He makes a very good argument against organized religion in general, and against the Catholic Church while supporting individual faith.
It’s a good point, though I find it a bit jarring, as my previous experience with him was in his roles on Blackadder, where he played the role of British pratt to perfection.
It’s well worth a listen.
Part (9:95)
Charles Johnson of LGF disassociates himself from the raving right, declaring those who support secular fascism*“, those who support Christo-fascism†, those who promote bigotry and white supremacy‡, the anti-science right§, the homophobic rightæ, anti-government looniesß, hateful conspiracy nutsØ, the frothing at the mouth right wing blogosphereÆ, anti-Islamic bigots±, and insane Obama Haters¥.
What is more interesting than this essay, which, after all, is not the first such essay against the insanity of the far right from a member of the not-so-far right, are the comments, which are generally supportive, and rather thoughtful, so the reader of Little Green Footballs deserve some credit here too.
One interesting bit of meta, as Mr. Johnson notes, is that he got a spike in traffic from his post, even though it was something that he, “wrote it in about three minutes last night.”
That’s always the way. The stuff that you feel is pearls of wisdom is largely ignored, and the stuff that you throw away gets the nod….File it under hoocoodanode.
H/t AMERICAblog
Note that the footnotes below are direct quotes, and I spent a lot of time looking up the HTML codes for the footnote symbols.
*Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.
†Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.
‡Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.
§creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.
æSarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.
ßtea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.
ØAlex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.
ÆHot Air, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, etc.
±Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.
¥witch doctor pictures, tea parties, Birthers, Michelle Malkin, Fox News, World Net Daily, Newsmax, and every other right wing source
—Barry Ritholtz discussing an article in GQ that excoriates the author.
Ritholtz himself describes her as a, “pedantic bore,” who writes, “blindingly horrific prose.”
I agree with both, though I have never been able to force myself to read anything of hers beyond The Virtue of Selfishness, a perusal of which made me <sarcasm>long for the straightforward and beautifully written prose of Immanuel Kant</sarcasm> and consider self immolation as an alternative to reading any more of hew work.
His last bit is prize:
Worst of all, Rand’s Objectivism has become the rationale for all manner of morally repugnant behaviour. However, I did take one personal lesson from Atlas Shrugged to heart: Anytime I see a parked car with a John Galt bumper sticker, I like to knock off one of the sideview mirrors, and leave it on the hood. I include a note stating my selfish, random act made me feel good, and therefore should be a perfectly fine act in their world.
I assume the recipients miss the irony . . .
So, Republican Whip Eric Cantor (VA-7) has criticized Rush Limbaugh for his divisive languate:
“The Republican Party in its roots is a party of inclusion and we ought to be promoting that and making sure that voices are heard,” Cantor, of Virginia, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing today.
Cantor, when asked about Limbaugh’s comments that “Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate” and his comparison of the administration’s health-care logo to a swastika, said his comparisons were wrong.
“Do I condone the mention of Hitler in any discussion about politics?” Cantor said. “No, I don’t, because obviously that is something that conjures up images that frankly are not, I think, very helpful.”
Mr. Cantor will be groveling at Rush Limbaugh’s feet before Monday evening, mark my words. We’ve seen this happen again, and again, and again, and again….
There is a distinctly Randroid branch of the Republican party, who follows Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum’s (Ayn Rand) philosophy of Objectivism, and as such, see activities like giving candies to trick or treaters as actually being evil, because any sort of activity which benefits the community is evil.
To their mind, the only good is self interest, hence the title of the only Ayn Rand book that I have ever read, The Virtue of Selfishness, which I found juvenile, as well as horribly written,* when I reviewed it as an extra credit assignment in my Philosophy of Literature class in high school.
It must be remembered that a significant portion of Republicans are actually philosophically opposed to the very idea of community.
H/t Cthulhu† for the cartoon.
*Seriously, really badly written. It was worse than reading Immanuel Kant, and that sh%$ was painful to read.
†No, not the unspeakably malevolent super-being, the contributor to the Shortskoolbus BBS.‡
‡OK, I’ve never seen the two of them together, so Cthulhu might actually be the Cthulhu, but the mere fact that he is on a BBS, interacting with humans§ would seem to mitigate against this.
§Yes, I know, this is the internet, where no one knows if you are a dog.
Who cares if Wall Street ‘talent’ leaves?
Note that this article, whose thesis is that these folks are a bunch of incompetent losers who the world of finance could do without, was written at that bastion of Marxism Fortune Magazine.
In order to deal with budget issues, Mayor Daley of Chicago is considering selling its water system to private operators, and allowing them to charge whatever they want.
So he gets the money, and succeeding generations get the revenue loss and more expensive water.
Also, the state that has so many bad ideas that it gave us both Barry Goldwater and John McCain is looking to turn over operation of their prisons to a private firm.
This one is a little different though, because private prisons have already been tried, and failed, with some of the institutions going so far as to bribe judges to send children to them for minor crimes.
This will not end well.
On my most recent bank failure Friday post, there was a small bank in Otsego, MN, Riverview Community Bank that was closed by regulators.
Well, it turns out that the story of this bank is just a bit weirder than your average bank failure.
Riverview Community Bank was run by a religious nutcase who attempted to foist his religious views on his employees:
Riverview Community Bank, an Otsego firm that attracted national media attention several years ago for espousing prayer in the workplace, has been shut down by state regulators.
…
Early in its life, Riverview had a reputation for mixing faith and finance. Chuck Ripka, one of the bank’s founders, once told the Star Tribune that God spoke to him and said, “Chuck, if you pastor the bank, I’ll take care of the bottom line.” Ripka and his staff would pray with customers in the bank’s Otsego branch and even at the drive-up window. In a 2004 New York Times story, Ripka said he occasionally slipped up and said, “Come on over to the church — I mean the bank.”
Of course, this makes his bank hostile to non-Christian, or for that matter, non-obnoxious Christian, and as a public accommodation it also makes it hostile to non-Christian, or for that matter, non-obnoxious Christian, customers.
Yes, a religious test on employment is illegal, and it’s pretty clear that this guy made it clear that non-Christian, or for that matter, non-obnoxious Christian, people need not apply for jobs.
There is also the whole “Chasing the money changers from the temple,” irony thing, but I’m not up on my Christian mythology enough to follow the finer points.
It is worth noting that the bank was the subject of consent enforcement actions in the year before its closing, and were instructed to stop paying dividends when they were always circling the drain.
There is a lesson in all this, though: If you believe that God is on your side, you are always wrong, but if you worry whether or not you are on God’s side, you have a possibility of being right.
There is something deeply disturbing and deeply hypocritical about all these folks who seem to think that Christianity is nothing more than a path to wealth.
So, Merkel will now govern with the Free Democrats, and not in a grand coalition with the SDP.
The reason that this is happening is very simple: The SDP is not running against the CDU, it’s running against the Left Party.
So you have proclamations that there will not be a coalition with the LP under any, because….because…I’m really not sure why, except, perhaps because the SDP sees the LP as drawing in disaffected SDP members, and they see the loss of power within the party as more troubling than the lose of power in the whole country.
Fundamentally, the success of the LP is because the 3rd Way endorsed by Clinton, Blair, and to a somewhat lesser extent, Gerhard Schröder, which supported “Anglo-Saxon” hyper-capitalism, and has failed in its goals to create increased living standards.
The people with the idea that the perhaps a party with founded with the idea that government should take a role in improving a society, like Oskar Lafontaine, now co chair of the LP have been disaffected and dis-empowered, so it’s no wonder that they are looking for somewhere else to go.
There is also the whole, “world wide financial meltdown,” thing which has tarnished the 3rd way’s concept of unfettered competition, which means that the LP is, you know, do the degree that that actually have a philosophy, as, “The Left hasn’t yet adopted its own party program“.
The decline of the SDP, in a bizarre way, mirrors the decline of the Labor Party in Israel, which stopped representing “Labor”, and became the party of, “We’re not as batsh%$ insane as Likud,” and so dropped to a pathetic 4th place in Israeli elections as a result of the “Thatcherite but not as batsh%$ insane as Likud,” Kadima party.
I have post-posted this, so that it will stay at the top of the page through September 30, so scroll down my other posts.
Some bloke has declared September 30 to be International Blasphemy Day.
While I am generally leery of the many special days that have been announced, except, of course for “Talk Like a Pirate Day,” the basic thesis here is a sound one:
Blaspheming the sacred is an obligation that every logical person must embrace. Like we all learned from Spiderman’s uncle, “With great power comes great responsibility”, and when your mind has evolved to a degree where you are granted an advanced understanding of logic and reason, you realize that the natural laws of the universe have given you a great power.
It is your responsibility as a logical person to shed light on the darkness of ignorance wherever it may be. Nothing must be left in the dark. No corner of this universe can be left alone from wanting to know.
There can be nothing sacred. Because the entire concept behind “sacred ideas” is that they are “off limits”. It is something that you are not allowed to question, or speak out against, or even think. There’s another term that fits this concept perfectly… “thought crime”.
…
I agree, and I agree with his post condemning Ireland’s blasphemy laws.
Going back to the home page of the administrator, this guy is generally anti-religious, as opposed to specifically anti-Islamic.
By the way, were most of the founding fathers, who loathed organized religion, even if they were spiritual.
Luckily, I don’t have to worry too much about this, if push comes to shove, I can go to Israel immediately, under the law of return.
But a reader of Americablog is asking this question:
….
When Bush won his second term, I reached deep within for the small bud of hope that remained, and built on that. Throughout the primary and general elections, many of us within the Obama volunteer team felt we’d proven that one person truly can make a difference. Now, after merely 10 months in office, the lack of action on the part of team Obama (DOMA, DADT, etc.), the bizarrely run health care reform effort combined with the subsequent willingness to kill the public option, the Obama administration’s approach to education have led me to a breaking point.
I sense that they don’t uphold any of the progressive ideals for which we fought, or on which he campaigned. That hope he told us to find, to rekindle – he and his administration have killed it more fully than Bush and his cronies ever did. Moving out of this country, where it appears a select few ‘haves’ control the outcome regardless of public opinion, suddenly presents a most palatable option. I’ve asked around, and it turns out that applications for nurse abroad and teach abroad programs are up over 300% in Colorado. That isn’t the least bit surprising to me, and I don’t think it’s economically motivated.
…..
I think that Barack Obama and His Stupid Minions™ have done everything in their power to avoid making progressive policy, and have done everything in their power to defund and disempower progressives, and as such, much as Bill Clinton did in 1994 with his nail and tongs fight for NAFTA (not healthcare reform), he is demoralizing his base.
2010 will not be pretty, because with his voters dispirited, and the swing voters looking looking at a choice between phony Republicans (Obama) and real ones, will, to Paraphrase Harry S Truman, choose the real Republicans every time.
Read the whole thing.
The Tobin tax, basically a small tax (typically less than ¼%) on financial transactions to discourage rampant speculation and high frequency trading, is moving into the Overton window, and leaving the realm of “you’re nuts,” and entering the realm of “serious people can discuss this.”
2 Weeks ago, Peer Steinbrück, Germany’s finance minister, called for just such a tax, and today an OP/Ed he wrote calling for an 0.05% tax to, noting that German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier also supports this policy.
Personally, I’d much rather see the tax rate closer to ¼% than his proposal of 1/20%, but it’s a good start.
According to his numbers, revenues would amount to, “$690bn a year, or about 1.4 per cent of world GDP,” which, while nowhere near covering the bailout by taxpayers to the banks, AIG alone has sucked about 1/3 of that out of taxpayers, and total spending on the just the TARP is over $700 billion, does have the effect of making bankers feel the pain, and it also makes risky high frequency trading operations economically nonviable.
BTW, it’s not just the Krauts who are beginning to look at this seriously. Adair Turner, chair of the Financial Services Authority in the UK, is calling for the same thing:
So Mr. Turner is proposing a few changes, none of which would make the bankers very happy. Tax financial transactions. Increase capital requirements. Shrink the financial industry, which, at its peak, accounted for roughly 11 percent of the British economy. Only then, he argues, can banks’ excessive profits — and bankers’ pay — be curtailed.
I would also note that Turner has also explicitly stated that the size of the financial industry needs to be reduced because, “The City [the London equivalent of Wall Street] takes too much from British society and gives back too little. It has grown too big and too powerful.”
It’s interesting that this discussion has moved from “crazy people” like Dean Baker, who, we should note, was 100% correct on spotting the real estate bubble, and put his money where his mouth was, selling his condo and going to renting in 2004, though he has recently purchased a detached house to movers and shakers.
And not a moment too soon.
*Pun not intended.
Demotivator Edition
Krugman, on the failure of modern efficient market economics.
His basic thesis is that the belief in the infallible markets, which has been dashed repeatedly over the past 200 years, came back, and when juxtaposed with beautiful mathematics that were unfortunately completely disjoint from reality, we got our current situation.
Go read.
“He [Volker] scoffed at the notion that clamping down on banks, hedge funds, and other players would stifle ‘innovation.’ The only innovation that real people cared about for the previous twenty or thirty years, he said, was ‘the automatic teller machine.’”
(emphasis mine)
And guess what, it was not about bipartisanship or bringing in stake-holders:
….With the exception of the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 (which gave the president authority to close the nation’s banks and which passed the House of Representatives unanimously), the principal legislative innovations of the 1930s were enacted over the vigorous opposition of a deeply entrenched minority. Majority rule, as Roosevelt saw it, did not require his opponents’ permission.
When Roosevelt asked Congress to establish the Tennessee Valley Authority to provide cheap electric power for the impoverished South, he did not consult with utility giants like Commonwealth and Southern. When he asked for the creation of a Securities and Exchange Commission to curb the excesses of Wall Street, he did not request the cooperation of those about to be regulated. When Congress passed the Glass-Steagall Act divesting investment houses of their commercial banking functions, the Democrats did not need the approval of J. P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs or Lehman Brothers.
Word.
No go read the rest.
Portrait of the Blogger as a Young AardvarkI post in my own name, with my own face, albeit a face* from 30 years ago.
I came to the decision not to use pseudonyms when I was at school, and I realized that everyone was calling me by my computer ID, Cerebus, as in Dave Sim’s comic book Aardvark, so I spent 2-3 years getting people to call me “Matthew” again.
So, now I stick with my name. It is a matter of personal aesthetics, not integrity, and no level of truth or integrity is intended by my use of my own name.
If you think that I am right, follow the links, and confirm.
If you think that I am wrong, follow the links, and confirm.
In any case, one of the writers (probably multiple writers, according to Felix Salmon) who posts as “Tyler Durden” at the blog financial zero hedge, got outed by the New York Post.
I figure an anonymous blogger who generates enough buzz to have someone hunt them down and out them deserves a look by me.
Zero hedge is now on my blogroll. They have an attitude, and I like attitude.
*And hair, which I miss.
Douglas Feith is not the “Stupidest F%$#ing guy on the face of the Earth,” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is.