The rise of Goddess worship

Believers come out to pray to a water stain that looks like a woman's naughty bits.

Oh, you mean some people think it looks like something else?

Rick Santorum, Weather God!

Everyone complains about the weather, but no one ever does anything about. Well, not anymore! Here comes Rick Santorum with his solution: privatize it!

Do you want a seven-day weather forecast for your ZIP code? Or hour-by-hour predictions of the temperature, wind speed, humidity and chance of rain? Or weather data beamed to your cellphone?

That information is available for free from the National Weather Service.

But under a bill pending in the U.S. Senate, it might all disappear.

The bill, introduced last week by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., would prohibit federal meteorologists from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel, which offer their own forecasts through paid services and free ad-supported Web sites.

(link courtesy The Carpetbagger Report)

I like Josh Marshall's take on this:

Plenty of federal legislation these days boils down to this sort of rip-off of the public. But seldom is the equation so clear.

You paid for the data. Your tax dollars fund a massive apparatus of meteorological data collection for reasons ranging from agriculture to disaster safety to keeping airplanes in the air -- everything under the sun. You pay for it and this is just the feds making it available to you on a website. The cost of letting you access it must be minuscule compared to that of collecting it. Indeed, most of the data these other guys sell is stuff they get from the feds or fed-subsidized data collection.

So they're in the business of selling to you the information that your tax dollars already went into collecting. And apparently they add so little added value that they can't handle the competition when the National Weather Service just gives it away. Santorum wants to make these guys into some sort of information age tax farmers.

It's bad enough that Santorum wants to dictate how we live our personal lives. Now he wants to control the weather!

Self-funding candidates

Kos has a little bit of information about the race to succeed Henry Hyde in Illionois. The focus of the post is on the Republicans, but Kos has an interesting line on the Democratic race:

On our side things are in flux, as 2004 candidate Christine Cegelis is already running hard (after a strong rookie performance), but with the DCCC looking around for someone else (read: a self-funder).

This is especially interesting in light of this dKos diary by Richard Morrison, the Democrat who gave Tom DeLay his toughest re-election race yet in 2004. A pattern is emerging of the DCCC stepping into 2006 races that were unexpectedly hot in 2004, but giving the cold shoulder to the candidates who actually made them hot.

Now, it's hard to know exactly the thinking going on in each of these races. And it may very well be that neither Cegelis and Morrison are the best choice for Democrats in these contests in 2006. But the DCCC would be stupid if it were to diss the candidates that a lot of grassroots activists adopted in times of trouble. Acknowledging those candidates as legitimate and worthy of consideration is the least they can do.

And don't get me started on the Democrats over-reliance of "self-funding" candidates (read, candidates who are rich enough to back their own bids). The DCCC likes these candidates because it means they can support them (read: endorse them) without actually having to support them (read: give them some of their precious money). Here's the thing: grassroot candidates have demonstrated an ability to fundraise with the best of them. So, in that sense, Cegelis and Morrison are "self-funding".

The Nation as Child

David Swanson of Progressive Democrats of America has an excellent take on the issue of Lakoffian framing that ties in with what we talked about a couple of weeks back (here, here and here) as well as my recent "No More Talking Points" post. I think he gets to the key point around which much of the confusion circles:

[...] I want to see skilled framing and spinning applied to the positions I support. I do not want to see the positions I support altered beyond recognition in order to fit some pollster�s idea of framing and spinning.

[...]

We should start with what we want to say, and then figure out how to say it.
We can�t figure out how to say it first and then decide what it is we want.
The latter method leads to Kerry-esque positions on war, DLC positions on trade and health care, and DNC positions on GLBT rights. In other words:
eternal muddle and defeat.

Framing is the skill that will allow us to present our ideas in a way that will appeal to the voters. But the frames we use have to emerge from the positions we take, not the other way around. The mistake Democrats have made in recent years is to think that all they have to do is emulate the words and the positions will follow.

David then goes on to outline an excellent alternative to the Strict Father/Nurturant Parent models:

What we should be doing is rejecting government paternalism as arrogant, offensive, aristocratic, anti-democratic, and oligarchical.

Republicans do not, at least not consistently, try to frame government as a strict father. Certainly it was that image that turned Bush and Giuliani into heros, rather than clowns, simply because they were in office when a disaster struck. But more often Republicans depict government as an overprotective mother.

In truth, the government is not a separate being from the rest of us, not as long as it is to some extent democratic. But the image of the government as a Leviathan constituted by its citizens is not quite right. The government is not, or should not be, a monster towering over us.

Rather, the government is our creation. It is both independent of us and in need of care and attention and discipline from us. It does not care for us.
We care for it. We care for each other through it. We should not unquestioningly obey it. We should nurture it, encourage it, allow it to try new things, and hold it accountable when it makes a mistake so that it does better next time. The government will outlast us and will carry with it what we provide it in education and guidance. The government is not our father or mother, but our child - and eternally the child of each future generation of us.

David very neatly flips the entire Nation as Parent metaphor on its head and puts the Citizen in the role of the Parent!

This harkens back to the era of John F. Kennedy who famously opened his presidency by saying, "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country." Using the metaphor David gives us, we can see that Kennedy's was not calling on citizens to serve their nation as a child might do their choirs for a parent. He was instead calling on citizens to help and guide their nation as a parent might help and guide their child to a more mature level of understanding.

A bad parent would treat their child as a servant, born only to perform the tasks the parent doesn't want to do ("mow the lawn! do the dishes! clean the living room!"). A good parent will see their child as an opportunity to instill and pass on a legacy that will outlast them. Similarly, a bad citizen will view their nation as a servant, empowered only to do the things the citizen doesn't want to do ("Fix the roads! Clean the parks! Educate my children! Protect me from the bad guys!"). A good citizen will see the nation as an entity in which they can pass on a national legacy that will outlast them and will be an inspiration to others.

The nation isn't the enemy, no more then your child is the enemy. It may sometimes be unruly. It may sometimes need to be disciplined. But just when you least expect it, it can do things that really make you appreciate the fact that it is there.

There is no greater joy for a parent then when a child exceeds the parent's expectations.

There is no greater joy for a citizen then when the nation exceeds the citizen's expectations.

The Privatization of Faith

I was reading this post on Liberal Oasis on The Institute for Religion and Democracy. LO describes IRD as "a secularly funded group (including money from the right-wing Scaife foundations) that attacks and smears clergy who voice interpretations of Christianity that it deems as insufficiently conservative." This ties in with my previous post about the politicization of faith, except that it is an example of a concomitant phenomena that I call the privatization of faith.(*)

Politics is an ugly business and its only natural that business gets involved in it. One of the "benefits" of politicizing matters of faith is that it allows special interests to more easily manipulate the electorates views so that they benefit those interests. Thus, the business lobby loves to work with the politicizers of faith because they can bring out so many dedicated voters to the polls. Of course, they don't like them when they start over-reaching, as they have with the recent attacks on the judiciary.

The IRD sounds like just the kind of operation that the business lobby would use to keep the Christian Soldiers in line. But this commingling of private interests with faith interests naturally leads to a perversion of faith just as bad as the previously discussed politicization.

The politicizers want to sully faith with the ugliness of government.

The privitizers want to sully faith with the ugliness of capitalism.(**)

Faith is a personal matter that can only be harmed by such actions. It's time for Democrats to defend faith against these corrupting influences.

 

(* Actually, I stole the term from the book God's Politics by Jim Wallis.)

(** When I refer to the "ugliness" of government and capitalism I am not impugning either institution by saying that they are fundamentally ugly. I happen to be a fan of both. But I don't let my favorable opinion of them blind me to their dark side.)

Lab rats in the neo-con experiment in democracy

I've come to the conclusion that Iraq is nothing more then a laboratory for an experiment by ivory-tower, neo-con think-tankers and that the Iraqis and American soldiers are simply the lab rats being monitored for the results of those experiments. Unfortunately, this is one experiment that has gotten away from the men in their lab coats. Steve Gilliard gives us the details:

* Rumsfeld's eagerness to use Iraq as a test bed for his transformation of the military was a disaster. While the US handled stage one capably, his indifferent to disorder set the stage for stage two.

* Leaving open the ammo dumps set the bed for the resistance. The Iraqi resistance is the most lavishly equipped in history. Every unit well armed with modern weapons.

* Poor planning left the US without their Third World auxillary armies to provide basic security. Without the large Pakistani and Nigerian units to patrol towns and provide basic area denial, US units have had to do two jobs, security and quick reaction.

* Disbanding the Army set the stage for the resistance to have trained people running it. These men didn't learn war from textbooks. The senior folks learned in combat and passed those lessons down

* US forces have adapted to tactics only to have those tactics shift.

* The Iraqis have minimized the use of helicopter units and limited them to observation and attack.

* The Iraqi resistance has also limited the use of the roadnet. Without convoys, resupply is impposible. This control is so dominant that US units now get some supplies by air.

* They have also thoroughly penetrated US assets in Iraq. No Iraqi unit can move without the guerrilas eventually finding out.

* US units are unable to leave their bases except on patrol. During the Vietnam War, Americans could frequent bars and live in the cities. No American can live in Iraq without security at the risk of kidnapping and death.

* The lack of infantry leaves the US unable to sustain military successes when they do occur. The scarest military resource is not armor, but trained combat infantry. Sure, you can send artillerymen out on patrol and get tankers on foot. But infantry is irreplacable for guerrilla warfare.

Conclusion: we are ruled by idiots

Christians are not a special interest group!

Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas gets right to point in explaining precisely what is wrong with the behavior of some Christian leaders who have joined in the attack on Democratic filibusters of Bush's judicial nominees:

Their tactics threaten "to make the followers of Jesus Christ just another special-interest group," Pryor said in a conference call with Arkansas reporters. "It is presumptuous of them to think that they represent all Christians in America, even to say they represent all evangelical Christians," added Pryor, 42, a first-term Democrat who has considered himself an evangelical Christian for 25 years. 

Here we see the reason why, at the foundation of our nation, so many Christians supported the strong constitutional provisions separating church and state from each other(*). When leaders of faith get involved in politics it inevitably leads to the politicization of faith. People go to church to deal with the most personal, trying issues in their lives. The religious leaders who are so gung-ho to politicize their faith are betraying their congregations by intermingling their politics with the congregations personal lives.

It is true that many mistakenly thought that America could live without God. They forgot about the strong tradition of faith in this country. The faith backlash was inevitable. But those who wish to politicize faith are making the similar mistake of forgetting that there is an equally strong tradition of secularism in this country. The secular backlash will only grow the more these modern day zealots scream.

 

(* One of the ironies of the current fight is that the strongest support for said separation came from southern Christians while the strongest opposition came from northeastern Christians, most particularly from Massachusetts!)

Timing is everything

Another interesting comment from Scott McClellan in this same report on the troubled Bolton nomination:

"Democrats continue to bring these accusations up and trump them up and make unfounded allegations, and we need to get John Bolton to the United Nations because this is an important position. We need to get him there sooner rather than later," McClellan said.

Um, what's the rush Scotty? What exactly does Bolton bring to the UN table that is so vital for the administration? Is there some kind of schedule the administration needs to meet that requires Bolton to be their "sooner rather than later"? Does he have some special insight into administration policy on some issue that will soon be a hot topic at the UN?

Hmmm?

Vetting? We don't need no steenkin' Vetting!

Interesting comment from Scott McClellan in this report on the troubled Bolton nomination:

Asked if the White House had fully vetted the accusations and determined they were not true, McClellan said: "I think these issues have been addressed by John Bolton himself."

So, like before with the Bernie Kerik nomination for Homeland Secretary, the White House vetting procedure is now a simple interview with the candidate in which they ask, "You do anything wrong?" If the candidate answers "nope" then that's good enough for Bush!

Outrageous!

Tom DeLay is outraged:

The No. 2 Republican in the House has been openly critical of the federal courts since they refused to order the reinsertion of Schiavo's feeding tube. And he pointed to [Supreme Court Justice Anthony] Kennedy as an example of Republican members of the Supreme Court who were activist and isolated.

"Absolutely. We've got Justice Kennedy writing decisions based upon international law, not the Constitution of the United States? That's just outrageous," DeLay told Fox News Radio on Tuesday. "And not only that, but he said in session that he does his own research on the Internet? That is just incredibly outrageous."

He does his own research in order to better understand the issues that come before him? Outrageous!

He investigates other forms of jurisprudence in order to learn from how others have dealt with legal issues? Outrageous!

Outrageous! It's just outrageous! Did you know that it is outrageous!?

Okay Tom, we get the point!

You're outrageous!

No more talking points!

Josh Marshall makes a good point, a point I've been thinking about for some time but haven't been able to put into words: the main problem with the Democrats is that they have developed a reflexive habit of letting politics dictate policy.

The problem Democrats have is not bad tactics or bad strategies or poor framing. The problem is an over-reliance, even an addiction, to tactics and strategies.

For years I've argued that the Democrats' problem on national security issues is not so much that they aren't 'tough enough' or that they lack new ideas. The problem is a now-deeply-ingrained habit of approaching national security issues not so much as policy questions to be wrestled with but as a political problem to be dealt with and moved on from.

That has a host of damaging consequences, the most serious of which is that if you chart your policy course so as to avoid political damage, always casting about for the sweet spot of political safety, you tend to lack any greater programmatic consistency. And that tells voters (as it probably should) that you�re inconstant and unserious. It also muddles effective communication by confusing the communicators themselves about just what it is they are trying to say or accomplish.

What the last year has taught me -- both in good ways and bad -- is that this malady isn't limited to the national security domain but applies to Democrats pretty much across the board.

Josh has some advice on how Democrats can overcome their political strategy cravings (using Social Security as an example):

Here's what I propose whenever Democrats have a question about just what stance to take on the Social Security debate.

One question ...

What is the actual policy outcome that would be most preferable on Social Security (to protect, preserve or augment it -- whatever) and how important is it that it take place in this Congress?

That's the first, second and third question.

That answer should drive everything else.

I could add to this, but it would just be fluffing. Go read the whole thing and absorb it.

I'm as big a fan of framing as anyone, but even framing is just another example of "tactics and strategy". It is the training wheels for the new Democratic movement. It is not the movement itself. I'm still interested in it, but I need to move beyond it.

update:If I can allow myself a little bit of meta I'd like to point out the irony that Josh Marshall's post about Democrats being addicted to strategy and tactics at the expense of real policy is itself an excellent use of metaphorical framing (Democrats are Addicts) to make a point that snide dismissals of framing has not: that framing is not enough.