QotD for 15 Feb., 2010

Upon hearing the news that Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Indiana) won't be running for re-election due to the strident partisanship in the current Congress, I'm reminded of the following:

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." ---from the poem "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats

I really wish the best would stay and fight instead of throwing their hands up in disgust...

Forgotten, not banished

When asked in a Washington Post interview whether an intelligent and discerning leader of the caliber of Dwight Eisenhower would be considered acceptable in today's conservative movement, Gerard Alexander, Assoc. Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, and himself a conservative, responded:

Maybe the saddest thing about Eisenhower is that he's not so much banished as forgotten.

QotD for 25 Jan., 2010

Considering both the recent senatorial election in Massachusetts and the Supreme Court campaign finance decision, the following seems apropos...

No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up. ---Lily Tomlin

QotD for 22 Jan., 2010

“I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country.” ---Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Logan. November 12, 1816

QotD for 4 Jan., 2010

Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country’s way of life; it’s only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage. The more we undermine our own laws, the more we convert our buildings into fortresses, the more we reduce the freedoms and liberties at the foundation of our societies, the more we’re doing the terrorists’ job for them. ---Bruce Schneier, American cryptographer, computer security specialist, and writer

QotD for 15 Dec., 2009

On the occasion of the birthday of the creator of Esperanto...

"I am profoundly convinced that every nationalism offers humanity only the greatest unhappiness... It is true that the nationalism of oppressed peoples -- as a natural self-defensive reaction -- is much more excusable than the nationalism of peoples who oppress; but, if the nationalism of the strong is ignoble, the nationalism of the weak is imprudent; both give birth to and support each other..." ---L. L. Zamenhof

I should know better...

::sigh:: Yes, I should know better, but I got into an argument with an extreme right-winger over in the comment section of someone's Facebook page about the Matthew Shepard Act.

It's just that the disdain positively dripped off of this woman's comments. And every comment of her's was a piece of misinformation lifted straight out of a list of Fox News / Glenn Beck talking points. How Judy Shepard manages to encounter this garbage all the time after losing her son and stay sane & rational is beyond me.

I swear, it's like trying to argue with a Holocaust denier...

So Tired of This Nonsense...

I can't even begin to describe how sick and tired I am of the personal nastiness being directed at the office of the President of the U.S. Just this morning I was subjected to photos on someone's iPhone of a black, dept. store manikin, dressed up in hospital scrubs, being abused next to a sign about "Obama care." This guy thought it was the most hilarious thing he'd ever seen and couldn't wait to show it around to everyone. Not only completely disrespectful of our President, but absolute racist crap to boot, and nobody around here said a damn thing about it.

Or how about the posts of several "friends of a friend" on Facebook who were going off about how Pres. Obama is trying to DESTROY THE CONSTITUTION (their caps, not mine) because he, wait for it... plans to accept the Nobel Prize.

Welcome to good, old patriotic Texas. We hope you enjoy your stay... :P

QotD for 25 Sept., 2009

Concerning the disparity of drug prices in the U.S. vs. other countries:

Dividing up the world economy into individual markets to benefit only businesses and not consumers is a big BS sandwich. They [Big Pharma] argue for their freedom to manufacture it in Mexico but want to deny you the freedom to purchase it from Mexico through political means. I do not understand how so many Americans walk around believing this is actually in their best interests and support these people by calling them "Free Marketers", which they most definitely are not. They are Selective Protectionists supporting economic and political protections for themselves but not the rest of us.---Anonymous, in the comment thread of Off My Meds on the Real Live Preacher blog

Zombie Conservatives

Interesting piece in the Sunday Dallas Morning News by, surprise, conservative columnist Rod Dreher:

Last week, the president delivered an education speech that fell somewhat short of the standard set by Lenin in his address at the Finland Station, launching the Bolshevik Revolution. In fact, Barack Obama told America's schoolchildren to work hard, respect their teachers and take responsibility for their own success. Which, in the language of the tinfoil-hatters, reads: Allahu akbar, comrades. ---Rod Dreher, Zombie Conservatives at the schoolhouse door

Lately, Dreher seems to be "getting it" when it comes to the dissolution of the GOP. But there's one more Rubicon for him to cross if he really takes his Libertarian-ish conservatism seriously. That being, no matter how much of a social/religious conservative you are (and Dreher identifies himself that way), you need to be willing to keep a lot of that to yourself and not be willing to use the power of government to force it on others.

That's where Dreher and many like-minded thinkers still fall flat.

"Socialism"

Words actually mean things, and despite persistent attempts by many on the right to make it so, “socialism” does not mean either “any government activity that is not a tax cut or an attempt to kill swarthy people with weapons” or “whatever it is Obama happens to be doing at the moment.” ---John Scalzi

The best, as well as “squirt milk out your nose funny”, commentary on current events can usually be found on Scalzi's blog Whatever. All hail Scalzi!

Stirring the Pot

Great Googly Moogly! A status update I posted on my Facebook page is getting more comment action than anything I've ever posted here :D So I'm gonna try and leech off of it...

"I believe that no one should die because they can't afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick."

Discuss.

How Low Can They Go ?

There's been a lot of misinformation flung about RE: health care reform, but this really takes the cake:

In a "poll" mailed to supporters, the RNC is actually suggesting that health insurance reform is a Democratic plot to deny health care to Republicans using voter registration data: Documents Obtained Show GOP Tricks

Geez Louise! And the sad thing is, there are people out there who'll believe this and start shouting about it at Congressional "town hall" meetings :P

What's it gonna take to get a rational discussion of health care reform started ?!

Everyone Rations Health Care

If we have any hope of a rational discussion on health care reform in the U.S., we need to get past the lies and the spin being flung about with such great abandon. Here's a big one: "Socialized" medicine, a misnomer in its own right applied to current attempts at reform in the U.S., will cause health care rationing.

Here's the truth - every country rations health care. Every. one. The difference is that the U.S. uses a criteria different from every, other First World country. We don't base it on medical effectiveness, or any, other sort of good science.

No, we de facto ration based on how wealthy you are. If you can afford it, the sky's the limit. If not, well....you get rationing. And the poorer you are, the more your access is rationed.

So can we please ditch the "rationing" shibboleth ? and have both a rational and heartfelt discussion about whether this is the direction in which we want our society to evolve ?

The One We Feed

One day an old Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson. He said, “There are two wolves fighting inside all of us – the wolf of fear and hate, and the wolf of love and peace.”

The grandson listened, then looked up at his grandfather and asked, “Which one will win?”

The grandfather replied, “The one we feed.”

From a comment on the excellent blog The Mudflats.

QotD for 20 Aug., 2009

This debate over health care goes to the heart of who we are as a people. I believe that nobody in America should be denied basic health care because he or she lacks health insurance. --- Pres. Barack Obama

Further in his appeal to faith-based groups to spread the truth about health care reform, the President urged listeners to reject misinformation about his plans, noting, "There are some folks out there who are, frankly, bearing false witness."

And yet self-professed Christians continue to lie about "death panels" and other outrageous nonsense. To say nothing about ignoring our Lord's injunction to care for the sick (and the hungry, and the orphans, and the needy,...).

Hey conservatives, news flash - "I got mine, screw you" can in no way be justified as a Biblical stance.

Update: When confronted by yet another ridiculous claim at a townhall meeting from a right-wing shill, Rep. Allen Boyd (D-Florida) responded, "When someone sends you something on the Internet that sounds crazy, how about just checking it a little bit?" Golly, ya think ?!

CNN's Health Care Fact Check site.

Sullivan Rounds Up Palin's Lies

Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish compiles all the various lies of Sarah Palin in one helpful place: The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin: A Round-Up.

I asked an intern to re-fact-check all of them to make sure new details hadn't emerged that might debunk some. And I also asked to get any subsequent statements by Palin that acknowledged that she had erred in any of these statements that are easily rebuttable by facts in the public record and apologized and corrected. She has not.

Just think - this fruitbat, bless her heart, could have been one stroke away from being sworn in as President of the United States...

The only way towards a liberal anarchy

You know what my main objection is to Libertarianism ? It's that I don't trust enough people to be egalitarian and, well... just plain good in a moral sense. Given human nature, a completely free, laissez-faire system would rapidly devolve into an oligarchy of the rich.

"But, but...we'd protect individual freedom!" Uh, yeah...right. When your values are primarily materialistic, power concentrates where material wealth does - in the hands of the (rich) elite.

But what if we lived in a post-scarcity society, like The Culture of Scottish SF writer Iain M. Banks ? Where society is governed by extremely powerful AI "Minds" that administer this affluence for the benefit of all and maintain an almost totally egalitarian, stable society without the use of any form of force or compulsion, except where necessary to protect others.

"In vesting all power in his individualistic, sometime eccentric, but always benign, AI Minds, Banks knew what he was doing; this is the only way a liberal anarchy could be achieved, by taking what is best in humans and placing it beyond corruption, which means out of human control." --- Chris Brown, Journal of International Studies, 2001

Indeed, Banks does know what he is doing, and apparently knows human nature pretty well, too. But until we can place "what is best in humans" outside of any chance of corruption, well...you'll have to forgive me if I don't get too excited by the more fringey forms of anarcho-capitalism.

Wallis and a Christian Mistake

The Religious Right was a Christian mistake. It was a movement that sought to implement a “Christian agenda” by tying the faithful to one political option—the right-wing of the Republican Party. The politicizing of faith in such a partisan way is always a theological mistake. But the rapid decline of the Religious Right now offers us a new opportunity to re-think the role of faith in American public life. ---Jim Wallis, in his Newsweek blog A Christian Nation

Why I Hate U2

Wanna know why I hate U2 ? No, it's not because I think Bono is a bit pretentious ;) No, it's not the :: shudder :: U2charist thing.

It's garbage like this that really gets to me...