Saturday Links for the Week — January 5, 2008

Posted on January 5, 2008 by Dave Pollard
Hugging Xiao Lei
Image: No Hugging is So Hard, a journal by Xiao Lei (Thunderlittle) from StartDrawing.org via Ampersand

Let’s get all the ‘political’ news out of our system early. Then we can finally acknowledge that the political system is hopelessly broken, that it doesn’t matter a damn who lobbies who to do what, or who gets elected, and then maybe we can focus our attention on things we can do, at a local level, that can actually make a difference:

Bush Blocks Medicare for Poor: “The Bush administration is imposing restrictions on the ability of states to expand eligibility for Medicaid, in an effort to prevent them from offering coverage to families of modest incomes.” Well no wonder he’s so popular.

Congress Takes First Step to Declaring Christianity the Official Religion of the Master Race: And no one paid much attention. Just a bit of Christmas rhetoric, never mind, move on.

Why Americans Think They’re the Chosen People, and Above the (International) Law: Here’s an interesting quote. Read it and guess who said it (just a few months ago) before you click the link:

The president of the United States needs a sense of perspective. The perspective you need is that this is a very very strong country. We’Äôre not in terrible, terrible trouble. Gosh, if we’Äôre in terrible trouble the world is gone. But we are not a country moving in the wrong direction or sliding down hill. The truth is we are the strongest country on earth, the strongest military power without a rival, the strongest economy on earth. The strongest democracy on earth. You have more freedom than anyone has ever had. No one has ever had more freedom than Americans. This is the greatest country in the world and the greatest country the world has ever known. — Who said it.

Broadsheet Laments NYT Anti-Single Bias: Boy, and I thought us polys had it bad! So now it’s clear. If you want to be someone you have to be rich, Christian, American, monogamous, and married. See, the antithesis of this isn’t poor, agnostic, non-American, loving and unattached. It’s lazy, terrorist, inferior, faithless and lonely.

9/11 Commission Complains of CIA Obstruction in Destroying Torture Videos: But then, they were only shown what they were supposed to see.

Environmental Issues Ignored in US Election Campaign: “In a recent study, the League of Conservation Voters found that as of two weeks ago, the five main political talk-show hosts had collectively asked 2,275 questions of candidates in both parties. Only 24 of the questions even touched on climate change.”

And the US Economy Still Teeters on the Brink, Threatening the Global Economy: “As 2008 begins, house prices are still skidding, bank losses are still mounting, oil is again flirting with $100 a barrel and consumers are buying less as prices rise. To many, the wheels appear to be coming off the economy.” And:

‘You have to ask yourself: where does the consumer continue to get his or her spending power?’ said Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington. ‘If consumption falters, it’Äôs good night nurse for the American economy.’ This is what many economists deem the most plausible of the negative situations that could unfold in 2008: Housing prices fall, consumers tighten up, and companies eliminate jobs in response to declining business, particularly in retailing, restaurants and travel. Companies curtail investments, cutting jobs in real estate, construction and banking. This takes more money out of the economy, generating a downward spiralof declining activity. In a word, recession.

Oh, well, I’m sure Obama or Huckabee will fix it all. They’ll look after us, for sure.

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6 Responses to Saturday Links for the Week — January 5, 2008

  1. Barbara Rubin says:
    January 5, 2008 at 16:12

    ::applauding post::Former New Yorker here, who fought Giuliani (and won). No surprise there, he lost a lot of battles and doesn’t have a clue as to constitutionality or reality. He was overturned many times by the courts on his Mayoral decisions. He is dumb enough to get nominated on the old 9/11 card but his personal life is so screwed up that the Christian right won’t have him. First thing they’ve been right about in a long time. Just remember though, the Republicans can’t tell the truth about how much trouble we are in in the USA. They run on the ‘everything is beautiful’ campaign and that they will keep it that way. For the contributors, of course.

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    January 5, 2008 at 17:01

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  3. David Parkinson says:
    January 5, 2008 at 17:12

    So is that the last of the political news for the year? I wouldn’t say no: it’s just too goddamn depressing in its predictability. I’m keen to hear more about action at the local level… and not just blather but real activities.That’s what I’m hoping for 2008, for me & for lots of other people: The Year We Discovered That Being Productive Is Productive.

  4. Greg says:
    January 6, 2008 at 17:23

    More hugs (apologies if this has been posted previously):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4

  5. Cory says:
    January 7, 2008 at 15:29

    Thanks for pointing out the WashPost article about the Christmas bill. I had missed that one during my “holiday” travels, an atheist visiting her sister for hanukah, her mother for Christmas and her inlaws for New Years. I’m outraged by the existence of the bill in the first place, and the vote outcome in the second place, and finally, by the evidence that lawmakers are too afraid to state and vote their principles on meaningless, time-wasting, money-wasting legislation. Where is the evidence that Christmas is under attack? In my opinion, it’s just political correctness over compensating for past insentivities. Must check to see how my members voted, and send a letter if necessary. Thanks for your vigilance.

  6. Barbara Rubin says:
    January 7, 2008 at 17:32

    Dave, I can’t agree with your advice to “move on” with regard to the attention we should pay to that Christmas bill. Their next move was far more insidious with H. Res. 888 (in my mind, it ought to be three ‘6’s).The Christmas bill, or HR 847, ‘simply’ glorified the institution of Christianity and passed in early December. However, 888 which was introduced later that month is a series of quotes by former citizens and governmental figures throughout American History leading to the pronouncement that we are a Christian nation. Under the guise of starting a religious history week each May, they proceeded to glorify Christianity alone among all religiouns celebrated in the U.S. and also introduced a revisionist history of the U.S. with regard to Christianity. It is filled with irrelevant information about the personal beliefs of Christian citizens as if their thoughts could be equated with law and never considered the context in which those words were spoken. Given that there has been a lot of controversy around Christian proselytizing in our military (see: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-aslan22aug22,0,4674900.story?coll=la-opinion-center ) the risks are ever increasing that the separation of Church and state will soon be a distant memory. Please contact your representatives and local chapters of the ACLU to protest this attack on the Constitution.Here is a snippet of this long winded resolution that I think everyone ought to read since it is a mere glimpse of things to come. It is about distracting the masses from real problems into, as Dave has eloquently put it, a state of learned helplessness in which we leave things to God (but really to industry and their bought, excuse me, ‘chosen’ electorate. Below this is the letter I sent to my state’s representatives because too many people know nothing about this. Ignoringthe spread of forced religious activity is a major threat to progress in enviromental studies/action. Remember that the extreme Christian right generally advocate for man’s dominion over nature instead of cooperation with it.——————————————-http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.RES.888: Whereas religious faith was not only important in official American life during the periods of discovery, exploration, colonization, and growth but has also been acknowledged and incorporated… (Introduced in House)HRES 888 IH 110th CONGRESS1st SessionH. RES. 888Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation’s founding and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the first week in May as `American Religious History Week’ for the appreciation of and education on America’s history of religious faith. =================================================My letter:Representative _________,In case it has not yet come to your attention, please refer to House Resolution 847 and the more recent H. Res. 888 and comment upon the tearing down of the wall between Church and State. I hope you will put a stop to these obvious attempts to have our country declared a Christian country, in violation of the Constitution. The former applauds the Christian faith for having numerous followers. However, it fails to point out some of the ways in which Christianity spread so far throughout the world, three relevant terms coming to mind: Crusades, Inquisition and Rice Christians. The latter bit of legislative interference makes numerous mentions of prominent American citizens making statements lauding their Christian faith. May I remind you that the Klu Klux Klan has done so as well, yet their quotes do not appear. I believe the KKK represents one of many reasons why such material is supposed to be absent from governmental agendas. It is a short step from speech to action and we have seen a great deal of aggressive prosyletization among the armed forces in recent years – by men carrying guns.Please do all you can to protect and defend the Constitution from radical influences which subvert the very nature of that document.Appreciatively Barbara Rubin

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