Is there any doubt that the enormous pull of religious zealots threatens to tear this country apart politically as well as culturally? Here’s two excellent pieces that touch on how destructive these religious thugs are. The first from Al Gore :

It is no accident that this assault on the integrity of our constitutional design has been fueled by a small group claiming special knowledge of God’s will in American politics. They even claim that those of us who disagree with their point of view are waging war against “people of faith.” How dare they?

Long before our founders met in Philadelphia, their forebears first came to these shores to escape oppression at the hands of despots in the old world who mixed religion with politics and claimed dominion over both their pocketbooks and their souls.

This aggressive new strain of right-wing religious zealotry is actually a throwback to the intolerance that led to the creation of America in the first place.

James Madison warned us in Federalist #10 that sometimes, “A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction.”
. . .
I remember a time not too long ago when senate leaders in both parties saw it as part of their responsibility to protect the senate against the destructive designs of demagogues who would subordinate the workings of our democracy to their narrow factional agendas.

Our founders understood that the way you protect and defend people of faith is by preventing any one sect from dominating. Most people of faith I know in both parties have been getting a belly-full of this extremist push to cloak their political agenda in religiosity and mix up their version of religion with their version of right-wing politics and force it on everyone else.

They should learn that religious faith is a precious freedom and not a tool to divide and conquer.

I think it is truly important to expose the fundamental flaw in the arguments of these zealots. The unifying theme now being pushed by this coalition is actually an American heresy — a highly developed political philosophy that is fundamentally at odds with the founding principles of the United States of America.

This article from Robert Kuttner takes the “American heresy” argument further :

America, which separated church and state precisely to protect the private right to worship, has long had its share of religious absolutists who have wanted to harness the power of the state to their own view of revealed truth. But never before in our history has the government deliberately and cynically intervened on the side of the zealots.
. . .
What’s under siege here is nothing less than the Enlightenment. Please recall that what we benignly remember as the Renaissance coexisted with centuries of vicious religious persecution — Christians persecuting heretics like Galileo, expelling and slaughtering Muslims and Jews, then doing bloody battle with each other following the Protestant Reformation.

The philosophers of the Enlightenment were men of science who understood that faith could not be disputed but that reason could be subjected to the test of logic and evidence. The American Revolution was a triple triumph — for political democracy, religious tolerance, and for the free inquiry demanded by the scientific method.

Today’s religious extremists are not only trying to use the state, with all its power, as religious proselytizer. They oppose science when it happens to conflict with their version of revealed truth. They twist history to claim that the Republic’s freethinking Founders, like Jefferson, Adams, and Madison, were really theocrats like themselves. They long for the presenate world of absolutes circa 1500.
. . .
I never thought I’d live to see a time when the Enlightenment — the Enlightenment! — was politically controversial. Democracy, like science, depends on debate, tolerance, and evidence. And in a democracy, nothing is scarier than a political force convinced it is getting irrefutable truth directly from God.

It’s amazing that I can even sleep at night knowing how far these lunatics are willing to go to rebuild this country to fit their flawed view of what Jesus would have wanted. I still can’t help but think we wouldn’t be in half as much trouble as we are now if these people payed more attention to what Jesus actually said than what hypocrites like James Dobson and Bill Frist say.

Lemme introduce you to the coolest (and I’ll admit it, “geekiest”) cereal prize ever¹…the light saber spoon.

Roll over the photo with your mouse to see the spoon in action.

^{1 : Okay, second coolest cereal prize ever. It’s hard to beat a whistle that’ll let you make free long distance phone calls.}

Kevin’s got the details on the Bush Social Security plan. It turns out that my initial impressions were incorrect¹. The President’s plan isn’t to help to poor, but to not hurt the poor. Here’s the breakdown of who’s gonna get screwed :

Basically, low income earners ($16K/year) currently get about 49% of their income replaced by Social Security. Under the Pozen plan, this would stay the same. Medium income workers ($36K/year), however, would see their replacement rate fall from 36% to 23% by the year 2100. The replacement rate for higher income workers ($58K/year) would fall to 14% and for maximum income workers ($90K/year) to 9%.

Kevin also includes a graphic, but I’ve gone ahead and recreated it to give a more accurate impression of the President’s goals :

In short, the President wants to gut the benefits you receive on the payroll taxes you’ve been paying for your entire life. Of course, not everyone’s benefits. He’s got to keep some benefits untouched so he can pretend to care about the poor.

^{1 : That’s what I get for believing what the president says.}

Schwarzenegger doesn’t have a chance in hell of getting reelected after a remark like this :

Calling the nation’s borders dangerously porous, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday praised the private “Minuteman” campaign that uses armed volunteers to stop illegal immigrants from crossing into the U.S.

Schwarzenegger said in a radio interview that the federal government is failing to secure the border with Mexico, and he cast the hundreds of private citizens who have been patrolling the Arizona-Mexico border since April 1 as a popular response to government inaction.

“I think they’ve done a terrific job,” Schwarzenegger said of the “Minuteman” volunteers, who plan to expand to California in June. “They’ve cut down the crossing of illegal immigrants a huge percentage. So it just shows that it works when you go and make an effort and when you work hard. It’s a doable thing.”

The governor added that, “It’s just that our federal government is not doing their job. It’s a shame that the private citizen has to go in there and start patrolling our borders.”

President Bush has denounced the Minuteman volunteers as vigilantes.

That’s just the latest in a string of failures for the Governator :

After much bluster from both sides, the governor began yielding, shelving certain proposals and signaling that he was open to negotiations on others. He was plainly wounded when teachers, nurses, police, and firefighters?all having separate beefs with Schwarzenegger?began dogging his public appearances and mussing his public image. He fired back with TV ads and rhetoric that were alternately inflammatory and contrite.

Part of the problem seems to be apathy. For all the governor’s efforts, the obtuse matters of redistricting and worker retirement just haven’t stirred Californians much. Ineptitude also played a part; the governor abruptly dropped his support for a measure overhauling the state pension system when it turned out that the ballot initiative could deny death benefits to police and firefighters. The governor capitulated after weeks of bad publicity, including complaints from the widows and orphans of public-safety officers.

But more than anything, Schwarzenegger has suffered from the way in which he tried to challenge the entire power structure in Sacramento: frontally, all at once, with little preparation for the inevitable backlash.

It may be the contradictions are finally catching up with Schwarzenegger. After campaigning as the scourge of special interests and vowing to take money from no one, the governor has collected political cash at a ravenous pace, raising more than $30 million since taking office. (Invitations to a recent Sacramento fundraiser, ?An Evening With Governor Schwarzenegger,? blithely offered access at four levels, starting at $10,000 for a ticket and one photograph and topping out at $100,000 for a seat at the head table.)

I don’t pay as much attention to local and state politics as I should, but I’ve always hated the way Scchwarzenegger sneaked into office on charm and empty rhetoric. It’s nice to see that people are finally starting to see through the celebrity bullshit and see that he’s unprepared to deliver the kind of leadership that he promised during the recall campaign.

The Preznit really blew it this time :

Nearing the end of a 60-day nationwide campaign for his Social Security proposals, Bush told a prime time White House news conference he favored changes to tilt the current system to favor low-income retirees of the future.

“If you work hard and pay into Social Security your entire life, you will not retire into poverty,” he said.

Bush spoke as White House officials issued written material saying the type of change he had in mind could be accomplished with a “sliding scale benefit formula.” That would mean lower payments for future retirees of middle and upper incomes than they are currently guaranteed ? a fact Bush himself did not mention in his 60-minute session with reporters.

The best attack the Republicans have had against the Democrats lately¹ is that they “don’t have a plan”. Well, now that the President has changed course and publicly stated that the goal of his Social Security plan is to prevent people from “retir[ing] into poverty”, he’s steering the GOP into some very unfriendly waters.

When it comes to preventing poverty, it’s the Democrats that are the ones overflowing with ideas. Increased funding for child care programs, raising the minimum wage, adding greater progressivity to the tax code, stopping predatory lending practices, and prividing greater access to healthcare will all do more to help the poor than Bush’s scheme to reinvent Social Security into one that might help the poor at the expense of everyone else. When it comes to really helping people living in poverty, it’s the Republicans who have no ideas.

And should I even bother speculating how well the idea of cutting benefits for the middle class and rich to provide for the poor will go over with the Republican rank-and-file? I’ve already seen it described as “turning Social Security into Welfare”. How long until we hear those old chestnuts about “redistribution of wealth” or, even worse, talk about taxes as “theft”? The right-wing has spent decades pushing the notion that the poor should be on the recieving end of any condescending talk of “tough love” or “responsibilty”. Do they honestly expect mainstream conservatives to flip-flop on this?? I know conservatives wanna kill Social Security, but I doubt they wanna do it this bad.

^{1 : And that ain’t sayin’ much. As Josh Marshall recently noted, “Democrats do have a plan: it’s called Social Security”}

There’s been a lot of complaints that the USDA’s new food pyramid is too complicated, with one columnist joking

The new food pyramid looks much like the old pyramid, dressed up for a gay pride parade. An interesting add-on is a hieroglyphic of a stick figure and a staircase.

As unoriginal as the gay/rainbow joke is, he does have a point. The new pyramid kinda sucks :

Nevermind the fact that changing the pyramid from a horizontal to vertical orientation defeats the whole purpose of having a pyramid in the first place, what’s really, really dumb is that tacked on stick figure guy seems more like an afterthought (”Oh yeah…don’t forget to exercise.”).

Design considerations aside, I have to give the USDA an enormous amount of credit for finally recognizing that not everyone needs to have the exact same diet.

MyPyramid, which replaces the Food Guide Pyramid introduced in 1992, is part of an overall food guidance system that emphasizes the need for a more individualized approach to improving diet and lifestyle.

?MyPyramid is about the ability of Americans to personalize their approach when choosing a healthier lifestyle that balances nutrition and exercise,? said Johanns. ?Many Americans can dramatically improve their overall health by making modest improvements to their diets and by incorporating regular physical activity into their daily lives.?
. . .
The new food guidance system utilizes interactive technology found on MyPyramid.gov. MyPyramid contains interactive activities that make it easy for individuals to key in their age, gender and physical activity level so that they can get a more personalized recommendation on their daily calorie level based on the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. It also allows individuals to find general food guidance and suggestions for making smart choices from each food group.

Now raise your hand if you’d already assumed that based on the picture of the stick figure climbing the stairs of the rainbow triangle…anyone??

That’s what I thought. If you go to MyPyramid.gov, you’re prompted for your age, gender, and the amount of physical activity you do per day. From those three pieces of information, you’re given a personalized diet breakdown, but even then, things are too simplistic. If you’re going to gather personal information, why not take it a step further to make things even more personalized??

For example, if I tell the website that I’m a 29-year-old male who doesn’t work out¹, it gives me a diet that recommends that I consume 2400 calories per day. That seems like an appropriate calorie target, but it doesn’t take into account two very important factors : height and weight. If MyPyramid.gov gathered this information as well, they could figure out my base metabolic rate and weigh it against my stated amount of physical activity to determine (a) whether I need to gain, lose, or maintain weight and (b) what diet could help me achieve those goals. All it would require is two extra form fields and a little bit of math.

It’s pretty obvious that the goal of this new food pyramid is to help people loose weight, but half-assed approach to personalization and the lack of emphasis on physical activity makes things much more confusing than they need to be. Personally, I think they should keep the personalization aspect of the food pyramid² and make it part of a larger “health scale” sort of effort :

Since about mid-January or so, I’ve lost thirty pounds and it’s mostly due to simply thinking of weight loss in the terms of our body’s input vs. output. If we consume more calories than we burn, the scale tips too far to the right and we gain weight. If we burn more than we consume, the scale tips to the left and we lose weight. The key to making this work, however, is paying attention to how much you consume as well as how many calories you burn per day³. Granted, it’s a little more complicated than that⁴, but it this goes a lot further than the repeated implication from the USDA that changing your diet alone can make you healthier. Not to mention the fact that it’s more goal-oriented and easier to understand than the new MyPyramid.

UPDATE : Slate has more recommendations for the food pyramid here. Most of them are way too complicated, but I love their idea for warning labels on unhealthy food.

^{1 : Which isn’t true. I work out three times per week. Even if it were true though, the next page should immediately suggest a moderate amount of exercise before even getting into the diet recommendations.}

2 : I’d also love to see them take it a step further to allow additional personalization for diets based on lifestyle choices (vegan, kosher, etc.) or food allergies.

3 :Which is why knowing your base metabolic rate is so important. If you don’t know how many calories you burn by sitting around doing nothing, you’ll never be able to adequately plan your diet.

4 : Since an unbalanced diet will almost always weigh down the right side of the scale.

There’s been a spirited debate between Ezra, Kos, and Digby about defining what Democrats stand for. I agree with Ezra that Kos’s “Democrats are the party for people who work for a living” falls way too short of the mark. I like Digby’s “fair taxes, a secure safety net, personal privacy, civil rights, and responsible global leadership” better, but it still feels like it’s missing something.

Personally I think the “brand” should be defined by something simpler and more broad that clearly stands in contrast to the Republican agenda. While it mentions a GOP bogeyman, I think this bit from FDR’s “Second Bill of Rights” speech is a good place to start :

The one supreme objective for the future, which we discussed for each Nation individually, and for all the United Nations, can be summed up in one word: Security.

And that means not only physical security which provides safety from attacks by aggressors. It means also economic security, social security, moral security–in a family of Nations.
. . .
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights–among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however–as our industrial economy expanded–these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
. . .
America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

Although it’s applicable to Britain more than America, this speech by Tony Blair really lays out a lot of Democrat-specific values :

And we may have a stable economy, but every business I visit tells me however well Britain does now, within a decade hundreds of thousands of UK jobs will go to China and India unless we build a wholly new platform of economic opportunity in knowledge, skills and science.

For the wealthy few, every one of those challenges of the future can be overcome.

The third term mission is to overcome them for the many.

Changing Britain for better. For good.

Not a society where all succeed equally - that is utopia; but an opportunity society where all have an equal chance to succeed; that could and should be 21st century Britain under a Labour Government.

Where nothing in your background, whether you’re black or white, a man or a woman, able-bodied or disabled stands in the way of what your merit and hard work can achieve.

Where hard working families who play by the rules are not going to see their opportunities blighted by those that don’t.

And where if any of our citizens, no matter how poor, is in sickness or need, they get the best care available without any regard to their wealth.

Power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many not the few.
. . .
The relationship between state and citizen has changed.

People have grown up. They want to make their own life choices. Their expectations, their ambitions, their hopes are all different and higher.

The 20th century traditional welfare state that did so much for so many has to be re-shaped as the opportunity society capable of liberation and advance every bit as substantial as the past but fitting the contours of the future.

And this will be a progressive future as long as we remember that the reason for our struggle against injustice has always been to liberate the individual. The argument is not between those who do and those who do not love freedom. It is between the Conservatives who believe freedom requires only that Government stand back while the fittest and most privileged prosper. And we who understand, that freedom for the individual, for every individual, whatever their starting point in life, is best achieved through a just society and a strong community.

In an opportunity society, as opposed to the old welfare state, government does not dictate; it empowers.

It makes the individual - patient, parent, law-abiding citizen, job-seeker - the driver of the system, not the state.

It sets free the huge talent of our public servants and social entrepreneurs whose ability is often thwarted by outdated rules and government bureaucracy.

It changes how government works, to open up the means of delivery to every resource, public, private and voluntary that can deliver opportunity based on need not wealth.

So perhaps our motto could be “Opportunity, Equality, Security”. I figure most people educated enough to get the reference probably wouldn’t be dumb enough to vote Republican anyways. Seriously though, I suck at boiling this sort of thing down into a sentence or two. Any suggestions?

Last month, in response to the rumors that Jeff Gannon’s access to the White House press room was the result of an affair he was having with someone in the White House, I wrote the following :

It’s easy to believe awful things about people you hate. So as much as I think this scenario might be plausible, I’d love to hear some backup before this ribald chatter gets repeated to the point that it get promoted from the the realm of speculation into fact.

Well, this revelation over at The Raw Story certainly adds credibility to the rumors :

Guckert made more than 200 appearances at the White House during his two-year tenure with the fledging conservative websites GOPUSA and Talon News, attending 155 of 196 White House press briefings. He had little to no previous journalism experience, previously worked as a male escort, and was refused a congressional press pass.

Perhaps more notable than the frequency of his attendance, however, is several distinct anomalies about his visits.

Guckert made more than two dozen excursions to the White House when there were no scheduled briefings. On many of these days, the Press Office held press gaggles aboard Air Force One?which raises questions about what Guckert was doing at the White House. On other days, the president held photo opportunities.

On at least fourteen occasions, Secret Service records show either the entry or exit time missing. Generally, the existing entry or exit times correlate with press conferences; on most of these days, the records show that Guckert checked in but was never processed out.

Checking in and not checking out with the security desk to me sounds like the behavior of somebody meeting their boyfriend at work and riding home with them through the employee parking lot. I’m sure there are plenty of other plausible explanations, but that’s the one that makes the most sense to me.

I don’t buy the blackmail scenario, though. If Jeff Gannon was stupid enough to try to blackmail the Karl Rove-run White House, he would have had his ass kicked long before we’d ever heard of the guy. I’m thinking this is a classic case of nepotism. A high-level Administration staffer has a “friend” who needs a favor so Ari and Karl, who always welcome extra friendly faces in the press room, pull some strings and hook the guy up. Boyfriend has a new career, the press secretary has a go-to guy if the questions get tough, and nobody notices or cares.

That said, while I initially thought Gannon’s presence was purely political, I no longer think that explains how he got there. If JimmyJeff’s only business in the White House was to spread GOP talking points, there wouldn’t be any unusual activity on the Secret Service logs. More importantly, however, is the fact that he’s an idiot. Having seen this guy interviewed a number of times by now, I’m sure a political genius like Karl Rove could find a more competent shill than this guy. Not only is Gannon dumb enough to think he can get away with plagiarizing Republican press releases, but he actually defends the practice. If the White House needed to recruit an Administration-friendly reporter, they could find somebody a lot less retarded than this guy (like Armstrong Williams or Maggie Gallagher).

I was just reading a Washington Post article from the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001 and this bit really sent a chill down my spine :

Bush had received the first news of the attack at 9:07 a.m., three minutes after he had stepped into a classroom to hear 18 second-graders show off their reading skills when his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., leaned over and whispered to him. Bush, whose eyes had been sparkling, looked suddenly grim. That was when officials still thought the crash at the World Trade Center was an accident, and he went ahead with the photo opportunity.

Bush sat with his hands folded and his legs crossed, with a bemused look. The second-graders read so well that Bush said, ?Really good readers! Whoo! This must be sixth-graders.?

Bush asked his standard question about whether any of the children read more than they watch television, and was pleased to hear that some do. Their reading included the phrase ?more to come.? Bush asked, ?What does that mean, ?More to come????

One of the pupils said, ?Something else is going to happen.?

Bush said, ?That?s exactly right.?

No, I don’t think this is a clue to some half-baked theory that Bush knew about 9/11 in advance or anything. It’s just a freaky coincidence. If you’ve got a conspiracy theory to sell, I ain’t buying.

Just in case you needed another reason to dislike Florida. this morning Jeb Bush signed the law that encourages Floridians to shoot first and ask questions later.

Florida’s lawmakers have passed a bill to remove criminal penalties for anyone who shoots an attacker even if the shooter didn’t first make an effort to escape.

The “Stand Your Ground” bill, which is expected to be signed by Gov. Jeb Bush, removes the “retreat if it is prudent” clause from state law, thus giving citizens the right to use deadly force - even when it may not be needed.

States and courts have long tried to draw a line between legitimate self-defense and a “duty to flee” principle. In many cases, fleeing is considered the safest way to protect oneself, a good reason state laws should encourage citizens to make that kind of split-second decision in a tough spot.
. . .
The Florida measure would push citizens toward a mentality of “shoot first and ask questions later.” And it could even encourage more citizens to carry weapons, thus increasing the possibility for using deadly force. Accidental shootings could also rise, especially among those with no gun training. Even Florida’s police are concerned about that possibility.

Despite the title I put on this post, I’m not 100% sure that this is going to lead to an explosion in the murder rate or anything, but I still despise this bill and everything it stands for. This is obviously a pet project of the NRA whose ultimate goal is to ensure that every citizen is armed and ready to shoot anything that moves, but even that isn’t the worst part.

What I really, really hate about this is the bill’s title :”Stand Your Ground” Ugggh….you know they chose this title because it made them feel like badasses and gave them another excuse to pat themselves on the back for being “tough on crime”. They didn’t really care about helping out some hypothetical crime victim that probably only represents a small handful of cases each year, they just wanted to feel like Dirty Harry for a day. With the concern more about macho posturing than actually doing something that could lower the crime rate, I’m surprised they didn’t name it something like the “Stop lookin’ at my lady, faggot!” bill or the “Lock n’ load, motherfucker!” bill.