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Blumenthal on the Filibuster

Sunday, June 20, 2010

My wife and I attended a Blumenthal fundraiser today. Before we went I told her I wanted to ask Blumenthal about the filibuster and the other arcane Senate rules that allow the minority party (when that party is the Republican party) to control the chamber. In the event, someone beat me to it. Blumenthal said he is in favor of changing the rules, though he wasn’t specific about what he would like to see happen. That’s not a knock on him, by the way, he wasn’t asked for specifics and it wasn’t the sort of setting where you could expect him to go into specifics.

He says he will propose rule changes, and he says he has spoken about the issue to others, from which I inferred he meant the newer Democratic senators and present candidates.

The vote on rules is the first vote taken in a new session, and changes can be made by a bare majority of Senators. No filibustering allowed. We will know whether the Democrats, assuming they retain the majority, are serious about governing when we hear the results of that vote. Or, more precisely, if we don’t hear the results of that vote, because if we hear nothing it means we will have business as usual, and that the Democrats in the Senate care more about their little club than they do about the future of the country and, for that matter, the planet.

It’s good to hear that Blumenthal recognizes the problem. We can only hope that he and those of like mind can prevail upon Reid to put an end to the dodge that “it takes 60 vote to pass anything in the Senate”.


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The Darkness Spreads

Saturday, June 19, 2010

For better or worse, the United States has been the source of most of the world’s cultural innovations in the past century or so. On the plus side, we gave the world rock ‘n roll, jazz, and ..well, I’m thinking. On the minus side is just about everything else.

Despite years of cultural imperialism it has seemed that Europe, at least, has been largely resistant to our most dangerous cultural trend: the rise of unreason and fundamentalist religion. Not so anymore, apparently, where at least in Northern Ireland they have seen us a demand for “teaching the controversy” about evolution and raised us by “abusing the language of rights and equality” in order to put religious delusion on a par with science. They have taken the religious right’s strategy of posing as the victim to new heights.

Last month Nelson McCausland, DUP assembly member and Northern Ireland culture minister, wrote to the trustees of National Museums Northern Ireland about how “to ensure that museums are reflective of the views, beliefs and cultural traditions” of the region. This included a more specific stipulation – referring explicitly to the Ulster Museum, the letter called for alternative views of the origin of the universe to be accommodated. In other words, creationism was to be incorporated into the museum’s natural history displays. That an elected minister should make such a suggestion is a development that should be taken seriously.

McCausland claimed that a third of the Northern Irish population believe in creationism, and said that “the diversity of views” on this should be reflected in the region’s museums. Calling it “a human rights issue and an equality issue”, this could have been viewed as an honest, but seriously misguided attempt to improve diversity in museums. However, shortly after the letter was made public, theCaleb Foundation, a group which “promotes the fundamentals of the historic evangelical Protestant faith”, revealed that it had previously met the minister to discuss the presentation of evolution in the Ulster Museum’s nature zone exhibits. They called this “wholly misleading propaganda” and claimed they were responsible for the content of the minister’s letter. As a fellow DUP member,Mervyn Storey, sits on the Caleb Foundation Council, this seemed plausible. McCausland himself is a Protestant fundamentalist, and what began to emerge was the pushing of a personal, religiously-informed viewpoint rather than the expression of a minister’s opinion formed on the basis of expert knowledge of the heritage and culture sector.

According to the Caleb Foundation, they have a civil right to their own facts, and a further right to have those “facts” foisted off on the rest of us as equal to – well, to actual facts- you know, the old fashioned kind. It would be interesting to know if they favor extending the same right to anyone who cares to come along with yet another creation myth. Flying spaghetti monster, anyone?

Clearly this can’t be restricted to the age of the earth. How about its shape? There are still people out there who believe that the earth is flat, and it would be simply monstrous to deny their rights, and lets not forget about the folks (and there are probably millions of uneducated folks out there who believe this) that believe the sun goes around the earth. Dare we trample on their rights?

I must say that as a student I would have been very much in favor of this approach to education. Who was the nun to tell me that 1 and 1 is 2? If I sincerely believe it is three, aren’t my views entitled to respect, indeed, shouldn’t they, like the creationist delusions, be accorded equal weight to those held by the mathists, who insist on cramming their version of mathematics down our throats? What a wonderful world it would have been, not to know much about science books, but still having the right to be an A student.


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Friday Night Music

Friday, June 18, 2010

Early 70s, and at least somewhat appropriate for Father’s Day, Danny’s Song, by Loggins and Messina


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Non sequiturs

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Yesterday I wrote a post, the thrust of which was that we are living in a world made largely fact free by the right wing echo chamber. I mentioned the fact that a friend of mine got an email from a right wing friend in which she claimed that Obama had spent his term blaming Bush for the world’s problems. I observed that was simply not the case, although he and the Democrats would be perfectly justified in doing so. As if to prove my point, one of my occasional right wing commenters had this to say:

google Blame Bush and you get 55.6 million results

Now there are probably times when the number of hits a particular search gets has some meaning, but this particular search can in no logical way be used to prove or disprove my point, which was that Obama has not made a habit of blaming Bush for anything. I certainly have, and so have lots of other people. Yet apparently my commenter thinks that somehow his search disproves my assertion. A corollary, perhaps, of the larger point I was making-both fact and logic free. The least he could do was search “Obama blame Bush”, though even the result of that search would be meaningless.

By the way, a search for “blame Obama” achieves 15,900,000 results, which considering Bush’s head start in both chronology and incompetence compares quite favorably in terms of raw numbers. Of course that result in no way proves that any particular person is blaming Obama for anything. In fact, at least on the first page of hits, that search turns up a lot of instances of Obama blaming….BP for the oil spill, not Bush for anything. Since Bush spent a lot of time blaming Clinton for everything under the sun, who knows how many of those 56 million hits are examples of just that.

Unfortunately, this is just one small, backwater example of an asymmetry with which we on the rational side of the street must deal. We try to deal in reasoned argument, while they are quite satisfied with non sequiturs. In fact, they appear to be proud of them.

By the way, it remains the case that there is almost nothing going tragically wrong in this country today that cannot be rightfully blamed on Bush and/or the Republicans. That’s simple fact and, as I said yesterday, it’s about time the Democrats started doing some blaming.


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Party tomorrow

Thursday, June 17, 2010

The Groton Democratic Town Committee invites all and sundry to a political gathering tomorrow at the German Club, Frohsinn Hall, 54 Greenmanville Avenue, Mystic.

Along with the usual Groton suspects, this is your chance to meet one or more of the following:

Congressman Joe Courtney (who can’t stay long because of another commitment)
Dan Malloy (possibly)
Mary Glassman
Denise Merrill
Kevin Lembo
State Senator Andy Maynard
State Representative Elissa Wright
Jerry Garcia’s wife: Magdalena Adamczyk Garcia

There will also be some representatives of various other candidates.

Suggested donation:

$10.00 for victims of the Bush recession.

$25.00 for anyone who’s not

Cash Bar

Music by Kit Johnson

UPDATE: Dan Malloy has confirmed that he is coming.


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So considerate

Thursday, June 17, 2010

From a notice I just received from my insurance company:

Over the past several years, changes in coverage such as special deductibles that apply only to the perils of windstorm and/or hurricane have been implemented as part of our overall effort to provide you with the best protection at the lowest reasonable cost.

So good to know they’re looking out for me.


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The power of prayer

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Former (thank god the forces of nature that drive all things) Congressman Mark Souder, the deeply devout Christian can’t understand why he couldn’t stop [insert your favorite word for the act here] his abstinence touting mistress, even after praying to Jehovah:

“I prayed multiple times a day, sang hymns with emotion and tears, felt each time that it wouldn’t happen again, read the Bible every morning. . . . So how in the world did I have a ‘torrid’ (which is an accurate word) many-year affair? How could I compartmentalize it so much?

Basically, he could do it because he was a gold plated hypocrite. But not to worry, as the story at the link shows, he is forgiven by his peers, who have a way of forgiving their hypocritical political or religious friends while extending no mercy to their foes (not for them Jesus’ injunction to love your enemy). Souder is apparently hitting the confessional circuit, where no doubt he’ll be a big draw, see e.g., John Rowland.

Meanwhile, what of the over 200,000 college students who lost student loans, courtesy of Mark Souder, because they were convicted of minor drug offenses. No forgiveness for them, and no second act on the lecture circuit.


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A delusional nation

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

A friend of mine forwarded an email he received from a right wing acquaintance about Obama. I won’t quote from the email, but I think it’s fair to say that any reality based person reading it would wonder what planet the person lived on. Among other things, the writer claimed that Obama has spent all his time blaming George Bush for the state we are in. Setting aside the fact that he would be perfectly justified in doing so, it’s a charge that seems peculiarly divorced from reality. From a purely political perspective it would have been great if Obama and the Democrats had spent the last year and a half invoking George Bush at every turn, but it’s asking too much to expect the Democrats to coordinate anything these days.

Part of the reason these things happen, I think, is that rightwingers are allowed to make these charges in environments where they know they will not be questioned. Consider Steve King, idiot Congressman from Iowa:

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is standing by his comments that President Obama has a “default mechanism” that “favors the black person” in a dispute — and says that Americans need to talk about this.

The natural follow up question would be: What on earth are you talking about? But that question never gets asked, because comments like this are always made while the person in question is safely ensconced in a right wing radio host’s studio, or in the friendly confines of Fox and Friends. In this case, the comment was made to G. Gordon Liddy, convicted criminal.

The one example King gave was Obama’s defense of Louis Gates, Jr., a matter in which Obama took no official action (and to which his first reaction was absolutely correct), but King charged, without a single example, that there is an “inclination on the part of the White House and the justice department and perhaps others within the administration to break on the side of favoritism with regard to race”.

Can there be any doubt that if there was a scintilla of truth to this charge that the actual facts would have been bruited about by the right wing? But we live in a world in which the right, at least, really is allowed to have not only its own opinion, but its own facts, which go unchallenged when asserted, and which are then amplified by repetition by a “mainstream” press that sees its duty as merely to report what is said, and not to provide context or correction. Have you ever heard one of these folks moaning about socialism being asked to define the term, much less being asked to give concrete examples of any actual Obama initiatives the real socialists approve?

As a result of this fact free discourse, we are a nation of politically deluded people. Maybe that’s appropriate, since we are also the most religiously deluded people in the Western World. It makes for a toxic mix, and doesn’t leave much margin of error for the rest of us, since if the info at the link is true, rational people are a minority in this country that depend for their survival on their ability to induce a certain percentage of the crazy to cast rational votes.


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Couldn’t have happened

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

There’s some really stunning news in this morning’s paper. It seems that BP took “shortcuts” and put finishing the well ahead of safety:

To save time and drilling costs, BP took “shortcuts” that may have led to the oil rig explosion and the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a letter released Monday by two House Democrats leading an investigation of the disaster.

The letter, sent in advance of congressional hearings with senior oil executives this week, paints a damning picture of five decisions the lawmakers said the oil firm took “to speed finishing the well,” which was running “significantly behind schedule.” Marshaling e-mails, interviews and documents, the lawmakers said: “In effect, it appears that BP repeatedly chose risky procedures in order to reduce costs and save time, and made minimal efforts to contain the added risk.”

Who could ever imagine that a corporation doing business in America would disregard the few rules we actually have in place and take “shortcuts”? Certainly no corporate officer would weigh the environment of the entire Gulf Coast against corporate profits and, funny thing, big bonuses and find the scale tipped in favor of profit. Who could have predicted it? Certainly not the Congress that wrote the law limiting liability to $75 million dollars, the law that they are now falling all over themselves to say they want to repeal, but which, what with all the press of business, just might never get repealed. Surely not Obama, who ditched his opposition to off shore drilling to try to look “bi-partisan” and shill for votes anyone in his (or her) right mind knew he’d never get. Certainly not the American people, particularly the folks who live by the Gulf, whose leaders are still pressing for more drilling, without much blowback from the home folks. Aren’t unregulated corporations supposed to avoid this sort of thing because somehow it’s in their long term best interest to do so?

All I can say is that this story certainly deserved the front page coverage it got in the Day. Absolutely shocking and absolutely unexpected. The next thing you know we’ll find out the bankers don’t give a damn whether they bring down the world economy, so long as their bonuses are secure. Now that would be a shocker indeed.


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Truly Astonishing

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Lee Whitnum, the Senate candidate who made Merrick Alpert look like a powerhouse, and who didn’t even get to go on stage with Merrick at the convention (among other things she went to the wrong place) has filed suit against Dan Malloy for calling her an anti-Semite.

Now, I am actually quite sympathetic to her basic premise: AIPAC drives our discourse on Israel, often contrary to our interests and sometimes contrary to Israel’s. And it’s quite true that one can be against AIPAC without being anti-Semitic. Lots of Jews disagree with its positions, and I think we can agree that there are not all that many anti-Semitic Jews. She may even have a case against Dan if he really said what she alleges. My recollection is that calling someone a racist or an anti-Semite is libel or slander per se, but I could be wrong about that.

But I must say I’m astounded by one thing. According to Connecticut News Junkie, the woman is about to publish a book about AIPAC. A whole book, by someone who could write this, taken from her self authored complaint against Malloy:

“At no time did Ms. Whitnum speak, nor write, disparagingly about any religious group therefore, the plaintiff seeks to define what it means to be ‘anti-Semitic’ and to make it defamatory to use the term to stifle much needed discussion as it related to the well-being of the United States of America,” Whitnum writes in her lawsuit.

A whole book, written in that style? My god. Maybe she thinks that’s the way lawyers write. If her whole book is like that, she’ll have to pay people to read it.

By the way, Whitnum makes a common mistake. She refers to Malloy as the “plaintiff”, when he’s actually the defendant. At least I hope she’s referring to Malloy, or her merely ungrammatical and tedious sentence becomes completely incoherent.


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