Lieberman tanks

The good news:

A Public Policy Poll in Connecticut gives Joe Lieberman very low ratings: 25% approval and 67% disapproval. As the poll concludes: "Barack Obama's approval rating with Connecticut Republicans is higher than Lieberman's with the state's Democrats."

The poll's interpretation attributes it to how out of touch Lieberman has become with his constituents.

Among voters who support the health care bill 87% disapprove of how Lieberman handled it with only 10% supporting it. But by voting for the final product after getting it watered down he also managed to earn the unhappiness of constituents opposed to the bill, 52% of whom say they disapprove of what Lieberman did to 33% in support

Overall just 19% of voters in the state say they like what Lieberman did on the issue with 68% opposed.

The bad news:

Lieberman's term runs until January 2013. Another three years of him gumming up the works and enjoying every revengeful minute of it.

Ralph

"That's my story, and I'm sticking to it."

From an article in the Huffington Post:

Sarah Palin is standing by her claim that Democratic-authored health care legislation includes the infamous "death panels" - even after the assertion was labeled the "lie of the year" by a prize-winning fact checking organization.

The former Alaska governor told Sean Hannity, in a taping of the conservative firebrand's radio program on Wednesday, that she was "not gonna back off" the criticism that the health care bill would pursue cost saving measures by rationing end of life care.

"If the health care bill goes the way Obama wants it, we're gonna have something very much like foreign countries' systems of health care like the British, and it's the American people -- if we have our health care paid for by the bureaucracy, by government -- depending on our health condition, depending on our age -- we're gonna be subject to bureaucrats deciding, panels and commissions deciding -- just like they do overseas -- who will be worthy of receiving the health care that government is going to provide."

"So that is the death panel that I referred to, and I won't back off on criticizing that aspect of the health care bill."

That's what the people love about Palin. She won't back down, even when she's proved wrong and unqualified for the job. She's not going to let those elites in Washington push her around.

I think we're finally beginning to realize that proving Sarah wrong/unqualified is not going to make her go away. If anything, it only enhances her appeal to her constituiency. They want someone with "common sense," someone who will "tell it like it is," and someone who will not back down to the ways of Washington and the liberals.

Given a continuing bad economy, things blowing up in Afghanistan, or a major terrorist attack -- and we could see a Republican Congress in 2012 and a President Palin in 2016.

Ralph

The long slow death of the death penalty

For an exam in a freshman English class 59 years ago, I chose to write my essay on the death penalty and why I opposed it. It was perhaps naive, but very earnest. I have never wavered from that position since.

There are, of course, the rational arguments: there are far too many innocent people wrongfully executed, and we can't seem to eliminate those mistakes; studies show that it is not a deterrent to serious crime, despite supporters insistence to the contrary; it has historically been applied disproportionately to minority groups.

But to me the over-riding argument has always been the moral one. I cannot accept the role that forces me to participate, as a citizen of our society, in the decision that someone else must die. All arguments about what heinous crimes the person may have done do not change my mind on that position. Not that the suffering of the victims doesn't matter, but to me it's irrelevant to the moral position that, when society decides in cold deliberation to kill one of its members, it descends to the level of the criminal. No august judges in black robes and no marble walls are enough to make this anything other than eye-for-an-eye, murderous "justice," in my view.

The idea of vengeance has never appealed to me. Some have said that I am too afraid of my own aggressive impulses and shun violence for that reason. Maybe. But to me it feels more like a philosophical and moral position.

But yesterday there was a story by Adam Liptak in the New York Times about the American Law Institute, a group of about 4000 judges, lawyers and law professors that "synthesizes and shapes the law in restatements and model codes that provide structure and coherence in a federal legal system that might otherwise consist of 50 different approaches to everything." In this function, it had provided the intellectual framework for the modern legal system for the death penalty system some 50 years ago.

Last fall, the group declared the project a failure and "voted in October to disavow the structure it had created 'in light of the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment.'”

In effect, they were saying that the system of fairness guidelines they had tried to establish was "irretrievably broken." Although it will make little immediate difference in decisions -- because this group's decision does not change any laws -- it will have long term implications for the way people think about it. For example, Law Professor Samuel Gross said:

“Law students who take first-year criminal law from 2010 on will learn that this same group of smart lawyers and judges — the ones whose work they read every day — has said that the death penalty in the United States is a moral and practical failure.”

So be it. May the death penalty RIP.

Ralph

Odds and ends

1. Michele Bachmann: "So if the Republican Party is wise, they will allow themselves to be re-defined by the tea party movement. And I hope that that will be the case."

2. Alabama Congressman Parker Griffeth, elected last year as a Democrat, has switched to the Republican party. As a result, his entire legislative and communications staff and his chief of staff resigned, saying:

". . . we cannot, in good conscience, continue working for him. . . . because we are unwavering in our own principles, we have no choice but to move on. We do not know what the future holds, but we are taking a leap of faith with the belief we will soon find ourselves in the employment of principled public officials."

Wow!! That must have stung, as it should have. The principled thing would have been for the Congressman himself to have resigned, if he felt he could not fulfill the expectations of those who elected him just one year ago.

3. In spite of the Christmas eve terrorist scare, which reminded us of the inadequacy of our airport security system, Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) continues to block the confirmation vote on Obama's nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration.

What is it with those three South Carolina politicians? Secret trysts in Argentina, shouting "You Lie" in the middle of the President's State of the Union speech to Congress, and now this?

4. So, last year three American "healing homosexuality" type evangelicals traveled to Uganda to present themselves as experts (on how homosexuals can change) at a conference organized on the theme of "the hidden, dark gay agenda" and the threat to Bible-based values and the traditional African family. The conference was attended by some members of the Ugandan parliament.

And now they are shocked that, one month later, a bill was introduced by one of those attendees that would include the death penalty for some homosexual acts and jail for friends or relatives that fail to report such behavior. That's the problem with these anti-homosexual zealots: they don't realize the harm they do, both in the direct effect on gays themselves and in stirring up and rationalizing anti-gay violence.

Or perhaps they do realize. Missionary Scott Lively said, on his website, that he had been told by a respected observer of society in Kampala "that our campaign was like a nuclear bomb against the "gay" agenda in Uganda. I pray that this, and the predictions, are true."

You pray that your effect will be "like a nuclear bomb" -- and then you're surprised when these people take you seriously and want to put homosexuals to death?

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In sharp contrast to such ignorant bigotry, President Obama has just taken an historical step in appointing a transsexual woman as Senior Technical Adviser to the Commerce Department. Amanda Simpson, a former test pilot and 2004 YWCA "Woman On The Move," has worked in the aerospace and defense industry for 30 years, including being Deputy Director in Advanced Technology Development for Raytheon.

Now, Mr. President, just keep going and work to end DA/DT and DOMA.

Ralph

May 21, 2011

Mark your calendar for May 21, 2011. That's the day the world will end and The Rapture will occur.

The movie "2012" got it wrong, according to 88 year old Harold Camping, self-described biblical scholar, who also heads an evangelical radio station that broadcasts worldwide via satellite dishes. He figured it out by decoding hidden numerical references in the Bible. It goes like this:

First you have to take his word that the number 5 = atonement, that 10 = completeness, and 17 = heaven. Multiply 5 x 10 x 17 and then square the result = 722,500. I'm not clear on the significance of multiplying those numbers and then squaring the result, but hold on to the total.

Then you have to accept as fact that April 1, 33 AD was the day that Jesus was hung on the cross. Count forward 722,500 days from that date, and ergo you get: ***May 21, 2011***. Judgment Day and The Rapture.

Don't laugh. People believe this. All over the world, on every continent. Never mind the fact that Camping had for two years predicted that Christ would return on September 6, 1994. The faithful gathered in California with Camping on that day, holding their bibles open-face toward heaven, and waiting . . . and waiting . . . and [Waiting for Godot? Sorry, I just couldn't resist].

But nothing happened.

He says he made a mistake in his calculation back then. According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle Rick LaCasse, who was in that group, says that his faith in Camping has only strengthened since then. "This time we have proof," he says, meaning that it's not just a prediction this time but actually based on the word of God in the Bible, as deciphered by Camping. He was asked if his opinion of Camping would change if it doesn't come to pass. "I can't even think like that," he said. "Everything is too positive right now. There's too little time to think like that."

Obviously, I am not a believer in Mr. Camping's theology or his mathematics. So why bother with this? People have been predicting the end of the world, in one form or other, for a long time. And it hasn't ended yet. We may be getting there via climate change and depletion of our ability to feed our over-populating selves. Which is a different problem.

Or is it? Isn't all of this the result of people believing what they want to believe, what they need to believe, for whatever psychological reason they need to believe it, or for whatever crass payoff reason they choose to adopt it -- and then trying to persuade others, or issue edicts, or pass or obstruct laws that have power over people? And it's all based on faith or cynical distortions or out right lies -- rather than established facts based on empirical evidence and logical reasoning and lessons from history.

I am not a scientific absolutist or puristic realist. I believe there is a place for faith in the world. It can inspire and comfort. So can great works of art, literature, and music. So can great moral leaders like Jesus, Mohammed, Ghandi, Schweitzer, King, Mandella, Mother Teresa. Moral teachings call us to our better selves and lead people to remarkable sacrifice for the good of others.

But no one should exercise power over others based on his own particular brand of faith when it contradicts empirical evidence. Whatever affects us all should be governed by the universally accepted set of principles of evidence-based facts, as best we can know them.

As far as I know, Harold Camping is harmless. I am not aware of his ever trying to force his belief on anyone or to get laws passed that discriminate against non-believers. But there are far too many who do try to impose their blind beliefs on others.

"Secular humanists" may be scorned by many religionists for lacking faith in a god; but their principles are based on empiricism, reason, and moral teachings of equality, justice and liberty. I suppose that's what I would be if I had to choose a label. You won't find secular humanists standing on a mountain top, waiting for their savior to return for them on a certain date, based on some esoteric math done by a zealot who arbitrarily assigned his own meaning to numbers written thousands of years ago and three language translations removed, and thinking he had uncovered God's code.

I've never heard of them invading another country or discriminating against those who believe differently. It is not secular humanists that hold health care reform hostage to religious opinions that declare a zygote a person from the moment of fertilization, so that abortion is actually murder, but killing the doctor who performs it is not. It is not secular humanists who quietly transfer a priest to another parish school to hide the fact that he molests children. It is not secular humanists who are about to pass a law in Uganda decreeing death to homosexuals and jail to their families for not turning them in. Secular humanism does not lead preachers to picket the funerals of AIDS victims, waving large signs saying "God hates fags. Matthew is burning in hell."

I may regret it when the great space ship arrives to take the faithful to heaven, and my name is not on the list. But I just don't think I can fake the belief that leads people to do such things -- or that sits silently while zealots do it in their name.

But that's a topic for another secular sermon: Where have all the liberal Christians and Jews gone? Was their leadership during the civil rights struggles just a fluke?

Ralph

Small gains

So much is so discouraging that we should celebrate the small gains -- and maybe this one is not so small after all.

December 2009 was the first month without a single American death in Iraq since we invaded nearly seven years ago.

It's tempting to go on about 4371 that should not have had to die for the Bush/Cheney folly. But for the moment, I'm just going to be glad that the number didn't become 4372 in December.

Ralph

Twenty-ten

Well, here we are. The beginning of a new decade.

For the past week, I've been just lying low, waiting for the old one to be over. I was so-o-o-o ready for it to be over with and so full of outrage fatigue, I had nothing more to say.

Today, I have a little hope that 2010 may be slightly better.

Fortunately, for anyone eager for some stimulating blogging, I can do no better than to steer you to Mickey Nardo's blog

http://1boringoldman.com/

Mickey is just back from a long trip to Egypt and Jordan and returned ready to share his wisdom and his prodigious internet researching skills.

I highly recommend his essay "A New Year's Resolution For Us All:"

We’ve spent trillions, and sent thousands to the grave trying to unhappen 9/11, looking for a safety that is elusive. And we’ve allowed ourselves to go over to the "dark side."

And then do take the time to watch his clip of Rachel Madow demolishing the shameless and hypocritical responses from Cheney and the Republicans to the Christmas day plane-bombing attempt and Obama's response to it.

Rachel is probably the smartest pundit on TV right now (a former Rhodes scholar); she's also fearless, unintimidated, and funny.

And Happy New Year.

Ralph