A favored political tactic among those of us who debate down here in the gallows is to take words uttered by opposition leaders that happen to harmonize with our own thoughts and feelings, and toss them at the other side like guacamole at a food fight. I hereby indulge myself.

Now it is true that I believe this country is following a dangerous trend when it permits too great a degree of centralization of governmental functions. I oppose this–in some instances the fight is a rather desperate one. But to attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything–even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon “moderation” in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.
Dwight Eisenhower, letter to his brother, Edgar Newton, November, 1954

From an email I received and verified at Snopes:

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats averaged $100.

Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

Some of the best sidewalk music and acrobatics I’ve ever seen was in Barcelona, Spain. One man held a hundred of us captive for half an hour as he performed various tricks with a bicycle, like balancing it on his nose. Walking through the ancient architecture we found various groups singing and playing instruments. The quality was very high.

But we were on vacation, and had time to take it in. We weren’t on our way to work. I wonder what they proved here?

Been kind of slow here. We’ve been traveling – it was shirtsleeve weather in Colorado. We drove from Denver to Bozeman today – icy roads around Cheyenne, but thankfully the Mrs. was driving. The temperature dropped from 40’s to low tens as we moved north. Between Billings and Bozeman we had drifting snow and those tempestuous SUV’er who pass and blind you with snow. I need flashing window sign – never mind what it would say.

I wondered today as we passed through miles of prairie how the election would have turned out if Obama had two kids who had dropped out of high school, one of whom was knocked up.

It may be true that we have a black president, but I’m pretty sure we still have double standards.

Just sayin’ here, I think it is unpatriotic to criticize a sitting president while we are in the midst of two wars. Especially a president that was actually elected.

And by gawd, don’t dare say anything about him overseas. Clear Channel will be on you like white on rice. I know that, because they are balanced in their approach to public policy.

Any criticism of President Obama will heretofore be knowns as “Obama bashing.” It’s not allowed.

Jonathon Chait discusses the rampant use of “scare quotes” as a deliberate tactic to inject emotional prejudice and unsubstantiated claims into Wall Street Journal editorials. Chait “writes” for the New Republic.

This article from the Dismal Scientist was written in early 2008, and foreshadows a lot of what has happened since. However, Mark Zandi held no crystal ball, and did not see the tsunami that would hit us last year. He discusses tax policies and their effect on the economy. The Bush Administration was proposing a stimulus package that eventually became law and awarded rebates to most taxpayers and many Social Security recipients who did not pay taxes. It was not terribly effective.

The question posed by the article that caught my attention was about how to spend tax dollars to generate economic activity. The mantra of the right is that tax cuts are always the best policy, but that is not borne out by a study done by Moody’s Economy.com (all for sale), summarized in the following table:

Note that the rebates we received (ours is still in savings) generate a couple of pennies additional activity. “Refundable” tax rebates (given to people whose taxes are less than the rebate) generate 29 cents or so in new activity. A payroll tax holiday has the same impact – that is, since lower-income people pay the payroll tax, they are more likely to spend it if it is not assessed.

The stimuli generally proposed by right wing economists, the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, reduced taxes on dividends and capital gains, have negative impact – that is, each generates less than half a dollar in short term activity for each dollar given. That is heresy – it says that approximately half of the economists in the country don’t know much about economics.

Most interesting: The best way to stimulate a weak economy is the Food Stamp Program. Infrastructure spending is up there too, along with extension of unemployment benefits. In other words, the best way to get us going again is to stimulate the bottom, as the flow of wealth is upward.

So what does the Obama Administration propose? It’s a $775 billion package that seems to have a bit of everything. There are payroll tax cuts, which are disproportionately paid by lower income people. He also proposes a $3,000 credit for each new hire that companies generate, but the effect of such a stimulus is debated – many feel that it merely subsidizes what is already going to happen anyway.

Then there are an assortment of business tax credits – not immediately beneficial, but maybe so in the longer term. There’s also talk of infrastructure spending for “shovel ready” projects. Surely that would have immediate impact.

There is a change in overall thrust with this new administration. Where the Bush people focused almost exclusively on the wealthy in its near religious belief that wealth trickles downward, Obama seems to understand that the process works in reverse. That is a hopeful sign.

Like love, like wrath, like hope, ambition, jealousy, like every other instinctive eagerness and impulse, it adds to life an enchantment which is not rational or logically deducible from anything else. This enchantment, coming as a gift when it does come – a gift of our organism, the physiologists will tell us, a gift of God’s grace, the theologians will say – is either there or not there for us, and there are persons who can no more become possessed by it than they can fall in love with a given woman by mere word of command. Religious feeling is thus an absolute addition to the Subject’s range of life. It gives him a new sphere of power. When the outward battle is lost, and the outer world disowns him, it redeems and vivifies the interior world which otherwise would be an empty waste. (William James)

Having been raised in an extremely religious home, I came to find religious belief oppressive and boring. Praying was meaningless, worship repetitive and compulsory. Freedom – the elation of the soul, came to me when I escaped religion. It came to me in the beauty of the vast natural world and the ability to explore the thoughts of the many scholars and scientists who were also set free. That was a true joy. Absence of religion, for me, is freedom.

I’ve known a host of religious people in my life – I will briefly describe five of them, and in doing so reduce them to utter simplicity. They are far more than this, but this is what I observe. The names have been changed to protect these people, four of whom are truly innocent.

Mandy virtually exudes religious fervor from every pore. One can hardly encounter her on a sidewalk without knowing something of her deep convictions. She believes every word of the bible, and where the bible contradicts itself, she does not suffer cognitive dissonance. She claims to have been elevated to a fourth level of existence, had visions, experienced heaven and met angels. While these are surely the product of brain chemistry, one has to be a little envious. Others use physical stimulants to achieve the same result, much to their own demise.

John has had a hard life. He was a brilliant student, but long troubled. After graduating college, he was overcome by anger and self loathing, and one day bloodied his fists on a wall to the degree that he had to be institutionalized. He was given electroshock therapy for his manic depression, and emerged a broken man, but passable in society. His religious beliefs are sincere and deep – a cry for help in a world that pleases him hardly at all. It is his sanctuary, his only hope for any kind of relief from the pains of living. He attends mass daily, prays and reads the bible. Though he has a high level of comprehension, he is trapped by a brain whose limited functions have impeded his ability to communicate. He is hardly able to express a complete thought. His is a truly tragic life.

Mike is a stern taskmaster. He believes not only in the Bible, but in his own righteousness and validation through it. He knows that most of us are sinners and that he will look down on us as we are judged while he enjoys the fruits of everlasting happiness. His religious belief is validation. It makes hims strong and will eventually not only set him free, but send the rest of us to hell. He hates people. (By the way, the day of judgment is at hand.)

George is a very smart and kind man. He believes in the bible – well, Jesus anyway. He practices kindness and understanding. He is happy in his skin. He prays and meditates, but also keeps abreast of world events, reading magazines, newspapers and books. He has no desire to change people, in fact, knows that people don’t much change. Ever. He’s OK with that. He likes people as they are. He’s a lovely man.

Gidget is a buttercup, an ever-effusive font of faux-joy. Something troubles her deep down, but none around her ever get to go beyond the surface except in those dark, rare, and fleeting moments when her voice lowers and she makes an accurate observation that is not bubbly and optimistic. She believes in Jesus, and insists that any who come to her house pray to him, usually holding hands. She thinks people who are not religious are deeply depressed, and cannot fathom happiness without it. She is at once happy and in denial of reality, confused and troubled, but, as I said, an ever-effusive font of joy.

There are many others we have experienced. One cannot categorize or herd these people into one corral. To each, religion gives meaning to life otherwise not comprehensible. It becomes and extension of their personality. Where they are kind, religion is kind. Where they are dark and hateful, religion is vengeance. Where they are hopeless, they have hope, where they are simply confused, religion makes sense of it all.

I get short with people who are extremely religious, and don’t often enough give it credit for keeping us from killing one another, or, as Napoleon said, keeping the poor from killing the rich. (Religion is also validation for killing, but I want to avoid that topic.) My observations above are reflections on being on page 35 of William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience. I bought the book because I wanted to understand the religious impulse in humans. I have a long way to go.

Have you ever had the experience of wanting something, and then attaining it and being left in a gloomy state? I’m not talking about an achievement or a lover – more like buying an IPod or a new computer or Wii. As a kid, I wanted a shiny flip-calendar to put on my desk – you just turned it and the date would change automatically. I saved money, and the day I had enough, I went running to the store to buy it, and I owned it, and there it sat, and I was oh so unfulfilled.

We live in a market economy, and every niche of our lives from the space over the urinal to the back of the handle that dispenses gasoline is saturated with advertising. Conservatives talk about Adam Smith’s invisible hand, and as we run around taking care of our surface needs, we are indeed making jobs and stores, and that is all necessary.

But it is unsatisfying. Not only that, the invisible hand can hit you with its backside too. As we are all merrily running around in our SUV’s, we’re spewing CO2 into the air and ruining the habitable climate. Our garbage dumps overflow, our food system makes us fat, our TV’s make us stupid, our news networks carve out an empty holographic image and call it news. But hey – our immediate desires are fulfilled.

The essence of happiness is not the fulfillment of wants, but denial of them. Saving money creates fulfillment, as does application of our efforts towards achieving a long term goal, like building a deck (or a beautiful stone pizza oven) or painting a house or reading a difficult book and actually grasping some of its essence. Then there is the greatest satisfaction of all – facing fear. Facing down fear. Doing something scary, whether confronting a phobia or a boss or leaving an unfulfilling job or seeing a doctor about that lump or telling a friend an unpleasant truth.

In other words, the market system we have built around us is merely a distraction, and cannot possibly make us happy. And the conservatives are wrong when they tell us that satisfying our private desires creates a greater good for all of us. And they don’t seem to have a clue what “freedom” is. It’s not that I can buy a Ford or a Suburu – it’s that I can breathe clean air and walk on public lands and drink clean water. It’s when a company commits a civic wrong, like polluting our air or water, and we the public, through are democratic institutions, are strong enough to punish them, bring them in line, or put them out of business. That’s freedom: Strong societies exercising their right to control commerce and resources for the greater good.

Markets don’t give us freedom. They take it away. Markets send our jobs overseas, invade our privacy, undermine our personal spaces – when market forces are stronger than governments (“globalization”), all but a fortunate few suffer. Capital overrules democratic governance. We may gain access to alternative sneakers and have phones that take pictures, but we lose our power to govern ourselves.

In other words, markets are not the same as democracy, and democracy is far more important than free trade and free markets. Our society is corrupted now – we’ve shot the wad, spent our savings, and have little to show for it but a cornucopia of consumer crap. Perhaps as we rebuild, we can rekindle the spirit of strength through community, and reinvigorate our public selves. Maybe we can set selfish material pursuits aside, save money in bank accounts, invest in our health and education and social security systems, and teach our children that the greatest happiness comes from denial of self, rather than trying to satisfy every want.

Thus endeth the Sunday sermon.

Anderson Cooper of CNN recently took a shot at Rachel Maddow, MSNBC’s liberal host, and one of the few liberals in the liberal media.

I’ll get to that, but first there’s the matter of David Gregory being elevated to host Meet the Press on NBC. The Sunday talk shows are rarely interesting to me, but I did on occasion watch Tim Russert. He had a reputation for being a hard-nosed interviewer. He was no such thing. He offered a gentle forum, as he was well-schooled in the American news business, where if you don’t treat guests with proper submissiveness, you don’t get guests.

That brings me back to Maddow briefly. She has a hard time finding Republican guests. One time she had on Nancy Pfotenhauer, a McCain campaign aid, and didn’t show proper reverence, and no McCain person appeared thereafter.

That’s why I like Maddow. She’s a different breed. Anyway, here’s what Anderson Cooper has to say:

Rachel Maddow is an incredible talent — she’s funny, and smart, obviously well researched on subjects. I’m just not interested as a viewer in listening to anchors’ opinions. It seems like there’s an awful lot of yelling, and this year yelling’s been replaced by sarcasm and snarkiness.

Allow me to translate:

I’m an American journalist, and I therefore follow the American script. I show extreme deference to American government officials and allow them to put forth their positions unchallenged. It’s not my job to challenge them. That’s not what journalists do. I therefore think that Rachel Maddow is not doing her job. She’ not being properly reverential.

Anyway, poor Rachel may be a flash in the pan. She may not last. She may go the way of Phil Donohue – a liberal with high ratings who was canned during the pre-Iraq War media/government love feast.

But Rachel (and Keith Olberman) have proved a point – there is a market for liberals on TV, and a place for them in commentary. Maddow, a Phd from Oxford is also showing us that intelligence also sells. It’s a good leaning experience for moribund boring mushy middlin’-to-right-leaning television news and opinion programming.

P.S. This was priceless. Zbignew Brzezinski called up Joe Scarborough for being “stunningly superficial”. Scarborough, who defended himself by saying he reads the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and is therefore up to speed, had never heard of the Taba Summit – a late Clinton era meeting of minds between Israelis and Palestinians that was ended by Ariel Sharon when he took office. (We came very close to having peace, but as per usual, the Israelis balked.) Scarborough is too typical of American pundits and journalists.

Free enterprise is a term that refers, in practice, to a system of public subsidy and private profit, with massive government intervention in the economy to maintain a welfare state for the rich.
Noam Chomsky

Capitalism will never fail because Socialism will always bail it out.
Nathra Nader (Ralph’s Dad, attributed by Ralph)

We do a lot of arguing here about various abstracts – see below. Dave Budge informed us in that thread that his philosophy, libertarianism, has not failed because it has never been tried.

I wanted to deal in something less abstract, something that is not only tried, but is always practiced in the real world, and not held out as some potentially beneficial abstract theory (if only we would come to our senses).

The quotes above are dead-on. Hard to dispute what is happening right before our eyes.