Mood Music (Tuesday)

Words Fail Me

I give you, the Snuggie Sutra.

H/T: Daily Dish

(I'll do a 'Mood Music Tuesday' tomorrow when everyone goes back to work.)

Unfortunate Update

I hate it when I can see something like this coming:

I'm glad that a story of a (presumably) squeaky-clean white baptist minister is out to bring light to abusive officers--if we assume it's true. (There is no confirmation on the story I can find yet) I just hope he's got no terrible skeletons in his closet (e.g., militia organizations/fringe Minutemen, racist, etc.) because, if he does, the officers' lawyers will eat him for lunch--in spite of what appears to be a detailed and legitimate complaint.

Because our friend Rev. Stephen Anderson is back in the news...(::smacks forehead::)

Pastor Steven Anderson has used his position at Faithful World Baptist Church, in Tempe, Arizona to bring just a little more hate into the world. Pastor Anderson is praying for the death of President Obama and an eternity in hell.

“Nope. I’m not gonna pray for his good. I’m going to pray that he dies and goes to hell. When I go to bed tonight, that’s what I’m going to pray. And you say, ‘Are you just saying that?’ No. When I go to bed tonight, Steven L. Anderson is going to pray for Barack Obama to die and go to hell.”

Reminds me of this classic from the Onion:

We're not all "Jesus Freaks" who run around screaming about how everyone should "Judge not lest ye be judged," whine "Blessed are the meek" all the time, or drone on and on about how we're all equal in the eyes of God! Some of us are just trying to be good, honest folks who believe the unbaptized will roam the Earth for ages without the comfort of God's love when Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior returns on Judgment Day to whisk the righteous off to heaven.

I am not insane. I am not racist. I do not hate the president. I am not a conspiracy theorist. I do not think Obama is the devil incarnate. I do not speak in a language that makes it sound as if "government" is just another word for "evil cabal hell-bent on taking away the god-given birthrights of affluent and middle-class white Americans." But, unfortunately, so many of the people who grab headlines with legitimate accusations of state overreactions and outright intrusions upon liberties indeed fit one or more of these descriptions.

Think about it this way: what if everything you believed was most popularly represented by screaming Code Pink yahoos (I've seen them up-close and personal...scary folks.) They are anti-war, among other things, but not everyone anti-war is like this. But, of course, libertarians are anti-'security state', inasmuch as it intrudes upon our constitutional rights.( N.B. This is not to say I am anti security of the state. Big difference.) But it seems the only people standing up to the injustice of overzealous cops and invasive and illegal searches are criminals, half-wits, and/or crazy bastards. And, of those who grab headlines, they tend to be white, middle class, with a touch of Southern 'States Rights' animosity that is thinly veiled, if veiled at all, racism. (I tend to refer to myself as a Federalist.)

To paraphrase William F. Buckley, speaking about Sen. Joseph McCarthy who led the infamous committees to uncover communists in the government--which, incidentally, had indeed infiltrated high levels of the U.S. government--"just because he's crazy, doesn't mean he's wrong." So too are embarrassments to liberty like Rev. Anderson.

But, alas, many mock our position on this, and health care, and anything else that has been shouted loudly by less-than-informed people on half-assed assumptions by good ol' boys and religious nuts and militia members and...well, the list goes on.

You'll notice that at the American Prospect, they're even mocking those of us who still believe the Constitution is the law of the land by comparing us to Orly Taitz and the "Birthers" by calling us "Tenthers"--we, so naive to support the anachronistic 10th Amendment to the Constitution. What crazy fucks we must be for taking the Constitution at face value.

*I am not accusing Anderson of racism, by the way. He may be, he may not be. It's irrelevant to my overall point because if it's not him, it's someone else.

Mood Music Monday

Nanny State Strikes Again

Of all the things in New York City the government should be worried about, having a cup of coffee--yes, just coffee--with a cigar is an offense that could allow the city to shut down a business that has been operating for nearly a century:

Vince Nastri III, the third-generation owner of Barclay Rex -- where bankers, City Hall staffers, lawyers and detectives smoke while sitting in plush leather chairs or browsing in the walk-in humidor -- complained that the city is "trying to take away my livelihood over a cop[sic] of coffee."

Health officials had no problem with all the cigars his customers were puffing on -- a handful of businesses, including Nastri's, are exempt from Mayor Bloomberg's anti-smoking laws -- but decided a $9,000 coffee machine was grounds for closing the place down.

"We didn't survive in business for 99 years by breaking laws. But this is just petty," said Nastri, whose shop's past customers have included Frank Sinatra, James Cagney and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

You may finally sleep soundly, New Yorkers, knowing that the coffee machine is gone and the streets of New York are safe again thanks to Michael Bloomberg's nannytopian policies.

How to Treat Kennedy's Death

My friend Elizabeth Nolan Brown had this to say about the way the American chattering and political classes are handling Ted Kennedy's death:

Maybe I’m just being falsely nostalgic, like when I wish ladies still wore hats and pretty stockings even though I can hardly be bothered to comb my hair and apply mascara on a daily basis; maybe it’s just, as the[LA Times] article goes on to point out, the “more elemental … difference between knowing someone as an individual rather than a political caricature” … but maybe it really is a sad, sad [indictment] of our current political culture and the kind of respect and diplomacy that’s been lost …

I found myself vacillating on how to treat Teddy in death because of my contempt for him while he was alive. Save one rather nasty tweet I wrote while somewhat intoxicated--that I subsequently deleted--I have been quite reserved in my public criticisms. The respect and diplomacy of which ENB writes I think is--like nearly any 'good ol' days'--indeed a 'false nostalgia' for things that never really were. But, nevertheless, I decided to hold my contempt for Teddy at bay, for the most part.

Most of my venom, instead, has been directed at the glowing obituaries that mention his most tragic act as nothing more than a political misstep for him--likening the death of a young woman to Gary Hart's pictures that cost him the nomination in 1984. That, I think, has been the most reckless part of this Kennedy media overdose.

But as this two-decade old profile in GQ illustrates, the man of the people wasn't really one of the people. Like the aristocratic politicians that counted plebes as their patrons in ancient Rome, the Kennedys' modern day Julio-Claudian mythology belies their personal, decadent, self-involved natures. The legendary personal "foibles"--as many are wont to use so-milquetoast of term--of the lot of the Kennedy men were stunts of such depraved indifference to other people that only those immune to laws of government and the judgment of society could survive politically. Yet, they are widely held to be "America's Royal Family," known for their empathy toward the downtrodden and helpless that could never approach them in their personal lives, lest they be molested on a restaurant table or hit in the face with a flying drink.

Obits like this one, penned by another friend of mine, J.P. Freire (who is, by the way, an unapologetic conservative), project a fragile humanity onto the man that,--while J.P.'s article was moving to read--I don't think was really there. Matt Yglesias, a proud "progressive", responding to some "right-of-center" rebukes this week for being confounded by modern politicians' motivations, wrote:

The formal model of the self-interested legislator is very easy to understand. What I’m saying is hard to understand is the actual psychology of this kind of behavior. I think I now have a much better grasp than I once did of what’s going on inside the heads of people who have ideological beliefs I disagree with. But I find it very difficult to extend my powers of moral imagination to the kind of people who hold high political office in the United States.

...

Instead, we’re fated to be ruled by the sort of people who are really desperate to cling to power. But it still strikes me as a very odd mentality.

If prostitution is the oldest profession, then man maneuvering to rule/control his fellow man is a close second. (Of course, the line between the two is hardly clear.) Governing politics embodies ideas so old and basic they've made it into the religious canon, and suffice it to say one doesn't need a degree in psychology to figure them out. What I want to know is how, after we have known how corrupting power is for--quite literally--thousands of years, intelligent people, especially those of us who live and work near the locus of political power, could ever be so naive as to happily grant the governing authority more power over our money and individual liberty, whatever the politicians use for their stated motivation.

Some may state that comparing today's politicians to Rome is not fair, given the great societal changes of the past two millenia. But I ask, has human nature changed in that time? Have the Seven Deadly Sins been erased from the human heart? And more concretely, have these things changed since the days of Mark Twain?H.L. Mencken? Sinclair Lewis? Will Rogers? Woodward & Bernstein? How politicians grab and cling to power is far less mystifying to me than someone as intelligent as Yglesias looking at the bloated bureaucracy of government, the dog-eat-dog fights that we call "election cycles," the cloakroom logrolling deals "to get things done"and then attempt to rationalize and assign any moral commitment to the people whose ability to lie to your face is a career necessity. (And while a perhaps noble gesture on J.P.'s part, I also have a hard time imagining the quiet torture of life as Ted Kennedy, especially after reading and hearing this).

I'd like to think that Yglesias's overall point is what he said it was in the follow-up post: that he just can't get into the mind of a politician. However, it still seems to me that there is a dramatic cognitive dissonance between what he--and, extending it further to most well-meaning "progressives"-- feels politically and what he painfully admits to knowing about politicians when he writes sentences like this about the departed senior senator from Massachusetts (who indeed was excellent on trucking and airline deregulation in the 1970s):

The moral of the story isn’t that “regulation is bad” but that progressive politics at its best isn’t about bigger government but about attacking privilege and power.

Thus, to his way of thinking, one must give more privilege and power to the privileged and powerful to take away privilege and power from others, who happened to be the government who you gave the privilege and power to in the first place. Like the man it praises, this aim of Matt's sentence is undercut by the means to achieve its stated goal.

In the end, Ted Kennedy was a deeply flawed man, of flawed moral and political character. He was bred for power, he attained it through legacy, and he used it to ends that suited him, for good and ill. With more Bushes, Clintons, and Kennedys still on the political horizon, I don't think we've seen the last of the political dynasties. But I sincerely hope that we have seen the end of the likes of Ted Kennedy.

Edward M. Kennedy, R.I.P.

Funding Something Does Not Make It Viable

For those who believe the government needs to "invest" in green technologies, let's see what bipartisan consensus in this area has yielded so far:

The biofuels revolution that promised to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil is fizzling out.

Two-thirds of U.S. biodiesel production capacity now sits unused, reports the National Biodiesel Board. Biodiesel, a crucial part of government efforts to develop alternative fuels for trucks and factories, has been hit hard by the recession and falling oil prices.

The global credit crisis, a glut of capacity, lower oil prices and delayed government rules changes on fuel mixes are threatening the viability of two of the three main biofuel sectors -- biodiesel and next-generation fuels derived from feedstocks other than food. Ethanol, the largest biofuel sector, is also in financial trouble, although longstanding government support will likely protect it.

Earlier this year, GreenHunter Energy Inc., operator of the nation's largest biodiesel refinery, stopped production and in June said it may have to sell its Houston plant, only a year after politicians presided over its opening. Dozens of other new biodiesel plants, which make a diesel substitute from vegetable oils and animal fats, have stopped operating because biodiesel production is no longer economical.

Basically, it's been a disaster. So, what's the solution? More government funding, duh:

Critics of the biofuels boom say government support helped create the mess in the first place. In 2007, biofuels including ethanol received $3.25 billion in subsidies and support -- more than nuclear, solar or any other energy source, according to the Energy Information Administration. With new stimulus funding, this figure is expected to jump. New Energy Finance Ltd., an alternative-energy research firm, estimates that blending mandates alone would provide over $33 billion in tax credits to the biofuels industry from 2009 through 2013.

Not all biofuels may be worth the investment because they divert land from food crops, are expensive to produce and may be eclipsed by the electric car. One fact cited against biofuels: If the entire U.S. supply of vegetable oils and animal fats were diverted to make biodiesel, production still would amount to at most 7% of U.S. diesel demand.

Producers and investors now are pushing for swift and aggressive government help. Biodiesel makers are lobbying to kick-start the delayed blending mandates immediately and extend biodiesel tax credits, which expire in December.

The organization (i.e., government) that routinely compounds bad investments by 'infusing' more 'investment' is trying to take over more and more of our economy. And, now officially in the OED under the term chutzpah, people with straight faces are still using the term "fiscal responsibility" when talking about this administration's economic plans.

H/T Jonathan Adler