That's Just the Way I Was Raised

I’m going to say this once again: “Because that’s just the way I was raised” may be a chosen (and unthinking) reason for why you do something or act a certain way, but it’s not an excuse. You are capable of acting whatever way or doing whatever you want. If you believe, for example, that marriage should only be allowed between men and women “because that’s just how I was raised”, you are using a platitude as a substitute for any real reasoning. Being ‘raised’ a certain way should not be some kind of trump card, but sadly people often use it that way and accept it from others. If I was raised to believe it’s OK to shoplift, does that make it acceptable for me to do so? No. I am perfectly capable of not shoplifting if I determine I was raised incorrectly.

Be Afraid, Always Afraid

I've been thinking this for some time:

Under the circumstances, investing additional resources in defending airplanes is unlikely to be a cost effective investment. It’s also worth underscoring the fact that flying in an airplane is much safer than driving. Insofar as stepped-up security makes flying both more expensive and more annoying, and therefore pushes more people to drive long distances, we’re going to cost lives rather than save them. And at the end of the day, you have to understand that terrorists are not going to weaken America by killing us all a hundred at a time with bombs. They do much more to weaken America by induces us to waste money and strangle our economy.

...even if airplanes were completely secure you could always kill people by detonating a bomb in some other crowded place. For example, you could blow something up in a crowded airport security line

No shit, people. Come out from under the beds. I know doing this will make the news channel sensationalists and political fear-mongers cry but, really, get a grip.

Underwear

When I first heard about the so-called "Undie-Bomber" this weekend, I knew there was something familiar with the concept. Looking back in my archives, I discovered why:

My only other comment about flying is the total stupidity of making so many of use take off our shoes. Gimme a break. One guy has explosive shoes and we all forever have to take off our shoes? I can’t remember where I read this but someone pointed out that we all should be grateful the shoe-bomber wasn’t wearing explosive underwear instead.

That was from April of 2006. I now look forward to putting my briefs (not boxers!) in the security tray along with my shoes and belt.

Schock Thinks Torture is a Good Idea

In a cable news debate, area reps Aaron Schock “The Monkey” and Phil Hare talk about bringing Gitmo detainees to Illinois. In the process, Schock, the sniveling, fear-mongering coward that he is, endorses torture as U.S. policy. What a disgrace. Surely there is some despotic third world country he could better represent.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Starting Points

There are a million points of contention between people who support general healthcare reform and those who don’t. But the one I find most interesting is the starting point of most of the pro and con arguments.

Those, like myself, who support sweeping healthcare reforms start from the position that there are lots of people who do not have access to affordable healthcare and the goal is to make it available to them, to everyone. It’s about people first and money second.

Those who oppose HCR, start from the position that any reform must not cost anything. There can be no tax increases, no loss in profits to the pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies or medical providers. Reform, if any, must come without disturbing the monetary status quo. In other words, it’s money first and people second.

This second position really frustrates me because this really is a matter of saying “I’ve got mine, go fuck yourself” to those who don’t have access to proper healthcare. Additionally, there is simply no way to get this healthcare to the people who need it without messing with the financial tradition of the medical-industrial complex as it exists now.

Meaningful reform will have to take away some profit in some sectors to be affordable. While I’d be all for a Ponies For Everyone proposal where everyone could become rich off of healthcare and everyone could get healthcare, that’s not going to happen and we need to prioritize. I happen to want to put people before money as a starting point.

I’ll Take Afghanistan for One Million

I know this is incredibly simplistic math but if we are sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan at a cost of $30 billion, that means each troop sent there is costing us a million dollars. And, of course, each troop only sees an infinitesimally small fraction of that cash while he or she is the one being shot at.

Left Out

Atrios, commenting on Sarah Palin’s political star status:

…imagine if John Kerry had put Dennis Kucinich on the Veep ticket [in 2004] and then lost. Kucinich would have increased stature in the Democratic party, and probably be quite popular with "the base," but the press would mostly ignore him other than to occasionally sneer. I'm not equating Palin and Kucinich, just trying to imagine who might occupy a similar space on the left.

It goes beyond Palin. The right seems to come up with these functionally illiterate political celebrities on a regular basis. Think Joe the Plumber or Carrie Prejean. I suppose one could conclude there is a conspiracy among the liberal media elites (you know, any media that isn’t Fox News or talk radio) to turn these goofballs into celebrities to make the right look bad. However, that doesn’t really work since the rightwing media and the right itself (up to and including Republican presidential candidates) regularly embraces and promotes these people as serious political players.

And since every fair-minded person knows that things are exactly equal on the left and right (they always are), I’d like to know where the left’s idiot political celbs are? Where’s the lefty Joe the Plumber? It just doesn’t happen.

Time to Just Give Up?

I really think this country is headed toward anarchy. With more and more people becoming detached from reality and believing almost anything they want to, there can’t even be the basis for foundational consensus. Add to this the growing belief that government is inherently bad in-and-of itself (i.e. not because it is increasingly becoming a tool of corporations and other monied interests), I see no other future.

Stupidity Celebrated

Oh it just keeps getting better.

Most of the Republican candidates for Illinois governor flatly reject the idea that human activity contributes to global warming, a position that contradicts the overwhelming consensus among climate scientists.

Five of the seven Republican candidates claim rising temperatures have nothing to do with pollution from cars, factories or power plants.

Honestly, I don’t know how much difference this lunacy makes since global climate change really needs to be addressed on a national and global scale. Still, this is just making it easier and easier to not take these guys seriously on anything. If you are this intellectually bankrupt, I don’t want you anywhere near the levers of power.

Holy Wars

What Cenk says:

Predictably, after the Ft. Hood shooting some idiot conservatives are suggesting that we do some sort of loyalty exam for Muslim-Americans before allowing them into the US military. Who is "we"? Who gets to do this exam? What, presumably more American people like whites or Christians?

Why don't Muslim Americans decide which Christians get to enter the US military? Oh, does that sound offensive? Does it sound weird? Why should it sound any different than Christians getting to decide which other Americans they will allow into the US military?

A lot of people are rightfully making the point that you can not generalize about millions of Muslims in this country based on two guys. Just as you cannot generalize about all right-leaning white Christians (let alone all Christians in their entirety) based on what domestic terrorists like Tim McVeigh did, or Terry Nichols, or Eric Rudolph, or Scott Roeder or ...

But there is a more important point here. Muslims Americans don't have to prove a damn thing to you. They are Americans just like anyone else, whether right-wing clowns like it or not. They are not 80% American. They are not 90% as American as you are. You don't get to judge how American they are.

Here is the inalterable fact that the right-wing of this country has to get used to - Muslim-Americans are 100% American. There are no degrees of how American you are. They have the same exact rights, privileges and responsibilities as any other American does. They don't have to answer to you.

This “debate” was all too predictable. Bigots are always ready to quickly generalize when an incident occurs that reinforces their bigotry. I knew this was coming as soon as the details behind the Ft. Hood incident were released. I suppose the best thing to do is let the bigots have their freak-out and a month (if not sooner) from now life will just go on, tragedies and all.

I’m Already Able To Endorse the Dem

Especially in light of the Blagojevich debacle, I’ve promised to keep an open mind on deciding on who to support for Illinois Governor next year. But I can already tell you that I can’t vote for any of these guys. That didn’t take long. What a bunch of idiots. Just, WOW.

Bad Ad

Richard Roeper wonders what I wonder:

If you watched any football over the weekend, you probably saw a certain commercial for DirecTV once. Or twice.

Or 20 times.

For the last three years, DirecTV has been enlisting the services of actors who re-create a famous role in a familiar scene from a movie, before breaking character and telling us about the benefits of getting DirecTV.

I can't deny the effectiveness of the ads. There's something jarring and conversation-starting about seeing the still-beautiful but 50ish Christie Brinkley reprising "The Girl in the Ferrari" from "National Lampoon's Vacation," Charlie Sheen back in uniform as the Wild Thing from the "Major League" movies, or Naomi Watts (!) doing the "King Kong" thing again.

It was a little unsettling to see Craig T. Nelson as the father from "Poltergeist," interacting with his daughter Carol Anne, given that Heather O'Rourke, the actress who played the little girl, died at 13.

But the latest DirecTV ad -- the one that aired again and again over the weekend -- is even creepier.

In the spot, David Spade is playing Richard Hayden from 1995's "Tommy Boy." Thanks to seamless technology, Spade seems to be in the room with Chris Farley's Thomas Callahan III, who's doing his "Fat Guy in a Little Coat" bit.

As Farley spins around and does the routine, Spade looks at the camera and says, "Great. I'm here with tons of fun when I could be at home watching DirecTV . . . but no, I'm stuck with either cable, or that."

Farley rips the little coat, and Spade chuckles and says, "Never gets old."

It's been nearly 12 years since Chris Farley was found dead in an apartment in the John Hancock Building. Spade was Farley's close friend, but he opted not to attend the funeral. He was quoted as saying he couldn't "be in a room where Farley was in a
box."

Now, though, Spade has put himself in a virtual room with the ghost of Farley.

Obviously, permissions had to be granted and rights obtained for a commercial like this to happen. And this certainly isn't the first time the image or video of a deceased celebrity has been incorporated into a commercial. Remember the late John Wayne for Coors? Fred Astaire dancing with a Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner?

I guess it gets people talking. But I'm just wondering if there's anyone who ISN'T put off by the Spade/Farley spot.

I was actually kind of shocked at the ad. It does seem tasteless for all the reasons Roeper mentions. Additionally, what was gained? While I was/am a Farley fan, particularly of his SNL work but less so of his movies, I still found the reference sort of obscure. Does even 10% of the audience get what’s going on, even a little? DirecTV and David Spade both showed really bad taste in doing this commercial.

What intrigues me about things like this is how it gets from concept, to production, to air without anyone pulling the plug. Before the 30 second spot was over, I knew it was bad. What happened during the months (or longer) of development that prevented anyone from getting how tasteless and obscure the project was? I just don’t understand how that happens.

Post-Racism Racism

This is last week’s news, but I was fascinated by the story about the justice of the peace in Louisiana, Keith Bardwell, who refused to marry an interracial couple and then declared:

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

Yikes. Short of lynching someone, I’m not sure how much more racist you can get. But this guy is convinced he’s not racist. I encounter stuff like this routinely. People with racist attitudes have convinced themselves that they can’t possibly be racist. I think it goes something like this: Racism is bad. I’m good. Therefore I can’t be a racist.

I’m glad being racist carries a social stigma, but I’m afraid that’s just leading to an absurd level of denial (see Mr. Bardwell). Many of these same people are also convinced that we live in a post-racist society where only the white man can’t get a break due to “political correctness” or “affirmative action” or Jesse Jackson or ACORN or whatever. Ironically, their own feelings of victimhood in a country where your best shot at almost anything is helped by being a white male are actually a kind of racism.

Being a racist does not require you to be a member of the KKK or advocate a return to slavery. No, it comes in many shades and some more subtle than others.

Just Say Boobs

This blog is getting (relatively) heavy traffic today because if you search Google Images for “Meghan McCain boobs”, the fourth pic listed is the photo I used in this post. The post was about Meghan’s fondness for Rep. Aaron Schock (the Monkey) and had nothing to do with the current interest in McCain’s chest. As far as I know, the woman in the picture with Schock is not Meghan McCain. However, I used the word “boobs” in the post and Google made the connection. And why are people searching for Meghan's boobs? Here's why.

Anyway, just for fun, here’s the picture again!

Fact Checking Parody

This may be the single best take down of cable news I’ve ever seen. And as a bonus, it’s funny!

I spend most of my workday lunches in front of the TV flipping between cable news channels. I’m just trying to get me a little information! Mostly I’m frustrated and disappointed. That’s why I wind up spending time with C-SPAN, local cable access and the channel guide.

Update: This related bit from Matthew Yglesias who just got back from Europe.

I wasn’t unplugged by any means over the past three weeks. I kept blogging and kept reading blogs. I read the newspapers and I even watched the news on television. But what I watched was CNN International and BBC World News. There’s a world of difference between those networks and even the relatively staid domestic version of CNN. And at the office they had the sound on for Fox News. Bill Hemmer & co. were spinning half-truths, deceptions, and outright falsehoods at a staggering rate. Meanwhile you could see frenetic action on MSNBC and CNN and if I felt like really making myself dizzy could even follow the action on closed caption.

It makes you think about the strange influence that daytime cable news has on American politics. The three networks combined have an aggregate daytime audience of roughly zero. But even though the audience, looked at nationally, amounts to rounding error the networks are hugely popular among the tiny number of people who work in professional politics. Just like traders have CNBC and Bloomberg on in their offices, political operatives are constantly tuned in to what’s happening on cable news. The result is a really bizarre hothouse scenario in which people are basically watching . . . well . . . nothing, but they’re riveted to it. How things “play” on cable news is considered fairly important even though no persuadable voters are watching it. And cable news’ hyper-agitated style starts to infect everyone’s frame of mind, making it extremely difficult for everyone to forget that the networks have huge incentives to massively and systematically overstate the significance of everything that happens.

At any rate, it’s good to be back home but the slower pace and more relaxed and substantive style of BBC and CNN International is something I’ll miss.

No Phone Zone

While I’m happy for the residents getting better cell phone service, I always thought it strange that there was this substantial dead zone along I-55 in that same area. Given the traffic on the interstate, I never could understand this. Hopefully, those days are now gone.

Chicago Ugly

Really? Number 4 on a list of The World’s Ugliest Buildings is the Harold Washington Library in Chicago? Really?

Worldly

I love it when the media discovers the world. The childlike awe and amazement is cute:

(CNN) -- Nearly one in four people worldwide is Muslim -- and they are not necessarily where you might think, according to an extensive new study that aims to map the global Muslim population.

India, a majority-Hindu country, has more Muslims than any country except for Indonesia and Pakistan, and more than twice as many as Egypt.

China has more Muslims than Syria.

Germany has more Muslims than Lebanon.

And Russia has more Muslims than Jordan and Libya put together.

Nearly two out of three of the world's Muslims are in Asia, stretching from Turkey to Indonesia.

The Middle East and north Africa, which together are home to about one in five of the world's Muslims, trail a very distant second.

There are about 1.57 billion Muslims in the world, according to the report, "Mapping the Global Muslim Population," by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. That represents about 23 percent of the total global population of 6.8 billion.

This story treats this information like a new ring has been discovered around Saturn. Who knew! What other secrets does our planet hold beyond our shores?

And Where Was Oprah?

Just to add a late bit to my snarky post from yesterday:

I was watching MSNBC at lunch today and they were broadcasting the news conference from Chicago on new efforts to combat teen violence. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Attorney General Eric Holder, Chicago mayor Richard Daley and others were all there. This was all prompted by the senseless beating death of that honor student on the city’s (largely black) south side.

After they broke away from the live coverage, MSNBC had some woman commenter on (even though I’ve seen her before, I don’t know her name, only that she looks like she has the mumps) and her first observation was that Oprah Winfrey wasn’t at the news conference. The very first thing she wanted to know why was Oprah wasn’t there! She’s black and she’s from Chicago, so of course she should be there, I guess was here thinking. Which is the same stupid thinking I was referring to yesterday.


Related: More rural white on white crime in the news here in Illinois and elsewhere. Why aren’t white celebrities speaking out about this???

Rural White on White Crime Now Rampant

With white residents of small towns in Central Illinois shooting and beating each other to death (Ashland, Beason) I think it’s time to hold white community leaders accountable. I expect our media to ask all white people they come in contact with, no matter how unrelated to the incidents, what they think of the recent violence and what should be done about it.