politics is the new religion

This quote by Feuerbach, apparently from The Essence of Christianity (1841), 

Individuality has replaced faith, reason the Bible, politics religion and the Church, the earth heaven, work prayer, poverty hell, and man Christ. 

 seems oddly relevant these days.

I don't think I'm identifying with it in the way Camus was but what's striking to me is the extent to which people are putting their efforts into politics instead of religion.  It really just feels like sacrificing your soul for table scraps.  I don't get it.

My main religion I guess is ancient Epicureanism followed by native/Spanish tinted pseudo catholicism but the thing is there's no way I'll exchange my personal commitments for the temporary commitments of the crowd.  

So many people seem to feel like things are so dire they must focus on politics.  And things really are dire which is all the more reason to double down on the religious sphere instead of the political sphere.

As our Stoic friend likes to say "The whole future lies in uncertainty, live immediately." 

your vote doesn't count (but that's no reason not to vote)

If you're like me then you realize that no matter who you vote for this election, you won't be represented on most major policy decisions.  Sure there will be some trivial things like, you know, staving the complete collapse of US society as we know it off by stopping the Republican candidate.  But then you know, a competent government can do bad things much better than an incompetent one.  So it's hard to say.

In any case, your vote not counting is no reason to not vote.  It just happens to be things are bad enough your vote might not be enough to make your vote count so you've got a bunch of other shit to also do to make sure your vote counts next time.

Some Friedersdorfian reasons you might not want to vote for either candidate:

Against Romney
Against Obama

the yin and the wankers

Obligatory political post.

our own unique culture is also being lost

With our headlong plunge into globalization and "progress", we sometimes forget that here too is a culture that faces challenges (and losses). Carl Johnson does a good job highlighting this utilizing some recent prop 8 chatter.

[T]he idea of mourning cultural change is something we should try to understand not just when the cultural change is happening to funkily clothed (or unclothed) indigenous peoples but also when it happens in our own society. A shift has occurred. We are watching the ramifications of the shift play out. Maybe in the end, it’s all for the greater good, but it’s still sad to see the old world burn to the ground.

George Packer reporting on the senate

George Packer's recent article and follow-up are worth noting. A glimpse:

It was, on the whole, an interesting and, surprise to say, enjoyable few months—a kind of adventure through a looking glass in which rooms are misnamed and the “Ohio clock” was made in Philadelphia. Of course, the institution is in a deep decline, but when you’re reporting a story like this, you don’t depress yourself, because the inquiry is bracing. It’s the poor reader who ends up depressed.

The main criticisms of the piece have come from Republicans, and their argument (for example, David Frum’s—still doing the hard work of keeping both sides honest) is that what looks to the left like obstruction is really only the minority party reflecting the public’s reservations about Obama’s agenda, and, beyond that, fulfilling the Senate’s constitutional mandate. I would answer that, on health care, for example, where the public was truly divided and, by some polls, increasingly skeptical, the Senate Republicans should have tried to negotiate a less sweeping bill. Instead (as Frum himself famously pointed out), they shut down negotiations altogether, leaving Olympia Snowe as the lone party holdout, and not for long. They weren’t trying to legislate better; they were trying to prevent any legislation at all. The same with the stimulus bill and financial reform. As Michael Bennet told me, the Senate isn’t on the level: the amount of bad faith is staggering (and yes, there’s plenty on the Democratic side as well). And the daily toll of legislative blockage is also staggering. The filibuster has become the everyday norm in this Senate—which has nothing to do with the constitution, moderation, the saucer that cools the coffee, or anything else written and said two hundred twenty years ago.

Pat Robertson gets screwtaped

here.

griznog for president 2012

He's running on the "earth is a finite resource" platform. He's also made clear his opinion on Abortion.

Uganda: where ideas have consequences

A lot of U.S. Evangelicals like to think our morality is based on the Bible. A few are now getting a taste of what that would be like.

Also, it looks like stupidity is still trumping evil as a cause of human suffering.

h/t News from Butterflies and Wheels

David Brooks and Glenn Greenwald agree on something

And both seem to understand the problems inherent in fear driven governance/policy. Now if we could just get the politicians and public to come around on this issue. Maybe we could stop spending so much money on "Security Theater". Gods know we could use the money elsewhere.

Greenwald's article in reference to Brooks' article.

Also, a related Schneier interview on cnn.com.

Sullivan asks Bush to own up to torture

so the US can move forward. His open letter to GWB covers a lot of the specifics in regard to torture during the Cheney/Bush years alongside historical analogues. Not for the faint of heart but definitely worth reading.

a theory consistent with the facts

Who decided to print trillions of dollars and give them to banks? The Bush Administration. Who decided to print hundreds of billions of dollars and give them to AIG? The Bush Administration. Who decided not to tell General Motors and Chrysler to work out their problems in bankruptcy court like any other company not smart enough to recognize the implications of pension and health care guarantees (see While America Aged)? The Bush Administration started with the Detroit bailout.

A theory consistent with the facts is that King Bush II knew that the next president would be a Democrat, due to the endless depressing Iraq/Afghanistan war. He therefore intentionally wrecked the economy and then took over much of it in order to make the next administration look like socialists.

Going by the numbers and facts, an economic historian would have little choice but to classify the U.S. circa 2009 as a socialist nation. Government at all levels spends a greater percentage of GDP than does China’s (source), for example, and the government either directly owns or assumes financial risks for a lot of our largest enterprises. How did we get here? It was a Republican plot to make Obama look like a socialist, by the clever strategy of converting the U.S. into a fully socialist economy prior to January 20, 2009.

Republican Plot to Make Obama Look Like a Socialist Philip Greenspun

Republicons: the other socialist party in the US.

health care reform

Philip Greenspun wrote an essay on health care reform. Of course ideas that make sense will likely be shot down in congress since our elected officials are incapable of reasonable discourse and behavior (their constituencies aren't much better) but it's fun to dream. He's looking for feedback.

It's time to vote third party in all national elections. Democrats and Republicons are just subsidiaries.

And if you get cancer in the US, before buying in to the "best healthcare in the world" nonsense and going bankrupt, look into getting treatment in India or maybe even Mexico.

the chain email means of political education

These sorts of things aren't making us too popular with our allies.

on Orwell writing 1984

Just came across this interesting short biographical piece on Orwell in the Guardian.

The circumstances surrounding the writing of Nineteen Eighty-Four make a haunting narrative that helps to explain the bleakness of Orwell's dystopia. Here was an English writer, desperately sick, grappling alone with the demons of his imagination in a bleak Scottish outpost in the desolate aftermath of the second world war. The idea for Nineteen Eighty-Four, alternatively, "The Last Man in Europe", had been incubating in Orwell's mind since the Spanish civil war. His novel, which owes something to Yevgeny Zamyatin's dystopian fiction We, probably began to acquire a definitive shape during 1943-44, around the time he and his wife, Eileen adopted their only son, Richard. Orwell himself claimed that he was partly inspired by the meeting of the Allied leaders at the Tehran Conference of 1944. Isaac Deutscher, an Observer colleague, reported that Orwell was "convinced that Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt consciously plotted to divide the world" at Tehran.

(emphasis mine) h/t Arts and Letters Daily

Obama Oatmeal Stout

Not the best picture but I'm too lazy to take another. We brewed this beer just after the election. I don't remember all the grains we used but we definitely used Challenger, Columbus and Liberty hops. Hopefully a few things will change. Tick, tick, tick -- 16 days.

ummm...

I'm really not sure what to say about this except maybe, "Is Laura Bush now participating in the war on Christmas?". She did say "happy holiday" instead of Merry Christmas there at the end. ;)

via Andrew Sullivan

political conversation

M: Since Obama is shutting down Gitmo I guess the question now is where will they transfer the inmates?

E: I hadn't thought about that, where will we put them?

M: My vote is we send them to a ranch in Crawford, TX. He made the mess...

E: That's a difficult problem. I'm still stuck on the fact we couldn't get the guy impeached. I'm putting my efforts behind whorePAC.

M: whorePAC?

E: It's my political action committee devoted to organizing prostitutes who are willing to be deployed to the White House on a moment's notice. Since congress won't impeach a president for more obvious reasons we have to resort to these more tried and true methods.

It's the only way I see to guarantee our ability to impeach when necessary in the future. Plus, whorePAC will create a new kind of American hero.

midnight regulations

Most recent presidents passed a bunch of midnight regulations on their way out. It looks like GWB has once again found a way to make himself stand out, even at this late stage in the game.

Why do Presidents wait till the last moment to push through changes they’ve had the power to impose all along? Legal scholars have advanced a variety of explanations; these range from megalomania (each Administration tries to extend its influence into the next) to simple distraction (federal agencies, like ninth graders, have a hard time focussing until they’re up against a deadline). Under the best of circumstances, experts point out, rule-making is a laborious process; many of the regulations published toward the end of the Clinton Administration—such as a rule limiting the amount of arsenic allowed in public drinking water—had been the subject of years’ worth of hearings and scientific review.

But none of these explanations is adequate to the current situation. What distinguishes this Administration in its final days—as in its earlier ones—is the purity of its cynicism. White House officials haven’t even bothered to argue that these new rules are in the public interest. Such a claim would, in any event, be impossible to defend, as just about every midnight regulation being proposed is, evidently, a gift to a favored industry.

Midnight Hour: Comment -Elizabeth Kolbert (newyorker.com)

Like a zillion other things that would have been big news in a more competent administration, these will be a few more that fly under the radar because of the more prominent crises we face.

the right to crypto is the neo "right to bear arms"

xkcd's alt text --

"It's totally a reasonable modern analogue. Jefferson would have been all about crypto."

a warning

They served their nonsensical, unknown god; we serve our rational god, whom we know most thoroughly. Their god gave them nothing but eternal, torturing seeking; our god gives us absolute truth--that is, he has rid us of any kind of doubt. Their god did not invent anything cleverer than sacrificing oneself, nobody knows what for; we bring to our god, the United State, a quiet, rational, carefully thought-out sacrifice.

Yevgeny Zamyatin We