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Sunday Sermon

Sunday, September 22, 2013

As my regular readers know, I have a hard earned degree in Catholic theology from Our Lady of Sorrows Grammar School, so it was only to be expected that many readers would have asked for my thoughts regarding the Pope's recent announcement that the church has, perhaps, been a bit obsessive about abortion and gays. It will likely, therefore, come as a shock to those readers to learn that no one has solicited my views, but I attribute this to shyness. Not wanting to deprive the world of my unique perspective, informed as it is with years of grueling Catholic education, I will respond to the uplifted voices which, if they are not raised in the world of reality, ring out loud and clear in my head.

Some might say that it is strange that the Pope can make news by verbalizing something that is and was common knowledge to those whose synapses are properly wired. But I beg to remind my readers that properly wired synapses are in short supply these days. The laws of evolution have been subverted, for certainly while some are winnowed out, many more survive despite Darwin's supposedly iron laws.

But back to the Pope. Of course, I agree with his remarks. (How can you not help but agree with an infallible being?) In its almost single minded obsessiveness with gays and abortion, the Church has almost completely lost sight of the other groups and activities that it has righteously condemned through the centuries. When was the last time the Church burned a usurer, or even condemned one, and God knows (or at least I believe God knows) that if usurers ever needed condemnation they certainly need it now. But usurers are small potatoes.

Take women, for instance. In its single minded obsession with abortion, the Church has almost lost sight of its broader mission to keep women securely under the thumb of men. During this obsessional period the Church has silently acquiesced to a level of sexual equality that would, I'm sure, have been abhorrent to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, had he ever chosen to express himself on the subject. I am qualified to speak on this subject because, as a person with a degree in theology, I can unerringly tell what Jesus would have said on any subject, no matter how much my pronouncements might seem at variance with what little we know of what he actually said.) It's off the subject a bit, but few people know that Jesus was adamantly opposed to any restrictions on gun ownership. But..back to women. In ways large and small the church has neglected many opportunities to keep women in subjection. Oh sure, it spared a few moments to condemn American nuns for their own obsession: social justice, but there was no follow through. Nary a witch was burnt.

Heretics, too, have gotten a virtual free pass. It's more than ever true that no one expects the Spanish Inquisition, but the sad fact is that no one gets one! Unless, of course, they are gay or had an abortion, but that lets so many fish wriggle through the net.

And don't let me get started on the Jews. The Church has a proud history of virulent anti-Semitism, but lately, unless the Jew in question is gay, the Church seems perfectly content to keep its anti-Semitism hidden in the closet, along with so many of its priests.

And need I remind my readers that nowadays, there are brand new groups that deserve condemnation and persecution that hardly even existed before modern times, which the Church has all but ignored in its single minded obsession with gays and abortion. Now that science has made the case for atheism, the number of out and proud non-believers has skyrocketed. Why, back in the day no Pope worth his salt would have let an atheist go unburnt; nowadays, even in Rome you can't even spit without hitting one.

So I am absolutely with the Pope. The Church has made a grievous mistake by focusing on gays and abortion. Millions of people are going un-demeaned, un-persecuted, and un-loathed because of it. They deserve to know that they too are unworthy of respect and human dignity.

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Organized Crime on the Government Dole

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

There is no criminal enterprise more organized than the modern banking industry. Wait, that may be unfair. It’s not really criminal if the government legalizes it once you start doing it. Still, if anyone else was doing it…

This is somewhat old news, but worth passing on, as reported by Pam Martens at Wall Street on Parade. It seems Elizabeth Warren was a bit upset about the fact that the too big to fail banks are feeding at yet another government trough, pushing the intended beneficiaries aside in the process:

Warren reminded the federal regulator that “Congress established the Federal Home Loan Bank System to serve as a reliable source of funding to local banks and other community lenders that offer families home mortgages.” Warren cited a report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau showing that significant levels of student debt pose a barrier to Americans trying to buy their first homes.

With housing stalling and mortgage credit still tight for many borrowers, Wall Street On Parade decided to delve into the financial filings of each of the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks and see who else might be getting a windfall from a program set up to help local lenders compete with the big boys. According to the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston, the system’s mission is as follows: “By supporting community-based financial institutions, the Federal Home Loan Bank System helps to strengthen communities. The System directly benefits consumers by helping to ensure competition in the housing-finance market.” Got that – competition.

The mission, like so much else that Wall Street touches, seems to have run off the tracks. As of June 30, 2013, three of the giant, global, Wall Street banks are the largest borrowers from the Federal Home Loan Banks, with JPMorgan way out in front with borrowings of $61.840 billion. And it’s not borrowing from just one FHLBank, it’s borrowing from three and grabbing 65.8 percent of all advances from the FHLBank of Cincinnati, which services Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee.

Bank of America Corporation comes in second with borrowings of $33.844 billion. Citigroup, parent of Citibank, is next with $25.702 billion. These 3 banks, out of 7500 members of the Federal Home Loan Banks, already control over $2.539 trillion in domestic deposits in their FDIC insured subsidiaries – a whopping 41 percent of all U.S. domestic deposits. Because they are considered too-big-to-fail, they already receive a huge, lower-cost borrowing advantage over community banks and credit unions. With all those deposits, why do they need to go to the well of the FHLBanks?

(via Wall Street on Parade)

So, these banks borrow from us taxpayers at near to 0% and then, in the case of yet another big bank (Sallie Mae) turn around and lend it back to us taxpayers in the form of student loans at 25 to 40 times that rate. Nice.

These are the same banks, by the way, that are working hard to destroy the type of banks the Home Loan Bank System is supposed to be helping.

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Going out with style

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

A belated comment about some recent good news, and that reminds me, this counts as my good news post of the week, as it truly is good news that Larry Summers won't be rewarded for helping destroy the economy by getting to run the Fed. This is good news on a number of levels It's the first time in recent history that someone like Summers has been taken to task for incompetence; the usual pattern is that these guys keep falling up; in Washington, nothing succeeds like failure. The other piece of good news is that this truly historical event was engineered by liberals, who have finally signaled that they have had enough. It's about time the left (such as it is in the Congress) took a lesson from the right.

So that's the good news, but here's what interested me. I read stories about Summers' withdrawal in both the Globe and the Times on Monday morning. The Globe's article was fairly straightforward, but the article in the Times appeared to have been ghostwritten by Summers and his flaks, loaded as it was with quotes from people close to Summers who refused to be identified. This has been a pattern, much noted elsewhere, throughout Summers' campaign for the job. What I took away from the article is that Summers truly is a nasty man, for when it became clear that he could not get the votes, he decided to turn on Obama and accuse him of weakness.

WASHINGTON — For Lawrence H. Summers, President Obama’s preferred candidate to lead the Federal Reserve, the messy debate over a military attack in Syria was the final sign.

After weeks of opposition to his candidacy from an array of progressives, the president’s inability to rally Congressional Democrats on Syria persuaded Mr. Summers that his most important audience — the Senate, which must confirm a Fed chairman — probably could not be won over.

He concluded that the White House was also unlikely to overcome opposition to his candidacy from many of the same Democrats, who view him as an opponent of stronger financial regulation, according to supporters who insisted on anonymity to describe confidential conversations with him.

“Clearly Obama couldn’t bring his own most enthusiastic supporters to back him on an issue of national security,” one supporter said. “How was he going to corral them for Larry?”

via New York Times

I suppose it's too much to expect Summers to have enough intellectual honesty to admit that Obama couldn't sell Summers, because Summers as Fed chief, like the proposed action in Syria, is a truly terrible idea. A few details here.

But in an extra dismal news week, month and year, this truly is good news, made a bit sweeter by the fact that New York's billionaire mayor will likely be replaced by a card carrying liberal. Next thing you know, they'll be sending a banker to jail.

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Sounds right to me

Sunday, September 15, 2013

My fellow Democrats: read this.

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Government sponsored inequality

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

As regular readers know, I'm a big fan of Dean Baker. Today he demolishes the claim that current levels of inequality are the result of market forces before which we are powerless to act. But no, as Dean shows with numerous examples, its not the invisible hand of the free market that is causing inequality, it's government policy. Baker's list is admittedly incomplete, so I'm going to add a couple of my favorites.

The first is low hanging fruit. With an exception during the Clinton years, we have had more than 30 years of tax cuts aimed disproportionately at the rich. While the rest of us get some crumbs off the tax cut table, most of those are vacuumed up by the inevitable need to raise taxes at the state and local level, not to mention the reduction in funding to essential services that causes among other thing, widespread and unfair taxation in the form, for instance, of student loans taken out to pay for an education that should be free.

But the most unequal of us all, as Baker points out, are the bankers:

At the top of the list are of winners are the Wall Street money boys. Does anyone think they would be as rich if the government taxed the financial sector the same way it taxes every other sector in the economy. Even the International Monetary Fund has called for additional taxes on the financial sector in the range of $40 billion a year to make its contribution to the Treasury comparable to that of other sectors. (My favorite here is a financial speculation tax like the one the U.K. has applied to stock trades for more than three centuries.)

via Beat the Press

But shouldn't we add the government policies that preserve inequality, particularly for the Wall Street money boys. Had they not been bailed out in 2008 at least some of the boys would not be as more equal as they are now. When we peons get into trouble the government might step in to make sure we don't starve, though the Republicans don't like even that very much, but when the boys get into trouble it makes sure their big money bonuses get paid. That’s a lot better than food stamps.

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Iraq redux?

Monday, September 9, 2013

I prefer to stay away from conspiracy theories, and I admit that, though I have expressed a lot of disappointment with Obama, I've held on to a belief that he is qualitatively different than Bush. I have, in short, a tough time accepting that he, like Bush, would lie us into war, but alas I may be very wrong.

The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, observing the time honored tradition of blaming the King's faults on his courtiers, have written to Obama, warning him that his advisers may be steering him wrong. I'd like to believe Obama is being poorly advised or actively misled, but…

Anyway, the VIPS wrote to Bush before the Iraq war telling him that his folks were lying us into a war, and now they've written to Obama:

Our sources confirm that a chemical incident of some sort did cause fatalities and injuries on August 21 in a suburb of Damascus. They insist, however, that the incident was not the result of an attack by the Syrian Army using military-grade chemical weapons from its arsenal. That is the most salient fact, according to CIA officers working on the Syria issue. They tell us that CIA Director John Brennan is perpetrating a pre-Iraq-War-type fraud on members of Congress, the media, the public – and perhaps even you.

We have observed John Brennan closely over recent years and, sadly, we find what our former colleagues are now telling us easy to believe. Sadder still, this goes in spades for those of us who have worked with him personally; we give him zero credence. And that goes, as well, for his titular boss, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who has admitted he gave “clearly erroneous” sworn testimony to Congress denying NSA eavesdropping on Americans.

Intelligence Summary or Political Ploy?

That Secretary of State John Kerry would invoke Clapper’s name this week in Congressional testimony, in an apparent attempt to enhance the credibility of the four-page “Government Assessment” strikes us as odd. The more so, since it was, for some unexplained reason, not Clapper but the White House that released the “assessment.”

This is not a fine point. We know how these things are done. Although the “Government Assessment” is being sold to the media as an “intelligence summary,” it is a political, not an intelligence document. The drafters, massagers, and fixers avoided presenting essential detail. Moreover, they conceded upfront that, though they pinned “high confidence” on the assessment, it still fell “short of confirmation.”

via Consortium News

More here and here. This is truly depressing, particularly because the objective in this escapade continues to be undefined. At least with Bush we knew that the point was to take out Saddam so that Bush could say he was a better man than his Daddy, but the definition of victory in this war (and bombing a sovereign nation is an act of war) is still elusive, and, to anyone with half a brain that fact alone compels the conclusion that the outcome will be a disaster, as we seek some way to declare victory as things escalate out of control.

We can only hope that Obama will wake up and subdue his inner Bush. We thought, or hoped he was a better guy that this, but if he is in fact lying us into war (and claiming certainty without good evidence is lying) then he's no better than Spurious George. It is to be hoped that he and Kerry will take the face saving diplomatic approach currently on offer from Putin.

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Playing by Humpty Dumpty’s rules

Sunday, September 8, 2013

A few days ago I came across an article, in which the following paragraph appears.

The Obama administration is considering putting the Pentagon in charge of arming and training moderate rebel forces in Syria, a move that could help expand the effort significantly beyond the limited scope of the current Central Intelligence Agency program, U.S. officials said.

via Buzzflash, quoting the Wall Street Journal

I consider myself something of a student of history, and I think I can say with some assurance that moderates (most relevant definition from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: “Not extreme in opinion, not strongly partisan, designating or pertaining to any of various political or ecclesiastical parties avoiding extreme views”) rarely become rebels, and, in the event of a successful rebellion, moderates rarely run the show. One might argue that the American Revolution was an exception, but there's reason to argue that was not a true revolution, and in any event, if it's an exception, it proves the rule. Certainly Syria bids fair to emulate Iran (the “moderates” ended up in front of firing squads) rather than colonial America.

Of course language is an elastic thing. If it suits the administration to call people in rebellion “moderates” it will do so; the question is why the Wall Street Journal, or any newspaper, would simply accept the designation. But this misuse of language is ordinary operating procedure. Consider the use of the word “rebel”. It is rarely applied to those of whom we do not approve, for the word has a certain romantic cachet. If we do not approve, the “rebel” morphs into a “militant”. These words have not completely lost all meaning, but their use often tells us more about the person using them than the person(s) to whom they are applied.

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Good News Day

Friday, September 6, 2013

The week’s almost over, so I’ve got to get this in. No, Obama has not come to his senses and called off the humanitarian bombing, but this is still good news, if it’s true. This man from Japan has invented a process to turn plastic back to oil. I suppose there’s some questions not answered in the video, such as how much energy you need to burn to do the conversion, but it still looks good:

If this really works, and if the oil companies let it see a broader application, then maybe someone can make money cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Presumably it would disappear more quickly if we cleaned it up rather than if we wait for plastic eating fish to evolve.

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Our guys vote right on Syria

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

This is not my “good news” post of the week, since it's weak tea, good news wise, but it is good news for the people of this state and this Congressional District that Chris Murphy voted against the Syria misadventure, and Joe Courtney has voiced his opposition.

For anyone looking for an education on this issue, this post by Juan Cole is a must read. No good can come of this.

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Founding Fondlers

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Lately our historically challenged right-wing brethren have, against all the evidence, taken to ascribing their own beliefs (or beliefs they pretend to hold) to our sainted Founding Fathers. If we are to believe them, our forefathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in religion, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, but some are created more equal than others. Today at Kos we get the latest example:

Oh, conservative crackpots, is there no conspiracy theory you can't duct-tape to the unwilling corpses of The Founding Fathers? Jerome Corsi, who is one of the battiest bats ever to fly from a cave, says that same-sex marriage is a plot to allow government to crack down on Christians. He knows this because America's founding fathers knew that sex is not supposed to be fun, or something.

“Our founding fathers knew that if we went this direction, there was no more moral compass and you won’t be able to explain to your children — you’ll have to face the fact that we lost holding the line on one of the most principle issues in the Bible, and that is sex is not about fun,” he remarked. “If you want to have fun, read a book, go to a movie. Sex is about the procreation of children. It’s a sacred responsibility that is meant by God to have men and women commit their lifetime to children.”

Well, one Founding Father that didn't get the message was one of my personal favorites, Ben Franklin. Ben is one of those guys high on the list of folks to whom I'd like to go back in time to meet. No one can deny him Founding Fatherhood, for in the case of the constitution, as opposed to his firstborn son, his fatherhood was entirely legitimate. Does this piece of poetry, authored by Ben at the mature age of 39, sound like the product of someone who thought sex was not about having fun?

“Fair Venus calls; her voice obey;
In Beauty’s arms spend night and day
The joys of love all joys excell
And loving’s certainly doing well.”

I won't vouch for the deathless quality of the poetry, but the meaning seems perfectly clear. And if he didn't have sex with half the women in France that he met, he certainly wanted people to think that he did, and if he thought sex was about having children why would he tout the advantages of an older mistress. After making the obligatory pitch for marriage he says (I've only reproduced the most salient parts):

But if you will not take this Counsel, and persist in thinking a Commerce with the Sex inevitable, then I repeat my former Advice, that in all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones. You call this a Paradox, and demand my Reasons. They are these:

..

Because there is no hazard of Children, which irregularly produc'd may be attended with much Inconvenience.

…
Because thro' more Experience, they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an Intrigue to prevent Suspicion. The Commerce with them is therefore safer with regard to your Reputation. And with regard to theirs, if the Affair should happen to be known, considerate People might be rather inclin'd to excuse an old Woman who would kindly take care of a young Man, form his Manners by her good Counsels, and prevent his ruining his Health and Fortune among mercenary Prostitutes.

Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part: The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement. (Emphases added)

A good and healthy debate could be had about whether his advice was tongue in cheek or not (and whether we can forgive the sexism), but it's really hard to make the case that he thought sex was all about having kids.

And let's not even talk about Tom and Sally.

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