Bruce Bartlett, one of the nation’s foremost conservative economists and one of the inventors of supply-side economics (more commonly called “Reaganomics”), has written an excellent analysis of the current fiscal situation in the United States- and who should take the blame. The article can be found here.
I struggle to be objective in a partisan political environment. So does everyone else, I imagine. But almost every time in recent months that I have heard a member of the Republican National Committee open their mouths, I have felt a strong desire to move in the politically opposite direction. To go farther Left.
At first, I thought this was a simple, knee-jerk reaction. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there was nothing simple about the situation. And the situation is thus:
Point A.
The GOP reached the height of political hypocrisy during the Bush Administration. It doesn’t matter how much of that good old Afghani Opium you smoke, expanding the Executive Branch’s surveillance and detainment powers in no way resembles Conservatism. And while the GOP parroted the old one liner about decreasing government power, they were busy increasing the power of the private sector, including allowing the Oil Industry to determine policy regarding Iraq. Of course, those with half a brain know that the GOP’s disposal of anti-trust regulation negates any positive attempt to “decrease the size of the government”. Tyranny can be corporate just as easily as it can be political.
Point B.
A bunch of people that I thought might still have something resembling Christian values or morality decided that because safety supersedes liberty, country supersedes morality. Or in other words, American exceptionalism supersedes the Geneva Convention. Attempts to morally justify “Enhanced Interrogation”, Extraordinary Rendition, Indefinite Confinement, Hiring of Mercenaries (then Blackwater, now Xe Services LLC), and the Abu Ghraib cover-up all fall flat. There is no way to reconcile the GOP’s position on traditional values with these actions.
Point C.
Palin will have the power of a Federal Executive (you know, that includes military power) over my dead body. A person that apparently didn’t know Africa is a continent and cannot even balance a single city’s budget is in no way fit to handle either Foreign or Fiscal policy on a Federal scale. Why the GOP could even consider her as an option is completely beyond me.
Point D.
Running some of the dirtiest Election campaigns I have ever seen in 2008. You can portray yourself as representing good ol’ fashion values all you want, but when your ads start leaning desperately toward calling the other side a bunch of terrorists, people will see through your facade.
***
And there is, of course, much more, but I would be here all night. The point is that some time ago, my subconscious must have begun realizing that what is best for me is generally the opposite of what the GOP wants for me.
Speaking of Palin, have a look at this. She’s buying into the Obama conspiracy theories just as the 9/11 Truthers buy into the idea that Bush committed 9/11. Both sides being, of course, absolutely nuts.
I have not yet come to a conclusion one way or another about the current iteration of the Health Care Bill. However, I am quite sure that I will oppose any corporate attempt at manipulating me through fear tactics, which now seems to be the norm for communication among the Health Care Bill’s opposition.
I’ve only just begun to realize that many atheists I know personally are only atheists because the only proponents of God that they’ve ever met are vocal members of the authoritarian, hypocritical, and politically-motivated American Evangelical Bloc. A great many of these Atheists cannot even quote a scientific reason why God should not exist; instead, their disbelief in God stems from the contradiction between the concept of a loving God and the concept of a judgmental, politically-biased, and simple-minded God as supported by the Evangelical Bloc. After all, are not Christians supposed to be human representatives of their God? And if enough Christians represent an evil and self-contradictory God, will not non-Christians make the assumption that God is, indeed, evil and self-contradictory in nature? Why believe in such a God, or follow such a religion?
One last question: Isn’t it the purview of Christianity to bring others to Jesus, not drive them away?
We require a New Christianity.
Update: Allow me to clarify my statement regarding the Evangelical Bloc, the Christian Right.
Christians who happen to also be conservative do not bother me. This is because for them, following a political ideology is always secondary to being a good Christian. That means being loving, tolerant, ideologically self-consistent (Jesus stressed this one most of all). But the Christian Right, as a movement, bothers me a great deal. For one, it’s such a strong and cohesive political movement that it could almost be incorporated as a single entity (attempts have been made to do just this, as a matter of fact). For another, vengeance, judgment, war, and wealth seem to be very prominent political priorities, and history has demonstrated this quite clearly. And lastly (but most relevant to this blog) is the terrifying mob mentality that seems to naturally accompany the strong cohesiveness and fervor of the movement. Fear seems to be a principle motivation for this mentality…it can be seen in every chain email, every public statement, every political pitch, and every conspiracy theory. It’s a consistent, overriding fear of the pervasive influence of some centralized evil. Little do they realize, however, that their very fear is what makes them easy prey for evil influence. In these traits they resemble modern day pharisees far more than original Christians.
Of course, let us be clear- this is merely a series of generalizations based on statistics, known public policy standings, behavior of politicians belonging to the Christian Right, and my personal observations. There are always exceptions, since every person is unique. No doubt that there will be visitors here that will see this post and claim that they are a member of the Christian Right, and so will be offended. But let us be clear on one thing…a person that relies on his own interpretations of Jesus’ words as given to him via inspiration from both life and God is not a member of the Christian Right. A member of the Christian Right receives interpretations through second-hand sources; this has been one of their primary, constant characteristics since the movement’s inception in the 1980s. So a conservative Christian is never necessarily a member of the Christian Right, and may even hold the same views as a Christian Rightist without being one. This is because the basic mentality between the two is different; one is ruled by fear, the other is ruled by God. God, of course, being an independent voter.
I will post more about a proposal for a New Christianity once I have taken a harder look at more of the internal nonpolitical problems facing modern Christianity.
Although I knew about it when it was first released, I never really got a chance to play around with the new Wolfram Alpha search engine. Like many other people, I didn’t see anything significant about it. I would now like to categorically state that I was quite wrong in my assumptions.
I am now fairly certain that the claims about Wolfram Alpha being “the next big thing” are correct. Because it’s not just a search engine. It also computes combinations of input. For example, I can type in “iss rise indianapolis” and get back the exact orbital trajectory of the International Space Station, including its position relative to Indianapolis and the time at which it will become visible in the sky to anyone in the city.
I can type in questions related to Mathematical and Chemical formulas, and receive back detailed answers and a variety of useful definitions. I can ask for the weather in any place at any time, and receive graphed meteorological trends for the entire month. I can ask for the profits of any publicly-traded company and receive full information about stock value. In short, Wolfram Alpha’s computational power and usefulness grows with each upgrade. And needless to say, it definitely would have helped with my Calculus homework.
You can find the Wolfram Alpha computational engine here.
As anyone who has studied the scripture knows, divine commands found in the Bible are often easily confused with human traditions that have simply been recorded in the Bible as well. Someone of simple-mind, however, would make no effort to puzzle out the difference between the two, and so would make the assumption that everything included in the Bible must be a direct command of God.
This is particularly troubling when we come to the issue of women. Paul wrote in his letters to Timothy that “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent”. Many Christians wish to claim that this is an actual divine commandment. This is typically a result of that Christian not using their God-given brains.
Which makes more sense- that God commanded women be silent, or that Paul simply included a typical first century prejudice in a letter that was later included in the Bible?
This was prompted by an article on the subject by former President Jimmy Carter. You can find it here.
“Have you given us a monarchy or a republic?”
“A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”
Not that this is really news to anyone, but another, well-cited article has come out about the Oil Industry’s hand in the US-led invasion of Iraq.
Apparently, an official government report was prepared for Vice President Richard Cheney by Shell Corp director Luis Giusti, British Petroleum regional president John Manzoni, and ChevronTexaco CEO David O’Reilly, among others. This report makes the case to the Bush administration that the US should depose Saddam Hussein in order to gain control of (and later auction off) Iraq’s oil fields.
The original article is here.
Given that numerous, very capable people throughout history have committed adultery, I think that under normal circumstances I could forgive and forget South Carolina Governor Mark Sandford’s infidelity.
But these are not normal circumstances.
Clinton and Gingrich (who, hypocritically enough, led the impeachment of Clinton while cheating on his second wife) both cheated on their wives, but still fulfilled their duties as President and Speaker, respectively. Governor Mark Sandford, on the other hand, literally disappeared. He snuck out of the United States, abandoning his post and his entire country in order to visit his Argentinian mistress.
Governor Sandford, you have tried to justify your decision to stay in office by citing the fact that King David of Israel stayed King despite his infidelity while on the throne. However, Mr. Sandford, there are two crucial differences between you and King David. The first is that David never left his country and post.
The second, Mr. Sandford, is that you are not, nor ever shall be, my King.
ABC is gaining exclusive media access to the White House for the President’s presentation on Health Care. It’s a bad move, to have that amount of media exclusivity.
FOX News agrees vehemently. But that’s the problem. FOX News held the same amount of exclusivity with President Bush several years ago, with many Iraq War sales pitches and White House interviews given exclusively to FOX.
Now I am fairly certain that ABC will, in turn, complain about FOX when the next Republican President again grants FOX exclusive access. And so it will deteriorate into a continuous, hypocritical media circus.
This is the problem with near-monopolistic control of a market sector. The global media system is almost exclusively dominated by Timewarner (owner of CNN) , Disney (owner of ABC), News Corporation (owner of FOX), Viacom (owner of CBS), and GE (owner of NBC and everything else). No matter WHAT you flip the channel to, you will always be turning to a source of information input that is owned by someone driven by profit. All that information you receive will be tuned to get you to help maximize that channel owner’s earnings. This manipulation goes all the way up to the executive and legislative level with lobbyists to both the FCC and Congress, allowing them to significantly influence elections and policy through YOU. And as demonstrated by this rivalry between ABC and FOX, each one will act without shame to gain the position of top dog.
This is what happens when you cross modern communication technology with relaxed anti-trust laws.
If you want a side-by-side video of the ABC-FOX corporate duel, go here.
Want to see what Socialism ACTUALLY looks like, represented economically in graph form? Go here.
The same news site/blog also compares the respective socialism levels of Obama’s federal policies and Palin’s Alaskan policies. The results are interesting, to say the least.
UPDATE: As was correctly pointed out in the comments below, the graph of “Palin’s Alaska” ends before she even takes office. So that appears to be deliberately deceptive. I’ve also looked at the original graph I linked to, and it doesn’t include some of the recent acquisitions of the government. However, considering the current devalued state of the housing and automobile markets, it doesn’t change the picture much at all. But as a commenter on that site pointed out, it doesn’t take majority ownership of the market to control it. The main influence of the government lies through its control of Fannie May and Freddie Mac. But ultimately, the loans to control the housing market are from China, so our government doesn’t even completely control things anyway. If we were to regraph that data by global national influence, we would see China occupying most of the graph due to its sheer industrial output.
An interesting commenter on The Atlantic going by the name of “Nelson Alexander” has this say about the graphs:
This may be a useful corrective to the silly ravings of the right, but in reality it only confirms our greater national delusions concerning the public/private or government/market dichotomies.
By many conventional estimates the “government” accounts for over 40 percent of the “economy,” but it is hardly clear what this means. Economies do not stop at national borders and governments maintain all fiat currencies and property laws through which “economies” operate, to point out only the obvious. In our recent troubles, the legal status of the Federal Reserve as a private institution and the revolving door between government jobs and, say, Goldman Sachs have made these specious distinctions even more absurd.
I have never yet heard anyone who touts the superior efficiency of “free markets” provide an example of this metaphysical entity that is not supported, stabilized, institutionalized, defined, and operated through a complex system of supposedly “inefficient” government structures. The only thing approaching an international market system, as far as I know, is the illegal drug trade. The unmentionable dichotomy between an investor class and those who rely on wages is far more realistic than the government/market paradigm used to fog the issues.
