Living a narcissist's dream

The Pastor Casts a Shadow - The New York Times

The Shrinking Election - Washington Post

Repelling by example

One more thought on the atheist story. Why is it that, so often, the most loudly self-avowed "Christians" are precisely the ones that think and behave in the least Christ-like manner? It's like the Bizarro-world version of "leading by example." Either these people have never cracked open a Bible, or their reading comprehension scores are in the negative numbers.

These also tend to be the first people to complain about the "anti-Christian" bias of secular culture. Well, there is an anti-Christian bias out there, but it's not about Christianity itself or, I would venture, even about most Christians. No one is rolling their eyes and making snide remarks about Mother Teresa. It's only this smaller group of do-the-opposite, in-name-only Christians -- those exemplars of bad behavior who try to shout down any contrary thought -- that try every thinking person's patience.

Well-paid experts can't understand why we're so dour about the economy

As Jobs Vanish and Prices Rise, Food Stamp Use Nears Record - The New York Times

Threats show need for remedial training in U.S. history, Constitutional principles, adulthood

Soldier Sues Army, Saying His Atheism Led to Threats - The New York Times

It's amazing, and disheartening, that the officers and fellow soldiers who threatened this guy are fighting for a Constitution they don't remotely understand. What the First Amendment prohibits is government attempts to shape, control or sanction our ideas (and our expressions thereof). Clearly, however, some people are threatened by any form of "freedom" that does not produce conformity.

As Thomas Jefferson explained in his Notes on the State of Virginia:

The rights of [religious] conscience we never submitted, we could not submit.... Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature.

Courting the let-them-eat-cake vote

McCain's economic program? Bushonmics on crack. Slate's Daniel Gross sums it up thusly:

Reading McCain's economic agenda and listening to his speech, it appears that the problem with the last eight years is that we haven't seen enough tax breaks for the wealthy, that economic royalism hasn't been pursued with sufficient vigor, and that the middle and working classes haven't been stiffed sufficiently.

A rare instance of economic accountability

This passage deserves particular emphasis:

The real incomes of middle-class families grew more than twice as fast under Democratic presidents as they did under Republican presidents. Even more remarkable, the real incomes of working-poor families (at the 20th percentile of the income distribution) grew six times as fast when Democrats held the White House. Only the incomes of affluent families were relatively impervious to partisan politics, growing robustly under Democrats and Republicans alike.

Inequalities - The New York Times

The shape of things to come

Bush Made Permanent - The New York Times

Be like lobstermen

Shankar Vedantam - Clinton, Obama and the Narcissist's Tale - washingtonpost.com

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Abandoning '48

The Wage That Meant Middle Class - The New York Times

The Post-Fact Society

Truth: Can You Handle It? - washingtonpost.com

Pollsters: In November, either Democrat will do

Still, I have yet to meet an independent or Republican crossover voter who hasn't told me, "I'd like to vote for a Democrat this year--but not if it's Hillary."

Democrats Assess Rivals’ Strength in Swing States - The New York Times

Working the ref

Conservatives shout, "liberal bias!", and the media quiver. Liberals shout, "conservative bias!", and the media shrug. What gives? My not-terribly-original thought is, "Follow the money." Are the corporations who now own most of the media better served by a conservative bias?

Sometimes correlation does mean causation.

Sleeping with the enemy

Sixties-izing the Dems

Happens every time. Let's move on, people.

(But before we do, it might be worth recalling that, on the big stuff--civil rights, the environment, Vietnam--those damn hippies were right.)

Back to The '60s

But seriously...

The deeper concern raised by the preceding story can be found in this graf:

"But sometimes somebody's temperament can get in the way of aides telling him the truth, which happened [during the Vietnam War] with LBJ. His temper scared some [aides] away, which was not good for anyone. . . . That's always part of the risk with a strong temper . . . and so it's always relevant."

We've already had eight years of see-no-evil, hear-no-evil leadership. The results have not been good.

Three words: Finger. Button. Boom.

McCain: A Question of Temperament - Washington Post

The stealthly pay cut

Workers Get Fewer Hours, Deepening the Downturn - The New York Times

Unlike "compassionate conservatives," the phrase "compassionate economics" is not necessarily an oxymoron

Last night I had the good fortune to stumble across a fascinating interview on New Dimensions radio with author Riane Eisler. She was discussing her most recent book, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating A Caring Economics. Good stuff, very insightful.

Here's an excerpt introducing the program from the New Dimensions website:

Even with a woman knocking on the door of the Presidency, our society-and our government-still views women, and the nurturing qualities of the feminine, as inferior. The result is a politics of scarcity, and a growing population of families living in poverty. Ms. Eisler explains, "As long as we don't make the invisible visible, we will continue to see this economic double standard at work, and policy makers will continue to tell us that we always have money for prisons or for weapons and wars. But these same policy makers will tell us somehow that there isn't enough money for health care, child care, paid parental leave. It makes no sense. This country is going to pay very, very dearly in economic terms for not investing in our human capital, not to speak of all the suffering that we're causing. But we've got to make that visible. Then we can change it."

The site charges $1.99 for the full, one-hour program (well worth the time and money, imho). Alternatively, an excerpt can be found here (free site registration required).

We need a conversation that gets to the point

The US needs to talk about class, but politicians don't have the vocabulary - The Guardian

There's no place for law, sense, and decency in this Administration's ideology. Not with all that money in there

President Is Rebuffed on Program for Children - New York Times

Since '01, Guarding Species Is Harder - Washington Post

If you can’t trust your shadowy overlords to keep a secret, what's the purpose of voting in a puppet democracy?

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Virginia Heffernan - The Medium - Television - Internet Video - Media - The Onion - New York Times

What can you expect if they're not wearing flag pins?

Shoddy! Tawdry! A Televised Train Wreck! - New York Times

She's right (except for the blog-entry crack)

But the takeaway thought belongs to Jon Stewart: "Not only do I want an elite president. I want someone who is embarrassingly superior to me."

Still with stupid? - Los Angeles Times

Who hangs out more in truck stops, millionaire politicians or millionaire journalists?

Elections in America: Millionaires Accusing Each Other of Elitism | Election 2008 | AlterNet

I miss "The West Wing" *sigh*

A 'West Wing' Writer Imagines the Showdown at the Democratic National Convention -- New York Magazine

The real question is, who's the least elitist?

• E. J. Dionne Jr. - Loose Lips and Democratic Ships - washingtonpost.com
• Richard Cohen - Guns, God and Gotchas - washingtonpost.com
• Some Perspective on ‘Bitter’ - New York Times

Two Americas? Nahhhh

Crisis of Confidence - New York Times

Despite Tough Times, Ultrarich Keep Spending - New York Times

Thought for the day

I filed my taxes today. At times like these, it is important to remember Oliver Wendell Holmes' famous observation: "Taxes are the price we pay for civilization." So true. Don't you hate all those freeloading libertarians who love to call taxation "theft," and yet don't hesitate to use the services government provides? Here's my proposal. Libertarians can stop paying taxes as long as they: build their own roads; use private schools; put out their own fires; dispose of their own sewage; enforce their own contracts; test all their own products for safety; forego police protection; stay out of public parks, libraries, museums, and job centers; forget about unemployment benefits and old-age protections; and abstain from any medical treatment that was developed using government funds (which is to say, most of them). Good luck, libertarians!

Abolish All ‘Taxes' - The New York Times

Thanks, Puritans

Re: the last post. I suppose such an attitude isn't surprising given our conflation of morals and money--the widespread, if unspoken, American belief that financial worth = human worth. The sinner in America is he who makes less than $50k. (Thank you, Puritans.)

It never seems to occur to anyone that there are far fewer good jobs than people who want them. If every American were to "get the education" to qualify for such jobs (the fact that even Democrats still cling to the "Great Education Myth" as our salvation is chilling), what we would wind up with isn't more good jobs, but rather more overqualified people who can only find work at Wal-Mart. And we have a surplus of those already.

America: Where only the wealthy deserve to be healthy

Health Care Horror Stories - New York Times

And finally....

• At the Poles, Melting Occurring at Alarming Rate - washingtonpost.com
• Suicide Is Not Painless - New York Times
• The Long, Dark Night - New York Times
• The Wiretap This Time - New York Times
• Thomas' rulings contrast meager beginnings - Los Angeles Times
• Robert Reich is the CEO's new best friend. - Slate Magazine
• Rudy, the Values Slayer - New York Times
• Insurers taking risk out of the equation - Los Angeles Times
• A Catastrophe Foretold - New York Times
• S.F. offering healthcare to neediest - Los Angeles Times
• White House Feels Waxman's Oversight Gaze - washingtonpost.com
• AlterNet: Where Does the Right-Wing End and the Media Begin?
• Billionaires Up, America Down - CommonDreams.org
• Dan Brown: Bush's "Poor Kids First" Kept Sick and Freezing - Politics on The Huffington Post
• Nobel Prize Sees What Market-Fundamentalists Don’t - CommonDreams.org
• Give Us This Day Our Daily Debt
• Civilization Ends with a Shutdown of Human Concern. Are We There Already? - CommonDreams.org
• Tax Evasion: Online Only: The New Yorker
• Economaniac
• Haunted by the Hippie - The American Prospect
• WorkingForChange: The Rise of Captive-Industry Populism
• Prostates and Prejudices - New York Times
• REGARDING MEDIA - Los Angeles Times
• TAP Talks to Paul Krugman - The American Prospect
• AlterNet: The Art of the Hissy Fit
• AlterNet: Progressive NYT Columnist Bob Herbert Is Doing God's Work ...
• Workers of the World Unite
• Guardian Unlimited - This is one dangerous man: it's George Bush with brains
• Health Care Excuses - New York Times
• Greenspan Is Critical Of Bush in Memoir - washingtonpost.com
• Foreign Policy In Focus - How Much is Enough?
• Who's to Blame for the Brave New Economy? - The American Prospect
• Ten Reasons Why American Health Care Is so Bad - The American Prospect
• All They Are Saying Is Give Happiness a Chance - New York Times
• Banks Gone Wild - New York Times
• Winter of Our Discontent - New York Times
• Harold Meyerson - National Labor Ruination Board - washingtonpost.com
• Eugene Robinson - Tattered Dream - washingtonpost.com
• Lost in a Flood of Debt - New York Times
• Winning the rat race by quitting it - Los Angeles Times
• Shankar Vedantam - With Power Comes a Selfish Point of View - washingtonpost.com
• That's Rich -- but Maybe Not for Someone Else
• Religion, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, separation of church and state - Salon.com
• E. J. Dionne Jr. - Liberals' McCain Problem - washingtonpost.com
• E. J. Dionne Jr. - The Street on Welfare - washingtonpost.com
• Partying Like It’s 1929 - New York Times
• Loans and Leadership - New York Times
• The Dilbert Strategy - New York Times
• Race and the Social Contract - New York Times
• Inflation Hits the Poor Hardest
• GAO Blasts Weapons Budget
• Meet the super-rich, the dysfunctional class threatening American values. - Slate Magazine
• Harold Meyerson - Bailing Out the Reaganites - washingtonpost.com
• E. J. Dionne Jr. - When Liberalism's Moment Ended - washingtonpost.com
• Voodoo Health Economics - New York Times
• Big Pharma's Golden Eggs - washingtonpost.com
• The prophetic anger of MLK - Los Angeles Times
• There Were Orders to Follow - New York Times
• Administration Asserted a Terror Exception on Search and Seizure - washingtonpost.com
• Harold Meyerson - Missing: Our Trade Strategy - washingtonpost.com

Cleaning up, part deux

• An Iraqi "Eliot Ness" Out in the Cold
• Voting for Strategy Over Policy - The American Prospect
• Health Care Hopes - New York Times
• $6 Billion in Contracts Reviewed, Pentagon Says - New York Times
• Over The Dead Bodies … - David Sirota
• Let the CHIPs Fall...
• AlterNet: Ask the Candidates: Will They Cut a Bloated 20th-Century Military Budget?
• Why isn't Congress asking tough questions about Pentagon spending? - By Fred Kaplan - Slate Magazine
• The Ugly Side of the G.O.P. - New York Times
• Politics in Black and White - New York Times
• Who Owns Adam Smith? - CommonDreams.org
• Truthdig - With Big Ideas Like These…
• Collecting of Details on Travelers Documented - washingtonpost.com
• Walking proof of insurance crisis - Los Angeles Times
• UAW Strike Points Up Need for Universal Health Care - The Progressive Magazine since 1909
• State Dept: Corruption in Iraq is Classified
• Inspector Finds Broad Failures in Oil Program - New York Times
• Divine politics | Salon Books
• Harold Meyerson - Rise of the Have-Nots - washingtonpost.com
• The Socialists Are Coming! The Socialists Are Coming! - New York Times
• Glenn Greenwald - Political Blogs and Opinions - Salon
• The war president "at peace" with himself - Salon.com
• AlterNet: The Conflicted Consumer
• Dan Rather Stands by His Story - CommonDreams.org
• The erasing of Iraq - Naomi Klein | Guardian Unlimited Books
• Why failure is the new face of success - Naomi Klein | Guardian Unlimited Books
• AlterNet: The GOP's '08 Candidates Can't Keep Dodging Iraq Much Longer
• The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West - Mark Lilla - New York Times
• The Hillarycare Mythology - The American Prospect
• Greenspan and the Myth of the True Believer
• Candidates Go Code Blue on Health Care - The American Prospect
• WorkingForChange: Greenspan Says Solution to Inequality Is to Lower U.S. Wages
• Harold Meyerson - Return of the Goldwater GOP - washingtonpost.com
• The Smear This Time - New York Times
• Why Bush was dumb to veto S-CHIP - Slate Magazine
• Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations - New York Times
• Conservatives Are Such Jokers - New York Times
• Eugene Robinson - Bush's Veto Lies - washingtonpost.com
• A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation - New York Times
• Reading My Grandfather's Son by Clarence Thomas. - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine
• Sliming Graeme Frost - New York Times
• Time to Rethink Our Economic Priorities? - The American Prospect
• Religion and nation - The Boston Globe
• Disparities: Comment: The New Yorker
• WorkingForChange: Confronting the Hollow Men
• The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us - New York Times
• AlterNet: WorkPlace: Americans Don't Believe in the American Dream
• Same Old Party - New York Times
• More Glorious Conservative Honesty - Campaign for America's Future
• Harold Meyerson - The Silenced Majority - washingtonpost.com
• Captives of the Supply Side - New York Times
• AlterNet: Paul Krugman--Why Do Right-Wingers Mock Attempts to Care for Other People?
• AlterNet: Millions of Americans in Economic Battle to Make Ends Meet
• WorkingForChange: Right-Wing Health Care Mythology
• TomPaine.com - A Human Right To Health
• Glenn Greenwald - Political Blogs and Opinions - Salon
• More Conservative Honesty Please - Campaign for America's Future
• A Case of Selective Justice? -Time
• Judge Radhi Testifies on Iraqi Corruption; GOPers Attack
• Joe Conason: Wesley Clark's memoir and the neocon strategy for a wider Mideast war - Salon.com
• Ex-Commander In Iraq Faults War Strategy
• How the Right's S-CHIP Smear Backfired - The American Prospect
• blackagendareport.com - Numbers Tricks Mask Declining Wages and Rising Inequality
• None Dare Call It Child Care - New York Times
• 'Anything But Clinton' Redux - The American Prospect
• Libertarians Rising - Time
• Don't think of a sick child - Salon.com
• The Rockefellers and class warfare - Slate Magazine
• The Invisible Culture of Corruption - David Sirota

Cleaning up

The first thing I need to do is put up the links I never got around to posting on the old site (remember, that time thing). There's a lot of them. Please be patient. Also, some of these articles may be out of date. Please ignore them. :)

• The House Lawyer Departs - New York Times
• Labor's failure - The Boston Globe
• Comment is free: A rich man's world
• The Difference Between The Parties Is As Deep As A Coal Mine - CommonDreams.org
• Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act - CommonDreams.org
• Bush Knew Saddam Had No Weapons of Mass Destruction - CommonDreams.org
• Glenn Greenwald - Political Blogs and Opinions - Salon
• Exhibit A in Painting Court as Too Far Right - washingtonpost.com
• AlterNet: How Gonzales Destroyed the American Dream
• For Workers, It Was No Holiday - The American Prospect
• A New Push to Regulate Power Costs - New York Times
• Supply Side Bait and Switch - The American Prospect
• The Patriot Act -- and the Senate's -- Constitution Problem
• Onward, Secular Soldiers
• Debunking Conservatives' Myths About S-CHIP
• Use time wisely -- by slacking off - Los Angeles Times
• New Book Details Cheney Lawyer's Efforts to Expand Executive Power - washingtonpost.com
• Free-lunch foragers - Los Angeles Times
• Wall Street Isn't the Economy - The American Prospect
• Excerpts from The Terror Presidency - Slate Magazine
• Winner Take All - Campaign for America's Future
• TV's triumphant overclass - Salon Arts & Entertainment
• Salon.com Books - "Broken Government"
• Workers paying more for coverage - Los Angeles Times
• Housing Costs Consumed More of Paychecks in 2006 - New York Times
• Experts Doubt Drop In Violence in Iraq - washingtonpost.com
• Petraeus: I "Don't Know" If Iraq War Makes U.S. Safer
• Petraeus’s Killer Confession - The Progressive
• Soldiers Who Challenged War Spin Die in Iraq
• "The Nine" - Salon Books
• AlterNet: Are Corporate Titans Really Worth the Billions They Suck In?
• We're losing in Afghanistan too - Los Angeles Times
• How Bush is trying to save face in Iraq - Salon.com
• Why Health Care Is a Losing Issue for the GOP - The American Prospect
• AlterNet: "NBA Syndrome" Helps Fuel Spiralling Inequality
• The real reason Bush is withdrawing troops from Iraq - Salon News
• The Presidential Pageant
• The Liberal Moment - Chronicle.com
• The Myth of the Balanced Court - The American Prospect
• The age of disaster capitalism - The Guardian
• San Francisco to Offer Care for Uninsured Adults - New York Times
• AlterNet: When the Rich Make Too Much--Is it Time for a Maximum Wage?
• Foreign Policy: 21 Solutions to Save the World--An Embarrassment of Riches
• Jane Smiley: The Shock Doctrine - The Huffington Post
• Fed’s Ex-Chief Attacks Bush on Fiscal Role - New York Times
• The Lies of Alan Greenspan
• Is This the Democrats' Chance to Become the Party for Grown-Ups? -- New York Magazine
• Truthdig -‘Giving’ and Taking
• Alan Greenspan discovers that human beings are … irrational! - Slate Magazine
• SCHIP: Are You For Good Government or Bad Government? - Campaign for America's Future
• TomPaine.com - Toxic Chickens Home To Roost
• Which Kind of Economics? - The American Prospect
• The Only Way Liberals Can Compete in Constitutional Interpretation
• In Turnaround, Industries Seek U.S. Regulations - New York Times
• Extract: The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein - Guardian Unlimited Books
• Introducing This Blog - Paul Krugman
• RealClearPolitics - Dominant Hillary Scares Enemies
• Clinton's healthy shot - Los Angeles Times
• Barbara's Blog: We Have Seen the Enemy — And Surrendered
• Las Vegas SUN: Wal-Mart breaks the law, gets punished, wins anyway
• Poverty Is Hazardous to Your Health
• Hillarycare II: new and improved - Slate Magazine
• Stop Blaming The Baby Boomers - Campaign for America's Future
• French Dressing

Raison d'etre (literally, "What the hell are you doing?")

Welcome.

This is the new home for my old website, "The Contrarian Review." Why the change? First, I no longer had the time to maintain a "real" website--what with file transfers and coding and site design not to screw up (a constant struggle given my nonexistent technical skills)--but I still wanted to share web articles that might be of interest with others. A blog seemed the quick-and-dirtiest way of doing that.

The second reason is that the main aim of my old site--to raise a loud alarm over the lies and lunacies of the Bush Administration (remember, when I started the old site in 2002, the mainstream media was still swooning over Bush, with the brave exception of Paul Krugman of the New York Times)--has been realized. Bush now has one of the lowest approval ratings of any president since the dawn of the approval rating. The NYT recently reported that 81% of Americans--81%!--now feel this country is on the wrong track.

But, as long as conservatives roam freely, we are not safe. I liked to consider the old CR as a kind of progressive Reader's Digest or "best of the progressive web," as well as a way (however feeble) of fighting the Republicans' seemingly implacable drive to de-civilize America, to make life hell for the non-wealthy.

If knowledge is power--and if it is viral--then maybe sharing this kind of information, even on a small scale, can help tip the social scales in a more just direction. Who knows? It's worth a shot.