To Introduce; for a real treat, go visit his most recent post, entitled Rocking Chair.  He writes of his young daughter, Abby, and his new daughter, Olivia, who is one month old.  I found myself writing way too much to Jeffrey. For convenience, I will re-post his comment here and respond to it with an open letter to him and to his generation.


kingcoyote:

About a year ago, I was stuck in traffic, waiting to get onto the highway. In the left lane, people kept going by at a good clip while my land was at a virtual stand-still. As I neared the highway exit ramp, I could see the problem... people were zipping up the left lane to the front of the line, and being let in. I really couldn't decide which one irritated me more, the people cutting in line (holding the rest of us up, as if WE didn't have places to be) or the people letting them in.

I can't help but feel the same way about the Westboro people, and the media. One thing that this interweb community that I've become a part of shows me over and over is that there really ARE many, many good peoples out there. Much more, I think, than the crazy creepers. Unfortunately, it's the crazies that sell papers... if we stopped paying attention to them, maybe they'd lose some of their power.

At any rate, I tend to feel like MFM [My Fellow Men] are (as a general rule) good people, but we tend to get so overwhelmed by the number of GLOBAL needs that it's easy to forget that what matters is an accumulation of LOCAL needs. I read a zen quote(ish) this week about community that went something like "We all see ourselves as waves, but forget that we are part of the ocean."

 Dear  Jeffrey,
You make a very good point, one that always generates some ambivalence for me when I feature Serious Crazy in a blog post:  maybe the Westboros of our world would go away if we ignore them.

I spent most of the last four years of the Bush administration in a news-fallout shelter. I yoga'd and Om'd myself into the present, local moment and stayed there as much as possible--especially after I discovered that New Zealand didn't need any retiring psychotherapists. I poked my nose out in 2007 to see if sanity had made any inroads and became re-engaged enough in '08 to do a little phone work for Hillary Clinton.  And to try to prevent my retirement savings from self-destructing in mutual fund hell.

I've stayed engaged--initially because I hoped that something really good might be happening in my country, something I could support and didn't want to miss. Then, just when I thought I was going to be able to handle the world again, in what seemed like the blink of an eye but was actually March through October of '08, something terrible and unprecedented, something only a few saw coming, began to happen, instead. I had ventured out to enjoy the view and found myself in a bucket brigade.

I think young families like yours, Jeffrey, do well to limit their exposure to the news, at least to some extent; whatever the emotional climate out there, there is a living to be made and there are babies to be rocked--Life demands some self-preservation of its reproductive generation and I'm all for it. For the sake of the species, please learn just enough about the larger world to make the necessary gross adjustments to conditions and then get on with the job at hand. Concentrate on raising children who take solar panels, wind energy, and locally-grown food as much for granted as their parents take cell-phones, gas stations, and strawberries in November.

I sometimes consider dragging out my mats, putting my feet up the wall, spritzing the lavender on my eye pillow, and disappearing into the Yoga Nidra meditation on my iPod. But a funny thing sometimes happens toward the end of our time here: some of us in the aged generation get riveted by imagining the sequel to the movie of Life--the one we won't be here to watch, the one that follows the movie WE found ourselves in and improvised from.  These days, it really is like watching that proverbial train wreck.


We want to do something to make the sequel better.  We do what we do best, naturally.  I'm a professional Warner; just ask my kids.  I've been practicing my entire life to warn you right now about...whatever it is that looms into my view and winds up in my next blog post.  In this case--or, rather, in the next post--it'll be Ron and Rand Paul and the surprising, threatening growth of Libertarianism in America. You're going to need to know about it, if you don't already. 


I like your focus on local needs.  I think it's just right both for managing life with Our Fellow Man and for building a sustainable life, rather than a growth-driven society. I'm probably preaching to the choir or missing the boat or...well, what I meant to say was that I'm convinced that forewarned is forearmed...okay, bad cliche and really AWFUL choice of words!  I'm convinced that the Libertarian movement will grow if it isn't understood and reckoned with. The term LOCAL isn't going to mean the same thing to everyone.


Localism as discussed by Bill McKibben in his book EAARTH is similar to the kind of community I grew up in during the early fifties.  Those were the conditions and the stories that gave rise to my liberalism and they were simpler, more manageable, far more family-friendly times.  And, although we didn't know it, they were the conditions that contained the seeds of the bitter harvest we reap now.  The New Localism will bear similarities to Fifties America, but it will be different in ways that you and I can't imagine yet, beyond some hopes and wishes...a localism that not even McKibben is willing to draw in detail.  It will be a wised-up localism.   It will not be, I feel fairly certain, the kind of laissez-faire localism that the Libertarians imagine.  


McKibben has written on the Libertarians,

I’m not a libertarian, because I think they’ve conflated “human nature”—their sense of the individual über alles—with the effects of the last couple hundred years of consumer society. I think humans are at their best when they’re social creatures; that’s why I’m a Methodist, not a Randian. But I don’t disdain libertarianism, nor conservatism. How could any environmentalist, who at heart is interested in maintaining as much as possible of the world we were born into? But each day that they remain in sly and subtle opposition to scientific fact draws them further into intellectual disrepute. It’s been a tough couple of years for laissez-faire ideology—Alan Greenspan pretty much dumped Ayn Rand overboard when he told Congress earlier this year that his worldview had been “flawed.” But at this rate, it’s going to be a tough geological epoch too—for all of us.

 And, lo!, I am launched on that next blog post before I've even finished this one.  This is not what I thought I'd be doing in retirement. I'm not really politically savvy enough to be weighing in with the heavy hitter blogs. I contribute my mite, and not without a lot of apprehension.  I was all set to gaze deeper into the Lotus, to join the Ocean, to tend my own garden. Instead, I find myself trying to have the courage to keep seeing the whole, ugly parts and all. I'm not very good at it, but, as the yogi would say, I can't stop until I do.

Jeffrey Johnson, Red Herring Illustration

Rock your precious little children with my warmest blessing.  Drop in here from time to time.  Visit the folks in my Blogroll.  Some of us are Warners, some are Scientists, some are Writers, some are scared and most are funny.  All of us want to help you.  Many of us are your web-local elders, and we love you because you are us...as we were and as it shall be.


Peace, honey.

You and whose army?

It's Memorial Day weekend again in the New South. It's nice to know they've finally accepted a holiday they once loathed. Of course it was Decoration Day until 1968 and after I was grown and had a family. It was as you know, about decorating the graves of Union Soldiers and after the next horror of the Great War, the graves of the 117,465 American dead: a day of solemn reflection.

But by the time they changed it to Memorial Day to make it more compatible with our imperialism at the height of the senseless horror in Vietnam, it was about Dad's cremated Hamburgers and Indy; parades and patriotic hoo-ha, but perhaps it's because I now live in the South, it's taken on a new tone. Perhaps too, it's because I live in an area flooded with retired military folks filled with their own importance and those employed by the notorious Military- Industrial Complex -- but my in-box is once again flooded with glorious stories about our glorious military and the glorious things they do. A good part of them are hoaxes and of course there are no mentions of our heroes of My Ly 4 or Abu Ghraib or of the recent glorious heroes who accidentally slaughtered 30 or so civilians using robot planes in air conditioned comfort from halfway around the world.

No, what I get are bogus stories about Marines rescuing babies on 9/11/01 and how it is the Veterans" we owe our freedom of religion, press, speech and the rest of the rights we've had abridged because of the martial spirit of the times -- not the constitution, the courts or the Government of the United States.

Have we forgotten that the biggest enemy of freedom on this continent was the American South? Was anything we can call our own freedom at risk in most of our wars? Andrew Jackson's slaughter and deportation of the Seminoles? the use of Federal troops in slave raids into Florida? The Mexican War? The Spanish American War? The war against Philippine independence? What kind of threat to our freedom of speech necessitated suppressing free elections in Vietnam or the killing of two million civilians? What threat to our freedom of Religion was posed by Iraq? What threat were flower carrying kids in Ohio that they needed to be shot in the back by American troops? Were the troops driving armored vehicles down Chicago's State Street in 1968 there to support our right to assembly or to shut us up?

It' s not that I have any disrespect for veterans, living or dead, but our Constitution wasn't written by the Generals, no foreign power is any threat to it and that we still pay any attention to the Bill of Rights owes as much to the "activist" courts and the ACLU as to anything else. It owes nothing whatever to the Tea Bag flag wavers who hate government power unless it's carrying guns. It owes nothing to Macho flag wavers from John Wayne to Bomb-bomb McCain.

Memorial day has become an encomium not to dead soldiers; an expression not of profound grief. It's not a day when we mourn our losses or of any remembrance of the horror of war and militarism, but to celebrate living veterans, sing praise to the Armed forces and to the glory of war itself. It's a day we now use to decorate ourselves, congratulate ourselves on our military prowess and this in a country that's been fighting all my life but hasn't been on the winning side of a war since 1945. It's a day too often used to obscure the real threats to freedom with red white and blue bunting and it's good to remember that the same folks crowing about military defense of freedom are quite happy to require anyone with tan skin to carry proof of citizenship at all times, quite happy to give the local police the power of Federal Marshals and to forget all about warrants and probable cause. What army is going to protect us against our own smug racism, bigotry and expansionism?

Arizona Draconia

As in most families, mine has a mix of political views. We frequently find ourselves on opposite sides of a debate but because we love each other, we never devolve into shouting or name calling. (Although voices may rise just a little). And so it was that yesterday I had an exchange with a couple of family members about Arizona's newly minted immigration laws.

Their first argument was that why shouldn't everyone have to carry ID? They only need their driver's license to prove their citizens, right? Wrong, the laws do not specify what constitutes proof of citizenship, only that if asked by law enforcement, you must have documentation to prove you are legally in this country. A driver's license does not usually qualify as proof of citizenship.

So then I asked if they routinely carried their birth certificates around and were willing to present them several times a day to anyone in law enforcement who asked for them. Of course, they are too white to have to worry about that, but I did want them to see the irony of this scenario as compared to the laws of communist countries where you used to have to produce your papers on demand.

After this part of the conversation there came this, "Well, they must have a good reason to take this drastic of a step. It must be really bad in Arizona." And I thought, I wonder just how bad it is in Arizona that they felt they needed to trample the constitution in order to stem the tide of criminal activity against bona fide American citizens.

I went HERE to get some information. The link will take you to Arizona Public Safety Dept crime reports for the last several years and here is what I found out.

Using the crime comparison index, with the exception of larceny and rape, crimes as a whole were down in 2009 from 2008.

Bias/hate offenses statistics was interesting; Assaults, intimidation, damage/vandalism were up across the board. The greatest number of bias crime targets were blacks, Hispanics, Jews and homosexuals.

Surprise, surprise...

Looking at drug offenses, specifically committed by Hispanics, there was, overall a 5% increase or about 500 more cases over the course of 2009. These stats include drug sales and drug use.

When you compare statistics of 2005 to 2009 you find that bias crimes against Hispanics and Jews are up, nearly doubled in 2009. Drug offenses by Hispanics overall is down in 2009 by at least 2,000 arrests. Both violent crime and property crimes are down in 2009 from 2005.

With these numbers in mind, what DID prompt the Draconian measures enacted by the Arizona governor and legislature? The argument that they had to "do something" about illegals in order to fight crime sure doesn't stand up in light of Arizon's own numbers.

Dairy Farm's Animal Abuse: Graphic Video and Petition

I've seen some brutal cases of animal abuse but this is without doubt the sickest and most outrageous. I know what I'd like to do with the clamps these bastards are using. The video is graphic and you probably won't be able to watch but a little but please watch some of it. I hope it moves you to sign the petition from change.org.

Jamie Lee Curtis and Christopher Guest write in an open letter to Conklin Dairy Farm:

Mr. Conklin,

Our daughter came to us last night urging us to watch the video of the abuse at your plant. She was overcome with grief that human beings could inflict such cruelty and unconscious hatred at the most benign of creatures and their infants. The shocking images were too much for her father and me but we watched enough to know where it led.

There are moments in all our lives where we face our deepest, darkest truths.

This is your moment.

What will you do?
(snip)
We challenge you to have the courage, as the brave person who filmed this did, to open your doors and your hearts. Become the standard for safety and kindness and actually change -- change your mental state and spend the rest of your lives, and the lives of your descendants, trying to make your farm the leader in humane, clean, loving treatment of the very animals you profit from. You have the opportunity. Certainly one more than those helpless victims of your sick, tortured abuse.

This is your moment. From the ashes of your lives can you re-build yourselves?

We know it is possible, if you have the willingness. But do you?

We are all waiting for your outrage and the outrage of your children and families and friends.

We are all waiting for your next move because we certainly know what ours is....

INCOME TAX INJUSTICE

MoveOn.Org commissioned this cartoon to call attention to one of the worst tax injustices of all time … the infamous Hedge Fund Loophole. It allows a highly privileged group of Wall Street traders to earn over $1 Billion a year, yet pay as little as 15% on the their federal income tax. What does the country get back in return for this extra generous tax break?

The answer is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Hedge fund traders do not create jobs, build factories, extend credit to growing businesses, fund new energy development, or confer any economic benefit to the country whatsoever. They do, however, fight like hell to keep their tax privileges intact.

Consider this: If you are a hedge fund trader earning in excess of $1 billion a year, the difference between a capital gains tax of 15% versus the top ordinary income tax rate of 35% amounts to $200 million a year. With that kind of money at stake, it is easy to buy off an army of politicians … and still have tons of cash left in your pocket. Killing the tax break would add $14.75 billion over five years and $24 billion over 10 years to the federal treasury … and help lift the burden of spending deficits and taxes from the middle class.

Petition your Congressional representatives and demand an end to this tax injustice.

The Oil Disaster -- a Good Site to Visit

The following site (frequented by engineers) has a live video feed of the oil flowing into the Gulf, and an animation of the Top-Kill procedure currently taking place: http://www.theoildrum.com/.  If this works, at least the well will be killed off and the flow halted.  I've been watching the live feed and it looks like the mud is flowing -- here's hoping that's a good sign.

AMERICAN JACKBOOTS ON THE MARCH

It seems our vaunted American news media has turned into the three monkeys that hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil. A British news source is covering this story, but not the MSM within these United States of Amerika?

How To Kick The Oil Habit

The conventional wisdom that we must depend on fossil fuels until we “transition to a new energy future” is a favorite of our political and media betters; problem is, they’ve been saying it for the past 30 years while doing absolutely nothing to further said “transition.” Now we face one crisis after another, after another.


Thanks a lot, assholes.

Never mind. I’ve said all along that this piece of conventional wisdom is false, a lie we’ve been told to make us feel better about our lack of action. Don’t worry, be happy. But sorry, peeps. Time to grow up. Time to call bullshit where we see it and demand some action, some leadership and some honesty.

Here’s a great place to start:

The last time lawmakers truly freaked out about the problem of our oil dependence--when gas prices topped $4 a gallon in the summer of 2008--the Senate Energy Committee called in Skip Laitner, director of economic analysis at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

The committee asked Laitner what efficiency--the famously unglamorous energy strategy--could do to relieve gas prices. He gave them an astonishing figure: It could save 46 billion barrels of oil. If the U.S. made an all-out investment in energy efficiency-cutting energy waste out of vehicles, buildings, the electrical grid, and elsewhere in the economy--Laitner believes it could save the energy equivalent of 46 billion barrels by 2030.

Domestic offshore drilling produced 537 million barrels a year over the last nine years, according to the Minerals Management Service. A full-bore efficiency plan would save the equivalent of 85 years of offshore drilling.

Let me repeat what I’ve said before: the oil companies are cutting back on refinery production, even shutting some refineries down permanently, in an effort to keep gas prices high. So I don’t believe conservation will lower gas prices significantly. But that’s not my concern. My concern is ecology, safety, and other areas of the economy that depend on our coastal areas. And it looks like conservation will give us that so-called “breathing room” we’ve been told we need offshore drilling to provide to fuel our transition to renewables.

Most of Laitner's “10 solutions” look fairly painless and easy to implement, but they require will, leadership, and commitment. We need to decide that we really do want to transition to renewables, not just use the words to justify our wasteful ways while we steep ourselves in denial.

There are tons more ideas from folks like Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, whose commentary Freeing America From Its Addiction To oil provides tons more pro-business, capitalistic solutions. But, as he notes, we need “real carrots, not just sticks painted orange.”

We can do this. It’s not hard. We have the motivation. We have the tecnology. We simply need to demand it of our leadership.

Alabama: Push It!

Mash-ups are not the end of culture, but the final form.

The politics portrayed here are not exclusive to Alabama, but my state is a bellwether for such politics nationally. Indeed, the south generally serves as a great indicator of the national direction. That is because southern Alabama is the epicenter of all wingnuttery -- as you can see by our TV ads.

Tim James has pandered his way to national attention. Young Boozer (real name!) has drawn national mention. So has Dale Peterson, a candidate for Agriculture Commissioner (really!). These ads are aggressive shouts for attention; they are desperate moves (no one in Alabama had ever heard of Dale Peterson).

The time had come for a mash-up -- a complete deconstruction of the right-wing Alabama advertisement:



Alabama's politics can be twisted; ironically, Dale Peterson is the most progressive candidate in the race in the ways that really count for the post. That said, I think Alabama is going to surprise the country this year -- and contribute to a sense of disappointment among the right.

For if the election were held today, the man at the beginning of that video -- Artur Davis -- would probably be elected Governor. The heart of Dixie...might just be turning blue again.

Fundamentals of the Social Contract: Why Rand Paul Is Wrong

According to aspiring legislator, Rand Paul, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 went too far in prohibiting racial discrimination by private businesses. All the while asserting that he would have voted yes for the Civil Rights Act, Rand nonetheless believes that private businesses should be allowed to refuse goods or services to black people, at least that's what he told Rachel Maddow in an interview. His words have thrown the GOP into something of a frenzy as they try to distance themselves from his remarks and yet reap the benefits of his popularity with the tea party contingency.

I have a very personal reaction to Paul's observations. I grew up in the era of Jim Crow when segregation was the norm. White Only and No Colored Allowed signs were as common as traffic signs. All businesses were legally allowed to discriminate, to deny goods and/or services based on the color of the consumer's skin. I don't have any desire to return to the good ole days. I also don't hold with the thinking that given time to evolve, Jim Crow would have died a natural death. Jim Crow wasn't born. The system of racial discrimination known as Jim Crow was artificially and intentionally created as a response to the post civil war efforts of black people to claim their rightful place in the social, economic, and political hierarchy of this country. There was nothing natural about it. It couldn't die; it had to be executed. I have no doubt that without government action legal segregation would still be a part of the fabric of this nation.

Rand Paul's position is seriously flawed; however, based on the comments littering the Internet on this topic, there are a lot of folks out there who have succumbed to the same flawed thinking. Much of it stems from worship of the cult of individuality. A characteristic of this cult is a belief that my individual rights supercede all other rights. Of course this is totally irrational. If my rights are more important than your rights, then aren't your rights more important than mine? What about Mary Sue next door, where do her rights fit in this hierarchy? Although said much more eloquently by such diverse thinkers as Locke, Rousseau, Jefferson, and Hobbes, it's this tension regarding individual rights balanced against the needs of the whole that necessitates the formation of governments. (My listing of only western philosophers is not intended to suggest that only white males have wrestled with these issues. It's just that as a product of a limited American public education, I am most familiar with the works of Eurocentric writers, which is an entirely separate topic to be addressed someday.)

Society is the whole, individuals are the parts. Societies were formed by the individuals to create a system in which the individuals could agree to live governed by rules to protect the common good. Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, Jefferson and many others have defined this concept as it relates to the purposes of goverment. Those who do not wish to agree to the social contract are free to live outside of it but cannot then also benefit from it. (i.e. you don't have to own a business) This is the basic flaw of Rand Paul's argument that a private business has the right to engage in discrimination. Businesses are by definition public enterprises. Its goods and services are sold to the public and as such the business is part of our system of commerce. The regulation of commerce is constitutionally assigned to Congress. If the businessman wishes to engage in discrimination, he may do so but not via his public enterprise. It's up to him to figure out how to run a profitable business enterprise without engaging in public commerce, if he wishes to engage in discrimination as to whom may partake of his goods and/or servces.

The most extreme example of those who place individual liberties tantamount to the society as a whole are those who commit crimes. The thief believes that his/her needs are superior to the needs of all others thereby justifying their right to take what they need. Indeed, if we follow the argument of the superiority of individual rights to its logical conclusion, then those who commit criminal acts are merely choosing to place their individual needs above the needs of the whole. Under this logic, our prisons are populated by true libertarians.

However, in a society, we all agree to subvert our individual liberties to the benefit of the function of the whole. To not do so results in anarchy and a society in which no one has any security. Whatever property that I may have secured would constantly be at risk of being taken by someone who had the strength to do so in a world governed by the supreme right of the individual. Instead, we have laws, enforcers, and systems of punishment to maintain order so that property rights, mine and yours, are not subject to the arbitrary will of might makes right. Which brings me to the final element of the social contract, governments are not instituted to protect the rights of the strong but rather to ensure that even the weak have protections. Otherwise, in the words of Hobbes,we would be in a constant state of war, and man would be a solitary being living an existence that is nasty, brutish and short.

P.S. A good friend, Mark Olmsted, writes for the Huffington Post. In his most recent piece, People and Property: What Rand Really Wants, he presents an astute assessment of Rand Paul's disturbing views which suggest that civil rights should be optional. Check it out.

Baffling Bedfellows

by Nance

At dinner the other night, my son asked me why I continue to study the history and evolution of Christianity, among other religions, since he's pretty sure I took a position on Christian beliefs many years ago. Do I study Christianity in order to validate my position?  To argue better with those who don't agree with me?

I explained that I started this study in high school, and continue it to this day, because Christianity has so powerfully influenced our culture. I've long since given up trying to convert or convince anyone to my way of thinking.  I was raised in Protestant churches and chose a women's college that allowed me to make an historical-critical study of the Christian Bible and of other religions.  I stay fascinated because Christianity plays such a huge role in the conflicts of our time, and because scholars continue to present new perspectives and deeper understandings.  I want to understand what philosophies drive American actions and inform America's short history. If I seek to understand, rather than to be understood, then I have to seriously ask, "What the hell are those people thinking?!"

As luck would have it, I found Mike Lux's article, Why Are So Many Christians Conservative?, on AlterNet. Lux does a really good job of explaining, with Biblical references, why the philosophy Jesus taught as revealed in the gospels is at odds with the stated philosophy of Conservatives.  To give a taste:

Conservatives believe that the rich and powerful got that way because they deserve to be, that society owes its prosperity to the prosperous, and that government's job when they have to make choices is to side with those businesspeople who are doing well, because all good things trickle down from them. Progressives, on the other hand, believe it is the poor and those who are ill-treated who need the most help from their government, and that prosperity comes from all of us -- the worker as well as the employer, the consumer as well as the seller, the struggling entrepreneur trying to make it as well as the wealthy who already have.

And,

The Jesus of the New Testament spent his public career preaching about the nature of God and our relationship to God, but also about how we should deal with each other. He repeatedly blessed mercy, gentleness, peacemaking, community, and taking care of each other. He lifted up the poor and oppressed, and spoke poorly of the wealthy and powerful. If anyone in modern society talked like he did, you can bet your bottom dollar that conservatives would condemn that person as a class warrior, a socialist.

The article is too long to have tattooed on my arm, although I briefly considered trying.  You'll have to read it for yourself and get back to me.

When you've done with that, perhaps you can help me understand another mongrel miscreation that keeps me awake at night:  The Feminist Conservative.

Addendum:  I should add that my own leanings are toward a mix of Reform Evangelical Druidism and Free Range Addlism.

Let there be -- bacteria

Said the J. Craig Venter Institute research team - and there was life.

While the human race, or at least Homo Americanus is preoccupied with destroying itself with it's pet mythologies and peremptory political philosophies and general stupidity, a few of us have been at work actually creating something that constitutes a giant leap for mankind. It's always a very few, isn't it?

A team of American scientists have succeeded in animating a cell with a synthetic genome made out of raw chemicals. The implications of this huge accomplishment are beyond anyone's ability to foresee and I'm not talking only about the ability to design or reproduce life from scratch or even to bring extinct species back from extinction: I'm talking about dispelling another myth, explaining another mystery without relying on further myths and mysteries ad infinitum.

Remember the scene from Blade Runner where the genetic engineer looks at a snake scale to find an identification number encoded in the artificial snake? Perhaps the team who put together a synthetic "replicant" bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides remembered when they encoded the names of the 46 scientists in the project along with the project's e-mail address into its genome.

Beyond being another blow to the "I don't understand how it works so God must have done it" fallacy, the creation of living, reproducing things from bottles of Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine and Guanine will require us to re-examine the nature of life itself and just when it "begins."

I wonder if looking back at today's newspapers 200 years from now we won't wonder why it didn't make the headlines, but perhaps the reason is the same reason we're in so much trouble right now: 300 million self-absorbed, short sighted, ignorant life forms trapped in solipsistic bubbles ( or tea bags) unable to see much beyond the membrane.

The will of the WASP

Rand Paul is not Ron Paul and I'm not flattering him by saying it. There is a difference between principle and bull-headed intransigence and Paul the younger seems as unclear about that as he is not quite up to the task of successfully debating Rachel Maddow about his distaste for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Asked whether he thought a restaurant had the right to refuse service to black customers, Paul commenced a rather evasive dance around the subject by trying to describe regulation as ownership.

"What about freedom of speech?" asked the less than candid Candidate. "Well what it gets into then is if you decide that restaurants are publicly owned and not privately owned, then do you say that you should have the right to bring your gun into a restaurant even though the owner of the restaurant says 'well no, we don't want to have guns in here' the bar says 'we don't want to have guns in here because people might drink and start fighting and shoot each-other?'" Paul replied. "Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government own his restaurant? These are important philosophical debates but not a very practical discussion."

Unfortunately, more than just being grammatically confused, he's wrong. He's equivocating and the debate is, of course, entirely about practical matters. Can we agree, for instance, that being black in a restaurant is fundamentally different than carrying a gun in a bar and if so, his analogy is defective and a fallacy of distraction? Certainly a speed limit is not Government ownership of my car, health regulations imposed on food producers aren't the equivalent of owning the family farm nor is forcing Woolworth to stop creating two Americas with their policies isn't Marxism.

Is the government of and by the people allowed,as the founding documents imply, to promote liberty for all, to promote peace and domestic tranquility by imposing limitations on individual behavior? Is he arguing for a government so impotent it must inevitably fall into feudalism and exploitation? Those are the questions he begs and the questions he avoids. Sorry Doctor, I think the balance between individual liberty and being a free country is a practical and necessary discussion.

Is it practical to have a society so far beyond the control of its members that justice becomes only a matter of the will of the strongest and the richest and most well connected -- the will of the WASP? No, unlimited individual license does not allow for a society at all, much less a free one.

Still it's all about the practical as opposed to the relentlessly repeated and self referential principle and we've all heard of or can easily come up with examples where freedom cannot be unlimited for many reasons; where behavior that needs to be restrained cannot be restrained by anyone other than Government. Is it preferable to allow my neighbors to forbid Baptists to live on my block and ignore my freedom or is it better to protect the minority against the majority, which is a common definition of democracy as distinguished from mob rule. No, if this is but a "philosophical" discussion it's because he doesn't want to address the inevitable questions Libertarians invite when they refuse to discuss its inherent limitations.

The traditional 'best government is least government' trope reduces to absurdity all by itself as quickly as does his argument that any restraints or obligations put on behavior or business practices constitute ownership and are an unnecessary stain on the pure and absolute freedom we've somehow decided is our birthright. Certainly although he assures us that he would never patronize a business that discriminates, he realizes that his sentiments are not universal. He realizes that he's giving license to anyone to debase any group he likes and to diminish their lives, their liberty and their pursuit of happiness. He realizes that such a nation as he dreams of would be fractured, Balkanized, a loose, weak, unstable confederation of hostile groups no more pleasant than a baboon troupe and with each of us at his neighbor's throat. He must realize that he's appealing to bigots, racists and sociopaths of no conscience -- and all in the name of principle and freedom.

So why is he debating as though the balance between too much and not enough wasn't worth discussing? As though that wasn't the real question? Perhaps its because he's pandering to an audience somewhat less rational than Ron Paul's: to an audience whipped into irrational fury by the basic requirements of civilization; too hungry for revenge against a maturing world and too angry and self centered to give a damn what he can do for his country.

Rachel, Rand Paul, and Libertarianism: “What That Woman Been Doin’ to Me”

Some readers may have seen Rachel Maddow’s interview last night with Kentucky’s Senate primary winner Dr. Rand Paul on her MSNBC show.  From what I’ve heard, Paul regrets his decision to appear on the show and considers himself not too well treated by Rachel.  So let’s cue Waylon Jennings and the Marshall Tucker Band’s soulful lyrics, “Can’t you see, oh can’t you see, what that woman, lawd, she been doin’ to me?” and consider this a bit.

The source of the dissatisfaction, apparently, was the following: that intellectual pitbull on the pantsleg of opportunity Rachel just wouldn’t give up easily in her quest to get the good doctor to admit that one's philosophy may have consequences in the real world.  In my own admittedly anecdotal experience, libertarians really, really hate it when you try to get them to admit that.  It’s so unfair of you!  They believe the free market (a myth) is the answer to all problems social, political, and economic.  They're hopelessly wrong, naive and ahistorical in their understanding, but just you try suggesting that to them.  I gather that the adoring dittoheads and teabaggery who flock to the well-spoken, eminently presentable and curly-locked Dr. Paul don’t pester him with annoying questions about his utter failure to historicize the concepts that authorize his philosophy and/or that pertain to it by way of extension and impact.  Concepts like, oh, I don’t know – private property, capitalism, American federal and state regulatory practice, and stuff like that.  I’m just sayin’….  I don't think Rachel was in any way suggesting that Rand Paul is personally a racist -- there's no reason at all to think that about him as an individual.  The question was and is, rather, the real consequences of his beliefs and the reflection those beliefs cast backwards on our collective history as Americans.

Well, anyway, if you’re a meanie like “that woman” Rachel, what you’ll get instead of a cogent answer is exactly the response I heard coming from Rand Paul, which I'll meanie-paraphrase and draw out as follows: “I'm sorry I even talked to that person!  I won't be doing that again anytime soon!  Why is she bothering me with all this hypothetical talk about civil rights and human misery?  It doesn't concern my abstraction-laced philosophy, which I know to be absolutely and always right in all things.”  Abstractionists and ideologues always cling to their notions with great fanaticism because they sense, however dimly, that abandoning those notions would leave the abandoner in the middle of the street just waiting to be run down by what Allen Ginsberg called “the Drunken Taxicabs of Absolute Reality.”  And this is an especially intense problem for libertarians, you see, because they pretty much consider the stop light that might halt any such careening Taxicab an infringement of their (and our) sacred personal liberty to do anything they (and we) want at any time.  Okay, I admit that I sort of feel that way about stop lights, too, when they last more than about a minute. It's a weakness of mine, I know....

But I say to the Rand Pauls of the political spectrum, nothing human is perfect, Horatio -- including your and my “philosophy,” however different they may be.  There’s much more to cover regarding the details of Rand Paul’s view of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but I’ll leave that to others’ commentary if they’d care to jump in.

Murkowski Says Yes To Big Oil

One of the definitions of a prostitute is, "a person who willingly uses his or her talent or ability in a base and unworthy way, usually for money." So, if you're getting over $400,000 a year from a bunch of guys in a particular industry, does that make you a whore?

And what does it make you when you side with your "financial backers over the public interest"? A brazen hussy.

In the wake of last month's catastrophic Gulf Coast oil spill, Sen. Lisa Murkowski blocked a bill that would have raised the maximum liability for oil companies after a spill from a paltry $75 million to $10 billion. The Republican lawmaker said the bill, introduced by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), would have unfairly hurt smaller oil companies by raising the costs of oil production. The legislation is "not where we need to be right now" she said.

Well I sure would hate for the little bitty oil companies to get hurt while thousands of gallons of oil a day are pouring into the Gulf, threatening the entire ecosystem, the wetlands, the marine life, the coastline, the fishing industry and the tourist industry, and the quality of life of its inhabitants for decades to come.

I wonder just where Mukowski thinks this legislation should be right now. I wonder if she's considered, or if she even cares, where the money is going to come from to pay for the cleanup and all the other fallout from this disaster. I wonder if she thinks about those 11 men who were killed - and their families. I wonder if she thinks.

Murkowski's move came just hours after Washington's top oil lobby, the American Petroleum Institute (API) expressed vociferous opposition to raising the cap. It argued that doing so would "threaten the viability of deep-water operations, significantly reduce U.S. domestic oil production and harm U.S. energy security." API's membership includes large oil companies like ExxonMobil and BP America, as well as smaller ones.

An API spokeswoman told TPMmuckraker that the bill represented "a knee-jerk reaction that could have unintended consequences." she added: "It's important that the Senate did vote it down."

In fact, the Senate didn't vote on the bill. Thanks to Senate procedures, Murkowski was able to block it simply by objecting to a voice vote request on the bill.

It's not clear that Murkowski's move will end up affecting how much BP and Transocean pay. The White House told TPMmuckraker last week that if the courts find BP to have been "grossly negligent or to have engaged in willful misconduct or conduct in violation of federal regulations," -- which would seem likely -- then the $75 million cap disappears. And there will likely be further efforts in the coming days to raise the cap.

(. . .)

Menendez was scathing in response to Murkowski's move, telling reporters: "Either you want to fully protect the small businesses, individuals and communities devastated by a man-made disaster -- this is not a natural disaster; this is a man-made disaster -- or you want to protect multibillion-dollar oil companies from being held fully accountable. Apparently there are some in the Senate who prefer to protect the oil companies."

If you are as angry as I am and if you want to scream at the top of your lungs, here's a couple of ways to go about it:

Senator Murkowski’s office phone number is 202-224-6665.
Her email is http://murkowski.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Contact
Ifidel753 provides this link to sign a petition to save the Clean Air Act. Guess who's trying to kill it?

Ya gotta wonder what kind of thingy is in the water up there in Alaska.

BPocalypse

Every day, I check the latest updates on the Gulf oil spill. The spill is massive; the response of BP is slimier than a cesspool; and our government appears incompetent and impotent. Last night, this article caught my attention, Loop Current Is Now Drawing The BP Oil Disaster To Florida Keys. Sometimes a reader comment is better than the article, such as this one (which follows after the jump):

No TEA for me please.

Rand Paul has things backwards and I don't mean his name. His win in the Kentucky Senate Republican Primary is not quite the same thing as being elected Senator and of course it's at least a few furlongs short of winning the Derby, or "taking back the Government" since, of course it wasn't taken from the voters in the first place. OK, there was Bush V. Gore, but you know what I mean.

Pretending that having been voted out of office was a breach of democracy seems to work for those at the Tea Party table, but then anything seems to work except reality and the reality is that we're not taxed enough already and we haven't had the tax increase they hope you believe we've had. Yes, we may be taxed unfairly and tax policy may have been written by people who can afford lobbyists and huge campaign donations, but beyond the amorphous anger, I haven't heard any proposals for a new tax code that could approach remedying the debt in any reasonable time much less as quickly as we paid off World War II.

They won't come up with one either unless they dispense with the repeatedly disproved fallacy that cutting taxes for the very rich will increase government revenues, spur investment in new businesses and boost employment and won't cause investment bubbles -- and that laissez faire capitalism doesn't lead to monopolies, corruption of government, fewer choices for consumers and less opportunities for small business.

In real terms most of us are paying less in Income tax than we used to -- less than at any time in my lifetime. The countries that have lower taxes are few and tend to have economies based on gambling, money laundering or revenues from things like the Panama Canal. The Republicans were ousted because of public anger and frustration with corporate control over people's lives, because of another apparently pointless and interminable war and the fear mongering that's eroded our freedom. I don't see where Mad Hatters like Rand Paul are addressing that and I do see that the Tea movement, if we can fall it that, is based on the hope that shattering the old form of government will magically cause freedom, justice and prosperity to break out and allow "the people" to control their own destiny. Sound like Marx to you? It does to me too. Does it sound like the same old: "don't trust them, but trust us even though we don't really have a plan other than to cloud your mind with anger?" It does to me too.

READIN', WRITIN', AND ASSASSINATIN'

The GOP has encouraged extremists in its party by promoting and tolerating hate mongers and near-seditionists like Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin or any other jackboot who will join them in stirring up the mobs in order to nullify the election of 2008.


How many times have we heard not just nutjobs like those mentioned above but even GOP Congressmen and women refer to the government, which they are part of, as a criminal organization--a "gangster government?"

And that is why a weak-minded moron, like this teacher in Alabama, felt comfortable in casually talkiing about murdering President Barack Obama as a way of explaining cosines. When stupid people like this teacher constantly hear his cynical leaders call the leaders of the opposition party, leaders of our government criminals, it follows that they deservc to be murdered, doesn't it? And if you're a teacher, what better way to introduce this idea than in math class?

Sara Robinson at Orcinus has written an excellent piece on where this tolerance for radical insurrectionist talk can lead. She discusses the Hutaree conspirators and the group, Guardians of the Free Republic:

"These two events are a wake-up call for progressives. They're telling us that it's time to openly confront the fact that conservatives have spent the past 40 years systematically delegitimizing the very idea of constitutional democracy in America. When they're in power, they mismanage it and defund it. When they're out of power, they refuse to participate in running the country at all -- indeed, they throw all their energy into thwarting the democratic process any way they can. When they need to win an election, they use violent, polarizing, eliminationist language against their opponents to motivate their base. This is sedition in slow motion, a gradual corrosive undermining of the government's authority and capacity to run the country. And it's been at the core of their politics going all the way back to Goldwater.

This long assault has gone into overdrive since Obama's inauguration, as the rhetoric has ratcheted up from overheated to perfervid. We've reached the point where you can't go a week without hearing some prominent right wing leader calling for outright sedition -- an immediate and defiant populist uprising against some legitimate form of government authority.

Moderates and liberals are responding to this rising threat with feckless calls for "a return to civility," as if all that's needed to put things right again is a stern talking-to from Miss Manners. Though that couldn't hurt, the sad fact is that we're well past the point where it's just a matter of conservatives behaving like tantrum-throwing spoiled brats (which they are). When a mob is surrounding your house with torches and telling you they intend to burn it down, "civility" really isn't the issue any more.

At that point -- and we're there -- criminal intent and action become the real issues. Progressives need to realize that the right began defiantly dancing back and forth over the legal line, daring us to do something about it, quite some time ago. And it's high time we called it out -- and, where appropriate, start prosecuting it -- for exactly what it is."

Big top

The Republicans sometimes like to talk about their big tent. Others, in consideration of the exploits and shenanigans of the party of values and families and apple pie may think it's more like a freak show tent, but we shall see soon enough which kind of tent the Donna Milo show winds up in.

Cuban born, 48 year old "Conservative" Republican Ms. Milo is running to unseat rather liberal Broward County Florida U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Yes, Miami Cuban Republicans are pretty numerous and at first glance one who didn't know that Ms. Milo used to be a Mr. Milo, whose friends called him Ed, wouldn't think anything was out of the ordinary.

Donna Milo is a person who prides herself in getting to where she is by her personal ability and in spite of her differentness -- not like those who we support with our tax money or special favors to Cuban immigrants, perhaps. Will that differentness matter more to the GOP than the traditional Republican attitudes she publicly displays?

It remains to be seen whether the party so traditionally inimical to the rights of gay, lesbian and transgendered people -- their agenda -- as they so often phrase it, will welcome her into the three ring big top with the other anti-Castro, pro-corporate liberal-bashing Miami paranoids or ushered out the side door.

Christian Politicians Deliberately Twist Constitution To Gain Votes

If you can pay the price you can buy almost anything you want in this country -- car, home, toothpaste, clothes, food or a charcoal grill. If you can pay the price you can buy services such as sex and votes. It doesn't matter if you don't know your history or your Constitution but it matters how hard you can thump the good book.

Liam Fox sets out to prove this on News Junkie Post.

Religions demand tolerance and acceptance of their own views, practices, prescriptions and prohibitions, when all they offer to others is intolerance. Religions requiring that others be forced, or coerced, to adhere to their tenets are nothing more than fascist political systems, and belief systems that regard their doctrine as being above a democratically elected legislature are seditious.

The founding fathers engineered the separation of church and state to protect America from Christianity, Judaism, Mormonism, Islam and all other politically insistent theologies while simultaneously protecting those and all other religions from the interference of government.

In the desperate political climate that they find themselves in, Politicians lacking a clear understanding of or commitment to the First Amendment line up in favor of sectarian measures in the hope of garnering votes and winning elections. . . . Politicians can knowingly violate the constitution secure in the knowledge that the support for their unconstitutional decisions will be provided by those that they have benefited.

TED POE, TEXAS REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN: His web page is headlined "National Day of Prayer is constitutional whether federal judges like it or not."

Displaying monumental ignorance, he goes on to say, ". . .James Madison knew more about the First Amendment than anybody else since he was the author; yet, in 1813, President Madison proclaimed a National Day of Prayer. . . ."

Wrong. Liam Fox writes: "In 1789, James Madison proposed twelve amendments that ultimately became the ten amendments. In this respect, Madison was the person who wrote the First Amendment, but he wasn’t the one who initially came up with the idea. In fact, there are several factors that qualify the claim that he is the sole author." See here

Although President Madison did issued prayer proclamations during the war of 1812, at the behest of congress, he later expressed regret for these actions. In an undated essay believed to have been written in the year 1817, referred to as ‘The Unattached Memoranda‘, Madison discusses the issue in detail providing five particular reasons for disagreeing with his prior actions of proclaiming a National Day of Prayer and espousing some insight that we would be wise to heed today. See here.

BRADLEY BYRNE, ALABAMA REPUBLICAN GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: He was attacked by the True Political Action Committee "for his previous support of teaching of evolution in public schools and reportedly having the gall to suggest that the Christian bible may not be entirely true."

In a switch reminiscent of John McCain, Byrne became a Born Again Christian and wrote on his website:

“I believe the Bible is the Word of God and that every single word of it is true. From the earliest parts of this campaign, a paraphrased and incomplete parsing of my words have been knowingly used to insinuate that I believe something different than that. My faith is at the center of my life and my belief in Jesus Christ as my personal savior and Lord guides my every action."

SARAH PALIN (no introduction necessary): In a Fox News interview with Bill O'Reilly Palin with all blinking eyed ga-ga smiling sincerity declared:

“I have said all along that America is based on Judeo-Christian beliefs and, you know, nobody has to believe me though. You can just go to our Founding Fathers’ early documents and see how they crafted a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution that allows that Judeo-Christian belief to be the foundation of our lives. And our Constitution, of course, essentially acknowledging that our unalienable rights don’t come from man; they come from God. So this document is set up to protect us from a government that would ever infringe upon our rights to have freedom of religion and to be able to express our faith freely.”

Someone at Fox, if they even know it, should explain to the Palin that neither the Constitution nor the Declaration of Independence mentions a particular religion, Jesus, the Bible or God. The Constitution does mention a "Nature's God" a few times but not Christianity or Judaism.

The principle misunderstanding of Mrs. Palin’s, is that her interpretation of “our rights to have freedom of religion” translates in her mind, as it does in the minds of most fundamentalist evangelicals, to ‘the right of Christians to impose their beliefs and practices on American law, politics, society and education.’

STEVE PEARCE, NEW MEXICO REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE, states on his website that one of his political goals, and a promise to voters, is that he will "protect our right to prayer and against the government halting expressions of faith."

It is due to the fact that America is a secular nation that no ones religious freedom is threatened. No ones religious freedom is threatened because America has a constitution that charges it’s government to remain neutral and to not get involved in religion or make any law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The only threat to the religious freedoms of all Americans comes from religious organizations and their inability to accept a non-theocratic secular government.

Freedom of religion is not the freedom to impose ones religion on others and the First Amendment is not the property of politicians to trade off for votes. Politicians desperate for votes need to get a platform and leave the constitution, and the American people’s freedom of religion, alone.