sometimes it takes an atheist...

...to remind people what the Bible actually says.

Pharyngula gives Wall Street an old lesson, Exodus 32, after some Christians decided to pray at the golden bull.

posted without comment...

George F. Will - Call Him John the Careless - washingtonpost.com:

As for the third reason -- "huge amounts" (McCain) of money "pouring into" (The Post) presidential politics -- well:

The Center for Responsive Politics calculates that, by Election Day, $2.4 billion will have been spent on presidential campaigns in the two-year election cycle that began in January 2007, and an additional $2.9 billion will have been spent on 435 House and 35 Senate contests. This $5.3 billion is a billion less than Americans will spend this year on potato chips.

concerned about one-party rule? yes, i am. but more concerned if things don't change first.

Can One Party Rule? - washingtonpost.com:

We worry, too, though we support Mr. Obama even knowing the result may be one-party rule. A political theorist might root for the Democrats to win the White House, a 60-vote majority in the Senate and a clear majority in the House. Then voters could find out what the Democrats really stand for and render a thumbs-up or thumbs-down in two and four years -- just as they passed judgment in 2006 on the one-party rule (though short of 60-vote control in the Senate) of Tom DeLay, Ted Stevens and George W. Bush.

But we don't believe either party has a monopoly on policy wisdom. We liked Mr. Bush's insistence on accountability in education, tempered by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's reminder that you couldn't fix urban schools without some money. We don't support the Democrats' plan to allow unionization without secret ballots, but we agree with them that National Labor Relations Board rules have tipped too far toward management. And so on. We like to think, in other words, that a process in which both parties play a role can sometimes lead to better outcomes and not always to dead ends.

That's harder to imagine, though, as each party's moderate wing shrinks. A Democratic sweep might bring to Washington some relatively centrist freshmen who would provide a check on the most liberal wing of the party. But it might claim as victims some of the few remaining Republican moderates, such as Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon and Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, and some of the real workhorses who are more interested in legislating than grandstanding -- the capable New Hampshire senator John E. Sununu, for example. The defeat of such politicians would be a loss for the country, not just for their party.

Of course, the very same sentiment should have been expressed in 2002 and 2004, when reasonable and moderate Democrats were voted out by their constituencies in favor of partisan Republicans (or moderate-talking Republicans who still voted the party line every time).

I do fear one-party rule over the long term (as the damage done from 2004-2007 has shown, damage that continues through Reid's relative spinelessness), and certainly I hate how our Constitutional rights are split between the two parties (support Republican policies and watch the 1st, 4th, and 5th amendments disappear; support Democrat policies and watch the 2nd disappear, along with gross abuses of the eminent domain clause; plus NEITHER party seems to give a crap about the fair use and public domain aspects of the Copyright and Patent clauses.).

But for at least the next 2 years, I might at least hope that the damage done to this country, it's constitution, and its international reputation by this administration and a compliant congress be cleaned up before the pendulum swings too far the other direction.

yet more blatant hypocricy

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Obama and Redistribution of Wealth:

The key here is noting that virtually everyone in modern political life, Democrats and Republicans alike, supports redistribution of income. And that includes John McCain.

[video of a McCain speech at Michigan State where he defends against the notion that the progressive tax scale is socialism]

Sarah Palin, the one repeatedly calling Obama a socialist, believes in redistribution of income herself. As governor of Alaska, she not only increased taxes on oil revenue but those taxes are used directly to send a check to every Alaska family every year, telling the New Yorker that she demanded that the oil companies "share the wealth." This is the very definition of redistribution of income. Someone explain to me why Obama is a socialist but Palin is not.

[...]

And let's also bear in mind that most redistribution of income in this country goes from middle class taxpayers to the bank accounts of big corporations. The Federal budget is rife with corporate welfare, with hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies, tax breaks and other giveaways to wealthy corporations. We're actually still subsidizing the oil companies in a myriad of ways even while they report the highest profits in the history of the world.

Ethanol subsidies are nothing but pure corporate welfare. The $300 billion farm bill passed earlier this year is almost entirely made up of corporate welfare. Huge agribusiness corporations spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions to politicians of both parties and in return they get tens of billions of dollars transferred from taxpayers to their bank accounts. Socialism indeed.

Whether you agree with it or not, no one can deny that this country long ago reached a consensus on having (more or less) free markets and private ownership of the means of production while also having the government provide a floor beneath the less fortunate. In fact, virtually the entire world has reached that consensus. All modern, civilized nations now feature some mixture of private ownership with government social programs.

We have social welfare programs in this country and they are supported by both parties. Conservatives and liberals may argue over how high that floor should be, or who should be eligible for support, but virtually no politician from either party actually wants to do away with all welfare programs. The pot is not merely calling the kettle black here, the pot is also feigning shock and outrage at the discovery.

Italy: Florence (at daytime) September 24th through 27th, 2008