Infinite Monkeys
"...a sparkly blog..." - James Lileks"Read them only with extreme caution."- Hugh Hewitt
Infinite MonkeysJohn Kerry. Sorry, boys... he didn't own Bush, exactly, but the president did himself no favors. He didn't look like he wanted to be there.
I'm no expert, but if I had to predict what the pundits are going to glom onto from this debate, it will be Bush's smirk. Dammit, sir, please stop it!
Update: Hugh says tonight's debate was "a big win" for Bush. I don't agree, but I do think that the Bush campaign would do well to seize on "The Global Test." Ultimately, it doesn't matter what the hell the world thinks. America's interests aren't always the world's interests. Isn't it obvious? No. But that's what this campaign is about.
Update II: Hinderocket thinks Bush won the debate, but "[o]n the whole, though, I think Kerry helped himself tonight." Who, other than the Bush campaign and a certain talkshow host thinks that Bush dominated tonight's contest?
Update III: Kevin Murphy asks and answers some very good questions that would have been useful in tonight's debate.
Richard Holbrooke on Fox News right now.
But, in addition, Monkeystein, the sad thing is: yes, I did put away a bottle of wine. And, no, I didn't call you. Why? Because I don't have your new number, you fiend! Also, my tolerance is very high. I think it has something to do with all of the rum I drank this summer.
So after the debate, someone called me and asked who I tought won the debate and I replied: "The American people Ben... the American people."
"What? Are you drunk?"
"No.. no... I'm just flush with a new confidence. We've turned a corner here Ben. Finally these two have finally began to talk about the issues. It's about the simple acknowledgement of the tough challenges ahead as laid out so convincingly by Senator kerry!."
"Are you spinning me Monkeystein?"
"No Ben, no. I'd never spin you. You're my friend. Though I will for this talk of Bush being such a great debater, this was his worst performance by far."
"Even worse than the Tim Russert interview?"
"Even worse..."
"What the State of the Union?"
"Definately worse."
"Man, Bush is toast... it's all over for the my beloved GOP!!! Oh God!!! Nooooooo!!!! I knew that Gallup poll was a setup! Kerry is gonna win it all!"
"Yes... maybe you and other people of your political persuasion should do the honorable thing, and just not go to the polls."
"Yeah... yeah..."
"Heh-heh-heh..."
"Hey wait a minute. I didn't call you! In fact, we didn't even have this conversation!"
'You were drunk!"
"No, I wasn't!"
"Remember the wine you bought before the debate."
"yeah."
"You drank it all Ben, and you got really drunk, and melancoly."
"I do that sometimes when I get drunk Dr. Monkeystein..."
"Exactly, and you called me right after the debate and you declared that President Bush lost the debate, and that he looked like a rumpled chimp, and that as an honorable Republican you would sit this election out. Do you remeber?"
"Well, I..."
"Rember you were drunk. And melancoly."
"I get that sometimes..."
"I know you do buddy... I know."
"Bush really lost?"
"I'm afraid so Ben."
"Hold on ben, there's call on the other line.... Hello?"
"Hey Monkeystein... so uh who do ya think won the debate?"
"The American people Dave... the American people."
Look, I've had too much wine. But I can't let this go:
"[I]n the Democratic Party, there is plenty of room left open to think, debate and dissent."
You cannot be serious.
Bob Casey?
Zell Miller?
Ronald Reagan: "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me."
Cynthia Matthews, who is running against David Dreier in Southern California, just lost the endorsement of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. The reason? She's running to the right of Dreier on illegal immigration!
And boy does Bush terrible in that suit. And he's wearing that psychedilc tie again. A Rove move no doubt to hypotize the American people. he looks tired. he was kinda slumping. I didn't care for the way he leaned against the podium. and he looks like a shimp next to kerry. I've purposely turned my back on the TV, and there are a lot of awkward pauses in his speaking. I think Kerry did extremely well. he made sense, and he sounded presidential. His hair looked nice. very un-helmet like.
Kos: "The split-screen isn't flattering to Bush, with the eye-rolling, angry looks, mouth-smacking...And Kerry is wiping the floor with Bush."
Atrios: "Eric Alterman is sitting on my couch looking grumpy."
Drum: "Bush's stock phrases so far...{snip} I've heard each of these at least half a dozen times so far. It's like a robot talking."
Frankly, I don't think Bush is doing well, either. Not that he's wrong, exactly. Kerry is a demagogue... good heavens! But Bush is blathering on and on. Repetition is not necessarily a bad thing. Repetition is not necessarily a bad thing. And if I'm being redundant, let me repeat myself: Repetition is not necessarily a bad thing.
Kerry thinks that a best defense is a defense built around sanctions and multilateralism. Bush thinks that the best defense is a good offense. That's not necessarily a typical Republican idea, or even a conservative one. But in a dangerous world, it's one that places the survival of the United States above everything else. I can't disagree.
My blog-mate believes that a Bush landslide is inevitable. Perhaps, but for most Americans, politics is something you start paying attention to, oh, about now. There are two things that impact the the late-comers' votes: (1) the conventions and (2) the debates. Several debates have turned around or vastly accelerated the trajectory of past elections: Nixon/Kennedy, 1960; Reagan/Carter, 1980; Kerry/Weld, 2000. In the case of Kerry v. Weld, Kerry turned a sorry looking campaign to a solid winner. We should recall that during Howard Dean's hay-day Kerry's upset was, well, an upset.
For my part I sat the fence on this one until a little over a month ago and until I decided to cast my chad for Kerry, I actually leaned towards Bush. People do not always make their decision based on the issues. The way political consultants seem to function, it would seem that very few people actually do - vote based on issues that is. The inestimable Prof. Marianne Jennings offers some compelling non-issue-based reasons to oppose Kerry. With those in mind, I'll list the reasons, in many ways tangential to issues, that I am making the call for Kerry.
Schizo-Centrism, the ACLU and the Right-wing Cabal
No one believes it once I make up my mind to vote after one candidate or another, but I am a centrist. Given my federalist credentials (gasp! that right-wing conspiracy!, that evil cabal), many may pidgeonhole me as a "right-wing wacko". Fortunately I am also a dues-paying, card-carrying member of the ACLU, so my schizo-centrist credentials remain intact.
It's Not the Man, It's the Herd
When it came down to it, just a few things ended up mattering to my centrist mind as it regarded who to cast a vote after:
1. Voting for president is not voting for a man, it is voting for an office and an administration
2. In voting for an administration, you are in part voting for a certain ideology, but you are also voting for a team
3. The Republican "team" is in a poor state -
- The GOP platform called for constitutional amendments banning abortion and gay marriage
- Neither of these is actually electorally feasible
- Both of these pander, cynically (see last point) to the right-most wing of the party
- Given the extreme right-wing nature of these two positions, the GOP considered a clause in their platform assuring that those with alternative positions are welcome in the party
- On consideration, the party rejected that clause
- The starlight speakers at the GOP convention, those for whom the GOP wished to put up as its "face" were: McCain, Schwarzeneggar and Guiliani, three of the most popular Republicans in America today
- These three are so popular with middle (centrist) America - people like me - because of their centrist qualities - because of the ways that they do not reflect the GOP platform and that they do not reflect the current posture of this administration
- None of these three actually discussed their own positions, since their own positions are so at odds with the party platform and the sentiments of most of those in attendance at the convention
What we are left with is a Republican Party veering hard-right, while putting on a centrist face.
Meanwhile, the Democrats:
1. Fielded seven serious candidates, ranging from Kucinich on the loony-left to Lieberman on the could-be Republican middle-right
2. With positions as far apart as those represented by the seven candidates, Democrats have managed to come together as a solid, inclusive coalition
What Team Would You Want to Join?
What do I receive from this: in the Democratic Party, there is plenty of room left open to think, debate and dissent, even if you are as far to the right as Lieberman. In the Republican Party, power is being consolidated on the far right and dissent is most unwelcome unless it is there to act as a friendly "moderate" face to swing-voters outside the party's base.
As a centrist, I feel increasingly shut out of the Republican Party.
The fundamental problem with this is that no one has a monopoly on reality. Leadership functions best when it has several information feedback loops, not one prism into the universe. Excellent positions, exellent execution, these both flow from a vigorous exchange of ideas. The more closed we become to ideas, the more narrow and distorted our concept of reality will become in consequence. Eventually ideology collides with reality.
What Would Churchill do in 1941? Roosevelt in 1942? Lincoln in 1863?
The disturbing reluctance of the Bush administration to either articulately defend its actions and inactions in Iraq against the back drop of increasing violence and decreasing local Iraqi support, together with its ongoing refusal to ask that Americans sacrifice for the rightness of its own cause there, both serve as frightening collaborating coincidences with this closed-loop perception of the administration.
Facing Reality Like a Hard-headed American
If the Republican convention, with its strict ideology and tow-the-line participants, is a reflection of how this administration is working, then the administration is at risk of believing its own rhetoric. Support for the U.S. in Iraq is said to be at 5%, Iran and North Korea are both seeking nuclear WMDs and the People's Republic of China has upwards of 600 missiles trained on Taiwan. Things are not well in the world for a superpower stretched so thin. We cannot afford to believe rhetoric. Reality is too scary.
Democrats, meanwhile, in fielding their seven candidates and in forming such a diverse coalition, are clearly still functioning as if all parts and persons have a legitimate and valuable link into the top. In other words, they're functioning like a well-honed team of mutts, not a dysfunctioning team of purebreds. Americans can only face today's terrifying dangers if we do so the way we've successfully faced the horrors of our past: that would be as mutts that somehow cobble together, and function, with the best ideas and the most accurate perceptions of reality reaching and thriving at the top.
Selling the GOP Ticker
Whatever Kerry's merits and demerits, well, Bush has them too. But in party-to-party terms, the indicators bode badly for the GOP this time around. A sharp sell-off in the party's electoral stock may be just what's needed for the long-term health and viability of the party if the current leadership is as hollow as it now feels.
Kerry just made the point that Osama bin Laden is the enemy who attacked us, not Saddam Hussein. That is the very heart of this debate, and the controversy at the heart of this election. Is the enemy al Qaeda, or the regimes that make al Qaeda possible? If we had killed Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora two years ago, would the war have ended? I suspect a lot of Democrats, and some Republicans, would have thought exactly that.
The Pottery Barn rule?
"What the hell is that, ma?"
"One of those upper-class stores they have in L.A. and Boston, pa."
I just checked out Hinderocket's live-blogging over at Powerline. He's sober, evidently, and his judgment appears sound.
It occurs to me as I write this: Is anybody reading this now, at 6:53 p.m. PST? I seriously doubt it. I'm barely reading it!
Hugh Hewitt has a scorecard. I think he's going a bit too easy on the president, but that should come as no surprise.
Jeez Louise, Kerry just said he wants to have a summit again!
More of the same versus a summit? I'll have more of the same, please...
Halliburton! Summitry! Mistake! Rush to war!
I stopped at the store on the way home and bought some wine from a good ally: Australia's Wolf Blass, Yellow Label Cabernet (2002). Tasty, and on sale!
Bush is, as we all know, a terrible speaker. But, mercifully, he did not butcher the name of the Polish President. Repetition is a good thing.
Kerry is haughty, French-looking...and effective. To a point. I suspect many Americans agreed with him when he accused Bush of spending money on police and fire departments in Iraq that could have been better spent at home. Never mind that the federal government isn't responsible for hiring local cops and firemen. I suspect many Americans, too, will nod approvingly when Kerry says (as he has three or four times now) that we've had to bear 90% of the costs, send 90% of the troops, and and take 90% of the casualties.
But perhaps my judgment is impaired.
Fact is stranger than fiction (and scarier).
If you haven't already heard about the shenanigans on Pitcairn Island, that island with a population of 47 that was peopled by mutineers from the HMS Bounty and their Polynesian wives (some might put wives in quotes here, I'm too ignorant to hold a position), then you can read all about it here.
Didn't we always wonder what happens when people get locked up in tropical islands?
One wonders if the peculiar custom about 12-year olds ever triggers debate among islanders whenever they discuss how the custom may be juxtaposed against these two stats from the CIA World Factbook: (1) 100% of Pitcairn Islanders are Seventh Day Adventist and (2) voting age is 18.
One might guess from the number of entries I've posted in so short a time on the same rather narrow topic, that Catholic concerns in the current election sit heavy with me, and one could be forgiven for that interpretation.
In fact, they don't. What sits heavy with me is the massive, ongoing proliferation of international free trade, which is an Orwellian term for "protectionism for the rich", in the near total absense of any parallel proliferation of international free markets, with the (rather weak) exception of the E.U.
Still more disturbing is the near total silence on this subject in public policy debates, even though current concerns about outsourcing should be making this a key election issue.
I teach at a university business school and have addressed this topic with a number of academics. The funny thing is, academic economists seem acutely aware of the vast canyon dividing "free trade" from "free markets" and the massive disadvantage workers are placed at when they are denied free markets but forced instead into "free trade".
There is a word academic economists use for it, that is the disadvantage workers have versus employers as a consequence of free trade: "dis-equality". You don't have to understand it, but I assure you, if you work for someone and don't hire people yourself, it is bad for you.
Yet the policy discussions have been completely hijacked by a certain vocal and disciplined group of ideological partisans who seem to have the entire center-right, center-left convinced that they represent enlightened liberal economics of the general commonwealth and not very specific and very powerful special interests of a particular class.
But the Catholic issue, and how I got onto it, keeps coming up in the press and it annoys me so that I can't resist addressing it. A little time may be worthwhile addressing how I got onto such a tiff. It doesn't start with Deal Hudsun, whose case we shall consider carefully, it actually started with Michael Novak.
Summa-Contra-Democratia
Roundabouts June 15th this summer Michael Novak, whose writing I am generally fond of, had this missive posted in the National Review Online.
In his article Mr. Novak lays out an argument for why Catholic politicians who favor keeping abortion legal should be denied communion by relevant Catholic bishops.
Stripped of detail, Mr. Novak's argument is essentially reducible to this: (1) abortion (along with other evils such as capital punishment) is in distinct opposition to Catholic moral teaching. (2) To be pro-choice is to be pro-abortion (though not stated, this is a clear assumption of his article). (3) Abortion is a catastrophic moral evil and must be opposed by the church, its laity and its leadership. (4) Politicians who are pro-choice are succumbing to electoral winds and suffering from moral dissonance, they are not exercising good, informed moral judgment, particularly judgment informed by Catholic sensibilities of morality and this failure must be corrected somehow. (5) Lay opposition to abortion (via voting against pro-choice candidates) is inadequate. (6) In this era of terrible moral slippage, it is time that bishops rise up to their charge as princes of the church and exercise discipline against Catholic politicians who are pro-choice by denying them communion.
As a Catholic, I was profoundly disturbed by this piece. Echos of it have been articulated in opinion pieces in the Wall Street Journal. I wasn't just disturbed by this on its own, I was disturbed because, in this highly charged electoral climate, with a Catholic, pro-choice challenger to the Presidency, this position was being exploited by Catholics and non-Catholics alike to manipulate the decisions of a candidate and the outcome of a Presidential election.
Breaking the False Dichotomy - What Catholic Laity Understand that Republican Operatives Don't
First, let's tend to "pro-choice" and "pro-abortion". Novak actually describes Catholic politicians who are pro-choice as "pro-abortion". Maintaining this equivalency is essential to maintaining the false dichotomy that allows this issue to persist, and which actually prolongs the time when abortions are conducted in massive and disturbing numbers in this country.
This is the essential connection to actually contending with abortion: making abortion illegal does not equal stopping abortions. If we make abortions illegal, but abortions keep happening, what have we accomplished?
Unfortunately, anti-abortion candidates, such as Bill Clinton and John Kerry, cannot expend much energy to resist abortion because they are so caught up in dealing with the attacks of those who hold "pro-choice" as "pro-abortion" as an article of faith.
Meanwhile, those "pro-life" candidates, such as George W. Bush, openly admit that they cannot do anything to meaningfully change the law to limit or ban abortions. Empirically, we know this: by alleviating the conditions that lead women to feel pressured to have abortions, we reduce the number of abortions. During the Clinton administration, the abortion rate dropped. During the Bush administration, it has risen again.
Back to Novak
Novak's article reminded me of the controversy that arose when John F. Kennedy ran for the presidency. In those less enlightened times, many were genuinely worried about voting for a president who did not take his cues from the people who elected him or for whose interests he was sworn under holy oath to protect, but from a foreign theocracy: the Vatican.
We laugh off those concerns now, but with articles like Novak's, one really has to wonder. Legitimate or not, Novak's position seems to be the precise manifestation of the fears of those who would oppose a candidate on the basis of the candidate's Catholic faith.
So we have two severe problems with Novak's position: (1) it may not be consistent with the desire on the part of Catholics to reduce abortions, potentially in lieu of making abortion illegal and (2) it constitutes and apologia for the imposition of decrees from a foreign theocratic monarchy into the decision processes of our secular democracy.
The first only bothers me a little, because "pro-life" activists and ideologues have become so fundamentalist in their thinking that it is probably expecting too much of them to understand this - to understand that if Clinton or Kerry had the support of say 20 million Catholics, instead of 12.5, that support would neutralize the influence of the ideologues at NARAL and provide the officials with electoral space to not only oppose abortion in campaign rhetoric, but to actively take every step possible, within the law and within the bully pulpit of the presidency, to reduce the number abortions.
Meanwhile, were we to hand Bush 20 million Catholic votes, instead of the 12.5 he will receive, we can be assured, nothing will change. Abortion will stay legal, the conditions that lead to abortions will continue or be aggravated, but the pro-life activists will feel as though "their man" is in the highest office, so all must be good.
I can live with the fact that pro-life bishops can't get their minds around that paradox. What disturbs me, what even shakes my faith, is that these bishops (1) fail to appreciate the anti-democratic nature of their rhetoric (2) fail to acknowledge how their rhetoric undermines the ability of Catholics to achieve elective office and use it, as in the case of Mario Cuomo, who Novak cites, to argue vehemently in the public space for public policy ethics guided by the sound, moral principles championed by the church and worst of all (3) that they do this when other options are clearly available to them, options that affirm democracy and Catholicism simultaneously; options such as non-violent resistance conducted by example, up to and including hunger strike.
No, still worse, they do so in a way that sets themselves up as moral champions without costing them anything personally.
The third problem reminds of the Platonic adage that the man who wishes to be king is the last person who should be. The man who least wants to be king is likely the most qualified. As princes of the church, bishops are called upon not first to be leaders or monarchs, but to be servants and examples.
Yet given what they obviously receive as a moral crisis of the highest order, their first and final impulses are of monarchical command and control, even to the disturbance of the democratic order and against the interest of the Catholic body politic whose interests their vocation is to champion.
Next time, Deal Hudson and the Republican "Catholic" strategy.
That unregistered Mexican transport trucks that fail American emissions standards can drive on American highways and pollute American air, this is a relatively minor objection (though it did make it to the Supreme Court).
That cheap goods may be imported to the U.S. from Mexico and Canada, potentially displacing American producers and workers, this too is a relatively minor objection, which on its own, has limited economic merit.
But that the size of the market for labor increased to include most of the northern American hemisphere, if you are an employer, while remaining constant, if you are a worker ... in other words on the basis of whether you buy or sell labor, this is the most fundamental moral and economic problem with NAFTA, setting it apart from (1) Adam Smith's prescription for free markets in the Wealth of Nations (2) our American tradition of free markets and (3) our American ethos of equality under the law.
This should have us inflamed.
If you need workers, hire them in Toronto. They did that when they filmed the movie, Chicago. Go figure.
But if you need a job, your American passport will do you no good outside the confines of American borders.
...that Bill Maher is a friggin' idiot?
I mean, who the Hell takes CHARLES RANGEL seriously????
I don't know about you, but I CAN'T WAIT for John Kerry to do his post-loss appearance on Saturday Night Live.
As I've revisited here and here, certain Catholic bishops have been angrily circulating the possibility that Kerry and other like-minded Catholic politicos may be denied communion by the erstwhile princes of the church on account of their stance on abortion.
Hmmm, Dan wonders: if these bishops, those princes of the church militant, are indeed convinced that abortion is the moral equivalent of murder and infanticide, then why do they pass the buck? Ought they instead to be providing moral leadership on this spiritual battlefield? In this unkind epoch of the church, most unkind as it is on the church's children and laypeople, it is hardly the time for bishops to give yet another reason to discount their moral authority.
But pass the buck they do ...
Threatening to withhold communion on this basis is arguably an impolitic imposition of the monarchical church into the affairs of a secular democracy. Not only is it an offense to non-Catholics, but it provides an argument for not voting for Catholic politicians, lest they be unduly counciled by a certain anti-democratic 3rd party with a foreign capital. The ultimate effect of this moral leadership vacuum and disengenuity, therefore, is harm to the Catholic body politic.
But there are potent ways these bishops can still make their point that are in no way an infringment of democratic society, no, they are more potent and they are an affirmation of democracy.
So much so, on both points, and such examples of leadership, that I am embarassed at having to publish them publicly.
First suggestion: hunger strike.
Certainly, if abortion is worth denying communion to John Kerry, then it is worth a hunger strike on the part of the interested bishops, no?
With all the challenges to faith that bishops have dished up in recent years, a few cases of inspiration by example would earn some much needed mileage.
Come-on princes, inspire the faithful like your forebearers did. No gladiator Lion Pits necessary, just publicly stop eating food and stay on message.
Dan wonders.
Andrew Sullivan has a very insightful post on how Prime Minister Blair is different from President Bush or Senator Kerry.
It's insightful, but he misses the obvious--he starts his post by saying
The NYT somewhat misrepresents Tony Blair's speech to his party conference yesterday, arguing in a headline that the prime minister had offered a partial apology for deposing Saddam. He didn't. He merely said that he took responsibility for the wrong information that led to the invasion. It was more eloquent and more candid than anything Bush has said. And precisely because it was so candid his defense of the war - now - is more persuasive.
And it is.
Note: it appears lost on some that what follows is satire.
A certain form of protectionism has been promoted successfully by ideologues by using complex arguments that conflate "free trade" with "free markets". By sustaining this as a complex, academic argument, out of the reach of ordinary voters, these ideologues have achieved success with their bait-and-switch methods that would not otherwise be possible.
The following post is to demonstrate that there is nothing esoteric requiring a Ph.D involved in understanding what is at stake when we engage in "free trade" without "free markets". Anyone, by comparing free trade to everyday commerce with which we are directly familiar, can come to understand how unreasonable a proposition free trade indeed is.
_________________________
You heard it here on InfiniteMonkeys first - due to the success of international free trade liberalization via efforts such as NAFTA, GATT and the WTO, senators and representatives in Congress have introduced a new bill to replace interstate free market commerce with free trade, which has proven to be such a success internationally.
After all, if we do it overseas, why not bring the success home!
You may not have known it, but until now, thanks to our American heritage of equality under the law, we have always enjoyed free markets as the basis of interstate and intra-state commerce.
What did our interstate free markets mean and how will that be any different if replaced with free trade?
I'm so glad you asked.
With interstate free markets, employers were allowed to fire workers in one state, hire them in another, and export goods back to the state where they fired the first workers.
Investors were allowed to pull investments out of one state and put them in another.
And, WORKERS were allowed to either (1) follow employers when employers left states or (2) fire their employers by quiting, (sometimes) moving and selling their services to new employers who treated workers better - often that meant leaving behind states, just like employers do.
In other words, if an employer in New York decided New York was too expensive, he could fire his New York workers, move operations to Alabama, then export goods back to New York. Of course, if he didn't pay the Alabamans a good share of the margin he made on the move, Alabamans were free to move to places where employers treat workers better, like New York.
This was two things: (1) it was Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" in action and (2) it created what economists call "equilibrium" - that is, equilibrium between the interests of all economic players, allowing everyone to prosper, even workers, who occupy the lowest rung of the economic totem pole.
It is all part of that beautiful economic dynamic where workers who manufacture goods or provide services can also afford that which they labor to make. That is a capitalist, free market dynamic, but it breaks down entirely when free markets are replaced with free trade.
BUT NO MORE!
We've learned from free trade that it is possible to keep workers in their place, financially and geographically, and pass far more profit margin on to employers and investors.
Economists used to describe the practice of locking one group out of a market in order to serve the interests of another as "protectionism", but we've learned that if we call it free trade, then foolish, poorly read and naive people will believe it is capitalism, the American Way and that Adam Smith was behind it (it isn't, it isn't and he wasn't).
So, with the passage of this new congressional bill, which Republican President George Bush is sure to sign, the following referrenda shall apply to all interstate commerce, causing it to conform to international free trade:
1. Employers will continue to be recognized their right to move between states, hiring and firing workers as they see fit
2. Investors will continue to be recognized their right to move their investments between states, investing and divesting in geographies as they see fit
3. Workers will no longer be recognized the right to move freely about states; their right to move between states shall be particularly restricted as it relates to seeking and entering employment - workers will only be allowed to seek employment in other states if they receive explicit permission from the INS, and the INS will keep a strict worker migration quota in place of no more than 100,000 interstate worker moves per year
Thanks to this new law, we can predict, based on sound economic principles, that employer and investor shares of profit margins will increase, worker shares (wages) will decrease, and quite a number of ghost towns will be created because localities do not always discover what free traders call "comparative advantage".
Ghost towns will pop up because besides "equilibrium" and the "Invisible Hand", free worker migration provides another benefit that workers lose once we replace their free markets with free trade - free worker migration hedges the economic bet in an uncertain economy that is rife with risk, providing an option of last resort to workers stuck at the bottom of the economic ladder: sometimes, in a competitive economy, moving is the only option.
Of course in the long run, under "free trade" growth will be stunted, it may even regress, for the same reasons protectionism stunts growth - restrictions on the freedoms of any economic players creates costly inefficiencies and unnatural distortions - distortions like high tech employers leaving the supertechnological, superinnovative U.S. to hire hoards of low-cost engineers in the 3rd world.
That is, 3rd world engineers who would rather sell their services in Seattle, New York and LA, simultaneously employing American home builders, home sellers, grocers, restauranteurs, tavern owners, retail shop owners and all the manner of workers necessary to keep those local enterprises thriving.
But long-term growth, human equity and equality, of course, are not things that tug strongly at the heart or mind strings of our elected leaders who continue to expand free trade no matter how much an affront it is to free market capitalism and the central American ethos of equality under the law.
For them, everything is well, so long as the right constituents get a first class slice of the economic pie.
Hi, it's late guy again, doing what late guy does-- blog about the minutia that fills his head. For example, Star Jones from the TV show "The View." I hate her. I'm so sick hearing about her wedding to Al. If i think I hear her talk just one more time about her freakin' weddding I'll puke. God she's annoying. Even more annoying than Oprah Winfrey-- and that's saying a lot.
By the way when did they start stocking Oprah audiences with women who recently escaped from mental wards? I've never seen women scream so much. it's like watching a bunch of Pentecosts speaking in tongues, jumping up and down, rolling about on the ground and lifting their skirts over their heads. I swear to god, that's actually happening, I don't know how the FCC lets Oprah get away that.
Just surfacing long enough to selfishly remind folks that I had made the Kerry / Oompa-Loompa connection back in July.
(The latest incarnation of the phenomenon is to be found in the Marshmallow Room and the Fudge Room.)
It just occured to me that the first verse of one of Mr. Wonka's songs (from the movie) seems to sum up Kerry's noted trait of decisiveness:
There's no earthly way of knowing
Which direction we are going.
There's no knowing where we're rowing
Or which way the river's flowing.
Is it raining?
Is it snowing?
Is a hurricane a blowing?
In an earlier Blog, I posited these two questions:
- Which candidate better reflects Catholic values, Kerry, a lifelong Catholic, or Bush, an elite child of east-coast mainline protestants who personally kicked the hooch later in life after "accepting Jesus Christ as personal lord and savior"?
- What are we to make of Republican and Bush administration, Karl Rov-ish "outreaches" to Catholics? - what do their methods and strategies tell us about these Republicans and what they must think of Catholics?
Appropo to these two questions, especially the second, Joseph Sobran, in a relevant missive, asserts this: "Kerry’s election would be a misfortune for faithful Catholics. Catholic laymen should tell him what they should have been telling every phony Catholic pol all these years: 'If you’re going to call yourself one of us, you’d better act like one of us.'"
An interesting charge, more and more common from the right, as it regards Catholics. The charge seems to make two assumptions:
1. There is a "Catholic" vote
2. That vote is obviously right-leaning, as if Catholicism obviously lends itself to right-of-center political thought
In fact, as the National Catholic Reporter points out, in the coming election, roughly 25 million of America's Catholics will vote. About 12.5 million will vote for Kerry, about 12.5 million will vote for Bush.
I'm reminded of an Elmo episode my 1-year old watches, where Elmo talks to himself, only in 3rd person, "Elmo wonders ..." he says.
Well, Dan wonders:
- What do Catholic voting statistics state, if anything but that there is no such thing as a "Catholic" vote? Or that the nation's 60 million Catholics form entirely too large a group to place into any ideological pidgeonhole?
- Who do these clowns think they are, to try and speak for millions of Catholics?
- How offensive are these electoral strategies, whether peddled by right or left, that characterize entire demographies as if they were one mind?
Just this morning on NPR I heard a pollster relating that with 53% of hispanics supporting Kerry, and 38% supporting Bush, "both" candidates should have "more support" from hispanics. By the pollster's tortured logic, Kerry, because that's obvious, and Bush, because earlier he had greater hispanic support.
What?
So all issues are settled if you are hispanic? All issues are settled if you are Catholic?
This racist and chauvanistic posture would be offensive enough by itself if the statistics didn't destroy it, but, but ...
Abortion - Not now, nor in 20, nor in 100 years, will this be made illegal, and if we were to turn into a theocratic military dictatorship in 2015 and ban abortion, it might reduce the number of abortions by 2/3rds, but it would simultaneously increase deaths due to botched illegal abortions 100-fold, and increase the misery of women in poverty and children born to poverty and underage mothers by an inverse-mastercard-"priceless" value that can't be measured.
So since that isn't going to happen and abortion is going to remain legal, to attempt to reduce abortion by way of making it illegal, is to sell a bill of goods.
George W. Bush knows this. Dubya knows this and he knows that to oppose abortion buys a feel-good vote, without costing him a thing.
Bill - O - goods.
Stem cell research - Dubya's position on stem cell research could at best be described as Bill Clinton's position on stem cell research. At worst, it could be described as confused.
Whatever it is, please don't conflate it with "the" "Catholic" position on stem cell research, whatever that is.
The environment - Bill Clinton wouldn't of allowed Kyoto to pass into law, and in doing so would have kept the agreement open for future concessions from other nations. Bill Clinton might have opened up ANWAR. But Bill Clinton would never have opened up ANWAR without a steep compromise from Republicans to tighten up fuel efficiency, automotive emissions and factory emissions standards. Bush will not succeed at opening up ANWAR, and he'll tighten emissions and efficiency requirements over Laura's dead body.
What's the "Catholic" position on the environment?
Poverty - reformation of welfare into the TANF programs has in many respects been a success, thank you Bill Clinton. That is, so long as one judges success by the number of families taken off of welfare roles and put into work. It is not clear, however, that the families moving out of welfare are able to break through the poverty barrier, working or not.
The statistical picture is a bit complicated, but looks something like this: the "middle middle" class is shrinking, growing more and more into the "upper middle" class. The "lower middle" class is also shrinking, and appears to be growing into both the "upper middle" and the "lower" class.
Translation:
Less people make 40-49K, and less people make 24-40K.
More people make 50-79K, and more people make <24K.
Left-wing interpretation - the middle class is shrinking, poverty is growing and the the upper class is getting ahead.
Right-wing interpretation - almost everyone's getting wealthier, some of the poor are getting poorer or else will never break out of abject poverty, not in this generation or the next. Why, again, does that bother you?
The right would have us turn a blind eye to the problem of poverty, pointing to statistics like these and the success of TANF in getting families off welfare.
We could turn the blind eye, but spend an afternoon in another part of town, one less blessed, just to remind yourself of how the "other half" lives. The experience may serve to remind that breaking out of poverty, with a family to raise, a vocational education and under $10/hour wages, is a feat approximating a natural miracle.
Kerry and Edwards argue that we, being such a rich society, rich as no previous society has been, owe something more to the working poor.
What's "the" "Catholic" position?
Immigration - no one even knows how many illegal immigrants from Central and South America there are in the U.S. Bush's solution: make them all "guest workers", whereby they will be allowed to work legally for 3 years, but then must return to their country of origin without the possibility of U.S. citizenship.
I keep wondering where the 14th amendment, and that inconvenient clause about "equal protection of the laws", is supposed to fit in.
One wonders how it is possible to have "guest workers" who are not simultaneously second-class citizens?
I'm not really sure what's "the" "Catholic" position is on that one, but I'd of thought that the American heritage position, the one founded on "all men are created equal", "equal protection of the laws" and near-universal immigrant ancestry, would have nothing of it.
Education - I don't even know where to start with that. Is there coherent posture on education that can be remotely described as "Catholic"? Someone help me. The joke possibilities on that one alone ...
Health care - 47 million Americans are uninsured. I will make reference to one Matthew Yglesias, who makes a compelling point on this: to argue, as Ramesh Ponnuru of the National Review Online does, that government should take a "hands off" approach to solving the health care crisis, is good, right-wing ideology.
But it also belies the fact that the right is simply not serious about health care.
Over 40% of medical expenditures are already made in the public sector. This to say nothing of the massive regime of health care law and regulations. The government IS in health care.
If Republicans were serious about their ideological positions on health care, they'd have some bills on the table to deregulate and divest the public interest. They don't, and they won't.
Meanwhile, we are amid a health care crisis, and millions of people live that crisis every day.
What is "the" "Catholic" position on what we should do for those people?
Okay okay okay, so let's try this one: the war in Iraq:
I for one do not know what the "Catholic" position happens to be on this now very complicated war, but the Vatican position on the war was quite clear: don't have one. An interesting conundrum, as Bush himself asserted shortly before hostilities began, "War is not inevitable."
Laying aside too the philosophical question of a "Just War", a Catholic might be reminded of Jesus's more earthy, practical admonition that before one mounts a campaign against an army of 20,000, one should count his army of 10,000. Iran is enflamed. North Korean is paranoid. Both are actively seeking nuclear WMDs. Taiwan's situation is as tenuous as ever. Our allies, even our most trusted allies, the British, have had their trust in American "leadership" utterly squandered as if their support were beyond the pale of dignity and respect and our military, by every measurement, is stretched thin to the breaking point.
Support for the Bush administration in Iraq, which is no longer occupied but a "host" country, is said to have been reduced to 5%. Fears exist that in the coming elections, if they occur, the Shiite vote will bring an intolerable, anti-liberal, anti-Western theocratic-mandate, the Sunnis will be left out because cities in the "Sunni Triangle" are safe for neither the provisional government nor coalition forces nor UN operatives who might proctor a fair election, and the Kurds, for their part, may secede.
With all this in mind, what was, what is, "the" "Catholic" position on the war in Iraq?
I have a theory. The Republican Party is atwitter with legions of evangelical Christians, a certain body of religious folk who, when their number is divided along racial lines, tend to vote alike, with white evangelicals voting Republican, and black evangelicals voting Democrat.
Driven as they are in their voting patterns by their religious animus, evangelical voters, pollsters and campaign strategists believe that other folks of religous stripes are similarly motivated to vote as one massive, borg-like, "we-do-what-we're-told" (thank you Peter Gabriel) automotan.
Hence, we have a spectacle among writers on the right that betrays an attitude that seems to say, "if only they could explain to those pesky Catholics that Catholics are supposed to think 'this' way, but dag-nab-it no one has told them so yet. Here, let me be the one!"
But reality is reality, and no matter how some may strategize to convince us otherwise, the earth still orbits the sun. And no matter now some strategize to convince us otherwise, there is no "Catholic" vote, Catholics think for themselves, and 25 million will prove this, again, on Nov. 2, by sending 1/2 their votes to Bush and the other 1/2 to Kerry. The Republican Catholic strategy is "a chasing after the wind".
In the hubbub over outsourcing, one of the hot points has been the movement of "call centers" overseas. These seem to be call centers for everything from your credit card to help desks for your computer to government benefits programs. The basic gist being that we close a call center in the U.S., open it in a place like India where lots of people speak English and are willing to work for $500/month or less, and we attribute to those people Anglo-sounding names to throw off unsuspecting American callers.
Laying aside the "equal protections" problem this would seem to raise under the 14th amendment, wherein employers evidently may go overseas and hire people anywhere, but the poor workers are limited to their own national markets for labor, what I really wonder about this new call center outsourcing phenomenon is why it isn't treated as illegal immigration under current law?
Here's what we have:
1. A worker
2. A non-US citizen who is also not authorized to work inside the borders of the U.S. - if he (or she) was so authorized, he wouldn't be settling for slave-wages in India
3. Said worker, neither U.S. citizen nor authorized worker, provides a service, for a fee, where the service is tendered inside U.S. borders
It would seem that the only thing that might justify this is that the worker does not happen to be located inside U.S. borders at the time that the service is provided.
At best, this appears to be a technicality. In all ways, this seems to have everything in common with illegal immigration.
Potential objection: what if you called a hotel in London to make a reservation? Isn't that the same?
Answer: No - the service is provided and transacted in the U.K. The same would be the case if you placed an order.
If it were me, I would grant green cards to every overseas call-center worker. Overseas outsourcing likely wouldn't make it very long if we really let Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" do its magic - which means removing all the barriers to commerce, not just the ones that inconvenience employers and investors - like worker freedom to move to better markets for labor.
But until then, I can't understand how the call center phenom has turned into the "thing" that it is. No law need be changed ... why isn't anyone litigating this?
Well, it looks like my prodding got some action. The RadioShark (discussed here and here) is finally shipping.
Now I have to decide if I'm going to go ahead and give them my new credit card info so they'll ship it to me at the original, lower, introductory price. If I do, I'll post a review.
Obviously, these folks believe that "1984" was some sort of government policy handbook.
It's fortunate that our government is so unquestionably benevolent. They would NEVER abuse their power to the detriment of the citizenry.
You hear it in whispers. You see it in secret nods of acknowledgement. Republicans one by one coming to the conclusion that George W. Bush is a lousy president. Oh, we'll put up a stiff upper lip. Talk the talk at those conservative cocktail parties pledging fealty to our man in house on 1600.
But come election day when you pull that lever, it'll be for Kerry.
"Sorry Georgie ol' chum," you'll say. "Sorry you have to be a one-termer like your pop. Thanks for the tax cut I really appreacted it. And I'm sorry you and your boys aren't going to get to follow on that whole Armeggeddon thig. But them's the breaks! Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out."
Yeah... oh, yeah....
I work on the sports desk of a daily newspaper. I'm the late guy. Ever wonder who updates the the agate type on page 83? or fixes the error on the crossword puzzle? The late guy. Me.
The late guy doesn't have a life. At least Monday though Wednesday. Though the late guy has been known to go to a certain strip club and get really, really drunk and get a few lap dances.
Okay, maybe more than a few lap dances. That's just because the late guy doesn't have a girlfriend right now, and well, the late guy gets lonely. And the late guy has this thing for women from Eastern Europe. Don't ask-- it's a long a convoluted story-- but a good one.
Anyhow, I'm the late guy, and there's lots of late guys like me all over America. Taking care of all the little things that you Non-Late Guy people take for granted. It's a lonely vigil, being a late guy, but we chose this life. Amen.
Someone forwarded this to me once, a work fellow actually. Some things are so funny that to comment on them would simply diminish, so that said, click here.
Today I am going to write about kittens, afterbirth and what that has to do with seeing ghosts. But first some background is required.
A couple years back my wife and I attended a class on Judaism. The basic method of the class was that from week to week we would attend classes at different synagogues, each synagogue representing various alignments of modern Jewish practice, including Reform, Conservative, "Traditional" - which I was lead to understand was Orthodox in all respects except for some allowances for co-ed worship, as well as Reconstructionist and non-aligned. The format was intended to give a broad sweep of exposure to the varieties of Jewish practice available today, as well as to emphasize the foundational unity of the faith.
Though not a point of this entry, it may be worth noting that the first day of class, at the Reform synagogue, the rabbi said something to this affect: Judaism is a faith, a way of life, a moral philosophy, an ethnic group deriving from an ancient mid-east tribe, a tribe which, he pointed out, exists and thrives today, unlike so many other tribes of 3500 years gone by, i.e.: the Hittites, the Philistines, the Canaanites and, for that matter, the Egyptians ... Judaism is many things, but, he said, whatever it is, it always has to do with God.
No one spelled out the connection, but to my mind it was a subtle apologetic plug, quickly tied into a certain mode of Jewish worship, which we also attended as part of the class. One is repeatedly reminded in Jewish liturgy that something "preserves" the Jews. It may be God, it may be the Sabbath, it may be the scriptures and the Law, it may be all of those things. But the Jews are with us today, a living, Semitic tribe over 3500 years old. Not something many others can claim.
I find that note interesting because one group left out of this introductory class was the self-described "Humanistic" sect of Judaism, which attempts to practice Judaism without fostering or affirming a belief in God. That group, evidently, was outside the boundaries of the "broad sweep".
But I'm not writing to talk about that today. What I really want to discuss is ghosts, how it is said that one may "see" them, and what that has to do with kittens and afterbirth.
It turns out that the first class we had at the Traditional synagogue was on the variety of Jewish scriptures. In my opinion, this was the most interesting course of the whole set. A brief primer:
Yes, Judaism holds in common with much of Christianity the "written" Law, what Judaism calls the Tanakh but what Christians are familiar with as the Old Testament. But much more than that forms the basis of Jewish anthropological, theological, cultural and philosophical thought.
First, the Tanakh begins with the first five books of Moses, the Torah, or what many Christians today call the Pentateuch. Christians and Jews are in general alignment to agree that the Torah was received by Moses from God. But, - if my memory serves me rightly - Judaism also holds that along with the Torah Moses received an "oral" Law, the Mishnah, which forms the first part of a larger body of work now described as the Talmud.
The Mishnah provides many details on technique of Jewish practice which, while commanded in the Torah, are not elaborated upon in detail. If, for example, the Temple were rebuilt today upon Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, no one would know how to perform any of the Temple rituals commanded in the Torah, were it not for the fact that they are spelled out in detail in the Mishnah.
Other examples may be techniques for the conduct of civil matters, such as marriage.
For generations the Mishnah and the Tanakh were studied exhaustively by rabbis. This formed a parallel conduit of oral tradition known as Gemara, which is rabbinic commentary on the Mishnah and Tanakh. Gemara is truly encyclopedic and voluminous. Roughly arround 400 A.D. (or C.E. as might be preferred), rabbis committed the Mishnah and Gemara to writing for fear that because of the diaspora of the Jews throughout the world, the knowledge was at risk of being lost. The combined Mishnah and Gemara are thus known as the Talmud.
Past this there is one other form of written Jewish scripture - and I use the word scripture here loosely because I do not claim to understand the relative level of authority attributed to these works in Judaism, but the other work is the Midrash. Though the Traditional rabbi was highly reluctant, under my repeated and direct questioning, to say so, I take the Midrash to essentially be the equivalent of what Christians would generally call "apocryphal" literature.
The difference would seem to be that in Judaism, this apocrypha seems to be held with something closer to the Catholic view than the Protestant view, which essentially dismisses aprocrypha out of hand. Catholics do attribute a good deal of authority to their apocryphal literature, what they describe as "deutero-canonical works". It seems that in Judaism, there is considerably more in the Midrash than in the Catholic canon.
The rabbi explained that Midrash provides something like "between the lines" detail on narratives that Torah and Tanakh tend to be quite brief in describing. For example, we know from the Torah that a man named Joseph was abandoned for dead by his brothers but eventually became a personal, trusted advisor to Pharoah and his advise helped save the people of and around Egypt from famine. In other words, just the facts. Midrash provides this additional detail: Joseph was a well-cut stud of man and was quite popular with the ladies. In a similar vein, we know from Torah that Sarah was Abraham's wife. Midrash clarifies: Sarah was Abraham's rocking, knock-out, babe of a wife.
At this point, nay, probably a while back, you were probably asking yourself, "what does any of this have to do with the title?" Well, I'm sorry to keep you waiting.
Earlier I mentioned how voluminous the Talmud is. The rabbi attempted to provide some sense of this by listing a spread of topics addressed in the Talmud, the point basically being, if it's a topic, the Talmud addresses it. I can't remember his list, but there was one topic I really fixated on: ghosts.
Ghosts, the rabbi said, exist, and the Talmud not only describes them, but it describes how one can prove to himself that they exist, or even, if one was so inclined, "see them".
This much the rabbi told us: the ghosts described in the Talmud are not necessarily so much the spirits of the dead, but just spirits of a kind, a kind the Talmud names the "shadim". If I recall rightly, the rabbi said that shadim are not necessarily hostile, but they are also quite far from friendly. Shadim do not like to be in the company of people, which is why they are drawn to inhabit places where people are not. Empty, abandoned homes and buildings are prime candidates for the inhabitance of shadim.
Also, shadim seem to fill a certain place in the cycle of things - the destructive place. Where ants and bacteria are the scavengers of the organic, shadim may be the scavengers of the inanimate. Shadim break things down. This is one reason why buildings that are not lived in tend to decay faster than buildings that are lived in. I found this claim very interesting, because while on the surface it is highly anecdotal, it is actually a scientifically testable hypothesis. But I digress.
He said it is unwise to go and be in the places where shadim inhabit, that the Talmud advises against this. People tend to be hurt in those places, not because of overt hostility from shadim that is, but simply because people tend to get in the way of the destructive business shadim are up to: i.e.: breaking down beams and dropping rocks.
The Talmud also says that cats can see shadim. This is why cats, unlike people, are quite safe prowling those places where shadim may be found. I might also be mistaken on this point, but it seems he said that cats may even chase shadim.
As an owner of a cat and as a fan of horror movies - specifically the kind of fan who is not at all frightened by monster movies - because we know there are no monsters, but one who suffers nightmares from ghost movies, - because, well ..., I found this interplay of cats and ghosts to be fascinating. Indeed, I will personally attest, I have many times watched my cat speed wildly about my apartment with the determination of a cheetah locked on its prey ... but when not so much as a flying bug was there to disturb her.
I've seen the cat hunt and I've chased the cat myself. I know what different kinds of running behaviors she has and sometimes she runs, she runs far (and even clumsily, as if too locked on a point of focus to pay any attention to a stool) and she pounces. But she does so, on nothing. Also, on the rare occasions when she goes about such psychotic behavior, it is always at night.
This one last detail for skeptics on the cat-behavior point: on at least one occasion I have witnessed, from the living room, my cat bolt headlong out of the bedroom, crash into the hallway wall darting for it, recover and speed clear across the hallway, negotiate the dual doorway to the living room and dining room, clear the dining-room table and cross the other room door to the living room, jump the ottoman, slide through the part-way opened door to the sun-room, jump up on a planter and pound her paws on the window, then stop. She was definitely not chasing a fly, and I don't recall any rodent jumping to its certain death out of our 4th story sun-room window.
So, back to the rabbi. The rabbi told us that for doubters, there is a way one can prove to oneself the existence of the shadim. He described the method thusly: go to a place shadim are likely to inhabit, i.e.: an abandoned building. Make yourself a bedding in that place and sleep there the night, but, in advance of going to sleep, spread ashes in a circle around your bedding. The shadim will leave footprints during the night, recognizable as similar to those of ducks, which you can observe during the day.
The rabbi went on to say that if this test were not satisfactory, then there is another way of seeing the shadim that is spelled out in the Talmud. He cautioned us, however, that the Talmud advises against using this test because there are, in fact, so very many shadim. A person using this test must be of soundest psychological character because either the sight or number of shadim (which of the two I don't recall) would be so upsetting that it would drive most mad.
Beyond this, the rabbi said that the technique of seeing shadim had to do with cats. He may have mentioned something about eyes too but past that, he would not give us any additional details.
I was possessed by this intriguing lesson for a long time, until a few months ago, running various search strings into the web, e.g.: "cats shadim", "talmud cats", etc, when finally I came upon a website that spells out the test. I take the website to be reliable simply because the coincidence is just so obscure, though I have no other reason for believing it so. That warning stated, the site is here.
I note that the website is a bit less ambiguous about the nature of shadim than the rabbi, describing them as "demons", clearly a more judgmental translation. But the site explains the test as follows:
"But if one would see the demons themselves, he must burn to ashes the after-birth of a first-born black kitten, the offspring of a firstborn black cat, and then put a little of the ashes into his eyes, and he will not fail to see them".
It also cautions, "'If our eye were permitted to see the malignant sprites that beset its, we could not rest on account of them.' Abaii has said, 'They out-number us, they surround us as the earthed-up soil on our garden-beds.' Rav Hunna says, 'Every one has a thousand at his left side and ten thousand at his right'".
Okay, on that, these points:
1. I explicitly recommend against anyone following through with this test or any test of this kind, nay, I condemn anyone who does so
2. If you are so inclined to do a test of this kind, you are a fool, not least of all because, as I already have written, we have no good reason to trust the website, so even if the Talmud is to be trusted here, the website is not
3. If you are a fool, and you do this because you read it on a blog site, well, first "J*sus Chr*st" and second, at very least make sure to notice that this is describing "the after-birth" that you must burn, NOT THE KITTEN.
That all said, this is one of the most perculiar, intriguing, fascinating things, at least in my low-IQ monkey judgment. I'm a big admirer of M. Night Shyamalan and would jump at any opportunity to sit down to lunch or for a beer with the fellow. While I have no way of contacting him, I think that this little tidbit would make fine fodder for another film of his trademark character. But more on Shyamalan for a later post.
As one must have guessed, I am far from a Talmud expert, but when I hear of things like this from the Talmud, and I've heard of others, what strikes me is how profoundedly occult it seems. Originating as it did in early Jewish history, I wonder how much of this constitutes cross-polination with other, early Semitic cultures and religions. Were I an archaeologist or anthropologist, I'd be tempted to explore possible connections between Talmudic literature and the thoughts and beliefs of other early mid-eastern tribes and peoples. That no such studies seem evident is quite surprising to me.
Reconnecting with the occult point for a minute though: there's a distinct, western, rationalist tradition that, I think, took root in western Christianity alongside of the Protestant reformation but which is actually quite foreign to the ancient Christian tradition. While never acknowledged by Catholicism, definite strains of it affect Catholic thinking as well, despite the fact that the Vatican has at times been at pains to condemn the rationalist infection.
But the rationalist tendency in our culture is strong and we tend to forget that Catholicism is a pre-Renaissance faith and unlike so much of westernized Protestantism, Catholicism does not shrink away from the occult, but, treats the occult as real and as a reality to be contended with. Every Catholic baptism, for example, is accompanied by a "minor exorcism". While, I believe, this is a strength of Catholicism (and would be even if the occult were not real), this can also be a weakness as it makes Catholicism both the victim and focus of any number of Hollywood religious media-massacres.
So while the rationalist, western part of me is put off by the apparent occultism of this evident Talmudic text, the Catholic part of me, the part that appreciates Catholicism explicitly because of its refusal to be co-opted by western cultural thought-trends, finds it quite compelling, even if the rationalist in me comes back and theorizes that it may have been co-opted from the Egyptian book-of-the-dead, or some such.
Anyway, please, don't go burning kitten after-birth and if you do you are a stupid fool not worthy of a monkey poop pie, you are not welcome in my home or hometown and I shall think nasty thoughts of you the next time my stomach is taken of too much gin and I am given to vomit and that is giving you too much credit.
Otherwise, for everyone else, next time I address matters of faith I'll stay away from such bloody affairs and keep it to M. Night Shyamalan and his recurrent themes of faith, hope and love, "and the greatest of these ...".
We are rapidly approaching the point where people will stop bothering to ask WHO is going to win the election. The question now is increasingly "Is this going to be a Nixon landslide or a Reagan landslide?"
It's also time for principled conservatives to stop worrying about winning the election (that's a done deal) and start thinking about how to best use your vote. Do you vote for King George just to rub Kerry's nose in it, or do you vote for a principled third-party candidate in order to remind the Republicans that you still remember what you believe in, and you're not going to sit for spending-run-amok and shameless vote-whoring much longer.
I believe I've mentioned where my vote is going.
Robb just e-mailed to ask me "So how does that Radio Shark work for you? Any regrets?" He's refering to the tivo-like device for radio from Griffin Technology.
I have to say I only have one regret: that I trusted those idiots over at Griffin. As you can see if you follow the link, you can "Pre-order now - shipping soon!"
So I did.
Last May. No, that's not right. What I mean is May 2003.
I didn't cancel the order because they raised the price during the wait, but every so often I'd e-mail Griffin to ask how things were going. They blamed Apple, and kept saying things like it was "in production," but they were finalizing the software. Apple has released many software updates since then, including at least two major releases.
So I've given up. I've decided to try this solution from the extraordinarily well-edited Macworld magazine. I'll let you know how it turns out.
The only delay now is selecting a good radio with a headphone out jack. If anyone has any recommendations, let me know. One that also has an alarm that can be set to different stations would be great too, but let's face it--I'm mainly going to record Hugh's show, and I may do that from the Internet feed.
Catholicism provides a perculiar nexus in this presidential election cycle that seems to open a Pandora's box on a whole host of issues:
- Should Kerry be denied communion by Catholic bishops due to his stance on abortion?
- What, in civil, democratic terms, would such a denial mean and if (heaven forbid!) Kerry accedded to it and altered his politics in order to receive communion (so far he has not been officially denied communion), what would that say about the role the church seems to be asserting for itself in democratic governance?
- Is it time for the church to rethink its historic role as a player in governance?
- Are there more appropriate, effective ways for bishops to express and fight for the concerns of the church militant than via sacramental censure of practicing catholics who happen to be elected leaders in democratic societies - that is leaders elected by the secular populace on secular merits, not exclusively by Catholics, not for Cathlic spiritual purposes and certainly not exclusively elected by elite Catholic bishops?
- Is abortion a legitimate litmus test on the part of Catholic voters whose faith significantly influences their vote?
The last question itself opens what almost seems like an onion of a Pandora's box worth of questions that lead to all manner of uncharted political waters, try these:
If abortion is not a legitimate litmus test for Catholic voters -
- Which candidate better reflects Catholic values, Kerry, a lifelong Catholic, or Bush, an elite child of east-coast mainline protestants who personally kicked the hooch later in life after "accepting Jesus Christ as personal lord and savior"?
- What are we to make of Republican and Bush administration, Karl Rov-ish "outreaches" to Catholics? - what do their methods and strategies tell us about these Republicans and what they must think of Catholics?
- Is it possible that the pro-life cause may be made distinct from the pro-life movement? - Is seeking to ban abortion the best way to reduce or stop it? - Is a ban on abortion even remotely possible? How many fetuses will be aborted as the decades pass while attempts at an abortion ban continue to fail? How many fetuses may reach birth in the same time if we exercised our political leverage with Democrats to work realistically within the law to reduce abortion, rather than with Republicans, to work unrealistically on a Quixotic quest to overturn or undermine Roe v. Wade?
- With minds released from the "pro-life/pro-choice" polarized dichotomy that serves only the interests of NARAL and the right-most wing of the Republican Party, might it be that Kerry and the Democratic Party are the best hope to make real headway advancing values that are important to all Catholics, not least of all preventing abortions? - Absent the current narrow reading on abortion and "pro-life", what does the Bush administration offer that ought to be of appeal to Catholics whose vote is influenced by their faith?
If I was going to send my daughters to school (don't worry, I'm not), I would love to be able to tell my friends a story like this one.
On April 7, 2002, Tenzin Delek Rinpoche and three other monks were seized from their monastery and charged with "inciting separatism". Though the Chinese government has produced no credible evidence for its charges against Tenzin Delek, in spite of demands from the U.S. and other governments to do so, it appears poised to proceed with his execution after a two-year "suspension". Another man charged in connection with Tenzin Delek's crime, Lobsang Dhondup, was executed Jan 26, 2003, hours after a Chinese court rejected their appeal.
U.S. Senate Resolution 365 calls for an immediate release of Tenzin Delek Rinpoche. Please consider sending an email to your senator now to encourage them to support this resolution.
Additional information on Tenzin Delek's case is available from the International Campaign for Tibet. Considerable pressure may be brought to bear to help save Tenzin Delek by asking the candidates to take advantage of mass publicity available during the election to call worldwide attention to his impending execution.
Do so by contacting the Kerry campaign and ask that John Kerry publically call on the Chinese government to respect Senate Resolution 365 and release Tenzin Delek.
Big thanks to Robb and the rest of the Monkeys for inviting me on to write in the esteemed company of hairy, armpit scratching, banana eaters. May I rise to be a flee-inflicted peer.
And, sorry for the delay on the first entry. Since Robb honored me with the introduction yesterday, I have: (1) had my flight home cancelled (2) had to book an extra day in the hotel (3) closed final details on the house we are buying tomorrow, over phone and fax (4) flown home at the most ungodly hour of the morning (5) experienced and angrily protested property damage to my car by my soon not-to-be landlord and (6) continued negotiations on a text book deal with an editor.
Betwixt all the above, I have been troubled by a few things which may be of interest to monkeys, ranging from guns and culture to Kerry, voting your faith and the Catholic church; from certain problems of the soul, particularly its ability to be lost and sold, to bureaucratic particularities of Patriot Act and its insipient watch lists.
But since I was explicitly invited to this forum to address t
