Michael Gerson has an op-ed at the Washington Post that tries to find a way to hold religion accountable for political influence. It’s a good idea, and I think he has some good take-away lines (like: “This use of religion in politics is a source of cynicism. It should raise alarms when the views of the Almighty conveniently match our most urgent political needs.”) But he gets it wrong, as well.

“A faith that conforms exactly,” he writes, “to the contours of a political ideology has lost its independence.” This is a common critique of the Religious Right – that their theology has conformed itself entirely to a political agenda. But a short review of history shows it is the other way around – the conservative agenda has been hijacked by a religious agenda. I’m the last one who would say that it is wrong for Christians – or any person of faith – to let their theology inform their politics. In fact, I’m on the record as saying it’s flat out impossible to be earnest in theology and keep it separated from one’s politics…especially in a democracy.

But there is a significant theological difference between the left and the right that is being overlooked. Most liberal Christians I know of are perfectly willing to admit that they do not know everything there is to know about God. They view Muslims and Jews, Hindus and Buddhists, secular humanists and pagans as all having equally valid views. They are generally willing to offer up a seat at the table in the hope of finding common ground.

But I attended several fundamentalist Christian churches who did not even believe that Catholics were fellow Christians. Anything other than their own narrow interpretation of The Truth was, at best, misguided. At worst, it was willfully disobedient. Any deviation from The Truth was heretical, and risked calling down God’s judgment on the whole community.

When that unbending attitude is brought into a governmental system that is specifically designed to force compromise, it necessarily causes bottlenecks. There are only two choices – success and capitulation – and it is unthinkable for such a believer to fail to carry out God’s will…even if it means stepping on the liberties or tax dollars or lives of other people. What matters is that the individual remained faithful and fought to the end.

When I was involved with the Liberal Faith BlogCon, a reporter asked me if I wanted the liberal faith movement to be like the religious right, and I emphatically answered, “No!” This is the heart of the reason why not…I do not wish to impose my faith through my politics. I only want a chance to explain my politics through the faith that informs it. If individuals want to reject my faith or my politics, that is their option – and their right.

the real John McCain. I would have loved to vote for this guy!

I haven’t had much to say about the “debt ceiling crisis” (or much of anything else) because there really isn’t that much to say. Dan Balz says it about as good as anyone:

Boehner was just as clear in casting the president as the obstacle. Obama, he said, came to office and led the country on a spending binge that included “a new health care bill that most Americans never asked for; a stimulus bill that’s more effective in producing material for late-night comedians than it was in producing jobs; and a national debt that has gotten so out of hand, it’s sparked a crisis without precedent in my lifetime or yours.”

The problem is that “most Americans” – before the overblown hype and hysteria – actually DID want a healthcare overhaul. If you will recall the 2008 Presidential election, even GOP can’t-quite-call-him-hopefull John McCain had a “healthcare plan.” Also, Democrats held a very slight voter preference in the realm of health care (48-46). It was a bona fide election issue.

So maybe Americans weren’t crazy about the bill that passed Congress…but that’s because it was truly a compromise. Each side gave up a lot to get something done. It’s how things are generally done.

President Obama put everything on the table – including Social Security and Medicare. But he insisted that he not be forced to cave entirely. For the GOP, it was capitulation, or nothing.

The Republicans cannot seem to understand that they control only one House of Congress. There were very specific reasons why our Constitution separated powers between both Houses of Congress and between Congress and the President. The biggest reason was to keep one party from winning a slender and temporary majority and using it to bum-rush the government and the American people and enact their partisan agenda.

And the Republicans are perfectly willing to destroy the economy in order to bring down Obama. They very simply care more about making him look bad than they do in the millions of people who are unemployed, underemployed, or whose livelihoods would be destroyed by their irresponsible actions.

This was not an accident. It was a specific and goal-oriented action as the new Republican majority rewrote the House rules. This was what they did in 1995, by the way, when they wanted to hamstring President Clinton. Same game, only the names have changed.

I’m not saying that runaway isn’t a problem – it is. But only a fool looks at one half of the equation. Remember that all those tax cuts were supposed to increase government revenues! If cutting marginal taxes would have balanced the budget and revved up our economy; then we wouldn’t be experiencing the economic doldrums we are now.

So why are we here? Because enough people elected Republicans to stop Obama at all costs…and that is exactly what they are doing.

The latest is that Anthony Wiener is resigning from Congress, effective immediately. The root of Weiner’s problems stemmed from his proclivity for sending pictures of himself in various stages of undress to young women, through Facebook and Twitter. I’m glad that this will mark the end of it, but I think it’s intellectually lazy to simply close the book and let it go.

To this point, nothing that Weiner did is even close to illegal. If the pictures were unwanted; then he is guilty of being a cad. If they were not; then he’s simply guilty of doing something millions of people on the internet do on a regular basis.

The morality of his actions is the more interesting question. Is it immoral to show off your body, either in person or via technology, to people who are interested in seeing it? A hard-line morality stance would say that it is, no questions asked. But if the pictures are showing something that can be seen by the scores at a beach or other public venue, then it isn’t really the showing-off that is the problem, is it?

The questionable morality comes from the length Weiner went to hide his actions. It would seem to indicate that there is more to the story than we know so far. The fact that he lied himself is a strong indicator, but the fact that he then asked others to lie for him is an even stronger one.

I’m of a mind that Weiner’s morality is an issue for him and his spiritual advisor to hash out. It’s obviously going to be the issue of rather pointed talks with his spouse. But should it disqualify him from office?

If he could have admitted it and put it behind him; then it shouldn’t. But the way he handled it meant that it became so much of a distraction that he decided to take a leave of absence from Congress. It seems pretty simple that, if you cannot do your job; then you should quit and let someone who can do it have it.

Would it have been possible for him to put it behind him? That’s a question that I’m not sure I can answer. The public loves sex scandals, even if it isn’t actual sex that’s being discussed. Yet it is possible that, had he openly and quickly admitted what had happened, accepted responsibility – and closed the Twitter/Facebook accounts to protect the identity of other potentially involved parties – then, and only then, would there have been a shot. And even that would be contingent on every woman he sent photos to deciding to keep quiet, too.

We can’t demand perfection of our public officials. If we do; then the only people who hold office will be scoundrels who are good enough to scam everyone all the time. But we can demand that our public officials be honest when their personal failings touch upon their official jobs. It’s painful. It’s humiliating. It’s scary.

But that is part of the deal of being a public person. If you can’t handle the bad; then don’t reach for the good.

The Washington Post has an excellent article today concerning the evolution of the Republican Party into a no-tax party. As a political and rhetorical tool, the “no new taxes” pledge has been probably the single most effective meme in modern politics. It has also become one of the most immoral.

In states like New Jersey, where budgets must be balanced, no matter what, it means that wave after wave of cuts must be enacted. New Jersey is an expensive place to live, and such entrenchment against any form of taxation means that those at the top get to keep enough income to cushion them from rough economic times while those at the bottom are impaled at the castle gates when vital services get cut.

Incidentally, it is the folks in the middle who get to pay for the lack of taxes.

Yeah, that’s what I call immoral.

At the federal level, the difference is financed through debt creation. Don’t let that fool you. That just lets the wealthy hold onto cash now, so they can make more wealth that won’t be taxed in the future. Meanwhile, the poor are never really going to be taxed because they have nothing to tax. So it will be the people in the middle who get to pay that future bill, too.

Last year’s budget had revenues of $2.1 Trillion and expenditures of $3.4 Trillion. That’s a deficit of $1.29 Trillion. That would require cuts equal to sixty-one percent of the entire budget just to bring it into balance. Want to pay off the debt? Well, just cut a bit more.

It’s also roughly thirty-eight percent of current revenues. Boosting tax revenues by a third would do the same thing that nearly destroying the government would do. Would such a tax hike hurt? Of course it would. Would it be more disruptive than halving the government? Not even close.

Consider that cutting the government by that amount would mean eliminating 1.22 million federal civilian workers, not counting cuts to the military and post office that would have to come along, too. Anyone think our current labor market can handle the extra demand? That would boost the number of unemployed to somewhere just over fifteen million. Again, that doesn’t include the military or post office – so the number probably goes well over sixteen million people in America without jobs.

2008 Statistics of Income (the latest year available) shows that, of the $1.03 Trillion brought in through the personal income tax, $249 billion (24%) came from people with incomes over $1 million per year. Now, doubling the income tax on all people would come close to eliminating the budget deficit. Let me go on record as saying that I do not want my taxes doubled. But the income tax is not the only source of revenue for the federal government. If income taxes on those with more than $1 million adjusted gross income were raised by fifty percent, rather than doubled, then that move alone would generate an extra $124.5 billion. That’s roughly a tenth of the budget deficit.

And, incidentally, that would increase the highest tax rate from 35% to 52.5%. That’s steep, but not even close to the 70% that it was as recently as the 1970s.

If we want to “spread the pain” then lower tax brackets could be raised by 25%. That would generate roughly an extra $195.25 billion. The two measures together would eliminate a third of the deficit.

Of course, that isn’t going to happen. Americans can’t bear the thought of raising taxes on Lady Gaga and Oprah. They prefer the immorality of pushing our debt onto future generations, and the chief mechanism for doing so is the no-tax pledge.

With all the hullabaloo over whats-his-crazy-name shooting Congresswoman Giffords, I thought I’d say a few things – which will probably make people on all sides cringe. I’ve been trying to find the right way to do it, but I decided I’d just let it fall how it may.

First of all, it isn’t the fault of “heated rhetoric.” I can say to just about anyone, “I’d like to kill that jack-ass for cutting me off today!” And most people will understand that it’s just blowing off steam. Unless and until someone finds a sound-bite of someone saying, “We seriously need to kill _______” then it isn’t the language that’s the problem.

Look, I used to work at a State School for the Mentally Retarded and one particular person was committed there by his family because his father told him, “Go put the dogs on the fire,” at a family holiday cook-out. And he put the family dog on the fire. Perhaps the father was a little too loose with his words (well, obviously). But the communication was normal for normal people. The problem was that it was taken in by a brain that wasn’t wired normally and disaster resulted.

Having said that, it’s also true that the more heated “mainstream” rhetoric gets, the more likely such ill-thought comments are to fall on abnormally wired ears. Plus overblown hyperbole, if used too often, loses its effectiveness. See also: The boy who cried Wolf.

Secondly, it isn’t the fault of gun manufacturers, retailers, or gun rights activists. A gun is a beautiful machine meant to allow any person to protect their self against attack, and when used as intended, it is one of the most beneficial things ever invented. Guns are awesome in the truest sense of the word – they literally hold life and death in their bodies. Plus, we are guaranteed the right of gun ownership in the US Constitution, and I believe we must uphold every part of it, not just the ones that agree with our ideology. Yes, a gun in the hands of a madman is a tragedy waiting for a place to happen – but what isn’t? A knife? A car? An airplane? A length of pipe, a bag of nails, and some fertilizer?

Third, this demonstrates the very best of what makes us a great people. The man whose dying act was to shield his wife with his own body. The woman who reached out to knock the new magazine out of the shooters hand. The unarmed men who subdued the shooter. The intern who ran towards danger. The incredible woman who, upon coming out of a medically induced coma, reached out to comfort her husband. This is the face of God we are seeing.

Fourth, more guns would not have made it safer. The people who subdued the shooter and stopped his rampage did so without weapons. And, despite Arizona having relatively lax gun-carry laws, anyone who had returned fire would only have made the scene worse. People identify the direction from which bullets are coming very quickly and they hide. When fire is returned, they do stupid things – like trying to run away as quickly as possible right into the line of fire.

Fifth, the existence of people like this shooter (I refuse to use his name) only solidify how badly we need universal medical coverage. If, when his misbehavior showed up at Community College, he would have been sent directly to therapy, this tragedy could possibly – but not assuredly – have been prevented. There are alway signs, and usually people who see them – but without any way to direct the person to proper care, they remain a freight train on a one-way rail to destruction.

Finally, this should remind us all to be just a little kinder to those around us. We simply don’t know how fragile they are. I recently read a study that showed a near elimination of violence among baboon families if the females were taught to groom all males, and not just the dominant ones. I know we are more than baboons, but the study just shows that a little kindness goes a long way. That, also, is the face of God among us.

Booman writes:

I’ve gone over this before, but most Blue Dogs lost because they chose the worst of both worlds. They took away parts of the Democrats’ agenda that people supported, like giving them an alternative to for-profit health insurance and a financial bill that really put the screws to Wall Street, and they supported the unpopular stuff like the bank and auto bailouts.

This is a recurring meme for Democrats. “If only Blue Dogs had simply been more liberal, they would have won re-election in their uber-conservative districts!” Color me unconvinced.

Take a look at New Mexico’s Second Congressional District. I happen to have some first hand knowledge about that place because I grew up there, and I still have family who lives there. And while the voters there are 49% Democrat versus 32% Republican, it says a lot that since the district was created in 1968, it has had a Democrat representing it for only eleven of forty-two years.

In 2008, Steve Pearce decided to run for the US Senate, so he had to withdraw from defending his House seat. Harry Teague won it for Democrats for the first time in 28 years. And he won it with fifty-six percent of the vote. Two years later, Pierce ran for his old seat and won it back – with fifty-five percent of the vote.

Now which is the more likely explanation: 1) This is a naturally liberal Democratic district but no one living there actually knew that they were liberal Democrats until 2008, but they forgot it in the meantime because Teague didn’t do enough to remind them of it; or 2) This is a naturally conservative Republican district, but 2008 was not a normal election cycle?

I’m going with number 2.

Okay, we’ll dig deeper. In 2006, Pearce received 90,169 votes and his Democratic challenger received 60,496 votes. This year, Pierce received 91,954 votes and his Democratic opponent received 73,995 votes. In the absence of a Presidential race to skew things, Democrats actually got more votes because of Blue Dog Harry Teague’s record – in a year where Democrats were supposed to lose support across the board. In fact, Democrats gained 13,000 votes over 2006 while Republicans gained only 1,000.

Plus, Harry Teague voted against the bank bailout. And the auto bailout? That happened prior to Teague being sworn in. And, just for good measure, Teague voted against the health care bill, too. Not that it really mattered, though, because voters did say health care was important (72%), but when it came to knowing what they wanted their representatives to do, 56% were not sure about the public option versus the Senate bill and 53% in that district said it would not make a difference in the way they voted.

So did Blue Dogs lose because they weren’t progressive enough? As they say on one of my favorite cable shows – consider this myth busted.

This weekend, I went to see Steve Earle and Joan Baez in concert. During his introduction of the song “Christmastime in Washington”, Steve Earle explained that his song was about his heroes. He explained that it wasn’t about all his heroes because he could have put Joan Baez in there. She stood up at Woodstock and dedicated the song “Joe Hill” to her husband because he was sitting in jail for refusing to go kill anyone and refusing to shut up about it. When he couldn’t talk, she gave him a voice. He went on to say that changing the world is not a spectator sport.

Then I read two things yesterday. One is by Jodi Jacobson, entitled “Why a Soccer Momma for Obama Hung Up Her Cleats.” The other is by James Vega, but “has no title. Ok, so I have something to say now.

I left a comment on Vega’s post, and I won’t repeat it here. What I will say is that Democrats never understood what Obama was saying he wanted to do. The one thing I remember him saying, over and over again, is that he wanted to change the tone in Washington. I think he may have given up on that, but even if he hasn’t, it’s a useless goal. One person cannot change Washington. Especially when about half of the people there depend on the current tone remaining exactly as it is.

What many Democrats see as Obama’s timidness and willingness to barter away the house is really his inclination to not vilify the side. It was his hope – and I use the word intentionally – that Republicans would actually take up his call to responsive dialogue. That’s the same hope that moved Jon Stewart to hold his Rally to Restore Sanity, where he gave one of the most moving speeches I’ve heard since 2008. Yes, we can work together. But too many people won’t.

In his book Discursive Democracy, John Dryzek explains that his job as a planner is to bring stakeholders together – even, or perhaps especially, when they do not want to be brought together. He explains that the first step in doing this is for one person to actually reach out to understand the other side. It isn’t enough to sit in an office and extend an invitation. You have to actually demonstrate that you have empathy for the person you want to speak with. Until they know you care, they don’t care about what you know.

Which is also what Dale Carnegie wrote so long ago: “Become genuinely interested in other people.” Or, as Stephen Covey put it: “Seek first to understand; then to be understood.”

The problem with Progressivism is that it has always been an elitist movement. Now, I have no problem with people working their way into the elite section of any arena of the public sphere. But they can’t forget, once they get there, that the people they’ve moved above (for lack of better way to put it) are intelligent and wonderful people – who don’t want to be told what to do with their lives. If Progressive leaders simply hand decisions down on high and say, “I’m doing this for your own good,” then people will continue to respond to them as a child to an overbearing parent.

That’s why the Progressive Movement of the late 19th and early 20th century resorted to poetry, songs, and novels to convert people to their cause. From Woody Guthrie to Upton Sinclair, their goals were to reduce the ideas and theories of the Progressive cause to memorable scenes and characters and songs that the average person could respond to on an emotional level – and then pass along to others.

I certainly respect people like Jodi Jacobson, and I stand in awe of her financial contributions and the time commitment that went with it. I certainly understand – and sometimes share – the sense of fatigue that nothing good is going to come of this. I feel as if I will batter myself like a moth against the light until my wings burn to dust and yet the light will endure unchanged. What then will I have accomplished?

Where people like Ms. Jacobson fail is in their understanding of our political system as a whole – not in the way that Mr. Vega wrote of, but in the way our system works against momentum. Our system of government was created by people who feared government enabled to work quickly. It is designed to slow things down so that actions can be made methodically rather than emotionally. It is designed to force actors to build broad consensus. That takes time. It takes patience. It takes concerted effort over decades. It takes caring about the people on the other side of the political divide long enough to engage them, demonstrate that they are valued as a person and as a people, and then maybe, just maybe, you can convince them you have their best interest at heart. That their best interest and your best interest is the same.

It isn’t that liberals need to understand the institutional pressures aligned against Progressive causes. They do. That’s why they are Progressives. The problem is that they don’t understand why everyone isn’t as Progressive as they are. They think that the vast numbers of Americans scattered between the coasts who identify as conservative are misguided, at best…and evil, at worst. They think that widespread outreach is a waste of time. That teaching Progressive principles is a waste of time. That anyone who can’t see the truth of their cause isn’t worthy of the benefits of the cause – or even the time needed to convince them that the cause is worthy.

And that’s why Conservatives have continue to dominate the political landscape. They have think-tanks and grassroots organizations that link up to disseminate information, right or wrong, and policy ideas and continually hammer down the nails of common values and principles. Progressives don’t. There are wonderful Progressive film-makers and authors who languish in obscurity because there is no existing means of promoting their products and supporting their art.

We have no Woody Guthrie. We have no Upton Sinclair. We have no way to demonstrate, as Sinclair wrote, how difficult it is to convince someone that the system is stacked against them when their livelihoods depend on believing that it isn’t. Until we do, we will win a few hit-and-miss episodes, but we will never turn the ship of American politics from its ultra-conservative drift.

I don’t think I’m the person who can do that. I don’t have the talent or drive of either Guthrie or Sinclair. But I can continue to insist we need someone like them until that person shows up. That’s why I write.

I just returned from vacation and saw this email waiting for me:

Welcome to the Daily Kos action email list. You received this email either because you are a registered member of the Daily Kos community, or because you donated to a Daily Kos operated Act Blue page. To unsubscribe from this list, follow the link at the bottom of this email.

Today we’re launching a campaign to end the filibuster. Join this campaign by following the link below and signing the petition that appears:

http://campaigns.dailykos.com/action/reformthesenate

Here’s how signing the petition makes a difference.

We’ll deliver the petition to every Democratic nominee for Senate and every returning Democratic Senator. When we do, we’ll get them on record about whether they agree that the rules of the Senate can, and should, be changed with a simple majority vote on the first day of Congress next year.

Once 51 returning and potential Senators have come out in support, we’ll have proven that changing Senate rules is possible with a simple majority vote.

http://campaigns.dailykos.com/action/reformthesenate

Entrenched power players like Joe Lieberman, Max Baucus, Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu have all depended on the filibuster to enable Republican obstructionism and water down progressive legislation. Corporate interests have used it to protect themselves by purchasing a few small state Senators on the cheap.

There’s no bigger decision Senate Democrats will make next year. The Senate is where good legislation goes to die. Democrats can either change a system that allows a tiny unaccountable minority to thwart the will of the country, or they can continue being part of the problem.

http://campaigns.dailykos.com/action/reformthesenate

Let’s get started,

Markos Moulitsas

Founder, Daily Kos

This email proves several things: 1) Markos is willing to venture into the land of the spammer when it suits his need (notice that I didn’t “opt in” to anything – he just decided to contact me because, at some point, I used his website and/or donated money to someone); 2) he fails to understand the importance of protecting our country from a “mere majority;” and 3) he doesn’t actually believe there’s any chance that sixty Progressives can ever be elected to the Senate.

The first one is simply an irritant. But I consider foisting email onto people who don’t want it and haven’t asked for it to be rather unethical. Kos has one of the highest trafficked websites on the web – he could just put a post on the front page and leave it there. But to start a “Daily Kos action email list” and assume that people who have already signed onto a site will: 1) want to see it, and 2) actually agree with it; is the height of conceit. I suppose it also points to the fact that he doesn’t believe his faithful followers will respond in enough numbers to actually use his site for what it was intended to do.

The second point shows that he and his mindless minions actually are a threat to our country – in exactly the same way that the mindless minions of FOX News are. Both badly misinterpret the design of our government and the fact that our Founders wanted it to be difficult to enact legislation. Both want to get 50% plus one and then claim they have the authority to enact massive legislative agendas (the “mandate”).

John Adams:

To remedy the dangers attendant upon the arbitrary use of power, checks, however multiplied, will scarcely avail without an explicit admission some limitation of the right of the majority to excercise sovereign authority over the individual citizen… In popular governments [democracies], minorities [individuals] constantly run much greater risk of suffering from arbitrary power than in absolute monarchies…

James Madison:

Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true.

Alexander Hamilton:

It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.

In fairness, I have to say that these men would be horrified that eight or nine Senators can grind the business of government to a halt. But they foresaw such an event and believed the best prevention was simply to expose those obstructionists for what they were and trust the voters to turn them out. Unless, of course, the voters wanted their representatives to obstruct that particular measure.

The problem with the Senate isn’t that the vote for cloture is set too high – it’s that the Democrats simply can’t manage to reach that number. So what happens if they lower the magic number for cloture to fifty-one and they find they only have forty-eight reliable votes for it (due to either electoral changes or personal intransigence)? That reality exposes the real belief at the heart of the measure.

Progressives simply don’t believe that they can forge a governable majority. They understand that they can’t win if they play by the rules, so they want to change the rules. I’m not necessarily against changing the rules, but the email is rather vague about “reform” – other than needing fifty-one votes to change a rule.

Our government was designed to make it difficult to pass legislation, because the Founders understood that it is easier to block bad legislation than to try and reform it later. In other words, it is often better to do nothing now and wait for the election cycle to turn out a stronger majority. Democrats made use of this idea when they started referring to the Republicans as “the party of no.” But, apparently, they believe they are going to lose and lose badly in November.

They would do well to remember that just a few short years ago, it was the Democrats who were in the minority. Back then, it was Democrats using legislative procedure to hold back the tide on the Bush agenda. I can’t, for the life of me, understand why any coherent and rational person would want to remove their last line of defense for getting steamrolled – unless they believe they will never be in the position of being steamrolled. But then, if Democrats believed they were a permanent and growing majority, they wouldn’t need to change the rules of operation, would they?

From the trial of Ted Stevens:

“He bought that chair as a gift, but I refused it as a gift,” Stevens explained. “He put it there and said it was my chair. I told him I would not accept it as a gift.”

“Where is that chair now?”

“In our house,” Stevens repeated. “We have lots of things in our house that don’t belong to us, ma’am.”

I don’t have anything in my house that doesn’t belong to my wife and/or I. Mr. Stevens apparently wants his house to be mistaken for a garbage dump:

“It was not my property,” he said of the fish statue that still resides at his home, “because I told them I didn’t want it.” Neither did he want the jumbo electric generator outside his Alaska home: “I requested a generator, not that generator.”

Here is a picture of the Senator testifying about the chair that isn’t his, the fish statue that isn’t his, the generator that he didn’t want, or maybe the Viking stainless steel grill that he allowed a friend to stash on his deck:

Technorati Tags: Ted Stevens