Month: July 2008

Hit Me Baby One More Time

by digby

Obama to expand Bush’s faith-based programs

Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans that would expand President Bush’s program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — support their ability to hire and fire based on faith.

Obama was unveiling his approach to getting religious charities more involved in government anti-poverty programs during a tour and remarks Tuesday at Eastside Community Ministry in Zanesville, Ohio. The arm of Central Presbyterian Church operates a food bank, provides clothes, has a youth ministry and provides other services in its impoverished community.

“The challenges we face today, from putting people back to work to improving our schools, from saving our planet to combating HIV/AIDS to ending genocide, are simply too big for government to solve alone,” Obama was to say, according to a prepared text of his remarks obtained by The Associated Press. “We need all hands on deck.”

But Obama’s support for letting religious charities that receive federal funding consider religion in employment decisions was likely to invite a storm of protest from those who view such faith requirements as discrimination.

David Kuo, a conservative Christian who was deputy director of Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives until 2003 and later became a critic of Bush’s commitment to the cause, said Obama’s position has the potential to be a major “Sister Souljah moment” for his campaign.

This is a reference to Bill Clinton’s accusation in his 1992 presidential campaign that the hip hop artist incited violence against whites. Because Clinton said this before a black audience, it fed into an image of him as a bold politician who was willing to take risks and refused to pander.

“It would be a very, very, very interesting thing,” said Kuo, who is not an Obama adviser or supporter but was contacted by the campaign to review the new plan.

[…]

Obama proposes to elevate the program to a “moral center” of his administration, by renaming it the Office of Community and Faith-Based Partnerships, and changing training from occasional huge conferences to empowering larger religious charities to mentor smaller ones in their communities.

He also proposes a $500 million per year program to provide summer learning for 1 million poor children to help close achievement gaps with white and wealthier students. A campaign fact sheet said he would pay for it by better managing surplus federal properties, reducing growth in the federal travel budget and streamlining the federal procurement process.

[…]

Obama does not see a need to push for a law to make this program work as Bush did, said a senior adviser to the campaign, who spoke on condition of anonymity to more freely describe the new policy.

Bush never got Congress to go along so he conducted his effort to give religious groups equal footing with nonsectarian groups in competing for federal contracts through administrative actions and executive orders.

Obama did say earlier this week that he didn’t support the proposed constitutional gay marriage ban in California, so at least that’s not on the menu. I’m looking forward to some other good news though because the last couple of weeks have been pretty hard to take. I think I’m just about Sistah Soljah’d out.

The rightward tilt on national security, guns and the death penalty are not entirely unexpected. Democrats have been doing that for decades and I guess it’s not over yet. And I knew that they generally had decided to adopt explicitly religious rhetoric and were attempting to appeal to evangelicals on issues of poverty and global warming etc. But this honestly surprises me. I didn’t expect any Democratic president to continue this right wing notion that the federal government should directly fund churches with tax dollars. I fundamentally disagree with the concept. Churches are already tax exempt and part of the reason for that is that they do charitable work. Government should not meddle in it or subsidize it. And the idea that the government should fund entities that discriminate is simply backwards and repugnant.

Maybe it’s good politics. I can see how it might co-opt some of the religious right. (Let’s hope it’s enough that they don’t feel the need to do this anyway.)But this one really sticks in my craw, especially the notions that he won’t go through congress to fund it and the idea that the”moral center” of the administration will be religiously based. That just doesn’t sound like fundamental change to me. That sounds like garden variety conservatism.

Wake me when the transformative, post-partisanship features something that doesn’t make me nauseous.

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Gilberson On Evolution And God

by tristero

I’ll give Karl Gilberson considerable credit for clearly articulating the intellectual poverty that is biblical literalism, young earth creationism, and intelligent design creationism. But his own theology is a muddle. As the clever interviewer, Vincent Rossmeier, makes clear, Gilberson’s belief in God more than resembles the attitudes of the id creationists. In particular, he comes perilously closely to unconsciously falling into the abyss of the God of the Gaps fallacy.

I think Gilberson’s problem is is his attempt to reconcile God with an entire worldview which is a Procrustean bed when it comes to the most common attitudes about God and spirituality – in other words, his problem is his main thesis. Gilberson advocates kind of a simplistic dualism between spirit and matter, apparetnly without recognizing that dualisms of this sort present utterly intractable problems of plausibility, ontology, and epistemology.

But these problems only arise if you insist on tucking God under science’s discursive covers. People do it all the time, but seriously, why on earth would anyone want to do that? It’s a losing proposition. Furthermore, just as intelligent design creationism reduces the role of God to, in Gilberson’s phrase, that of conjuror, so talking about God in the language of science makes the very idea of God incoherent. It is the exactly wrong language.

The study of evolutionary biology provides tremendous insight into life, and will provide in the future, more and deeper such insight. But as a way to understanding the nature of God, it’s as helpful as studying TCP/IP, perhaps less so.* We won’t better comprehend most of the meanings of Melville’s white whale by learning calculus any more than we can learn calculus by reading Moby Dick in math class (regarding the latter, I speak from shameful experience). And we shouldn’t expect to meet God as we read genetics or perform experiments.

Besides, and this is a point that all the “New Atheists” make again and again in one way or another, it is not “Spinoza’s God” that is at issue, or the related experiences of connectedness, oceanic feelings of wonder and awe at the universe, and similar emotions and states. It’s the idea that God is the big guy in the sky that knows good from evil always, smites the Evil Ones who just happen to coincide with the mundane enemies of those compiling the sacred texts, and so on – that’s the issue (and the problem). So, even if Gilberson were a sophisticated theologian, it wouldn’t matter. The Guy In The Sky worshippers don’t care about that fancy stuff and won’t listen. Gilberson perceives this somewhat, but seems not to realize that he is talking about two different Gods:one is his personal deity, the other the White Beareded One.

All this said, Gilberson makes some clever points, such as noting the difference between perceiving the Bible as the Word of God, with which he has no problem, and thinking the Bible contains the words of God, which is, to put it mildly, seriously wrong, if not overtly blasphemous within a Judeo-Christian context (as in making the Bible an idol, a graven image of God). I just wish he wouldn’t try to reconcile his beliefs with the language of science because not only is that a hopeless, thankless task, it is a meaningless one.

*Of course, science can investigate the phenomenon of religion and the nature of beliefs about God, and should.

Con Men

by dday

Rick Perlstein used to call his blog The Big Con, and he explained that modern conservatism was, at its root, a giant con game on its own constituency.

Have I got a story for him.

During the first quarter of 2008, BMW Direct, a conservative political firm in Washington, helped raise more than $500,000 for an obscure Republican longshot running for Congress in Georgia.

But in a replay of the firm’s modus operandi in a Massachusetts race, as chronicled by the Boston Globe, most of the money raised by BMW Direct in the Georgia race has come from out-of-state contributors and been spent on supposed campaign-related services provide by the firm and its affiliates.

A half a million dollars in a single quarter is a substantial haul for even well-financed, high-profile candidates, let alone someone like like Deborah Travis Honeycutt, who ran for the seat in 2006 and lost by 38 points […]

Honeycutt’s campaign has brought in more than $1.7 million so far this election cycle. It has also spent more than $1.5 million.

For the most recent quarter, the campaign raised $620,016.72 in mostly small donations from across the country, according to her most recent FEC filing. And she spent $537,622.68 during the first quarter, most of which was to cover the costs of the direct mail campaign.

Only a small fraction of the money went to pay for a campaign on the ground. The total money spent in Georgia was $16,695. That covered expenses listed as political field work, public relations and media.

However, more than $314,000 went to BMW Direct and its affiliates who all work in the same downtown Washington office building. That’s not including the other large payments to other Washington-area firms for direct mail-related expenses.

The best ending to this story would be if there were no Deborah Travis Honeycutt, only a photo grabbed out of a K-Mart picture frame.

This is the modern conservative movement distilled to its very essence – stealing from its most ardent supporters, using politics for profit-taking, promising the world and giving back nothing. If I didn’t know any better I’d think it was a evangelical ministry.

It seems fairly clear that this is theft, and yet I’m struggling to determine how this would be prosecuted as a crime. Honeycutt is on the ballot as a candidate, complying with FEC reports, and using the small-dollar donations to pay staff, a legitimate expense. If she didn’t exist I suppose there would be something about bilking people out of cash under false pretenses, but then the same could be said of every Republican who promised to overturn Roe and limit the size of government. I don’t know if there is a relevant statute. Just a short con by some low-lifes. Or, if you prefer, the Grand Old Party.

…speaking of con men, see too the “PUMAs,” supposedly Hillary supporters who are organizing to stop Obama, run by a woman who’s made one substantive political donation in her life, and it was to John McCain. Rick Perlstein, late of The Big Con, has more.

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Does Anyone Have A Spare Lace Hankie?

by digby

…the Village is running short.

This is getting really comical. The LaVyrle Spencer Book Review And Ladies Circle Jerk Society had a conference call today. And they were utterly shocked *SHOCKED, I TELL YOU* to the point of near delirium:

“I was utterly shocked,” Sen. John Warner, R-Va., told the conference call, “… that he would in such a disrespectful way attack one of his fellow career military officers.”

“Beyond comprehension … further erosion of our nation’s political discourse,” said former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., in a written statement.

“Complete silliness,” retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. Carl Smith said on the call.

Retired Marine Lt. Col. Orson Swindle said Clark was “denigrating the character and the experience and the integrity and the performance” of McCain.

“A very indecent thing,” said retired Air Force Col. Bud Day.

You are no Officer or Gentleman, General Wesley Clark! I shall have my butler escort you from the parlor and remove you from the company of these well bred gentle ladies before you further erode the discourse with your shocking indecency. The honor of her Grace the Duchess of Sedona shall not be besmirched by your kind, sirrah!

James, burn some feathers and fetch my salts immediately. The Dowager Lady Swindle just fainted dead away!

And bring us some tea and cream cakes. We’re feeling peckish.

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What About Lieberman’s Remark?

by dday

The unquestionably worst thing about this Wes Clark incident is how it has obscured the rather remarkable statement uttered by a different guest on the very same episode of Face The Nation yesterday, Joe Lieberman.

Joe Lieberman, appearing on Face the Nation today, made the case for McCain with a blunt reminder.

“Our enemies will test the new president early,” said Lieberman. “Remember that the truck bombing of the World Trade Center happened in the first year of the Clinton administration. 9/11 happened in the first year of the Bush administration.”

The White House, by the way, endorsed this today. Being the kinder, gentler party of the two, I don’t think a single important Democrat went after Joe Lieberman for these comments. But they are procedurally similar to Charlie Black’s statement that a terror attack would unquestionably help Republicans. This is the comment that the Beltway press navel-gazed last week, only to come to the conclusion that it was probably true. Therefore, when Lieberman says something like “Presidents get tested early by Al Qaeda” (as if Al Qaeda ties all of their potential attacks to the American political calendar) there’s no doubt how the media receives that, how it colors their reporting, and how it’s fed to the public – there will be more terrorist attacks, and we can’t have on-the-job training, and so we must stick with the same failed policies, etc.

Sen. Barack Obama and his surrogates continued to criticize Charles R. Black Jr., a top adviser to Sen. John McCain, on Tuesday for saying a terrorist attack before the November election would help the presumptive Republican nominee. But behind their protests lay a question that has dogged Democrats since Sept. 11, 2001: Was Black speaking the truth? […]

McCain has distanced himself from Black’s comments, saying, “If he said that — and I don’t know the context — I strenuously disagree.”

But radio host Rush Limbaugh said aloud what other Republicans have been saying privately for months. Black’s comments were “obvious,” Limbaugh said yesterday on his program as he criticized McCain for distancing himself from them.

Limbaugh said in no uncertain terms that Obama would be weak in the face of terrorism. “We know damn well it’s Obama who would seek to appease our enemies. We know damn well it’s McCain who won’t put up with another attack,” Limbaugh said.

A propagandist like Rush Limbaugh is allowed to present the dominant opinion in one of the nation’s paper of record on this question of whether terrorism helps Democrats. If you wonder why media stars flub Obama and Osama over and over, this is the reason. They’re subliminally meant to conflate them.

Importantly, the substance of the argument here is never discussed – it’s always about who among the political parties terrorism or a more dangerous world benefits, not which political party can bring about less terrorism or a less dangerous world. Because given the primary evidence, there is no possible way that answer can be Republicans.

Late last year, top Bush administration officials decided to take a step they had long resisted. They drafted a secret plan to make it easier for the Pentagon’s Special Operations forces to launch missions into the snow-capped mountains of Pakistan to capture or kill top leaders of Al Qaeda […]

But more than six months later, the Special Operations forces are still waiting for the green light. The plan has been held up in Washington by the very disagreements it was meant to eliminate. A senior Defense Department official said there was “mounting frustration” in the Pentagon at the continued delay.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush committed the nation to a “war on terrorism” and made the destruction of Mr. bin Laden’s network the top priority of his presidency. But it is increasingly clear that the Bush administration will leave office with Al Qaeda having successfully relocated its base from Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas, where it has rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region and broadcast its messages to militants across the world.

The Keystone Kops would actually be an IMPROVEMENT from these clowns. The most basic initiative in this so-called war on terror, to any reasonable individual, would be to seek out those who actually committed the act. Seven years later – seven years – they have been allowed to escape, rebuild, launch attacks, nearly take over large towns in Pakistan and most of the Afghan countryside, and generally return their operation to roughly the same level of force as it was before the 9-11 attacks. There has been no comprehensive strategy in seven years to counteract this.

And I’m supposed to believe that’s the party who ought to benefit from a future terror attack?

But we’re too focused on whether or not a distinguished retired general hurt John McCain’s feelings to grapple with this. And Democratic fecklessness in the face of the hissy fit just ensures that such a conversation never takes place. Joe Lieberman, who will speak at the 2008 RNC, probably in a starring, prime-time role, will never face pressure for the comment he made. Wes Clark, who worked to elect his opponent and is as credible a national security voice as there is in the Party, gets the legs cut out from him by its leaders.

I’m going to need a new laptop. This one’s acting all screwy from the 18,000 I’ve banged my head against it today.

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