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MUST READ
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This weekend's Must Read comes from climateprogress.org, which in turn references top NASA climatologist James Hansen. And while I'm totally aware that climate change is a socialist myth propagated by leftist academics engaged in a conspiracy to bring you increasingly under the government's thumb (do I have that right?) — at least according to studies funded by fossil fuel companies who really have nothing but your best interests in mind, honest — let's see what Hansen has to say, anyway, just for fun (you can download the entire pdf of his paper here):
Finally, a comment on frequently asked questions of the sort: Was global warming the cause of the 2010 heat wave in Moscow, the 2003 heat wave in Europe, the all-time record high temperatures reached in many Asian nations in 2010, the incredible Pakistan flood in 2010? The standard scientist answer is âyou cannot blame a specific weather/climate event on global warming.â That answer, to the public, translates as ânoâ.
However, if the question were posed as âwould these events have occurred if atmospheric carbon dioxide had remained at its pre-industrial level of 280 ppm?â, an appropriate answer in that case is âalmost certainly not.â That answer, to the public, translates as âyesâ, i.e., humans probably bear a responsibility for the extreme event.
In either case, the scientist usually goes on to say something about probabilities and how those are changing because of global warming. But the extended discussion, to much of the public, is chatter. The initial answer is all important.
Although either answer can be defended as âcorrectâ, we suggest that leading with the standard caveat âyou cannot blameâ¦â is misleading and allows a misinterpretation about the danger of increasing extreme events. Extreme events, by definition, are on the tail of the probability distribution. Events in the tail of the distribution are the ones that change most in frequency of occurrence as the distribution shifts due to global warming.
For example, the âhundred year floodâ was once something that you had better be aware of, but it was not very likely soon and you could get reasonably priced insurance. But the probability distribution function does not need to shift very far for the 100-year event to be occurring several times a century, along with a good chance of at least one 500-year event.
â¦
Given the dominant effect of El Nino-La Nina on short-term temperature change and the usual lag of a few months between the Nino index and its effect on global temperature, it is unlikely that 2011 will reach a new global record temperature.
In contrast, it is likely that 2012 will reach a record high global temperature. The principal caveat is that the duration of the current La Nina could stretch an extra year, as some prior La Ninas have. Given the association of extreme weather and climate events with rising global temperature, the expectation of new record high temperatures in 2012 also suggests that the frequency and magnitude of extreme events could reach a high level in 2012. Extreme events include not only high temperatures, but also indirect effects of a warming atmosphere including the impact of higher temperature on extreme rainfall and droughts. The greater water vapor content of a warmer atmosphere allows larger rainfall anomalies and provides the fuel for stronger storms driven by latent heat.
(Bold mine.)
Now, of course, Sean Hannity is the true expert on these things, not the NASA guy, and he knows James Hansen is full of shit, because it snowed last winter. At least, the entire GOP thinks so. And this is why we'll never get a sane climate policy.
It's nice outside today. Enjoy it, while you still can.
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Philly Mag and writer Jason Fagone get big, big ups for running this absolute ball-buster of an investigative piece into Emanuel Freeman and his Germantown Settlement, which — with a a combination of millions of tax dollars, unfettered greed and avarice, a loathsome city bureaucracy and Council members and officials who were all too happy to keep directing your tax dollars Freeman's way, even after his incompetence and alleged corruption was laid bare — managed to put this Northwest community into a deep, deep hole.
He was, as one source put it, the âMugabe of Germantown,â and the city couldn't have cared less.
It's long, but seriously worth your attention. If heads don't roll over this — here's looking at you, Councilwoman Miller — then this city truly isn't ready for primetime.
Until very recently, through the social agency, Freeman provided services directly to 15,000 of the city's most vulnerable residents, and he has always bragged in his grant requests that when you add in his real estate ventures, he touches the lives of 195,000 people—one in every seven residents of Philadelphia.
He's the largest developer in Germantown, and is also the community's largest employer, which partly explains why politicians, both white and black, have always liked him: everyone from Governor and ex-mayor Ed Rendell, who used to call him âManny,â to Congressman Bob Brady, who scored him a $250,000 federal earmark in 2009, to Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller, whose daughter, Shakira, was paid $55.14 an hour by a Freeman-run nonprofit to âconsultâ with her mother, using walking-around money controlled by legislators and administered by Rendell's Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED). (Brady didn't respond to an interview request, and Miller said her daughter worked hard, and that to single her out for scrutiny was âunfair to the children of elected officials.â)
When you start to add up the grants, tax breaks and low-interest loans, you find that Freeman has raised at least $100 million for his enterprise since the mid-'80s. To an oil company, $100 million is a rounding error, but for a nonprofit working in a single part of a single city, it's unheard of. Crazy, though: When you visit Germantown, you can't see where any of this money went. When I walked through Germantown this spring, with two black women who used to work for Settlement and have since become its critics — Anita Hamilton and Debra White-Roberts, of the Wister Neighborhood Council — what we saw was blight: a run-down, graffiti-tagged strip mall called Freedom Square, built with $400,000 from the city, $600,000 from the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC), and $600,000 from the federal government; three abandoned, boarded-up stucco homes on East Penn Street; and a gaping foundation pit on Wakefield Street, full of trash bags. Settlement âdevelopedâ these properties. âThis is all we got,â White-Roberts told me. âWe're worse off than if the money hadn't come here in the first place, because we don't know where it went.â
â¦
Time and time again, Miller took Freeman at his word. She didn't challenge him. And almost no one was willing to challenge Miller. Not even in the summer of 2008, which is the pivot point in the Settlement saga — the moment when it stops being a troubling historical yarn about race and real estate and becomes something way more raw.
In the summer of 2008, Elders Place I and II were baking. The hallways were hot. Some of the air conditioners were broken. Low-income old people lived there. On August 1st, HUD inspectors found rodent infestations, leaky roofs, and either âwarmâ or âextremely hotâ hallways at both Elders I and II, plus a broken fire alarm system at Elders II; two months later, they went back, and their report noted problems with mold, ancient pumps, illegal wiring, water leaks, a lack of hot water, a âvery hotâ hallway, and trash. HUD wrote Freeman, to alert him to these dangerous problems.
Meanwhile, the social-agency side of Settlement was falling apart, too. On August 25th, an inspector with the city's Department of Human Services began a spot check on Settlement's âServices to Children in their Own Homesâ program, which was designed to keep children in their own homes and prevent foster-care placement where possible. The city paid Settlement more than $460,000 on its SCOH contract alone in 2008. Here's what the city inspector, who recommended that the city shut the program down, wrote in the report:
This agency seems to be able only to provide minimal social services to the families. They are deficient in most of the required standards, many of which are safety-driven. There were months and months of contacts notes missing. The agency blamed this problem on workers who were no longer employed with the agency. It appeared to this evaluator that many of the problems were systemic; meaning that the agency had no real or concrete understanding of what was required of them.ONE CITY AGENCY actually followed procedure and cut off Freeman's funding, despite his repeated requests. On November 17, 2008, the director of housing, Deborah McColloch, rejected a request from Freeman for $40,000, pointing out in a letter to him that his audits were still delinquent, and that Settlement and its housing company owed outstanding payroll taxes to the city, state and federal governments totaling approximately $800,000. âI am sorry I cannot approve your request,â McColloch wrote.
On December 9th, Freeman wrote to Don Schwarz, head of the city's Department of Public Health. Schwarz is a distinguished pediatrician, and a senior Nutter administration official. Freeman e-mailed Schwarz asking for help in getting an emergency payment of $133,855 from the Department of Human Services.
At this point, Schwarz's agency, DPH, hadn't received an audit from Settlement since 2005, a clear signal to give Freeman nothing more. Instead, 14 minutes later, Schwarz replied to Freeman, copying Donna Reed Miller, apologizing for any delay in funds: âI am sorry for this.â Later that day, Schwarz sent a longer reply to Freeman, promising three separate payments for various needs, totaling $119,500 that would be rushed into Settlement's hands. âI hope this helps,â Schwarz wrote Freeman. âWe will continue to push to get you paid.â
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by JB, SettleUrTax and SettleTaxNow, Philly News Now. Philly News Now said: MUST READ. How Germantown went to shit, thanks to one man's greed and the city's complicity.: Philly Mag and write... http://bit.ly/aCQRnk [...]
Thank you! This is a great start. Please continue. Tax arrears estimates are very low. Freeman is listed as delinquent in Montgomery Co alone for c. $500,000. He was instrumental in destroying both Y's in Gtown, avoids sheriff's sales (wonder how that happens), and is entrenched with charter schools & Dwight Evans. Perhaps you have begun pulling on a nasty snarl of string!
[...] MUST READ. How Germantown went to shit, thanks to one man's greed and the …Philadelphia Citypaper (blog)… and either ?warm? or ?extremely hot? hallways at both Elders I and II, plus a broken fire alarm system at Elders II; two months later, they went back, … [...]
Gtown Settlement is one of those agencies everyone in the city has known for years does absolutely nothing, as a social worker I've never referred anyone there, never heard of anyone who was referred there getting any actual services, it's just totally open and known that it's one of the fiefdom-style neighborhood places whose entire existence is to suck money for a small circle of connected people. That DHS farms out SCOH work to this place is mind blowing, as SCOH workers are the frontline of the child welfare apparatus who are supposed to be actually in the home monitoring at risk children. You would think DHS would know this place's reputation, as it seems everyone else on the planet does, and totally steer clear. This has been an ongoing issue for DHS going all the way back past Charlenni and Danieal Kelly, they have basically turned over their agency's core function to a vast network of contractors who, like Germantown Settlement, can demonstrate no competency in that (pretty vital) practice area.
If this article is of interest to you and you oppose the pillaging that has taken place in this great Philadelphia neighborhood, please check out a new Face Book page called Battle for Germantown and become a friend.
It's a good question, and one Jamelle Bouie explores admirably.
I understand the logic of incarcerating the elderly — a murder committed 40 years ago is still a murder — but it's hard to see the enterprise as anything other than absurd. Crime is a game for the young; the vast majority of crimes are committed by men in their late teens and 20s. Criminal behavior drops sharply drops after age 30 and enters a permanent tailspin after late middle age. According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report for 2009, fewer than 1 percent of all crimes are attributable to those 60 and older. Assuming you could weed out the most dangerous inmates from those who are basically harmless, it makes the most sense to just release prisoners once they reach 65; at that point, they are well past the peak years for criminal behavior. If that's too radical, you could mandate the possibility of parole for any inmate serving a life sentence, or one that would leave them imprisoned past the age of 60.
On the one hand, empirically, Bouie has an undeniably legit point — if the sole purpose of life incarceration is to protect society from violent offenders, rather than to punish misdeeds. All the same, in an era of prison overcrowding, might it make sense to release the elderly and infirm to free up resources and space to deal with younger, more violent people? It's a reasonable proposition. On the other hand, many of these elderly prisoners are behind bars for a good reason, and if we are to oppose capital punishment, which I do, on the grounds that, well, it is a backward, medieval, ineffective and expensive system of extracting justice — and that's ignoring the ever-present possibility that we'll kill innocents — society must have recourse to punish the worst among us, those who through their actions have given up the right to live freely among us.
Feel free to weigh in in the comments.
I don't know much about the statute of limitations, but I think it should never run out for serious felonies. Roman Polanski raped a girl many years ago and has been evading authorities ever since living outside the US...should we just give him a free pass? What about these old guys that were Nazis in WWII and committed grisly war crimes (though they are dying off)? Seems to me they should be locked up and/or executed whatever age they might be.
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| H/t Matt Stroud, via FFFFound! |
Your weekend's Must Read comes from David Roberts at Grist, who puts climate-change denial in its proper place — basically, alongside the Flat Earth Society.
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In reference to the above graph, Roberts writes:
For the most part the American public's feelings on climate change are shallow, sloshing around with the economic and political tides. When people are feeling safer and more prosperous, climate scientists will magically become more persuasive.
As for the professional skeptics and culture warriors, there's little point hashing out the same arguments with them again and again. I have long since abandoned it. Many people do it well and G*d bless them but I've had my fill of sunspots and medieval warming periods and Pacific Decadal Oscillations. Ideological trench warfare is wearisome and there are many other issues in dire need of attention, principally how we're going to respond to climate change. That's a conversation that engages people outside the armed camps.
However! It does seem to me that the right's climate denialism hasn't been properly linked to the larger phenomenon of epistemic closure on the right. When Jim Manzi, everyone's favorite sensible conservative, criticized fellow conservative Mark Levin for peddling intellectually shoddy skeptic arguments in his bestselling book Liberty and Tyranny, Levin went nuts, joined by a half-dozen other NRO writers. How could they not? The very same skeptic talking points in Levin's book appear in thousands of blogs and comment sections across the interwebs. If they are intellectually bankrupt, a whole lot of people are going to look stupid.
But here is what I think is the most important point.
Climate denialism is part of something much broader and scarier on the right. The core idea is most clearly expressed by Rush Limbaugh: âWe really live, folks, in two worlds. There are two worlds. We live in two universes. One universe is a lie. One universe is an entire lie. Everything run, dominated, and controlled by the left here and around the world is a lie. The other universe is where we are, and that's where reality reigns supreme and we deal with it. And seldom do these two universes ever overlap. ... The Four Corners of Deceit: Government, academia, science, and media. Those institutions are now corrupt and exist by virtue of deceit. That's how they promulgate themselves; it is how they prosper.â
The right's project over the last 30 years has been to dismantle the post-war liberal consensus by undermining trust in society's leading institutions. Experts are made elites; their presumption of expertise becomes self-damning. They think they're better than you. They talk down to you. They don't respect people like us, real Americans.
â¦
The decline in trust in institutions has generated fear and uncertainty, to which people generally respond by placing their trust in protective authorities. And some subset of people respond with tribalism, nationalism, and xenophobia. The right stokes and exploits modern anxiety relentlessly, but that's not all they do. They also offer a space to huddle in safety among the like-minded. The conservative movement in America has created a self-contained, hermetically sealed epistemological reality -- a closed-loop system of cable news, talk radio, and email forwards -- designed not just as a source of alternative facts but as an identity. That's why when you question climate skepticism you catch hell. You're messing with who people are.
Consider what the Limbaugh/Morano crowd is saying about climate: not only that that the world's scientists and scientific institutions are systematically wrong, but that they are purposefully perpetrating a deception. Virtually all the world's governments, scientific academies, and media are either in on it or duped by it. The only ones who have pierced the veil and seen the truth are American movement conservatives, the ones who found death panels in the healthcare bill. (Emphasis mine.)
This notion that your âcommon senseâ is as important as the âexpertsâ and their âdataâ has been imbedded in movement conservatism from its outset, but it goes back further than that. It's at the root of fundamentalist strains of religion, as well, and has reared its head whenever science came into conflict with religion. During the Scopes Monkey Trial, for instance, William Jennings Bryan, who died soon after arguing the case for the state of Tennessee, insisted that evolution was wrong because one's common sense and Biblical literalism should be taken more seriously than human-generated scientific knowledge. (In one famed moment toward the trial's end, defense attorney and civil libertarian Clarence Darrow snapped , âWe have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States.â)
It strikes me that, in a sense, we're re-litigating the Scopes trial with all this hullaballoo about climate change. There is an overwhelming, and undeniable scientific consensus about the reality of man-made climate change, denied by only a handful of outsiders and a cadre of industry-paid shills. And yet, somehow, the right's counter-argument, that all of these scientists are either idiots or somehow engaged in a socialist plot — or whatever — has gained traction; the right has, with considerable and alarming success, argued that its members' âcommon senseâ should trump the overwhelming scientific consensus.
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PS: In other news, the Flat Earth Society actually has a website. Wow.
[...] MUST READ. Climate zombies and epistemic closure. :: The Clog … [...]
Reading this Slate piece reminded me of a line from the W.B. Yeats poem "The Second Coming":
The best lack all conviction/ while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
You see this in the vociferous demonstrations against that Islamic community center in lower Manhattan; in the inchoate and often incoherent rage of the Tea Party groups and Glenn Beck acolytes; in the denunciations of âsocialismâ and dire warnings of some fascist government takeover during last year's health care reform debate — the right, and particularly, its fringe, reactionary, conspiracist and stunningly vacuous, uninformed and anti-intellectual base, has been whipped up into a frenzy these last 18 months and is poised to make big gains in November. The 112th Congress, if the polls bear out and this current crop of Republican extremists takes control — Rand Paul, Joe Miller, John Boehner, Jim DeMint, Darrell Issa, and, yes, Pat Toomey, among too many others to name — we're almost certain to see two years dominated by hyperventilating ideologues, government shutdowns and the sort of endless bullshit "investigations" into nonexistent improprieties that marked the Gingrich "revolution" of the 1990s. Probably worse, because unlike that class of Republicans, these fools have no absolutely no appetite for actual governance, nor any type of discernable agenda beyond cutting taxes for billionaires and bulldozing the small, but important, progress we've made on health care. (On that note, check this out: Were Republicans still in charge, we'd have higher deficits and unemployment than we do now.)
The problem is, while the worst of us — the Glenn Becks and Sarah Palins and so forth — are frothing over with âpassionate intensity,â as Yeats would say, âThe best lack all conviction.â And that brings us to today's Must Read, from Slate's Jacob Weisberg:
Barack Obama's redecoration of the Oval Office includes a nice personal touch: a carpet ringed with favorite quotations from Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, both Presidents Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King Jr. The King quote, in particular, has become a kind of emblem for him: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." For all the carping about his every move, the only big problem with the Obama Presidency is the gap between what's written on his rug, and what's buried under it—the distance between the President's veneration of moral leadership past and his failure, so far, to exhibit much of it himself.
Obama has had numerous occasions to assert leadership on values issues this summer: Arizona's crude anti-immigrant law, the battle over Prop 8 and gay marriage, and the backlash against what Fox News persists in calling the "Ground Zero mosque." These battles raise fundamental questions of national identity, liberty, and individual rights. When Lindsey Graham argues for rewriting the Constitution to eliminate the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, or Newt Gingrich proposes a Saudi standard for the free exercise of religion, they're taking positions at odds with America's basic ideals. But Obama's instinctive caution has steered him away from casting these questions as moral or civil rights issues. On none of them has he shown anything resembling courage.
The whole piece is worth a read, but one particular passage struck me:
With the Proposition 8 fight, Obama has fallen short in a different way, by his reluctance to join an emerging social consensus. Obama had previously criticized California's Proposition 8, the ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage, as "divisive." But his official position—which no one believes he actually holds—is that he is against legalizing gay marriage. Americans are changing their views on this issue with inspiring rapidity. Judge Vaughn Walker's moving opinion provided an occasion for Obama to move to embrace the extension of equal rights to gay people. Instead, he slunk mumbling in the other direction. How dismal that America's first black president will be remembered as shirking the last great civil rights struggle (emphasis added).
The best lack conviction. As I noted last year (at my previous employ), prominent Democrats too often take the right positions when they don't matter. In power, they're cowed by the worst's âpassionate intensity.â And though it shouldn't really matter, there is a political aspect to this: Passionate intensity gets voters to the polls, especially in midterm elections (see âthe enthusiasm gapâ). The president's unwillingness to channel his inner MLK or Truman or LBJ — who passed through the Civil Rights Act famously knowing that it would cost Democrats the South for generations, and it did — and do the goddamned right thing because it's the goddamned right thing will be part of the reason the Dems will take a lashing in November.
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I'm offended by Mr. Billman's use of profanity...it's unclassy and unnecessary.
Greta, what did you think of the content of what Mr. Billman had to say?
Sorry, I don't need to be anonymous.
[...] MUST READ: Obama's moral cowardice: âThe best lack all conviction … [...]
[...] MUST READ: Obama's moral cowardice: âThe best lack all conviction … [...]
[...] MUST READ: Obama's moral cowardice: âThe best lack all conviction … [...]
Eugene Robinson can read my mind.
In the punditry business, it's considered bad form to question the essential wisdom of the American people. But at this point, it's impossible to ignore the obvious: The American people are acting like a bunch of spoiled brats.
â¦
The nation demands the impossible: quick, painless solutions to long-term, structural problems. While they're running for office, politicians of both parties encourage this kind of magical thinking. When they get into office, they're forced to try to explain that things aren't quite so simple -- that restructuring our economy, renewing the nation's increasingly rickety infrastructure, reforming an unsustainable system of entitlements, redefining America's position in the world and all the other massive challenges that face the country are going to require years of effort. But the American people don't want to hear any of this. They want somebody to make it all better. Now.
President Obama can point to any number of occasions on which he has told Americans that getting our nation back on track is a long-range project. But his campaign stump speech ended with the exhortation, "Let's go change the world" -- not, "Let's go change the world slowly and incrementally, waiting years before we see the fruits of our labor."
And one thing he really hasn't done is frame the hard work that lies ahead as a national crusade that will require a degree of sacrifice from every one of us. It's obvious, for example, that the solution to our economic woes is not just to reinflate the housing bubble. New foundations have to be laid for a 21st-century economy, starting with weaning the nation off of its dependence on fossil fuels, which means there will have to be an increase in the price of oil. I don't want to pay more to fill my gas tank, but I know that it would be good for the nation if I did.
The richest Americans need to pay higher taxes -- not because they're bad people who deserve to be punished but because they earn a much bigger share of the nation's income, and hold a bigger share of its overall wealth. If they don't pay more, there won't be enough revenue to maintain, much less improve, the kind of infrastructure that fosters economic growth. Think of what the interstate highway system has meant to this country. Now imagine trying to build it today.
i disagree Jeff. american people want solutions, and it's not so much that they want the solutions to be painless (though obviously, the absence of pain is preferable to pain), it's that they don't want the solution to entail ordinary people being fucked up the ass until they're bleeding to death (figuratively speakig of course). so far, what the american people have seen is banks getting bailed out under two presidents, with rates near 0%, while ordinary people have to pay exorbitant rates. we saw a bill called "the patient protection and affordability act" pass (and I might add, without the public option a majority supported, because the pres had made a secret deal with the pharma and insurance industries that there wouldn't be) that mandates that we all have to purchase insurance or face a substantial IRS penalty. today we woke up to learn our rates are going up about 14%. have you checked out the insurance exchange calculators? I don't know about you, but even with a subsidy, i can't afford to participate. And you know, it probably would have been easier to just expand medicaid to everyone, like Alan Grayson's been pushing, but that wouldn't have provided blue cross and well point with captive consumers. it's been like this with everything: health care reform became health insurance reform. The president has not led on DADT, when he could issue a stop-loss order. The administration's role in marriage equality is disgraceful and well-known. he has not led on immigration (although he gets credit for the suit against arizona and against Arpaio the racist dick). "yes we can" has very quickly morphed into "well, except for that. and except for that. and except for that." and then of course there is that pesky 10% unemployment number, which the adminsitration said in january 2009 would be below 7% at this time, without stimulus. OOOPS. And we both know that if the official rate is 10%, it's probably closer to 15%, maybe more than that. And let's not forget the deficit commission stacked with people who want to cut social security based on duplicitous reasoning. americans, I submit, are not spoiled brats (tea party nutbags excluded). what they are is sick: sick of being told that the bowl of shit they have been presented is actually the beef stew they ordered.
[...] MUST READ. Spoiled brats and elections.Philadelphia Citypaper (blog)… or face a substantial IRS penalty. today we woke up to learn our rates are going up about 14%. have you checked out the insurance exchange calculators? …and more » [...]
That "bowl of shit they have been presented" includes the federal government forcing law abiding citizens to incentivize and subsidize illegal behavior. A Pew Research Center report recently came up with startling results..."The report, based on Pew's analysis of the Census Bureau's March 2009 Current Population Survey, also found that the lion's share, or 79%, of the 5.1 million children of illegal immigrants residing in the U.S. in 2009 were born in the country and are therefore citizens." Taken one step further, 79% of 5.1 million is 4 million babies born here in the US to illegals in 2009. 4 million times $10,000 (average hospital cost per birth) is $40 BILLION, just for births, per year, paid for mostly by Medicaid (YOU AND ME). Factor in all the other annual "free" emergency room health care visits per year and it can easily be $100-$150 BILLION PER YEAR, over ten years equals $1-1.5 TRILLION, or the ENTIRE current federal budget deficit. The "bowl of shit they have been presented" is a socialistic redistributionist class envy attack the producers bowl of shit that says tax increases and government debt are harmless because people haven't been paying their fair share anyway; it includes an assumption that people that have worked hard and played by the rules to acquire wealth are actually evil tax dodgers and they are the ones that must pay for other people's bad decision making. The bowl of shit says bankruptcy is hurtful, the American people must pay for other people's mistakes. The bowl of shit says you can produce all the children you possibly can because it is the government that should pay to support them. The "bowl of shit they have been presented" includes a mentality that says you are an intolerant racist bigot if you want people to enter our country legally, and if you believe that if one is an illegal immigrant to America their simple act of having a child on U.S. soil should not grant automatic citizenship to that child, nor should the birth be paid for by the U.S. taxpayer. I submit, this Tea Party Nutbag is not a spoiled brat. I am not dependent on government, nor do I make every decision based on how much government money I think I am entitled to. I believe in a government safety net, I believe in government as referee. I am sick - sick of slimy redistributionist spin city government...sick of this bowl of shit we have been presented.
If you have ever had food poisoning, you know that your body essentially wrings itself out until it gets back to normal. The American people were fed what they told was a fresh wonderful bowl of "yes we can" "TARP" "Stimulus" "subprime loan" and "we have to pass it to find out what's in it" salad. The salad looked pretty good, and tasted good too. But as it started being digested, the severe indigestion & food poisoning started ---- and hasn't even come close to finishing yet. A Republican/Tea Party revolution will be a nice dose of Pepto-Bismol, but that will only be the first part of lengthy prescription to nurse this country back to health.
Here is a great cartoon --- says it all! http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/PhotoPopup.aspx?id=546001
Republican/Tea Party Pepto Bismol? Sounds like part of the problem - it's not the party that's the problem, it's how quickly they walk away from the table and run to the press about how rigid the other party member is. Partisan politics and intolerance is the main "virus". A lengthy prescription has nothing to do with political parties, and everything to do with actually hammering out compromise. The bitching and finger pointing only adds to the problem and wastes time. If we spent half as much time finding solutions as we do bickering, something might actually get done. Everyone has to give a bit, and both parties are guilty for continuing to walk away when it's not 100% to their liking.
Clearly, as the ever-resurgent the teabag-waving radical right demonstrates, the Culture War has not gone away, although, it has most certainly changed over the years. In part, I would imagine, that's because the writing is on the wall — progressives are winning, and will continue to win, especially in issues like gay rights, where the recent Prop 8 decision brought little more than a pathetic wimper from a once-mighty Christianists while the rest of us moved on with our lives — and the activists very much need to rebrand. From Politico:
At a moment that finds the right energized and seemingly ascendant, the battles over morality-based cultural issues such as gay rights, abortion and illegal drugs that did so much to drive the conservative movement and dominated the political conversation for more than 30 years have abated, giving way not just to broad economic anxiety but to a new set of emotionally charged issues.
â¦
For while Obama has avoided single-issue fights on issues such as gays in the military and federal funding of abortions — angering parts of his base, in the process — he has, in the minds of conservatives, pushed a comprehensive agenda, and that is far more threatening.
These people have, to my thinking, lost their freaking minds and any semblance of a grasp of historical context: Obama has, if anything, been far too accommodating, far too centrist, far too willing to water down and walk back important parts of his agenda — the stimulus, health care, climate change, gays in the military, etc. He is, in many ways, more of a Rockefeller Republican than a McGovern Democrat.
But that's all a matter of perspective, I suppose.
Anyway, this weekend's Must Read comes from Adam Serwer at American Prospect.
To the extent that this new culture war resembles the old one, it is in the reversal of roles--it is the right that is now largely defined by an identity politics which perceives persecution, and possible extinction, for a culturally constructed usually white, conservative, "real American." This isn't just about Obama or his agenda, which borrows heavily from earlier conservative ideas, it's also a response to anxiety over economic insecurity and fear of ideological annihilation through demographic change. Hence the burgeoning Islamophobia and calls to repeal birthright citizenship.
I think a large part of what appealed to liberals about Obama was his ability to acknowledge discrete strands of American culture as equally legitimate. His fundamental task in the 2008 election, with the wind at his back, was to persuade the American people that he was one of them-- his failure to do so would be the only thing to bring defeat. Obama didn't start that argument, but for the first time in a long time, he helped the left win it--and the right has been in a state of rage ever since.
But if Obama's election was a referendum on what it means to be an American, then the right's response can be seen as a large scale attempt to challenge the legitimacy of the results. This can be seen as an element of almost every genre of right wing criticism, from the birther fringe to the far more common accusations of "European-style socialism." Sadly, Obama didn't end the culture war, his election just ushered in a new one. To the right, Obama's election wasn't a call for truce, it was a deliberate escalation.
I come back to this time and time again, because I think it is a very seminal piece of modern political science, but if you really want to understand the dynamics at play, read Authoritarianism & Polarization in American Politics by Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler. All of these issues — be they abortion, gay rights, race relations, defense spending, immigration, the hullabaloo over the deficit, the emergent Tea Partiers, and so on — are fruit of the same tree: authoritarianism* and the preservation of the existing social order, or rather, the fear that the social order is changing and leaving them behind.
*To clarify: The word "authoritarianism" is not in this sense a pejorative, though it is commonly associated with totalitarianism and fascism. Indeed, without some reverence for authority and social order, society would likely be chaotic. Think of authoritarianism more as a scale rather than a yes/no proposition. Conservatives, at least modern conservatives and especially social/religious conservatives, tend to have significantly higher than their liberal counterparts. Interestingly, inner-city African Americans are basically off the charts when it comes to authoritarianism, which complicates social science research into this subject, because they tend to vote for liberal, Democratic candidates, thanks largely to the perception of conservative racism — at least, according to the available data.)
[...] MUST READ. The evolution of a Culture War :: The Clog :: Blog … [...]
"....because they [African Americans] tend to vote for liberal, Democratic candidates, thanks largely to the perception of conservative racism — at least, according to the available data." Or is it because Democrats promise everything under the sun for nothing? Keep stirring up class envy, bash and smear the producers of society, create an entitlement/deserving mentality and an entire segment of the population with a dependency on government benefits...and bash those who would reduce those benefits as uncaring and insensitive. The problem is when your society turns into a house of cards and you have a government meltdown like Greece --- which is required by the world bank as part of its bailout to adopt "austerity measures". I wonder if they are proud of their socialism now.
"Or is it because Democrats promise everything under the sun for nothing?" No. BTW, the austerity measures that teatards love so much are destroying Greece's economy. Welcome to economics 101, idiots.
[...] MUST READ. The evolution of the Culture War :: The Clog :: Blog Archive :: Staff Blog :: Philadelphi... [...]
[...] MUST READ. The evolution of the Culture War :: The Clog :: Blog Archive :: Staff Blog :: Philadelphi... [...]
[...] MUST READ. The expansion of a Culture War :: The Clog :: Blog Archive :: Staff Blog :: Philadelphia ... [...]
The austerity measures are forcing the Greek government to live within its means, and giving the free market more room to operate. The only pain that is being felt is by people that shouldn't have been benefitting from the lavish government spending in the first place. It's like taking easy subprime loans for low income people away from the US housing market, or stopping irresponsible defense spending of $1000 toilet seats and $500 hammers.
[...] MUST READ. The evolution of the Culture War :: The Clog :: Blog … [...]
[...] MUST READ. The evolution of the Culture War :: The Clog :: Blog … [...]
[...] MUST READ. The evolution of the Culture War :: The Clog :: Blog … [...]
[...] Jeffrey Billman пиÑеÑ: … gay rights, race relations, defense spending, immigration, the hullabaloo over the deficit, the emergent Tea Partiers, and so on âÃî are fruit of the same tree: authoritarianism* and the preservation of the existing social order, or rather, …. LGBTQ, Mind/Body, Museums/Exhibits, Music, Classical, Folk/World, Jazz/Blues, Rock/Pop, Open Mic, Karaoke, Performance, Performing Arts, Cabaret, Dance, Opera, Theater, Readings/Book Signings, Repertory Film, Shopping/Style … [...]
Today's must read comes from The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
A substantial and growing number of Americans say that Barack Obama is a Muslim, while the proportion saying he is a Christian has declined. More than a year and a half into his presidency, a plurality of the public says they do not know what religion Obama follows. A new national survey by the Pew Research Center finds that nearly one-in-five Americans (18%) now say Obama is a Muslim, up from 11% in March 2009. Only about one-third of adults (34%) say Obama is a Christian, down sharply from 48% in 2009. Fully 43% say they do not know what Obama's religion is.
It's not exactly groundbreaking to suggest that the average American voter isn't, well, all that attuned to politics. Noted political scientists — Philip Converse, UPenn's Michael X. Delli Carpini, Scott Keeter (who now apparently works for Pew, Richard R. Lau, David P. Redlawsk, Scott L. Althaus, Edward G. Carmines and James Stimson, to name just a few — have tackled the issues of how much voters know, and to what degree their opinions are manipulated by "elites", a term that in this usage refers to politicians and drivers of public opinion, who tend to be considerably more plugged in.
(Here, I linked to some of the pieces when I found them online for free.)
Converse's seminal 1964 piece, "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics," paints a pretty bleak picture for informed democracy. Converse breaks the public down into five fields of interest, and posits that the more engaged one is, the more logically consistent one's beliefs are. The lower on his scale you go, the more manipulatable you are. Unfortunately, Converse argues, most people fall toward the bottom. Based on 1950s survey data, the top-two groups only made up about 10 percent of the population. Those with absolutely no idea about anything make up nearly a quarter of the population.Of course, his research is now 46 years old, and maybe the Information Age has changed that (I haven't been reading the polisci journals like I did in grad school, but nothing I've seen suggests a massive change).
The question then becomes, what difference does it make? Lau and Redlawsk say not a lot: no matter how much info they have, voters will vote their interest 70 percent of the time. Althaus, in a controversial piece, argues that the more informed a voter is, the more likely he or she is to be progressive on social issues.
With that as background, let's get back to the Pew poll: The toplines are getting the attention — many people, especially Republicans, think (erroneously, of course) that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Here's the more interesting part, to me:
 |
| Pew |
Clearly, belief that Obama is a Muslim correlates with a disapproval of his policies. There are two ways to read that: One, is Ben Smith's view:"I'd speculate, telling a pollster that Obama is a Muslim is just another way of expressing disapproval." People who don't like Obama say he's Muslim, but their opinion of him wouldn't change if they got the answer right. The other is that more informed and engaged voters are more likely to approve of Obama's policies. If I had to guess, and it would only be a guess, I'd think it a combination of both.
All the same, you won't go broke underestimating the sophistication of the American voter.
Obama has stated that he is a Christian...but all of his comments and actions leave people wondering if he secretly prays to Allah... http://www.actforamerica.org/
Remember, it wasn't not too long ago when there were news reports that Obama had beaten GW Bush in usage of the word "Jesus". Maybe he'll now need to say it more often than Joel Osteen on a regular basis? http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23510.html
My name Habib Halal Al-Sharif. I support mosque by ground zero. Next we build mosque in all american state capitals and DC, next to statehouses and white house OK? America muslim country soon! Muslims support muslim president!
[...] MUST READ: You won’t go broke underestimating the sophistication of the American voter :: The ... [...]
I am Sharif Mustaffa Al-Halal. I want mosque too. I want America to be muslim country with sharia law..."In Allah We Trust" should be on American money, and "One Nation, Under Allah" should be in Pledge of Allegiance. Women should be covered up, not drive cars, and not be allowed to speak unless allowed to speak by husband.
I am muslim. I support mosque and sharia. Women should not drive car and only speak when allowed by husband!
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