Democrats and moral values


How did Republicans corner the God Market? More importantly, how can Democrats be taken seriously by people of faith? Democratic candidate for Wisconsin's 5th Congressional District, does a terrific job of tackling my second question in over at Folkbium's blog. Kennedy grew up Catholic, but converted to Mormonism as a teenager. His lengthy and informative post takes apart most of the misunderstandings of that church.
Despite conservative personal behaviors, Latter-Day Saints are also very progressive collectively. The Church has its own welfare system and we take care of people during hard times. The LDS Church has a worldwide charitable arm that functions in areas of natural disaster, famine or war to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Our women's auxiliary regularly provides meals and assistance to families when a new child is born, a parent is sick or there is a death in the family. We take seriously the passage from the Book of Mormon: "When ye are in the service of your fellow being, ye are only in the service of your God." (Mosiah 2:17) Our Sunday School classes and weekly worship services regularly teach of: faith, hope and charity; brotherly kindness; and lifting up the sick, the afflicted, the elderly, the fatherless, the widows, and the downtrodden.
Kennedy is trying to unseat James Sensenbrenner, a 14-term Republican, and it looks like he's off to a great start.
1.1.06 15:49


Bush's spying scandal and media myths


Media Matters has posted the top 12 media myths and falsehoods about the President's latest scandal. My favorite: "Only Democrats are concerned about the Bush administration's secret surveillance."


Abramoff sings

And speaking of media myths, here's one we'll be hearing more and more in the coming months: That GOP sleazeball lobbyist Jack Abramoff's criminal behavior taints both parties equally. That's a true statement if you define 'equally" as ""bribing mostly Republicans"":
Between 2001 and 2004, Abramoff gave more than $127,000 to Republican candidates and committees and nothing to Democrats, federal records show. At the same time, his Indian clients were the only ones among the top 10 tribal donors in the U.S. to donate more money to Republicans than Democrats.
Among those spinning the "both sides are guilty" myth is President George W. Bush, when he told Fox News last month "It seems to me that (Abramoff) was an equal money dispenser, that he was giving money to people in both political parties.''

The indispensible Digby says:
This characterization of the scandal as being "bi-partisan" is typical bad mainstream journalism, particularly the emphasis they are placing on the very small handful of Democrats who've even been mentioned (much less included in any legal procedings.) Not only are they creating some equity and illegality where none exists, by doing it they are missing the real story, as usual.
Don't let them get away with it. The Republicans, or their media poodles.
3.1.06 16:22


Make babies, not war


The Red State blogosphere is in full swoon today over Mark Steyn's 6,000-word Opinion Journal piece prophetically titled The Century Ahead. Steyn, a theatre-critic and columnist, pushes the Stormfront.org envelope when he writes that The War Against Terror is all about demographics - brown people make babies faster than white people. In Steyn's dark vision, in 100 years our great-granddaughters will be dressed like beekeepers and living under sharia law.

Steyn does make some valid points. He wonders why liberals, and those he sneeringly calls "progressives", aren't more concerned about radical Islam's hostility to gays, reproductive rights, and Britney Spears. I wonder the same thing. But Steyn's solution to Islamist encroachment on Europe and elsewhere is to banish "secondary impulses" such as government funded health care, so society can get back to basics, or what Steyn calls the "primary impulses" of family, faith, and national defense. I guess people who depend on universal for health care are too busy seeing their government funded podiatrist to have babies.

Steyn also has nasty things to say about gays, and abortion rights activists, and multi-culturalists, but he keeps circling back to his main point, that the west has grown too soft, too dependent on government, and too busy to make babies. Meanwhile, those randy Muslims, with their peek-a-boo abayas and push-up suicide belts, are screwing like bunnies.

The real threat to Western civilization is not terrorism, since al Qaeda lacks the military power to defeat even our weak, government funded military, says Steyn. He quotes Arnold Toynbee's chestnut that "civilizations die from suicide, not murder", and says the real suicide bombers threatening the west are progressives (said with a sneer) and their "lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, (and) multiculturalism." He particularly has it in for multiculturalism, which Steyn defines as "feeling good about other cultures."

Steyn's solution to the coming demographic jidad is a return to Christian values, where men are men and women are receptacles. In other words, it takes a paternalistic, theocratic state to defeat a paternalistic, theocratic enemy. In order to come to this astonishing conclusion, Steyn first has to ignore any number of facts. Here's four for starters:

1. Any race can be any religion. We're not at war with Islam. I have a Syrian friend, a devout Muslim, who lives in the Milwaukee suburbs and has three children. Is he now my demographic enemy?

2) Cultures change, especially robust, liberal democracies like ours. Maintaining our current culture is about as smart as maintaining our current technology.

3) Steyn presumes that all Muslims are the same, and that all Christians are the same. But most Muslims are liberal, and yearn for freedom. I think George Bush said that.

4) The Islamic uprising throughout Europe has more to do with poverty and lack of opportunity than Wahabiism. If anything, Europeans need to be more multicultural, not less, to curb Islamic violence.

America and the West will prevail in the current War on Terror because of our western values of tolerance, justice, and equality, not despite them. Right wing ideologues like Steyn are the political equivalents of war profiteers, trying to sell their reactionary vision to a public that is too distracted by the sound of distant cannons to properly inspect the merchandise.
4.1.06 22:37


Cry panic and unleash the dogs of war


Vice President Richard Cheney strongly defended warrantless wiretaps the other day, and said that if the government was violating our fourth amendment rights prior to Sept. 11, then the terrorist attacks that killed 3,000 Americans might not have happened:
Cheney insisted that the highly classified program, authorized by President George W. Bush after hijackers flew planes into the World Trade Center's twin towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, had helped prevent potential terrorist attacks and did not violate civil liberties.

"If we'd been able to do this before 9/11, we might have been able to pick up on two of the hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon."

"They were in the United States, communicating with al Qaeda associates overseas, but we didn't know they were here plotting until it was too late," he said.
You know what else might have prevented 9-11? A memo titled Bin Laden determined to strike in US. Or a President more focused on al Qaeda and national security, and less on stem cell research and paybacks for the Gulf War.

This is not great war leadership. It's panic.
5.1.06 01:33


More bad album covers


Complete with snarky comments.




Haunting Michael Jackson's dreams
since 1972.



And thus ended the Ritchie Family line.



I'll get the money, I promise, and Scooter,
I mean, Dr. Lujack, will fix everything.



Our manager says that if we sell enough
albums, then we can have our clothes back.

Via Piglipstick
5.1.06 18:58


Memo to Bill O'Reilly


Chronic confabulator and luffa aficionado Bill O'Reilly says that if he makes a mistake, he will fess up:
I mean, we have these nutty, far-left smear websites recording every word I say, so we have to record every word I say, because I know they'll distort, they'll lie, they'll take it out of context. We know what they're doing. So, we are very methodical in what we do and how we do it. If we make a mistake, we tell you. I do three hours of commentary a day. Of course, I'm gonna make mistakes and misstatements.
Bill: You probably want to hit the ground running with this "honesty" thing you're trying out. So how about setting the record straight with the whopper you told Dave Letterman two nights ago about the Wisconsin Elementary school where the "pinhead" teachers changed the words to Silent Night, to cleanse the song of any religious significance. That didn't happen.
5.1.06 21:02


Mine safety and the Democrats




Please God, please please please don't let the Democrats blame President Bush for the senseless and tragic explosion that killed 12 West Virginia coal miners this week. Sure, the Bush administration is packed with cronies, but even if the person heading up the obscure federal office that overseas mining safety was Laura's library science study partner, this is not Katrina. Besides, there's a better way to gain politically from this tragedy without looking like ghouls.

Forget croneyism for now. Sago is all about how government is a force for good in people's lives. Publius at Legal Fiction nails it:
The Sago story, like Katrina, is one of those rare stories that forces you to step back and reflect on the fundamentals - or "first principles" - of your political and moral values. We tend to lose sight of these first principles in the everyday give-and-take about this-or-that issue. But beneath all the gotcha and the plotting and the partisan bickering, there are values and assumptions that form the very foundation of our political thought. Even if we don't think about them much, these fundamental assumptions are what make us "liberal" or "conservative" in the first place.

And one of my first principles is that government is a force for good. Government makes our lives better and more secure. I don't believe in abstract Marxist reorderings of society, but I do believe that the American people are better off because of the actions of the federal government. That's why I vote the way I vote, and that's why I write the way I write. Clinton's anti-government rhetoric was politically effective and all that, but if you really want a create a progressive majority over the long-term, you need to rehabilitate government in the minds of Americans. We need to stop running from this simple truth, and instead embrace it.
I have a conservative friend who has made a bundle selling plastics to the automotive industry. Predictably, he sees nothing good about government, and has voted Republican his whole life. But where would his lucrative sales gig be without government? Who built the roads that make mass production of automobiles possible? Who insures bank deposits, so people can save up enough money to buy a car? Who maintains the ports to receive imported oil, and educates the automotive engineers that build the cars? Without effective government and free market democracy, my friend might be a clever shepherd, or a successful brigand. But he most definitely wouldn't be living in the cushy suburbs of Detroit, and enjoying weekends at his Lake Michigan beach house.

If the Democrats need to score points off a tragedy, this is the way to do it. Emphasize the positive. We only look ridiculous when we start blaming Bush for every disaster, man-made or otherwise. "The Sago mine disaster highlights the need for continued federal oversite of worker safety" will play better than "Bush is killing us all."

Republicans have been scoring their own points off 9/11 for four years, and they've gotten away with it because their message is actionable - to prevent another terrorist attack, America needs to fight back. Forget that we attacked the wrong country, and handed bin Laden a gift in the process, the point remains. The Bushies spun a positive message out of a tragic event. The Sago mining disaster offers Democrats the same opportunity, without making us look like tone deaf opportunists in the process.

In the past ten years, 376 miners have died in mining accidents in the US. While every death is tragic, the number is small when you consider the number of mines, and number of men and women employed in that dangerous work.

If you think it's something of a miracle that there aren't more deaths, don't thank Bush. Thank government.

That's a message Americans can get behind.
6.1.06 01:40


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