Come For The Chomsky

...stay for the Carlin.



And remember - it's not about Libs vs Cons or Red vs Blue.  

It's about moderates vs extremists.  

Caring about each other vs not caring about anybody.

It's about trying to live up to the notion of a more perfect union - and staying exceptional.

Listening

It's axiomatic that when you wanna figure out something that's complex and weird and difficult to understand, you need to get a buncha smart guys in a room, get 'em talking and then listen to what they say.

George Lakoff is one of those guys:

Liberals tend not to understand conservatives, and their confusion is showing. On the one hand liberals see conservatives in disarray and react with glee at the fragmentation: the Tea Party vs. Libertarians vs. Neocons vs. Wall Street. Eric Cantor, the Republican Majority Leader, brought down by a Tea Party unknown. John Boehner unable to control his majority in the House. Republican primary challenges everywhere.

On the other hand, liberals are scared stiff of the Koch brothers and other wealthy Republicans bankrolling Republican candidates at every level all over the country. They are scared of a Republican takeover. And they should be.

--and-- 

At the heart of conservatism is strict father morality, as we have seen. But strict father morality has complexities and natural variations. What liberals don’t see is that the diversity can give conservatism as a whole considerable strength.

Different versions of conservatisms are defined by particular domains of interest. Strict father morality applies to all the domains—individual liberty and self-interest, world power, business, and society. These domains of interest characterize libertarian, neocon, financial, and Tea Party conservatives.

A better understanding of the Proto-Fascist crap we're up against is the first step in staying ready to fight back.

One of the main problems "with the liberals" is the tendency to think that there can actually be an end to a political fight; that once the election is over, the question's been settled and they can go about their business and stop worrying about it.  

All the great "liberal stuff" - Civil Rights, anti-trust law, labor law, Social Security, banking regulations, Medicare, EPA, OSHA, etc etc etc - all the stuff that actually makes us great because it makes us try a little harder to live up to the promises we made to ourselves in The Declaration and the Preamble - all the amazing LIBRUL/PROGRESSIVE accomplishments over the last 40 or 60 or 80+ years is being pared back because "the conservatives" never stop fighting to get their The Daddy State cemented into place.  

It's never over.  There is no such thing as "Once And For All".  Get used to it and understand that either we get busy winning or we get busy losing.

Give It A Try

Lamenting the dearth of good solid "librul" radio, Driftglass and BlueGal mentioned this on The Professional Left podcast today:

Netroots Radio

Elect Republicans

Expect amazingly great things, and end up getting Kansas.



We are so Kansas-ed.

My Country My Ass

"I feel like a stranger, in the land where I was born" --Quicksilver Messenger Service

• Vigilante "Justice"
• School kids and their teachers massacred
• Rise of Hate Groups
• Increase of 400% in death threats against the prez.
• Voting Rights legislation gutted
• Fracking
• Pipelines for the dirtiest oil on Earth
• Corporation = person
• Coat hangers for women stuck in poverty
• Disappearing middle class
• Schools for profit
• Wars for profit
• Prisons for profit
• Innocent citizens murdered by the cops
• Coin-operated politicians
• Deliberate Congressional gridlock
• Police Department funding by seizure of citizens' property
• Cutting benefits for the poor
• Subsidizing the rich
• Minority rule
• GMO gag rules
• Money = Speech
• Government by religion
• Death penalty and botched executions
• Guns Guns and More Guns

USAmerica, Inc - not brought to you by:

hat tip = Left Turn Only

Nexus

Inquiring Minds:
The main focus is on trying to figure out what the real differences are between us politically; and how that knowledge is being used (IMHO) to drive us apart.



But don't forget to take a look at this:

Here's the link to the article in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

A team of Greek and German researchers has shown that the colours of sunsets painted by famous artists can be used to estimate pollution levels in the Earth’s past atmosphere. In particular, the paintings reveal that ash and gas released during major volcanic eruptions scatter the different colours of sunlight, making sunsets appear more red. The results are published today in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

When the Tambora volcano in Indonesia erupted in 1815, painters in Europe could see the colours of the sky changing. The volcanic ash and gas spewed into the atmosphere travelled the world and, as these aerosol particles scattered sunlight, they produced bright red and orange sunsets in Europe for up to three years after the eruption. J. M. W. Turner was one of the artists who painted the stunning sunsets during that time. Now, scientists are using his, and other great masters’, paintings to retrieve information on the composition of the past atmosphere.

“Nature speaks to the hearts and souls of great artists,” says lead-author Christos Zerefos, a professor of atmospheric physics at the Academy of Athens in Greece. “But we have found that, when colouring sunsets, it is the way their brains perceive greens and reds that contains important environmental information.”

Connections

I think this guy is trying hard to get "conservatives" to look at things from a perspective other than from inside their own bowels; using his take on John Mellencamp's music to illustrate their basic inability to hear what "the American people" are really trying to tell them.

David Masciotra at The American Conservative:

One of the problems of movement conservatism is a resistance to—and often flat out rejection of—complexity. Too much of the American right is dominated by a mentality that views its country with childlike simplicity and awe. Any invocation of American iconography must be worshipful, and for those who combine Christianity with nationalism to create a civil religion, any sign of the cross must be celebratory of everything American.

Not that I have a lot of confidence in anybody's ability to get these meatheads either into line or out of the party, but I can tip my hat to a guy who's making some effort to move people away from the adolescent insistence that all we need is a little common sense and that every problem (and therefore, every solution) can be reduced to simple 10-word phrases that fit neatly onto bumper stickers; or that can be perfectly reflected in a 3-minute pop tune.

Holy Crap

I had no idea this thing still existed.

On "Age of the Earth":

See also Counterexamples to an Old Earth.

The Age of the Earth has been a matter of interest to humans for millennia. The subject is still debated today, particularly between young-Earth scientists, who believe that the Earth is only approximately 6,000-10,000 (8 × 103 ± 25%) years old, and most scientific organisations who believe that Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years (4.54 × 109 ± 1%).[1][1] The scientific evidence points to a young age of the earth and the universe, and the biblical creation organization Creation Ministries International published an article entitled 101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe, which further argues for the young age of the Earth.

Old Earth advocates rely on one flawed assumption to the exclusion of other evidence, similar to how an investigator may mistakenly rely on one eyewitness's opinion to the exclusion of all else. In fact, eyewitness testimony is proven to be less reliable to than other indicators, just as the assumption by Old Earth proponents that the rate of radioactive decay has always been constant is flawed. In fact, a large number of physical processes, such as neutron capture and fluctuations in solar radiation, can affect the rate of radioactive decay of elements in the Earth's crust and render radioactive dating measurements unreliable with errors up to 5%, depending upon the specific methods used.[2] Even so, such an error will not cause a calculation of the age of the Earth based on radiometric dating to be off by up to five orders of magnitude.

A test to quantify openmindedness:

1. Do you resist admitting the possibility that a conservative approach to education is far more effective for students than a liberal one?
2. If it were proven to your satisfaction that some idea you've been using to bolster a political argument was false, would you keep using that idea in your argument?
3. Do you resist admitting that something you accepted for over a decade is, in fact, completely false?
4. Do you resist the possibility that Hollywood values result in significant harm for those who believe in them, and to innocent bystanders?
5. Do you think it is impossible that increased gun ownership reduces the rate of crime?
6. When President Ronald Reagan told Mr. Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, would you have thought that it was politically impossible for the Berlin Wall to be torn down?
7. Did you think, or still think, that the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") is impossible?
8. Do you think that it is impossible that the Shroud of Turin is authentic?
9. Do you think that there must be a purely material-based explanation (such as magnetism) for remarkable homing and migration behavior of birds and butterflies?
10. Do you think that it is impossible for the speed of light in the Earth's atmosphere to have been measurably different in the past?
11. Do you think that it is impossible to measure openmindedness?
12. Do you think that evolution[2] must have occurred?
13. Do you think that is impossible for the power of 2 in Newtonian gravity, whereby the gravitational force is proportional to 1/r2, to be more precise with an exponent that is slightly different from 2, such as a gravitational force proportional to 1/r2.00000001?
14. Do you resist admitting that some things taught to you in school are completely false, and even known to be false by some responsible for the material?
15. Do you deny that some widely required theories of science, such as the theory of evolution, may actually impede the progress of science?[3]
16. Do you deny that the imposition of socialism and same-sex marriage on a nation could harm its competitiveness at international events like the Olympics?
17. Do you refuse to consider the possibility that "experts" may not have all the answers, and that the best of the public may have valuable insights to which experts are blind?
18. Do you think that if you read parts of the Bible years ago as a child, you can claim to "have read the Bible" and that you have no reason to read it regularly now?
19. Do you believe that because the Earth's orbit and rotation are what they are now, they are guaranteed to remain stable for billions of years?
20. Do you refuse to consider the possibility that Hebrews might have been authored by Jesus?

The above questions can be asked, and one's closed-mindedness can be scored based on how often they answered "yes" above. Answering more than half as "yes" reflects acute closed-mindedness.

That's what passes for intellectual inquiry and insight from our friends way over there on the far end of the spectrum - except I get a bad feeling sometimes that maybe it's not considered all that far out.  When I talk to some people, they seem to accept this nonsense; or at least have it in their minds that this is nothing more than a difference of opinion.  And the main problem I have with that thinking is that an awful lot of  "conservatives" are not willing to leave it as a matter of differing opinions - they're actively seeking to turn this shit into law.  And the people who shrug and give me the standard "comme ci, comme ça" response are the ones doing nothing to counteract it.

Project Much?

Reporting on a study out of Geo Mason Univ (not exactly El Centro dela Librulisimo), from Addicting Info:

The study reveals that 32% of Republican statements have been rated ‘false’ or ‘pants on fire’ by Politifact, an organization that fact checks claims made by politicians and others. In stark contrast, only 11% of statements made by Democrats received the same ratings.

According to CMPA President Dr. Robert Lichter, “While Republicans see a credibility gap in the Obama administration, PolitiFact rates Republicans as the less credible party.”

Today's Oxymoron

"Reasonable Conservative"

Keeping in mind the immortal words of Ferris Bueler - "Isms, in my opinion, are not good".

This bit from Andrew Bacevich at The American Conservative is actually pretty close to what I've held to be true for a good long time.

Conservatives take human relationships seriously and know that they require nurturing. In community lies our best hope of enjoying a meaningful earthly existence. But community does not emerge spontaneously. Conservatives understand that the most basic community, the little platoon of family, is under unrelenting assault, from both left and right. Emphasizing autonomy, the forces of modernity are intent on supplanting the family with the hyper-empowered—if also alienated—individual, who exists to gratify appetite and ambition. With its insatiable hunger for profit, the market is intent on transforming the family into a cluster of consumers who just happen to live under the same roof. One more thing: conservatives don’t confuse intimacy with sex.

--and--

The key to success will be to pick the right fights against the right enemies, while forging smart tactical alliances. (By tactical, I do not mean cynical.) Conservatives need to discriminate between the issues that matter and those that don’t, the contests that can be won and those that can’t. And they need to recognize that the political left includes people of goodwill whose views on some (by no means all) matters coincide with our own.

So forget about dismantling the welfare state. Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and, yes, Obamacare are here to stay. Forget about outlawing abortion or prohibiting gay marriage. Conservatives may judge the fruits produced by the sexual revolution poisonous, but the revolution itself is irreversible.

Of course, I have to diverge from some of his points (eg: his take on "Original Sin" is actually pretty good, but I've come to view it from the opposite perspective), and some of his agenda items leave something to be desired.

The thing that gets me is that here's a guy trying to make some sense of his own thinking, and to extricate himself (and his fellows) from having been lumped in with the screaming wingnuts of the GOP.  Hope springs eternal.

The Basic Fallacy

Krugman has a quick one about the argumentative attacks that get thrown at "Liberals":

Aside from the silliness of the exercise, this little exchange is another illustration of a point I’ve noticed before: the way hard-right commentators assume that the other side must be their mirror image. They insist that no government intervention is ever justified; so liberals must support any and all government interventions. They want smaller government, as a principle; liberals must want bigger government, never mind what for. They believe that deficits and printing money are always evil; liberals must be for deficits and money-printing under all circumstances.

This mirror-imaging thing has been effective for a long time, and it's the big reason (I think) for why Democrats get beat even when they have better ideas; why they're seen as weak in the face of political opponents who've got nothing but slander going for them.  Unfortunately, The Mud-Slinger usually wins - especially if he's the first to sling that mud.  Gerrymandering has plenty to do with why Dems couldn't get a majority in The House this time even when they got more votes overall, but the main thing is that way too often, the Repubs have put out some bogus crap - either a false positive for themselves or a false negative for the Dems - and let the already-in-place belief that "both sides do it / they're all the same" do the rest.

Once you've set up the framing that requires this Manichean binary simplicity, it gets easier.  And if you have Press Poodles who're willing to help maintain this false balance between false equivalence and false dichotomy, then you have the required 3-legged stool on which to build the perfectly false reality we kinda find ourselves in right now.

Look Back Briefly

Brian Williams on the air not too long after Sandy.



There may a tiny glimmer of hope for a few of the Press Poodles yet.

Heard Today

When the facts are with you, argue the facts.
When the facts are against you, argue the law.
When the facts and the law are against you, pound the table.

The Professional Left Podcast.

Honestly Conservative

From a piece in The American Conservative by Richard Gamble:

(reminding me that a conservative is somebody who just tries to stay true to the ideals at the heart of our liberal democracy)

In 1814, half a century after the publication of his "Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law", John Adams wrote to his Southern adversary John Taylor of Caroline. In the course of defending his constitutional principles, Adams issued a warning that the new exceptionalists will never quote, let alone heed: “We may boast that we are the chosen people; we may even thank God that we are not like other men; but, after all, it will be but flattery, and the delusion, the self-deceit of the Pharisee.”

A people, as surely as an individual, cannot stand in the presence of the world and congratulate itself on its unassailable virtue without leading itself into moral blindness and earning the contempt of others. Nothing about the American achievement is “placed beyond all possibility of failure,” as John Quincy Adams boasted. It would be fatal for a republic to entertain such presumption. There is nothing inevitable about our future, and no facile talk about exceptionalism will make it so. A history and a tradition—an authentic, fully American history and tradition—is available to us, but only if we turn away from the myths of the new exceptionalism.

Who's Side?

I'll have to ask for a temporary suspension of Godwin's 1st Corollary so we can play a quick round of Political Scattergories.  Quick - tell me which side of the standard Conservative/Liberal divide do you think this butthead fits best.

From Addicting Info:

The Mission statement of his current group:
“WE BELIEVE that the current government in America is run by Jews,” and, “WE BELIEVE that the Jews [sic] main goal is the total annihilation of the Aryan race, heritage, & culture.”

Mullet states that not only does he not believe President Obama was born in America, he believes Obama is the anti-Christ, (Ethos Magazine in 2010). On his web post on the American National Socialist Party forum, March 13, 2011 Paul wrote:

”Typical Nigger Behavior and they want equal rights? Really is America that far gone that they can not [sic] see that you can take the nigger out of the jungle but not the jungle out of the nigger.”

Where'd They Go?

For at least the last 15 years, I've been casting about, looking for anybody still visible and still with some power in the GOP who isn't totally upside down and backwards on every issue I care about.  And it's not a big list, but I don't feel the need to line it out right now because that's not my point.

Here's my point:  If you're wondering why it's so hard to find a Moderate in the GOP, it's because they're all Democrats now.

The graph is from voteview blog.  The big take away seems pretty obvious.  Once you get past Truman and Ike, everything trends in the "Conservative" direction.

Bamboozled - Again

NASA has come out with a new study that shoots holes in the last of the deniers' arguments  - that Solar Activity is the main cause of Global Warming.

Take a look at what's up at the NASA website:

Hansen's team concluded that Earth has absorbed more than half a watt more solar energy per square meter than it let off throughout the six year study period. The calculated value of the imbalance (0.58 watts of excess energy per square meter) is more than twice as much as the reduction in the amount of solar energy supplied to the planet between maximum and minimum solar activity (0.25 watts per square meter).

"The fact that we still see a positive imbalance despite the prolonged solar minimum isn't a surprise given what we've learned about the climate system, but it's worth noting because this provides unequivocal evidence that the sun is not the dominant driver of global warming," Hansen said.

Add this to a growing list of issues about which "Libruls" were right and "Conservatives" have been lying to us.

Corporate Taxes
Climate Change

Domestic Terrorism

From Crooks and Liars today, a story about another incident of political violence.

See the video here (the embedding code isn't working for me today)

Did you catch the operative phrase in the video?  At about :55, the News Poodle says, "Burris admits he's liberal".  Well, there ya have it - he admits it!  And so then, of course, the rest of the piece is all about Animal Cruelty, and not a word about the crime as an obvious act of terrorism against a political opponent.

There are red flags popping up in lots of places.

Liberal vs Conservative

"There is no contradiction in having a hard head and a soft heart." -Tom Morris

Conservative vs Liberal

A lively discussion is going on over at Balloon Juice about the 'definitions' of Conservative and Liberal as those descriptors are perceived today.

For the last several years, I've tho't things were changing rather dramatically, and that the old reliable labels were becoming inadequate.  A couple of examples:

1. If you think you have the right to own any weapon you want and to do whatever you want with it, then that's a pretty liberal interpretation of the 2nd amendment.
2. If you want to make it illegal 'to desecrate the flag', then you're in favor of greatly expanding the government's authority; and so you're not a conservative.
3. If you want to limit US involvement in armed conflict; &/or you want to limit the capacity of the government to exert deadly force then you're neither conservative nor liberal - you're just kinda normal.

Gimme some more.