Ranting and Raving

I'm neither left nor right, I'm just sitting here tonight,
Staring at that hopeless  little screen.
--Leonard Cohen, "Democracy."

I feel that the time has come to do some political posts.  I am going to begin by laying out my personal political platform.  It's not complicated, and it's not simple, and it's not something I ever get to vote for, because, for reasons I don't understand, many of my causes have been taken up by one party or the other, but not both.  Here goes:

• I am Pro-Gun and Pro-Choice,
• Pro-Labor and Pro Israel,
• I believe that the government has the responsibility to collect taxes and provide services.
• I believe that people should be generally free to do as they wish, but that the government has an obligation to set  rules where the exercise of one person's freedom poses danger to another person.

That about sums it up.

I generally vote for Democrats, because I find that they do (ever so slightly) more to advance  my agenda than impede it.

level_head has a post worth contemplating, regardless of its slant, called Unpatriotic.

It's noteworthy to my mind because it points to a way in which we, as Americans, have gotten sloppy in our thinking, especially over the past eight years, but going back farther than that even. We have become accustomed to an us and them style of thought. The right and the left alike have spent the Bush years assimilating the "if you're not with us, your against us" mentality. And here is my warning: any lefty who brings this framework to the Obama presidency is going to be disappointed.

What we have in Obama is someone who grasps realpolitik. And that tends to mean compromise. If the last 8 years have had any effect on our culture at all, it has been to make "compromise" on either side of the fence a dirty word. The partisanship that has been brewing since Nixon, that saw its full flowering in the "Republican Revolution" and the Bush administration have torn this nation limb from limb. Getting us to where we are now demanded that Franken take on Limbaugh, that Maddow deconstruct Coulter, but the battle is now lost and won, and its time for reconstruction.

I think that Obama's ability to blend that which I agree with along with that which I find distasteful speaks volumes about his ability to reintegrate a nation that has been separated as if by a centrifuge. To those who are seeking ideological purity, he will seem a sellout, but to those who want a nation at peace, he may just the ticket.

You can't always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need.


[Edit: bluerain notes: "I actually think it's grossly unfair to cast anyone who is angry at the selection of Warren as displaying an "if you're not with us, you're against us" mentality." This assessment is correct and just, and I have therefore removed the reference from the body of the post. Thanks to her and orv for helping refine my thoughts on that.]

Here are some thoughts of mine on the matter of the Real Estate market correction and its consequences.

The assumption that the bubble came about solely because of subprime lending unhinging home prices from inflation misses the point. The Fed lowering the Prime Rate to levels that were unsustainable in order to combat inflation near the beginning of this decade did a lot to make people seek new mortgages and re-finances who perhaps otherwise would not have. It demonstrates a failure of the "Free Market" that prices so quickly began to outstrip value. One thing this should teach us is that homes, real-estate, have an intrinsic value, separate from the market value. The bursting of the bubble is a "correction," but this is a more tragic correction than, say, a correction in the stock market, because rather than being stock certificates, these are people's homes. So these homes go into foreclosure because, in many cases, the homeowner is burdened with a debt that exceeds the value of his collateral. Seen this happen first hand.

Banks could have taken two approaches - 1) Take a loss by writing a new mortgage for the real value of the house, or 2) Take a bigger loss by foreclosing the home and reselling it in a depressed market, depressing it even further.

Banks seem, by and large to have chosen option 2. It seems to me that any "bailout" would have to favor option 1 - I suspect many homeowners currently faced with foreclosure would greet a manageable monthly payment at a fixed rate with relief.

And this brings me to my last point. If you are buying a house because you plan to fix it up and resell it within a year, perhaps an ARM makes sense. But if you are buying a house as a roof over your head, and a nest egg, then the ARM is a predatory instrument. Especially in times where the prime rate is unsustainably low. If subprime lending is to continue, ARMs should not be among the instruments used: a subprime loan presumes a precarious borrower, it is folly to imagine that such a borrower will be able to manage a higher payment when the rate goes up.

So, my proposals are as follows:

1) Do not write (or underwrite) loans for more than the home is reasonably worth.

and

2) Do not make ARMs available to subprime borrowers. The more precarious your economic situation, the more important it is that your housing costs be Fixed, not Variable.

Item 1 is tricky, because it raises the problem of how to assess a property's intrinsic value (by which I really mean the market value in a market which is neither inflated nor depressed). I suppose a formula that looks at average home prices over a fairly long period of time, adjusted for inflation would come close.

The effect of people not being to obtain loans for a ludicrously overvalued home would be that they could not make offers on them and the prices would have to reach sane levels before the loans would be written.

I addressed the following e-mail to Mark Dayton, who opposed the cloture motion on the debate of the Alito nomination. To my liberal California readers - Boxer and DiFi also opposed cloture, and deserve your praise.

Mr. Dayton,

I am just dropping a note to say "thank you" for your "No" vote on yesterday's cloture motion. That vote shows that you have the integrity and intestinal fortitude to stand up for what is right. There are those who voted "yes" yesterday but will vote "no" today, so that they can tell their constituents that they opposed Alito. The only possible response when they do will be "where were you when it mattered?" I am proud that when it mattered, the Democratic Senator from Minnesota was at his station and not hiding under the decks. I regret that you are not running for re-election, if you were you would surely have my vote.

I sent this to Senator Dayton today, via his web form.

I expect senate Democrats to fillibuster this nomination. The purpose of an opposition party is to defend the people of this nation from the tyranny of a grasping Majority.

The decisions of Samuel Alito on every court on which he sat betray a consistent elevation of corporate and government power over individual freedom, on topics ranging from the FMLA to discrimination to abortion. His ascendancy to the Supreme Court would eliminate the last, wafer thin, barrier between the US as a Constitutional Republic and the US as a Corporate Feudal State.

If the Democrats Fillibuster, and the Republicans exercise the so called "Nuclear Option," so be it. It would demonstrate the barefaced brutality of the current regime.

However, if the Democrats do not Fillibuster, then we will find that we have already surrendered to a one party state in which elections are as meaningful as they were in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. There will be no reason to vote any more.


Finally, note that Sandra Day O'Connor has agreed to serve until a replacement is found. Her willingness to prevent an actual Vacancy implies a wish on her part that a Justice more reflective of her values than of Bush's replace her.

Do not fail her.
And do not fail the people of this nation.

Do not vote to end debate on this nomination.

Your Political Profile

Overall: 20% Conservative, 80% Liberal

Social Issues: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Personal Responsibility: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal

Fiscal Issues: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Ethics: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Defense and Crime: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal

And troubled by question 13. Lotsa ways to drive the deficit down these days without screwing the poor.

I am a person of faith. So are many people, Jewish and Christian, Muslim and Buddhist who read my journal. And I feel that there is a war being raised against some of the fundamental tenets of my faith, from people like the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. (I don't know who the speaker of the House is these days, so upstaged has he been by DeLay).

These people have been seeking to put into law very specific elements of the very specific splinter of Christianity in which they engaged. And every time Liberals talk about "the separation of Church and State," these wingnuts have a cow about how evil secularists and atheists are on a crusade to destroy Christianity in America. Their perception seems to be that they are being oppressed if their beliefs, and their beliefs alone are not being legislated, are not forming the basis for jurisprudence, and are not being enforced at home and on the world stage.

As many conservatives will point out, there is no "separation of Church and State" in the constitution. And they are right - this concept is the result of judicial interpretation. The Constitution gives us the "establishment clause" in its first Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . ."

Let's take a good hard look at this, leaving behind for the moment the notion of "separation of Church and State" and asking ourselves why it is there at all. First and foremost it codifies an important religious sentiment that we find in the Concessions and Agreements establishing the colony of New Jersey, written by William Penn, namely that "that no man, nor number of men upon earth, hath power or authority to rule over men's consciences in religious matters" (Joseph Story). This is an important notion to understand: the establishment clause is there not to prohibit prayer in schools, necessarily, nor to prohibit display of the Ten Commandments, necessarily, but to guarantee the the state does nothing to compromise the individual's relationship with God. Now this remains true regardless of whether that relationship is one of disavowal, a belief in an abstract "creator," or a belief in a personal God or gods.

Justice Thomas Black, writing in EVERSON v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF EWING TP., 330 U.S. 1 (1947) illuminates for us the historical milieu from which the establishment clause arose:

A large proportion of the early settlers of this country came here from Europe to escape the bondage of laws which compelled them to support and attend government favored churches. The centuries immediately before and contemporaneous with the colonization of America had been filled with turmoil, civil strife, and persecutions, generated in large part by established sects determined to [330 U.S. 1, 9] maintain their absolute political and religious supremacy. With the power of government supporting them, at various times and places, Catholics had persecuted Protestants, Protestants had persecuted Catholics, Protestant sects had persecuted other Protestant sects, Catholics of one shade of belief had persecuted Catholics of another shade of belief, and all of these had from time to time persecuted Jews. In efforts to force loyalty to whatever religious group happened to be on top and in league with the government of a particular time and place, men and women had been fined, cast in jail, cruelly tortured, and killed. Among the offenses for which these punishments had been inflicted were such things as speaking disrespectfully of the views of ministers of government-established churches, nonattendance at those churches, expressions of non-belief in their doctrines, and failure to pay taxes and tithes to support them.

What we are witnessing today is precisely this scenario: a particular flavor of Christianity is seeking to forge an alliance with the government, though which it can force loyalty to its notion of "family values" or "morals" or whatever the buzzword of the day happens to be. The first amendment is intended to safeguard the relationship between man and God, such that it cannot be hijacked by any single religious persuasion.

So this, then is the right wing War on Faith: If you are Presbyterian, Quaker, United Church of Christ, Reformed Jewish, any kind of Jewish really, Muslim, Buddhist, etc, then according to these people YOUR FAITH IS NOT VALID. And here comes the sticky part: because we are not so prideful as to say "You're wrong because God said so," we do not appear to speak with the moral authority that they do.

So what can we do? For starters, we need to invoke God. Seriously. Even in a war of prooftexting, we can win this thing if we so choose. We tend to be afraid to do this, because we can't know that God is on our side. However, I don't think that's true - I think God IS on our side, and that it can be demonstrated from any holy text we care to cite. I was once asked by a fellow learner in Torah Study "How can we know?"

It's a valid question. The answer is a matter of history and projection - if we examine the pattern that has given us Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and look at what it parallels in the past what do we see? I see a Holocaust survivor in my congregation describing how, upon being seen with a scrap of Army blanket she had found to keep herself warm, she was made to kneel with her arms over her head for five hours, during which she fainted three times. Her treatment was virtually identical to the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay as described in a report by the ICRC:

The physical tactics noted by the Red Cross included placing detainees in extremely cold rooms with loud music blaring, and forcing them to kneel for long periods of time. . . .

It's not difficult to see where the policy leads. And as for the notion that it is hyperbole or hysteria to draw on the Holocaust for comparison the only thing I can say is that the notion that the Holocaust was somehow a unique or aberrant evil is the greatest assurance that it WILL happen again. All of us have within us not only a spark of divine goodness, but an evil inclination as well, and when that inclination is appealed to on a national stage, it scales up better that a Linux Beowulf cluster. We insist on believing that the holocaust was perpetrated by inhuman monsters, when in fact is was perpetrated by people JUST LIKE US, to whose worst instincts a simple megalomaniac appealed. When we see a nation being encouraged to vote against granting a right to a particular population, when we see a nation that looks the other way when it's citizens are denied justice and due process, we see a nation that has not God, but the evil inclination perched on it's shoulder.

We need to understand that as people of faith we have the RESPONSIBILITY to invoke God. Because if we do not, then we sell Him into slavery to the false prophets who invoke the divine crown for the sole purpose of increasing their power and wealth.



Works Cited

Story, Joseph. COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES; WITH A PRELIMINARY REVIEW OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE COLONIES AND STATES, BEFORE THE ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. Harvard University, 1833.

I haven't been able to bring myself to do a political cartoon since the election, but today, this idea came upon me, so I sketched it out at work with gel-pen on bond paper. I couldn't find my pencil, so this is the totally unrehearsed product of my pen.



The different ways liberals and conservatives parse the messages they receive is something that has been occupying my mind quite a bit of late. This is also the first time I've drawn people from the rear, and I'm kind of pleased with how they turned out. I do wish I had made the TV big enough to do more with my Bush caricature.

Went to see National Treasure this evening, looking for brainless mind candy, and all I can say is wow. Just wow.

Well actually, I'm going to say a lot more than that.

( it gets kinda spoilery )

I expect I will own this one on DVD - I imagine that more is buried in there.

I am not a consumer of pornography, and I never have been. But back in the 80's when Larry Flynt was under fire, I was content to take his side. Not because I have any taste for his product (I once looked at a Penthouse and found it . . . disturbing), but rather because I understood what few Americans understood at the time - that ANY restriction on speech is EVERY restriction on speech.

Larry Flynt was an excellent choice for an attack on free speech. The right didn't like him because he was Im-MOE-ral, the left didn't like him because his portrayals of women perpetuated a rape culture. In short he was someone that you could love to hate regardless of your political persuasion, and to many on both sides of the fence, restricting his press freedom seemed a good idea at the time.

But it wasn't.

It was the groundwork for the actions of the moral majority, giving the FCC ever greater enforcement power over what was said on the airwaves. It was the bedrock of rules regarding Indecent and Obscene speech. And there is a VERY fine line between enforcement and retribution. And where government retribution becomes a possibility, basic freedoms are lost.

We are approaching the final stages of this game. Our media is useless. I will refrain from arguing whether it is "liberal" or "conservative." Truth is, it doesn't matter any more because primarily the media are a)Greedy and b)Fearful. The result is this:

CBS and UPN have refused to air an ad from the United Church of Christ that states that it welcomes gays and lesbians. Here is the reason they give:

"Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations," reads an explanation from CBS, "and the fact the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the [CBS and UPN] networks."

Contemplate that for a moment: The federal government has proposed an amendment to the constitution, and rather than engage in speech that would foster discussion, major networks are prattling about "controversy."

The problem can be summed up in this one single event: Janet Jackson's Boob. That event set the stage for the FCC levying unreasonable fines for something over which the network had no control, and this was followed swiftly by fines for Howard Stern's material, at which they had looked askance for decades.

The message, of course, is that the Federal Government has retributive powers over broadcast media. Because sex sell and because obscenity rules or vague, if a broadcaster publishes a message that runs afoul of the government, it may be subject to the government's arbitrary punishment.

The result is a media that is, in essence, the executive's mouthpiece, afraid, by its own admission, to run afoul of that executive's mouthpiece, both because of the threat of fines and because of the carrot of increased market share.

With such a media, the most important fundamental of democracy, a population well informed about all sides of the issues, is destroyed.