Not just Obama – this woman was also selling John McCain and Sarah Palin condoms in Union Square today.  Yes it was her: the Obamacondoms.com lady.  All images licensed Creative Commons 3.0 attribution.

The Republican party’s base has to be suffering from some severe self-image problems.

Never mind that it was shown that smarty-pants Gretchen Carlson dumbs herself down to appeal to the Fox News core demographic; now the Republican National Committee has highlighted the unflattering ways they see their own party faithful.  You wouldn’t think that the RNC’s money man would spell out liberal charges [emphasis added]:

That’s exactly what RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart did, however, as part of a presentation he gave to donors and fundraisers last month. The presentation, obtained by Politico’s Ben Smith, includes several slides that portray the GOP’s own supporters in a very negative light, giving the impression that the RNC believes its donors are stupid, and that it plans to treat them that way.

One of the slides (three can be seen below; the full presentation is available for download in PDF form here) divides donors into two groups — major donors and smaller ones who are reached through direct marketing efforts. The latter group, the slide says, gives for visceral reasons: “Fear” and “Extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration” are listed. The slide also tags this group with a term usually used in an less-than-flattering sense: “Reactionary.” The major donors don’t fare much better; they give, the slide says, for “Networking Opportunities” and “Access” and they’re “Ego-Driven.”

Another slide sums up the message this way: “What can you sell when you do not have the White House, the House or the Senate …? Save the country from trending toward Socialism!” [Salon.com]

This might upset the Republican base, but it makes a lot of sense.  You can’t raise money unless you’re (internally) honest about what appeals to the people who you want to give you the money.

But do they have to be so insulting about it?  That’s the point raised by Kevin Huffman at the Washington Post, who once was a fundraiser for a non-profit:

First, your plan divides Republican donors into two main categories: small donors who are “visceral,” “reactionary” and motivated by “fear,” and large donors who are “calculated,” “ego-driven” and motivated by “access.” I don’t know these guys as well as you do, but my experience in the field suggests a potential need for rebranding. What if, instead of labeling your small donors as “reactionary,” you thought of them as “passionate”? And for the large donors, instead of “ego-driven,” you could consider them “thought leaders.” You see what I did there? It’s a slight nuance, but if you give your donors a teeny bit more credit, it sets up a different framework to address some of the message and outreach challenges delineated below. Plus, these days, you never know what will wind up on the Internet — it’s probably best to word things in a way that won’t alienate your supporters.

File this under: The Truth Hurts.  File this also under: it hurts the country when either of our parties is this whacked out.

“Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.” John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

“I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill [Health Care] passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country.” Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), 2009

Americans have a hard time admitting to themselves that they are more moved by emotion than common sense; they are so pulled by emotion that too often their beliefs and votes make little sense.

We’re a country where politicians make what type of car they bought central themes of their campaigns, and it resonates with us.  What you drive has absolutely no bearing on how good of a leader you will be.  It’s little more than a conscious consumer choice, something everyone does.  But such marketing theatrics work.

Frank Rich, one of this blog’s favorite columnists, fell victim in his latest column to the almost irresistble urge not to tell Americans that they are hurting their own country with their foolishness.  After going through the disingenuous and empty rhetoric that is coming from all corners of the Republican Party, he ends with this paragraph [emphasis added]:

So it went with Palin last weekend. Her only concrete program for dealing with America’s pressing problems came in the question-and-answer session. “It would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country,” she said, “so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again.” That pretty much sums up her party’s economic program, at least: divine intervention will achieve what government intervention cannot. That the G.O.P. may actually be winning this argument is less an indictment of Palin than of Washington Democrats too busy reading the writing on her hand to see or respond to the ominous political writing on the wall.

Frank, if Americans are choosing to follow people whose solution to our economic problems is “pray to God” instead of for a government comprised of the people, by the people to fix them, that’s hardly an indictment of the Democrats.   Say what it really is: an indictment of us.

However flawed are the Democrats proposals, on their face they are better than “proposals” based upon the intervention of a supernatural power.

That Palin gets any meaningful support or taken seriously shows how problematic is the state of our union.  The quality of the leaders we have in this country is nothing more than the quality of thought that goes into choosing them.  The problem is us: we have high standards for our politicians only for all the things that don’t matter at all.

Dick Cheney, America’s Torquemada, came out from the shadows this Valentine’s Day to defend his use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques”:

Mr. Cheney said interrogators should have had the option to use the “enhanced interrogation techniques” his administration approved—including the use of simulated drowning, or “water-boarding.” He called himself “a big supporter of water-boarding,” which critics say amounts to torture.

“Now, President Obama has taken [those techniques] off the table,” Mr. Cheney said. “He announced when he came in last year that they would never use anything other than the U.S. Army Manual which doesn’t include those techniques. I think that’s a mistake.”

Cheney forgets that the Army itself considers waterboarding torture and banned the practice under his own administration in September 2006:

The service issued a “strategic communication hot topic” alert to its senior leaders two days before the Senate confirmed Mukasey, asking them to make sure every soldier, family member and Army civilian employee understands the ban on waterboarding. Mukasey was sworn in Nov. 9.

“The U.S. Army strictly prohibits the use of waterboarding during intelligence investigations by any of its members. It is specifically prohibited by Field Manual 2-22.3 and is not a sanctioned interrogation technique in any training manual or any instructions to soldiers in the field,” the statement says.

Right now everywhere in political circles the recently-deceased John Murtha is being toasted by friend and former foe alike.  He was a man’s man and a politician’s politician.  It was hard not to like the character he cut.

That said, I don’t miss the King of Pork Congressman Murtha, who felt no shame in the game that earned him his moniker; the white elephant of waste that is the $200 million John Murtha airport his true legacy.

Liberals sort of fell for Murtha when he became anti-war because he was continually trumpeted in the media as a real “hawk”.  He’s still loved for that.

However, Murtha’s ‘grasp at the swill for my constituents because it’s my Constitutional duty’ style of politics were foolish before and ruinous now that the country’s economic outlook is so dire.  If we don’t start capping people like Richard Shelby at the knees, as we should have done to Murtha, our entire standard of living is threatened.  We simply can’t afford to spend this way anymore, nor allow our government to be run so ineffectually.  The war, tax-cut and high spending policies of the last ten years have hurt this country’s finances greatly, and we haven’t woken up to the economic reality yet.  Our leaders won’t tell us how bad it is because they are all too much like Congressman Murtha, or Senator Shelby, and because the cold hard truth of it all does not get them re-elected.

But a toast to John Murtha the man, may he rest in peace.

New York Times obituary.

(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Here is how the pork cuts across party lines and the Senate gets nothing done in the process. It wasn’t just porkstar Democrats like John Murtha.  Alabama Senator Dick Shelby, a Republican who dabbled in birtherism, showed everyone that he will hold up Senate business in the name of pork for his state.

How’s that for tea in your eye?

[continued]

What's a guy got to do to get a little pork?

With all the talk of tea parties, it’s easy to forget that fiscally reckless Bush Republicanism is still with us, and that if Scott Brown is anything he is an untested moderate who won an anomalous election.  Ron Elving’s column was spot-on about Shelby:

Shelby has placed a blanket “hold” on 70 nominations pending before the Senate, nominations for federal agency jobs and seats on the federal bench. Does he have a case against each and every one of the 70? No, he isn’t really talking about any of them.

His problem has to do with a couple of government contracts he wants to see benefit his home state of Alabama. To date, these Shelby “earmarks” have not come to pass, and the senator wants to change that. He is tired of being stiffed. He wants to force the Senate and the Obama administration to cede to his preferences for the granting of these contracts.

That they allow this chicanery in the Senate procedural rules is without doubt evidence that both parties fail at doing the people’s business.  Shelby released some holds Monday night amid a growing public uproar, but he still has retained others and continues to threaten to do so.

These are bad times!  Don’t hold up the business of the people because you aren’t getting your earmarks:

What is this mysterious power to place a hold on appointments and bills? How is it that one senator can delay or even cancel the filling of these jobs? The hold is simply a senator’s way of notifying the majority leader that he or she intends to use the right to extended debate against that name or bill. It is an implicit threat to filibuster, in a time when such threats are as effective as filibusters themselves ever were.

In this case, Shelby’s communications director tells us, the issue is the coddling of terrorists. The Obama administration has not yet granted a certain contract for the building of tanker planes to refuel U.S. warplanes in midflight. And the Obama administration has not let a contract for a lab that will analyze forensic evidence from bomb-making materials found in Iraq and Afghanistan. The communication from the senator’s office suggests this shows a lack of commitment to anti-terrorism.

It neglects to mention that both these contracts involve, or might involve, large business interests in the state of Alabama.

Let him filibuster.  Let them filibuster.  Let the filibusters begin should be the new mantra of the Democrats as people watch Dick Shelby stop government to filibuster his pork.

Read Ron Elving’s Washington Watch post at NPR, Why All Americans Should Thank Senator Shelby, and the New York Daily News op-ed about this abuse of process.

Sarah Palin June 2009:

She opens the introduction praising Reagan’s son, a talk radio guy, for his willingness “to screw the political correctness that some would expect him to try to adhere to.”

She blasts “self-proclaimed intellectuals, and the smug lobbyists who dominate Washington, and the liberal media.”

Sarah Palin February 2010:

Sarah Palin took out after White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel today for referring to a group of liberal activists as “retarded.”

“Just as we’d be appalled if any public figure of Rahm’s stature ever used the ‘N-word’ or other such inappropriate language, Rahm’s slur on all God’s children with cognitive and developmental disabilities — and the people who love them — is unacceptable, and it’s heartbreaking,” Palin wrote on her Facebook page.

I find this kind of shameless, in the way values-crusaders like David Vitter and Mark Sanford are shameless.

It’s very difficult to converse in a country when there is no consistency in the arguments that our leaders make.  Which is it: are we going to be politically correct, or not?  If you decide to take a stand against political correctness as Palin did–to Republican cheers–then to back-track for cheap political points is…shameless.

It’s also confusing to those of us who care to try to figure out what our leaders believe and how they think.

Regardless, the N-word has a long history of use for oppression of blacks; whereas the word “Retarded” has simply fallen into disfavor and is akin to calling someone “Insane” instead of “Pathological”.

Additionally, there are many uses of the word “Retarded” that could apply to, in the words of Rahm Emmanuel, “fucking retarded” liberal activists:

• retard – cause to move more slowly or operate at a slower rate; “This drug will retard your heart rate”
• retard – be delayed
• retard – check: slow the growth or development of; “The brain damage will retard the child’s language development”
• retard – decelerate: lose velocity; move more slowly; “The car decelerated”
• retard – idiot: a person of subnormal intelligence

Source: Princeton Wordnet

Of course, he probably meant the last, but I’m just sayin’.  Don’t forget all the hot water people have found themselves in over the word “niggardly“.

New York’s Legislature is one of the most mismanaged and corrupt in the country.  In the midst of the recession and a fiscal crises their leadership played politics that held up the business of this state for months.

Now, our state is in dire financial condition.

In a speech to the Legislature, Governor David Paterson (who came from their ranks) talked about the complete dereliction of the their governing responsibilities.  And of all things, Senator John Sampson took umbrage that he and his kind were called out on hurting the state and the people they are elected to represent:

Mr. Paterson’s remarks drew quick praise from business groups and budget hawks, but less from leaders of the Legislature.

“New Yorkers are angry and so am I,” said Senator John Sampson, the Democratic leader in the State Senate. “The people want statesmen to fix our problems, not politicians who ascribe blame without offering a solution.”

Senator Sampson, you don’t get it.  The people of New York are fed up with all of you.  You have no right to be mad yourself – you and the rest of the incumbents are the problem.

Get rid of these people!  Who is responsible for bringing fools like Senator Sampson to the Legislature that they criminally mismanage?

He represents the 19th Senatorial District which encompasses Canarsie, East Flatbush, Parts of Brownsville, Crown Heights, East New York, portions of Old Mill Basin, Spring Creek Towers, and parts of Midwood and Kensington in Brooklyn.

What does it say about the people in the 19th District that they elect someone like Sampson who could care less about living up to the trust and responsibility placed in him, and who instead carps about Governor Paterson pointing out what everyone else is thinking?

Salman Rushdie at breakfast with David Saranga in 2008.

David Saranga was a fixture in New York City’s social and media circles when he was Consul for Media and Public Affairs at the Consulate General of Israel. We first met when I was invited on a press junket to Israel in 2007, and we have remained friends. I credit him for so much valuable first-hand knowledge into the region and some extraordinary experiences.

The other day I read his piece on Huffington Post about traveling to Morocco–one of the few Arab countries that Israelis can visit–and I was moved:

For the first time in 15 years, I arrived in a country without the Diplomatic passport I carry and without the sense of demonstrative pride which says “I am Israeli”. Since I wanted to have as many interactions with locals as possible I had an internal debate regarding the way I should behave: to identify myself as an Israeli or to identify myself as a New Yorker.

From this trip, Saranga had several epiphanies:

In retrospect, we Israelis ask ourselves repeatedly what the reason is for the failure of the peace process with the Palestinians. “We agreed to withdraw from 97% of the territories, divide Jerusalem and find a solution agreeable to both sides on the refugee issue – and still, that was not enough for the Palestinians,” we often say. The answer might be simple: we do not understand our neighbors, their culture and their language. Their tradition of negotiation, for instance, the fact that when they say yes, they mean maybe, when they say maybe, they mean no, and when they say no, they don’t always mean no – depending on whether it was said publicly or behind closed doors.

We need to internalize the understanding that the culture and language of the other starts at home. It starts with the Israeli school system, which unwisely didn’t teach Israelis the Arab language. It continues through dialogue with the Arab Israeli minority, which, as opposed to its vocal leaders — who represent 10% of the Israeli parliament — can provide a bridge to understanding our neighbors. We have not yet learned to build this bridge with the Arab Israeli minority, and with each passing day we are more distant from our neighbors and from segments of Israeli society.

Part travel essay, part personal journey, Saranga’s essay is insight into our common humanity.  Click here to read it.

I was flipping through Wikipedia when I hit the article Writings of D.M. Murdock. It stuck out.  It’s an odd title, and there is no Wikipedia article about D.M. Murdock herself.  Murdock, under her pen name Acharya S, had a biography for years; however, she has been at the heart of a controversy fundamental to Western civilization: was Jesus real?  If any topic can bring detractors, it’s the very suggestion of it.

According to her site, she has a degree in Classics from Franklin and Marshall College and attended the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

Murdock/Acharya has to date written five scholarly books that argue Jesus Christ is a myth, beginning with The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. Subsequent books delve further into explaining how the story of Christ was recycled from other mythologies, and they address criticism about her or her research, which she stands by.

From Writings of D.M. Murdock:

Acharya describes the New Testament as a work of mythic fiction within a historical setting. The story of Christ, she maintains, is a retelling of various pagan myths, representing “astrotheology,” or the story of the Sun and also incorporates the science of archaeoastronomy. She asserts the pagans understood the stories to be myths, but Christians obliterated evidence to the contrary by destroying and controlling literature when they attained control of the Roman Empire, which led to widespread illiteracy in the ancient world, ensuring the mythical nature of Christ’s story was hidden.

She argues that the canonical gospels represent a middle to late 2nd-century CE creation utilizing Old Testament “prophetic” scriptures as a blueprint, in combination with a collage of other, older Pagan and Jewish concepts, and that Christianity was thereby fabricated in order to compete with the other popular religions of the time.

Murdock continues to write a column as Freethought Examiner.  Below are five questions for her.

Five Questions: Different people, same questions

Q. What is one thing you think every American should know?

A. Every American should know that they are protected by the greatest Constitution the world has so far created and that their freedoms must not be taken for granted but must be fought for. As American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson was reputed to say, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”

Q. If you had the option to have been born another nationality than your current one, which nationality would you choose?

A. I have a big soft spot for ancient Greece, and I would have loved to have been active in the creation of the classical Greek civilization. It would have been amazing to be in ancient Egypt as well. As concerns modern countries, New Zealand would be lovely, I imagine. Everyone loves New Zealanders. I rather like India as well. There are many fascinating cultures and places on planet Earth.

Q. What is one misconception people have about you?

A. Many people think I am an atheist or anti-religious. I do not label myself either an atheist or a theist, and I have a tremendous appreciation for religion, so long as its meaning and origins are understood. Unfortunately, very few people are truly aware of the roots of religious ideology, so what we see manifested is often the pathology of religion, and that is all I am really criticizing. The rest of my work is designed to show the great beauty of human culture dating back thousands of years.

Q. Is there anyone’s death, either in your life or in popular culture, whose passing you were surprised by how profoundly it affected you?

A. The profundity of how my mother’s death affected me was not surprising. The most surprising sense of loss, probably, was over the death of Princess Diana. Although I liked what I knew about her before her death, I was under the false impression that she was somewhat shallow and superficial. It occurred to me after she was killed just how deep and caring a human being she was. Diana was extremely innocent and trusting; yet, she was also incredibly powerful and had been born into a world-changing role. Amazing woman, really. Her death was the end of the glamour age for royalty. I hoped that the massive globally mourning would have pulled people together, but it seems not at all. I hate to think that her life and death were for nothing. Ditto with my mom and every individual who has contributed light and love to planet Earth.

Q. In life we often have goals that we feel as if would just die if we don’t reach them. Sometimes we reach them, sometimes we don’t. The question is, have you ever worked to fulfill a goal, only to find that once you achieved it, the experience was a let down? It meant something to you when you did not have it. Then you obtained it and, after the initial excitement, you thought to yourself, “Is that all there is?” Have you ever had an experience like that?

A. LOL! Of course, I have had many disappointments in life. It’s an ongoing thing. We try not to be negative, so instead we set high hopes and positive wishes; yet, the reality frequently shortchanges our desired outcome. That’s how life is. Thus, in order to keep that zest for life alive, we must look to smaller pleasures for a sense of excitement and accomplishment, while relishing that occasional grand achievement we may be fortunate to attain.