Ten Things I Am Proud of

I have screwed up plenty in my life, but there are a few things I have done (and not done) that I am kind of proud of.

1. In my first national election I voted for George McGovern.
2. I rebuilt two Volkswagen engines (a Beetle and a Bus) all the way from splitting the crankcase and back up.  The rebuilt engines actually started in both cases! (Well, on the first one I had the intake and outflow tubes to the fuel pump switched, but once I figured that out it started.)
3. I have never watched American Idol or Survivor.
4. I have never had a speeding ticket.
5. Every car I have owned has cost less that $20,000, including six new ones.
6. I finally read War and Peace (at age 65).
7. My daughters both grew up to be progressives.
8. I think I was one of the first stay-at-home dads (1978+).
9. I read Godel, Escher, Bach from beginning to end (and plan on a second read while snowbirding on the Gulf of Mexico in January and February).
10. I never gave money to any PAC of any company for which I worked.

Christmas Music

Hymn #54, Christian Worship: A Lutheran Hymnal
Text by Jaroslav Vajda
This hymn is almost chokingly beautiful with the setting by Carl Schalk.

Where shepherds lately knelt and kept the angel's word,
I come in half belief , a pilgrim strangely stirred;
But there is room and welcome there for me,
But there is room and welcome there for me.

In that unlikely place I find him as they said:
Sweet newborn Babe, how frail! and in a manger bed,
A still, small voice to cry one day for me,
A still, small voice to cry one day for me.

How should I not have known Isaiah would be there,
His prophecies fulfilled? With pounding heart I stare:
A child, a son, the Prince of Peace for me,
A child, a son, the Prince of Peace for me.

Can I, will I forget how Love was born, and burned
Its way into my heart unasked, unforced, unearned,
To die, to live, and not alone for me,
To die, to live, and not alone for me.

We sang this last night in our Christmas Eve Service.  I am still baffled trying to understand what war Sarah Palin and Fox News think they are waging.  It seems to be something about the Second Amendment and whether Santa Claus is black or white.  Such a "war" just trivializes Christmas all the more.  As for me, I know what I need:  a Christ child whose love "burned its way into my heart unasked, unforced, unearned" and whose voice will "cry one day for me."  Sarah and Fox and the rest of the Neo-Pharisees can have their phony war. The battle is already over.  Christ already won it without their help.

Happy Holidays

To any real people who actually read this, I wish you Happy Holidays.  I used to say Merry Christmas, but Sarah Palin, Bill O'Reilly, most of Fox News, etc., have ruined that for me.  I don't want anyone to think I want to be associated with that brood of vipers.  So Happy Holidays to all.

(Partial) Book Review

Review of Sarah Palin's book  here. Warning: the reviewer wasn't able to get through the entire book and I don't think I would be able to either.

Some Things I Wonder About

• I wonder why any journalist takes seriously anything that Darrell Issa tells them.  Time after time stories have been written that turned out to be utterly false (Fast and Furious fiction, Benghazi nonstory, Healthcare.gov security nonissue, IRS nonscandal, etc., etc., etc.).  But they keep running with the stories anyway to their own embarrassment.  He is a man who is not to be trusted.  Why do you keep listening to him?
• I wonder why anyone pays attention to Charles Krauthammer (he's really just my proxy for the whole brood of chickenhawk neo-con vipers).  Not only does he think the Iraq war was a good idea-- he also thinks we won.
• I wonder when we will be given the details of the "Replace" part of "Repeal and Replace".  (Warning: if the term "tort reform" appears anywhere in your answer, the judges will disqualify it)
• I wonder why the Tea Partiers act like the NSA and drones were invented by Obama.  We could have used some of your vehemence during the Bush years.
• I wonder how the NFL can be a nonprofit organization.
• For that matter, I wonder how the NCAA can be a nonprofit, since I don't think there's anything it wouldn't do for money.

Quote(s) of the Day

'There is also free speech that you don't agree with. You are not some sort of "Patriot, fighting for the First Amendment rights of all Americans" if the only time you get upset about a person's "rights being trampled" is when it happens to people who think exactly like you. If you think of the First Amendment when hearing people saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas," you are very, very confused. And if the only free speech that you support is speech that you agree with, that doesn't make you a "patriot." It makes you a hypocrite. And that's something completely different.'

and....

'This is not religious persecution. I cannot stress this enough. He did not get suspended for his religious beliefs. He was suspended because what he said was completely offensive. There are plenty of Christians (many of my friends, in fact) who believe that being gay is a sin and marriage should only be between a man and a woman, yet they could have still answered those questions with love and humility. Someone might use Bible verses to claim that interracial relations are an abomination and say, "Anyone who commits the sin of miscegenation is heading straight to Hell" and call it freedom of religion, but really... It's just old-school hatred. Hatred is not a biblical belief.'

Chris Boeskool, blogging about A&E and ducks
You can read the entire post here.  It's worth it.

Quote for Today

(Thanks to Bill in Portland, Maine)

"Regarding the 'trickle-down theories' which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and social inclusiveness in the world: the promise was that when the glass was full, it would overflow, benefiting the poor. But what happens instead, is that when the glass is full, it magically gets bigger---nothing ever comes out for the poor."

Pope Francis

Surprise! Lots of People Are Saving Money Thanks to Obamacare. http://t.co/1zHdcVjsVO

— Kevin Drum (@kdrum) December 18, 2013

Great Flow Chart Here

Are you being persecuted!? #waronchristmas pic.twitter.com/gANjAWsvqe

— isaacw (@isaacw) December 2, 2013

Mandela

My picks for notable writing on Mandela's death:

From Charles Pierce on those Reaganite hypocrites who came too late to the Mandela dance and now think they can jump on the bandwagon:

It's too late now to seek absolution at the bier of Nelson Mandela, who is dead and can't speak for himself.  Back in the era in which you all opposed him, all you chickenhawk bastards, keeping your campus sandwich joints safe from the Sandinistas, you did so because your politics and your world view were formed in an abattoir, built on the bones of butchered civilians in El Mozote and a hundred other places, steeped in the blood of people like Sister Jean Donovan. You opposed Mandela when it really counted for the same reason you cheered on murderers in this hemisphere. Ronald Reagan was a dim hack who did horrible damage to almost everything he touched. You can own him and be welcome to him, but you don't get Nelson Mandela.

And from Hunter writing for Daily Kos:

Jerry Falwell was against him. Pat Robertson was against him. Dick Cheney was against him, and William F. Buckley was against him, and George Will was against him, and Grover Norquist travelled to South Africa to be against him, and the Heritage Foundation was against him, and of course Ronald Reagan was steadfastly and famously against him.

Everyone would agree that apartheid was wrong, mind you, but Nelson Mandela and the others who fought against the system were just so ... uppity? In the rancidity of Jesse Helms' behavior towards the man it would be impossible to not detect the lingering fury of our own nation's not-that-distant civil rights battles, a fight that many of the same segregationists were still eager to fight, a fight where everyone could agree on the inherent unacceptability of institutional racism but who were forever finding reasons why those who stood up against those things could not be trusted and would not be supported. When his government declared him a terrorist, compliant American forces declared him a terrorist. When his government warned that he was a communist, vast portions of our own country nodded and understood that being a suspected communist was an obviously more troubling thing than the proven violence of apartheid.

Quote of the Day

"Apparently the tweaking of health care law regulations by health care law regulators jumps a constitutional bar that crushing a child's testicles as interrogation device does not."

'Hunter", on Daily Kos  writing on Michele Bachmann's latest Constitutional Crisis ridiculousness.

Don't Let the Drunks Drive Again

I always thought that the most apropos metaphor for the Iraq War was that friends don't let friends drive drunk.  America had many friends back then (France, Canada, et al) that tried to get the neocon drunks in the Bush administration to give up the keys to the car.  Those were our true friends, but the Cheney/ Rumsfeld/Bolton chicken hawk coalition tried to turn them into enemies.

As expected, this same group of scoundrels that sent us to war over nonexistent weapons of mass destruction has reared up its ugly chicken hawk head over the latest Iran initiative.  It is astonishing to me that anyone still cares what they think about anything.  Other people are still cleaning up the mess they left in the Middle East.

You fear that we will be duped by Iran? Well, we were already duped (i.e., neo-conned) by you in 2003.  It's entirely possible that Iran is not to be trusted here. Well, then we have lost a few months and can renew sanctions or whatever else is needed.   That's a much preferable strategy than the chicken hawk willingness to send others off to die to satisfy their need for bluster and empty bravado.  You had eight years to "fix" the serious issues with Iran.  It's time to let someone sober drive the car.

Is Fox and Friends a Secret Parody?

From Hunter at the Daily Kos:

"What if Fox & Friends is actually a biting, tough-edged parody of the rest of the Fox News network, and the rest of us just haven't caught on yet? Elizabeth Hasselbeck hasn't been co-hosting the show for long, but she's already challenging Steve Doocy and the guy who isn't Steve Doocy in their years-running campaign to be known as The Dumb One."

Quote of the Day

"Hey Cohen—if it looks like a racist, talks like a racist, passes racist legislation, it ain't conventional at all—it's racist."

(Denise Oliver Velez, writing on the Daily Kos about Richard Cohen's disgusting column)

Another excerpt from her post (next to her picture):

This is what I look like. The result of an ancestry of a bicentennial of breeding farms and rape during the enslavement period on one side of the family, and a loving marriage between a white Kansan grandmother and a black grandfather from Tennessee on the other (whose marriage was illegal in many parts of the U.S. in 1915 when they wed).

Since we've been informed by Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen that the sight of "us" (and we number in the millions) makes racists he refuses to call racists gag—I suggest strongly that they complete the process.

Puke on.

 You really should read the entire post.  It's here.

Kevin Drum Is Right on as Usual

From Kevin Drum's blog.  As usual, he is mostly right on the mark.  Worth the read.

Quote of the Day

"The reason we have become a middle-class nation is because of the labor movement."

New York Mayor-Elect Bill de Blasio

Bill Gross

Bill Gross from Pimco--hardly a socialist--has this interesting take on taxes.  The whole article is worth the read, but thus section is particularly to the point:

Having benefited enormously via the leveraging of capital since the beginning of my career and having shared a decreasing percentage of my income thanks to Presidents Reagan and Bush 43 via lower government taxes, I now find my intellectual leanings shifting to the plight of labor. I often tell my wife Sue it’s probably a Kennedy-esque type of phenomenon. Having gotten rich at the expense of labor, the guilt sets in and I begin to feel sorry for the less well-off, writing very public Investment Outlooks that “dis” the success that provided me the soapbox in the first place. If your immediate reaction is to nod up and down, then give yourself some points in this intellectual tête-à-tête. Still, I would ask the Scrooge McDucks of the world who so vehemently criticize what they consider to be counterproductive, even crippling taxation of the wealthy in the midst of historically high corporate profits and personal income, to consider this: Instead of approaching the tax reform argument from the standpoint of what an enormous percentage of the overall income taxes the top 1% pay, consider how much of the national income you’ve been privileged to make. In the United States, the share of total pre-tax income accruing to the top 1% has more than doubled from 10% in the 1970s to 20% today. Admit that you, and I and others in the magnificent “1%” grew up in a gilded age of credit, where those who borrowed money or charged fees on expanding financial assets had a much better chance of making it to the big tent than those who used their hands for a living. Yes I know many of you money people worked hard as did I, and you survived and prospered where others did not. A fair economic system should always allow for an opportunity to succeed. Congratulations. Smoke that cigar, enjoy that Chateau Lafite 1989. But (mostly you guys) acknowledge your good fortune at having been born in the ‘40s, ‘50s or ‘60s, entering the male-dominated workforce 25 years later, and having had the privilege of riding a credit wave and a credit boom for the past three decades. You did not, as President Obama averred, “build that,” you did not create that wave. You rode it. And now it’s time to kick out and share some of your good fortune by paying higher taxes or reforming them to favor economic growth and labor, as opposed to corporate profits and individual gazillions. You’ll still be able to attend those charity galas and demonstrate your benevolence and philanthropic character to your admiring public. You’ll just have to write a little bit smaller check. Scrooge McDuck would complain but then he’s swimming in it, and can afford to duck paddle to a shallower end for a while. If you’re in the privileged 1%, you should be paddling right alongside and willing to support higher taxes on carried interest, and certainly capital gains readjusted to existing marginal income tax rates. Stanley Druckenmiller and Warren Buffett have recently advocated similar proposals. The era of taxing “capital” at lower rates than “labor” should now end. [emphasis in the original]

 

Charlie Sykes

Charlie Sykes--the right-wing talk radio dude on WTMJ Milwaukee--now has three PolitiFact ratings in his resume:  one False and two Pants on Fire.

You might recall that Loose-With-The-Truth Sykes was a guest speaker at the Christian Life Resources (CLR) National Convention a year or two ago.  Oh wait...I forgot...CLR isn't interested in the truth as long as it agrees with their politics.

Are You a Lutheran?

Seen on a friend's Facebook page...You might be a Lutheran if you are watching a Star Wars movie and one of the characters says, "May the force be with you" and you respond, "And also with you."

Confessions of a "Conservative" Lutheran

I belong to what is generally regarded as among the most "conservative" church bodies in America:  the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS).  I put it in quotes, because I don't want the so-called conservatism of the church to be confused with political conservatism.  While it is true that the vast majority of WELS members are politically conservative, that's simply because they are a bunch of conservative Germans, not because our doctrine demands it.  Historically, the WELS has been meticulous about distinguishing between the heavenly and earthly kingdoms (kingdoms of the "right hand" and the "left hand"), but this changed with the Clinton administration and got even worse with the election (twice) of Barack Obama.  By now it is beyond dispute that the synod has become more politically active.  The vocabulary used demonstrates this, with an increasing use of language that is from the lexicon of right wing conservatism and the Tea Party.  This is most blatant from some of the affiliated organizations, such as Christian Life Resources, but it has also crept into sermons that I have heard now and then, as well as in Bible classes.  While most of the Synod pronouncements try to stay politically neutral, even official publications like Forward in Christ display an assumption that the reader is politically conservative.

With that background in mind, what follows below is a random and unorganized list of my own "confessions" from the perspective of a Lutheran who happens to be far to the left on the political spectrum (way to the left of Barack Obama).   You will not see these thoughts in Forward in Christ.

• I am 65 years old and I have never been discriminated against or persecuted because I am a Christian.
• My kids went to Lutheran grade schools for K-8 and then to public high school.  I've  never had to "unteach" anything from a religious perspective from the public school, but I have had to correct false  religious teachings that my kids brought home from Lutheran school.
• WELS President Schroeder went public, describing the HHS birth control mandate as an "unprecedented threat to...religious liberty".  I want to declare loudly and publicly that Schroeder does NOT speak for me.  My religious liberty hasn't been curtailed one iota because of this.  I worship and receive the means of grace the same as always.  This was never about religious liberty;  it was about money.
• In contrast to the phony "threat to religious liberty" in the last bullet, there are plenty of real infringements of religious liberty about which WELS has been silent. A few examples:  (1) When I was in the army, I was routinely in situations where I was expected to bow my head in prayer.  (2) Air Force Academy officers attempted to force their religion on cadets. (3) There are public events (like football games in Texas) where kids are coerced into praying or listening to prayers. (4) Under the Faith-Based Initiatives started by G.W. Bush and continued by President Obama, some "counselors" won't declare a patient "cured" until they declare certain religious beliefs.  See the pattern here?  Real threats to religious liberty in this country are overwhelmingly perpetrated by Christians.  I haven't heard anyone in WELS express outrage about these things.  Why?  I can only conclude that they are less controversial to WELS pastors because they are perpetrated by conservatives.  But the HHS mandate is identified with us godless liberals, so the world is coming to an end.
• I have been a WELS member since 1970.  I hear about abortion, evolution, and homosexuality almost every week in church.  I can honestly say that I don't think I have ever heard the word "racism" in a WELS sermon. 
• We rarely go to Bible classes anymore, because too often it ends up being about politics. I don't go to a Lutheran Bible class to talk about Glenn Beck or the Affordable Care Act.  Kind of ruins one's Sunday, so we just stay away from it.
• Politically-charged issues like climate-change denial, creationist "science", and intelligent design seem to be encouraged.  These are entirely political and have nothing to do with Lutheran doctrine, so the fact that they are encouraged--even tacitly--shows how far the WELS has come politically.

Small wonder that we find ourselves more and more questioning whether we are still in fellowship with the Wisconsin Synod.

Quote of the Day (10/25/2013)

"Fox News:  Rich people paying rich people to tell middle class people to blame poor people."

Seen on Daily Kos, but I don't really know who said it.

Poem of the Day (10/17/2013)

Hope I'm not breaking the law too badly by sharing this.  From Calvin Trillin (Deadline Poet) in The Nation:

Explaining Ted Cruz's Behavior

Does he have a plan that the others can't see?
Is this man as smart as the devil?
Or is he, to put it in carpenter's terms,
A guy who's a bubble off level?

Headline of the Day (10/16/2013)

From Mother Jones:

House Republicans Hold Hearing on Why Their Shutdown Shut Things Down

I Am Not Fooled

Republicans slashed veterans benefits during the Bush II administration.  Now they are falling all over themselves to get phony photo ops with veterans during the shutdown that they created, acting as if they are the great defenders of veterans or something.

This is one veteran who is not fooled by their hypocrisy.

Quote of the Day - Oct. 10

How We Got Here

Oh...so now the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Retail Federation, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, and many Republican CEOs are bemoaning how the Republicans in Congress are acting.  Well, most of your money went to those candidates as well as to redistricting initiatives that created this monster.  If you are such Smart People, then how did you expect anything different?

No..you don't get off the hook that easy.  What is happening today is exactly what you wanted.  Now it's here and you don't like it?  If you want to know How We Got Here, just look in the mirror.  If you now want to help fix it, that's great.  Just don't blame this on anyone but yourselves.

What the rest of us need to do is ignore all these Smart People when CNBC trots them out one after another as if they actually know anything.

I Will Chip In

Thanks to Daily Kos. Rep. Stutzman wants to "get something" for funding the government. I will chip in for one of these.

Something I Never Knew

Here is something I never knew before Barack Obama became president (twice--yay!).  There are Constitutional scholars everywhere!  And most of them are most anxious to re-educate you about your ignorance.  They aren't bashful about it one bit.  Aren't you glad?

Here is a short list of some folks that I had no idea are among those Constitutional scholars:

• The guy who fixed my garage door (I will call someone else next time I think)
• The guy whose snowbird condo we used to rent in Alabama (not anymore!)
• Quite a few of my wife's Facebook friends
• The President of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS)
• Tim Thomas
• Victoria Jackson
• Pat Boone
• Kirk Cameron

I hope you will sleep better tonight knowing that these folks are protecting your rights.

Stupid Quote of the Day

"We're not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is."
-- Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN), quoted by the Washington Examiner, on the government shutdown.

Quote of the Day for October 2

"What, US Chamber of Commerce, inveterate supporter of all things Republican and serial denouncer of President Obama and the Democrats for being anti-business, now you are having second thoughts about the monster you helped create?  Well cry me a river ..."

Steven D. at Daily Kos

You can read the entire post here.  It's pretty good.

A Simple Request

To my conservative friends:  I am more than happy for you to try to convince me that you are right about something and that I am wrong.  But you are not helping your cause by simply sending me links to The Daily Caller, or Glenn Beck, or American Spectator, or Rush Limbaugh, or Ann Coulter, or the Drudge Report, or...you get my point.  Most of those folks think I am a commie liberal leftist godless traitor (some of them have even written books with titles like that).  So I don't know why you think I give a rat's a$$ what they have to say about the Affordable Care Act or anything else.  Oh...and as my part of the deal, I will not try to convert you by sending you to Michael Moore's website.

Factoids

1. The Senate has had the courage to have an up-or-down vote on everything the House has sent to it the last few days.  The House has had no votes on what the Senate has sent its way.  (Reason:  in an up-or-down vote, the House would probably pass a "clean" continuing resolution.)
2. The House's idea of "compromise" is--in effect--for the Dems to scrap the ACA in exchange for six weeks of funding the government.  Are you serious?!
3. When I was in high school, I actually thought I was a conservative.  How embarrassing.
4. I am equally embarrassed for my conservative friends who--apparently with a straight face--contend that the "compromise" in factoid 2 above is actually reasonable.
5. In 2012, Democratic House candidates received something like 1.4 million more votes than Republicans.
6. Bush and the Republicans cut veterans benefits (presumably to pay for unneeded tax cuts for the wealthy) back in the 00's.  As a veteran, I consider it the height of hypocrisy for the Wingnut Republicans to try to use another phony bill in the House to play politics with the lives of the same veterans they turned their backs on during the Bush administration.
7. This is more an opinion (or suspicion) than a factoid:  If the Wingnuts in America are convinced that the ACA is totally despised and that it will be an utterly unsuccessful train wreck, why aren't they eager for it to roll out?  Then--if they're right--the public will demand repeal and will run the Dems out of town.  We'll have a Wingnut House, a Wingnut Senate, and maybe (gasp!) a Wingnut in the White House.  So, my (totally unbiased) opinion is that they must think it's going to succeed and be quite popular.  Just sayin'.

Quote of the Day for October 1

"If it turns out that President Barack Obama can make a deal with the most intransigent, hardline, unreasonable, totalitarian mullahs in the world, but not with Republicans, maybe he’s not the problem."

Jon Stuart
The Dailey Show

Red States Tend to Have More Government Workers

This is nothing new, just another angle on the same story.  This is from Floyd Norris's article in today's Times.  You really should read the whole article but here are some excerpts:

Whatever the explanation, the states whose economies are most dependent on government employment and economic activity are also the states that are most likely to vote for Republicans, who generally campaign on promises to reduce the size of government.

Consider one measure, the proportion of civilian employees in each state with government jobs, whether federal, state or local. Nationally, the proportion last month was 16 percent, the lowest figure since 2001.

But the variance among the 50 states is large. At the top of the list, with one out of four workers employed by the government, is Wyoming. At the other extreme is Pennsylvania, with just one in eight.

Wyoming is among the most Republican states, and that is part of a pattern. Of the 15 states with the highest proportion of government employment, 10 voted for Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, in last year’s presidential election. (The District of Columbia, with more than 30 percent of the employees working for the government, is not included in the list because it is not a state, but it voted for President Obama.) Of the 15 states with the lowest level of government employment, only two — Indiana and Tennessee — voted for Mr. Romney.

Once again we see that reality in this world is much different from the alternate reality concocted by the current Republican Party.

Quote of the Day for Sept. 25

from the Blogger Hunter of the Daily Kos, on Cruz's expected upcoming appearance on the Limbaugh's radio program.

"The two [Sen. Cruz and Rush Limbaugh] are expected to share their tips on how to get paid to talk for long stretches of time without saying or accomplishing anything in particular."

Funny Stuff

Recently seen exchange on Facebook (I was not a participant, only an observer):

FB Questioner:  Tell me one specific thing that you don't approve of in Obamacare...

Answers (combined and paraphrased):   blah blah blah founding fathers blah blah blah states' rights blah blah blah death panels blah blah blah deceit blah blah blah health care rationing blah blah blah inhumane blah blah blah fascist blah blah blah take away our guns blah blah blah single payer (say what?!?!) blah blah blah.

Translation:  I got a chain email about this and it said Obamacare is really bad, maybe even the end of our country as we know it, and you know how chain emails are usually accurate.

Quote of the Day for Sept. 23

"A civilization which for any reason puts a human life at a disadvantage; or a civilization which can exist only by putting human life at a disadvantage; is worthy neither of the name nor of continuance. And a human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who prefers that this should remain as it is, is a human being by definition only, having much more in common with the bedbug, the tapeworm, the cancer, and the scavengers of the deep sea."

James Agee,  Let Us Now Praise Famous Men


 

GOP Hyper-Hypocrisy on the Affordable Care Act

A nice summary of the real GOP feelings about Obamacare:  we hate the law but we will take credit for the money and spend all we can.

Church Obsessions

From today's New York Times:

...Pope Francis, in the first extensive interview of his six-month-old papacy, said that the Roman Catholic church had grown “obsessed” with preaching about abortion, gay marriage and contraception, and that he has chosen not to speak of those issues despite recriminations from some critics

In remarkably blunt language, Francis sought to set a new tone for the church, saying it should be a “home for all” and not a “small chapel” focused on doctrine, orthodoxy and a limited agenda of moral teachings....

The Pope could just as well be describing what has happened to my church--Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS)--especially the part about "a limited agenda of moral teachings".  This coincides with the increased politicization of the WELS.  The "moral teachings" emphasized by the current church seem to be limited to those near and dear to the Religious Right and other politically conservative groups.

Quote of the Day

Charlie Dent, Republican Congressman from Pennsylvania:  "It's important that Republicans stop pretending that Mitch McConnell is the Senate majority leader and Mitt Romney is the president."

Editorial from a Southern Newspaper

Presented without further comment:   Recent editorial from Alabama

Another Lie from Christian Life Resources

Quote from an article on today's Christian Life Resources (CLR) website: "On Friday, a judge in Wisconsin issued an injunction blocking part of a pro-life law designed to protect the health and safety of women considering abortions."  This statement is a lie.  The law is not "designed" to protect women.  It is designed to prevent a woman from exercising her constitutional right to an abortion.  CLR may regard that as a worthy goal, but then they should say so instead of lying about it.

Indeed, as another source noted:

[...]Quite simply, it does not matter whether an abortion provider has admitting privileges for a local hospital.

For all of Wisconsin’s claims, therefore, that these regulations are “reasonably related to ‘the preservation and protection of maternal health,’” it seems clear that is not the case. Indeed, as the court pointed out, the legislative history of Act 37 revealed no medical expert speaking in its favor, or articulating a legitimate medical reason for the admitting privileges requirement.

In response to the evidence submitted to the court that the admitting privilege restrictions serve no purpose in advancing maternal health, Wisconsin admitted that serious complications rarely result from a pre-viability abortion. Nevertheless, Wisconsin argued that the requirement for admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the location of the abortion would reduce risk to the patient. But Judge Conley wasn’t buying it. He wrote, “Aside from the claimed need for ‘continuity of care,’ counsel was unable to offer any support for this position, which does not bear even superficial scrutiny on the current record.”

Judge Conley seems to understand what pro-choice advocates know to be true: The real purpose of the law—like similar pending legislation in Alabama, Mississippi, and North Dakota—is not to protect maternal health, but to prevent women from exercising their constitutional right to choose an abortion, through forced closure of the clinics subject to targeted regulation of abortion provider (TRAP) laws, by making it virtually impossible to do so.

Quite simply, the first sentence in this CLR article is a lie.

Some Good Points from Steve M.

From Steve M.'s blog today:  No More Mister Nice Blog

 I think I pretty much agree with him.

New Dog

I see that the Obamas got another dog.  I'm waiting to hear what Constitutional crisis this has caused.

Obama (and Bloomberg) Have Put Themselves in Bad Company

In the Bush/Cheney (or Cheney/Bush?) disastrous eight years, they used the phony claim of "saving lives" to justify torture.  It is embarrassing to see Barack Obama--and now Mayor Bloomberg--use the same false either/or argument:  Obama to justify the NSA's over-the-top surveillance, and Bloomberg to justify racist stop-and-frisk tactics.  If that's their argument, it tells me that they don't have a real argument, so they are resorting to an emotionally loaded euphemism like "saving lives" instead.

I expect as much from Bush/Cheney.  It's embarrassing and sad to have Obama using the same tactic.  Mr. President, you have put yourself in very bad company indeed.

Obama Can Do Better Than This

President Obama has pretty much continued the Bush policies in regard to prosecuting whistleblowers and defending unwarranted surveillance.  His recent pronouncements on the NSA and Snowden have been specious.  I expect more form him that this.  I agree with Kevin Drum of Mother Jones that Friday's speech treated us like five-year-olds.

After listening to all the tortured logic about privacy versus secrecy, I think the arguments are misplaced.  It's really about democracy.  Cutting through all the phony rhetoric, for me it boils down to two points:

• Our government rules with the consent of the governed.
• How can I give my consent if I don't know what you are doing (or--even more troubling--if you lie to me about what you are doing).

My understanding is that at least part of Snowden's motivation is that he thought Americans had a right to know what their government is doing.  We are now having a discussion about that.  We would not be having this discussion if Snowden hadn't done what he did.  For Obama to claim that we would have gotten here anyway is--as Drum says-- laughable.  We are having the discussion because Obama was forced into it.

This is not the high point of the Obama presidency, that's for sure.

Voter Suppression - Official GOP Policy Now

Governor Scott's attempt to suppress the Florida vote in the last election was stymied, but now the activist Supreme Court's ruling has re-energized the neo-Jim Crow efforts of the Republican Party.  This paragraph from today's New York Times story pretty much sums up the bald-faced nature of what Scott and the national Republicans are trying to accomplish.  Can't get the voters to agree with you?  Just eliminate more and more of them.

...Mr. Scott risks angering voters with perhaps little payoff, political strategists said. While securing the integrity of the vote is admirable, they say, there is no evidence that noncitizens in Florida are systematically voting. Last year’s attempt at unearthing noncitizens initially began with a pool of 182,000 names of potential noncitizens, and that was winnowed to a list of 2,600. Those named were sent to election supervisors, who found that many were in fact citizens. Ultimately, the list of possible noncitizen voters shrank to 198. Of those, fewer than 40 had voted illegally.

“It’s a solution in search of a problem,” said Steve Schale, who directed Mr. Obama’s campaign in Florida in 2008 and was a senior adviser in 2012....

"Solution in search of a problem" could be the offical motto of today's Republican Party.  How sad.


 

Quote of the Day

Written in the 1930s, but could be describing today's 1%:

For these men were all the victims of an occupational disease--a kind of mass hypnosis that denied to them the evidence of their senses.  It was a monstrous and ironic fact that the very men who had created this world in which every value was false and theatrical saw themselves, not as creatures tranced by fatal illusions, but rather as the most knowing, practical, and hard-headed men alive.  They did not see themselves as gamblers, obsessed by their own fictions of speculation, but as brilliant executives of great affairs who at every moment of the day "had their fingers on the pulse of the nation."  So when they looked about them and saw nothing but the myriad shapes of privilege, dishonesty, and self-interest, they were convinced that this was inevitably "the way things are."

Thomas Wolfe,  You Can't Go Home Again

Comfortable with Our Prejudices

Sometime back in the 80s, Rosalynn Carter made a statement to the effect that Ronald Reagan makes us comfortable with our prejudices.  Of course, the Rush Limbaughs and other Reagan worshippers derided it as some sort of mortal sin, but I thought it was rather prescient and insightful.  I pretty much agreed with her then, and I believe that history has shown it to be true today.  The casual way in which some people justify the profiling of the Zimmerman case and New York's stop-and-frisk program (to name only two examples), shows how comfortable some have become with their prejudices.  So comfortable that they don't see the insidious racism that's involved.

The Cheneys Just Won't Go Away

I see today that Liz Cheney is going to run for the (Republican) senate seat in Wyoming.  She is anxious to carry on the Chickenhawk legacy of the Cheney clan.

Texas Tampon Massacre

The Texas Department of Public Safety confiscated tampons and maxi-pads outside the Texas Senate gallery last week because they were afraid they would be used as some sort of projectile weaponry.  (Guns were allowed in the gallery, of course)  Now just wait a dag-gone minute!!  If those tampons are really dangerous weapons, aren't they protected by the Second Amendment?  This is Texas after all....

Christian Life Resources Half Truths

Headline in the Christian Life Resources (CLR) website:  "Huffington Post Poll: Americans Ban (sic)  20-Week Abortion Ban by 2-1 Margin".  (I assume they meant to say "Americans Support....)  Sounds pretty cut-and-dry, huh?  But if you read the actual Huff Post article, it is much more nuanced.  For example, in another part of the same poll, 63% of respondent said "Decisions on abortion should be made by [a] woman and her doctor".  Not quite what the headline suggests is it?  That part of the poll isn't reported in the CLR article.  In fact, none of the nuances of the "conflicted" respondents is really addressed.

This is just one more example of CLR's willingness to report with deception and half-truth.  In their astonishing moral relativism, such deception is justified if it serves their political agenda.

Quote of the Day

Thanks to Mahablog (www.mahablog.com) for putting me onto this quote from Mike Konczal, a blogger at The Washington Post.  This quote is from his July 6 blog post, which is worth a read:

The specifics of a libertarian populist agenda are often lacking, but advocates sometimes point to to things like Rand Paul’s budget plan. This is a plan that calls for flat taxes, cutting discretionary spending through a balanced budget and removing the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate to promote low inflation and high employment.

This brings to mind Eugene Mirman’s joke about bears, where he notes that the common notion that you should play dead if you see a bear “is a rumor that bears spread.” Similarly, the idea that reducing the tax burden on the rich while calling for tighter money and deregulation counts as “populism” sure seems like a rumor spread by the 1 percent.

More Judicial Activism

I guess I am of the school that believes that yesterday's Supreme Court decision will not--in the long run--open the doors to the current GOP voter suppression strategy.  Demographic trends will produce a backlash that will damage the GOP, much like what happened in the 2012 election, where the GOP tactics angered people enough that turnout actually increased.

But, having said that, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court is just another example proving that the current Court is pursuing a specific political agenda and is the most activist Court of my lifetime.  Kevin Drum gives an excellent take on this (here's the link).  The gross inconsistency shows that their decision is political rather than judicial.  That's kinda the definition of judicial activism.

And Another Good Article from Aaron Carroll

Here's a good piece from Aaron Carroll  at The Incidental Economist blog.

Just a Little Something from Daily Kos

A  good post from Daily Kos about the Neo-Pharisees running today's GOP.

Christian Life Resources Showing Its True Colors (Again)

I found this article on the Christian Life Resources (CLR) website today (dated June 6).  The article seems to glowingly approve of Baltimore Ravens player Matt Birk dissing President Obama by not attending the traditional White House get-together with the Super Bowl champs.  CLR apparently thinks it's some kind of act of high principle.  It is just the opposite.  What it really shows is how much Christian Life Resources dislikes the current president and how it is willing to sidestep its own supposed principles in order to promote its own political agenda.

First, in regard to Matt Birk.  He is quoted in the article as saying he has "great respect for the office of the president".  That's a lie.  If he had great respect for the office of the president he would have been at the event.  The event was nonpolitical, nonpartisan, and had nothing to do with abortion.  He may think his action was directed only at Barack Obama, but in fact he was disrespecting his fellow citizens.  At this event, the President was representing all Americans.  Professional athletes are paid big bucks.  When they become professional athletes, they sign up for events like this.  It's part of their job, which includes representing the communities which support them and ultimately pay their salaries.  The Religious Right may think this is high principle.  I think he decided to make it about himself.  Matt Birk is selfish and small minded.

Christian Life Resources has no excuse.  As a WELS-affiliated organization, it is supposed to be in agreement with WELS teachings concerning government.  On its own website it pays lip service to this:

[...] We owe the government more than just taxes. As God's servant, the government deserves our honor and respect. The Apostle Paul reminds us of that:

This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. (Romans 13:6,7)

We may not always agree with what our elected officials say or do, but that does not give us license to dishonor them with our speech.... (Clearly Caring Magazine Sept/Oct 2008)

Clearly, Matt Birk dishonored President Obama.  His church may encourage such public disrespect.   The teachings of our church regard it as sin.  Why does Christian Life Resources present it in a positive light?  The only answer I can come up with is the one that has always been the case since I started following this organization many years ago:  Politics always trumps doctrine.  It's disappointing and embarrassing.  It's even more disappointing and embarrassing that the WELS leadership allows it to continue.

GOP Hates Obamacare Unless They Want the Money

I don't know if this link from The Nation will still be around after it's archived, but it's a pretty typical example of Republican/Tea Party hypocrisy on the Affordable Care Act.  Actually, it's typical of their lack of principle on all federal programs.

Take a Deep Breath

The problem with the perpetual outrage of the Republican/Tea Party is that they never have time to take a deep breath and actually think about things.  The supposedly scandalous IRS conference is a case in point.  I suppose it's always possible to find fault with almost anything.  And all someone has to do is say "IRS" and they have this low-hanging-fruit thing going on so they can say anything without having to think about or prove anything.  People are ready to gobble it up.

Anyway, Kevin Drum did take a breath and actually think about it a little.  His blog post today puts it into a little perspective.  I certainly spent a lot of time at stupid events like this when I was in the private sector, just like he says.  And yes, the corporate execs and their "training" staffs thought they were great.  So go ahead and have fun with your easy target.  But as Drum says, there is "less here than meets the eye".  If this is your big scandal then you have too much time on your hands.

Waiting for the Real Story

As we all should know by now, the initial reports that we get on any story will almost always turn out to be false, especially if reported by television news.  The problem is that those first "reports" tend to have a life and tenacity of their own, and many people--especially those who rely entirely on TV news and partisan blogs for their "information"--continue to believe the misinformation long after it's has been debunked.

To wit:

• In the first Iraq war, "on-the-scene" television reporting from CNN and others suggested that "smart bombs" and Patriot missiles were almost 100% effective.  The real story that was pieced together later proved that this was fiction.
• Initial reporting on the Fast and Furious operation proved to be false, but we had to wait weeks before an unbiased analysis by a Fortune magazine reporter gave us the real story.  Indeed, it seems that the "whistleblower" relied on by Darrell Issa and the Obama haters may have been the only bad guy in the whole affair.
• More recently, an ABC reporter claimed to have smoking-gun emails about the Benghazi incident.  It took a former Fox News reporter to give us the real story a little later:  the emails were fabricated.

The point is that a lot of people still believe the original story, even after the real story is finally available.  Now we have the IRS "scandal".  It turns out (as many of us expected) that many of these groups deserved the scrutiny they were getting and some even lied on their applications.  You won't hear this real story from the likes of Charles Krauthammer or Peggy Noonan. In fact, they will probably keep repeating the untruth.  (Both of them have become caricatures of themselves, but I digress.)  They are too occupied with their state of perpetual frenzied outrage. 

A Subsidy Is an Entitlement If You're from a Red State

This from today's New York Times.  It is becoming increasingly clear that the "takers" of Mitt Romney's 47% are really from his own party.  It validates my definition of "taxes" from an older post:  Money that is collected from the Blue States and then sent to the Red States.

WASHINGTON — A Tennessee congressman who supports billions of dollars in cuts to the food stamp program is one of the largest recipients of federal farm subsidies, according to new annual data released by a Washington environmental group.

Using Agriculture Department data, researchers at the Environmental Working Group found that Representative Stephen Fincher, a Republican and a farmer from Frog Jump, Tenn., collected nearly $3.5 million in subsidies from 1999 to 2012. The data is part of the research group’s online farm subsidy database from which the group issues a report each year.

In 2012 alone, the data shows, Mr. Fincher received about $70,000 in direct payments, money that is given to farmers and farmland owners, even if they do not grow crops. It is unclear how much Mr. Fincher received in crop insurance subsidies because the names of people receiving the subsidies are not public. The group said most of the agriculture subsidies go to the largest, most profitable farm operations in the country. These farmers have received $265 billion in direct payments and farm insurance subsidies since 1995, federal records show.

During debate on the farm bill in the House Agriculture Committee last week, Mr. Fincher was one of the biggest proponents of $20 billion in cuts to food stamps in the legislation. At times he quoted passages from the Bible in defending the cuts.

“We have to remember there is not a big printing press in Washington that continually prints money over and over,” Mr. Fincher said during the debate. “This is other people’s money that Washington is appropriating and spending.”[...]

To top it all off, Rep. Fincher has joined Tony Perkins, Michele Bachmann, and other Rightwing haters to share with us the insider knowledge that God is opposed to federal spending...unless the check is written to them.

More Deception from Christian Life Resources

Christian Life Resources (CLR) is an affiliated organization of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS).  It's supposed mission is "to use life and family issues as bridges to convey the love of God and to share the message of salvation through Christ."  Unfortunately, it has evolved into a mouthpiece for the Republican Party, and particularly for the rightmost fringe of that party.  That is bad enough.  But all too often it uses deceptive and dishonest means to further its political agenda.

Today provides another example.  The following quote appeared on its website today: "The American College of Pediatricians continues to oppose the over-the-counter distribution of 'emergency contraceptive' medication to children as recently mandated by the court."  It then links to an article.  The deception here is that the American College of Pediatricians is not a medical organization like, say, the American Academy of Pediatrics.  The group was, rather,  formed for specifically political reasons.  Simply attaching the word "Pediatricians" doesn't change that fact.

The implication on the CLR website is that this group is some sort of recognized and authoritative medical organization.  It is nothing of the sort.  The Wikipedia entry for the American College of Pediatricians estimates its membership is between 60 and 200.  The American Academy of Pediatrics, by contrast, has some 60,000 members.

CLR, of course, has every right to pursue its agenda (although, as a WELS member, I consider its political activism unbiblical and embarrassing).  But to use deception to further its cause is not worthy of a group claiming Christian principles.  The American College of Pediatricians is an explicitly political organization.  Passing it off as a medical authority is dishonest.

Spineless Democrats

The Democrats in the White House and both houses of Congress look wimpily spineless this week.  Congress voted to reallocate money for the air traffic control system, with the overwhelming support of Democrats, and apparently Obama is set to sign it.  Once again the Democrats show that they all too often act just like Republicans.  Millions of people are suffering from the sequester, and the Democrats chose to alleviate some minor inconvenience incurred by the affluent.  So much for "sharing the pain".

It reminds me of when they bailed out the homebuilders back in 2009-2010 with the loss lookback.  Wealthy homebuilders were able to recover their losses, while the individuals whom those homebuilders dumped on were stuck with theirs.  A Democratic Congress passed that one, too.  Now they are at it again.  Nice going, wimps.

Colbert on Reinhart-Rogoff

Here's the link to Colbert's discussion of the Reinhart-Rogoff spreadsheet error.

More from Texas and Rick Perry

Here's a good link from Daily Kos.

West, Texas Fertilizer Plant Explosion

Whether or not the  Boston Marathon bombing was over-reported is a matter of opinion.  But the media has been shamefully mute in under-reporting the disaster in West, Texas (read this link for one opinion).  It appears that the perpetrators of the Boston tragedy have been or will be held accountable for their actions.  Whether the owners of the fertilizer plant will be held to account for their negligence is highly doubtful.

Random Thoughts

Some random (mostly unconnected) thoughts after the gun vote, Boston, etc.

• Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council hate group is at it again.  First, a few years back he said that any Christian who voted for Obama (I am proudly guilty) should repent.  Then, he misused Luke 19 to claim that God is a laissez-faire capitalist (see my post of 12/10/2011).  Now he is quoting Luke 22:36 to claim that God is a Second Amendment extremist and wants all Christians to buy guns.  Okay, so first he tries to bind the conscience of Christians who differ with his politics.  Then, in the next two instances, he trivializes spiritual principles to advance his earthly political agenda.  I can only assume it is intentional.  I have been in Wisconsin Synod (WELS) congregations where liberals like Bill Maher are the main characters in a Sunday sermon, and where the president is spoken of disrespectfully in Bible classes.  And this criticism is for their politics, not their religion.  But here is a man--Perkins--who is allowed to be a spokesman for Christians and who is promulgating dangerous and harmful false doctrine, and I have never once heard him publicly called on it by anyone associated with the WELS.  Indeed, if you search in the affiliate Christian Life Resources website, you are likely to find Tony Perkins presented as a favorable ally.  As I 've said before, in the WELS it is okay to have poor doctrine as long as you have the correct politics.  It's shameful and embarrassing.
• Is there any phrase that has become more meaningless on television news than "Breaking News"?
• A relative of mine posted this quote on Facebook:  "Please call them what they are...Muslim terrorists!"  Okay, can we also label Timothy McVeigh, Wade Page, Anders Breivak, et al,  as Christian terrorists?
• I really do believe that people are entitled to have whatever political beliefs they want, but I hope that mine aren't based on fear, paranoia, anger, and hatred.

On Different Planets?

I saw in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel today that Paul Ryan's reaction to President Obama's budget is that Republicans and Democrats are on different planets.  This is news?  Many of us observed a long time ago that Paul Ryan and the Republican (aka Tea) Party were residing in a parallel universe.  So far as I can see, they are still out there.

What Are the Real Drivers of Health Care Costs?

Informative blog post from Ezra Klein concerning the true drivers of increasing health care costs...for those who prefer actual reality over the alternate reality of the Wingnuts' parallel universe.

Lest We Forget

There are lots of Google links to be found about the Iraq War now that the tenth anniversary is upon us.  There are a couple videos on this link at Huff Post, one highlighting who got it wrong (it's chillingly laughable to watch this one) and--a bit further down the page--one showing who got it right.  Conventional wisdom seems to have it that there was almost unanimous consensus on the necessity of this war, but that is simply not the case.  There was plenty of opposition from well-known people of both parties.

The list of who was wrong is more familiar, and it contains notables from both sides of the aisle.  Here's a partial list:

• George Bush
• Dick Cheney (and the entire clan)
• Donald Rumsfeld
• Hillary Clinton
• Condoleezza Rice
• Colin Powell
• Joe Biden
• Thomas Friedman
• Paul Wolfowitz
• John Edwards
• John McCain
• Joe Lieberman

The list of some notables who had it right includes:

• Paul Wellstone
• Al Gore
• Barack Obama
• Hans Blix
• Tammy Baldwin
• Ron Paul
• Dennis Kucinich
• Ted Kennedy
• Jesse Jackson
• Robert Byrd

Stealing Worker Pensions

For all the Wingnuts who think that terrible union workers wear black hats and benign corporations wear white, here's an article from Bloomberg to consider.  I am waiting for Rick Santelli, Jack Welch, Joe Kernen, or any of other the corporate shills out there to express their outrage.  Just the other day I heard Santelli's typical rant about how awful it is to reward bad behavior.  Apparently it only applies to people whose mortgages are underwater thanks to the economic policies of the gang Santelli, Welch, Kernen, et al.  Hypocrites....

Other People's Children

I stole the title to this post from Paul Krugman's tweet....Matthew Yglesias has a pretty good take (here's the link) on Sen. Portman's welcome change of heart on gay marriage.

From Daily Kos

Here's the  link to a post on Daily Kos .  No further comment is necessary.

Drones

Most liberals oppose Obama's use of drones (cf. The Nation magazine over the last few years).  The only difference between us and the Republican Wingnuts is that we also opposed them when GW Bush was president.  Of course, when W was president, such opposition was un-American and traitorous.  Now it is the height of patriotism.

It's all pretty typical.  Bush did it and it was tough national defense.  Obama does it and it's a constitutional crisis.  Of course, there aren't many things Obama can do without the Wingnuts invoking a constitutional crisis--probably including eating his breakfast.

Market Update

Returning to a theme I have posted about several times before, here is a brief stock market update...

The Dow is up a little over 80% since Obama took office.  (And a reminder:  the Dow actually went down 22% during Bush II's eight years.)

Now, I will be the first to admit that a president can't take all the credit nor suffer all the blame for the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average;  but, still, this is not quite the disaster Jack Welch, Ken Langone, Joe Kernen, and all the other Obama haters predicted.

Just sayin'....

Obama's Spine

I guess it's about time that I took back my concern (expressed in my Dec. 19,2012 post) that President Obama was going to cave once more to the extremism and obstructionism of the Wingnut Party (aka GOP).  It surely seems that he has found his confidence and footing, and it's pretty gratifying.  I suppose there is still time for him to cave in the future but it seems pretty unlikely now.

So let this serve as my apology to the Prez.  Your spine seems to be plenty strong.  Hang in there...we are with you.

Santelli Silliness

I just caught the latest bit of high-decibel and high-pitched whinery from Rick Santelli on CNBC concerning the evils of Ben Bernanke and the Fed.  The problem for Rick is that he uses Phil Gramm to buttress his argument.  Earth to Rick:  there is no person in America whose economic views have been more discredited over the last ten years or so than Phil Gramm (except for maybe his wife).

You need a better argument, Rick.  Citing Phil Gramm only serves to disprove your idea.