Sunday art blogging

Artist: Viktor Vasnetsov
Image from Wikimedia Commons

Quote worth pondering

Take a look:

You know, we haven't got any business in those far away wars. Seven thousand miles is a long way to go to shoot somebody, especially if you are not right sure they need shooting, and you are not sure whether you are shooting the right side or not.

~Will Rogers

You know, people here in Oklahoma are so proud of native son, Will Rogers, and yet they are typically very much in favor of foreign wars. Sad.
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The Corporate Court

The photo above was included in the February e-mail newsletter put out by the People for the American Way. It is, of course, referring to the Supreme Court ruling (Citizens United) which gives corporations the right to spend unlimited amounts of money in order to influence politicians.

Here's an excerpt:

In 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter, "I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and to bid defiance to the laws of our country."
...
The Court, by a one vote margin, kicked open the door for unlimited corporate money in our elections with its radical reinterpretation of the First Amendment. While there's some good legislation out there that would mitigate the damage, the only way to undo the harm of Court's ruling completely is with a constitutional amendment. And support for an amendment is growing.

You can sign a petition in support of such an amendment right here.
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Friday cat blogging!

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

The sickness of Ayn Rand

My goodness. I knew that Ayn Rand preached a gospel of selfishness and that this is why conservatives and libertarians love her so much. But I didn't know she was actually pathological.

I want to call your attention to an article entitled "Ayn Rand, Hugely Popular Author and Inspiration to Right-Wing Leaders, Was a Big Admirer of Serial Killer" that I discovered over on Alternet. Here's how it gets started:

There's something deeply unsettling about living in a country where millions of people froth at the mouth at the idea of giving health care to the tens of millions of Americans who don't have it, or who take pleasure at the thought of privatizing and slashing bedrock social programs like Social Security or Medicare. It might not be as hard to stomach if other Western countries also had a large, vocal chunk of the population who thought like this, but the US is seemingly the only place where right-wing elites can openly share their distaste for the working poor. Where do they find their philosophical justification for this kind of attitude?It turns out, you can trace much of this thinking back to Ayn Rand, a popular cult-philosopher who exerts a huge influence over much of the right-wing and libertarian crowd, but whose influence is only starting to spread out of the US.

One reason why most countries don't find the time to embrace her thinking is that Ayn Rand is a textbook sociopath. Literally a sociopath: Ayn Rand, in her notebooks, worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, and used this killer as an early model for the type of "ideal man" that Rand promoted in her more famous books -- ideas which were later picked up on and put into play by major right-wing figures of the past half decade, including the key architects of America's most recent economic catastrophe -- former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and SEC Commissioner Chris Cox -- along with other notable right-wing Republicans such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Rush Limbaugh, and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.

Please do go read the rest of the article. It's truly an eye-opener.
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Interesting lawsuit

Look, I don't know what I think of this, really. But there seems to be a certain poetic justice in the idea:

The widow of an Internal Revenue Service employee killed when a disgruntled taxpayer flew his plane into a seven-story building in Austin, Texas, last week is suing the pilot's wife, according to court documents.

Valerie Hunter, the wife of Vernon Hunter, is accusing Sheryl Stack, wife of Andrew Joseph "Joe" Stack III, of negligence, alleging she she knew or should have known that her husband was a threat to others and, thus, could have prevented the attack, according to the lawsuit filed Monday in Travis County District Court.

"Stack was threatened enough by Joseph Stack that she took her daughter and stayed at a hotel the night before the plane crash. [She] owed a duty to exercise reasonable care to avoid a foreseeable risk of injury to others including [Vernon Hunter]," the suit says.

This is from a CNN report that I found here.
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Quote of the Day

And what a distressing quote it is. This was in an email from Sojourners:

The American people and the governing class have accepted that war has become a permanent condition. Protracted war has become a widely accepted part of our politics.

-- Andrew Bacevich, retired Army Col. (and now history professor at Boston University) whose son was killed in Iraq in 2007, on how eight years of war have affected American foreign policy.
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The importance of politics

I found this on the Spirituality and Practice site:

Reconnecting politics to our best values is now the most important task of political life.

— Jim Wallis in The Soul of Politics

Something about investment

This is both powerful and inspiring. It is also an indictment of the dominant culture's values:

Once I was in Victoria, and I saw a very large house. They told me it was a bank and that the white men place their money there to be taken care of, and that by and by they got it back with interest. We are Indians and we have no such bank; but when we have plenty of money or blankets, we give them away to other chiefs and people, and by and by they return them with interest, and our hearts feel good. Our way of giving is our bank.

-- Chief Maquinna

Sunday art blogging

"Three Graces in Blue" by Antoni Karwowski
Image from Wikimedia Commons

Really understanding the tea party folks

George Lakoff is truly amazing. I do want to urge you in the strongest possible terms to go read his article "A Good Week For Science — and Insight into Politics". It's all about recent advances in brain science research as well as how this applies to understanding the respective conservative and liberal mindsets. Here's an important excerpt:

The conservatives are not fools. Because their highest value is protecting and extending the conservative moral system itself, giving Obama any victory at all would strengthen Obama and weaken the hold of their moral system. Of course they were going to vote against every proposal and delay and filibuster as often as possible. Protecting and extending their worldview demands it.

Obama has not understood this.

We saw this when Obama attended the Republican caucus. He kept pointing out that they voted against proposals that Republicans had made and that he had incorporated, acting as if this were a contradiction. But that was to be expected, since a particular proposal that strengthens Obama and hence weakens their moral view violates their highest moral principle.

Such conservative logic explains why conservatives in Congress first proposed a bipartisan committee to study the deficit, and then voted against it.

That is why I don't expect much from the President's summit with Republicans on February 25. Why should they do anything to strengthen Obama's hand, when it would violate their highest moral principle, as well as weakening themselves electorally. If Obama thinks he can shame them in front of their voters, he is mistaken again. Conservative voters think the same way they do.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama used framing perfectly and articulated the progressive moral system (empathy, individual and social responsibility, making oneself and the world better) as well as it has ever been done.

But he changed after the election.

And that's why many of us are hugely disappointed.

I'm going to re-read the article now. I think it merits further pondering.
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Some amazing footage

This is a "prestige" film from 1953. Of great historical interest, I would say:

More GOP hypocrisy

Well, well, well. Sarah Palin's grandson has socialized medicine. Take a look:

The dangers of "death panels" were explained to Americans on Sarah Palin's Facebook page. Oh, sweet Lord, she must not sleep at night...her grandson could be the next victim of "socialized medicine".

Recently released documents from the custody battle show clearly Tripp Palin Johnston has socialized health care through Indian Health Services and the Alaska Native Medical Center.

Palin's family has federally funded health care afforded to them...but if you had it Barack Obama might kill you.

It's from an opinion piece over on Huffington Post by Shannyn Moore. Some of the comments are also particularly interesting.
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Friday cat blogging!

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Why is it not terrorism?

This really disturbs me. It's a QuickVote from the CNN home page today:

Do you consider the Texas plane crash to be terrorism?

No - 68%

Yes - 32%

Needless to say, I voted "yes".

The man flew a plane into a building to make a political point. He wrote a manifesto explaining why ahead of time. (Fortunately, somone sent me a copy/paste email of the manifesto this morning. It was taken off line a little while ago due to its "sensitive nature". Censorship, anyone? If anyone wants to see it, email me privately and I'll forward it to you.)

Oh, I get it. He's white and non-Muslim. (/sarcasm)
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