There Are No Rules of the Road

Tags

Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, death, Democrats, economy, life, life in the meadow, Republicans, Sarah Palin

If I had found myself abandoned in the wilds of the US, oh say, four hundred years ago, I would surely have perished. I was not “the fittest”. Nor even close.

To what do I refer? Well, please keep the secret, but I am one of those people genetically challenged when it comes to sight. I couldn’t hit the side of the proverbial barn as they say. Without technological assistance that is.

So with bow and arrow, I would have missed the target, and no doubt starved to death.

I started wearing glasses in the fourth grade. Year by year my eyes deteriorated until I was close to the “coke bottle” syndrome. I switched to contacts, but a badly shaped eyeball made them difficult at best.

Finally, I trucked off to Canada and got the Lasix treatment where they rearrange your focal point by some voodoo magic light, and voilá, I could see, sans glasses.

That has pretty much been it for nearly seventeen years. But alas age catches up with all of us.

Which is nothing more to say than that the Contrarian and I (as part of our departure stuff) went off to get our eyes tested and glasses ordered. We have gotten to the point that watching anything written on the TV screen, requires both of us to read it. We figured we might miss New Mexico all together and end up in the Grand Canyon by mistake. I do mean IN it.

So that was yesterday.

And I’m telling you all this, simple because there are no rules of the road here, and I can tell you whatever I choose, and you can read or not as the mood or time strikes you.

♦

As we were driving and I was trying hard to ignore the fact that one is never quite sure where one will end up when driving with the Contrarian at the wheel, we got to talking about Brandy. The sorrow is still there, but we can talk with laughter now.

Anyway, we were talking about how she went so easy and we were not forced to make that decision to “put her down”, a thoroughly strange way of avoiding “ordering her killed.”

It came to me, that we as humans are adjudged “humane” for putting down an animal that is in pain and with no real way to correct the condition. If we were to do the same thing for a human being, we would be adjudged more often than not, a murderer. A human is required to die in misery if that be the medical situation, no matter how long it takes. ‘Course, they often don’t. I understand doctors often “over dose” with pain killers, knowing that death will ensue.

Still, we wouldn’t judge it humane to put a human being out of their misery. Except if you were Doctor Kevorkian. He judged it merciful.

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I wonder how it will play?

Democrats: lets build roads, repair schools, fix bridges. (translate: hire construction companies which then hire more workers, and all the supply companies (concrete and so forth). Job creation: immediate. Results: workers make some money, start buying crap at Wal-Mart, and Wal-Mart starts hiring more workers. Two tiered job creation.)

Republicans: cut taxes, eliminate regulations. (translate: corporations have more cash. HOPEFULLY they will expand worker pools. Hard to see why they would when nobody has any money to buy their shit.)

Does the American public at large have the brains to see this? I wonder.

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Did ya hear? Sarah Palin is heading off to Korea in a month or so to speak at a “World Knowledge conference.” I mean, oxymoron or what? What on earth could she possibly be speaking about? Is she gonna ask for help? A book list maybe? Or just pooh-pooh the notion that In_tEYE-lec-tuls are necessary in a world where everything can be decided using just good old common sense.

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Did anybody catch that Rudy Giuliani did it again? He said he will make a decision about running for the GOP nomination but not until after the 9/11 events. He does always get that 9/11 reference into everything he says doesn’t he?

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I’m just about done with Atlas Shrugged. She really is a pretty awful writer. She actually had some interesting characters but she’s buried them in so much political rhetoric that you have to wade through pages and pages of it, to get back to the story line.

I just finished “John Galt’s” radio broadcast. It went on for about forty pages of non-stop explanation of why enterpreneurs were good and everybody else was bad. This quote sums up her thinking about all of “us”.

“The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom, who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains.”

The rich man is the victim you see, and the worker is the exploiter of the rich man’s intellect. Why, Rand claims, all the things the worms at the bottom have, are the product of the genius of the top. The worms could never create a car if their life depended upon it.

This is ADMITTED mindset of the Cantors and Ryans, the DeMints and the Pauls. This is their concept of “survival of the fittest.”

Have a nice day!

If I Could Just Understand Your Theory. . .

Tags

budget, Democrats, economy, GOP, Kenysian economics, supply-side economics, taxes

Okay, before we start, hold this thought firmly in your mind. I have no degree in economics. I tend to rely on the likes of Paul Krugman and Robert Reich, both well-respected as experts.

As I understand things, most economists believe in a Keynesian approach to managing a national economy. There are lots of variations of course, but essentially Keynesian economics recognize that at some points unchecked business practices lead to stagnation and that government must intervene at some points and with some actions that stabilize and move growth forward. Of course where and with what are always the question.

This is the approach generally favored I believe by both Krugman and Reich, and certainly by the President, and most Democrats.

Republicans, on the other hand, favor a “supply side” economics, which generally can be referred to as “trickle down” or “laissiz-faire” or “free market”. Of course details vary, but in the main it means that government needs to stay out of the way, taxes on the wealthy and corporations should be low, and regulations eliminated for the most part. 

The idea is that the wealthy, given more money, will invest it in infrastructure and expanding business, employing more, thus lowering prices, allowing the lower echelons to buy more, as they  receive greater income.

This practice, according to John Kenneth Galbraith has been tried before, namely in the 1890’s. It failed and led to the panic of 1896 and this famous statement from none other that William Jennings Bryant:

“There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests up on them.”

So nothing new here.

Why then do Republican politicians continue to push this failed agenda? Frankly, I can come up with no other answer than that is what their overlords demand of them. Business interests have always filled the coffers of Republican politicians. (Democrats of course get their money elsewhere, and there is plenty of room for condemnation there as well. But that is another story.)

The question then becomes why do corporations push these failing policies? The average small business is mostly doing horribly in this economic downturn. So are most medium-sized. It is only the mega conglomerates, with their deep diversity in markets throughout the world that can be said to be doing well. And frankly it seems that most of the ones who do well are doing so because they provide essential products.

But clearly, a stable, growing economy seems best for them too. So why do they argue for policies that ultimately tank the average national economy and lead to severe recessions if not down-right depression?

I think in part it is fairly simple.

We tend to think of corporations as entities, as “persons” because we have been taught to. Courts have declared over the passing decades that corporations can be guilty of torts and even criminal acts. They can sue and be sued. The can be harmed and can harm. They are people in the sense that they have a right a political voice. They have a right to pursue through advertising and lobbying their particularized interests.

So we tend to think of them as “people.’

Yet, in the end, they are not. They are run by INDIVIDUALS. And when you remember that, it all makes a good deal more sense. The individual who is CEO or CFO of Acme Inc., is not looking down the road to what the world will look like twenty years from now given a particular economic ideology. They are looking to the next quarter.

Most if not all CEO’s and others in high management, know that their “bottom line” is dependent on the corporation’s bottom line. You are paid to make money and keep stockholders happy and buying stock. You are not paid to make choices that hurt in the short term but will mean a healthier and stable business in ten years.

One would expect that most CEOs of major businesses have taken basic economics. Yet they ignore what works and argue for what doesn’t work long-term. If you tell business that “they are the job creators” and wait for them to tell you what they “need” they will. Don’t be surprised if it’s lower taxes and less or no regulation. Nothing drives up the short-term bottom line than those two things.

This is the only explanation that makes any sense to me. Trickle down economics was restarted with the Bush tax cuts in 2001. All the Bush years brought us was the loss of millions of jobs, a spiraling debt, a recession, and a growing divide between the rich and the rest of us. Yet today, Congressional Republicans and those running for the nomination cannot get off this tired and failed merry-go-round.

That’s what I’ve come up with. I’d be happy to hear what you think.

Related articles

• Robert Reich: Ransom Paid (huffingtonpost.com)
• Robert Reich: It’s not a budget crisis, but a jobs crisis (americablog.com)
• Brawl with Paul – Krugman is ‘wrong,’ Sperling says (politico.com)
• Newt Gingrich Accuses Obama Of Being A Follower Of Paul Krugman, Which Would Be News To Paul Krugman (huffingtonpost.com)
• Krugman: “The President Surrenders” (americablog.com)

Well, It’s Pretty Done I Guess

Tags

Democrats, GOP, government, poltiical theory, Rousseau

We got some sort of a deal. I’m not liking a lot of it. It could have been better, but then again, it could have been worse. I don’t care to examine it in detail. I’m just tired.

Through all this I’ve been reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. I like tomes, and this is about average. Not the best written by far, but a readable story. Ayn Rand is another thing. She paints caricatures of characters. They, be they Capitalists or Progressives, are so distorted as to be laughable.

After nearly three hundred pages, I suddenly sat back and went, “Whoa, this is the bible that people like Rand Paul and Paul Ryan demand their staffs read!” I mean, it’s laughable and scary at the same time. The Capitalists are brilliant and virile, the progressives are dull and soft. How anyone could base a political and economic philosophy on such fantasy is beyond me.

Yet, I recognized too that there is a deep and ultimately traversable chasm between most Democrats and most Republicans. We don’t see the world at all the same. And it is this divide, strengthened by the extreme right who are wickedly ill-informed yet ideological fanatics, that makes governing a near impossibility.

Rousseau talked about a “social compact” between government and the people:

Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will; and in a body we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.

The devil is of course in the details. Republicans would argue that any such contract is merely for those services that individuals cannot do themselves, since as defense from foreign countries, and provisions for a monetary system, mail, and roads. Beyond that Republicans prefer that all people are free to create a livelihood and make individual agreements as they wish without government interference. If government does anything, it protects the right of business to operate unfettered by loathsome state or local regulation.

Democrats, I believe, see the compact as much more. Protection is not limited to merely physical defense, but involves a duty to take care of its vulnerable citizens such that the great worth of the state is used in part to protect those who are unable to successfully compete in the market place. Part of who they protect against is the insatiable greed of business.

No doubt the purist system that Republicans so love, once worked perfectly. We had the exactly perfect mix of farming/manufacturing/services ratio. We had the right amount of untamed, open land to explore and settle in. But all too soon our cities grew, and business ran up against competitions, and entrepreneurs looked for ways to get an edge. The easy choices were wages and working conditions. As the poor grew in size, government stepped in to regulate and then protect those who individually had no leverage against big business.

Republicans call Democrats “bleeding liberals”. One of the reasons the debt ceiling crisis careened perilously close to the edge was that Republicans knew that Democrats would protect the “nanny state” items of social security, medicare and so forth in return for giving in on taxing the most wealthy at a fair rate. And they were mostly right in this.

Republicans see the state of our country much as Eisenhower viewed the European theater before Normandy. The war was going badly, and we were on the brink of losing. Only a major strike, accepting severe losses could turn the tide. Republicans see the state of the US much the same. Hopelessly mired in a welfare mentality, with increasing numbers dependent and expecting the government to support them, they are willing, to accept the high “losses” that will accrue via draconian cuts in welfare “entitlement” programs. They see them as necessary pain to be endured. Of course the pain is not going to be born by them.

They of course cannot voice this Republican truth. To do so would be to court annihilation at the ballot box. That is why you hear the perverse crap of “in a recession you cannot raise taxes.” Nobody ever bothers to stop them there and ask why. No economist backs them up on this. Taxes up or down don’t correlate to the economy quite simply. And worse, the Bush tax cuts never created a single job. Where were all those “job creators” the GOP speaks of?

No, the mantras of no taxes in a recession, and “we have a spending problem” are simply untruths used to avoid the philosophical position that the only way to right the ship of state is to dismantle all social programs. Surely a bloodbath of misery will follow, but when the dust settles and the sun returns, we will have a country reduced to able-bodied and Protestant work-ethic workers, ready to dig in and make America great again.

That is pure Ayn Rand. It is fantasy. It is not even good fantasy. It is not rational economics 101. It is not good political theory. It is nothing but the wilful desire of business interests who have paid for their politicians, their twisted think tank “reports”, and ultimately their puppet TeaPeople who like lap-dogs, scurry around the table looking for the scraps that are always promised but never appear.

It is greed, unbridled, bloodthirsty, take no prisoners greed. Who says that Corporatocracy was not just another word for ARISTOCRACY. Let them eat cake!

 

Laughing Around the World

Tags

Democrats, Fox News, GOP, Humor, Media, Michele Bachmann, teabaggers

Well, HI!

Half way through another week, and on Friday I’ll be heading to town to stock up on grub. That’s what we in Iowa call food. A sack of flour, a sack of sugar, some bags of beans, some salt pork, you know the routine.

Meanwhile, from my telescope on the world, I see things are still in basically a chitty mess. Everyone is babbling the same old rhetoric, the same lies are perpetrated by the same suspects, the same folks seek power at anyone’s expense, the same folks hold on for dear life.

Everyone pretty much “speaks for the American People” without ever calling me and asking me anything. Some how they think they are speaking for me. They seldom are.

Shouldn’t our computers have a “bad news” filter? Just a thought.

Okay, I saw this little cute thing over at Joe.My.God. I copied it. Enjoy it.

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Andy Borowitz discovered that Fox Noise has inadvertently helped Qaddafi recently. Read down the right column of “featured stories” about how Qaddafi has solved his “journalist” problem. Fox is good for something. Can we now try them as traitors?

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A blog called AngryBlackLadyChronicles has some amusing poetry she composed about Michele (oh my achin’ mind) Bachmann. The site is amusing, worth a look in any case. Smart, sassy writing. I pray every single day, please let the wonka woman run for the presidency. . .oh pretty please God! [h/t to Crooks and Liars]

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Joe Klein is a good writer. He, during the 2008 campaign, finally exposed John McCain for the self-centered, mean ugly little wart that he was. Since then, he has continued to call it as he sees it. While the wacked out GOP continues to pepper every speech with flag-waving “American exceptionalism” rhetoric, Joe has a different take. It is a great read!

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Is there a fundamental difference between the way Democrats and Republicans govern? Some suggest that Democrats focus on substantive legislation around important policy items, like energy, health care, business regulation. Republicans on the other hand focus on increasing their power base–thus the moves to defund NPR, defund the EPA, increasingly regulate abortions, all designed to make their base happy and keep everyone in line on their side. MoJo has an interesting post by Kevin Drum.

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Hooray! There is still hope for America. A recent PPP poll said that PBS is the “most trusted news outlet in the US, and Fox has fallen badly. Fox finds itself about equal to NBC and CNN, and drawing up the rear is ABC and CBS. A 12 point change in moderates accounts for much of Fox’s loss. And that is a very good sign. Finally word is getting out that Fox blatantly lies to support its right-wing agenda.

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What’s on the Stove? fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn

Muttering in Circles

Tags

Catholicism, Christmas, DADT, Democrats, essay, GOP, pets, poverty, teabaggers

I’m bored. I’m also, shocking I know, feeling lazy.  Okay, pick yourself up off the floor. I should have warned you.

I am not quite sure why that is. I’m not unhappy. Far from it. I’m rather serene actually. That is a word that seldom bumps up in a sentence next to I. Spooky.

I’m laid back. This too is “not me.”

I should be livid. I really should. I should be laughing up a storm at the Republicans. Do you know they managed in one 24-hour cycle to piss of huge sections of the electorate? Latinos, social security recipients, and gays. Wow, that’s some accomplishment. To say nothing of the fact that the “teasippers” are none to pleased with them either. I think an award of some sort is in order.

I’m not despondent. Frankly this is really scary, given the time of year. After all, there is white stuff on the ground, not the green I prefer, nor the brown I can tolerate. I am into live and let live as far as the weather is concerned. You KNOW that is not me.

I’m quite happy with my church. I feel good there. I feel “right.” I had a rare utterly spiritually elevating moment, my voice almost breaking at a Hallelujah. I was staring at the crucifix, and, well, how does one explain? You don’t of course, you just glory in the moment. You realize once again why you trudge twenty miles with temps in the teens to be in this place. Go figure.

The Contrarian is doing very well. Was it due to my unceasing prayers? I don’t know. But his balance, after YEARS is much much better. He sleeps later in the morning. Miraculous, or just a lucky choice? Does it matter? It’s all God to me.

We got that appointment at the Cedar Rapids VA. He likes his new doctor. She didn’t like the medications he had been prescribed in Iowa City. She changed them. He’s breathing a good 50% better now. She has him on Aleve for his rotor cuffs. He’s barely mentioning his shoulders now, and insists on “dressing himself” which entails finding armholes alone and fiddling with bib straps. He’s been out for going on two hours, pulling logs and cutting them up for splitting. Did the same thing yesterday. I’m relieved, and for the first time in months, don’t find myself worrying.

I’m proud of the House Democrats. Somebody has to stand up to power and say, “this is not right, and we are not going along!” A secret: Obama as the ability to convince me of just about anything. And he almost persuaded me to go along with this “deal”. But he’s wrong here. He has to stand for something. And if he won’t then we have to.

So, I’m bored in a good way. Friday is a good day to be bored on I think. The Contrarian has been threatening me with “Singing in the Rain” on Saturday. I trumped that with some disaster movies, about earthquakes and polar ice something or other. I like smash-em up disaster movies. I’ve told you that.

The opening page on WordPress is the featured blogs of the day. There are an inordinate number of writing blogs. I find that odd. They talk about writing. Isn’t that cheating? Writing about writing isn’t writing, it’s explaining why you are so bereft of ideas you can only talk about what you are doing. Egocentric? A bit.

Not what I do. I’m chatting with myself, in front of you. Intimate isn’t it? Get to see how the wheels turn and such? Fascinated, aren’t you? No? Well, excuse me. I’ll whisper.

We have one cat who will not go outside in winter. Hates getting his little paws into the snow. So we finally had to relent (you don’t want to know the alternative), and put in a litter box. Now the other freakin’ three are using it too. Have they no shame?

Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cat exhibit shame. Cats walk across a table, knocking a coffee cup off and smashing it, and look at you. “You might want to clean that up so I don’t cut myself when I jump down.”

Dogs know shame. They can look at you and you are sure they wish they could disappear down a hole, they are so embarrassed. Dogs are simply more human than cats.

We decided to have ham for Christmas. Then I added a potato casserole. Then some glazed carrots. Then the left-over dressing (now in the freezer–I haven’t left it since Thanksgiving!), then the cranberry sauce also left over. Then some raw veggies. Rolls. Sigh. . .you see how this stuff multiplies? It’s a freakin’ dinner. But I’m standing my ground on dessert–I’ll buy sumpin’ at the grocery store. Not baking.

But I’m sorta baking. Gotta do sugar cookies. I mean that’s required. And some truffles. They are easy. And some  nut clusters.

And some lights on my humongous umbrella tree. And maybe the crèche. Some candles for the table?

And then there is New Year’s Day. Finger food. Pizza, and chicken tenders with barbecue sauce or blue cheese dressing. And raw veggies with a chipolte-spinich dip.

Sigh. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Now that IS depressing.

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US Politics for Dummies

Tags

Congress, DADT, Democrats, Dream Act, economy, GOP, Latinos, lobbyists, social security, Susan Collins, tax cut bill, teabaggers, Unemployment insurance, US Politics for Dummies, voting

No, we really don’t have to practice US politics for dummies here at AFeatherAdrift, for the simple reason that you readers are both sophisticated and knowledgeable. Those that need to be reading, aren’t of course. That would be the GOP, in case you were unsure.

The Dream Act passed the House. The Dream Act has, of course, no chance of passing the Senate. The brilliant requirement of having to have a super majority on any vote means that little gets done there. And most assuredly, even less than little gets done, when the GOP is about the business of “just saying no.”

The Democrats don’t have the votes to invoke cloture, so they are tabling the Dream Act. But The Reaction makes a good point, and one that at least won’t be lost on some GOPers, if there are any sane ones left that is.

Even in losing, the Democrats go down on record as the party who favors the sane, moral, and rational position, that young Latinos who were brought to this country as children, and who have completed high school, and either military service or college, can get legal residency in this country and move forward to citizenship. The GOP, on the other hand, continue to favor nativism and the cruel  and harsh persecution of undocumented aliens in this country.

The GOP continues to show the country deliberately and with clear intent, that it is the party of the rich and the white. Tell us how that works for you come 2012.

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I thought that as part of the cave-in on tax cuts for the rich, we were getting an extension of unemployment benefits for an additional 13 months. According to Crooks and Liars, that just ain’t so, and the cap is still 99 weeks and you’re through. That is no compromise at all, as I see it. Read the link and see what you think. I’m completely unclear and now see the Democratic House anger as very justified. Guess I’m ready to oppose this damn bill too.

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Can’t say as I’m surprised. It turns out that a slew of newly elected GOPer’s have hired lobbyists to run their congressional offices. Teabuggers ran on the argument that Washington was broken and a den of iniquity peopled with corruption and special interests who no longer did the people’s will. It seems to be business as usual, and that is exactly what we expected to happen. The poor teabuggers will soon find out that they have been taken for the proverbial ride. So much for “we the people” and all that rot. We warned ya, ya know.

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I just want to personally thank GOPer’s in both the House and Senate for blocking a measly one-time payment of $250 to those who collect social  security and have been denied cost of living increases for two years running. Add another group that the GOP has lost in 2012. But do protect the right of the obscenely rich to avoid taxes Repukelicans.

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I read this, but can’t find the link. It seems that teabuggers are mighty unhappy with the compromise tax cut extensions. They had been taken in by the promises of fiscal responsibility promised by the GOPers. Does the word sucker come to mind? Anyway, the novel answer being given by some Restuplicans, is that all that fiscal responsibility doesn’t start until the new Congress is sworn in, so it’s still business as usual until then. Now that’s an argument you can believe in! Enjoy your new master, teabuggers!

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We all talk a lot about economic things, but frankly, most of us, (myself included) don’t understand this stuff all that well. Corrupting Conservatives, gives us a good primer on what all this tax business and economic growth actually mean. This is truly US politics for dummies in an economic nutshell. Do stop by and learn.

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Was it just a week ago or so that Susan Collins said she was in favor pretty much of repealing DADT but couldn’t unless there was a tax cut bill negotiated, the “holy grail” of the GOP? Yes, well, now it seems that Ms. Collins has been instructed to stop that talk, and to get in marching line with the GOP. She is reconsidering her position. Olympia Snow, already did her bit to be immoral and unprincipled, she helped kill the Dream Act in the Senate. These people have no shame, and it proves that you can’t trust any Resucklican. They all lie.

Collins continues to make more demands on Reid, and the we shall see. Some are optimistic, but I’m too used to being screwed to expect the right outcome. Time will tell.

We all know why this is happening of course. Collins is being targeted by the teabuggers and well, re-election trumps principles doesn’t it? I mean, of course, nothing can be more important than retaining my government job.

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What’s on the stove? Ribs in the oven with some smoky paprika mac and cheese and homegrown corn on the side. I’m getting hungry even as I type. It’s Iowa food today!

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• Senate delays ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ vote – msnbc.com (news.google.com)
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• Paul Abrams: Democrats (and Bloggers): Stop Arguing, Unite Behind “Hostage” Banner, and Win. (huffingtonpost.com)

Driving Off the Cliff

Tags

DADT, Democrats, evolution, fundamentalists, GOP, life, McCain, Obama, Pauline theology, religious right, science, scientific integrity, tax cuts, theology

As we speak, the Senate is voting on two tax bills. Both are failing of course, since the GOP is holding tough with its demand that the rich get even richer. They take care of their own.

Sadly, this might have turned out differently had the White House not waved the white flag almost immediately after the midterm elections. Emboldened, the GOP knows that it cannot really fail since the President apparently doesn’t have the stomach to do as the American people ask: actually fulfill a campaign promise to end the tax cuts for the rich.

As we have said before, Obama can win this if he holds the line and lets the GOP argue that it is better to increase the deficit by 4 trillion in order to protect the buying power of the likes of Paris Hilton and as Think Progress suggested LeBron James. Where are the jobs after 10 years of tax cuts for the rich? I ask ya?

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One of the things we expected from this Administration, was scientific integrity returned as the standard of doing business. Obama promised that scientists would be free to do their work and report their findings without being edited. A policy statement was authorized. To date, no such policy has been forthcoming, and a significant number of scientists in the FDA and AG, report being urged to exclude or alter information. Read about it at New Scientist.

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For a different prospective on DADT: The Reaction asks: What do Bulgaria, Jordan, Poland, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the US have in common? Go read the article and see. Oh oh, yes, we do have friends in low places.

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Ethics Daily reports that a slew of right-wing Christians leaders met a couple of months ago at a Dallas airport to work out how to get rid of Obama and install a right-wing friendly president in the Oval office. Scary rundown of names.  (H/T to Ahab at Republic of Gilead.

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Don’t know if you caught the big news from NASA. Life as we know it, has well, you know, C H A N G E D. It’s a subtle point, but once “gotten” its like huge. It’s like Star Trek! Okay, thoroughly confused? Let me ‘splain. (Remember I told you a couple of years ago, that most anything can be explained or understood via an episode from Star Trek?)

The Enterprise went to investigate a mining colony on a dead planet. Miners were turning up dead. What they discovered was that the planet was not dead, but a silicon-based life form was doing fine there, except that miners were killing the “eggs” of the mother Horta.

Once they made contact, they patched up the wounded Horta with some cement which worked just fine, and everybody got along famously.

The point is, that we have so far only identified life as being carbon based. And that requires a number of other elements to be viable. One of those elements is phosphorus. Trust me on this, I just read it in a book I’ll be reviewing for you next week.

Anyway, in a lake in California Mono, to be specific, a microbe has been found that doesn’t have any phosphorus in its DNA. Rather it has arsenic, yes you heard that right. It’s a bacterium that is different from any life form on this planet. No idea how it got here either.

What this means is that when we turn on the telescopes and scan for the stuff we think means life, we can’t just stop at the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulphur, nitrogen and phosphorus, but must also scan for arsenic. What is life just got a whole lot broader. The possibilities are well, huge.

I feel all warm and cozy now, sure that surely we are not alone. A little alien may be among us, or perhaps even in our carbon based environment, other types of life can arise. Who knows? Science is wetting its pants and agog with excitement. But they get excited about a new species of newt too.   (Note the link is to the post of Dec. 2–I have loads of trouble with this reader feed)

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See, there are theologians and biblical scholars. And then there are wannabes. I’m one of those. But in this category, theology,  there are Wannabes and wannabees. I’m the latter. John is the former. If you are feeling all theology-y, then drop over and read what John has to say about how Paul acquired his theology on the road to Damascus. (pssst. it probably didn’t happen there, since Luke is probably not giving a historically accurate account of Paul’s travels here, but it assuredly happened to Paul somewhere!)

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If’n you want to see a psychoanalysis of Mr.’s McCain and Obama, then Crooks and Liars is your choice. Lots of interesting commentary from varied sources, make these two almost equally delusional.

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We got about two solid inches of snow. We can get out. We tidied up the bird feeder and put the “open” sign up. The dogs are sleeping. The cats are sleeping. I’m being a good wife and cooking liver ‘n onions for my husband. Don’t mind eating it, just hate fixin’ it. Going to church tomorrow. Lookin’ for some college football to watch. Havin’ ham for Christmas. Reading a lot these days, publishers have been kind. That is a tour of my synapses, known as roamin’ round the noggin.

Laters.

Related Articles

• Keith Olbermann Reports On Alien Life Discovery, Totally Pwns NASA in Star Trek Knowledge (mediaite.com)
• NASA’s Press Conference On Alien Life (geekologie.com)