Tuesday Reads

Good Morning!!

I’m doing a little surfing for Dakinikat because she’s technologically challenged at the moment.  She’s got a fried hard drive, an ancient computer, and a messed-up Blackberry to work with.   And she’s got a big presentation to make today.  Yikes!

Finally, election day has arrived and all the experts are predicting huge losses for the Democrats.  The predictions are so bad, that I almost wonder if we’re being set up to be surprised if the worst doesn’t happen.  Today pollster Charlie Cook named eleven more House Democrats who may well lose their seats.

On Monday, Cook announced that he was shifting four Democratic-held seats from the “Toss Up” category into the “Lean Republican” category – including incumbent Reps. Dina Titus of Nevada, Harry Teague of New Mexico and Frank Kratovil of Maryland – freshmen who have been high on the GOP target list practically since they arrived in Washington.

Cook also placed the Arkansas 1st District seat currently held by retiring Democratic Rep. Marion Berry, where Democrat Chad Causey is running against Republican Rick Crawford, into the “Lean Republican” field.

The handicapper now lists 29 seats currently held by Democrats in the “Lean Republican” or “Likely Republican” categories. Republicans need to seize at least 39 Democratic-held seats in order to win control of the House.

Cook is predicting losses of 50 to 60 Democratic seats in the House. In the Senate, Cook predicts gains for Republicans of 6 to 8 seats.

While it is becoming increasingly likely that Republicans will hold all 18 of its own seats, Democrats’ prospects in three of their 19 seats have improved in recent days. Sens. Barbara Boxer in California and Patty Murray in Washington now appear to be headed for re-election, albeit by small margins. In the special election in West Virginia, Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin now holds an advantage. Currently there are 57 Democrats, two independents that caucus with Democrats, and 41 Republican Senators. Post-election, Republicans could hold between 47 and 49 seats to 51 to 53 seats for Democrats. This new outlook means that the odds of Republicans winning a majority in the Senate are now non-existent.

Of course, from a liberal’s point of view it won’t matter all that much, since the Senate seems to give the Republicans everything they want anyway. I have to admit that a part of me will be celebrating if Harry Reid loses–even though everything I read about Sharron Angle gives me the heebee jeebees. According to the Washington Post that race is going to go down to the wire.

Cook also predicts gains of 6 to 8 governorships for the Republicans. I sincerely hope Massachusetts won’t be one of the ones they win–even though I’m not at all thrilled with Deval Patrick.

Just to be ornery, I guess, Nate Silver has dreamed up a scenario in which the Dems can still hold onto the House. It’s pretty far-fetched–but go read it and tell me what you think.

Anyway, we won’t have long to wait until we know how bad the Republican tsunami will be. We’ll be following the results here at Sky Dancing tonight.

In a setback to hopes for the repeal of DADT, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the discriminatory policy will continue for now.

A federal judge in California, Virginia A. Phillips, ruled on Sept. 9 that the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law violated the equal protection and First Amendment rights of service members, and wrote that it had a “direct and deleterious effect” on the armed services. On Oct. 12, she ordered the military to stop enforcing the law nationwide.

The Defense Department asked the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to allow the status quo to continue as the case made its way through the courts. It has narrowed its own process for dismissing openly gay people under the policy. [….]

In the order, Judges Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain and Stephen S. Trott wrote that they were expressing no opinion on the eventual outcome of the case. But they said the government’s request to block Judge Phillips’s injunction should be granted out of deference to the judgment of Congress and the military, and in light of the fact that decisions by four other federal circuit courts finding the law not unconstitutional were “arguably at odds” with Judge Phillips’s rulings.

I really don’t see how a law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation could be constitutional. It’s a shame we can’t just get rid of the thing rather than go on wrangling about it while people’s careers are destroyed. Sigh….

Glenn Greenwald has a great piece up about the latest terrorist scare. Why do these always happen right before an election, I wonder?

Yesterday, The New York Times reported that “evidence was mounting” that Al Qaeda and Anwar al-Awlaki–the American citizen that President Obama has targeted for assassination without benefit of probable cause or a trial–were behind the “attempted attacks.”

But today, the NYT wasn’t as definite:

American and Yemeni officials still have little hard evidence about who was involved in the thwarted attack. . . . As for who was behind the plot, evidence remains elusive, though officials believe the bombs bear the hallmarks of Al Qaeda in Yemen’s top bomb maker.

Sorry, but I don’t buy anything the government has to say about terrorism anymore. I’ll believe it when I see it. Anyway, here’s Greenwald’s take:

The reality, as today’s version of the NYT makes clear, is that the U.S. has no idea who is responsible for sending these bombs. So in the dark are they that Homeland Security actually blamed two Yemeni schools that don’t even seem to exist, with the only one remotely similar to it being one sponsored by the State Department. But no matter: within a very short time of the attempted attack’s becoming public, U.S. government officials fanned out to anonymously pin the blame on Anwar Awlaki as the Mastermind, and newspapers then dutifully printed what they were told, even though nobody had any idea whether that was actually true. But when you’re trying to justify the presidential seizure of the power to assassinate your own citizens without a shred of due process, what matters is ratcheting up fear and hatred levels against your targets, not evidence or rationality. Just scream TERRORIST! enough times and maybe everyone will forget how tyrannical is your conduct.

To its credit, even the NYT article originally announcing the administration’s accusations that “evidence is mounting” of Awlaki’s culpability stated: “they did not present proof of Mr. Awlaki’s involvement.” How surprising. That same deficiency is true of the general accusation that Awlaki is involved in Terrorist plots as opposed to merely exercising his clear First Amendment right to advocate the justifiability of anti-American violence in retaliation for the violence Americans bring to the Muslim world. But that complete lack of evidence doesn’t deter huge numbers of people from running around proclaiming Awlaki to be a Terrorist and cheering for the presidentially-decreed death penalty based solely on unchecked government pronouncements, so it’s unlikely that the lack of evidence in this case will deter his being widely blamed as the Mastermind for this attack either.

Since I’m writing this post, I’m going to throw in a little sports news. First, the San Francisco Giants have won the World Series. As long as the Red Sox are out of it, I’ll take that result. From NBC Sports: Who are these guys?

Willie Mays never won a World Series in San Francisco. Neither did Willie McCovey. Or Orlando Cepeda. Or Barry Bonds. Or Juan Marichal or Gaylord Perry. Hall of Famers? The San Francisco Giants have had many. But world championships? None.

Before tonight, anyway. Before a lineup full of role players and aging veterans — and one rookie who may one day join the immortals in Giants history — beat the odds in beating the Phillies and the Rangers and now stand as champions of the baseball world.

Good for the Giants. And another curse falls by the wayside. Perhaps the baseball gods have finally forgiven the Giants for moving out of New York.

And in another strange sports story, Wide Receiver Randy Moss, who was recently traded to the Minnesota Vikings from the New England Patriots, has now been waived by the Vikings after Moss shot off his mouth after the Pats-Vikings game on Sunday.

Moss, who cost the Vikings a third-round draft pick, had only one catch for eight yards against the Patriots on Sunday. In four games for the Vikings, he had 13 catches for 174 yards and two touchdowns. Moss, who was fined $25,000 last week for failing to cooperate with the media and make himself regularly available for interviews, stepped to the lectern after the Patriots game but announced he wouldn’t take any questions. He repeatedly expressed admiration for Patriots Coach Bill Belichick and his former team and criticized the Vikings for not taking enough of his game-planning advice.

The Pats got rid of Moss because all he did was whine about not having a contract for 2011. Then he comes back to New England and goes on a tirade about Vikings coaches and how much he misses the Pats. What a crazed basket case this guy is. Some Pats fans actually want him back. I sure don’t.

OK, I know probably no one else is interested in that story but me. So what news stories and blog posts do you recommend this morning? I look forward to following your links.

The Audacity of Anger

It’s only been two rotations ’round the sun–a gnat’s life in the grand scheme of things–since the Obama surge swept over the District beltway.  Two years represent eons in political schemes.  The election isn’t until Tuesday, but the obits have already been written. 

Can you honestly say that you’ll be happy with fewer feminist women in Washington and a Speaker of the House Boehner?  (Also implying the first woman in that position was ill-suited?)  This is a much bigger mess than even we conceived.

I read the latest issue of The Economist like one read’s an obit or the day-after-the game analysis.  It correctly identified the root source of a lot of the anger; the economy.  It also listed some good decisions  like appointing Hillary Clinton SOS and quieting some of the cowboy foreign policy swagger.  It also lists mistakes and rightly quantifies some of the major mishaps; like mismanaging expectations of economic recovery.

So what went wrong? The answer is a series of smaller things—rhetoric, details, execution, even an aloof vagueness—that have cumulatively undermined his presidency. He has made enemies of the businessmen who are needed to drive forward America’s recovery, haranguing them as fat cats and speculators. He has even, as we report here, forfeited the goodwill of America’s most dynamic and entrepreneurial asset. Silicon Valley, which once saw Mr Obama as a promising start-up, now sees him as a bad investment.

His decision to leave details to others has also cost him dearly. By choosing to subcontract the stimulus, health reform and finance reform to the Democratic leadership, he ended up with shoddy bills that Republicans could safely vote against and that many Democrats are now anxious to distance themselves from. A more accomplished president would have controlled that process better, and found ways to make the Republicans offers that they could not refuse.

Now this is where I begin to part ways.  First, the problem has not been Obama’s ‘anti-business’ stand, it’s been his selective pre-occupation with the financial sector and disinterest in other areas of commerce; including what creates jobs.  Second, it’s pretty obvious that there’s only a handful of Republicans that will go along with ANYthing.  They’ve gotten a lot of Republican policy and they’ve continually said no. 

Krugman’s last NYT op-ed ‘Divided We Lose’ did an excellent job showing exactly how little we can expect after the election.  We didn’t get change recently and we sure won’t get change now.

Another recent interview by National Journal, this one with Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, has received a lot of attention thanks to a headline-grabbing quote: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

If you read the full interview, what Mr. McConnell was saying was that, in 1995, Republicans erred by focusing too much on their policy agenda and not enough on destroying the president: “We suffered from some degree of hubris and acted as if the president was irrelevant and we would roll over him. By the summer of 1995, he was already on the way to being re-elected, and we were hanging on for our lives.” So this time around, he implied, they’ll stay focused on bringing down Mr. Obama.

True, Mr. McConnell did say that he might be willing to work with Mr. Obama in certain circumstances — namely, if he’s willing to do a “Clintonian back flip,” taking positions that would find more support among Republicans than in his own party. Of course, this would actually hurt Mr. Obama’s chances of re-election — but that’s the point.

We might add that should any Republicans in Congress find themselves considering the possibility of acting in a statesmanlike, bipartisan manner, they’ll surely reconsider after looking over their shoulder at the Tea Party-types, who will jump on them if they show any signs of being reasonable. The role of the Tea Party is one reason smart observers expect another government shutdown, probably as early as next spring.

 Plus, and this is my third beef, there’s been no course correction or accountability demanded for many of the worst Bush Administration excesses.  There’s been no attempts to address the horrid war crimes and civil liberties abuses.  The only glimpses we’ve seen have come from Wikileaks and whistle blowers.

It’s hard to say this, but I’m even less optimistic than I was two years ago.  The economy is not good. No politician seems able to understand the issues facing the middle class. It’s just going to be more political in-fighting and I don’t see how that’s really going to move us forwards. Let’s just say I know who the losers will be already too.

Politics may be ugly business but discussing it should never be an excuse to Bully

I’ve taken a hiatus from blogging for a few weeks because of the tone of many posts and comments I’ve read recently at The Confluence.  Many are something  that I wish to be no party of or to.

There are few circumstances that cause me to go off on people.  I do not support incessant repetition of  hateful memes that scapegoat minority groups for the issues confronting our nation and our world.  I’ve always felt and articulated that an Obama Presidency would not deliver what it promised and was not going to be what it was portrayed during the 2008 campaign. His substantial shortcomings have nothing to do with his multi-racial genetics. (I believe I’ve been more-than-correct on that assertion.)  I’ve also tried to represent a clear liberal criticism and an alternative voice to the miserable policy that was enacted over the last two years.  Recent Democratic policy was symbolically labeled but short content-wise on substantive positive change in the direction that I feel is necessary for the future of our children and neighbors in this country. It continues to enable and enrich the few at the cost of the many.

Additionally, this is not 2008.  It is late 2010 and there is no point to waxing  on or ranting on about what coulda, shoulda, mighta been.

In no way should my words be taken then or now as approving any Republican take-over of government or a denial that the Tea Party is overtly right wing and full of racist, homophobic, and xenophobic elements.  I do not hate our government even though many things it does are ill-conceived and ill-enacted.  That I even feel the need to say this is because I’ve feel my words have been surrounding by too much behavior and words by folks that think differently and I wish to disassociate myself completely with that sentiment.

I’ve seen overt bullying in threads at a time when the consequences of bullying should be more than obvious to even the most obtuse individual. No one’s personal life has been without challenge recently. Not even mine. However, I have tried not to bring the stress of my every day life and the emotional chaos that surrounds the disassembling of higher education in Louisiana by a consummate right wing Republican Governor and ultimately the disappearance of my job there to you. I also have tried not let my dismay at the blogosphere or the Democratic party fester into something ugly.

I’ve watched folks brought over by my Tweets and Facebook posts poked and prodded into leaving simply because they feel differently.   All criticism of things Clinton or Obama are not necessarily part of a derangement syndrome.  Some things are honest substantial differences based on distinct opinions on policy and issues.  I have never tolerated name calling or bullying. I have always been fully committed to establishing a ‘be nice or leave’ zone.  I do believe when there is a difference of opinion not based on the blatant spin memes of interest groups, one can disagree without denigrating another human being or humiliating them to the point they angrily respond so then the bully self-righteously claims victory in the argument.  I’ve seen way too much of this activity during this political season. I’m tired of anger. There is no future in it and it creates a hostile environment for free thought and discussion.

I am–at heart–an issues oriented independent.  Since the so-called Reagan Revolution, I’ve had a horrible time identifying any Republican with whom I agree on any issue other than a few old-timers who have been jackbooted out of positions by the virulent anti everything rank and file.  I vote Democratic most of the time by default, but never without full knowledge that what I am getting is probably not what I really want.  This has especially been true in the age of the Obama cult.  Hopefully, Democrats are seeing the follies of their ways of the last two years.  My one little vote and voice have never been part of a critical mass and I don’t see this changing any time soon.

That being said, I enjoy the company of  like-minded.  Yet, I abhor the bullying of the self-righteous and the intolerant no matter how like-minded on issues they may be.  Since I committed to posting at TC, I have posted with complete regularity and have tried to take the high road when ever confronted with difference of opinion or thought. I try to start a conversation; never trying to find some ultimate correctness.  A right wing shill is still a right wing shill even if they occasionally strike a point.  I also actively question the group think of the self-labeled progressive movement.  I do not defend this either.  I try to stick to issues and I have tried to bring in different viewpoints in the hopes of stimulating discussion when relevant.  I have never sought to weed out people or question their fitness for the blog.   I rarely front page right wing hysterics and only do so as a way to provide various viewpoints.  My heavy handedness was relegated to removing bullies that name call and correcting angry people who shriek memes endlessly.  After you say the same thing about three times and some one still disagrees, posting the same argument over and over isn’t going to change the direction of people’s feelings.  I hope those actions were noticeable.   I have never questioned people’s decisions on whether they were right for the blog or the blog was right for them.  I’ve tried to maintain that as a frontpager and later as an editor. That being said, I’ve noticed a distinct change in overall tone recently that has caused me to question my commitment to frontpaging at The Confluence.  There is stuff going on that makes me want to ignore thread-after-thread-after-thread.

I was going to try to keep this self-questioning off the front page, but by now, my absence must be noted and questioned by a few.  I’m still in tumult.  For those of you that have enjoyed your reprieve from my voice, you’ll be happy to hear that so far, I’ve not really had a change of heart. I’ve had some discourse with fellow front pagers so this isn’t going to surprise most of them.  I’ve made a commitment to post a Tuesday morning news thread and I’ve kept that commitment.  I just want you all to know that the community here is always what’s kept me here because many of you and  your wisdom has meant so much to me over the last few years.  I have to figure out if I can keep coming here and contributing under some of the current circumstances.  There is enough stress in my personal life without coming here to find discussion threads laced with behavior that makes me feel very uncomfortable.  I hope you all understand that this is difficult for me and I’m not taking my decision-making and feelings or yours lightly at all.

I’m uncertain what response I will receive for this by any one at this point but I’m prepared to live with the consequences.  Whatever that means. Hopefully, this was short and to the point and conveyed how I feel.  This was extremely hard for me to write. I just felt I needed to get it off my chest and clear the very thick air around me.

Religion: force for good or not?

I thought I’d front page this since I posted it on an earlier thread and it’s generated some interesting discussion. The Economist has weekly debate sessions where there are two sides asked to give arguments pro and con for a statement. Then, the readers are asked to weigh in. It’s always fun to read the comments from “the floor”. This week’s motion was:

Throughout history and across the globe religion has been a cause of peace and violence, tolerance and inflexibility, charity and selfishness. Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa all found inspiration in their religious beliefs—as did Osama bin Laden, Baruch Goldstein and Jim Jones. This mixed history invites the question of whether religion, on the whole, is a cause of good or ill. Is faith dangerous, inspiring the fierce defence of dogmatic views, often leading to conflict, intolerance and regression? Or is it beneficial, compelling people to pursue moral, virtuous and productive lives? It can be both, of course, but at the end of this debate we must decide whether a world without religion would be a better place to live.

Sam Harris of Project Reason argued against the motion. Mark Oppenheimer, Beliefs’ columnist for the New York Times, author of “Wisenheimer” and a lecturer at Yale, supported the motion that that religion is a force for good in the world. Seventy Five per cent (including me) agreed with Sam Harris. Here is his major argument.

The important question is whether religion is ever the best force for good at our disposal. And I think the answer to this question is clearly “no”—because religion gives people bad reasons for being good where good reasons are available.

This is Oppenheimer’s major point.

Religion responds to a deep, satisfying human need for ritual. And it often organises the human quests for ethics and meaning. To think about the common good, the purpose of life and how to live, it has proven useful to use religious stories or theology.

My current favorite (albeit against our constitution) comment from the peanut gallery is this one.

The moral superiority of secularism gains support from Mr Harris. He concedes that there are plenty of peaceful and reasonable religious people, but this is only because they “don’t take the divisive nonsense in their holy books very seriously”. Indeed, the forces of reason and moderation within religion tend to come from outside it. He observes, “When the Catholic Church finally recognises the unconscionable stupidity of its teachings about contraception, as it one day must,” all credit will go to “tidal forces created by a larger, secular concern for human well-being.” So too have moderate Muslims learned to ignore much of what the Koran teaches. “To say that such adherents are now the ‘true’ Muslims is to blindly hope that a faith can be best exemplified by people who are in the process of losing it.”

So, I thought I’d give this a front page so every one could discuss it. So, as you know, I’m a student of Buddha, and as such I do not believe in a ‘creator god’ or whatever you choose to name it. I adhere to the practices and tenets of Vajrayana Buddhism (nyingma lineage) but as such, I believe clinging to anything, including my own practices and rituals, to be a deterrence to a better me and a better humanity. That’s the best I can do in terms of a disclaimer. It seems the more I try to say, yes, I’m an atheist and I do not believe in invisible beings, the more some people find offense.

Please be nice.