Drinking Liberally Idaho Falls Chapter Blog

RIP PPACA?

This Thursday will be a big night for discussion.  I refer, of course, to the pending SCOTUS decision on the PPACA, which is supposed to be released earlier in the day.

Here are some points that you can use when news is released, no matter which way the SCOTUS rules:

• First, the individual mandate is about the only unpopular aspect of the PPACA.  Americans, including the Republicans, like the other main provisions.
• Second, the individual mandate is the GOP’s contribution to the bill.  The mandate was popularized by a conservative think tank, the Heritage Institute, back in the early 90s.
• Third, the GOP has perpetrated a great, hypocritical fraud on America, by manufacturing opposition to their own idea
• Fourth, it appears that Antonin Scalia is going bonkers
• Finally, the GOP health care plan is indeed to let people die in the streets

No matter what the decision is, we should not let the conservatives and Republicans forget what the facts are.

Soup Kitchen this Sunday!  Hollis and I are out of town, as are a few other regulars.  If you have not attended in the past, we’d be happy to see you there.

Great news!  We’ve been discussing going down to SLC to see the Saturday’s Voyeur 2012 show.  It turns out that the SLC Drinking Liberally group has planned a trip on August 24th, and has invited us along.  Plus, they’ve wrangled a $15 discount.

The show is a parody of life in Utah, and is an annual fundraising production for the Salt Lake Acting Company.  There is also a pre-party with the SLC Drinking Liberally folks.

For tickets, call the box office at (801) 363-7522.  Just let them know you’re with Drinking Liberally to get the discount.  Tables will be reserved for the DL group.  Seating is limited, though.

“What’ya know?”

“Not much.  You?”

If that exchange means something to you, you’ll be excited to hear that Michael Feldman is bringing What’Ya Know? to Pocatello for a live show.  KISU is promoting the show heavily, which is being held in the Stephens Performing Arts Center on Friday, July 27th.  Should be great!

Cheers,
Dan

Here are a few things that happened on this day (i.e., the day of our next Drinking Liberally meeting) that might serve to motivate you to attend.

Today is the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in 1969.  Three cheers for revolution!

Also, today marks an interesting coincidence:  it is the anniversary of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria (in 1914), as well as the signing of the Treaty of Versailles (in 1919), which events mark the both the beginning and the end of World War I.  [To be fair, the date of the treaty signing could have been picked purposefully to mark the 5th anniversary of the start of the war.  I couldn’t find a definitive statement on that, despite spending as much time as it was worth (i.e., about 10 seconds).]

Finally, the US handed sovereign power of Iraq back to the Iraqis on this day in … 2004!  (Bet you didn’t realize that happened just about a year after we invaded.)

“[One Party Is Unhinged] … Or, rather, it is living in an alternative reality.  63 percent of Republicans in a new poll believe that Saddam Hussein had WMDs when we invaded in 2003, despite even George W. Bush’s acknowledgment that he didn’t.  64 percent also believe that Barack Obama was born in a foreign country, even though we have the long-form birth certificate from Hawaii.  This alternate reality is sustained by a 24 hour propaganda network, and hermetically sealed off from any external intervention.

“We are reaching a democratic crisis of some sorts.  One major political party refuses to accept empirical truths.  It has become a hall of ideological mirrors.”
– Andrew Sullivan, conservative commentator

“The United States has never been witness to a presidential candidate, in modern American history, who lies as frequently, as flagrantly and as brazenly as Mitt Romney.”
– Michael Cohen

Second Fortune

Between what is and what is not
we walked, the Huntress loosed a shot.

Before and after, we were there –
the arrow pierced but singing air.

That, my love, was quite an art,
to be together and apart

yet we, transparent, without fear –
what were we but singing air?

Link to calendar

Contest!

I’ve only gotten one official submission for the contest I introduced last week, and that was from Debu.  So far, the contest is between me, Debu, Justin Krebs, and JFK.  Bring your personal definition of liberal (and/or conservative) this week, and we’ll vote for the winner.

We also have the opportunity to join both the Fourth of July parade and a week-long celebration of the Fourth on the greenbelt.  Tom has both a parade permit and a permit for the area of the greenbelt at the corner of Riverside and Memorial (that runs from Thursday, June 28th through Thursday, July 5th).

For the parade, we’ll have to devote some time to decorating the float.  It will mostly have a 99% theme, which fits nicely with this year’s parade theme.

For the Greenbelt permit, Tom envisions having games and activities for kids, with a light-hearted approach for the grown-ups.  There will be no General Assembly meetings, and no mic checks.  He wants to return the movement to what made it fun and positive in the first place.  I’m thinking that we might want to try renting the dunk tank for the week.  Should we revive the Dunk-a-Liberal fundraiser?

Come join us this Thursday night for the contest, and let’s discuss ideas for the Fourth.

Cheers,
Dan

Here are a few things that happened on this day (i.e., the day of our next Drinking Liberally meeting) that might serve to motivate you to attend.

In 1964, three civil rights workers – Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Mickey Schwerner – were murdered by the KKK in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

“In what sense were we richer three or four years ago, when the exact same housing stock sold for up to twice as much?  In what sense are we poorer now?”
– Michael Kinsley

“This discovery – that you can tell almost any lie without paying a price – is, in some sense, an example of national politics becoming a lot more like local politics.  Blatant lying has always been routine in local races that don’t get a lot of press coverage, but the brighter media spotlight kept at least a bit of a lid on it in higher profile races.  However, with the splintering of the mainstream national media in recent years and the rise of the web and social media, national politics is local again.  And being called on your lies by the occasional earnest fact checker now matters about as much as it does when a local columnist for a weekly newspaper calls you on it.”
– Kevin Drum, explaining why Romney is getting away with so many lies

My Moses

Big Jack and his walking stick
live on the ridge.  Navajo
orphan kids dance for him,
bobcat urine’s in the weeds,
the shotgun barrel’s up his sleeve,
a Persian coin is on the wind.
The Chinese Mountains smell the moon
and arch their backs.  I tell him, Jack,
there’s times I wish I was living in
canvas France, the old west,
a picture book, the Sea of
Tranquility, or even in
the den near the hot spring.
He says, kid, to hell with

phantom limbs; spring is a verb,
a wish is a wash, a walking stick
is a gottdam wing.

Link to calendar

Contest!

I was goofing around thinking of definitions a couple of weeks ago while writing the meeting notice.  Here’s what I came up with:

Conservatism

Avaricious policies designed to benefit the advantaged, but pretending to provide long-term benefits to all

Liberalism

Compassionate policies designed to help the disadvantaged, with the added benefit of long-term improvement for all

Then I thought of the definition given by DL’s founder:

Of course, we have JFK’s definitional comment:

That gave me the notion that we should have a contest to come up with the best definitions of liberal and conservative (one winner in each category).  The contest is now open for the next week, and we’ll vote on the submissions a week from tomorrow.  You can email your submission, or bring it in.  Just make it personal and original.  I’ll provide an insubstantial, mostly token prize for the winning entries.

Join us this Thursday night at D’railed – we’ll be out on the back patio hashing out our definitions if it’s warm enough.

Cheers,
Dan

Here are a few things that happened on this day (i.e., the day of our next Drinking Liberally meeting) that might serve to motivate you to attend.

In 1947, something crashed in Roswell.  George Babbage invented the computer in 1822.  And bourbon was invented by American clergyman the Rev Elijah Craig.  Can I get an Amen?

“He wants another stimulus, he wants to hire more government workers.  He says we need more fireman, more policeman, more teachers.  Did he not get the message of Wisconsin?  The American people did.  It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.”
– Mitt Romney, on President Obama

Link to calendar

Short and Sweet

I'm really under the weather, and my new work schedule is kicking my butt, so this notice will be unusually short and sweet.

We are having a regular DL meeting this Thursday, although I may not be able to make it.

I had a call from Nicole Lefavour, and I told her that we would look at finding a private home for a potential fundraiser.  Any volunteers?  I will be getting a call from her staff on Friday to let them know if we can arrange something.  We should do it in a way that allows Nicole to attend a regular DL event on Thursday evening (perhaps a temporary change of location one night).

That’s one item for discussion at this week’s meeting.

Also, we will be having our annual Loving Day Celebration next Tuesday evening at the pavillion by the Key Bank parking lot.  Please make plans to join us that evening.  Bring a dish to share, and enjoy the drinks and burgers that will be provided.

Join us this Thursday night at D’railed – we’ll be out on the back patio if it’s warm enough.

Cheers,
Dan

Here are a few things that happened on this day (i.e., the day of our next Drinking Liberally meeting) that might serve to motivate you to attend.

This time it’s personal:  let’s toast to Debu’s recovery, and to Lyn’s family following the unexpected passing of her father.

Link to calendar

Best Interest

Voting against your own best interests is a phrase that we use to describe the baffling fact that nearly half of Americans vote for the modern GOP and for regressive conservative policies.  But I’ve never

liked the phrase, for some reason.  It seems overly simplistic and unhelpful (in a way very much related to this subject).  But President Obama’s quote at right kind of crystalizes why the phrase is inadequate.

We liberals don’t vote our own best interest.  We vote for everyone else’s best interest.  I would vote in favor of affirmative action policies that would definitely NOT benefit me.  I would vote to increase taxes on my own tax bracket (and those in brackets above mine) just to lower taxes in the lower tax brackets.  I’ll vote for school bonds long after my kids are out of public schools.  I would vote against other issues that would directly benefit me at the expense of other groups (like privatizing Social Security or instituting a flat tax).  I think most of you would do the same.

In fact, we liberals want society to move into a more just and civil direction – whether or not such changes benefit us directly and immediately.  Our own interests are secondary in our political decision-making.

Now, you might interpret best interest to mean that we should take the long-term view.  That we should vote for environmental regulations – even though they might hurt us directly in the short term through higher costs and loss of jobs – because in the long term it is in our best interest.  Maybe that’s how liberals are really voting for their own best interests.  If we redefine "best interest" to mean that we do what’s right for our society in the long run because that’s a real benefit to us individually, then you can argue that liberals do always vote in our own best interest.

However, that act of redefinition blows a hole in the original argument.  The original point was that conservatives vote against their own best interests.  But the redefinition would allow the conservatives to argue that they are voting in their own best interests – it’s just that you have to take that same long-term view.  So claiming that they vote against their best interest loses its power completely.  You can’t say that liberals get to take the long-term view but conservatives don’t.

No … the phrase voting against their own best interests really has to be limited to the direct, immediate sense or it ceases to be a meaningful complaint about conservative voting habits.

Therefore, if conservatives are voting against their own best interests, then so are we.  Of course, I’d much rather be on our side:  voting against our own best interests in order to help those who need it.  That’s much better than voting against our own best interests in order to help the wealthy and powerful.

Join us this week at D’railed and defend your own best interests.

Cheers,
Dan

Fifty years of government spending in one graph.

Here are a few things that happened on this day (i.e., the day of our next Drinking Liberally meeting) that might serve to motivate you to attend.

We should toast Dr George Tiller.  Also, on this day in 1927, the 15,007,003^rd (and last) Model T Ford rolled off the assembly line.

“Relentless.  Boring.  But, like any pestilence, (think nematodes in a potato field …) likely to get worse if no one works to inhibit its progress.  What irks me is that I won’t get to see how historians a quarter-century from now explain them.”
– Betty Benthin, our finest local pundit describing the extremist right-wingers on PostTalk

“Do we believe, even for a second, that if Obama had been busted for marijuana – under the laws that he condones – would his life have been better?  If Obama had been caught with the marijuana that he says he uses, and ‘maybe a little blow’… if he had been busted under his laws, he would have done hard fucking time.  And if he had done time in prison, time in federal prison, time for his ‘weed’ and ‘a little blow,’ he would not be President of the United States of America.  He would not have gone to his fancy-ass college, he would not have sold books that sold millions and millions of copies and made millions and millions of dollars, he would not have a beautiful, smart wife, he would not have a great job.  He would have been in fucking prison, and it’s not a goddamn joke.  People who smoke marijuana must be set free.  It is insane to lock people up.”
– Penn Jillette

“It was a tough few months at the beginning.  I remember in those early weeks receiving from a friend a copy of the Teddy Roosevelt quote about ‘the man in the arena.’  You may know the quote.  It starts like this.  ‘It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by sweat and blood …’  I thought that was a thoughtful gesture from this friend, and then, well, about 10 more people sent me the same quote, and I thought, well … this can’t be good.”
– Timothy Geitner

My Mother

My mother writes from Trenton,
a comedian to the bone
but underneath serious
and all heart.  “Honey,” she says,
“be a mensch and Mary too,
its no good, to worry, you
are doing the best you can
your Dad and everyone
thinks you turned out very well
as long as you pay your bills
nobody can say a word
you can tell them, to drop dead
so save a dollar it can’t
hurt – remember Frank you went
to highschool with? he still lives
with his wife’s mother, his wife
works while he writes his books and
did he ever sell a one
the four kids run around naked
36, and he’s never had,
you’ll forgive my expression
even a pot to piss in
or a window to throw it,
such a smart boy he couldn’t
read the footprints on the wall
honey you think you know all
the answers you dont, please, try
to put some money away
believe me it wouldn’t hurt
artist schmartist life’s too short
for that kind of, forgive me,
horseshit, I know what you want
better than you, all that counts
is to make a good living
and the best of everything,
as Sholem Aleichem said,
he was a great writer did
you ever read his books dear,
you should make what he makes a year
anyway he says some place
Poverty is no disgrace
but its no honor either
that’s what I say,
                     love,
                            Mother”

Link to calendar

Local Journalism Standards

Recently, Frank VanderSloot has been in the national news, although you wouldn’t learn about it from the Post Register (except for one sycophantic guest opinion column by Mike Adams from back in February).  VanderSloot was the subject of a comprehensive exposé in Salon magazine about his practice of using the legal tools at his disposal to silence his critics (which was the event that prompted Mike Adams’s defensive column).  Rachel Maddow of MSNBC covered the original story, and followed up with an interview with Peter Zuckerman, the former Post Register reporter who came into VanderSloot’s crosshairs because of his excessive gayness.  Maddow recently followed up with those charges, and with VanderSloot’s despicable response.

[VanderSloot has posted answers to some criticisms here.  At that site he also proudly features a defense of him written by none other than Roger Plothow, editor of the Post Register.]

Over the last few weeks, VanderSloot has appeared on Fox News about 4 times, all to accuse the President of launching a personal attack on a private citizen.’Which would make sense if VanderSloot were just a private citizen and not a million-dollar donor to Romney’s PAC, and the finance co-chair of the Romney presidential campaign.  Fox News has even suggested our President is a terrorist for having initiated this assault on VanderSloot.

But the Post Register has ignored the situation completely.  Think about it:  the pre-eminent local businessman in the Post Register’s service area is at the center of a national political dust-up that he claims has damaged his business over a period of months, and which involves charges of terrorism against our President, and the Post Register doesn’t see fit to even mention the affair.

As Hollis reminded me, the Idaho Statesman thinks the story is important enough to cover.

Strange.  But maybe not so strange, given that the Post accepts lots of advertizing money from VanderSloot – even printing a despicable, vindictive, homophobic ad that had the purpose of smearing its own award-winning reporter.

I guess some people are more privileged than others.

I have written a letter to the editor outlining this issue.  It should appear sometime early next week.  Perhaps some of you might want to comment on this or related issues.  Maybe a satirical defense of VanderSloot against the vicious assault from the Kenyan terrorist would work.

Join us this Thursday evening and let’s discuss plans.

Cheers,
Dan

Here are a few things that happened on this day (i.e., the day of our next Drinking Liberally meeting) that might serve to motivate you to attend.

In 1961, the Freedom Riders were arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, for “disturbing the peace” after disembarking from their bus.

In 1856, the abolitionist John Brown and several followers killed 5 pro-slavery opponents in the Pottawatomie Creek massacre.

In 1844, the first telegraph signal is sent from Washington, DC, to Baltimore, Maryland.

“Scour Romney’s record for a single example of real political courage – a single, solitary instance, however small, where Romney placed principle or substance above his own short-term political interests.  Let me know if you find one…

“Romney has shown no such conviction, no such courage and no such strength.  His campaign has been an exercise in feeble appeasement.  The only thing he appears to be dedicated to is abasing himself to the hard-right wing of the Republican Party.  Consider the way he allowed a foreign-policy spokesman to be drummed out of the campaign simply for being gay.”
– Gerald Rafshoon, press secretary to President Carter

“My responsibility is to make judgments about hard, complex issues that I believe to be right.  Simply looking at the status quo and suggesting that the tax code is sacrosanct and can never change, and that decisions made in the ’80s and ’90s can never change, is absurd.  The tax code is weighted toward the ultra-wealthy and ultra-wealthy corporations, and has created an offshore aristocracy of people who can afford to hire an army of accountants and lawyers.  This shifts the tax burden to small businesses, entrepreneurs, and others.  I don’t want to see taxes go up on any hardworking American.  We need a simpler, fairer tax code”
– Jeff Fortenberry (R–NE), explaining his refusal to sign Gorver Norquist’s anti-tax pledge

“As I watched my Facebook and Twitter feeds last night, the reaction among my friends fell into an imperfect but highly predictable pattern.  Christians over 40 were celebrating.  Christians under 40 were mourning.  Reading through the comments, the same thought kept returning to my mind as occurred to me when I first saw that Billy Graham ad:  You’re losing us.

“I’ve said it a million times, and I’ll say it again …(though I’m starting to think that no one is listening):  My generation is tired of the culture wars.

“We are tired of fighting, tired of vain efforts to advance the Kingdom through politics and power, tired of drawing lines in the sand, tired of being known for what we are against, not what we are for.

“And when it comes to homosexuality, we no longer think in the black-and-white categories of the generations before ours.  We know too many wonderful people from the LGBT community to consider homosexuality a mere ‘issue.’  These are people, and they are our friends.  When they tell us that something hurts them, we listen.”
– Anonymous commenter, following the North Carolina marriage amendment vote

“I actually feel kind of bad for those Americans Elect goobers.  It’s not their fault that Americans don’t actually want an independent moderate unity presidential ticket.  (It is their fault that they spent $10 zillion pushing the idea.)  But there is really no excuse for the bizarre belief that anyone wants Joe Lieberman to be president.”
– Alex Pareene

“Sushi is the gay marriage of food.”
– Jonathan Haidt

“I’m not familiar precisely with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said whatever it was.”
– Mitt Romney

Grammar

Maxine, back from a weekend with her boyfriend,
smiles like a big cat and says
that she’s a conjugated verb.
She’s been doing the direct object
with a second person pronoun named Phil,
and when she walks into the room,
everybody turns:

some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious,
and the bees, if they were here, would buzz
suspiciously around her hair, looking
for the door in her corona.
We’re all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy,

we’ve all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap

Link to calendar

Crossing Over

I am now a Republican.  Seriously.  I asked for the GOP ballot today at my polling location, and voted for my choices in the Republican primary races.

I figured that Nicole didn’t really need my help against that person nobody knows who was running against her.  And it looked like filling out the rest of the Democratic ballot would entail either having no choice at all, or picking the sole candidate.  It just didn’t look like very much fun.

So I got to vote for Greg Crockett.  And against Mike Simpson, who has pissed me off lately.  Yes … I voted for the insane Chick Heileson – which I would not have done if he’d had a shot at beating Simpson (I’m not crazy).  I just hope that I have done my part to skew the Idaho Republican Party’s voting data.

I didn’t have to sign anything, or pledge allegiance to Ronald Reagan, or stomp on a woman’s uterus – it was pretty easy.  But I’m not really sure what all the ramifications are.  I know a few people who have done it and were planning to do it this time and didn’t seem worried.  Maybe I’ll just start getting the GOP bulk mail.  I guess that will cost them a little tax-payer subsidized postage!  Win-win!

And I never would have thought of doing it if the extremists in the GOP had not decided to close their primary process … claiming that Democrats and liberals were messing with their nominations.  Serves them right.

Did any of you bother to vote?  Did any of you vote on the Republican side?  What’s your thoughts on that tactic?

The Trujillo/Lechelt race in legislative district 33A is still too close to call as I send this out.  Lechelt leads by 4 votes out of nearly 1800 counted (16 of 21 precincts reporting).  I wish I’d been able to vote in that race.

Cheers,
Dan

Just a matter of time:  support for marriage equality.

Here are a few things that happened on this day (i.e., the day of our next Drinking Liberally meeting) that might serve to motivate you to attend.

Two noteworthy events occurred on this day in history.  In 1954, the US Supreme Court handed down the Brown v Board of Education ruling.  And in 2004, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage.

“While it’s great to listen to your kids’ ideas, there’s also a time when dads simply need to be dads.  In this case, it would’ve been helpful for him to explain to Malia and Sasha that while her friends parents are no doubt lovely people, that’s not a reason to change thousands of years of thinking about marriage.  Or that – as great as her friends may be – we know that in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home.  Ideally, fathers help shape their kids’ worldview.”
– Bristol Palin, who is still unmarried, I think

“The ultimate task for the people is to remain vigilant and aware ~ that the government, their government is out of control, and this moment, this opportunity, must not be forsaken, must not escape us, for we shall not have any coarse but armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November ~ This Republic cannot survive for 4 more years underneath this political socialist ideologue.”
– Republican Committee of Greene County, Virginia

“We had a wonderful night, and we were surrounded by true friends.  I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.”
– Tiffany Wright, sophomore, speaking of the alternate prom held in her Catholic high school’s parking lot

Grammar

Maxine, back from a weekend with her boyfriend,
smiles like a big cat and says
that she’s a conjugated verb.
She’s been doing the direct object
with a second person pronoun named Phil,
and when she walks into the room,
everybody turns:

some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious,
and the bees, if they were here, would buzz
suspiciously around her hair, looking
for the door in her corona.
We’re all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy,

we’ve all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap

Link to calendar

Bon Voyage to Jim and Rosie

Come wish Jim & Rosie a bon voyage as they embark upon a new adventure in their lives.  Let them know just how terribly they will be missed, but do it in a happy way.

Drinks, hamburgers, and place settings will be provided.  Bring something to share if you like.  Also, bring something to sit upon.

Cheers,
Dan

GOP Trust

Remember:  This week we’ll be officially meeting at the Edwards Cinemas (aka Grand Teton Stadium 14) for the This American Life Live 2012 show.  I suppose that if Ira Glass, David Sedaris, Mike Birbiglia, Tig Notaro, and OK Go are not up your alley, then D’railed would love to have you visit for an informal DL get together.

Also note that the OK Go performance will be interactive.  You need to download the This American Life & OK Go app.

The front page of the Post Register today (Tuesday) is about how extremist conservatives are forcing RINOs out of the Idaho GOP.  Two articles by Zack Kyle paint a picture that would have raised a collective “DUH!” from every one of us in DL six years ago.  But it is good to see attention being paid to the phenomenon.  Note that both articles are behind the Post Register’s paywall, so you can only see them if you have a subscription.

No ‘RINOs’ allowed
by Zack Kyle

[…]

A trend of trying to out-conservative fellow Republicans has become fashionable, political scientist David Adler said.

“You see it reflected in efforts to ostracize moderate Republicans as being insufficiently Republican, those characterized as ‘RINOS,’” Adler said.  “It’s a function to impose a litmus test, to say you aren’t a real Republican.” …

Upon being elected the chairman of the Bonneville County Republican Central Committee in 2010, Don Shanz said:  “You have elected, for the first time I can remember, a constitutionally principled conservative … The politics of compromise, of political correctness, of popularity, we’ve tried that as Republicans and I don’t think that will work.” …

Is there room for moderates in Idaho?
by Zack Kyle

[…]

Do moderates have a place in eastern Idaho politics?  And what is a moderate, anyway? …

“Moderates embrace compromise as the engine of democracy and really reject ideological purity and rigidity,” [David] Adler said.  “Those characteristics do very little to further solutions.”

[Tim] Urling calls himself a libertarian and constitutional Republican.  He said moderates “corrode” the Republican Party.

“I’m a Republican for what it used to stand for:  limited government, private property, things like that,” Urling said.  “Moderates, I don’t have a lot of use for them, but there sure are plenty in the Republican Party.” …

It seems that the extremists don’t trust anybody to the left of them – even long-standing Republicans.  But it also seems that there is a growing distrust of the GOP in the country (we’ll see if that is reflected in Idaho, or if we’ll only wake up ten years after everyone else).

There is a similar situation going on in the atheist world.  The Secular Coalition for America, the major umbrella organization representing atheists, humanists, freethinkers, agnostics, and other non-theistic people, has just named a new Executive Director:  Edwina Rogers.  The concern that many atheists have is that Ms Rogers is a Republican, and former George Bush administration official.

The SCA is a bipartisan organization, so in a sane world, the naming of a Republican to the post should not have caused a stir.  In fact, having a Republican lobbyist head the organization could arguably provide new contacts and influence for the SCA (assuming Ms Rogers does a good job in the post).

But it did raise alarms.  Many observers were immediately put off by her party affiliation, and called her appointment “unorthodox.”  Being rational and skeptical people, though, most were willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, until she actually earned some disapproval.  [It has not helped that in several inteviews, Ms Rogers has been very defensive (and seemingly dishonest) about the GOP and its positions on issues like abortion, contraception, and the separation of church and state.]

I find it fascinating and enjoyable that just being a Republican these days can earn someone a lot of unwanted baggage.  And the recent publicity problems of Rush Limbaugh and ALEC are heartening, as well.  Let’s hope that many more organizations and businesses begin to recognize that fact.

Cheers,
Dan

The illustrated history of you being screwed by people like Mitt Romney

Here are a few things that happened on this day (i.e., the day of our next Drinking Liberally meeting) that might serve to motivate you to attend.

In 1994, Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa, 14 years before America accomplished that feat (although he was kind of a terrorist)

In 1924, J. Edgar Hoover became the Director of the FBI (a position he held until he died in 1972 – an incredible 48 years)

And today's birthday celebrants include Mark David Chapman, John Wilkes Booth, and Rick Santorum.

“And I believe I understand now what Barack Obama is about.  And it is intentional, it is not ineptitude on his part, it is intentional and his mission in life is to punish the United States for being a racist country.  That’s what drives him, it’s what animates him, it’s what energizes every single thing he does; to punish this country, to cut it down to size, to wound it, to hurt it, to damage it, to diminish it in order to punish the United States for being a racist country …

“To Barack Obama, the entire United States of America is one big, giant Ku Klux Klan and the Constitution, for Barack Obama, is the membership charter for this giant Ku Klux Klan … And I honestly believe that this is how Barack Obama sees the United States of America; one big, giant Ku Klux Klan meeting and it’s his job to punish the Ku Klux Klan, which is the United States of America in his worldview.”
– Bryan Fischer former Idaho bigot

“I dont miss driving around scared to hit mexicans walkin on the side of the street, soft ass wanna be thugs messin with peoples cars when they aint around (what are you provin, that you can dent a car when no ones watchin) dont make you a man in my book.  Workin 96 hours to get a decent pay check, gettin knifes pulled on you by every mexican you run into!”
– George Zimmerman

“The media portrayal of George as a racist could not be further from the truth”
– George Zimmerman’s father

Who owns the land?

Who owns the land?
We buy rent sell.
drive prices up up up
until they tumble and crash.
What becomes
of the mansions houses slums,
our varied homes?
What becomes
of the urns graves mausoleums,
our varied homes?
They are overtaken by the trees the plants the mice the bugs.
We fight them our whole lives,
try to establish order.
They were here before.
They will be after.
In one thousand years or two,
we’ll be some archaeologist’s excavation,
a lost civilization.
In one million,
nothing

It is all sand.
It is water in the hand.
No one owns the land.

Link to calendar

Bad Simile

You can always tell when I’ve been either uninspired or had a very busy week.  You get a notice with some content that I copied wholesale from somewhere else.  But in this case, it’s even worse because I featured this same stuff four years ago and barely remember it.

I borrowed this list from here with some trimming (although it’s reprinted all over the place).  Apparently these were entries into a bad simile contest that was sponsored by the Washington Post.  Enjoy.

So this is like dredging clichés from the bottom of the barrel – only a barrel that was dredged pretty heavily once before.

• Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
• He was as tall as a 6’3” tree.
• Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
• From the attic came an unearthly howl.  The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
• John and Mary had never met.  They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
• She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
• The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
• He was as lame as a duck.  Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame.  Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
• Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
• She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
• The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.
• McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
• His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
• Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
• The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
• Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
• The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
• He felt like he was being hunted down like a dog, in a place that hunts dogs, I suppose.
• She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
• The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil.  But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
• The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
• “Oh, Jason, take me!” she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.
• It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
• Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like “Second Tall Man.”
• The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.
• The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.
• She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.
• Her pants fit her like a glove, well, maybe more like a mitten, actually.
• Fishing is like waiting for something that does not happen very often.
• They were as good friends as the people on “Friends.”
• Oooo, he smells bad, she thought, as bad as Calvin Klein’s Obsession would smell if it were called Enema and was made from spoiled Spamburgers instead of natural floral fragrances.
• The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D‐Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R‐Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.
• He was as bald as one of the Three Stooges, either Curly or Larry, you know, the one who goes woo woo woo.
• The sardines were packed as tight as the coach section of a 747.
• Her eyes were shining like two marbles that someone dropped in mucus and then held up to catch the light.
• The baseball player stepped out of the box and spit like a fountain statue of a Greek god that scratches itself a lot and spits brown, rusty tobacco water and refuses to sign autographs for all the little Greek kids unless they pay him lots of drachmas.
• I felt a nameless dread.  Well, there probably is a long German name for it, like Geschpooklichkeit or something, but I don’t speak German.  Anyway, it’s a dread that nobody knows the name for, like those little square plastic gizmos that close your bread bags.  I don’t know the name for those either.
• She was as unhappy as when someone puts your cake out in the rain, and all the sweet green icing flows down and then you lose the recipe, and on top of that you can’t sing worth a damn.
• Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.
• It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.

Some of those were so funny that I made one of those snort-laughs that sounds like someone trying to suck ketchup up his nose through a straw.

Come share your contribution this Thursday.

Cheers,
Dan

At this point, austerity is a bad idea.  We can take care of the national debt later, after the economy has recovered.  That’s when it is easier to do.  But recovery is nearly impossible if you’re focused on debt reduction.

Here are a few things that happened on this day (i.e., the day of our next Drinking Liberally meeting) that might serve to motivate you to attend.

In a rebuke to both racists and liberatarians, the SCOTUS rules in Shelley v Kraemer (1948) that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities are legally unenforceable.

Also, in 1915, John McCrae wrote In Flanders Fields (see below).

Finally, it is the birthday of both Sen Jim Risch, Gov Butch Otter, and the evil David Koch.  Coincidence?

“Medical examiners in Los Angeles are investigating the possible poisoning death of one of their own officials who may have worked on the case of Andrew Breitbart, the conservative firebrand who died March 1, the same day Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced probable cause for forgery in President Obama’s birth certificate.”
– Joe Kovacs, writing the perfect wingnut paragraph (and he’s serious)

“Jimmy Carter is a graduate of the U.S.  Naval Academy who spent ten years in the uniformed service of his country.  As far as I can tell, this is ten years more than the cumulative service of all members of the Romney clan.  Obviously you don’t have to be a veteran to have judgments about military policy or criticisms of others’ views.  But when it comes to casual slurs about someone else’s strength or resolve, you want to be careful, as a guy on the sidelines, sounding this way about people who have served.”
– James Fallows, blasting Mitt Romney for smearing President Carter

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
        Between the crosses, row on row,
    That mark our place; and in the sky
    The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
    Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
            In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
    The torch; be yours to hold it high.
    If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
            In Flanders fields.

Link to calendar