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When one is an anti-manicheist, one tends to get in a lot of scraps as being independent means you got stuff to disagree with everyone on.

Over at Street Prophets, Curry called Bennett a racist. I defended and criticized him. Its amazing how people can be vindictive and judgemental.

One fellow wrote for me,

No, no. Don’t you do it — don’t you say “In defense of Bennett.” Remarks like his are indefensible. You and he and everyone else knows exactly what he was saying. Don’t give him the “out.” Don’t give him an inch. Don’t give him the room to snake around and justify the unjustifiable.

I wrote back,

We all make wrong calls… This also includes Bennett. I think there is wisdom in allowing one’s opponents the opportunity to save face when they have seriously blundered.

I still believe that. I believe people who supported GWB’s GWII and helped reelect them because they were concerned about moral values or our security should not be castigated for the mistakes. They should be exhorted rather to learn from the experience and to join us in pressuring GWB to rule more from the center and to look into alternatives to the US occupation of Iraq.

dlw

(on Swedish Baptist Pietism) *dance for joy*, now all I have to do is go back and make sure my footnotes are in Terabian style and write up the Bibliography. I’m only a week late *blush* because I put off doing the final integrative part between Swedish Baptists and Pietism til this past week and it was hard writing. But now that I’m elated at being finished, I feel like I might want to write a book on Swedish Baptist Pietism. Though, this might be similar to the sort of reasoning that has led me in the past to grow out my beard so I could get so many compliments when I shaved it off. It just feels really good at the end. But I doubt anyone else will write such a book where we I could expand on and refine my paper and, it will give me an excuse to go back to Sweden and learn more Swedish. Yah, shure you betcha!

dlw

Josh Claybourn quotes Newt Gingrich plan to maybe run for president in 2008. “If I’m potentially going to run, I have to get my message out, and if it works and five others pick it up, I won’t run. If the message doesn’t work, I won’t run. But if the message works and nobody picks it up, I’ll run.”
I like Newt’s method and hope others will do the same on the Left. I think that, once we reframe the abortion and homosexuality debates, there will be more room for other issues or much needed reforms to become more prominent in debates that precede the elections.

dlw

My friend Matt does a wicked satire of how the end of times may be near now that even Rush is rationalizing how the Republicans are promoting their own big-gov’t version of the New Deal for the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast, minus any immediate tax-cuts to pay for it.

dlw

I found out via Josh Marshall that Eschaton has discovered that DeLay has lied. DeLay claimed he was not invited to attend the trial that indicted him when he was invited to testify under oath and was wisely counseled by his lawyers not to attend. Now, why would lawyers counsel DeLay not to testify unless that would have made him admit to doing wrong or perjured himself?

This needs to be taken up and run with. All those people who pressed for Clinton to be impeached for lying about his affair with Monica should now for consistency sake also press for DeLay to resign. It’d probably be for the best for the Republican Party. Blunt is more than capable of using K Street funds to enforce discipline in the party in the House.

dlw

I’ve started doing some repostings over at Street Prophets.

One thing I’ve found interesting is Kos’s post where he introduced the site. He describes himself as a militant atheist whose political views are driven by his utilitarian world-view. But then he goes on to describe how he was blown away by a presentation by Jim Wallis.

Wallis urged his Democratic audience to speak of values when on the campaign trail. And not “values” as the word has been hijacked by the Right. Rather, to explain to voters the moral foundation upon which their decision making was based. This didn’t mean inserting religion into government, but giving voters a sense of how they personally arrived at their decisions.

Voters don’t want a spreadsheet with a candidate’s position on every single possible issue. They simply want to know what powers the candidate. If it’s the Bible, then great (the Bible, as Jim Wallis’ book vividly illustrates, is actually an extremely liberal document). If it’s another religious text, wonderful. If it’s something else, then they should talk about that something else.

It is just as important to talk about why we are Democrats as it is to talk about what it means to be a Democrat. People hunger for that knowledge. It’s why Obama’s DNC speech was such a hit. And whether that ethical foundation comes from religion or somewhere else doesn’t matter. Either way, we need to feel more comfortable talking about it.

This repeats Jim Wallis’s sin of idealism. I think it’s also important to acknowledge that a lot of gov’t is business/economics driven and politicians on both sides are very much swayed by the influence of K Street. That’s not to say that they do not have personal convictions on matters, but they are inevitably limited in their capacity to exercise them by the pressures of getting into power and staying in power.

But if we can overcome people’s cynicism and get them to see why deepening their deliberation on how they act politically, going beyond the labels of conservative and liberal, then we should be able to have a more healthy democracy where the power of K Street is checked.

dlw

Josh Marshall links to a site on Roy Blunt, the congressman from Missouri who is the temporary replacement for Tom Delay. Apparently he’s a divorcee who has been caught doing some pretty unethical stuff to benefit members of his family. Particularly interesting is a post by CitizenKan on Blunt,

Roy Blunt “and family” get a free pass for engaging in unethical behavior because they vote against abortion, gay marriage and the estate tax. Roy pretends to be for the family farmer while voting for legislation that only benefits the corporate farm industry. He speaks of the evils of the 527 funds, while his own RoyB 527(Rely On Your Beliefs) has more money in it than any challenger could ever hope to raise. He loves to talk about the family values of Americans, but he cannot face up to his own shortcomings without becoming angry and defensive.

I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that I live in the city/area that boasts the world headquarters of the Assemblies of God, John Ashcroft and the Blunt Dynasty. Religion has been hi-jacked in Missouri and no one is paying attention. Preachers regularly use their bully pulpit to engage in political musings and politicians often use houses of worship to get their messages to the voters.

Blunt has been hit with all the charges that are in the CREW report, and it only makes the voters mad at the “liberal media.”

Seems like a sad state of affairs and one that calls for a religious renewal that also encourages deeper habits of political deliberation.

dlw
ps, as noted by Josh Claybourn at In the Agora, it seems the Republican party may have passed over David Dreier for the “temporary” spot of Majority Leader because he is gay. Imagine the waves that may be caused in the Republican party when that fact hits the fan.
dlw

As you know, Delay has been indicted for fraud, but its amazing how the Republican party seems to be falling over itself to defend him.

But apparently

the facts of the central transactions at issue in the case — the transfer to Washington in September 2002 of $190,000 in corporate funds collected by the committee in Texas and the subsequent donation of those funds to seven Texas House candidates on Oct. 4, 2002 — have never been at issue. A copy of the relevant check has long been in the prosecutor’s hands.

But Delay will only “temporarily” step down from his number 2 position in the HOuse, until he is cleared from these fraudulent charges.

I like the BBC’s perspective on the matter.

According to Jim Barnes, the DeLay story shows how power can corrupt.

“The Republicans criticised these kinds of ethical lapses when the Democrats controlled Capitol Hill.

“Now it raises the spectre of was there some kind of hypocrisy here on the Republicans’ part.”

Washington is alive with rumour about one of its most powerful politicians.

For the moment Tom DeLay shows no signs of surrender.

If he were toppled, it could damage his party and shake Americans’ faith in the integrity of their leaders.

I look at DeLay and say, “There Goes I but for the Grace of God.” The former majority leader, Richard Armey has been going to the same church in Texas that my family went to when I was between the ages 3 and 9. If my father had not decided to leave his much better paying systems analyst in TX to teach in MN, I most definitely would have met him and, with my incipient interests in politics/history/social sciences, I can definitely see how I might have been taken under his wing and entered into the same political circles as DeLay and Bush. And, perhaps, then I’d be falling over myself to show myself a party-loyalist by defending DeLay against these “crass politically-motivated” charges made against him.

dlw

Rebecca Haines of the Institute for Global Engagement has a well done article on the need to hold to a more nuanced view of religious violence and Islam than is typically presented to us in the MSM. One of the services she provides is a list of moderate muslim voices. Read more

Kevin Drum helps to explain a mystery with some interesting stats…

George Bush is failing miserably, his approval ratings are in the tank, the liberal base is seething with anger, and yet it’s all translating into….nothing. E.J. Dionne explains why today:

[The Democratic] party’s problems are structural and can be explained by three numbers: 21, 34 and 45. According to the network exit polls, 21 percent of the voters who cast ballots in 2004 called themselves liberal, 34 percent said they were conservative and 45 percent called themselves moderate.

Those numbers mean that liberal-leaning Democrats are far more dependent than conservatively inclined Republicans on alliances with the political center.

These numbers have been rock steady for decades, and their meaning is simple: energizing the base just isn’t enough for Democrats. Even if every hardcore liberal in the country votes Democratic, we have to win about three-quarters of the moderates to gain a majority. That means we have to win support pretty far into the conservative end of that moderate center, and people like that simply aren’t going to respond to anti-war rallies and screaming campaigns against John Roberts.

I wonder how much of the 34 percent of voters who call themselves conservatives are more social than economic conservatives? If you look at the Zoo’s political blogosphere polital compass you’ll see that among social conservatives there is a divergence between economic conservativism and liberalism.
It would seem that the Dems don’t just have to reach out to the moderates, they also many need to stir more frictures between conservatives. The best way to do this is to reframe the cultural wars issues along lines that I’ve suggested in my party platform and aggressively advocate for family-friendly measures that economic conservatives won’t like too much.

dlw

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