Month: June 2011

Huntsman’s Pitch

117081635

It has two components, it seems to me: a focus on reversing American economic decline and on resurrecting civility in public debate. Here's the jobs part:

We must reignite the powerful job creating engine of our economy – the industry, innovation, reliability, and trailblazing genius of Americans and their enterprises — and restore confidence in our people.

We did many of these things in Utah when I was governor. We cut taxes and flattened rates. We balanced our budget. Worked to maintain our AAA bond rating. When the economic crisis hit, we were ready. And by many accounts we became the best state for business and the best managed state in America. We proved government doesn't have to choose between fiscal responsibility and economic growth. I learned something very important as Governor. For the average American family there is nothing more important than a job.

My italics. His Utah experience – two terms and massive popularity – will be a big factor. Obama's obvious vulnerability is unemployment. I suspect its resilience is a function of a debt hangover, a strapped middle class consumer, but more importantly, the integration of all of India and China into the global economy. The US has never emerged from a recession before in the face of such strong cheap-labor headwinds from abroad. Profits are way up, and growth is back – but the US jobs remain elusive. The challenge for the GOP is finding someone with credibility on this question to use it against the president. I don't think Romney fits that bill for multiple reasons – he made a fortune out of firing people and he seems fake. Huntsman? Not so much.

Then there's this pledge, which seeks to turn his working for Obama into an advantage:

I don't think you need to run down anyone's reputation to run for President. Of course we'll have our disagreements. I respect my fellow Republican candidates. And I respect the President. He and I have a difference of opinion on how to help the country we both love. But the question each of us wants the voters to answer is who will be the better President; not who's the better American.

If the GOP really wants to win over the middle, they should listen closely to this insistence on civility. The Obama campaign has, in my mind, finally met an opponent they should fear for the best reasons, not the worst ones.

(Photo: Republican Jon Huntsman speaks during a press conference to announce his bid for the presidency at Liberty State Park June 21, 2011 in Jersey City, New Jersey. Huntsman, until recently the U.S. ambassador to China under President Obama, emphasized his record as a two-term governor of Utah. By Spencer Platt/Getty Images.)

Why New York Matters, Ctd

A reader writes:

Churches have never been required to officiate the marriage ceremonies of anyone they don't want to.  St. Catherine's Catholic Church refused to marry my parents because my dad had been previously married and divorced.  The Church refused to baptize me because I was born out of wedlock.  While I did go to mass with my Grandmother, I didn't get to participate in catechism or communion. So, the idea that religion needs to be protected from recognizing my same-sex marriage seems absurd to me.

The gay rights movement never insisted that particular churches ought to be legally required to officiate same-sex marriages. Christianists said they would be forced to open their doors to homosexuals to scare people. The religious exemptions aren't there to guarantee religious liberty, but to codify religious privilege and to appease those with an irrational fear of losing it. This codification makes it more difficult for gay Christians to enact change and push for reform within denominations they wish to remain part of, so it's not without consequence.

The gay rights movement (the struggle for civil liberties) and the gay Christian movement (the struggle for religious liberty) is something that I've long seen as parallel movements in separate state and church spheres. In this case, the former is stepping on the neck of the latter to secure a right.

It doesn't seem particularly libertarian to codify something that doesn't need codifying. I never had a right to be Catholic for reasons apart from being gay, so why have legislation codifying that I don't have a right to be Catholic because I'm gay?

Another writes:

One needs to keep in mind that there are some churches and congregations who are having their religious freedom restricted when civil marriage equality for same-sex couples is not recognized.

For example, Unitarian Universalists and United Church of Christ support marriage equality as denominations and many of their clergy will solemnize same-sex unions in a religious ceremony today. But UU and UCC folks are told that their clergy must disregard their religious beliefs when acting as agents of the state in solemnizing marriages in any state where marriage equality does not exist. In states where same-sex marriage is not legal, some clergy have stopped doing any civil marriage ceremonies and have offered the same non-civil religious ceremony to all couples in their congregations.

That suggests that the "religious liberty" concern voiced by anti-gay marriage folks is a specious concern. They haven't worried about religious liberty when it comes to my Unitarian Universalist religion or liberal Protestant denominations like the United Church of Christ that do recognize same-sex couples as families. I'm willing to support the religious freedoms of anti-marriage equality folks to discriminate, but it looks like they don't want to repay the favor and support my religious freedom to forgo discrimination in my church.

“A Twenty-Something Eighth Grader”

Leaks from Bristol's vicious little book:

Palin writes that the first time she met the 26-year-old daughter of Sen. John McCain, she "ignored us during the entire visit." This was just before Senator McCain introduced Sarah Palin as his running mate. Palin adds that she "had a sneaking suspicion I might need to watch my back."

"Every time we saw Meghan, she seemed to be constantly checking us out, comparing my family to hers and complaining," she writes. "Oh the complaining."

Cindy McCain, the senator's wife, also rubbed the eldest Palin daughter the wrong way.

"I'd never seen people with so much Louis Vuitton luggage, so many cell phones, and so many constant helpers to do hair and makeup," Palin writes, adding that the would-be first lady looked "like a queen" and held "herself like royalty."

“A Forty-Something Eighth Grader”

Here's a lively review of Geoffrey Dunn's book, "The Lies Of Sarah Palin." This is the first time I've read this devastating assessment of her central flaw from her local paper, The Frontiersman:

"Wasilla residents have been subject to attempts to unlawfully appoint council members, statements that have been shown to be patently untrue, unrepentant backpedaling, and incessant whining that her only enemies are the press and a few disgruntled supporters of Mayor Stein. Mayor Palin fails to have a firm grasp of something very simple: the truth."

This is nicely wrought:

She may be the first who has put together "a perfect storm" of all of the most dangerous qualities of a demagogue in a single package: she is mean-spirited, inept, vindictive, and lazy, but can play all the emotional chords in the correct keys of the lower octaves of America's divisive undercurrents.

That's why I remain vigilant about her, even as her prospects for electoral success seem to be on the decline. Never under-estimate the power of a demagogue in a recession. Especially one in which the jobs are never coming back.

The Afghanistan Drawdown

Tomorrow Obama is set to announce that a number of troops will return from Afghanistan. Spencer Ackerman isn't focused on the exact number:

What matters isn’t how many troops Obama withdraws this year, or next. It’s how the drawdown supports Taliban peace talks, the only real ticket out of the war. … if Obama’s Wednesday speech doesn’t explain how the drawdown supports a political strategy for ending the war, it’ll mean one thing: he has no idea how to get out of Afghanistan.

One also notes David Brooks' account of the failure of economic aid to assuage the "grudges, tribal dynamics and religious fanaticism" that fuel violence. Ackerman's earlier thoughts on political reconciliation with the Taliban:

Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton formally blessed Taliban talks in February; Secretary Gates confirmed … that furtive discussions are underway. Why this isn't the top political priority of the Afghanistan war — hell, the top priority of the Afghanistan war, period — remains a mystery. For years, U.S. officials have spouted the truism that the Afghanistan war is primarily a political conflict, almost as an afterthought, as if they needed to pay lip service to sophisticated opinion. Now it's time to act like it — especially if the Obama administration believes what it tells the rest of us about military progress.

The Spiritual Power Of Psilocybin, Ctd

A reader writes:

ShroomsThat is an irrational conclusion, in fact. If I begin to imagine that the voices coming out of my cell phone originate in the cell phone, and dismiss the idea that there are other people in some distant unseen part of the universe talking to me through my cell phone as madness, it is I who am becoming mad. And scientific materialists who imagine that all God-experiences merely originate in the brain because they can be  associated with brain phenomena, are similarly mad, and missing the point.

They have no idea who they even are as conscious beings, but are confusing the player of the game with the machine the game is played on.

That is where the illogic in these matters begins, with that divide between the conscious experiencer and the brain-medium of our experiences. Faith is not illogical if one doesn’t fall for this fallacy, but instead fixes oneself in the primary position of the conscious experiencer. That’s the position from which we can love, and know God and reality directly.

Science takes an abstracted definition of the self, founded in an objective experience that is presumed to be the true subject. But no subject is ever identical to his objects, or even to the media of perception by which we observe those objects. As Jesus said, the Kingdom of Heaven is within, in the subjective dimension of our conscious being, not in the objective dimension of the “game”. We play the game of life in order to learn this lesson in the midst of the most challenging circumstances. Some get that lesson, and we loosely call them “saints”. Most take a very long time, requiring many lifetimes, many different brains and bodies, as we play the game over and over again until we get it right.

Scientists are only grasping one small part of the game, and misinterpreting what it means. They will cite a lack of “evidence” for my position, but they have no evidence for their own interpretation either. The evidence I will point to is the happiness and love that comes from living from the point of view of conscious being, rather than the materialist viewpoint. But they are of course free to make as many mistakes as they like. It’s a long game, after all. One often learns only by making mistakes. But our happiness is the criteria by which we ought to judge ourselves, not dissociated logic. Logic is not a thing in itself, it is a tool to increase our love for reality.

Beautifully, powerfully put.

Economic Bubbles Are More Like Tumors?

Lawrence Weschler highlights the danger behind certain analogies:

What if, instead of that playful word bubble, we tried something a bit more accurately descriptive when growth at any cost became the goal. Say, “tumor”: “the dot-com tumor,” “the subprime tumor,” “the derivatives tumor.” Would anyone seriously gainsay the highest possible vigilance over the proper functioning of their own body or doubt the need for strong regulation? Who, facing the prospect of a tumorous outbreak or living with a body demonstrably prone to such outbreaks, would entrust that body to a band of physicians blithely committed to laissez faire regarding these fatal bubbles of flesh?

Words matter. Metaphors frame thought. Pay them heed and tend them well.