Planet Utah

One Utah: Brad DeLong Asks: Is American Democracy Broken?

Wed, 16 May 2012 17:27:23 +0000

It’s an intriguing question and he offers insights based on his experiences in DC during the 1990s.

And so things that we in the Bentsen Treasury all expected to happen, did not happen. We had expected that sometime between January and June 1994 Lloyd Bentsen’s chief healthcare aide would sit down with Bob Dole’s chief healthcare aide. We had expected that they would hammer out a deal, so that people in the future would never be as dependent on on charity for their healthcare as Bob Dole was when he returned injured from World War II.

That meeting never happened. Bob Dole decided he would rather join Gingrich to try to portray Clinton as a failure. So Bob Dole never got a legislative accomplishment. Instead, he got to lose a presidential election. And I today remember Bob Dole not as the co-architect of health care reform in 1994, but as somebody who denounced Roosevelt and Truman for getting us into those Democrat wars that saved Europe from the Nazis, China and the rest of Asia from Imperial Japan (and that have allowed South Koreans to grow five inches taller than their North Korean cousins).

As my friend Mark Schmitt wrote in his review of Geoffrey Kabaservice’s book about the moderate Republicans, Rule and Ruin, the moderate Republicans were partisan Republicans first and Americans second. [snip]

So what’s up?

What’s going on?

I look around and I see a number of things:

I see a press corps that is unconcerned with policy substance and the future of America and devotes itself to calling politics like a basketball game: “who wins the week?” “who wins the day?” Lately it’s been: “who wins the morning?”
An electorate that in my fears appears to want to be led by a strong or a competent leader–or rather by a leader whom the press corps tells it wins lots of mornings–and that does not want to see its policy preferences actually enacted and satisfied, or that does not know what its policy preferences are.
Multiple blockage points in our outdated eighteenth-century orrery of a political system that froze the distribution of power between President, Senate, and House where the distribution of power between King George III, Lords, and Commons had been in 1776–and thus that makes it easy to block things, and hence very easy to portray a president of the other party as a hapless failure.
A recognition that if you make blocking everything the president of the other party does your highest priority, you do have a good chance of portraying him as a weakling and doing well in the next election cycle.
1994 and 2010 demonstrate that this nihilistic, anti-patriotic, un-American strategy works.
Democratic barons–cough, Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson, cough–who remind me of Wile E. Coyote standing in the desert after the Roadrunner has dropped a 500 ton weight from above: frozen and watching in place as the shadow covering him grows larger. Simply put, they do not understand that when they face the electorates of Nebraska and Arkansas, saying “but I helped block Obama from doing liberal things!” is not a strategy that wins them reelection. But “I backed the president, and the president did X, Y and Z, and look at how much better things are” might well be.
On top of all these, everybody below the top 5% of the American income distribution today is not living any better than their predecessors did a generation ago. We all have lots of cheap electronic toys (I love mine). But offsetting that we have more congestion, longer commutes, and more expensive houses. For the top 5% things are better. For the rest of America, it looks as though they may well not be.
Right now, for every 13 workers in America, we have one person who would be working in normal times–who was working back in 2007–and who now is not working. That means that two-thirds of American households today have one or more people in their or their parents’ or their siblings’ or their childrens’ households who would be working in normal times and is not working now. At the moment more people still think that this is George W. Bush’s fault than think that it is Barack Obama’s. But everyone agrees it is the governments fault somehow–although they are not sure how.

DeLong, like many liberals, has been frustrated with the Democratic party’s chasing of compromise with people who have no interest in actual compromise. It’s been a fiasco from day one and continues to be a fiasco. In the comment sections, some of DeLong’s commenters make the point that much that is wrong in our government could be fixed if the media actually did their job – you know reporting on news rather than acting like a bunch of wannabes hoping the cool kids will make nice.

Clinton Legacy of Political Weakness In comments last week, I argued that Bill Clinton failed to build the Democratic brand in the 1990s. This ...
Something we could learn from the Brits On C-Span today they aired the Prime Minister's Questions from the House of Commons. I've seen these sessions before, ...
The Cost and Victory of Obama’s Leadership Style The American Prospect has two great articles today. The first, Victory at What Cost? by Mark Schmitt offers a series of ...
The Old Order Has Broken Down One of the stranger outcomes of the Bush years has been the complete collapse of the old order of American ...

One Utah: Support the American Prospect

Wed, 16 May 2012 15:11:51 +0000

It may not seem like a big deal but The American Prospect, www.prospect.org, is facing some financial hard times. They’re doing great, independent journalism and writing. Right now they need our financial support.

Head on over and make a donation.

Link Farm Jeffrey Feldman over at Frameshop has a great post on Death and Taxes Mydd has a great post on why Dems ...
Why Aren’t American Women Angrier? Given that the Republican party has been indulging in some of the most absurd antics imaginable and are actively pursuing ...
American Cars . . . hmm . . . Robert Kuttner has an interesting article over at the American Prospect on GM. Kuttner's conclusion: "What's wrong with GM? The ...
Conservatives Have No Where Else to Go Over at The American Prospect, Paul Waldman's latest article explores the rising tensions in the Republican party between the plutocrats ...

One Utah: Mitt’s Big Budget Speech – Not So Much Factual as Fact Challenged

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:01:53 +0000

Tuesday, Mittens delivered a rip roaring budget speech that the AP described as less the entirely factual. The real analysis however comes from Jonathan Chait:

Mitt Romney delivered a speech today about the budget deficit. It’s hard to wrap your arms around Romney’s argument, because it’s an amalgamation of free-floating conservative rage and anxiety, completely untethered to any facts, as agreed upon by the relevant experts.

That’s the nicest thing he says about Romney’s speech.

Not only does Romney elide vast swaths of established facts about the deficit, it’s fairly clear that he does not operate within the mainstream understanding of the term “deficit” at all. As Jonathan Bernstein has repeatedly explained, modern Republican behavior and even language in relation to the deficit is completely nonsensical if you understand “the deficit” to mean the gap between revenue and outlays. Republican use of the term only makes sense if you define “the deficit” to mean “spending Republicans don’t like.” That’s why Republicansconsider it impossible to believe that one could simultaneously extend health insurance to the uninsured while reducing the deficit.

The final is the most damning:

It’s [the speech] an expression of conservative moral beliefs about the role of government. While loosely couched in budgetary terms, Romney is expressing an analysis that resides outside of, and completely at odds with, mainstream macroeconomic forecasting and scoring assumptions.

It occurs to me that what’s happened is incredibly simple. For today’s Republican base, caught up in the fundamentalist fervor of a war between good and evil, there is no solution that isn’t a moral solution. Those sluts who have sex outside of marriage are bad people, irresponsible people, and giving them health insurance that covers contraception is immoral. Those gays who want to get married are bad, irresponsible people and letting them marry is immoral. And so on and so on. The job of government is to enforce their morals until such time as paradise ensues.

Are Republicans Afraid to Discuss Economic Inequality? Jonathan Chait thinks so: The GOP Establishment’s deepest and most recurrent fear is an open debate over economic class. This is ...
Romney Picture Cries Out For Photoshop Original photo: And, of course this: I first saw this photo, not knowing whether or not it was altered. You know Obama wouldn't ...
Willard’s Tax Plan Would Blow Up Deficits and Give Millionaires $150K Via Think Progress. Willard ("Mitt") Romney’s plan would give millionaires a $150,000 tax cut, while raising taxes on many low-income families. ...
Do Your Taxes Like Willard (“Mitt”) Romney Now that Rick Sanctimonious is out, the GOP is left with the candidate of the 1 Percent. UPDATE: Willard is fluent ...

One Utah: Willard Admits He’s Not The Job Creator He Said He Was

Mon, 14 May 2012 21:32:11 +0000

THE LIE:

Mitt Romney helped create more jobs in his private sector experience and more jobs as Governor of Massachusetts than President Obama has for the entire nation. — Romney press secretary Andrea Saul

THE FACT:

Trickle-down economics is all Romney is offering. Think Progress:

In its effort to sell Mitt Romney as someone who understands the economy and knows how to create jobs, one of his campaign’s early talking points was that he helped create 100,000 jobs during his tenure at Bain Capital.

…Romney eventually stopped repeating the talking point, which advisers had difficulty defending under pressure, and now it seems Boston has completely Etch A Sketched the number and severely lowered the number of jobs Romney is supposed to have created at Bain.

…This time, the campaign is asserting that Romney created a meager and vague “thousands of jobs” at Bain and “tens of thousands” of jobs as governor of Massachusetts.

This is nothing less than an admission from the Romney campaign that their 100,000 jobs claim was entirely bogus, and acceptance that Romney created vastly fewer jobs than he claimed he had just a few months ago.

Romney’s business career was all about throwing people out of work and looting their company pension funds for profit. When Romney was Governor of Massachusetts, his state ranked 47th in job creation.

The Job Creators "I'm very happy in my former life; we helped create over 100,000 new jobs." —Mitt Romney, several weeks ago "We started ...
Romney Picture Cries Out For Photoshop Original photo: And, of course this: I first saw this photo, not knowing whether or not it was altered. You know Obama wouldn't ...
Cliff’s Pick: No Oval Office for Mitt Romney New old news I didn't know. Mitt Romney raises taxes big time while Governor of Massachusetts. Listen to this insider's take ...
Willard’s Tax Plan Would Blow Up Deficits and Give Millionaires $150K Via Think Progress. Willard ("Mitt") Romney’s plan would give millionaires a $150,000 tax cut, while raising taxes on many low-income families. ...

One Utah: Andrew Sullivan Holds Back Tears Describing Obama’s Support of Same Sex Marriage

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:13:56 +0000

I disagree with some of his language; I agree with his assessment of the power of the President’s statement to glbt persons.

Utah Stands!
OccupySLC Winter Campers COULD BE In Warm Beds Instead Watch as playlist. Poyce Healther Suker David Raphael Cordray Solomon Schneider Noel Song Martin Bammes
Just cause
Pink: Raise Your Glass

One Utah: An Elephant’s memory

Sat, 12 May 2012 22:33:05 +0000

The article itself is interesting, a take on Mitt Romney’s reported bullying of another student, arguing that he missed an opportunity to be a leader through his usual oblivious, inarticulate and un-self reflective nature.

The comments, however, are striking. People remembering painful details of their own childhood experiences of being on the receiving or delivering end of cruelty.

We all have an elephant’s memory of the cruelties we suffered and inflicted as children. That Mitt would try to excuse this incident by saying “I don’t remember” rings false.

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Do Your Taxes Like Willard (“Mitt”) Romney Now that Rick Sanctimonious is out, the GOP is left with the candidate of the 1 Percent. UPDATE: Willard is fluent ...
I (did) Like Mitt Romney Personally, Iâ€™ve given Romney the benefit of the doubt ever since he began eyeing a run for president. Heâ€™s smart ...
Mitt Romney Pro Abortion I couldn't help it but it is true that at least MY LDS friends refer to democrats as "pro-abortion." ...

One Utah: The Golden Girls Explains Marriage Equality

Sat, 12 May 2012 13:36:06 +0000

Indigo Girls: Hammer and a Nail
The Day Bill Clinton Stopped Turning His Cheek It was shortly after ABC television ran an obscenely political movie which - in my opinion - was produced with ...
Midnight Oil: Forgotten Years Something political for Larry . . .
There’s a new disease . . . AbFab raises our awareness

One Utah: Democratic Leadership Support Marriage Equality

Sat, 12 May 2012 13:10:12 +0000

The state of affairs:

President Obama’s announcement that he believes same-sex couples should be allowed to marry has opened the doors to several other Democrats and has solidified the party’s position — at least among its leadership — on the matter.

At this point, all of the elected leaders of the national Democratic Party support marriage equality.

The moves in the last week on the issue of marriage equality provide an example of how leadership works in a democracy. Public opinion has been moving in the direction of marriage equality for a while. I think we’ll see that movement pick up speed. Not because people are thinking, “Oh well if Obama’s in favor now I am” but because the president’s statement moves marriage equality into a mainstream position. It becomes more acceptable. The president however waiting on his announcement supporting marriage equality until it was obvious that the tide was shifting. In a democracy, elected officials get punished if they get too far ahead of public opinion.

At a time when the Republicans are becoming even more passionately anti-gay, the Democrats have established themselves as the party of the modern world. If I had to guess, I’d say this move is aimed at much people under thirty as it is at the gay community.

Marriage Equality Comes to Washington DC And the WaPo editorializes powerfully, saying: Here as throughout the country, same-sex marriage remains controversial. We don't belittle the strong feelings ...
Analysis of Yesterday’s Prop 8 Decision I am short on time right now so I'll refer readers to Ari Ezra Waldman's excellent piece at Towleroad. The general ...
Gay Marriage recognized in D.C., IF . . . Washington D.C. council has voted to recognize gay marriages performed in states where those marriages are legal. This law must first ...
Marriage Equality Could Happen Very, Very Soon In Washington State The details are here.

One Utah: Indigo Girls: Hammer and a Nail

Sat, 12 May 2012 04:26:08 +0000

The Golden Girls Explains Marriage Equality
The Day Bill Clinton Stopped Turning His Cheek It was shortly after ABC television ran an obscenely political movie which - in my opinion - was produced with ...
Midnight Oil: Forgotten Years Something political for Larry . . .
There’s a new disease . . . AbFab raises our awareness

One Utah: Midnight Oil: Forgotten Years

Fri, 11 May 2012 02:12:28 +0000

Something political for Larry . . .

The Day Bill Clinton Stopped Turning His Cheek It was shortly after ABC television ran an obscenely political movie which - in my opinion - was produced with ...
The Golden Girls Explains Marriage Equality
Indigo Girls: Hammer and a Nail
Amanda Palmer: Leeds United

Utah Senate: ALEC Report: Utah has a bright economic outlook

Wed, 09 May 2012 21:17:28 +0000

By Wayne Niederhauser

Utah State Senator, District 9

In a time when the entire nation is experiencing what is at best a tepid economic recovery at the hands of the federal government, it is gratifying to see Utah taking the lead in setting a solid economic foundation for the country. For the fifth year in a row, Utah has been named as the state with the strongest economic outlook.

The ranking is part of the American Legislative Exchange Council‘s, or ALEC, annual “Rich States, Poor States” report, which compares key economic markers, such as tax rates, minimum wage, population growth and job creation. The report is an overview of the policies that contribute to economic well-being, even in these tough times, and which policies states should avoid. As in previous years, the report shows states like Utah that have pro-growth policies are faring better and weathering the recession better than their neighbors.

Utah set a very basic course for itself — create a business-friendly environment that rewards competition and growth. It has done so by keeping in mind a simple equation: do not spend more money than you have. Working with ALEC to review legislation from other states and debate policy initiatives with other legislators, Utah has remained committed to competitive fiscal policy and job creation. This strong outlook is due in part to our flat 5 percent tax rate and employee pension reform legislation.

In 2012 the state was able to pass a balanced budget — something the federal government is unable to do — without raising taxes. Thanks to strict adherence to the policies set, the state has effectively shaken off the recession affecting so many other states. Earlier this year, legislators were able to announce more than $400 million in new spending for education, health care, law enforcement and roads.

The “Rich States, Poor States” report and Utah’s own experience clearly demonstrate that we cannot continue to follow the tax-heavy course set by the federal government and those who support big-government solutions. To ensure the well-being and long-term success of their state, legislators must take the lead in creating economic policies that benefit their state by creating jobs, spurring innovation and encouraging competition.

This work cannot happen in a vacuum. It is imperative for politicians from all 50 states and both sides of the aisle to come together and exchange ideas. The role ALEC plays facilitating the conversation around pro-growth, limited government principles and developing model legislation that advance free market ideals has never been needed more than today.

The principles of free-market enterprise and limited government supported by ALEC are the cornerstone of our nation. At this critical time, we should be focusing public conversation on how these policies can benefit individual states and America. ALEC, without apology, promotes ideas that foster economic freedom and job creation — ideals I proudly agree with. We are at a crossroads and more attention needs to be paid to policies that will generate jobs and lower taxes for our citizens. We should be asking publicly why states like New York and California are stagnating while states like Utah are flourishing.

The economic policies supported by ALEC have kept Utah competitive, creating and keeping jobs in our state and serving as a model for other states to follow as they try to alleviate budget challenges. We have proven that free-market principles can result in a solid economic foundation — for Utah and all the states.

Published on 5/9/12 in the Deseret News.

One Utah: President Obama Supports Gay Marriage

Wed, 09 May 2012 20:20:11 +0000

It’s about time.

It’s also a huge freaking deal. Barack Obama is the Abraham Lincoln of gay rights. History rhymes. It’s powerful that an African American president should do so.

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One Utah: Vollenweider: Dancing With the Lion

Wed, 09 May 2012 13:49:00 +0000

The Day Bill Clinton Stopped Turning His Cheek It was shortly after ABC television ran an obscenely political movie which - in my opinion - was produced with ...
Midnight Oil: Forgotten Years Something political for Larry . . .
The Golden Girls Explains Marriage Equality
Amanda Palmer: Leeds United

One Utah: Sisters of Mercy – Lucretia, My Reflection

Tue, 08 May 2012 13:14:29 +0000

The Day Bill Clinton Stopped Turning His Cheek It was shortly after ABC television ran an obscenely political movie which - in my opinion - was produced with ...
The Golden Girls Explains Marriage Equality
Midnight Oil: Forgotten Years Something political for Larry . . .
Indigo Girls: Hammer and a Nail

One Utah: Vancouver’s Supervised Injection Site

Mon, 07 May 2012 17:51:05 +0000

I remember hearing about the supervised injection center in Vancouver a few years ago and I haven’t given it any thought since then. It seems like an idea worth trying:

There was a big push to get a facility like this opened in the late ’90s when overdose rates in British Columbia were reaching epidemic proportions. I think in 1997 we had something like over 450 overdose deaths in the province. Those are absolutely needless deaths.

Participants at InSite have their own booth, which is clean and sanitary. We offer them new needles, alcohol swabs, a sink to wash their hands and medical care. We can dress their wounds and address chronic health issues. We can also link them up with income assistance and housing.

At our front desk, people can pick up equipment such as condoms, lubrication, needles, cookers, filters and everything you need for injecting safely. We give out as much as people think they need. You could take hundreds of needles if you want. There’s no limit. It’s not a one-for-one needle exchange.

Also, we ask that participants maintain the confidentiality of others who use the site.

They use the harm reduction model:

Well, first, we’re trying to reduce harm any way we can without requiring abstinence. We’re not trying to push things on people. I mean, we want people to be abstinent, but that’s not our expectation. Our push is to promote safety and harm reduction.

The approach we take is to promote self-respect. We’re trying to get people to respect themselves regardless of their addictions or whatever’s going on. It’s pretty much unconditional. We’re not going to meet these people with a bunch of shame. We’re not going to lump our expectations and our hopes onto them. Usually they feel shitty enough themselves. They already know that they fucked up. They’re already their own worst enemy.

We’re in this beautiful position where we’re not family and we’re not friends. We have the capacity to accept them again, easily and openly.

And why should tax payers support such a center?

People often ask why taxpayers should be paying to enable others to get high. It’s really backward. Research supports that InSite is cost-effective in preventing the spread of Hepatitis C and HIV, which are really expensive to treat and maintain. So it’s cost-saving. Every cost-benefit analysis I’ve seen has supported InSite.

The war on drugs has failed. It’s incarcerated god knows how many people with treating their addiction, it’s costs untold amounts of wealth and the drug problem isn’t going away. Drug addiction is a medical problem with legal aspects, not a criminal problem with a medical side. It’s time we stopped pretending we can jail everyone whose ever smoked a joint and think that we’ve solved the problem of drugs.

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One Utah: Bob Mould: It’s Too late

Mon, 07 May 2012 05:04:17 +0000

Bob Mould – It's Too Late by BobMould-Official

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One Utah: Most Utah Women Want Government Up Their Vaginas

Sun, 06 May 2012 16:35:54 +0000

Finally, I understand why there are woman who vote Republican.

Giving Utah Leaders What They Want

While most women might find it distressing that legislation has popped up across various states that would restrict affordable birth control and enforce invasive ultrasounds before going through with an abortion, these women find them to be refreshing.

Republicans, Get In My Vagina! from Kate Beckinsale

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One Utah: Why I Love Iowans

Sun, 06 May 2012 13:29:59 +0000

While attending Grinnell, I fell in love with Iowa and Iowans. The concepts of basic fairness are deeply entrenched in the state and its people. When Iowa’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of same sex marriage it was a big deal. Today’s NY Times has an interesting profile of one of the judges – Marsha Ternus – that reminds me why I love Iowans.

The first woman ever to preside over the Iowa Supreme Court, she was asked three years ago to rule on a challenge to an Iowa statute banning same-sex marriage. She looked at the case and at the law and deemed the ban a violation of equal-protection language in the state’s Constitution, which said that no privileges should be reserved for a limited class of citizens. Her six fellow justices agreed. Their unanimous decision is why Iowa is among the minority of states in which two men or two women can marry.

I found this passage revealing:

As for the decision itself, they learned in the first hours of discussion that none of them saw any way to square the marriage ban with equal-protection language. “Everyone’s jaws dropped — that we had a unanimous decision,” she recalled.

After the decision, national right wing groups poured millions into an attempt to defeat the judges in their usually pro forma re-elections. Several friends of mine – life long Iowans – were offended at the campaign to remove the judges from the bench. But it was ultimately successful. Right wingers accused the judges of every thing they could think of – labeling them radicals, activists, people intent on destroying the family, members of a radical and arrogant elite. Ternus’ response to losing was to deep clean her house.

Like most Iowans I met, she’s fair, commonsense and grounded in the real world. Which of course is another reason right wingers would hate her.

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One Utah: Some Thoughts on Pastor Sean Harris’ Hatefilled “Beat your sons till they’re straight” Sermon and His “Just Joking” Defense

Sat, 05 May 2012 14:41:53 +0000

By now, Sean Harris’ sermon has made its way around the intertubes. A partial transcript of his comments:

“So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, “Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do,” you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed.

Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male. And when your daughter starts acting to Butch you reign her in. And you say, “Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.”

You say, “Can I take charge like that as a parent?”

Yeah, you can. You are authorized. I just gave you a special dispensation this morning to do that.”

The immediate gut level response is to be outraged. Justifiably so (the whole transcript is here). Harris issued a notpology in which he said he was only joking about beating your children if they start acting like faggots, dykes and queers. That’s a tired one and conservatives trot it out far too often. ”Sure, I played the song Barack the Magic Negro ten times a day for six weeks, how can you accuse me of being a racist, I’m only joking.” It’s what we hear too often when people realize they’ve said or done something truly awful and it’s not convincing. He did, however, add this important snippet:

“If I had to say it again, I would say it differently, no doubt,” Harris said Tuesday. “Those weren’t planned words, but what I do stand by is that the word of God makes it clear that effeminate behavior is ungodly. I’m not going to compromise on that.”

Sure, cause we all joke about beating children into submission. Acting like a nelly screaming queen makes the baby Jesus cry. Nobody tell Rick Perry that.

Jeremy at Good as You rejected Harris’ notpology, writing:

The thing is? There are certain words that should never be on (or even near) a person’s tongue. There are certain ideas that should never strike a person’s brain. There are certain views that should never find their way to one’s bank of consideration. There are certain jokes that are never funny. There are certain sentiments that should never have the opportunity to spill out of one’s mouth as the sentiments are too out of the ballpark of possibility to ever make their way to verbalization.

Threatening violence against LGBT children falls firmly in that latter category. Especially when said violence is encouraged in a church. Especially during a sermon deliberately designed to foster discrimination (i.e. negative message in to LGBT people) via a proposed state marriage ban. Especially when the violence-fomenting sermon comes from a pastor whose church also operates a school.

The real problem isn’t that Harris is a bigot and a bully. It’s not that he delivered a fire breathing sermon in which he told parents to beat their children until they engage in gender normative behavior. It’s that he’s entirely representative of a whole class of American fundamentalists who embrace the idea that 1950s gender roles and specific types of behavior were ordained by god and that any behaviors or attitudes that vary from those specific gender roles or behaviors anger god.

Suddenly, then, we’re not talking about normal variation in human behavior and attitudes. Suddenly, the whole discussion is distorted by the idea that God is watching us and is judging us. And you can’t have a rational public discussion if the consequences of making the wrong choice is going to hell. That, as much as anything, is what should outrage us about Harris’ sermon.

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One Utah: Recovery From Bush’s Great Recession Has Stalled

Fri, 04 May 2012 17:47:03 +0000

Source: Calculated Risk.

There were 115,000 payroll jobs added in April, with 130,000 private sector jobs added, and 15,000 government jobs lost. The unemployment rate declined to 8.1%. U-6, an alternate measure of labor underutilization that includes part time workers and marginally attached workers, was unchanged at 14.5%.

Robert Reich:

Friday’s jobs report for April was even more disappointing than March. Employers added only 115,000 new jobs, down from March’s number (the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised the March number upward to 154,000, but it’s still abysmal relative to what’s needed). At least 125,000 new jobs are necessary each month just to keep up with an expanding population of working-age people.

That means the hole is getting even deeper.

…Most of the job gains in April were in lower-wage industries — retail stores, restaurants, and temporary-help. That means average wages continue to drop, adjusted for inflation — continuing their long-term decline. Most of the new jobs that have been added to the U.S. economy during this recovery have paid less than the jobs that were lost during the downturn.

What does all this mean? Together with other recent data showing slower economic growth during the first quarter of this year, it’s safe to say the economy has stalled.

From Calculated Risk:

There are a total of 12.5 million Americans unemployed and 5.1 million have been unemployed for more than 6 months.
According to the BLS, there are 5.1 million workers who have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks and still want a job.
There are now more private sector jobs than when President Obama took office.
The public sector is continuing to hemorrhage jobs.
The participation rate decreased to 63.6% from 63.8% (a new cycle low).

The Bush administration crashed our economy so badly that even though the Obama job creation record is better than Bush’s, it’s still not enough. Most new jobs are low-paying, and the middle class just doesn’t have the spending power to help with the recovery. The rich are doing better than ever, but this also does not help the economy – instead, it sets the conditions for the next bubble and financial sector meltdown.

UPDATE: Dean Baker reminds us that the collapse of the housing bubble stuck the American consumer with $8 trillion in lost wealth, and this continues to depress demand.

UPDATE: Presidential candidate Willard (“Mitt”) Romney says “We should be seeing numbers in the 500,000 jobs per month.” Of course, that has only happened four times in 50 years.

UPDATE: Labor Force Participation Is Lower Than It Has Been In 30 Years — Why It Matters And Why It Doesn’t

UPDATE: Robert Reich tweets:

“Rom says unemp shld be 4%. I was Sec of Lab last time it was 4%. We got there by raising taxes on rich and investing in ed and infrstructre.”

UPDATE: CHART: Economy Has Recovered All Private Sector Jobs Lost Since Obama Took Office

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One Utah: liberalism, same sex marriage and social change

Fri, 04 May 2012 14:56:56 +0000

An article from the The American Conservative is bouncing around the blogosphere. It’s a long and complex article arguing simply that no matter the short term political victories, the right cannot in the long run win the battle over same sex marriage. The author, Daniel McCarthy, offers a basic thesis – once society accepted that gay people existed, that they were in fact people, then the logic of arguments against full legal equality were increasingly tenuous and unacceptable.

Once society was widely conscious of this population, and had an inkling of its extent, there was no question of reverting to the status quo ante. The knowledge itself had changed the political question. Not only were homosexuals not going back into the closet, but the rest of society could not forget that they exist. And there had been little in the way of a “traditional” approach to something that was beyond the margin of public consciousness. So now the question arose of how to think about—and act toward—this alarming new population. Should it be included in or excluded from the body politic, and on what terms?

The prohibitionist approaches – making gay sex illegal, locking gays in jail, forcing them into “change” therapy – were tried for a while but have fallen increasingly out of favor.

Yet if homosexuals were not going to be under legal or therapeutic penalty, what would become of them? This is the question to which few conservatives can supply a satisfactory answer because the principles that conservatives affirm point toward policies that conflict with their wishes.

And so the right had a fundamental problem – the preferred approach was no longer possible once gay people were acknowledged to exist and yet the most immediate responses proved impossible to sustain and was increasingly acknowledged as cruel beyond the limits of human conscience. And so conservatives find themselves fighting to defend the symbols not the substance of the old world for which they long.

Social conservatives are caught between two worldviews, each of which they are reluctant to endorse fully. And with good reason: neither is a genuinely traditional because the traditional world—the Christian civilization to which social conservatives look as their ideal—has already given way to something radically new, leaving traditionalists with a choice between modern alternatives of left and right, neither of which is wholly in accord with the old values.

The conservative outlook is built on a yearning for social order, an order in which persons have a place in society with which they may not be satisfied but which they accept in exchange for stability and order, for certainty. The right has accepted the principle of non-discrimination laws and is left instead to fight for specific types of discrimination.

But that’s the pot in which social conservatives are being boiled. They have made enough concessions to the reality of political life in 21st-century America—to the principle of legal equality and the need for some nondiscrimination law—that they’re left making largely unsympathetic and unconvincing arguments for exceptions. Over time they may feel compelled throw their full electoral weight behind the libertarian principle of tolerance even for intolerance as the only viable alternative to a futile authoritarianism or outright surrender to liberalism. From libertarians they might also take the lesson that just because something is enshrined in law does not mean it has thereby acquired a higher moral status.

McCarthy’s article is getting a lot of attention and my instincts tell me the left more than the right is paying attention to his actual arguments. Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly responded:

“The libertarian principle of tolerance even for intolerance” is, I suppose, McCarthy’s way of referring to the “religious liberty” argument of conservatives that even if they cannot impose their general view of divine or natural law on the rest of society, they should be allowed to carve out large zones of immunity from the “liberal” laws that govern the rest of us.

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars responded as well:

Here’s a far more hopeful interpretation of these questions: They are losing this fight because they should lose this fight. They are losing it for the same reasons that they lost earlier fights against equality for blacks and for women, because the inexorable logic of the basic principles of liberty and equality is, in the end, simply too powerful.

Unsurprisingly, McCarthy’s article is a fascinating window into the workings of the right and the conservative mind in general. He cites a 1947 book pointing out something that conservatives usually ignore:

To understand how marriage has changed, and not changed, over the course of Western history one can hardly do better than turn to Harvard sociologist Carle Zimmerman’s Family and Civilization as a primer. First published in 1947, it remains an invaluable, indeed prophetic, guide to the marriage debate and wider culture wars. While same-sex marriage may be an absolute novelty, there have been pitched battles over the definition of marriage before . . .

2000 years of fights over marriage. Unwittingly perhaps, McCarthy is making the same point people on the left have been making – marriage is not and never has been an eternal institution. It has changed and every time it has changed, society’s conservatives have fought tooth and nail to keep it from changing. Acknowledging the historical reality that marriage has changed and altered over the centuries makes it harder to argue against changes in our time. But it’s also a fascinating insight into the always contingent mode of thought that is conservatism. Corey Robin, from The Reactionary Mind:

Unlike their opponents on the left, they do not unfurl a blueprint in advance of events. They read situations and circumstances, not texts and tomes; their preferred mode is adaptation and intimation rather than assertion and declamation. There’s a certain truth to this claim, as we will see: the conservative mind is extraordinarily supple, alert to changes in context and fortune long before others realize they are occurring.

McCarthy paradoxically is reading in the political successes of the last decade against gay marriage it’s own demise. The right’s mistake was making it a pitched battle which put same sex marriage on the mental map in a way nothing else could have. The fight against the very thing may have unintentionally legitimized it – by making it a topic of discussion, by making it public, the right shattered the taboo it was trying to uphold. It forced gay people into the public awareness which made gay people and the lives of gay people all that much more known to people who then acknowledged that gay people are fully human. The laws the right has fought to pass will inevitably be revoked, reversed and removed because the more gay people become known as fully human, deserving of full legal equality, the less tolerable those laws will be. And so like his conservative predecessors, McCarthy is arguing it’s time to adapt, to preserve what can be preserved and hold it against the ever encroaching forces of modernity.

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One Utah: The Conservative Attempt to Stigmatize Anyone and Everyone who Disagrees with Them in Any Way Shape or Form

Fri, 04 May 2012 14:00:08 +0000

The right’s faux outrage machine is working at full speed in overdrive to attack Dan Savage. What we’re seeing here is nothing new or out of character for the right. They latch onto someone and gin up outrage until the mainstream media starts saying things like “Controversial columnist Dan Savage . . .” Their goal is to scare everyone else into thinking that the person in question did or said something that is really outrageous. It’s about disrupting public dialogue and shutting out voices with whom the right disagrees.

It goes something like this. Savage said that we can learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about human sexuality the same way we ignore the bullshit in the bible about slavery. The right’s noise machine cranked itself up with claims his comments were an attack on on Christianity. Savage’s criticism of the bible was incredibly modest and common sense. Yet the right has gone into the stratosphere attacking him, spinning his modest criticisms as some sort of rabid assault on all that they hold dear, decrying Savage as the face of left wing hate.

The goal is simple – they’re trying to stigmatize any and all criticism of the right in an attempt to shut down public discourse. It’s wrong, it’s an attack on democracy and it’s fundamentally dishonest.

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Utah Senate: The First Freedom

Fri, 04 May 2012 03:50:34 +0000

By Stuart Reid

Utah State Senator, District 18

The Roman Catholic bishops in America recently issued a proclamation calling upon every priest and lay member to participate in a “great national campaign” to defend religious freedom. The proclamation further declared that: “If we face today the prospect of unjust laws, then Catholics in America, in solidarity with our fellow citizens, must have the courage not to obey them.”

It is always troubling when individuals choose civil disobedience of laws they don’t agree with, but it is particularly shocking when a revered religious institution like the Catholic Church urges its members and others to disobey the law. Encouraging such tactics to win a policy battle in the public square is beneath the church.

No matter how “righteous” the cause, it is irresponsible and even dangerous for any religion to unleash the passions of its people by calling on them to disobey the laws of the land. Particularly when it is not known how they will react.

The Founding Fathers believed that religious liberties are inalienable, God-given rights to mankind. They memorialized these freedoms in the Bill of Rights. They anticipated that religious principles, freely promulgated throughout the nation, would produce and strengthen a virtuous society necessary to maintain order and secure the public good. They hoped religion would provide the healing balm for the ills of society, bridle passions within the public square and encourage civility in public discourse. The call to disobey the law is not in harmony with the founders’ aspirations for religion’s role and its transcendent covenant with America, and therefore should be reversed.

Nevertheless, the Catholic Church is justified in its view that religious freedom is under siege. Its proclamation cites several examples when religious freedoms were violated by government. Other religions could significantly add to its list of grievances.

Clearly, religious freedom, once known as the First Freedom, has lost standing with the government when confronted by the so-called “new civil rights.” Religious leaders throughout America suspect government is waging a war against religious rights in support of other interests. This is a serious concern, and if it is not properly addressed it will become a serious problem for the nation. Government leaders should not trifle with protections afforded religion.

It is the right of people of faith and others to work in one accord securing religious freedom within the rule of law. If their petitions are ignored by government, they can and should encourage the formation of legal, independent political action organizations to elect those who will more earnestly protect religious rights of conscience and freedom.

If religious leaders will inspire their followers, including local and national business leaders, to support the work of the IPAOs, they will be able to shield themselves from those trying to wield government against their freedoms, while sustaining the primary missions of their faith.

In a nation forged by faith, it is the responsibility of religion to prophetically proclaim the sacred principles of religion’s God-given freedoms; to educate and inspire all people to properly protect religious freedom; and to properly help unify and organize the most effective petition for the government to do its duty — the duty to first and foremost preserve religious freedoms.

If religious leaders will call upon the better angels of humanity, they can bless America and the rest of the world. Hopefully, the Catholic Church, along with others, will see the virtue in this course of action.

Originally published May 3rd, 2012, in the Salt Lake Tribune.

Photo Credit: Teotwawki

One Utah: Grey Gardens: Hawthorne by way of Lovecraft

Wed, 02 May 2012 21:23:53 +0000

The 1975 documentary Grey Gardens first came to my attention many years ago. I heard bits and pieces about it, probably saw a clip or two, and then moved on. I recently thought about it again and streamed the movie via the magic of the intertubes. It’s a truly, deeply strange cultural artefact. From the beginning, it jars and disorients the viewer. We watch as Big and Little Edie Bouvier-Beale bicker, argue, eat, dance, sing and entertain friends and family in their crumbling 28 room mansion. They open themselves to the camera in a way that no contemporary reality tv “star” could manage. Yet, these two East Coast society women in the collapsing mansion bring to mind Hawthorne’s decayed gentry in their mouldering houses – delivered to us via Lovecraft’s long gone mad gentry rotting in foetid, inhuman placidity. It’s the House of Seven Gables parasitically living with the Whaley Manor from the Dunwich Horror.

For my money, the most deeply odd part of the documentary is Little Edie traipsing in heals and turbans through the collapsing mansion, talking to the camera in her perfect Northeastern lockjaw accent. She sounds disturbingly like her cousin, Jackie O. Amidst the filth and decay, the decrepitude of Grey Gardens, she seems blissfully unaware of and immune to the physical collapse around her. She appears youthful, even glamorous; her signature turbans, adapted from sweaters and tea cosies and whatever came to hand, make her appear youthful, creative and carefree. As the film runs, it becomes increasingly obvious that the physical world she inhabits is an expression of her mental state. She fears of the outside world, exhibits a strange paranoia that someone is in her house, and engages in blissfully neurotic behavior – despising the raccoons yet feeding them, hating the house and yet loving it, wanting to be an artist, but terrified of leaving the house.

I read a line about the Edies – that they display the kind of innocence and naivete of people in the grip of grand delusions. Big and Little Edie are not well, and yet their not wellness isn’t threatening or dangerous; it’s turned inward onto itself and transformed them into harmless harmed individuals. The horror of their squalid home with its mounds of animal shit and piles of empty cat food cans is offset by the women’s innocence. They seem to welcome the filth, the decay with a casual shrug of the shoulders. “Oh well, at least he’s happy,” Big Edie says as she watches one of her many cats piss on the floor.

Here’s a couple interesting links:

http://decorology.blogspot.com/2009/04/unimaginable-but-true-mansion-grey.html

http://greygardensnews.blogspot.com/2009/05/grey-gardens-house-and-gardens-in.html

http://anxietyny.tripod.com/goddessedie.html

http://theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com/2009/04/20/grey-gardens-the-beautiful-decay/

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One Utah: General Strike Today – Did Anybody Notice?

Tue, 01 May 2012 16:34:13 +0000

Source: Jake Rosenfeld, Little Labor: How Union Decline is Changing the American Landscape (PDF).

Jake Rosenfeld compiled the data: The number of strikes involving 1,000 or more workers peaked at over 400 in 1974. In 2009, there were five. Fully one-third of the private sector workforce belonged to a labor union during the 1950s. The late 1970s and 1980s proved especially brutal for organized labor, with unionization rates halving during the period. The nation’s intellectuals and journalists covered this phenomenon extensively, linking union decline to a new post-industrial economy increasingly open to global trade. Recent trends have garnered less attention, yet private-sector unionization rates nearly halved again between 1990 and 2009. Now it’s below 7 percent.

In the rest of the world May 1 (May Day) is recognized as International Workers’ Day. In the USA, partly as a legacy of the Cold War, our government decided to call it “Loyalty Day.” May Day has traditionally been known as a day of mass workers’ strikes – otherwise known as the General Strike. And that’s what the 99 Percent Movement (aka Occupy Wall Street) is calling for today – a nationwide general strike. The theme of the protests is “A Day Without the 99 Percent.”

FireDogLake has is keeping track with a Live Blog.

America’s last general strike was in Oakland in 1946. Under the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act, passed in 1947, general strikes were banned.

UPDATE: MAY DAY CHARTS: We Don’t Currently Reward Our Workers. While productivity has been on the rise among workers, average wage and compensation has remained nearly flat. Wages are at the lowest share of GDP on record. As union membership falls, the middle class shrinks.

UPDATE: Taking Back May Day: What to Expect on the Nationwide Day of Rallies, Strikes and Actions

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Dave Fletcher: Utah.gov 2012: Built on Data

Tue, 01 May 2012 13:49:20 +0000

Today, we introduce a major change to the state of Utah portal, Utah.gov. Going forward, the portal has a new underlying infrastructure that will drive the delivery of data and information. In reality, Utah.gov is built on data and a new Master Data Index helps to ensure that the portal integrates information and services in real time. The MDI indexes all kinds of data, including online services, social media streams, raw datasets, agencies, locations, and mobile applications. For example, Utah.gov indexes over 850 Twitter feeds, aggregating and integrating streams on topics like tourism, business, and education.

Utah.gov 2012 is built using a parallax scrolling technique to create a more immersive, three dimensional experience using layers that scroll at different speeds. The Utah.gov development team ultimately focuses on delivering a high quality user experience. We continue to learn from our users' activity and a primary goal has always been to increase the total number of unique visitors to the site. This ensures that our services and information are being seen and utilized by the largest number of Utah businesses and citizens possible. Since 2007, this number has increased by an average of over half a million unique visitors every month. This does not even consider the many successful non-Utah.gov domains also supported by Utah government agencies, such as the highly visual travel portal VisitUtah.com or our innovation portal InnovationUtah.com.

Utah state and local agencies have taken advantage of social media to a remarkable degree. With some many options for connecting to government, it is easy to get distracted and it is somewhat remarkable that so many citizens continue to find their way to the Utah.gov portal. They can find much of the information they are looking for in places like Facebook and Scribd. Even the newer social media services like Google+ and Pinterest are becoming a second or third home to Utah.gov agencies and services. For example, check out the beautiful pinboards of the Utah Travel Council.

One of the best ways to access Utah.gov data is using mobile platforms such as Flipboard and connecting to Utah.gov Twitter lists. Simply subscribe to @UtahGov Twitter lists for government or education, then pull them up on Flipboard to get the latest information delivered to your iOS device.

We are exploring new ways to engage Utah's tech community and have created a new Utah.gov API page that developers can use to leverage Utah.gov MDI data to create their own services.

Utah.gov continues to work to support its growing base of mobile users. Utah agencies have created about 40 mobile apps designed to meet the needs of these users. The site itself uses responsive design to support various formats of smartphones and other smaller devices.

If you have suggestions for helping improve Utah.gov, we want to hear them. We receive hundreds of comments each year that have helped us improve the way we offer services and provide information.

One Utah: The Long Suffering Christian Victims of . . . Well No One (updated)

Tue, 01 May 2012 13:20:53 +0000

I thought I was being wittily ironic with my headline “Dan Savage Makes the Baby Christians Cry” – then I saw the Fox Noise headline:

Christian Teens Say Gay Activist Made Girls Cry

Irony is dead, and its dessicated corpse is being dragged through the Fox studios and being desecrated by the network’s purveyors of propaganda.

These Christian students are tearfully proclaiming they have been the victims of bullying. Seriously. Re-watch the video. He said bullshit. Three whole times. And then he said their response was pansy ass. And, btw, he apologized for that. But they’ve been taught by their pastors and parents that Christians are the real victims. Notice, as well, he didn’t actually attack Christianity or say it should be tossed aside. He argued the bible isn’t a reliable guide on matters of human sexuality based on its absolute failure on the question of slavery. Simply criticizing the bible was more than these supposedly faithful Christians could bear to hear. They fled the room – about 100 of them did. The remaining 2700 students stayed and cheered.

My favorite part is that these supposedly deeply faithful Christian who are so offended by his comments about the bible don’t know a darn thing about the bible.

“I was thinking, ‘This is not going a good direction at all,’ Then he started going off about the Bible. He said somehow the Bible was pro-slavery. I’m really shy. I’m not really someone to, like, stir up anything. But all of a sudden I just blurted out, ‘That’s bull!’ ”

Of course all that statement reveals is that person making it hasn’t actually read the book in question – no where does the Biblical text condemn slavery. Paul tells slaves to obey their masters. There’s lots of rules in the bible about how to own slaves. Nothing in it says slavery is wrong. Yet our modern sensibilities agree slavery is wrong so this poor deluded students believes that the bible must not approve of slavery.

The whole contretemps has a number of revealing parts. The minute Savage begins talking about the Bible, these students flee the room as if they’r afraid they’ll be contaminated by impure thoughts spread by Dan Savage. His critique of the Bible is incredibly modest. He doesn’t say throw it out, or its useless. Instead, he makes the boringly commonsense point that we can ignore parts of it – since we already do. These faithful students don’t notice that because they’re so busy running for the exits. What we’ve got here is a perfect expression of what happens when Christians worship the Bible. Fundamentalist Bible-olotry teaches that the Bible itself is holy. When Savage criticized it – and even used a bad word to do so – the 100 Christian students were horrified and shocked and fled.

Another reveal was the way in which the right wing noise machine has spun the story. The right has worked hard over the last decade to create a narrative for itself in which Christians are being oppressed at every turn in our society. They’ve used this incident to argue that Christian students are really the ones being bullied in schools, that policies which protect sexual minority students are examples of ways in which Christians are bullied in schools. The right wing machine leapt into action, claiming the Savage’s remarks constituted intolerance of Christians, an attack on Christianity and bullying of Christian students. Re-watch the video. Even the supposedly offensive part – calling the response pansy ass – isn’t directed at a person or persons as it is their response to even mild criticism of using the Bible to justify discriminating against glbt persons. Savage apologized for that but has stuck to his guns otherwise.

The right in general and the religious right in particular (and the two are most inseparable) opposes any efforts to extend legal recognition of and protections for sexual minorities. They’re so desperate for anything to use to make their case that gay folks don’t deserve legal protections and efforts to protect gay youth from bullying that they’ve seized on Savage’s words in an attempt to cast themselves as the true victims. In doing so, they’ve demonstrated that they have no idea what constitutes bullying, no idea what it means to be bullied or even victimized. They’ve also shown us something else – the right loves to dish it out but the minute anyone starts to push back, to publicly confront them and their belief system in even modest ways, they can’t take it.

Again, Savage’s critique of the Bible is incredibly modest. I’ve heard far more thorough and devastating critiques from pastors and priests. Victor Stenger’s analysis of the Bible in God, the Failed Hypothesis is far more thorough and sufficient to suggest we could toss out the whole thing without regrets. Savage’s observation that we ignore huge chunks of the Bible is accurate, yet even hearing it is too much for these students and their adult keepers. The claim that his comments constitute some sort of intolerance against Christians says almost nothing about Savage or his views and a great deal about the right’s inability to confront even mild criticism.

At the end of the day, the discussion is pretty basic. Dan Savage called parts of the Bible bullshit and some high school students scrambled for the exits and the nearest right wing website so they could complain that someone said something they disagreed with and to pretend hearing information that contradicts your beliefs is the same thing as being bullied. This incident has really nothing to do with Dan Savage and everything to do with the religious right’s terror of living in a pluralistic society.

A final thought:

But then, to keep perspective.

Name the teenager who commited suicide because of a profound shame at being, deep down, a Christian.

Go ahead.

Updates:

I saw this piece at Alvin McEwan’s place after I posted.

Now about this Dan Savage controversy. I have said on more than one occasion that he and I don’t see eye-to-eye on many things. Also, the language he used here isn’t exactly something I would have said.

But you know what? He is exactly right.

I consider myself a person of faith. I credit my faith in God with accepting my sexual orientation. But here is something that I have never understood about some of my fellow Christians. How is it that they can cite passages regarding the supposed sin of homosexuality, but will ignore the ones advocating slavery, children obeying their parents, keeping women silent in church, divorce, and other things that they will not talk about which is clearly in the Bible. Why didn’t Jesus say one word about homosexuality? And for that matter,why didn’t God Himself?

Two more reactions – one from John Aravosis of AmericaBlog:

Dan Savage has apologized for using some harsh language when referring to the Bible’s provisions calling for the murder of gay people and the endorsement of slavery. Understandable since Dan has been pro-gay and anti-slavery all his life.

The question remains, is it ever okay to say that the Bible’s provisions endorsing the murder of gays and the enslaving of blacks (and others) to be “bullsh*t”"? And if not, why not?

Surely no one thinks the Bible got it right on slavery? Nor on its admonition to stone gays to death. What other word to use for anything, even a holy book, that endorses slavery and the murder of an entire people? [snip]

Many religions treat the Bible as an inviolate document, but the simple fact remains that the document is wrong when it comes to a few things, including the mass murder of gay people and the notion that it’s okay to enslave others. Dan Savage said just that. And anyone stil upset with Dan, even after he’s now apologized for using harsh, if not incorrect, language, needs to explain why they’re defending the Bible’s provisions about murdering gays and enslaving blacks.

And another from Andrew Sullivan:

The case must be made about the inconsistent way that Christianists read the Bible to tilt it focus entirely on gays. But the case against the hypocritical, selective reading of the Bible is so strong that it undermines it to use the term “bullshit”. Using logic – as Dan also did – always wins in civil rights struggles. In the end. Dan’s actually quite nuanced feelings about the Catholicism he grew up in can be found here.

We have a moment here – I’m wondering if we’re ready to use.

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One Utah: Republicans are the problem – and the mainstream commentariat has finally figured that out

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 13:41:28 +0000

It’s only taken them three plus years to figure it out but the mainstream media seems to finally be waking up to the fact that the Republican party has gone so far to the right as to have become the problem in American politics. Witness this article from Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein.

They lay out the problem:

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

They lay the blame at the feet of Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist, whose political strategies have excited and awakened an intransigent, ideologically rigid base, empowered that base and in turn created a feedback loop in which Republicans move ever further to the right.

Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies. The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented.

Think about that final point – Republicans are doing everything in their power to prevent laws from being implemented. They’re not arguing for changing them or fixing them, they’re abusing longstanding ways of doing things to illegitimately block legitimately enacted laws. They’re abusing the system to keep it from working.

The GOP’s evolution has become too much for some longtime Republicans. Former senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska called his party “irresponsible” in an interview with the Financial Times in August, at the height of the debt-ceiling battle. “I think the Republican Party is captive to political movements that are very ideological, that are very narrow,” he said. “I’ve never seen so much intolerance as I see today in American politics.”

And Mike Lofgren, a veteran Republican congressional staffer, wrote an anguished diatribe last year about why he was ending his career on the Hill after nearly three decades. “The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,” he wrote on the Truthout Web site.

Lofgren’s point is striking to me. Republicans constantly bag on Europe but they have become more like one of its extremist parties than a traditional Americans political party. In the past, I’ve used the term fundamentalist for the Republicans – they’ve become political fundamentalists, insistent on seeing only one distorted version of history, adhering to a rigid ideological standard, rejecting other ways of seeing the world as illegitimate. They’ve adopted a fundamentalist mindset and all the behaviors that go with it, including a tendency to see everyone who disagrees as enemies and absolute rejection of pluralism.

The Republicans have gone insane and they intend to drag the rest of along with them. Mann and Ornstein end their article with a call for the mainstream media to actually do their jobs as journalists, to eschew the false “both sides do it” tendencies and to actually give voters accurate information. The mainstream cult of balance is unlikely to heed the call but we can hope.

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One Utah: Watergate Felon Chuck Colson Died This Last Week

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 20:38:19 +0000

From what little I know about Chuck Colson he sounds like a real bastard, someone who would do or say anything to help his side and do or say anything to hurt the otherside, someone who saw the world in starkly Manichean terms. His influence in American public life has been a less than salutory one, one might even be tempted to describe it as baleful.

Colson is best known as Nixon’s hatchet man and Watergate felon turned prison evangelist. For his admirers, though, he was even bigger than his larger-than-life tale of redemption by salvation alone. He was not merely living proof of the salvific power of Christ; not merely a rescuer of the heretics; not merely a coalition builder of Catholics and evangelicals once divided by theological differences. He was nothing short of a battle commander in the cosmic culture wars, the manufactured showdown between the “Christian worldview” — the only “true” way to see things — and other “worldviews” he insisted were antithetical to it.

Ed Kilgore described him as a thug turned martyr:

Colson was also co-founder, along with Fr. Richard John Neuhaus (another recently deceased religious figure whose vast influence just keeps increasing) of Catholics and Evangelicals Together, a group that has taken the beachhead of cooperation on the abortion issue and widened it into an alliance encompassing its founders’ unusually aggressive approach to the meaning of “religious liberty.” Some may recall that Neuhaus caused a very big stir in 1996 by suggesting that a “regime” that legalized abortion and same-sex relationships might well forfeit any obligation of obedience from godly citizens. It’s no accident that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ recent “statement on religious liberty” approvingly cites a similar manifesto from CET.

At the same time, he had family and friends who loved him and who are grieving. He had a wife and children (three daughters if I’m not mistaken).

It’s a hard thing to say but his influence won’t be missed, though the people in his life will miss him. But I think it’s a fair assessment.

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