Talk about raising the stakes of the election ...
Let's hope this story doesn't get too much press, or Sharkey may gain a fringe following larger and more loyal than Nader's
"I'm with God. And I am here to save your party."
"Sorry, Ms V. I think you have us mixed up with someone else."
If by "Christian" we mean people living by Christ's "Treat others as you would be treated" - by whatever means they choose to express that ideal - then I say let them all joint us in the Democratic party. It is this ethic, I believe, more than any other that informs the policies of the party faithful. One need not buy any of the other institutional trappings of the faith to buy the ideal: the enlightenment might have taught us that. Athiests sometimes managed the trick better than many "real Christians." Humility develops naturally from living according to this ideal, a kind that is absent Ms V's pronouncement.
Why commit to spending $21 billion for something an expert panel suggests would help solve the problem, if you can spend 20 or 100 times that* on a massive boodoggle that you have no reason to believe might help? Scale is crucial. You need truly massive operation if the loss of 353 tons of cash is to be seen as being so insignificant that it will barely rate a footnote in any account. What could those Democrats be thinking!
*The cost of the war is much higher than what has been budgeted and spent. It is wearing out equipment - the equipment that doesn't crash and burn - and causing permanent health problem for troops. Once all these are factored in, it represents a commitment, so far, of between $1 and $2 trillion - depending on the source. The Guardian is one.
It is an important observation that Bush does not behave as we expect him to. When I started imagining that Bush simply wanted to become dictator, overthrowing the laws of the land and the Constitution, I found that it was hard to find any act that did not make sense. Assume that the war in Iraq is being fought not to win. Nor to lose. Only to fight. Then the special powers of a "wartime President" begin to have real, and permanent, meaning. So do the rather bizzare provisions of the Patriot and Military Comissions act that build a whole dysfunctional judiciary within the executive and throw people in jail without charge, without public trial, without hope of seeing the light of day.
Of course, it is impossible to prove; but assuming the worst makes the cognitive dissonance go away. And one can focus less on fighting the incomprehensibly massive incompetence, and more on fighting the very comprehensible but massive malfeasance.
It was the Dubai Ports deal that jarred me into thinking about things differently. The secrecy that preceded the deal, and the fast-track authority suggested Bush realized it was a political hot potato. That meant he understood the political ramafications - at least qualitatively. Doing the deal was not a simple act of incompetence. So what was he doing? Did he know for certain that Dubai posed no terrorist threat? Or did he know that they might, given the right inducement? Seems like it had to be one or the other.
Consistent with either point of view would be the suggestion that nobody who is pushing for passport access at the border is doing so because they seriously believe it will improve security.
I hope I can be forgiven for briefly referring back to Franklin, knitting & a number of other textile makers above.
I keep encountering knitters online who have bright, clear, witty voices, ones that are at the same time kind and sensitive, just and sensible. Has anyone else noticed this? Is there some connection? Franklin and Echidne of the Snakes are two examples, and several people who comment here are also.
It leads me to wonder: Is there a special place where witty knitters congregate on the Web? If not, should there be a special place one might go to encounter them: Knit Wits,* perhaps? That might also be a good place to go to enjoy a good yarn.
..
*knitwits.net, sadly, is registered to TuCows, client transfer prohibited.
Thanks for introducing me to Franklin! I got a wonderful lesson in civility that I hope will inform my own online interactions.
I generally start my own writing at the raving lunatic stage. As I write I progress through simmering rage. When I feel anger softening to disappointment or mild bitterness, I draw the piece to a conclusion. By the time my sense of equanimity returns I'm out planting bulbs, pulling up weeds, or fertilizing something. Humor only occurs when I am at least ten minutes drive from my keyboard. I guess I need to get out more.
This is wonderful, practical advice.
I have cooked about a dozen thanksgivings for a small family and find the turkey itself to be relatively easy - apart from the obligatory fire alarms. I mastered cranberry sauce from scratch a few years ago, managing it in about ten minutes. Last year I learned to make a kind of sweet-potato puree flavored with a bit of OJ concentrate, pecans, butter & brown sugar. I find really good gravy to be the most difficult element, and am still far from perfecting it- though I do find barley flour made into roux is a vital part of the equation. Perfect corn-bread stuffing is still on my to-master list.
I also agree that this is a time for simplicity and plentitude, close friends and family. The purpose is to be cozy, compfortable, content: not to wow.
#61 It is not a difficult calculation to do. By my own calculation, the $1000 billion spent on Iraq would buy 50,000 MW of generating capacity. These plants would be able to generate more electrical power in a year than the work done by all the gasoline engines of automobiles in a year. Had we built nuclear power generation plants instead of invading Iraq, mideast oil would not be relevant as a strategic resource. We could have gone a good portion of the same distance (1/3 -1/2) with a combination of wind and solar.
...
Restoring a right no Anglophone society has ever before permanently been without seems like a no-brainer to me. When Bush vetoes it, I would hope that he might be successfully portrayed as Neanderthal who simply tried to restore the divine right of kings and who came frightfully close to succeeding.
That is a wonderful poem. It seems to imply a really great name for whatever the thing is : Dubya's Codpiece.
I rexpect this is a peculiar take on the topic and that I am probably preaching to the choir, but here is a proposition: Any relationship with God exists only in the first person. My God can never tell you or someone else what to do. My God has claim only on my own actions.
If we can each individually accept such a proposition - and I know it is idealistic to imagine it might be so universally during the next century or millenium - then we can sit down as adults and decide on how we ought to treat each other in civil society. We can inform our own thinking with moral thought imported from religion, but we cannot use religious arguments per se to frame public policy. 'Holier than thou' speech disappears. My God might prohibit me from doing things you find yourself free to do and vice versa.
It also seems to me that societies develop ethical structures of thought by consesus. Gauthier in Morals By Agreement develops some reasons why and some ways of doing it. He develops three cooperative principles whose overall shape is not so profoundly different from Kant's categorical imperative or the Golden Rule. Axelrod's Evolution of cooperation is related. All are about cooperation informed by empathetic insight. And all might be blessed by Hume.
I see a lot of social problems being caused by a lack of empathy, ethical reasoning, and self restraint in society. People underestimate the importance of cooperation on so many levels. I vehemently disagree with the idea of bringing God into public schools; buy I think some form of ethical training might be very helpful. Naturally we would teach the 'My God Rule.' Much of ethical thought involves being able to see things from different viewpoints; and this is a quality that is almost totally lost from any public discourse in America ( this site excepted, of course.)
Wallis turned my stomach too. I didn't get past the second paragraph. But I wonder whether one way to make guys like this shut up and go away might be to address the problems they are talking about.
Russell, I agree. "Democrats are going to have to figure out how to talk to these folks if they want to regain contact with the grandchildren of the farmers and factory workers who formed" the party half a century ago.
Sara Robinson ran a great series at Ocinus recently on how to do this. One prerequisite is to treat the people themselves with respect, and to find common ground. I think it is possible. A current Newsweek article argues that 74 percent of evangelicals are very concerned about the environment. And it is wrong to imagine all of them don't care about peace and social justice. Finally, they are happy enough to vote against their own economic self-interest if they understand how it makes the world a better place for everyone. These are attitudes that many Democrats share. There is no hope of getting all the evangelicals, but there is hope of attracting some.
Bush has made most of the issues of the enlightenment Democratic issues. His administration evokes the inquisition, divine rights of kings, the thirty years war.. and so much more. And it seems to me that if we can claim the ideas of the enlightenment, preach them, practice them, advertise them, and get people to buy them, that we might be able to drive some of the demons out of the Republican party itself.
Thank you, Ned. Your candidacy started a new story, a story of hope.
Absolutely Right. The "I got mine" attitude to voting that took hold in the late 1970's spawned the beast we are tryiing to slay today. Decency, compassion, a vital sense of fairness - these elements need to re-enter political discourse if there is to be hope of moving forward from here.
Mrs Robinson at Orcinus has been doing a lot of nice pieces recently on understanding fundamentalism. One of the most remarkable observations is that fundamentalim offers easy answers, and treats us as children. She quotes Salman Akhtar, a noteworthy pshychiatrist:
When we say fundamentalism, we mean a complex set of five things that go together. First, there is a literal interpretation of some religious tract so what is written is no longer deciphered or deconstructed. It is not to be thought about, it is not to be given meaning, it is what it is. There is literalness to the interpretation one. Second, there is an ethnocentric attitude. The fundamentalist says my belief, my religion, my book is the best one there is. So there is literalness and there is ethnocentricity. With that there is megalomania We know and we have the solution and we can solve the problem; we know exactly what the problem is and we know exactly what the solution is. Megalomania, and then interestingly, a little spice, just as we add a little hing when we are cooking aloo gobi , a little spice of a sense of victimhood, a sense that we are endangered. Real or imaginary, it is a cultivated sense of delightful and delicious masochism, a masochism that will come very handy, as you will see. The imagined cultivated threat is what creates cohesion of the group and would then permit the enactment of violence towards others as a justified protective device. But this is merely a description. Why does fundamentalism have such a powerful appeal? If Marx called religion the opium of the people I believe fundamentalism is intravenous morphine.
Salman Akhtar
It is interesting that fundamentalism always promotes fear of "the outsider" "the other" and calls us to make war on this other or the otherness of it. Hence the war on drugs, the cold war, the war on terra. The thing we ought to fear is the damage done by fundamentalism. And the thing we need to focus on is how to reverse the damage.
In any philosophical discussion it is useful to start with an accurate description of the topic. I believe it would be a little more meaningful to state
dS=dQ/T
This is especially true because these are path functions and how you get to where you are going matters.
Americans must like entropy, we produce more of it per capita than people of any other nation on earth.
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