Fact-esque

It's the End of the World As We Know It and I Feel Fine

I've been putting off writing this because it's simply too depressing once you put it into words, but somebody has to say it and it seems to be my role. Everybody, especially economists like Krugman and Baker, have been dancing around this for weeks, unable to bring themselves to state baldly and simply the conclusion that all their recent analysis inevitably leads to. So I will.

The American economy is never - repeat NEVER - coming back.

Religious Right Theocrat Moves In On TPers

There's a lot around about the clown-show that was the TeaParty convention a couple of weeks ago, like on SarahCuda's $100K speech for which she had notes written on the palm of her hand and wingnut Rep Tom Tancredo's reprehensible immigrant-bashing on opening day. But what you may not have heard (I just ran across this myself) is that the discredited and fractious far-right religious wingnuts are trying to attach themselves to the TP movement just like they attached themselves to the Movement Conservatives in the 90's.

Making Sense of Beck and His GOP: Ever Read Lord of the Flies?

The left-wing, including, gleefully, yours truly, has been having a lot of fun with the way right-wing whackos have blindly, ignorantly jammed together mutually exclusive concepts without realizing that they were, you know, mutully exclusive. For instance.But while they are slowly moving closer and closer to the truth about the Republicans and wingo mouthpieces like Glenn Beck, even the best of them seem to be having trouble accepting the obvious: that they're pure political propagandists. They keep looking for a consistent throughline of some kind as if what's left of the GOP and RWNM are still locked in the ideological framework of the Bush years. Here's Glenn Greenwald:

Like the establishment leadership of both political parties, [Glenn Beck] has no core political principles or fixed, identifiable ideology.  His description of himself as a "rodeo clown" might be the most perceptive thing he's ever said.  Attempts to classify him on the conventional political spectrum are destined to fail, and attempts to demonize him as some sort of standard Republican bogeyman will inevitably be so over-simplified as to be false. Such efforts assume far more coherence than he possesses.

Good. He clearly "gets" Beck now. But on the political party front, he still can't understand how they can say one thing one day and it's opposite the next with equal fervor.

Ross Douchehat: The NYT Hired Him...Why, Exactly?

If David Brooks was a dumb move, what do you call the NYT's scooping up the worst conservative columnist this side of Jonah G? Inspired? Or suicidal?

Douthat, in that patented, barely acknowledged aside that smirks, "Everybody knows that", announced in his column today that the problem with Bush was that he was a - hold onto your braces - "crypto-liberal" president.

Dear Teabaggers,

As a fellow grassroots activist, let me first say that I feel your pain.  Some (maybe even most) of you are out there doing the First Amendment thing.  You're frustrated by government.  You feel out of control.  You probably get your news from FOX or another of the cable stations so you're even more misinformed than the rest of us who avoid those corporatist outlets.  You see suffering that's normally reserved for "Cadillac-driving Welfare Queens" and other lazy bums starting to creep up the class ladder and it's scary.  Maybe you're even suffering yourself - lost your job or watched your portfolio take a hit.  It's not exactly wondering where your next meal is coming from or how you'll pay for your kid's asthma meds, but it's still discomforting and, depending on your age, may be genuinely frightening.  You want to get that feeling of control back.  You want people to know what you know and pay attention.  I hear that.  I live that.  So when I see you being mocked and called crazy, I feel some sympathy.  It's not quite empathy because, based on what I understand of this teabagging movement, it's all about not paying taxes and scapegoating the "illegals," which makes me think that your movement is basically lazy and selfish and willing to be led by a truly hideous element of our society.  But I know it hurts to believe something is true and noble and be laughed at because of it.   So I won't laugh at you.

Here's what I will do:  I'll keep organizing communities that work for reduced military spending because our war economy is an abomination.  I will keep working for fair tax policy that works to have everyone and every corporation pay their fair share.  I will keep organizing for health care reform that covers everyone, reduces costs and improves care through the inclusion of a strong and independent public health insurance plan option.  I'll keep working to improve the chances you and your children and their children have to succeed by working to ensure government investment in human needs programs that help all of us - even the lazy bums who don't deserve it because, you know, it's in all our best economic interests to do so and because my moral center compels me to.

In the meantime, here's something you won't see on FOX or the rest of the cable news shows.   

Can't We Just Pass a Law Preventing David Brooks from Writing About Anything He Doesn't Understand?

Which would, of course, effectively prevent his writing anything at all except treatises on Dick and Jane primers and shoe-tying. And maybe brie.

I usually ignore him but sometimes his smug plastic complacency when he manages to get through a magazine article or, dawg forbid, a whole book without his head exploding is a little hard to take. He appears to have read two books in the last couple years or so and built his most recent column out of them, proving once again that conservatives can only be conservatives by fighting to maintain their ignorance and then bragging about it.

The Man Responsible for Obama's Election

It may well be, though no one has yet said this, that the man who is truly responsible for the election of a black man to the US presidency isn't anyone who has been mentioned by anybody in any context.

Obama Picks Gay Bishop to Give Pre-Inauguration Prayer

The firestorm of protest after Obama's announcement that right-wing evangelist and would-be theocrat Rick Warren was going to be delivering the inaugural invocation evidently had BO and his team re-thinking their whole approach. Now the Boston Globe is reporting that gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson - the guy who started a blistering controversy of his own that resulted in a split in the worldwide Episcopal Church - has been chosen to offer a pre-inauguration prayer.

President-elect Barack Obama, facing criticism from gay rights advocates for picking an evangelical pastor who helped overturn same-sex marriage in California to deliver the invocation at his inauguration, has chosen the openly gay Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire to offer a prayer at a pre-inauguration event on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Obama's choice, announced yesterday, of Bishop V. Gene Robinson to deliver the invocation at a star-studded inaugural celebration Sunday evening was immediately greeted with praise by gay rights advocates, who had been irate over the invitation to Rick Warren, one of the nation's most prominent evangelicals. Among the critics had been Robinson, an early Obama supporter who said yesterday he is now hoping that he will be able to sit down with Warren before either of them gives his opening invocation next week.

Certainly that should help wind down the criticism from gay groups though it may not do much for those of us with much deeper Warren-problems than his anti-homosexual mania, bad as that is. More interesting is the fact that they've cannily used the opportunity to re-vamp the ceremonies, adding two other disparate prelates as well in an effort to manifest Obama's openness and the inclusivity of his message.

Robinson and Warren are two of four Protestant clergy given prominent prayer spots during the inaugural festivities - a United Methodist civil rights leader, Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, is giving the closing benediction at the inauguration next Tuesday, and the Rev. Sharon E. Watkins, general minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), is giving the sermon at the national prayer service the following day.

"These are all very different people, with very different kinds of messages, from different churches and different backgrounds, and again it just underscores how diverse we can be when coming together," said Linda Douglass, Obama's inauguration spokeswoman.

Very nice, though, again, it doesn't solve the problem of Warren's high visibility up against the virtual invisibility of the other three. Still, it's a step and one more indication that criticizing him works. Bear that in mind for the future.

Steve Hildebrand Needs to STFU, Not Tell Us To

Jane Hamsher catches Obama deputy Steve Hildebrand telling liberals to stop questioning BO's Cabinet choices. (Via Avedon Carol)

This is not a time for the left wing of our Party to draw conclusions about the Cabinet and White House appointments that President-Elect Obama is making. Some believe the appointments generally aren't progressive enough.... After all, he was elected to be the president of all the people - not just those on the left.

Steve, of course, has the sentence wrong. What Obama and his people need to remember - for a change - is that BO was elected by us to be president of all the people, not just those on the Right. We have been consistently more correct about the negative effects of conservative policies than either the Center or the Right-wing Washington establishment, let alone the far-Right whacko neocons who've had things their own way for almost a decade. We don't propose to be shuffled aside like obstreperous children by a president we elected just to see the same people we've been accurately critical of put back in place so they can continue the disruptive, unworkable policies that landed us in the soup in the first place.

Somebody needs to explain to Steve that if he's telling his own people they're not allowed to voice concerns about anything BO does, he ain't no fucking liberal. Liberals listen and then work things out. They DON'T say "My way or the highway", and they DON'T run political parties as if they were military units getting their marching orders from which there had better be no deviation or the guardhouse awaits. Conservatives do that. A lot. It's a conservative characteristic. So who's kidding who, Stevie?

Marry Who You Want, Babe

Today is "Write to Marry Day", viz:

Bloggers around the country will participate in "Write to Marry Day" on October 29, 2008, posting on their blogs in support of marriage equality for same-sex couples and against California's Proposition 8. Prop 8 is a measure on California's November ballot that would take away the right of same-sex couples to marry.

***

"Prop 8 is an unfair and unnecessary measure that would eliminate equal protections for same-sex couples and write discrimination into the California state Constitution," adds co-organizer Dana Rudolph, founder of LGBT-parenting blog Mombian. "As marriage equality spreads throughout the country, people in all states have a vested interest in making sure this hard-won right is protected."

Basically what happened is the usual right-wing folderol. The California Constitution was finally interpreted correctly by the State Supreme Court and gay marriage became legal. It's pretty much the same thing that happened in Massachusetts last year and the response was equally typical: the Religious Right - Jimmy Dobson, the Devil's Friend, and his bag of nuts in Focus on the Family are right in the middle of it no doubt - got a proposition on the California ballot demanding that the California Constitution and the rights of a group of people they don't care for be violated in order to make the country safe for bigots and haters.

Let just get this straight (no pun intended) once and for all: gay marriage does not and cannot and will not endanger hetero marriage in any way shape or form. The whole argument against it is bogus from beginning to end.