Month: August 2008

The Onion touts a new product.

Yglesias wants to abolish the vice presidency.

McCain attacks Obama for attacking McCain:

It’s a good question after Saturday night’s pander-thon to Rick Warren. If you define Christian as the evangelical magazine Christianity Today does, the answer is probably Andrew Jackson. Here’s CT’s intellectually honest terminology:

George Washington 1789-97 Episcopalian (theistic rationalist*)

John Adams 1797-1801 Congregationalist; Unitarian
Thomas Jefferson 1801-09 Episcopalian (theistic rationalist*)
James Madison 1809-17  Episcopalian (theistic rationalist*)
James Monroe 1817-25 Episcopalian (deist?)
John Quincy Adams  1825-29 Unitarian
Andrew Jackson 1829-37 Presbyterian

CT describes "theistic rationalism" thus:

theistic rationalists believed that God was active in the world and that prayer was therefore effectual. They contended that religion’s primary role was to promote morality, which was indispensable to society.

When the theocons talk of American politics being imbued with religion from its founding, they have a point. But the type of religion that influenced the Founding Fathers could not be further removed from the deeply personal, evangelical experience touted by Warren, and its relationship to divine truth far more reserved than contemporary fundamentalism. By today’s standards, many of the founders would be termed secular humanists with Christian leanings who nonetheless believed religion to be essential to social order.

One question: has any presidential debate been held in an active church before?

Was Obama referring to God?

Greg Allen looks at campaign imagery from McCain Blogette, Meghan McCain’s blog. Allen comments:

I’m still trying to decide who made this sign, though. It’s "M-C-C-A-I-N" spelled out in tap code, a cipher used by prisoners in solitary confinement. It puts the letters into a 5×5 grid [minus the K]. So M is third row, second column, etc. This sign, in other words, says "JOHN MCCAIN, POW." I can’t figure out if it was printed by the campaign and handed out, or if this guy just happened to make it himself. [It doesn’t have the two-color printing of the official McCain signs, and the blue is slightly off. But would a random guy put at otherwise meaningless star on the top, and the campaign URL?] Whether it’s supposed to telegraph McCain’s POW bona fides to a knowing audience, or whether it’s meant to imply that McCain’s POW experience somehow qualifies him for the presidency, the relentless playing of the POW card seems beyond the pale.

"The continued tolerance and prominence of Jerome Corsi – his books, columns and appearances – is just embarrassing.  It is embarrassing for the Right, embarrassing for Republicans, embarrassing for conservatives and libertarians, embarrassing for all of us.

It’s not just that he’s frequently, remarkably wrong – something pretty well documented and acknowledged by both the Left and (while less enthusiastically) the Right (and the Obama campaign (PDF), of course). Both the Obama campaign and Hugh Hewitt acknowledge that Jerome Corsi is "fringe"…

I mean, c’mon.  Have some standards.  This guy does not deserve the platform, he does not deserve the publicity, and he does not deserve to be treated as member-in-good-standing on the Right.

The Right seems to engage today in social promotion of hatchet men, bullies and political hit men.  Those people poison the Right, and – whatever their temporary electoral effects – they serve to discredit us all," – John Henke.

"There was a time, seventy, eighty, a hundred years ago, that we Americans sat here in the western hemisphere, and puzzled over why British imperialists went to places like Iraq and Afghanistan. We viewed that sort of imperial adventurism with disdain. But, it’s really become part of what we do. Unless a President could ask fundamental questions about our posture in the world, it becomes impossible then, for any American President to engage the American people in some sort of a conversation about how and whether or not to change the way we live," – Andrew Bacevich, on Bill Moyers.

Time for a fisking:

"Divorced, stigmatized and barred any legal protections." Andrew Sullivan says that’s how I want gays in America to live. No, I just want to protect the institution of marriage — which is between a man and a woman.

The Federal Marriage Amendment for which K-Lo campaigned would render my civil marriage null and void. It would also explicitly remove any legal protections even under the rubric of "civil unions" that would provide me and my husband security. It would give people other than my spouse legal claims on my property were I to die or be rendered in some way incompetent. It would effectively divorce us. This is not factually in dispute. And if K-Lo supports eual treatment for gay couples under the rubric of civil unions, I’d be happy to discover that. But that is the only way she can argue that she is not, in fact, insisting that gay couples be stripped of defensible rights and stigmatized under the law.

K-Lo even supported Virginia’s Marriage Amendment which claims to bar even private legal arrangement between gay spouses. The removal of all these rights and responsibilities, by the way, in no way "protects" marriage for straight people: their rights are guaranteed regardless, and I am an enthusiast for those rights and for those families. I came from one, after all.

That doesn’t necessitate marginalizing or making second-class citizens of anyone.

I’m afraid it does, unless all gay people disappear off the face of the earth.

It’s protecting the integrity of what marriage is.

This is a tautology.

I know we disagree and that doesn’t delight me in any way. But marriage between man and woman, raising children is at the heart of civilization. And we’re in danger of losing it. That can’t be.

We’re not in danger of losing it in any way – and never will. Such heterosexual unions will remain and should remain at the heart of civilization, and heterosexual desire is hardly likey to evaporate because society is inclusive of all people, and not just the overwhelming majority. Moreover civil marriage already allows people to commit to one another without reproducing and no one seems to believe that marriage needs to be protected from this. So why the double standard for infertile or non-reproducing straights and gays – unless the point is purely to stigmatize homosexuality?

Redefining it would be the wrong direction.

We are not redefining it. We are making it available for the tiny minority of human beings and citizens who otherwise have no secure legal or social protection for their relationships.

I’m sure K-Lo doesn’t mean to hurt gays and in her own mind doesn’t believe that stripping me of basic rights in my relationship renders me second class. But it does, and her feelings about this are irrelevant compared with the facts. Under her vision of society, my husband and I are denied the basic rights granted to every heterosexual. Under my vision, we all have the same rights; and gay people can and should celebrate the families of straight people, do all they can to support parenting, while straight people can do the same for their gay siblings, offspring and friends.

Her vision necessitates marginalization and second class citizenship. And she and others on her side of the debate need to acknowledge it as such and own it.

Bradford Plumer pores over the mounting challenges to air travel:

It’s always dangerous to bet against human ingenuity. But, while most of the technology needed to replace gas-guzzling cars with, say, plug-in hybrids either exists or sits just over the horizon, decarbonizing air travel is a much harder prospect, not least because of the massive amounts of energy needed to lift a large passenger plane in the air.

The industry has already boosted the fuel efficiency of jets 70 percent in the last four decades, and is now left sanding down the rough spots–tinkering with ultralight materials, flying more slowly, or even charging passengers for extra bags. Propeller planes use less fuel than jets but are only really viable for some short-haul flights. Engine manufacturers say that more advanced technologies like fuel cells and carbon capture are still technically infeasible, while "blended wing" designs–planes shaped like stealth bombers to reduce drag–have barely left the drawing board. Improvements in air-traffic control will reduce both the length of flights and fuel-wasting delays, but may not be enough to surmount $200-per-barrel oil.