"To say [McCain] would be worse [than Obama] is mindless, mindless, incoherent as a matter of fact. […] I think there’s enormous confusion and positioning and pandering. It may be entertaining, but from my perspective, it’s not. It’s pathetic," – Mark Levin, on Glenn Beck's interview with Katie Couric.
Of course, disdain from the dogmatic right will only help Beck. As it should. He should wear the scorn of Levin like a badge of honor.
In 1990, 8 percent of Americans reported that they had no religious beliefs. Twenty years later, that's 15 percent. But when you look at younger Americans, you see that the proportion of "nones" is reaching 22 percent. The 1990s were the boom years for the Nones; and a huge 35 percent of the new Nones are ex-Catholics. No doubt, some of this is a reflection of the sex abuse crisis. But the intellectual collapse of Christianity under the leadership of Protestant fundamentalists and Catholic theocons is surely relevant. The well-deserved inability of literalists to win many converts among educated people is also surely salient. The emergence of the politicized Christianist right – and its assault on Christianity as a freely chosen spiritual process – will surely lead to a continued and accelerating flight from organized religion.
But the Nones are not Ditchkins atheists. They express their position primarily as a form of skepticism and Deism. They are agnostics who do not dismiss the religious life but remain at a cool distance from it. This is, of course, one of the deepest American religious inheritances:
"American nones are kind of agnostic and deistic, so it's a very American kind of skepticism," says Barry Kosmin, director of Trinity's Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture. "It's a kind of religious indifference that's not hostile to religion the way they are in France. Franklin and Jefferson would have recognized these people."
The study estimates that in twenty years, the Nones will make up 25 percent of Americans. The political breakdown is also fascinating.
In 1990, the Nones were mainly Independents but were equally spread among Democrats and Republicans. Today, the proportion of Independents who are Nones has leaped from 12 percent to 21 percent; and the percentage of Democratic Nones has doubled from 6 percent to 16 percent. In stark contrast, the GOP share has fallen from 8 percent to 6 percent. I'd say that's a function of the GOP becoming an essentially Christianist fundamentalist party; and the Democrats having lots of Irish, Jewish and Asian supporters, who are the strongest groups in the None cohort.
The Nones are not wealthier than average, but they are more male. Almost 20 percent of American men are Nones, compared with 12 percent of women.
61 percent of Nones find evolution convincing, compared with 38 percent of all Americans. And yet they do not dismiss the possibility of a God they do not understand; and refuse to call themselves atheists. This is the fertile ground on which a new Christianity will at some point grow. In the end, the intellectual bankruptcy of the theocon right and Christianist movement counts. Very few people with brains are listening to these people any more. They have discredited Christianity as much as they have tarnished conservatism.
The British foreign secretary, David Miliband, tweets.
"I think that, if Senator Baucus can put together a filibuster-proof number of votes, then I think what you will get is a bill that passes the Senate and a slightly more liberal bill that passes the House. It will go to conference and then they will try to take the best elements of both bills. I actually believe that he will pass a bill, and I think if he gets fairly close, there might be four or five Republican senators who will vote for it," – former president Bill Clinton.
Am I the only person to be somewhat alarmed by this statement:
"Yes, he'll be a good soldier, but he will only go so far," a senior official in Kabul said. "He'll hold his ground. He's not going to bend to political pressure."
It is McChrystal's job to bend to political pressure. His job is to obey the orders of his commander-in-chief who is answerable to the American people. The way in which this man seems to be trying to bounce the administration into a deeper longer war, and threatening to resign to exact political damage if he doesn't, is outrageous. It is one thing to recommend a new military strategy; it is another thing to enter politics. McChrystal is lucky that his recent history of presiding over some of the worst torture and abuse of the Cheney era was glossed over by the Senate in confirming him. He shouldn't push his luck.
Right-wing blogs are up in arms over an “EXPLOSIVE” audio clip of a conference call involving progressive artists, the National Endowment of the Arts, and the White House Office of Public Engagement, claiming the call proves an Obama conspiracy to use the NEA for partisan gain. AL lowers the temperature:
In terms of optics, it was certainly not a good idea for the NEA communications director to participate in such a call (which is probably why he is not the communications director anymore). That organization is not supposed to be involved in political advocacy. But unless Breitbart’s got a lot more, this is the political equivalent of jaywalking. Neither the NEA nor the White House organized this call and the staffers on the call basically gave boilerplate cheerleading remarks. There is nothing in the call that suggests that NEA money or grants were being funneled to progressive artists or anything of the sort. And the White House is of course free to participate on calls with supporters and encourage them to be pro-active. That’s what the Office of Public Engagement does.
What’s ironic (though not at all surprising) is that the very kind of allegation that is being leveled here was repeatedly proven to have occurred during the Bush administration, and in far more significant contexts. Monica Goodling was hiring and firing prosecutors, both U.S. Attorneys and DOJ line prosecutors, based on political criteria. Lurita Doan used the General Services Administration to “help” GOP candidates for office (and was eventually forced to resign). There were many other such examples, and the reaction to all of them by the Andrew Breitbarts of the world was a collective yawn.
Torture-defender Andy McCarthy doesn’t disappoint:
At Powerline, John Hinderaker has a superb analysis, including consideration of the question whether criminal statutes (such as the Hatch Act) have been violated. […] We’re about to see (yet again) how serious the Pelosi/Reid Democrats are about all that “rule of law” stuff they spout.
Ah, yes. “The rule of law”. I wondered how long it would take the true fanatics on the right to remember they are supposed to stand for that.
A reader writes:
I am a Canadian citizen, moving to the US for work next month and your Sickbed Stories have pretty much got me terrified. I read every one of them and think…that probably wouldn’t happen in Canada. I am told that the organization that will provide our health insurance in the US has some of the best coverage in the country – but as your personal stories prove – there are just too many cracks in your system with too many people falling through them. Why not me one day? Our health care is delivered provincially and so I can only speak for British Columbia but I know the systems are similar across Canada. Basically, each person pays $54 per month for all essential medical
services; you pay nothing if you make less than $20,000 a year.
If you have a good health insurance plan through work, it will usually pay your monthly premium and cover you for additional services like eye care, physiotherapy, and psychiatry with annual limits on coverage (e.g. acupuncture treatments up to $600 per year) and subsidized costs on prescription drugs depending on the plan. There may be a small deductible for those “extras”, but you know beforehand what will be covered and what will not.
For that monthly $54 (and with no additional insurance), I have access to a family doctor whenever I need one, to walk-in clinics where doctors treat individuals on a first-come, first-served basis, and to emergency or standard medical care in hospital. And whether it is a quick diagnosis and prescribed antibiotics for an infected spider bite (me) or radical chemotherapy treatment, months of hospitalization and surgery for life threatening cancer (one of my closest friends) – there are no bills for that care.
You simply present your Care Card where you are receiving treatment identifying you as a resident of the province, and you are entitled to whatever care you need as determined by your doctor – not “the government” and not any insurance company. Of course, this care is not “free”. As Canadian citizens, we all pay for this incredible privilege of universal health care through our taxes, which are slightly higher than in the US. But I think about those MasterCard commercials from a few years back – "Piece of mind knowing that you and your family will never be financially ruined by health care bills? Priceless." There was a long, hard political fight for universal health care in Canada. Man, was it worth it.
Here's a helpful description of the events leading up to and engulfing the SWAT style raid on a gay club in Atlanta. The raid seems out of all proportion to a couple of anonymous complaints. And the police conduct during the raid is now the subject of a months-long inquiry.
Contra Horowitz, Pete Wehner insists that the ascendancy of Glenn Beck "should worry the conservative movement":
I say that because he seems to be more of a populist and libertarian than a conservative, more of a Perotista than a Reaganite. His interest in conspiracy theories is disquieting, as is his admiration for Ron Paul and his charges of American “imperialism.” (He is now talking about pulling troops out of Afghanistan, South Korea, Germany, and elsewhere.) Some of Beck’s statements—for example, that President Obama has a “deep-seated hatred for white people”–are quite unfair and not good for the country. His argument that there is very little difference between the two parties is silly, and his contempt for parties in general is anti-Burkean (Burke himself was a great champion of political parties). And then there is his sometimes bizarre behavior, from tearing up to screaming at his callers. Beck seems to be a roiling mix of fear, resentment, and anger—the antithesis of Ronald Reagan.
My hunch is that he is a comet blazing across the media sky right now—and will soon flame out. Whether he does or not, he isn’t the face or disposition that should represent modern-day conservatism. At a time when we should aim for intellectual depth, for tough-minded and reasoned arguments, for good cheer and calm purpose, rather than erratic behavior, he is not the kind of figure conservatives should embrace or cheer on.
I agree, of course. But I do think that Beck deserves some kudos for putting defense on the table as an issue for small government conservatives. There is no way the US can return to limited government without abandoning its neo-imperial ambitions and its middle class entitlements. The Pentagon, as that limited government president Eisenhower understood, is as much a big government program as Medicare or Social Security. Limited government Americans are rightly skeptical of a government that insists on a massive investment of time, money and human beings in open-ended nation-building in a place where these is no nation and no credible government.
I suspect Obama can appeal to these people if he frames withdrawal from Afghanistan in the Beck model: it cannot work, it has taken too long, it has cost too much, it has ended too many lives. Above all: we cannot afford it. There is no such thing as absolute security in a world like ours. We need to deleverage the neo-empire as urgently as we need to deleverage American debt.
And why on earth are US troops still in Germany? What dire threat to national security are they deterring?
Shenzhen, China, 6.37 pm
The Dish 