Bad Democrats

Glenn Greenwald over at Salon.com nails it right on the head in this article. The entire article is worth reading (it’s not that long) but here’s the money quote:

As this week’s red-district election to Congress of anti-telecom-amnesty candidate Bill Foster demonstrates, they’re not doing these things because it’s politically necessary. There doing it because more than enough Democrats believe in the virtues of telecom amnesty and warrantless eavesdropping–just as they believe in the continued occupation of Iraq, the abolition of habeas corpus, the “enhanced interrogation techniques” authorized by the Military Commissions Act, concealing Bush’s illegal eavesdropping programs, and a long array of other radical Bush policies that now have bipartisan Congressional support.

I wondered whether Joe Donnelly, my congressional representative, falls into this category. Last week I was ready to write Donnelly a letter telling him he no longer has my financial support. But then, figuring I should know some facts first, I did some research. On a good number of issues, Donnelly votes along with the Congressman that I use as a yardstick, Robert Wexler (D-FL). Donnelly even voted in favor of the House bringing legal action to have Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten held in contempt of Congress.

But the web site OpenCongress.org shows that Donnelly votes most consistently with Indiana’s Brad Ellsworth (a theoretical Democrat). Firedoglake has identified six House Democrats who need to get punished for their activities (by way of an advertising campaign in their district), and Ellsworth is one of them.

And when Donnelly gets praise from the right-wing National Review, it’s time to stop wondering and start worrying.

The morning after

After yesterday’s primaries and caucuses in Ohio and Texas (plus Rhode Island and Vermont), I’m a little unhappy. A couple of reasons lurk behind my disgruntledness with the results. One, it appears that even though the math shows that Hillary Clinton can’t get enough delegates to win the nomination, she will be moving forward–apparently hoping the super-delegates will go to her side.

If this happens, then I foresee several problems–all of which benefit John McCain in November. For one, we will have a convention fight. Those are never healthy for a candidate’s chances in the general election. Another problem is that we will continue to have weeks and months of negative campaigning–Clinton’s ads or Obama’s ads that attack the other can become fodder for McCain to use. That’s not going to be healthy for our chances in November. (Did anyone else want to open a vein [not necessarily one's own] when Hillary Clinton said the other day that John McCain has more experience than Barack Obama? Talk about an endorsement of the opponent!]

My third worry is that if we do end up with a convention fight, whoever comes out with the nomination will not be seen as legitimately chosen by the voters. There will always be a stigma–and that won’t help us. So many new people have become involved in politics thanks to Senator Obama, and I worry that an ugly convention will turn them off.

Of course, I’m merely echoing what plenty of pundits have already said, but these things do worry me.

My favorite picture of the week

There might be hope for this country yet. Check it out.

Someone needs to turn that into a bumper sticker.

God, Part 3

Without naming names, I learn today that a local county council member has decided to run against a state representative because “God told him to” during the night.

Dear Lord…some of your followers are nuts.

I don’t have a problem with people talking to God. I do it myself–it’s called prayer. Sometimes it’s more formalized, like attending Mass or saying the Our Father. Sometimes it’s just meandering thoughts. But I don’t claim to be so important that God talks back to me and tells me to do things.

Does this local politician (or any of these “God told me X” people) think that with all that’s going on in the world, with all the people suffering because of poverty, famine, disease, war, genocide, or just generally not doing well, with all the prayers that God must be hearing every minute of every day–does this guy really think that God ignores all of that so He can tell this guy to run for state representative?

When will the insanity stop? There is not one bit of scriptural basis to support the proposition that God tells us what He wants us to do on a daily basis. The Gospels and New Testament lay out a very good set of guidelines to follow (do unto others, love your neighbor, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, etc.).

I am tired of these so-called “Christians” hijacking religion, no, desecrating religion for the purpose of getting votes. God is not a Republican, or a Democrat. He’s not even an American–people in Europe who believe in God don’t think that God is French or Italian. But we Americans seem to have our collective heads on backwards when it comes to how we think of God.

May God give me strength…

This is good

Yes. We. Can.

vs.

Ten. Thousand. Years.

I vote for the first one.

Would their mothers be proud of their behavior?

Today, Ann Coulter throws another anti-gay slur at John Edwards and tosses in a racial comment about Barack Obama as well.

Ten years ago, John McCain made a cruel, horrible joke about Chelsea Clinton during a speech.

This year, when a person at a town meeting asks John McCain “how do we beat the bitch,” he thinks it’s an excellent question. Wouldn’t a real leader gently scold that person and say something about how it’s inappropriate to lower the level of civil discourse that way?

What I don’t get is if a guy like Don Imus can get in trouble for making equally tasteless comments in public, why don’t Coulter and McCain get in trouble? Even NBC’s David Shuster, who made a comment that Chelsea Clinton appears to be “pimped out” while campaigning for her mother, got himself yanked off the air except to apologize.

This is challenging!

I read a very short book last night, Novena In Time Of War, written by a vet of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. He tells the story of dining with a minister and his wife and discussing the current Iraq war. The topic of supporting the troops came up–how we may not want to go to war, but once we do, we as a nation start to pull together to support the troops. The minister offered one simple truth:

“The boys are over there killing people.”

Holy crap. That hit me pretty hard and made me stop and think.

I highly recommend the book. The author does a masterful job of posing very difficult yet important questions about the morality of war.

Let me see if I have this right

Mitt Romney says he’s “suspending” his bid for the Republican nomination because he worries that if he stays in the race, a Democrat will win, and the terrorists will attack us.

The terrorists will attack us because…we elect a Democrat who has publicly committed himself or herself to pulling the troops out of Iraq and to stop acting like the world’s bully?

Seems to me the terrorists attack because we have our troops in a place where they aren’t wanted and because we don’t do much to help the folks in need in the Middle East while Bush holds hands with the king of Saudi Arabia.

Maybe I’m just confused. I’m sure someone out there can set me straight.

Why bipartisanship is bad for the U.S.

Everyone in Washington likes to talk about “working in a bipartisan manner.” Every time I hear a Democrat talk about bipartisanship as if it is some sacred object, I just want to hit my head against the wall.

Glenn Greenwald explains it very well.

An effort to explain why FISA legislation is a bad thing

Forgetting for the moment the horrible idea of retroactivity for the telecom companies that spied on us, here’s the problem.

The FISA proposal would allow, as I understand it, virtually unchecked monitoring of all international communications. So, if a mother talks to her soldier son in Iraq, and tells him she wishes “this damn war would be over,” the US government will know about it. When my brother sent me emails from his trip to Paris, the US government would know about it.

So what’s the problem, some ask.

The simple answer is this: being monitored is no way to live. If we think we’re being monitored by the authorities, we modify our behavior.

Think I’m crazy? Imagine this scenario. You’re driving down the highway and see a police car. What’s the first thing you do? You look at your speedometer. If you’re going faster than you should, you apply your brakes. And after you pass the police officer, you probably look in your rear-view mirror to see if he’s turned his emergency lights on to come after you (or someone else). The worry isn’t just about the speeding ticket. Perhaps the officer is suspicious about your passengers. He has the authority (not necessarily legal) to delay you, ask questions, and look for things that confirm his suspicions. Even if you have nothing to hide, the officer may not think so. And he gets to call the shots. That’s why we try to avoid his attention on the road.

When we might be noticed by authority, we modify our behavior in hopes of avoiding notice. When we take a test in a room full of students, who among us never stared at the test paper harder when the proctor came by? Clearly, no one wants to be even suspected of cheating on a test, so one makes the effort to avoid being suspicious–even though one hasn’t cheated or even plans to cheat on the test.

When we might be monitored by the government, we do things to avoid drawing attention to ourselves. We don’t laugh, we don’t tell jokes (want to have a bad experience? tell a terrorist joke in the TSA line at the airport), we retreat inside and behave less than who we are. We don’t live fully, even for those few minutes.

We’ve all had the experience of being on the telephone with someone in the room when we couldn’t talk freely. “Yes, sure, that will be great” is all we can say lest we give an indication as to who is on the phone with us or what the topic of conversation is. Do we want to live like that all the time? If so, we’d better make sure the FISA legislation gets passed–but only after it’s amended to apply to all communications within the US too.

If that happens, patriots will weep. We will become what we opposed just a couple of decades ago: the American equivalent of the Soviet Union, a totalitarian government.