Can't wait for the pentagram

South Carolina's Christian license plate is a clear establishment of religion by the state government, and it's obviously unconstitutional. It puts one religion above all others, which is exactly what the establishment clause of the First Amendment was meant to prevent.

If the South Carolina government really wanted to get right with the Constitution, they could fix the defects of this law and keep their stained glass plate by simply allowing atheists and all other religions their own plates under exactly the same rules. I for one am really looking forward to the Wicca plate.

In all of this, Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer plays as if Christians are set upon in South Carolina. Some martyr he is, pandering to the majority. And he still expects us to swallow his bullshit claim that this might hurt him politically!

Update (7/10): CNN has taken the story down (though their search feature still finds the old URL, but Google has it cached here, at least for now.

I really tried to keep quiet

Click image for full Joe Liccar/Gatehouse Media cartoon.

... but now I'm lying down with pigs.

Flagging attention

Click image for full Bruce Plante/Tulsa World cartoon.

If he's wearing it, that must be flag desecration.

Sense and senselessness

What national polls repeatedly say: We don't make any goddamn sense. Our knees jerk, we give an answer, and we don't connect it to anything.

The Founders would not be impressed, we say. But we're extremely proud to be Americans.

Look, I love my country, but I'm ashamed that my country invaded Iraq without just cause, has unrepentantly tortured prisoners, has trashed its own democracy, and is led by bad, lawless men. The love I feel is why I want to make America better.

But I suppose that the idiotically specific flag pin question is the tie-breaker:

How often should a U.S. presidential candidate wear a flag pin (when dressed in other than casual clothes)?

The poll is begging for the answer it wants. Why should wearing casual clothes exempt one from wearing a flag pin? I bet a real patriot like Darth Cheney has a flag pin nipple ring.

The challenge of this birthday

You might say that July Fourth is the day that America was conceived and that its birth awaited the ratification of the Constitution after a long gestation. But that's not how we celebrate it, so:

Happy Birthday, America!

As every generation has, we face Ben Franklin's famous challenge:

A Republic, if you can keep it.

Lately, we haven't been doing so well on that score. Though the Judiciary remains occasionally independent, the Congress even in Democratic hands has failed utterly to perform its duties as first framed among equal branches.

On this Independence Day, we should remember the words of Thomas Jefferson about who holds the true just power:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Duhbya has altered the old Constitutional order beyond recognition. Congress has disgracefully failed to stand in his way. We the people have for the most part acquiesced.

If it is to be done at all, the people must alter our form of government back or institute a new form.

Universal health care in Massachusetts

Ezra Klein:

Insofar as the plan's point was to cover the uninsured, covering more of the uninsured may be pricey, but it's not a failure. It's an expensive success. A more relevant measure of the plan's efficiency is costs per enrollee, which have been lower than expected. Cost per enrollee came in under budget in 2007, by about $2 a month. In other words, the program is operating a bit more efficiently then expected, but covering more people than anticipated.

There's trouble too. Go read.

Poker vs. craps

Time tells us that McCain rolls dice and Obama counts cards. This alone should be enough to decide between them.

McCain, like Bill Bennett, is a high roller in a game that the house always wins in the long run because it's entirely devoid of any element of skill. Like all casino games, it's fixed in favor of the house. McCain gets the thrill of throwing Cindy's money away, and if it's bad publicity he wants a private room to do it in, the heck with the camaraderie.

Obama plays a game of skill in dealing with chance, watches his cards carefully, and doesn't bluff much. He also plays at a much more responsible expense level that could never be characterized as high-rolling.

So, America, here's your choice: a rich thrill-seeking dummy who believes in his own luck or a smart, careful, analytical relationship-building winner.

Update: There's a brief conversation on DailyKos about this post.

Raving racist Texas bully vote

McCain has that demographic sewn up tight:

Texas Trail Dog

July 2nd, 2008 9:30 pm ET THAT'S EXACTLY WHY WE NEED THIS MAN AS PRESIDENT. AND THAT AND HIS NOT PUTTING UP WITH OF THE DRUG DEALING ORTEGO CROWD THAT HE JERKED THE FELLOW UP BY THE COLLAR. WE CAN FINALLY HAVE A PRESIDENT WITH GUTS. NOT LIKE THIS CRY BABY BULLCRAP MESS OBAMA IS TALKING ABOUT OR HIS SUPPORTERS. YOU PEOPLE MAKE ME SICK. PLUS JAPANS IMAGE OF AN OBAMA BEHIND THE PRESIDENT'S EMBLEM IS RIGHT ON NOTHING BUT A BUNCH OF MONKEYS TRYING TO BE SOMETHING THIEY'RE NOT. IF OBAMA GAINS OFFICE IT WILL REMIND ME OF THE PLANET OF THE APES.

If you wanted me to identify some of the ignoramuses mentioned in my last post, ah, here's one.

Schwarzchild radius of a doomed empire?

Andrew Bacevich writes:

By showing that Bush has put the country on a path pointing to permanent war, ever increasing debt and dependency, and further abuses of executive authority, Obama can transform the election into a referendum on the current administration's entire national security legacy. By articulating a set of principles that will safeguard the country's vital interests, both today and in the long run, at a price we can afford while preserving rather than distorting the Constitution, Obama can persuade Americans to repudiate the Bush legacy and to choose another course.

This is a stiff test, not the work of a speech or two, but of an entire campaign. Whether or not Obama passes the test will determine his fitness for the presidency.

Amen. Usually, I'm an incrementalist. Not now.

The ideas and ideals that have been the best of America for two centuries may be doomed. So few Americans seem to care about them any more, preferring instead to maintain the illusion of our superiority in all things as the empire Duhbya and the PNAC neocons wanted crumbles around us.

We may be helpless in a canoe trying to paddle back from the edge of Niagara. We may have crossed the Schwarzchild radius of doomed empires.

Maybe the tribalism of a proudly uneducable ignoramus in the threadbare favorite Bud Lite T-shirt from high school that no longer covers his beer belly has already thrown back the Enlightenment. Maybe when he shouts "USA number 1" at a Republican rally and it's not just a feel-good slogan but the sum-total of his so-called thoughts, we've already reached the point at which asking Americans to make themselves, our shared nation, and our impact on the world better is - stupidly, vapidly, absurdly - too much for him to bear our asking.

This ignoramus sees it as an insult to ask USA-number-1 to improve. This ignoramus sees the flag as more important than the Constitution because the flag is a tribal totem to him and engages his balls and his ample gut, while the Constitution is just fancy words that would engage what he imagines is his mind. But those words might puzzle and confuse him if he ever read them, so he doesn't. This willful ignorance is the path to death as a leading civilization.

There are signs that end times are coming, though they have nothing at all to do with the Rapture, but only with the social and political rot in our heartwood. Even so, I still hope, mostly because I can't give up on the founding ideals of America.

(h/t Tom at the Inverse Square, in turn from Talking Points Memo)

Utter, complete, moronic stupidity

Time debunks the stupidest "scandal" in the extraordinarily imbecilic history of Republican-manipulated American media. (Whew!)

Every day, the Republicans tell Americans how utterly devoid of the slightest bit of intelligence or good sense they are. Every day, some Americans lap it up.

Licking the floor in a public bathroom would make more sense.

Every querulous mention of a fist bump by the media means that they agree with the Republicans about our intelligence.

Conscience-free

Duhbya can sleep at night because he lacks any conscience. He can't find any humanity in his enemies. They aren't people. He doesn't just despise them, he thoroughly hates them. He is, like so many others, a Christian in name only.

Duhbya and Darth Cheney and David Addington and John Yoo and Donald Rumsfeld have loosed on our enemies torture. That word is its due and the least we can offer to describe waterboarding. Christopher Hitchens may be easily despised in other venues, but this is how he puts it:

You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it “simulates” the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning...

Many times before we have described this as torture, as we were learning it from Communist enemies practicing it on us in Korea and Vietnam. At the time, we universally abhorred it. Now many Americans defend it as a necessity, the failed Nuremberg defense, a defense we never accepted when the Chinese did it any more than when the Nazis did.

We said it was a war crime, a crime against humanity. It still is.

Open season

This is the Texas ideal of justice: Shoot 'em all, let God sort 'em out.

No proportionality. No due process. No lawyers. Joe Horn makes sharia look good.

Not even give 'em a fair trial and then hang 'em.

Instead, "I'm going to kill them." Yet, despite announced premeditation, no indictment.

Shot 'em in the back. Your Honor, I was afraid they'd shoot flames out their asses at me. It was an open and shut case of self-defense.

Update (7/3): Time shows up to O.K. Corral a little late.

McCNN structures the news

This is pretty minor, just another day's work in the so-called liberal media:

• Half the story is McCain's warmed over law and order Nixonism with a little fillip of earmarks malarkey.
• We get a rehash of the no command experience story.
• Finally, in the rump of the story, we hear that Obama wants to expand faith-based programs, though in a way that preserves rather than assailing the separation of church and state.

For an editor with real news sense, which of these is really the top of the story? Just askin'...

A man's got to know his limitations

I had heard many years ago that suicides by gun outnumber homicides by gun in the U.S., but I had not seen it in print for so long that I had begun to doubt my memory and my sourcing. The risk to loved ones and myself is one reason I don't keep my .22 rifle, a legacy from my grandfather, in my house.

Here's the approximate breakdown of fatalities (in 2005):

• suicides - 17,000
• criminal homicides - 12,500
• accidents - 900
  
• putatively righteous shootings, most by cops - 600

What does this prove about gun control and the Constitution? Not necessarily anything; it's just some facts.

Bob Barr gets something right

... and that's news, though less so lately.

"It probably wasn't any one thing," he said during our conversation last week outside the White House.

"But perhaps listening to the attorney general of the United States, in a purportedly conservative Republican administration of George W. Bush, justify to the American people that the writ of habeas corpus, the great writ, the foundation of civilized society as we know it, is no longer important. Watching a president and his attorney general try and torture the language of the law and the language of the Fourth Amendment to justify warrantless spying on American citizens in their own country in the name of being a commander in chief.

"Those are so dramatically inconsistent with any notions of legitimate, constitutional, conservative government, that I certainly could not be party to, or remain in a party that advocated those procedures."

Aside from the misplaced esteem for conservatism, he gets everything right.

Sadly untested

John McCain's lack of command experience is soooo sad.

No matter how much the McCain surrogates may mewl and wail about Obama surrogate Wesley Clark's comments, it is an objectively unassailable fact that McCain has no war-time (corrected) command experience. Courage and military service, sure, but not in a command role.

It's interesting to note the McCain campaign's response is to pretend that Clark disrespected McCain's courage and service and to use that pretense to attack. The obvious on-point rejoinder that Obama has no military command experience either leaves the two candidates on par, and the McCain camp can't surrender their perceived advantage even though the fact is that McCain was what business these days calls an individual contributor.

Update (7/4): The definitive account from Media Matters of this affair's complete, abject ridiculousness.

Dysbelief

Only rare human beings think for themselves. Most of us choose to follow along with the predominant crowd. In the state of nature and probably also in a developed society, this is adaptive behavior in the short run, but it risks a lemming plunge together over an easily seen cliff.

Peer influence is a tremendous prejudicial force in human groups (and groups of other animals, as well, I'm sure). It leads to the Gloucester 17, to obesity in relationship cohorts, to religious beliefs, to the acceptance of bald political lies.

If your friends are fabulists, their most outrageous lies become the received wisdom of your peer group, and it's afterward unshakable, despite the only evidence for it being rumor deriving from very unauthoritative sources such as "some guy" or an email or a posting on the Internet with circular or non-existent sourcing.

People believe what they want to believe, what they choose to believe. Only a precious few compare their beliefs to their experience and reject their false beliefs.

More than a day late

Now the Swifties are concerned with their good name. Where were they in 2004 when it mattered, when the Swift Boat Liars were everywhere? Why aren't they all pillorying T. Boone Pickens, Texas bullshit artist?

Stole it fair and square

Can we now dispense with the fiction that Zimbabwe is a democracy? Robert Mugabe is President for Life.

If violently stealing an election doesn't justify revolution, I'm not sure that any political crime could, but I still have no idea whether it's practical in Zimbabwe.

Mitt right but stupid

Look, non-proliferation has always been a liberal approach to a national security problem. The internationalists were for it, the conservatives simply wanted to use military force. Anyone ever heard of preemption? Of course, the internationalists were not all liberals, but the driving force behind engaging adversary and ally alike to reduce the spread of nuclear weaponry was us libs.

People who have a brain understand that arms control and preemption may both be needed at different times. You can tell liberals from conservatives by which stick they reach for first.

Mitt Romney gets points for saying so but only enough to get him the booby prize.

What's really stupid on his part, though, is that his definition of 'bipartisan' is "caving to the conservatives". I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that he labors under this misconception, since that has been the Broderist, Liebermanesque definition for the past twenty years.

True to form, John Roberts totally misses the obvious logic of the story.