What Taibbi Said

The reason a real health-care bill is not going to get passed is simple: because nobody in Washington really wants it. There is insufficient political will to get it done... It won’t get done, because that’s not the way our government works. Our government doesn’t exist to protect voters from interests, it exists to protect interests from voters. The situation we have here is an angry and desperate population that at long last has voted in a majority that it believes should be able to pass a health care bill. It expects something to be done. The task of the lawmakers on the Hill, at least as they see things, is to create the appearance of having done something. And that’s what they’re doing. Personally, I think they’re doing a lousy job even of that... [Democrats] aren’t even pretending to give a shit, not really. I mean, they’re not even willing to give up their vacations.

This whole business, it was a litmus test for whether or not we even have a functioning government. Here we had a political majority in congress and a popular president armed with oodles of political capital and backed by the overwhelming sentiment of perhaps 150 million Americans, and this government could not bring itself to offend ten thousand insurance men in order to pass a bill that addresses an urgent emergency. What’s left? Third-party politics?

-- Matt Taibbi

If Obama's election was all about hope, his Presidency, so far, has been about hopelessness. It's not because I think Obama is a bad politician; frankly, I remain convinced that he is just about the best we could hope might be elected in our current political climate & system. All we are learning is how little that means.

If Obama gets through a real health care bill -- with a public option, an employer mandate, and ideally a surtax on the rich -- then maybe there will be some hope here. If not, then, as Taibbi says, what's left? Third party politics, the Democratic party -- both seem equally hopeless and useless.

This quote came to me via Ezra Klein, who also has some good things to say about the topic. He compares it to climate change:

Taibbi is right that this, like climate change, is a litmus test for our government. Both are serious, foreseeable and solvable threats to our society. One threatens to bankrupt the country. The other threatens irreversible damage to the planet we live on. Responding to such threats is the test of a political system. And our system will fail it. We will not avert catastrophic climate change. We will not protect ourselves from health-care inflation.

I actually think the two are quite different: on the one hand, you have, as Taibbi says, "an angry and desperate population that at long last has voted in a majority that it believes should be able to pass a health care bill", and the political system is too dysfunctional to respond to what the public wants (and voted for). On the other hand, you have a much worse catastrophe, which is not so strongly felt by the public (certainly not enough to make it a voting priority), but whose danger and immanence make it, in a different way, a test of the system. The one is whether the system can respond to the voting public; the other is whether it can respond to dire threats. So far it's flunking both.

I go back and forth on how much this is Obama's fault. If he'd played his hand better from the get-go -- presented us as in the emergency we were in, and tried to use the direness of the situation to push through climate change legislation and health care legislation along with (better) economic legislation with the force that FDR did in 1933 (for which ignoring the Republican minority, not courting them, would have been necessary if hardly sufficient) -- then we might have done better. Or perhaps the veto points and the inherent foulness of so many democrats is simply too strong, and what Obama is showing is that it simply can't be done.

Because, again, I think Obama is as good as we'll get. Which just means that we're totally fucked, because he ain't doing well enough in at least a half-dozen areas where things are dire and posed to get worse. If he can't do better than this, then...

What?

I wish I had a better answer than: despair, because we're fucked. But that's what I'm feeling right now, today.

Quote of the Day

What is the semiotic iconography of cheese?

-- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 143

Today is a Good Day to Remember Self-Evident Truths

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

-- The Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, July 4, 1776

Happy July 4th, everyone!

Thoughts of a Baby Held Up to a Mirror

Who's that baby that I suddenly see?
And if poppa's holding him, who's holding me?

Updating Humbert Wolfe

You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British U.S. journalist.

But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there's
no occasion to.

-- Humbert Wolfe (almost)

***

PS: On the topic that is the subject of the first stanza's links, I particularly liked this bit from Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth (via):

Weymouth knew of the plans to host small dinners at her home and to charge lobbying and trade organizations for participation. But, one of the executives said, she believed that there would be multiple sponsors, to minimize any appearance of charging for access, and that the newsroom would be in charge of the scope and content of any dinners in which Post reporters and editors participated.

Ah yes, if there are multiple sponsors -- perhaps I should say "sponsors" -- that totally means you're not charging for access. And I love how her concern isn't that they might actually be charging for access, but simply that it might appear that way -- so they need a bit of cover. You can understand the misunderstandings that might result from language like "Underwriting Opportunity: An evening with the right people can alter the debate".

Oh, and the Post's Executive Editor, Marcus Brauchli's line -- "you cannot buy access to a Washington Post journalist" -- is a great example of the genre of lie including such classics as "we don't torture" and "I did not have sex with that woman". Call it the "who are you going to believe, me or your own lying eyes" genre.

But you see? Even as I describe it, I fall into the trap: the outright bribe is so much more outrageous than the pervasive power-worship, excusing the criminal, and so on and so forth that the media does, it's easy to forget the latter is far more important in its effects.

Shoter Michael Scheuer

"I hope we suffer a devastating terrorist attack, since otherwise we might suffer a devastating terrorist attack."

The blogs that I've seen discussing this have focused, reasonably enough, on the moral horror, the nature of (the subset of) right wing "patriotism" that this embodies, the ultimate desire for an autocratic fear-based state, and so forth. But what gets me most is the sheer illogic of it.

Cultural Continuity

Jeff Lacks, a political scientist who teaches at Columbia, writes (via):

If policy were set by state-by-state majorities of those 65 or older, none would allow same-sex marriage. If policy were set by those under 30, only 12 states would not allow-same-sex marriage.

This is a fascinating presentation of an admittedly familiar piece of data -- namely, that support for same-sex marriage is largely a generational issue, and that demographics provide a solid basis for hope that the good guys will win.

But looking at his chart made me think of another familiar piece of data -- one that this study also corroborates.

Here's a map:

And here's another:

One of those is a map of the 12 states whose under-30 population are not in favor of equal marriage rights; the other is a map of the 11 states that seceded to form the Confederacy in 1861 (kicking of the U. S. Civil War). At a glance, can you tell which is which?

If so, good for you -- you remember your U. S. history. But if not, it's not that much of a surprise; no less than nine states are among both the 12 and the 11.

(The answer: the first map, colored in red-state red, is based contemporary attitudes towards equal marriage rights; the second, colored in confederate grey, is of the Confederacy.)

Terribly surprising -- except that it's not, since the cultural continuity in the north-south divide is a commonplace (which dates back to the earliest days of colonial history if David Hackett Fischer is to be believed), one which a quick survey of election maps over a century apart will demonstrate. (Obviously the pattern comes and goes: it's hidden in landslide years, and the Democrat/Republican constituency switch hid it a lot in the intervening century, etc.) If anything, what is surprising is how unsurprising it is: even before I looked at Lacks's list, I guessed there would be a lot of overlap. Because the South is now, as it long has been, the most conservative area of the country. It's just that what causes that manifests itself in support for -- slavery or anti-gay bigotry -- changes.

What's interesting, actually, are the few differences. So here's a third map. In this case, the two states that joined the Confederacy but a majority of whose youngsters support equal marriage rights are in grey; the three states that did not join the Confederacy but whose youngsters do not support equal marriage rights are in red; the states that fall on the conservative sides of both these divides are in (a hopefully neutral) yellow:

So what is up with the five states that aren't in the overlap?

The first thing to note is that two of the three non-confederate anti-equality-youngsters states (hereafter, red states) were not even states at the time of the Civil War: Utah and Oklahoma only joined the union in 1896 and 1907, respectively. So they didn't even have a chance to do so. They are historically conservative areas whose statehood post-dates the war.

The third of the red states is Kentucky. It was one of the four slave states that did not secede; like all of them, it had a mix of Confederate and Union supporters. (The same was true in some of the states that did secede, incidentally, which is why (for example) West Virginia is now a separate state.) Obviously its conservative elements have now won out (in contrast, I suppose, to those in Missouri, Maryland and Delaware, the other three loyal slave states).

As for the two states that have moved (so to speak) in the opposite direction, Florida and Virginia are both states that have been culturally shifting to the north for various reasons, in large part having to do with immigrants to those states from elsewhere in the country (and from without it). While each has its ongoing Confederate regions, these are off-set by more liberal areas elsewhere in those states.

Despite this, however, nine states -- Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia -- show (in this as in so many other areas) the ongoing power of a historically deep conservative culture in the southern (now really better described as south-eastern) region of the country.

Quote of the Day

Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.

-- Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers (Chapter 4)

"How can citizens view the birthday of the country they live in as illegitimate?"

The dean of an Israeli law school, speaking in support of a proposed Israeli law banning the marking of Israel's founding as the "Nakba" (catastrophe) for Palestinians (via Mondoweiss):

I don't see anything wrong with a State that proclaims it is Jewish not giving legitimization to the denial of it being so. Imagine US Jews declaring a day of morning on July 4 - that would be unacceptable. How can citizens view the birthday of the country they live in as illegitimate? People forget where we are living.... The moment the Arab public in the country says the establishment of a Jewish State is a catastrophe, it contradicts not only the Zionist outlook, but also the principles of international law. Just as I don't have the right to defame people in the street, they do not have the right to defame the State.

-- Eliav Shuchtman

July 4 as a day of mourning? Whoever could think that? Hmmm...

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

-- Frederick Douglass, Rochester, NY, July 5, 1852

I guess Frederick Douglass must have forgotten where he was living.

The Reason I Have Not Been Blogging Remains The Same As The Last Time I Blogged It

I've been busy with other pursuits...

I don't know when things will let up, I really don't. I'd like to think that I'll get back to my blogging frequency from, oh, 2007 - 2008 -- and the quality (I like to think that) I hit (if only sporadically) in those years -- but I don't know when I will. If I do, this will be the space.

In the meantime, here's Joseph in a bear suit.

(Just to give you a sense of how this works, this very post was interrupted by some emergency clean-up inspired by the above-pictured bear...)

Quote of the Day

There is a fine line between fiction and nonfiction, and I believe Jimmy Buffett and I snorted it in 1976.

-- Kinky Friedman

Shorter American Political System

Two separate incidents today, combined, tell you pretty much all you need to know about our political system at the moment.

1. The FTC has gotten over 30,000 complaints about those annoying robo-warranty-phone calls (I've gotten two on my cell & 7 on my work number, plus a bunch at home, all in the last few months). These calls violate the "do-not-call" registry; they're also a scam. After 30,000 complaints, the FTC does nothing. Then a senator gets one of the calls, complains -- and the robocalls are shut down at once.

2. Bush, having captured a bunch of people that he couldn't prove guilty in court (unsurprisingly, since at least some of them (that we know of) were innocent; plus his torture program made a lot of evidence inadmissible), set up a system of Military Commissions to try the people (since he just "knew" they were guilty) without all those annoying procedural safeguards that our normal court system has. Obama, having run on a campaign of change, has now instituted... Military Commissions with fewer annoying procedural safeguards than our normal court system has, albeit more than Bush wanted.

So what do we have?

1) 30,000 citizens count for nothing; a senator must complain before a law is enforced (but his complaint is jumped at instantly).

2) One party believes in junking all the procedural safeguards from the court system to try detainees; the other party only believes in junking some of them.

That about sums it up.

Greatest country in the world, baby; greatest country in the world.

5 Down, 45 To Go

Hooray for the great state of Maine!

Quote from Andrew Sullivan:

A few years ago, this would have been front page news. Now it feels like history repeating. And justice slowly seeping up like a rising water table that becomes a mighty and joyous flood.

And, dear New York legislature: if we're not in the top ten, it's gonna be downright embarrassing. So get on it please? Soon?

Quite Possibly the Definitive Reading of Ferris Bueller's Day Off

...or, at the very least, a really fabulous non-canonical reading. Quoting from some dude on the internet (via Gerry Canavan), cutting only the totally unnecessary spoilers for a different movie (which I'd never seen, thanks a lot S.D.O.T.I.):

My favorite thought-piece about Ferris Bueller is the [following] theory, in which Ferris Bueller, the person, is just a figment of Cameron's imagination... and Sloane is the girl Cameron secretly loves.

One day while he's lying sick in bed, Cameron lets "Ferris" steal his father's car and take the day off, and as Cameron wanders around the city, all of his interactions with Ferris and Sloane, and all the impossible hijinks, are all just played out in his head. This is part of the reason why the "three" characters can see so much of Chicago in less than one day -- Cameron is alone, just imagining it all.

It isn't until he destroys the front of the car in a fugue state does he finally get a grip and decide to confront his father, after which he imagines a final, impossible escape for Ferris and a storybook happy ending for Sloane ("He's gonna marry me!"), the girl that Cameron knows he can never have.

Portrait of a Regional Party?

Based on this Kos post, I made up this map of the post-Specter Senate Republicans:

The claim is that this is a regional party, based in the south and the western Mormon corridor.

Maybe I'm just overly pessimistic, or cautious, but I think that's jumping the gun. Sure, those areas are where their strength are. And with only 40 Senators, its not that surprising their strength is somewhat localized. But while they may be becoming a regional party, I think it's overly optimistic to say they are one. (Not to mention that the Democrats have made real inroads back into the South, albeit mostly the upper South.)

That New England Republican remnant sure stands out, though.

Meanwhile, if anyone wants to make a map like this for House districts, I suspect that'd be far more telling... and far more murky (hence my being unwilling to say flatly, yes, they're a regional party.)

Shorter Obama Administration

Shorter Obama Administration: We'll confirm that torture was committed; we just want to assure everyone that we won't actually prosecute the crimes.

As Benen implies, this might be a justifiable stance -- at least it'd be defensible -- if it was coupled with aggressive prosecution of those who authorized, ordered and supervised the torture while letting off the grunts who actually committed it. But absent full war crimes trials of the torture masterminds -- including Bush and Cheney along with all the rest -- this is simply a pathetic nullification of basic laws, seasoned with some particularly hypocritical rhetoric about this being a "nation of laws".

Yes, we're a nation of laws: therefore we'll make sure everyone knows precisely what those laws are as we let the torturers off the hook for violating them.

Despicable. And edging horribly close to being an accomplice-after-the-fact (morally, I mean: I don't know about the legality of that status -- IANAL).

Update: Interestingly, Glenn Greenwald -- who has been following this issue extremely closely -- is more upbeat. He also seems to take seriously a statement by Senator Russ Feingold that while Obama won't "prosecute those who acted reasonably and relied in good faith upon legal advice... his decision does not mean that anyone who engaged in activities that the Department had not approved, those who gave improper legal advice or those who authorized the program could not be prosecuted." (Similar statements were made by anonymous administration officials.)

So perhaps I'm too pessimistic here. I dunno. I oppose the "following orders" defense, which Andrew Sullivan (like Greenwald, an admirably close follower of this issue) properly calls the Nuremberg defense. On the other hand, it is unquestionably more important for those who created, justified and authorized the torture to be prosecuted than those who obeyed orders. If that's still in the cards, I may retract this post.

But for the moment I'm disappointed.

Quotes of the Day: The Blessing of the New Sun Edition

The heavens declare the glory of God,
the sky proclaims His handiwork.
Day to day makes utterance,
night to night speaks out.
There is no utterance,
there are no words,
whose sound goes unheard.
Their voice carries throughout the earth,
their words to the end of the world.
He placed in them a tent for the sun,
who is like a groom coming forth from the chamber,
like a hero, eager to run his course.
His rising-place is at one end of heaven,
and his circuit reaches the other;
nothing escapes his heat.

-- Psalm 19:2-7 (JPS translation)

Today observant Jews say birkat hachama, the blessing for the sun (sometimes translated the blessing for the new sun). It is said only once every twenty-eight years (it was last said April 8, 1981; it will next be said April 8, 2037).*

It's all a fraud, of course. It's based on the Julian calendar, which is inaccurate; it's based on the incorrect date for the equinox; even on its own terms, the Jewish calendar is off by 165 years; and, of course, the entire thing is based on the notion that the sun was created 5769 years ago, which is off by about 4,600,000,000 years. (You can find more on the errors behind the blessing at Dov Bear (and also (but also)), at parshablog and here from Rav Bar-hayim. More on every aspect of the blessing can be found at Hirhurim.)

And those are only the prettier aspects of the matter -- I'm not even mentioning that it's based upon a cosmology which was upended by Copernicus (see above quote from Psalm 19), let alone the fact that it celebrates a creator for whom the existing evidence is non-existent. We don't need to go there, since even in a quite traditional framework, it's all based on a series of errors (if not myths).

But so what? It's not about accuracy. It's about the ritual. And it's a once-in-twenty-eight-years opportunity.**

So around the time this post is published, I'll be getting up at a quite ungodly hour, and will take my new son with me to say the blessing of the new sun. And I hope that when he's 28 years, 15 weeks, and 3 days old, we'll go together again.

But, of course, what occurred to me when I heard about the Blessing of the New Sun was this:

What struck me on the beach--and it struck me indeed, so that I staggered as at a blow--was that if the Eternal Principle had rested in that curved thorn I had carried about my neck across so many leagues, and if it now rested in the new thorn (perhaps the same thorn) I had only now put there, then it might rest in everything, in every thorn in every bush, in every drop of water in the sea. The thorn was a sacred Claw because all thorns were sacred Claws; the sand in my boots was sacred sand because it came from a beach of sacred sand. The cenobites treasured up the relics of the sannyasins because the sannyasins had approached the Pancreator. But everything had approached and even touched the Pancreator, because everything had dropped from his hand. Everything was a relic. All the world was a relic. I drew off my boots, that had traveled with me so far, and threw them into the waves that I might not walk shod on holy ground.

-- Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun
(The Citadel of the Autarch, chapter 31)

-- which, of course, is the point of the whole thing.

Happy birkat hachama day to everyone. For those of you who wish to say it, you have until a third of the daylight hours have passed (more lenient authorities say half).

Oh, and isn't there something else that Jews do tomorrow? What was that again? Well, happy holiday (to any and all who wish to receive it) for that one too...

_____________________
* Yes, April 8, both times, despite the fact that the Jewish calendar doesn't line up with the Gregorian calendar -- because this bracha is timed to (oddly) the Julian calendar, which lines up well enough with the Gregorian to preserve the date over this span.

** Of course some will object that I could get up and say the words "Blessed are You, Lord our God, sovereign of the universe who makes the works of creation"near sunrise any time I'm willing to get up that early.*** But that doesn't affect the fact that this is a once-in-twenty-eight-years opportunity. I mean, sure, you can say the words when you want -- just as (borrowing a metaphor from Stanley Cavell) you can go to a chessboard and pick up the little piece of wood called the knight and move it horizontally eight spaces. But this is not moving the knight; it's pushing around a piece of wood on a board. Similarly, the words can be said whenever you like; but the only opportunities to do the ritual come once every twenty-eight years.

*** Which makes this, yes, about a once-in-twenty-eight-years event, for a whole 'nother reason.

And Then There Were Four

Vermont just became -- along with Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa -- the fourth state in our union to allow marriage on a non-discriminatory basis.

Even better, it was the first one to do so simply through legislative action -- there was no judicial ruling that it was necessary. (The governor vetoed it; the legislature overrode the veto.) Like many other proponents of equal marriage rights, while I think the court rulings in its favor are proper, correct and entirely legitimate, I think it is preferable to have equality achieved legislatively.

Hey -- New York? My home state? We could still be #5 y'know. How about it?

I'd say "4 down, 46 to go" but actually there is another battle too -- one that is arguably more important than any victory in the remaining 46 states -- namely, getting the federal government to recognize the marriages done in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa & Vermont on an equal basis. Currently, the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" prohibits that (as well as stating that no state needs to recognize same-sex marriages done in another state). Putting aside for the moment the issues of recognition by other states, it seems to me that we should at least get rid of that provision. At the moment, same-sex couples who marry in one of the four non-discriminatory states have many benefits denied them due to federal non-recognition of their marriages. It seems to me a top priority is assuring that, at least in those states that choose to be non-discriminatory, marriages can be fully and genuinely equal.

But that's for tomorrow. For today: hooray for Vermont!

RIP, Andy Hallett (1975 - 2009)

Andy Hallett, who Whedon fans know as the actor who played "The Host" a.k.a. Lorne a.k.a. Krevlornswath of the Deathwok Clan on Angel (from season two on) just died of heart failure at the really appallingly young age of 33. He added a really astonishing amount to the show, and was fabulous throughout. It's really a terrible loss, even far beyond his family and friends, who must be devastated.

RIP.

Quote of the Day

When I was a kid, I remember hearing that cockroaches would not only survive the sure-to-happen US-Soviet nuclear holocaust, but actually emerge stronger than ever as they devour our irradiated corpses. Similarly, there’s a new think tank in town, headed by Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, and former Coalition Provisional Authority spokesguy Dan Senor.

-- Matt Yglesias

...although, on second thought, this is grossly unfair to the cockroaches, who under the nuclear-holocaust scenario would simply be benefiting from our stupidity; whereas Kristol and Kagan (and maybe Senor, I don't know) were major players in causing the destruction they are now attempting to feast of off. For this parallel to work we'd have to imagine cockroaches actually starting a nuclear war, and then flourishing as they devoured our corpses....