Speedkill

Regardless of the ridiculous controversy over the cover, this New Yorker article on Obama is worth reading.

It’s not flattering, but it’s by no means a negative article. The man is smart and he figured out how to work Chicago’s political landscape and propel himself into the U.S. Senate. He learned from mistakes and made it to the top. A bit ruthlessly, maybe, but politics isn’t for timid folks like myself. The story also does a good job showing just how absurd the allegations that he’s some kind of left wing radical are, as well.

It does cut against his idealistic message of hope change a little, though. He used Chicago’s political machine when he needed it, he didn’t try to change it. He didn’t push sweeping changes at any level. I’m tempted to say that’s really what the controversy over the cover is for – to redirect attention from this article – but it doesn’t seem like it’s worth the trouble.

UPDATE: Jesus, I should read these more carefully before I post them.

Seriously, is it November yet?

I’m trying and failing to not care about this election for at least a few more months. There’s pretty clearly nothing I can do to change anything about the way things are going (which seems ok, so far, but not where it should be, in my opinion), especially now. So I have to just sit back and watch the fake media scandals and awkward campaign responses. It’s not fun. I can barely muster enough energy to mock McCain’s failure at the Internets. Or even the unrelated matter of Bill Donahue’s claim that it’s hard to come up with a more vile act than desecrating a communion wafer. Mr. Donahue, meet Cardinal Law. I’m sure you’ll be fast friends.

On another subject, this song is awesome.

This is great. McCain put out an economic plan (in the loosest sense of the word) that was purportedly signed by 300 economists. The catch being that some of them don’t even agree with that plan, but signed a short, vague statement about McCain’s broader economic perspective.

It seems the McCain camp is getting tips from creationists and global warming denialists. Fake surveys are their stock and trade. The party of the backwards and ignorant marches on.

I’ve been ignoring this for some reason. The initial outrage was based on an inaccurate AP story, but there’s still a lot to think about.

On the second day of a weeklong tour intended to highlight his values, Mr. Obama traveled to the battleground state of Ohio on Tuesday to present his proposal to get religious charities more involved in government programs. He is scheduled to give an afternoon speech here outside of the Eastside Community Ministry, a program providing food, clothes and youth ministry.

“Now, I know there are some who bristle at the notion that faith has a place in the public square,” Mr. Obama intends to say. “But the fact is, leaders in both parties have recognized the value of a partnership between the White House and faith-based groups.”

Presumably I’m one of those people bristling. What role faith has in the “public square” isn’t really the issue for me. It’s whether we should be giving religious groups money.

He thus embraced the heart of a program, established early in the Bush administration, that critics say blurs the constitutional separation of church and state. Mr. Obama made clear, however, that he would work to ensure that charitable groups receiving government funds be carefully monitored to prevent them from using the money to proselytize and to prevent any religion-based discrimination against potential recipients or employees.

This seems awkward. Say you’re considering giving money to a charity run by the Church of the FSM. As part of their mission, this group proselytizes to those receiving aid and hires only those who agree to a statement affirming their faith in the FSM. So, the group has to change its hiring practices. Would a religious charity want to do this? Some would, some wouldn’t, presumably. What about proselytizing? I suppose the lowest impact change they’d have to make would be to stop proselytizing as part of whatever program was receiving aid. The government wouldn’t be directly funding proselytizing. But aren’t you indirectly, at that point? Unless you’re forcing the group to cease any proselytizing, at which point it would seem that you’ve made it into a secular charity, isn’t that group just going to reroute money from the program the government is funding to other programs which do proselytize? Is that really much different than funding them directly? Granted, you can take that logic and make a case that funding any group is indirectly giving money to those whom your new aid dissuades contributions from. Still, it seems possibly reasonable if applied only to money routed within a group.

My questions become:

1. If the groups receiving aid have to cease all proselytizing and discriminatory hiring, why is this program different from one that allocates money to secular charities?
2. If a group doesn’t have to cease all proselytizing, just that which occurred as part of the program the aid is earmarked for, aren’t you indirectly funding exactly what you’re trying to avoid? The caveat to that question is that I have my doubts that that logic is generally accepted for other restrictions on government aid.

Let’s take a quick look at a possible application of the Lemon test, which is always a fun exercise:

1. The program has a pretty clear secular purpose: increasing charity work.
2. Its primary effect is a little more tricky. If government isn’t allowed to fund religious charities in general (presumably because they do advance religion) and if the program directs more non-government money to the normal work of religious charities, isn’t one of its primary effects to advance religion?
3. My sense is that safeguards are going to be tricky to define and difficult to enforce. Maybe it’s more trouble than its worth.

I think Obama’s on dangerous ground, but it’s not surprising. It seems like his governing philosophy is one that wants to include faith as much as possible, so it isn’t inconsistent for him to advocate this. Of course, you’d have to pretty naive to assume that the prospect of evangelical votes isn’t behind this to some extent. I guess we’ll see once Obama is elected.

Very very dense.

Dobson also takes aim at Obama for suggesting in the speech that those motivated by religion should attempt to appeal to broader segments of the population by not just framing their arguments around religious precepts.

“Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal rather than religion-specific values,” Obama said. “It requires their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason.”

Dobson said the suggestion is an attempt to lead by the “lowest common denominator of morality.”

“Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?” he asked. “What he’s trying to say here is, unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe.

“What the senator is saying there, in essence, is that ‘I can’t seek to pass legislation, for example, that bans partial-birth abortion, because there are people in the culture who don’t see that as a moral issue,’ ” Dobson said. “And if I can’t get everyone to agree with me, than it is undemocratic to try to pass legislation that I find offensive to the Scripture. Now, that is a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution.”

I mean, I can see disagreeing that we shouldn’t try to legislate based on religion, but Dobson apparently doesn’t even understand the concept. Obviously, Obama’s point was that it’s fine if you support a policy because of your religious beliefs, but you need to make an argument for it on universal moral grounds. It’s trivial to do that for abortion, to use Dobson’s example (it’s not trivial to make a good argument, however).

Obama calling Dobson’s political worldview undemocratic is a more interesting point. It’s not strictly undemocratic to simply try to appeal to just enough people (or representatives, if you one of those people who thinks he’s needs to correct every application of the word democracy to our government) to get your way . Hell, that seems to be the way our government works more often than not. But it’s hardly in the spirit of good democratic government to use narrow sectarian arguments to oppress a segment of the population. Not to mention the fact that it violates the concept of inalienable individual rights our country is founded upon. So not very democratic and rather totalitarian. Wonderful views the man has.

Also, I will be patiently awaiting Dobson’s speech attacking essentially the entire Christian anti-gay movement for using Leviticus as a justification for being against homosexuality. I’d bet he’s used it, too, but since I can’t find a quote, I’ll have to give him a pass for now.

Thought I’d share this quote from Obama, via Steve Benen:

“I tend to be eclectic. I do think we’re in a different time in 2008 than we were in 1992. The thing I think people should feel confident in is that I’m going to make these judgments not based on some fierce ideological pre-disposition but based on what makes sense. I’m a big believer in evidence. I’m a big believer in fact. You know, if somebody shows me we can do something better through a market mechanism, I’m happy to do it. I have no vested interest in expanding government or setting up a program just for the sake of setting one up. It’s too much work.

“On the health-care front, for example, if I actually believed that just providing a tax cut to everybody would solve the problem of lack of health insurance and cure health-care inflation, I’d say great, that’s a nice way to do it. It prevents a lot of headaches. But I’ve seen no evidence that the kinds of policies John McCain puts forward would actually work.

On the other hand, I read that Obama’s a radical Muslim who wants to do…something. It’s not clear what, but it’s very bad. Be afraid, people!

When I said I liked Richardson, but didn’t know enough about him, this is the kind of stuff I wanted to know. He doesn’t look as impressive now, but he wouldn’t be the worst choice.

Discussion about possible VP choices for Obama seems to be in full swing. It’s fun to read, but I don’t think the eventual choice will make a big difference. As far as I’m concerned, Obama has one problem in the general election: racism and race-related personal attacks. Some people are more cynical than me and think this means he won’t be elected, but I think that’s the only issue that makes this a close race.

Anyway, who should Obama pick? Count me among those who are skeptical about Webb. He’s a decent Senator who brings very little you can’t get elsewhere to the slot. Edwards is the darling of left wing blogs, but I remain less than convinced about him. He seems like the Mitt Romney of the Democratic party.

I’ve seen our governor’s name bandied about as well. As entertaining as that would be, it would hurt Montana Democrats quite a lot (that’s explained here). More than we’d gain from Schweitzer being on the ticket, certainly.

While I’m on the subject, Montana politics is awesome. For our single House seat we have a guy who pledged that he wouldn’t campaign against Rehberg (who, let’s face it, was going to win anyway). For Senate, the Republicans voted in an 85 year old former Green party candidate who wants us to have a Parliament. Not only that, but he’s essentially a Green party candidate in every respect. He’s going against our annoying half-ass Democrat, Max Baucus.

Ok, back to the topic at hand. I kind of like Richardson, but presumably the Clinton faction of the party will go apeshit. He’s got solid foreign policy experience and is an engaging guy. Although the fact that his campaign couldn’t get him anywhere near the the top tier candidates is worrying. I don’t know a whole lot about him, though, so maybe my interest is based on my image of him more than his actual strengths.

Did you think I was going to end this without talking about Clinton? I do not want her on the ticket. The pandering and the absurd end of primary desperation. I don’t want the Clinton machine in the White House. That said, what am I going to do if Obama picks her? Probably nothing. I can see that it has value in terms of party unity. She’s doing a decent job in the Senate, so I’d rather have her stay there.

This story is not inspiring.

NEW YORK — Oh, man. One little joke about Barack Obama and that Middle Eastern fellow with the rhyming name, and her inbox is piled high with squawky offended e-mail. It’s enough to make make Jeanne Moos wish she were back interviewing three-legged pantyhose or even two-headed turtles.

”I’m used to doing dog stories,” says CNN’s queen of quirk, shaking her head as she leafs through outraged denunciations ranging from not particularly bright to how low can you sink? “Dogs don’t write in. I’ve never gotten any angry e-mails from dogs.”

If there’s one lesson Moos has learned in the 12 months since becoming a regular on Situation Room, the network’s daily campaign roundup, it’s that political activists have much less of a sense of humor than the average canine. Whether she’s musing on John McCain’s difficulties using a teleprompter or Hillary Clinton’s befuddlement at the technology of convenience-store coffee machines, Moos has drawn almost daily fire.

I admittedly don’t watch CNN much, but what the hell? They put someone who does those useless “quirky news” stories on to do political humor? Why? The rest of CNN’s content wasn’t trivial enough?

Now, Media Matters could lighten up, but whatever. This is even worse:

”Media Matters is after me all the time,” Moos sighs. “I did a funny piece on the whole Obama/Osama thing, just observing what was going on in the culture. They put out a press release. . . . I was doing a piece on people confusing the two, and they put me in the press release as if I had confused them. It’s PC to the nth degree.

”It has a chilling effect, a very systematic one. Everyone becomes paranoid. Look what happened to David Shuster (suspended by MSNBC after suggesting Clinton might be “pimping out” her daughter Chelsea on the campaign trail) or Chris Matthews (forced by MSNBC to apologize for saying Clinton won sympathy votes because “her husband messed around”). Everyone becomes gun-shy. I don’t want to be gun-shy. I want to have a sense of humor.”

In what universe were those comments funny? They were absurd and have no place on a serious news show.

Veteran TV newswoman Terry Anzur, now a Los Angeles-based consultant who coaches reporters and anchors, says every station in America should have a Jeanne Moos on staff.

”The most important things in a TV newscast are the first story and last,” Anzur says. “The first one decides whether viewers will stick with the newscast or flip the channel. The last one decides if they’ll come back again. If you can end with a great writer like Jeanne Moos, who takes a story everybody knows and puts a reverse spin on it, they’re always going to come back. She’s like dessert, and as long as you’re serving a well-balanced meal, there’s always room for dessert.”

*sigh* These people are morons. Well balanced? How many hours did they loop clips of Rev. Wright? How many hours do they spend covering whatever missing white girl scandal is hot at a given time? The life-blood of TV news is trivial scandal and fluff. It’s not even particularly interesting scandal and fluff. Well-balanced? It’s like a meal that consists entirely of stale candy corn.

I’ve just returned from Jackson, Wyoming. I regret to inform you that the town’s immigrant underclass has not yet overthrown the local government and rescinded the regulation that requires buildings to be in keeping with the village’s rustic aesthetic. Also, I was a traffic jam caused by cattle outside of Ennis. Most of my readership will not find that surprising.

The Bush administration is either as corrupt as I suspect or it consists almost entirely of political opportunists looking to make money off of book sales. Either way we get to make fun of them; we can’t lose. Oh, wait…

LitW’s (relatively) new novelty – a Clinton supporter – is really lazy.

I’m nearly a quarter-century old today. How nice of the government to send me a $600 present. Now, how should I do my part to stimulate the economy? I think I would be breaking my government’s trust if I put it toward my student loans.