Hooray for the UCC!

Hooray for the UCC. Not only are they serious mensches, they're hilarious. (Hat tip Aravosis.)

Fun with Dick

I don't spend a lot of time at Democratic Underground, but luckily I wandered in in time to catch Dick Cheney doing American Idol (scroll down to the bottom of the page; he's No. 10).

Rubberstamp Republicans

If you can spare a few minutes and $6.50, head over to FireDogLake for today's instructions. It's Phase Two of the Republican Congress Wakeup Call. This one is fun.

Collins "ethics" speech disrupted by protesters

Breaking news: Susan Collins spoke earlier today on ethics at the Margaret Chase Smith Center in Orono and was overshadowed by an extremely effective and organized group of protesters. PhilinMaine has the goods. (And it's very good.)

Heresy

I missed these studies the first time around:

Two years ago, the American Political Science Association produced a study entitled Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality. The report said people with wealth – privileged Americans – are “roaring with a clarity and consistency that public officials readily hear and routinely follow” while citizens “with lower or moderate incomes are speaking with a whisper.” The study concluded that “progress toward realizing American ideals of democracy may have stalled, and even, in some places, reversed.”

The following year – 2005 – the editors of The Economist, one of the world’s most pro-capitalist publications, produced their own sobering analysis of what is happening in America. They found great and growing income disparities. Thirty years ago the average annual compensation of the top 100 chief executives was 30 times the pay of the average worker; today it is 1000 times the pay of the average worker.

They found an education system “increasingly stratified by social class” in which poor children “attend schools with fewer resources than those of their richer contemporaries.” They found our celebrated universities increasingly “reinforcing rather that reducing” these educational inequalities.

They found American corporations no longer successful agents of upward mobility. It is now harder for people to start at the bottom and rise up the company hierarchy by dint of hard work and self-improvement.

The editors of The Economist studied all this evidence and concluded – and I am quoting a pro-business magazine, remember – that the United States “risks calcifying into a European-style, class-based society.”

Let that sink in: The United States “risks calcifying into a European-style, class-based society.”

That's Bill Moyers, in a fascinating speech he gave earlier this month at Wake Forest Divinity School, where he and his wife were being honored with the creation of a scholarship in religious freedom in their names. After tracing the history of religious freedom in this country and comparing the courageous role of early Baptists with some of their theocratic modern brethren, Moyers says this is again "a time for heresy":

We need such courage today. This is a time for heresy. American democracy is threatened by perversions of money, power, and religion. Money has bought our elections right out from under us. Power has turned government “of, by, and for the people” into the patron of privilege. And Christianity and Islam have been hijacked by fundamentalists who have made religion the language of power, the excuse for violence, and the alibi for empire. We must answer the principalities and powers that would force on America a stifling conformity. Either we make the heretical choices that will inspire us to renew our commitment to America’s deepest values and ideals, or the day will come when we will no longer recognize the country we love.

The Domenech Disgrace

Aravosis has the best summing up:

Ben was hardly an anomaly. He's the founder of one of the top conservative blogs, was an editor at the top conservative publishing house (Regnery), was a White House employee, and a top speechwriter family-values US Senator Cornyn. He isn't the worst of the Republican crop, he IS the Republican crop. He is typical of Republican bloggers, and is typical of Republicans. That's why they defended him so heartily last night on the blogs - they know Ben and they love Ben for who he is: a typical family values conservative who tells others how to live their lives while refusing to live under the same rules.

Washington Post, good luck finding another Republican blogger who isn't a racist, who isn't a plagiarist, and who doesn't just make shit up.

UPDATE: I spoke too soon. The incomparable Hunter just weighed in.

Smiley nails GOP rats

Jane Smiley has a few words for Bruce Bartlett, Sandra Day O'Connor, Andrew Sullivan, and all the other newly minted Bush deniers among the GOP:

Your ideas and your policies have promoted selfishness, greed, short-term solutions, bullying, and pain for others. You have looked in the faces of children and denied the existence of a "common good". You have disdained and denied the idea of "altruism". At one time, our bureaucracy was full of people who had gone into government service or scientific research for altruistic reasons--I knew, because I knew some of them. You have driven them out and replaced them with vindictive ignoramuses. You have lied over and over about your motives, for example, making laws that hurt people and calling it "originalist interpretations of the Constitution" (conveniently ignoring the Ninth Amendment). You have increased the powers of corporations at the expense of every other sector in the nation and actively defied any sort of regulation that would require these corporations to treat our world with care and respect. You have made economic growth your deity, and in doing so, you have accelerated the power of the corporations to destroy the atmosphere, the oceans, the ice caps, the rainforests, and the climate. You have produced CEOs in charge of lots of resources and lots of people who have no more sense of reciprocity or connection or responsibility than George W. Bush.

Now you are fleeing him, but it's only because he's got the earmarks of a loser. Your problem is that you don't know why he's losing. You think he's made mistakes. But no. He's losing because the ideas that you taught him and demonstrated for him are bad ideas, self-destructive ideas, and even suicidal ideas. And they are immoral ideas. You should be ashamed of yourselves because not only have your ideas not worked to make the world a better place, they were inhumane and cruel to begin with, and they have served to cultivate and excuse the inhumane and cruel character traits of those who profess them.

It's an incredible piece. Go read.

Koufax finalists

Get your votes in and enjoy the reading.

Best Blog (non-pro)
Best Commenter
Best Single Issue
Best Series
Best Blog (pro/sponsor)
Best Expert Blog
Most Humorous Blog
Most Humorous Post
Best Post
Best Group Blog
Best Blog Community
Best Writing
Best state and local Blogs
Wider Recognition Blogs
Best New Blogs

And if you can, send a few dollars to Wampum for their bandwidth costs.

We already knew this: they're insecure, defensive, and rigid

Ha ha! We're spending the night in Berkeley tonight, and what should I discover over at BlogsPeek but this gem:

A Berkeley study, published in the Journal of Research Into Personality, showed that whiny 3- and 4-year-olds:

... tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.

The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests.

Very funny. Still, much as I appreciate the heady intellectual climate at Berkeley, I'd have trouble attending the place for more than a week, I think, without wanting to punch someone. We ventured onto the campus for exactly twenty minutes this sleepy Monday afternoon and in that time I noted:

• a PETA display with graphic, lifesized photos of baby seals being clubbed to death and handouts thrust at passersby
  
• two men clad in black leather, each with multiple body piercings, one saying to the other, "Well, then, call them 'white-centric' views..."
  
• a building festooned with so many gender/ethnic/sexual orientation/racial qualifiers in multiple combinations that I kept walking around it in wonderment to see each new doorway (the Lesbian Latina Center; the Asian Gender Equity Project - I'm making these up but you get the picture)
• a demonstration in formation, for what we don't know, occasioning a TV news van, multiple police cars with sirens, and a blocked off street.
  

And lots of other stuff I think I've blocked out. For instance, I spent about five minutes reading the action-packed student bulletin board (which did have a notice in the middle for a course in Intelligent Design). Anyway, maybe I'm just old and cranky.

But now I know I wasn't a whiny child!

St. George

Another email making the rounds:

President George W. Bush was scheduled to visit the Methodist Church outside Washington as part of his campaign. Karl Rove made a visit to the Bishop and said to him, "We've been getting a lot of bad publicity among Methodists because of Bush's position on stem cell research, the war, and such. I'll gladly make a contribution to the church of $100,000 if, during your sermon, you'd say the President is a saint."

The Bishop thinks it over for a few moments and says, "The Church is in desperate need of funds. I will do it."

Bush pompously shows up that following Sunday, looking especially smug, sneering for his photo ops, while strutting his way, cowboy-style, into the church.

As the sermon starts, the Bishop begins his homily:

"George Bush is a petty, self-absorbed hypocrite as well as a nitwit. He is a liar, a cheat, probably still a drunk, and a low-intelligence sneaky weasel. He has lied about his military record, and then had the gall to put himself in uniform on a military jet, landing on a carrier, and then posing before a banner stating 'Mission Accomplished.' He invaded a country for oil and money, all the while lying to the American people about the war, with nary a care for the thousands of lives it has taken and continues to take. He is destroying our Constitutional rights, spying on US citizens and surrounds himself with cronies. He is the worst example of a Methodist I've ever personally known or known of.

"But compared to Dick Cheney, George Bush is a saint."

But we mustn't censure him because it would make us look bad

Reuters via Americablog:

A majority of Americans, 56 percent, believe Bush is "out of touch," the poll found. When asked for a one-word description of Bush, the most frequent response was "incompetent," followed by "good," "idiot" and "liar." In February 2005, the most frequent reply was "honest."

At this point, any person claiming to think "good" when he hears Bush's name is either an idiot or a liar.

I guess enough time has gone by to laugh about it

Ex-Fighting Dem Paul Hackett gives a good-natured interview to The Daily Show, where he and reporter Ed Helms dissect "winning matrices," "The Dukakis Method," "Al Gore's 837 Steps to Campaign Victory," and other hot Democratic electioneering tips. C&L has the video.

On losing well

Digby invokes Sun Tzu to explain why opposition is our only path.

Let's help Russ

firedoglake is tracking senators on Feingold's censure Bush proposal. All she needs from us is one phone call and one email.

Koufax time

The first round of voting on the 2005 Koufax awards ends tonight at midnight. Drop in for some great reading, let your voice be heard, and be sure to kick in a few bucks to help Wampum defray the costs of hosting the awards.

The categories are:

Best Blog (non-pro)
Best Commenter
Best Single Issue
Best Series
Best Blog (pro/sponsor)
Best Expert Blog
Most Humorous Blog
Most Humorous Post
Best Post
Best Group Blog
Best Blog Community
Best Writing
Best state and local Blogs
Wider Recognition Blogs
Best New Blogs