Education Tests For Voting

I remember a book I read a long time ago (must have been about 40 years) by Neville Shute - I think it was called "Beyond the Black Stump".In it there is a voting system where everybody over the age of majority has 1 vote. You then become entitled to more votes depending on various factors (which I cannot remember in detail) something allong the lines of :-Universtiy Degree - 1 voteIn full time employment (unless medically incapable) - 1 voteetc .etc.Votes can be removed as well as added, except you will never have less than 1. (e.g. votes can be removed for a criminal conviction - indeed this forms part of the "punishment")Thus you get more votes the more you can show you contribute to society and/or show a good education.The seventh vote was an "honour" bestowed on those who had contributed "over the odds" by dedicating their life to a charitable cause etc.Thus you can have anything between 1 and 7 votes.Seemed like a good idea when I read it and I still think it has quite a lot of merit, but would be difficult to administer.

I think it was William Buckley who said he would rather be ruled by the first 100 people in the Boston telephone directory than the first 100 people in the Harvard alumni directory. (That's the gist-- not an exact quote.) I consider this idea to be off the page bad. Elitism has its place in sports and science, but not in public affairs where there is a public interest in expanding the electoral franchise since public servants will make decisions that have deep and lasting effects. The reason why the US has prohibited restrictions such as property ownership and reading tests is because the courts recognize there is no relationship between judgment and intellect, and in some cases the relationship is inverse. Consider for example the Nobel Prize winners who are bigots and folks at Mensa who are infatuated with astrology.

Place Your Bets: Intrade Political Predictions

The voice of the markets is the voice of God. Here is what contract buyers and sellers saying who will be the eventual presidential nominees. They theory is that like the stock market futures these numbers reflect the sum total of all information from the most whimsical guesses to to the most informed number-crunching by real people using real money.

http://www.intrade.com/


Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic Presidential Nominee in 2008 60 percent
Barack Obama to be Democratic Prsidential Nominee in 2008 38 percent

John McCain to be the Republican Presidential Nominee in 2008 56 percent
Rudy Guiliani to be the Republican Presidential Nominee in 2008 8 percent

You can cross check by comparing the bets of political gamblers who do much of the same thing. However, as in a horse race, the favorite doesn't always win.

http://odds.bestbetting.com/specials/politics/

Bush's Destruction of the GOP

Peggy Noonan

http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html

On the pundit civil wars, Rush Limbaugh declared on the radio this week, "I'm here to tell you, if either of these two guys [Mr. McCain or Mike Huckabee] get the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party. It's going to change it forever, be the end of it!"

This is absurd. George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.
Were there other causes? Yes, of course. But there was an immediate and essential cause.

And this needs saying, because if you don't know what broke the elephant you can't put it together again. The party cannot re-find itself if it can't trace back the moment at which it became lost. It cannot heal an illness whose origin is kept obscure.

The Crying Game

She's crying for herself.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/07/hillary-tears-up-on-the-c_n_80254.html

And they were crying for themselves.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2007-12-19-emotion-politics_N.htm

Political Advertising

On Madison Avenue, it is a truism that you cannot sell at any price what people don't want. Milk past its due-date cannot be sold at any price, for example. Clever advertisers can promote a product in such a way such that even the most questionable product can have an allure. An example is the Army Strong campaign to attract military recruits into an unpopular and deadly war.

This principle is true also in politics. Despite spending more than $200 per voter, Romney lost the Iowa campaign. Today, New Hampshire is flooded with more political commercials and mailers. I doubt that many people will switch their votes on the basis of this kind of marketing. Political viewpoints emerge generally from a blending of two sources-- raw fact and images, such as most people get from debates and news stories-- and also from word of mouth of friends and family.

Once these view points take hold, they are difficult to reverse, either by a new set of facts and persuasion or by attack propaganda. What is even more difficult to reverse is when these views aggregate into a trend becoming a force of nature that can only keep going in the same direction. This may be happening to the deteriment of Romney and Clinton at present. I predict a further erosion of support for their candidacies and it may be only a matter of time before they both throw in the towel.

Mitch the Grinch

A letter from James Carville.

I've always told my daughters that it's Santa's job to figure out who's been naughty and who's been nice. But I thought that this year it would be fun for all of us who support the DSCC to help Santa out a little bit.

After all, he's got so much work to do figuring out what gifts to bring for the nice kids, wouldn't it be nice if we could make his job easier by identifying a few of the naughty ones? In fact, I've got one guy in mind who really should have a lump of coal coming his way.

I'm talking about Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.

In the last year, Senator McConnell has been a grinch to the more than three million uninsured children who would benefit from the health care bill he blocked. He's been anything but helpful to our soldiers in Iraq, blocking Democratic efforts to set a new course. He's tried to allow a lot more elected officials to be naughty rather than nice by delaying true ethics reform.

The man is just begging for a lump of coal.

And we're just the folks to give it to him.

Every day, Mitch McConnell is showing why come next election, we need a lot more than 51 Democratic Senators. By gumming up the works so badly, thwarting the will of the people, Mitch McConnell has been anything but good for America.

And for that, he deserves a lump of coal.

Next year, we'll get to send Senator McConnell a message with our votes. But for now, let's just make sure that this holiday season he gets a stocking overflowing with coal.

After all, when it comes to sending Republicans a message about how bad they are for this country, it really is better to give than to receive.

Click here to send Mitch McConnell a "virtual" lump of coal this holiday season.

Happy holidays to you and yours.

Political Endorsements

I endorse for the Republicans Huckabee and for the Democrats Obama.

I will explain my thinking in the next few days. But I have no illusions. My endorsement will have as much impact on voters other than myself as it has on my cat. To put it another way, my endorsement will have no less impact as the endorsement of Barbra Streisand for Clinton or the smarmy Dennis Miller for Giuliani. There is no proof that celebrities or the media can turn public opinion on a dime. To the contrary, in the case of Streisand's endorsement, for example, it can have a negative effect as it reinforces latent fears about Hillary's authentic beliefs, that she is more in sympathy with the Hollyweird elite than Main Street, USA. Miller, grinning on the O'Reilly show like a pervert in an adult bookstore, can only help the Democratic cause. And this statement from former Nebraskan Senator Bob Kerrey about Obama did Obama no favors: "I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim," said Kerrey.

Deciding who to vote for at the top of a state or national ticket is an accumulation of facts, impressions, and prejudices over many months and sometimes years.

Romney's Speech

Who would not want to have the whole truth instead of just a piece? Of course in this view, Jews are now two testaments behind with a lot of catching up to do.

I have a hunch that this speech marks the end of Romney's race, although this will only be revealed in hindsight. I think it is a mistake for several reasons. Some people will see it as an attempt to legitmize inexplicable dogma. Others will be offended by the implication that he is a man of faith and other candidates are not. This is the aura that Joe Lieberman projected. As a political move, it's not a winner, as the LDS are I believe about four percent of the population. Kennedy's speech was given at a time when Catholics were about a third of the nation, by contrast. Finally, there is also the contradiction between claims of ethics and the reality of the way some church members live their lives. I'm impressed by their family solidarity and general wholesomeness. I'm less impressed by their missionary zealotry. I ran into this buzz-saw about two decades ago when some LDS kids took me to court on behalf of a tenant I was evicting for non-payment of rent. There is also the strange phenomena that the LDS state of Utah is a hot-bed of scams. I don't know if there is an relationship between rip-offs and the LDS faith, but the facts are the facts.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20070107/ai_n17107556

I might also mention that my respect for Romney has eroded since the YouTube debate, especially beause of his spat with Julie Anne over immigration and his inability to forumulate a clear position as regards to waterboarding, placing his moral compass in the hands of his advisors and lawyers.

You might appreciate Gail Collins's response to the Romney speech.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/08/opinion/08collins.html?hp

Shed a tear for the poor elephant. It has fallen on hard times.

The difference between Kennedy and Romney's speeches is that Kennedy was saying that faith must be separate from American politics whereas Romney seemed to be saying that faith is integral to American politics-- too bad to those who lack that faith or any faith. While they are both motivated to win votes, Kennedy's motivation also appears to be diffuse anti-Catholic nativism whereas Romney's motivation seems to be to identify with a specific Christian brand. Who do you suppose has a better understanding of the Establishment Clause?

I think the elephant is in its last throes.

Here is some more reader reaction and commentary.

http://tpmelectioncentral.com/2007/12/romney_spokesman_wont_say_whether_athiests_have_a_proper_place_in_america.php

The Retreat of Conventional Wisdom

This has been a bad day for conventional wisdom.

Contrary to punditry by establishment talking heads, it now appears that Obama and Huckabee are the front runners in Iowa, Iran had halted its nuclear weaponry program years ago, Imus is back on the radio, and the voters of Venezuela have repudiated Hugo Chavez.

This bring up an axiom of prophacy, whether it is stock market forcasting, weather forcasting, or political forecasting . The worst possible way to predict the future is to project from the past. Events have a way of twisting and forking unexpectedly, no doubt due to the cussedness of human nature.

Fred Barnes Hates Youtube

It's fascinating to watch in the wake of the CNN/Youtube debate the dismay by Republicans. For example, Fred Barnes, a Fox News commentator, reviled the questioners as unibomber look-alikes and CNN for selecting questions that would embarass the Republicans.

Here is how Brent Baker puts it:

Describing the agenda of questions CNN chose to pose, during its Wednesday night Republican presidential debate with YouTube, as “completely different” from those forwarded to Democrats in July, Fred Barnes, on Thursday's Special Report on FNC, cited the contrast in questions about the military and Iraq as demonstrating how CNN picked the questioners to “screw Republicans” and “boost Democrats.” .

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2007/11/30/fred-barnes-cnns-debates-screw-republicans-boost-democrats

And from Jonathan Martin's blog:

The questions chosen seemed to reflect a Manhattan elite caricature of what defines the Republican party. And as Barnes gets at, there were few (if any) questions about kitchen table issues like education, health care, energy, jobs, and the mortgage crisis that many Republicans, as well as millions of other Americans, care about. Instead, it was all the conservative hot buttons, real (immigration) and perceived (Rebel flag).

http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/1107/Conservatives_rage_against_CNNYouTube.html

It's true that some of the folks that appeared on these videos seemed to be running shy of all four cylinders, such as the chap who shook his Bible at us and the other guy who threw a rifle through the air. But my overall reaction to this tempest in a teapot is: so what?

Let's accept the stipulation that media outlets such as CNN, Fox News, the Wall Street Jounral, and the New York Times have their axe to grind in their news coverage. The way I see it is that there are no bad or unfair questions. There are only bad answers. And if a president want-to-be cannot answer such questions or turn such questions to his own advantage, how can we expect him to do the same on the world stage?

It has always bothered me that President Bush has generally only allowed questions from sympathetic audiences, which only reinforces his reality in contrast to what might really be happening. I attribute the erosion of pubic support in Bush's Social Security initiative. He never allowed a real debate to take place and in the absence of a real debate, Americans embraced the status quo.

Things are not any better on the Democratic side with the Clinton campaign planting soft-ball questions.

Eventually, someone from one of those two debates is going to go head to head with allies and tyrants. There will be a lot of unfair questions, and the new president will need to be able to handle any of them without crying about boycotts and do-overs.

Battle of the Little People

Quotations from the Florida CNN/YouTube Debate.

The strongest debaters were McCain and Paul, the former speaking with passion about torture and the later on foreign policy in spite of a hostile audience. The weakest were Giuliani and Romney, both of whom sounded weasally. Giuliani especially failed to throw the audience enough red meat nuttiness on gun rights, immigration, and abortion and embarrassed himself on a question about the Bible-- he was reticient to accept that there were dinosaurs on Noah's ark. Giuliani ducked and weaved and reminded me of a dyspeptic Manhatten tailor. Romney ducked and weaved and reminded me of the plastic guy you put on a wedding cake. Both of them had trouble looking each other in the eye. Grandpa Thompson, with his outrageous shar pei face, continues to scare me with his death to social security talk. The main whipping boys continued to be Hillary and the Islamo-fascists, which they still conflate. The most electric moment was when the audience hissed a former general for being gay. In all fairness, CNN violated the strict Republican limit of one non-hetro on stage at once by having Governor Charlie Crist introduce the clowns and Anderson question them.

This was an entertaining evening that also gave viewers such as myself insight into the candidates' policies and personalities.

Here is the transcript of the two hour debate.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/28/debate.transcript/

From out of the mouth of babes . . .

Giuliani : "You did have illegal immigrants at your mansion, didn't you?" Mitt usually criticizes people when he usually has the far worse record."


McCain: "We must recognize these are God's children as well. They need our love and compassion, and I want to ensure that I will enforce the borders first. But we won't demagogue it."

Thompson: "I wanted to give my buddies here a little extra air time."

Romney: "On abortion, I was wrong."

McCain: "Governor, let me tell you, if we're going to gain the high ground in this world ... we're not going to torture people. How in the world someone could think that that kind of thing could be inflicted on people who are in our custody is absolutely beyond me."

Paul: "I want to trade with people, talk with people, travel."

Leaving the Republican Party

As former Senator Zell Miller (D-GA) said, "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me."

I feel the same way about the Republican Party. The first president I voted for was Ronald Reagan, and I remember how contemptuous I was toward President Carter at the time. My values-- belief in balanced budgets, integrity in our leaders and officials, small government, caution in foreign entanglements, and state control of education-- has not changed. What has changed is that the Republican Party now stands for massive deficit spending, dishonesty in our leaders and officials, large government, rash foreign entanglements, and federal control of education.

I didn't leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me.

Leftards

http://hotair.com/archives/2006/09/12/five-years-on-take-2/

My theory is testable. Get a Liberal to describe a Conservative. When you tell him you are a Conservative, and that you don’t believe the things he imagines you do, and tell him what Conservatives actually believe, he will: 1) call you a liar, 2) say that you aren’t a real Conservative or 3) be blown away, achieve enlightenment, and register as a Republican.

It seems to me that it is you that is doing exactly what you accuse the liberals of doing, with your sweeping generalizations, name-calling, expressions of persecution, and intimations that liberals are not patriotic or sane. But I will take you up on your challenge by describing a conservative.

Generally, a conservative is someone who embraces traditional values and promotes the status quo, whereas as liberal challenges those values and promotes appropriate change.

I'm proudly a conservative. I enjoy Fox television and read William Buckley's National Review. As a matter of personal conscience and preference, I don't smoke, drink, gamble, or stray from my family obligations. I work hard, avoid debt, and like children and small animals. I'm suspicious of concentrations of power in the government and corporations. In domestic policy, I believe in balanced budgets and fiscal prudence. We go to church each Sunday, and we support local charities. The first president I voted for was Ronald Reagan.

I'm also proudly a liberal. I get most of my news from NPR radio and the New York Times. I'm a first amendment absolutist and I'm suspicious of intrusions of the clergy into public policy. I favor gay rights, a generous immigrantion policy, and the expansion of civil rights for the least among us. I don't have a beef with affirmative action, the public school system, or with the tax code. In foreign policy, I'm opposed to foreign entanglements, imperial dreams, and gunboat diplomacy, believing that if you want to sell Jesus or buy oil overseas, you should do so, but on your dime and without wrapping yourself in the American flag. I'm currently a registered Democrat, and, yes, I despise Bush and his Values Party.

http://mymallandnews.bizland.com/index078.html

Such terms as liberal and conservative are meaningless ways to self-characterize or to pejoratively characterize. Life in all of its diversity and dynamism expects more from us than to be wedded to such simplistic labels.

The Evangelical Crack-Up

The evangelicals are in retreat. They don't have a natural presidential candidate. They don't have a unified leadership. They no longer seem to share even the same political beliefs.

Excerpts from David D. Kirpatrick's End Time for Evangelicals? and Frank Rich's Rudy, the Values Slayer. (The New York Times, October 28th).

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/magazine/28Evangelicals-t.html

Meanwhile, a younger generation of evangelical pastors — including the widely emulated preachers Rick Warren and Bill Hybels — are pushing the movement and its theology in new directions. There are many related ways to characterize the split: a push to better this world as well as save eternal souls; a focus on the spiritual growth that follows conversion rather than the yes-or-no moment of salvation; a renewed attention to Jesus’ teachings about social justice as well as about personal or sexual morality. However conceived, though, the result is a new interest in public policies that address problems of peace, health and poverty — problems, unlike abortion and same-sex marriage, where left and right compete to present the best answers.

The backlash on the right against Bush and the war has emboldened some previously circumspect evangelical leaders to criticize the leadership of the Christian conservative political movement. “The quickness to arms, the quickness to invade, I think that caused a kind of desertion of what has been known as the Christian right,” Hybels, whose Willow Creek Association now includes 12,000 churches, told me over the summer. “People who might be called progressive evangelicals or centrist evangelicals are one stirring away from a real awakening.”

Some rebellious evangelical pastors and theologians of the new school refer to themselves as the emergent church. Others who are less openly rebellious but share a similar approach point to the examples of Rick Warren and Bill Hybels. “What Warren and Hybels are doing is reshaping the perception of what it means to be a Christian in our country and our world,” McKnight says.
Warren and Hybels are also highly entrepreneurial. Each has built a network of thousands of mostly evangelical churches that rely on their ministries for sermon ideas, worship plans or audio-video materials to enliven services. As a result, their influence may rival that of any denominational leader in the country.

Warren is clearly a theological and cultural conservative. Before the 2004 election, he wrote a letter to other pastors emphasizing the need to combat abortion rights and same-sex marriage. But these days Warren talks much more often about fighting AIDS and poverty. He raised hackles among conservatives last year by having Barack Obama give a speech at his church. And he also came under fire last year when he traveled to Damascus, Syria, where he implicitly criticized the Bush administration for refusing to talk with unfriendly nations.

Hybels, founder of the Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago, is very possibly the single-most-influential pastor in America; in the last 15 years, his Willow Creek Association has grown to include more than 12,000 churches. Many invite their staff members and lay leaders to participate by telecast in Willow Creek’s annual leadership conferences, creating a virtual gathering of tens of thousands. Dozens of churches in Wichita, including Central Christian and other past bastions of conservative activism, are part of the association.

As his stature has grown, Hybels has seemed more willing to irk Christian conservative political leaders — and even some in his own congregation. He set off a furor a few years ago when he invited former President Bill Clinton to speak at one of his conferences. And the Iraq war has brought into sharp relief Hybels’s differences with conservatives like Dobson.

Most conservative Christian leaders have resolutely supported Bush’s foreign policy. Dobson and others have even talked about defending Western civilization from radical Islam as a precondition for protecting family values. But on the eve of the Iraq invasion, Hybels preached a sermon called “Why War?” Laying out three approaches to war — realism, just-war theory and pacifism — he implored members of his congregation to re-examine their own thinking and then try to square it with the Bible. In the process, he left little doubt about where he personally stood. He called himself a pacifist.

Hybels traced the “J curve” of mounting deaths from war through the centuries. “In case you are wondering about this, wonder how God feels about all this,” he said. “It breaks the heart of God.”
At his annual leadership conference this summer, Hybels interviewed former President Jimmy Carter. To some Christian conservatives, it was quite a provocation. Carter, after all, was their first great disappointment, a Southern Baptist who denounced the conservative takeover and an early critic of the Bush administration. Some pastors canceled plans to attend.

“I think that a superpower ought to be the exemplification of a commitment to peace,” Carter told Hybels, who nodded along. “I would like for anyone in the world that’s threatened with conflict to say to themselves immediately: ‘Why don’t we go to Washington? They believe in peace and they will help us get peace.’ ” Carter added: “This is just a simple but important extrapolation from what a human being ought to do, and what a human being ought to do is what Jesus Christ did, who was a champion of peace.”

In a conversation I had with him, Hybels told me he considered politics a path to “heartache and disappointment” for a Christian leader. But he also described the message of his Willow Creek Association to its member churches in terms that would warm a liberal’s heart.
“We have just pounded the drum again and again that, for churches to reach their full redemptive potential, they have to do more than hold services — they have to try to transform their communities,” he said. “If there is racial injustice in your community, you have to speak to that. If there is educational injustice, you have to do something there. If the poor are being neglected by the government or being oppressed in some way, then you have to stand up for the poor.”
In the past, Hybels has scrupulously avoided criticizing conservative Christian political figures like Falwell or Dobson. But in my talk with him, he argued that the leaders of the conservative Christian political movement had lost touch with their base. “The Indians are saying to the chiefs, ‘We are interested in more than your two or three issues,’ ” Hybels said. “We are interested in the poor, in racial reconciliation, in global poverty and AIDS, in the plight of women in the developing world.”

Conservative Christian leaders in Washington acknowledge a “leftward drift” among evangelicals, said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and the movement’s chief advocate in Washington. He told me he believed that Hybels and many of his admirers had, in effect, fallen away from orthodox evangelical theology. Perkins compared the phenomenon to the century-old division in American Protestantism between the liberal mainline and the orthodox evangelical churches. “It is almost like another split coming within the evangelicals,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/opinion/28rich.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

When Rudy’s candidacy started to show legs, pundits and family values activists alike assumed that ignorant voters knew only his 9/11 video reel and not his personal history or his stands on issues. “Americans do not yet realize how far outside of the mainstream of conservative thought that Mayor Giuliani’s social views really are,” declared Tony Perkins, the Family Research Council leader, in February. But despite Rudy’s fleeting stabs at fudging his views, they are well known now, and still he leads in national polls of Republican voters and is neck and neck with Fred Thompson in the Bible Belt sanctuary of South Carolina.

There are various explanations for this. One is that 9/11 and terrorism fears trump everything. Another is that the rest of the field is weak. But the most obvious explanation is the one that Washington resists because it contradicts the city’s long-running story line. Namely, that the political clout ritualistically ascribed to Mr. Perkins, James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Gary Bauer of American Values and their ilk is a sham.

These self-promoting values hacks don’t speak for the American mainstream. They don’t speak for the Republican Party. They no longer speak for many evangelical ministers and their flocks. The emperors of morality have in fact had no clothes for some time. Should Rudy Giuliani end up doing a victory dance at the Republican convention, it will be on their graves.

But the most significant — and happiest — explanation for the values czars’ demise as a political force is that white evangelical Christians and a new generation of evangelical leaders have themselves steadily tacked a different course from the Dobson crowd. A CBS News poll this month parallels what the Times reporter David D. Kirkpatrick found in his examination of evangelicals for today’s Times Magazine. Like most other Americans, they are more interested in hearing from presidential candidates about the war in Iraq and health care than about any other issues.

Abortion and same-sex marriage landed at the bottom of that list; fighting poverty outpolled abortion as a personal priority by a 3-to-2 margin. To see just how large a gap separates that evangelical electorate from the values organizations that purport to speak in its name, just look at the Values Voter Summit that the Family Research Council convened to much press attention in Washington last weekend. In a survey of participants to determine which issue would be “most important” in choosing a presidential candidate, the summit’s organizers didn’t even think to list the war, health care or fighting poverty among the 12 hot-button options.

The Values Voter Summit’s survey of the attendees’ presidential preferences showed just as large a disconnect. Rudy Giuliani came in next to last (behind Tom Tancredo, ahead of John McCain) in the field of nine candidates, earning only 1.85 percent of the vote. By contrast, among white evangelicals nationwide in the CBS News poll, he was in a statistical dead heat for first place with Fred Thompson; indeed, Mr. Giuliani’s 26 percent among evangelicals nearly matches his showing among all Republican voters. The discrepancy between the CBS poll and the summit survey leaves you wondering who exactly follows Dr. Dobson and Mr. Perkins beyond the ticket buyers who showed up for their media circus last weekend at the Washington Hilton.

Of late Dr. Dobson has been throwing a hissy fit about Rudy’s rise, reminiscent of his 2005 condemnation of the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants for appearing in what he labeled a “pro-homosexual video.” Apparently suffering from the delusion that he has the pull on the right that Ralph Nader once did on the left, he has threatened to bolt to a third party. But for all this huffing and puffing, Dr. Dobson and his stop-Rudy brigade are as politically hypocritical as the Reverend Haggard was sexually hypocritical.

If they really believed uncompromisingly in their issues and principles, they would have long since endorsed either Sam Brownback, the zealous Kansas senator fond of using fetus photos as political props, or Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who spent 15 years as a Baptist preacher, calls abortion a “holocaust” and believes in intelligent design rather than evolution.

But they gave Senator Brownback so little moral and financial support that he folded his candidacy a week ago. And they continue to stop well short of embracing Mr. Huckabee, no matter how many rave reviews his affable personality receives on the campaign trail. They shun him because they know he’ll lose, and they would rather compromise principle than back a loser.
Backing a loser, they know, would even further diminish their waning Washington status in a post-Rove, post-Bush G.O.P. The more they shed their illusion of power, the more they imperil their ability to rake in big bucks from their apocalyptic direct-mail campaigns. They must choose mammon over God if they are to maintain the many values rackets that make up their various business empires.

Hilariously enough, some other big names on the right, typified by Sean Hannity of Fox News, are capitulating to the Giuliani candidacy by pretending that he, like the incessantly flip-flopping Mitt Romney, is reversing his previously liberal record on social issues. The straw they cling to is Rudy’s promise to appoint “strict constructionist” judges to the Supreme Court.

Even leaving aside the Giuliani record in New York (where his judicial appointees were mostly Democrats), the more Democratic Senate likely to emerge after 2008 is a poor bet to confirm a Scalia or Alito even should a Republican president nominate one. No matter how you slice it, the Giuliani positions on abortion, gay rights and gun control remain indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton’s.

“You have absolutely nothing to fear from me,” Rudy disingenuously told the assembled at the Values Voter Summit last weekend. Actually, there’s plenty for everyone to fear from a Giuliani presidency, starting with the mad neocon bombers shaping his apocalyptic policy toward Iran. But that’s another story. Whichever candidate or party lands in the White House, this much is certain: Inauguration Day 2009 is at the very least Armageddon for the reigning ayatollahs of the American right.

Dipping Our Toe in Politics

We were invited to a wine tasting Sunday evening sponsored by a PAC in Paradise Valley where we were introduced to several local Democratic candidates, notably Bob Lord who hopes to defeat John B. Shadegg of the Third District.

A wine tasting consists of an aroma component-- detecting wines based on aroma. For exampe, a lemon aroma relates to the citrusy qualities of Sauvignon whereas the smell of jasmine, orange, an apricot can be found in Gewurtztraminer and Riesling. Gererally, the aromas break down into floral, spicy, herbal, vegetable, nutty, woody, earthy, oxidized, and micro biological (yeasty and lactic).

The tasting components consists of seeing how foods interact with the wine causing sometimes similarity and blending and other times contrast. For example, Ecco Domani Pinot Grigio shows similarity with basil pesto and contrast with toasted pine nuts. With Beaulieu Vinyard BV Pinot Noir (a red wine), the grilled portabello mushrooms showed simalarity on the palate. The sundried tomatoes accentuated the acidic taste thereby showing contrast.

Political Websites

Here are websites of presidential political candidates.

Thompson

Obama

Paul

Clinton

Edwards

Huckabee

McCain

Romney

Guiliani

Biden

Kuchnick

Hunter

Richardson

Dodd

Brownback

Gravel

Moral Christian Republicans

Senator (or about to be former Senator) Larry Craig of Idaho, a family-values, anti-gay crusader who got caught in a men's bathroom in Minneapolis, MN soliciting sex under the bottom of a stall from an undercover policeman. He pled guilty to a lesser crime two months later and announced today that he is quitting the Senate because he embarrassed himself.

And let me guess.....the guy is a Christian?

In my time as a Born Again, I lost track of the number of hypocritical Church leaders who were caught doing the exact opposite of what they preached. They have a penchant for it.

There certainly are a lot of hypocritical Republican perverts.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=358x814#3808

As to why there are so many, I think it has little to do with their religious background. The Democrats have also had their scandals, most notably, Bill Clinton. However, I think the reason why so many Republicans are now coming out of the woodwork is because they have enjoyed six years of power with little accountability-- control of all branches of government and most of the press as well. Power is now sliding away from them, and wth that you will see even more scandals. Power corrupts, and power has corrupted the Republicans. A moral Christian Republican is becoming an oxymoron for our times.

The Epistomology of War

Neither war was an epistemological mistake. Both wars are/was more a botched attempt at imperialism.

I don't deny that the wars were a botched attempt at imperialism, with other motivations dovetailing as well. But wars that turn out badly by definition are epistomological failures, whether it is the delusions of the French field marshalls riding to Moscow in 1812, Hitler attacking Poland in 1939, Johnson's escalation in Viet Nam, or Bush's foray into in Iraq. I don't deny the economic or political factors that caused these failures, although frankly I put less weight on them than you do. There was also a failure of separate the real from the false, not just by our national leaders, but by the fourth estate and much of the public. As you state: "It’s as if every now and again we must relearn that direct military occupation never ends well."
Why must war teach us these slow and painful lessons? It is because vain-glorious wishes and hopes skew the perceptions of those who start and support wars rather than understanding things as they really are, i.e. epistomology.

In the case of the Viet Nam war, it is ironic that the most LSD-addled yipster in Grant Park was closer to the essential truth than the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune, the august Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the faculty lounge of the University of Chicago in his distrust for the truth that the press, military, and government spun out during that time. As it turned ut Viet Nam was a shining lie from start to finish, from the Tonkin Bay, through Me Lei massacre, and the Pentagon Papers. And the lies continue to this day when neocons assert that the Cambodian genoicide occurred because the US left Viet Nam, while conveniently leaving out the fact that it was the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam that crushed the Khmer Rouge in 1979. .

And now a generation later you see the same kind of epistomology-- forceful actions taken by brilliant people on false premises using stacked facts or no facts. What was the reality that prevailed in 2003 in Bush's head? It was the reality of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a link between terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and Iraq, that Iraqi oil would pay for this war, that war could be fought on the cheap, that the people of Iraqi would welcome our troops, and the probability that our domination of Iraq would bring peace to the Middle East.. Perhaps someday hsiotory will endorse the decision Bush made. But there is no question that there was a gap between what was believed and what was real in making that decision, a failure, as I said before, of epistomology that is costing us untold blood and treasure.

American political philosophy has always been Machiavellian.

I wish it were so but that I doubt that it is, as Machiavellian politics is by definition politics that is rooted in what is tangiable rather than what is fanciful. Nothing is more deadly to us as individuals or to our country we we take flight from reality into the never-never land of idealism.

What you failed to quote in the same paragraph, “I suppose its hard showing prudence when you have such a huge military complex itching to gorge itself on government funds”, is the key to understanding why we engage in these seemingly bad wars; it’s not a result of bad epistemology.

I understand your argument, but I remain skeptical of it.

I am skeptical when labels such as "militarism" or "imperialism" or any ism for that matter is applied to the United States. These type of labels have more to do with ideological dogma usually with a quasi-Marxist coloration than explaining the existing reality. I am skeptical of the claim that nations general and people individually are primarily driven by the "pocketbok nerve". The economic interpretation of history that sees men as voting or going to war based on the imperatives of capital is simplistic in the light of what we know of mass human psychology. Hitler may well have been an instrument of the Ruhr industralists, protecting their economic advantage against the workers, but this doesn't scratch the surface in explaining the rise of Nazism.

This-- that people are more than "economic man"-- is clearly true in the Middle East where the satisfication of material wants perversely seems to fuel terrorism and where many of the terrorisms came from backgrounds of comfort or wealth. I think you also discount the negative impact war has on capitalism, in terms of wasted resources and opportunity costs, including those of defense contractors. Furthermore, if our motive of being in Iraq is oil, it seems a nonsensical goal as we can get all the oil that we can consume on the open market at $80 per barrel. Finally, you invoke a shadowy "powerful interests" that somehow are responsible for dispatching our youth to Iraq. There are no such puppet masters. At the end of the day, the electorate will vote people into or out of office based on how our national leaders perform. The Republicans lost Congress in 2006, will probably lose the presidency in 2008 and the Supreme Court in 2010. I'm all for cynicism, but the kind of cyncism that implies that a change in political leaders has no effect on our war policies strikes as an intuition that isn't based on the evidence.

Militarism and imperialism are just words that describe the facts. I think you would have good cause to chide me had I said, “I am skeptical of a word like Darwinism.” if we had been discussing that ever so popular topic evolution.

I object to such words because they carry agitprop baggage that does more to obscure than illuminate and also allow the debate to be framed in such a way that disconnects conclusions from evidence. Darwinism, Hinduism, materialism, spirtualism-- all of these are glittering generalities that mean different things to different people and really have no value until they are intelligibly defined. Can we say the US is a militarist country? Yes. Can we say that the US is a pacifist country? Again, yes. The evidence is there to make the case in both instances. I think you lose sight of the diversity of this country when such superficial categorical descriptions are made. The US is both a racist nation and a tolerant nation, an expansionist nation and an insular nation, a secular nation and a sacred nation, and so on.

Self-interest / greed are what motivate our foreign policy.

And we are all in thrall to the multi-nationals and military-industrial complex. Really? Yes, there were economic motivations in founding this nation, in the civil war, the constitution was a set of compromises between economic interest groups, and so on. But to stop there is to lose sight of a deeper reality of the other motivations that drive you and me. I'm persuaded by Eric Hoffer's True Believer, who linked individual psychology to politics, especially to mass movements. I especially appreciated his insight into the interchangeability hetween mass movements-- that fanatics be they Fascists, Communists, Christians, or atheists--are all brothers under the skin in their frustration, insecurity, and need to sacrifice himself for a holy or historic cause. I don't who said it, but someone said that when someone fires a gun it is fired with his testicles, not his fingers. Ther's a lot of truth in that-- that Shakesperean emotions have much more of an impact on how we live our lives than what our Fidelity statement is. In the case of Bush, a ne're do black sheep well who tried to eclipse his father in statecraft and governance, it's quite possible that that there is more than an element of psychodrama-- much more so than the so-called need for access to oil.

I think you have no idea the extent of our involvement in the Middle East, the least of which is in the current Afghanistan and Iraq escapades.

As someone who grew up in a Muslim country and now works for a leading defense contractor, I can assure you that I do indeed know the extent of our involvement in the ME, perhaps more so than you. And nor do I gainsay the imperative to be involved in the ME to some degree. But it doesn't follow that our ME interests translate to boots on the ground. That we need Iraq for oil and that we need an army in Iraq to protect our oil interests are assumptions, not facts, and tendentious and fallacious assumptions at that.

Your continued insistence that everything politicians say should be taken at face value shows mental shortcoming on your end not theirs.

You sorely misread me if you infer from anything that I've written that the pronouncements of politicans should be taken at face value. When it comes to politicans, I'm an equal opportunity skeptic-- to both conservatives and to liberals, to democrats and to republicans.
The premise of my last post is that truth in politics is both desirable and attainable-- to answer your original question-- and that means having the epistomological discipline to separate truth from falsehood in what politicans and their intellectual handmaidens say or do. If your premise is that political truth is elusive, subjective, relativistic, or power-based, than your competing ideas must also be so based and as equally distrusted and transient. The question for me is not: is that policy liberal or conservative?; but is that policy true or false, right or wrong? To answer those questions, we must start with the premise that those questions can first be answered. And if those questions are answered with sufficient rigor, than, it seems to me, the public policy will take care of itself.

The administration today is largely the same people of the Bush 1 and Reagan administrations; and they are not stupid or deluded but have a clear and consistent agenda.

Ok, but their prime agenda is to stay in power. However, by misreading the public-- believing as you do that we the people are tolerant of messanic foreign adventures and are militeristic and credulous-- they are on the brink of losing their power and their agenda. Thoughts have consequences and epistomology is a two-way street.

Chickenhawk College Republicans

. . . with better things to do than to fight them over there so they won't have to fight them over here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFGit_tZDqs

Bush's Atheism

Christopher Hitchens

"I know something which is known to few but is not a secret. Karl Rove is not a believer, and he doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, but when asked, he answers quite honestly. I think the way he puts it is, 'I’m not fortunate enough to be a person of faith.'"


"I think it’s false to say that the president acts as if he believes he has God’s instructions. Compared to Jimmy Carter, he’s nowhere. He’s a Methodist, having joined his wife’s church in the end. He also claims that Jesus got him off the demon drink. He doesn’t believe it. His wife said, 'If you don’t stop, I’m leaving and I’m taking the kids.' You can say that you got help from Jesus if you want, but that’s just a polite way of putting it in Texas."

I think James Moore and Wayne Slater's characterization in The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power that Rove is agnostic is accurate. What Rove and Bush have done is use god-talk as one more political lever. Former president Clinton, Carter. and Lyndon Johnson are somewhat the same, although their belief system had deeper cultural roots. I have my doubts as to whether it is even possible to be a person of faith and a world class politican. Such inherently clashing world views create a kind of neutering schizophrenia, as in the case of Woodrow Wilson.

Liberalism

This is what liberalism is according to Newt.

And here is a somewhat more coherent understanding of this term.

The word liberal is used prejoratively in modern discourse. But I think it is only because many of us are reluctant to embrace this word. It's a word that denotes a way of looking at power and liberty that is consistent with the thinking of our founding fathers and our greatest presidents.

Newt finds in the philosophy of modern-day liberalism moral relativism and a contempt for the sanctity of life, which is just a tad hypocritical for an adulteror who supports wars that use weapons of mass destruction.

I'm Thinking of A Number - Part I

``If we lose," Karl Rove said "they will follow.''

For the sake of argument, let's accept the Bush administration's premise, that we are in the midst of a global war on terror of uncertain duration and cost, and that the Iraqi war wasn't fabricated from whole cloth to re-elect the president. At this point, there is only one number that would persuade me. That number is: two. Bush has two children, and that neither of them is willing to sacrifice themselves on the alter of liberty at least makes me think that this so-called war is nothing more than a politicized fantasy.

"Money-Making is a Jewish Tradition"

Former Wisconsin governor and Republican presidential hopeful Tommy Thompson told Jewish activists Monday that making money is "part of the Jewish tradition," and something that he applauded.

I don't know about that. But making money is certainly part of my tradition.

Should We Humanize or Demonize?

It is perhaps not a spring-time thought that someday our graveyard will now longer be remembered. There is much to be said for living in the present and not becoming overly concerned over what politicians and preachers have to say to us. The recent news of the cancers that are challenging Tony Snow and Elizabeth Edwards, political partisans on different sides of the aisle, reminds us of our own mortality and that our own days are numbered. I nevertheless think it is appropriate not to pull our rhetorical punches when it comes to talking about current policies and events. Whatever feelings we may have to them at the human level, politicans are neverthless making decisions that will influence our lives and the lives of our children and community.