Month: May 2012

Hairball house music:

(Hat tip: Adam Kaplan)

Noam Scheiber notes that Obama's former Wall Street backers are "shockingly unsophisticated about politics." Yglesias extrapolates: 

Steep recessions and sluggish subsequent growth have a really negative impact on the wealth and incomes of a wide range of people. That includes wealthy finance guys and jobless young people and underwater middle class homeowners and everyone. And the natural human instinct when you wind up with less pie than you thought you could reasonably expect is to assume that the people in charge gave your pie to someone else. So Wall Street feels that run-amok populism has impoverished them (relative to expectations) for roughly the same reasons that Obama's liberal critics feel that his constant succor of the banksters has impoverished them—everyone is poorer than they thought they were going to be.

Previous Dish on why Wall Street donors have ditched the Obama campaign here. Meanwhile, Peter J. Boyer and Peter Schweizer investigate the administration's failure to hold Wall Street accountable (for instance, "financial-fraud prosecutions by the Department of Justice are at 20-year lows"). 

Last week, the Obama campaign debuted a slideshow illustrating how its policies would affect one woman throughout her life, unleashing a barrage of gleeful sarcasm from Republicans. Meanwhile, it's been "liked" more than 40,000 times on Facebook. Douthat finds it condescending at best: 

The liberalism of "the Life of Julia" doesn’t envision government spending the way an older liberalism did — as a backstop for otherwise self-sufficient working families, providing insurance against job loss, decrepitude and catastrophic illness. It offers a more sweeping vision of government’s place in society, in which the individual depends on the state at every stage of life, and no decision — personal, educational, entrepreneurial, sexual — can be contemplated without the promise that it will be somehow subsidized by Washington.

Chait counters: 

"The Life of Julia” also portrays government in a positive way because this is its contrast with Romney, who has tied himself to a sweeping anti-government agenda. It’s not an embrace of unlimited government, it’s an attack on the extremely truncated vision of government proposed by the Republicans. … And this is the policy contrast of the election. It’s not Obama’s government-centric society against Romney’s market-centric society. It’s Obama keeping something resembling the status quo intact — a relatively small government that partially offsets some of the worst imperfections of the market — against the Republican plan to rewrite the social compact.

A reader writes:

I've been meaning to write in to The Dish about this for a long time and the post about "What Do Atheists Want?" and "Why Choose Agnostic?" finally got me to the keyboard. Pardon the length, but this has been building up for the last few years I've been following The Dish. As an atheist I love your conversations about faith and theology, but I often find the discussion of atheism wanting. I think the issue for me is similar to one you've complained about as a Catholic: that the loudest proponents of your religion do not represent your faith. The same is true for me and for most atheists I know. Allow me to make a few points to illustrate, in no particular order:

– Theism is the belief in a personified God, or Gods. Atheism is the lack of belief in a personified God, or Gods. That's really the only thing that unites us atheists – a lack of a belief in something. So when you ask "What does atheism want?" it seems to imply that the population of atheists shares some specific positive goal, when in reality we're just (non)sharing a generic, negative (non)belief.

– Sam Harris (e.g.) is a materialist, or physicalist. He believes only in things for which there is an identifiable physical process that can be observed via scientific means. While a materialist will surely be an atheist,  an atheist is not necessarily a materialist. Many of us find the smug dogma of Harris' materialism to be just as off-putting as the righteous dogma of biblical literalism.

– I bet one of your readers has the actual stats, but let me just say that I believe the atheistic political regimes (Lenin, Mao, Stalin, etc) in the 20th century evened up the historical body count between atheists and theists. A history-aware atheist probably ought not be decrying religion as being an inevitable force for tyranny and suffering. There is a lot of bloody glass in the way of throwing those stones, folks!

– For a great many atheists, atheism is neither a reaction against religion nor a loss of faith. In my experience there are as many atheists who never believed in a religion as there are those who abandoned a religion and became atheists.

– As a result of not seeing religion and faith as the same thing, many of us atheists having no problem being faithful. We are looking for deeper meaning in community, in relationships, from spiritual texts (sometimes even religious texts), in mushroom visions, meditation, hiking, and all the rest. We may hold beliefs which are neither falsifiable nor observable in any sense, so they wouldn't pass muster for Dawkins or Harris, yet they are utterly without reference to God.

I suspect a lot more Americans are atheists of this sort than any one now realizes. Until the public face of atheism is pro-meaning (de Botton) instead of anti-faith (Hitchens, Harris, et al.), I suspect the faithful and/or spiritual among us non-believers will be underrepresented in the public discourse. As a deeply spiritual atheist, this situation is frustrating.

The TED talk you posted from Alain de Botton is the gem that stands out for me in recent coverage of atheists. That's what most of us are up to – looking for meaning and community, trying to get our needs met, experience some happiness, and achieve some fulfillment. This journey of being human is what theists and atheists have in common and it is more important than what we do not share. How much better would that conversation be compared to what we have now: "you're silly and bad for people!" VS "you're sinful and bad for people!"

Piedades de Santa Ana, Costa Rica, 12 pm

A reader writes:

Reporting from Black Mountain, NC. It didn't hit home until last night when my wife came back after seeing a vote Amendment One sign stuck on the corner of the street where our two friends and their two children live. I can't imagine how hurtful it is to have one of your direct neighbors advocating publicly that you can't marry the person you love. My first thought was to kick over the sign, or add a sign stating, "I am a prejudice bigot." Instead, my wife and I have been texting and calling our friends to make sure they are voting today. Not sure it will make a difference. 

I would like to add one thing to your discussion on gay marriage: I think you are missing some of the framing by people against gay marriage.

Here in rural North Carolina they have managed to convince themselves and their congregations that they are under attack, that they are the victims, that this is not about gay people as much as it is an attack on their culture, their churches, and their god by outsiders. The campaign against Amendment One has been poor in response – as opinion polls show that there is confusion about what people are exactly voting for. There have been some positive signs of religious coalitions speaking out against the amendment. Asheville is known as a progressive center for the Southeast. We have a large and open lesbian population, and for the first time last weekend I saw a male couple on the streets of Asheville being openly affectionate.

These battles against gay marriage will eventually be defeated, but they are very painful now, especially to our friends and neighbors and their children.

Another writes:

As a recent transplant to NC, I'm beyond devastated by the likely outcome of today's election.  But while the horrific Amendment likely will pass, it will not be because a majority of voters intended to "carve in large, bloody letters hatred into the Constitution," as your reader put it.  In fact, as you've noted earlier today, a majority of voters support civil unions, and would oppose the Amendment if they understood it.  Our failure (those of us opposing the Amendment) was in not clearly communicating the meaning of this Amendment, in not engaging enough with those "Christians" who think they're just voting to state their religious belief.  I talked to many of them while phone-banking last night, and some of them were genuinely surprised to understand what they were voting for.  

I may think there's no basis in the love of Jesus Christ to be against gay marriage, but that's not a helpful starting point for the conversation.  Instead, I can tell them about the 80,000 kids who will lose healthcare because their parents' domestic partnership (gay or straight) will no longer be permissibly recognized in the state.  I can tell them that the Amendment will undermine the moral bonds, the legal rights, and the safety of countless families in the state they call home.  And if in doing so, I can change or at least open a couple minds, then the dialogue served a purpose, even if we lose today.  

Yes, there was a campaign of hate and misinformation carried out by those who introduced the Amendment.  So what else is new?  We fight hate with love, misinformation and irrationality with reason.  We don't give up.  So the solution is not for fair-minded, forward-thinking individuals like the UNC professor, myself, and countless in others in this "purple" state to leave.  We stay, and we live to fight another day.  Because when liberals stay in liberal states, and the religious right and neo-cons stay in red states, everyone digs deeper into their own self-reaffirming trenches, reasonable dialogue ceases, and the whole country suffers.  We've got to work together to make changes where we can, not just retreat to the safety of a Boulder bubble, or some blue state enclave.  (How does your reader think Colorado went from solidly Bush to solidly Obama?) 

So I say to all those disheartened by a major step backward:  please, please don't abandon this beautiful state.

Another:

Are you trying to make me cry on a day wherein I already have cried?  I wish I could talk to the author of your Email of the Day.  I am a native North Carolinian.  I have never not lived in this great state.  My mother is from another country, my father's father was a Northerner, but my father's maternal family has been in the TarHeel state since the Revolutionary War.  I grew up in rural North Carolina, my father was the mayor of our small town, and I have raised my two daughters in an urban part of the state.  I went to public school here and graduated from UNC.  In other words, I bleed Carolina blue.  

Yes, this is a bad day.  This one hurts.  As someone who knows this state so well, I would beg that UNC professor to stay.  This is but the death rattle of an ugly discrimination which will be over in the near future.  The GOP Speaker of the State House said as much himself when he acknowledged that this amendment will pass only to be repealed in a generation.  (For whatever reason, he has no problem looking like a complete bigot by the next generation.)  To the professor, I say stay.  Be a part of what is coming next.  I recall as a child that I thought I had to be one of the only biracial kids in the state.  

Today, the cities and to some extent the rural areas of NC are more diverse than I ever imagined they would be.  Obama won this state in 2008.  If that is not a signal, I don't know what is. We are a state that always has believed in progress and education.  It has made us different and less afraid of change.  

Today, we go the way of Mississippi, Alabama, and the other Southern states.  We will be back on track soon though.  This won't last.  I know because I have children who do not understand why people are treating other people in this manner.  It is as unimaginable to them as Jim Crow was to us.  And, it isn't just the generations coming up that have changed.  

On our way to school this week, we have seen a little 80-something year old woman standing on the side of a busy road holding a homemade sign reading, "Vote NO!"  You simply would never have seen that at any other time in my life.  Today must mark the day when we liberals, moderates, and true conservatives say, "Enough."  This is the day when the rage and hatred of the last three years has been taken too far and become too ugly for open society.  North Carolina will be back.  I promise.

Another:

Please let your reader know that he and his husband do not have to leave North Carolina.  There are many of us ready to contribute resources towards a lawsuit to get Amendment 1, should it pass, overthrown in Federal court.  The amendment is so overreaching that I do not believe it could possibly withstand review.

Update from the Email of the Day reader:

Thank you for these letters. I am crying as I type this. I don't know what decision I will end up making, but these mean the world to me.

Waldman's assessment:

There's no doubt that at the moment, Mitt Romney's greatest strength is the idea that as a successful businessman, he will do a good job stewarding the American economy. In fact, that may be his only strength.

Kevin Drum doubts "Romney's business schtick is really such a good one for him":

After all, when was the last time America elected a president whose background was primarily in business? That would be — never. I mean, sure, Bush Jr. rounded up investors for a baseball team and Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer, experiences that they used as part of their resumes, but they basically ran as politicians. The last person to seriously run as a businessman was Ross Perot, and that didn't work out so well.

Tomasky suggests attacking Romney for his work at Bain:

[T]he argument is not “Mitt Romney was a job destroyer.” Because sometimes, Mitt Romney was a job creator. That’s an unwinnable argument. The winnable argument is that Mitt Romney worked for the 1 percent. Sometimes it helped workers, but other times it hurt them; but nearly every time, the wealthy investors, and Romney himself, came out all right. That’s the story to tell. And any story that paints a darker picture of Bain than is fair will be pounced on and ripped to shreds.