I don’t always agree with Bill Maher on things (like his absurd position towards medicine and vaccinations). However, this is fantastic:

“Our culture isn’t just different than one that makes death threats to cartoonists–it’s better.”

Watch the whole thing.

it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them

Barack Obama, April 6, 2008.

The House of Representatives today voted to approve the Senate Health Care Bill and the Reconciliation Bill.

Summoned to success by President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled Congress approved historic legislation Sunday night extending health care to tens of millions of uninsured Americans and cracking down on insurance company abuses, a climactic chapter in the century-long quest for near universal coverage.
“This is what change looks like,” Obama said a few moments later in televised remarks that stirred memories of his 2008 campaign promise of “change we can believe in.”

Widely viewed as dead two months ago, the Senate-passed bill cleared the House on a 219-212 vote. Republicans were unanimous in opposition, joined by 34 dissident Democrats.

A second, smaller measure — making changes in the first — cleared the House shortly before midnight and was sent to the Senate, where Democratic leaders said they had the votes necessary to pass it quickly. The vote was 220-211.

This vote is a tribute to Obama’s overarching political strategy: do the math and grind it out. During the Democratic primaries, his team did the math, ignored the ups and downs of the campaign, and focused on get out the vote efforts, and upset Hilary Clinton.

He followed the same strategy during the general election. Focusing on long term efforts and ignoring the ups and downs. And now here with Health Care Reform, he knew he had a Congressional majority, he knew it would be tough. He did the math, focused on a bill that would get a majority, and ground it out. And now he’s won.

And it’s clear that he is now the leader of the Democratic Party, a Party that has been without one for quite some time. This speech before Congress on Saturday is emblematic of that:

I’d say it’s impossible for the Republicans to claim that Obama is ineffectual now. I think he’s going to start to scare them the way Clinton scared them–but Obama doesn’t have the same ethical lapses that Clinton did.

I fully expect the Democrats to maintain control of Congress in the fall, and I honestly believe that this bill will HELP the Democrats in the Fall. I don’t think that Republicans are going to be too thrilled with ads lambasting them for wanting small businesses to pay higher taxes, insurance companies to drop coverage on sick people, and people to not be able to buy affordable, individual insurance.

Sue Lowden, a Nevada Republican running against Harry Reid for his Senate seat, runs a new ad in which she blasts “government run health care”.

Harry Reid thinks Washington knows best, but I think we the people know best. Harry Reid’s big government health care plan will raise taxes, put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor, weaken Medicare, kill jobs, push us further into debt. I’m Sue Lowden and I approve this message because government run health care is wrong.

I don’t understand how anybody can, with a straight face, put themselves in the completely ridiculous rhetorical position of arguing that government run healthcare is wrong because it would weaken Medicare!

Do Republicans really think that people are that stupid?

(link via Matthew Yglesias)

It’s odd that I had two different posts pop up in my feed reader today, both of them revolving around the theme that the modern conservative movement, as represented by TV punditry and the tea parties and Republicans in Congress, has some more than passing resemblance to the hard-left counterculture of the 60s and 70s. First is this piece by Stan Collender:

it was hard not to conclude that one of the biggest changes from when I last saw “Hair” was that the real radicals these days are not kids on the street wearing torn jeans, wearing peace symbols, and getting high (Never mind the fact that torn jeans are now sold in the stores).

Today, the most radical behavior by far is coming from middle age congressional Republicans.
Think about it: GOP members of the House and Senate routinely reject rules, norms, and procedures and, like the hippies from the 60s, feel absolutely justified in doing it.

House and Senate Republicans also don’t feel bound by precedents or culture.

And then, there’s this essay by Freddie de Boer, which I cannot recommend highly enough.

Convinced of the necessity of imprinting the conservative brand onto even the most elementary of human experiences, conservatives have come to look for ideological status (and thus ideological battle) in the narrowest crevices of day-to-day life. This has led to the sprawling industry of providing “conservative alternatives,” in the realm of commodities or media, to conservative people. It is now entirely easy for someone to consume only conservative-oriented media at every level: conservative magazines, conservative radio, conservative television and news, conservative websites. Broader still, there are conservative dating services, conservative coffee houses, conservative colleges, conservative financial services, conservative rock music, a conservative YouTube….Often explicit, always obvious, these conservative-situated alternatives send the inescapable message: there is no end to the political; all of human life is a part of an endless ideological struggle; nothing is to be considered free from the quest for conservative purity.

As I’ve said, this is an uneasy development for an antigovernment movement; branding all of one’s attachments, affinities, and commodities self-consciously “conservative” ensures that all political arguments will be fought on liberal battlegrounds. More troubling, though, is the inevitable stakes-raising that this kind of ideology-in-everything provokes. If one’s whole life is part of an ideological war, if every aspect of someone’s daily existence is to be counted as a function of an endless partisan squabble, there is no hope for reconciliation, only for victory. Political disagreement becomes not an easily-compartmentalized distraction from everyday life, but an affront to the whole self. Whatever its valuable insights, Marxism has this elementary failing; it is a corrosion of human life to relegate all behavior to the battle for resources and the wages of political war. Yet this is a seduction that movement conservatism has fallen prey to almost entirely.

Read both pieces. They’re quite fascinating.

The AP is reporting that the Obama Administration is set to announce that it will provide loan guarantees for new American nuclear power plants.

The Obama administration’s planned loan guarantee to build the first nuclear power plant in the U.S in almost three decades is part of a broad shift in energy strategy to lessen dependence on foreign oil and reduce the use of other fossil fuels blamed for global warming.

President Barack Obama called for “a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants” in his Jan. 27 State of the Union speech and followed that by proposing to triple loan guarantees for new nuclear plants. He wants to use nuclear power and other alternative sources of energy in his effort to shift energy policy.

Obama in the coming week will announce the loan guarantee to build the nuclear power plant, an administration official said Friday. The two new Southern Co. reactors to be built in Burke, Ga., are part of a White House energy plan that administration officials hope will draw Republican support.

I am definitely all for this. Nuclear power is a much safer, cleaner source of energy than coal. This is long overdue.

h/t Dodd Harris

Image Credit: Sarah Elzas

In discussing Scott Horton’s infuriating article about a possible cover-up of the murder of prisoners at Gitmo, Conor Friedersdorf provides an excellent reminder of why I will not be voting Republican any time in the near future.

If I may address the skeptics on the right directly, it is penny wise and pound foolish to worry about creeping tyranny via government-run health care or gun control when we’re another terrorist attack away from popular support for an archipelago of secret prisons where anyone can be whisked away and tortured without any evidence against them. Look to Europe if you doubt whether government-run health care or black sites run by secret police are a more immediate threat to the liberty of innocents.

That about sums it right up, doesn’t it?

E.D. Kain is of the opinion that Scott Brown’s election heralds a return to “big-tent conservatism”, but I think he’s wrong on this point. For reasons surpassing my understanding, the hard-core conservative movement in this country has become utterly enthralled with any type of lawlessness and violence in the name of “fighting terrorism.” Core American values of decency, respect for liberty, and humane treatment of even our enemies have been dropped in favor of a self-proclaimed “Jacksonianism.”

Indeed, I think that this self-applied label is correct. Andrew Jackson is the patron saint of modern conservatism: anti-”elitist”, autocratic, jingoistic, and disrespectful of the rule of law. He was a man who valued loyalty above merit and power above principle. And that’s today’s GOP. The libertarians have utterly lost their battle for the soul of the Party. What little remains is being rhetorically harnessed to use as a tool against the Democratic Party, not for actual principled governance.

If the Republican Party actually cared about checking the power of the state, they’d be clamoring for trials of suspected terrorists in open court. Instead, Scott Brown and other Republicans have been clamoring for the Christmas Bomber to be sent to Gitmo, even though shoe-bomber Richard Reid was tried in Federal Court and is in prison right now. If the Republican Party truly wanted to hold government accountable for abuses and protect liberty against tyranny, they’d be clamoring to investigate allegations of abuse at Gitmo, Bagram, and everywhere else–but they’re clamoring for these things to be kept secret. If the Republican Party was serious about reining in deficits, they would demand that Medicare and Defense cuts be put on the table–but instead they’re lambasting Democrats for Medicare cuts and calling for increases in Defense spending.

For all of their pretensions as the protectors of liberty and free-markets, today’s GOP is nothing of the sort. And frankly, I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Next month, the credit card reforms that passed in may will be coming effective. If you’re curious to know how this will affect you and your accounts, there’s a good rundown at Get Rich Slowly.

The traditional story of the building of the great Egyptian pyramids is that they were built by armies of slaves. For those who get their history from Cecil B. DeMille, it’s often thought that these slaves were Jewish. However, recent research indicates that the builders of the pyramids may have been private contractors, instead.

Evidence from the site indicated the approximately 10,000 workers who built the pyramids had eaten 21 cattle and 23 sheep sent to them daily from farms in the Delta and Upper Egypt, said Dr Hawass.

This would suggest the farmers who sent the animals were not paying their taxes to the Egyptian government, but were sharing in one of Egypt’s national projects, he added.

The workers were employed for three-month stints, and the tombs, which date from the 4th and 5th Dynasties (2649-2374 BC), were for those who died during construction.

The authorities have long fought what they call the “myth” of slaves building the pyramids, saying it undermines the skill involved in their construction, and the sophistication of ancient Egypt’s civilisation.

This is just utterly fascinating to me. The history of Ancient Egypt is, sadly, something I don’t know enough about. I will say this though–I’m probably the only one, but this story prompted my memory of the story in Genesis which states how Egypt turned from a society of free laborers into a centrally-planned proto-feudal serfdom. It was all because of God’s chosen, Joseph, the son of Israel who became Prime Minister of Egypt.

There was no food, however, in the whole region because the famine was severe; both Egypt and Canaan wasted away because of the famine. Joseph collected all the money that was to be found in Egypt and Canaan in payment for the grain they were buying, and he brought it to Pharaoh’s palace. When the money of the people of Egypt and Canaan was gone, all Egypt came to Joseph and said, “Give us food. Why should we die before your eyes? Our money is used up.”

“Then bring your livestock,” said Joseph. “I will sell you food in exchange for your livestock, since your money is gone.” So they brought their livestock to Joseph, and he gave them food in exchange for their horses, their sheep and goats, their cattle and donkeys. And he brought them through that year with food in exchange for all their livestock.

When that year was over, they came to him the following year and said, “We cannot hide from our lord the fact that since our money is gone and our livestock belongs to you, there is nothing left for our lord except our bodies and our land. Why should we perish before your eyes—we and our land as well? Buy us and our land in exchange for food, and we with our land will be in bondage to Pharaoh. Give us seed so that we may live and not die, and that the land may not become desolate.”

So Joseph bought all the land in Egypt for Pharaoh. The Egyptians, one and all, sold their fields, because the famine was too severe for them. The land became Pharaoh’s, and Joseph reduced the people to servitude, from one end of Egypt to the other. However, he did not buy the land of the priests, because they received a regular allotment from Pharaoh and had food enough from the allotment Pharaoh gave them. That is why they did not sell their land.

Joseph said to the people, “Now that I have bought you and your land today for Pharaoh, here is seed for you so you can plant the ground. But when the crop comes in, give a fifth of it to Pharaoh. The other four-fifths you may keep as seed for the fields and as food for yourselves and your households and your children.”

“You have saved our lives,” they said. “May we find favor in the eyes of our lord; we will be in bondage to Pharaoh.”

There you go, folks. Biblical support for the nationalization of agriculture and a 20% gross income tax…

Image Credit: Swamibu

The Economist discusses the religious insanity that is the Alabama gubernatorial primary:

EVERY politician says something he has to walk back once in a while. In the case of Bradley Byrne, a Republican candidate for governor of Alabama, it was

I think there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be literally true and parts that are not.

Mr Byrne was battered by so much criticism that he quickly trudged to a Piggly Wiggly grocery store to hold a press conference and recant. Claiming he had been misquoted, he said

I believe the Bible is true. Every word of it.

Mr Byrne’s momentary hesitation about the literal truth of every word of the Bible makes him the religious hippie in the Republican field.

Of course, even for the most fervent believers, it’s impossible to believe that everything in the Bible is literally true. Some things are very clearly metaphor or poetry (Song of Songs?). And some things, even as they stand, are clearly wrong. Take this passage about the building of Solomon’s temple, for example:

He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it.

In other words, according to the Bible, Solomon built a column that was thirty cubits in circumference and 10 cubits in diameter for a ratio of 3. That’s simply impossible, because in every circle, by definition, the ratio of the circumference to diameter is pi (3.14159…). So either the Bible is wrong or mathematics and engineering is. Given that pi is the basis for lots of different equations, and that bridges stand and planes fly, my money is on the Bible being wrong here.

Still, I would love to ask the question in the gubernatorial debates. “So, do you believe that the Bible is literally true from cover to cover?” “Yes.” “What’s the value of pi?” “Uh, 3.1415… ?” “Ah-ha! You don’t believe in the literal truth of scripture!”

(Thanks to Chris Lawrence for the link.)

Image Credit: Sarah-Wynne Taylor