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?

Does anyone here think that working to stop GOP from destroying the filibuster in 2005 was still a good idea?

Wasn’t that a mistake? Shouldn’t we have helped them instead?

Discuss.

It was also sent out on Twitter, and I responded thusly:

Yes. If Democrats knew how to message, they could paint the GOP as obstructionist and win even more seats. But they are too dumb

Within minutes, I received a Twitter reply that shows there is no seriousness involved and no discussion was ever wanted:

Oh yeah, better messaging would have led to huge Dem landslide in 2010, and / or forced GOP to cave on big policies. #um,no

Wow. Way to engage in an actual conversation. Before I go into detail, I’ll provide my two responses, just so anyone who actually reads this will have complete disclosure:
#1:

@openleft make a real argument. With 65 dems the gop could not filibuster.

and #2:

@openleft it isn’t about forcing gop to cave. Its about having a governing majority.

First, let’s deal with the issue of the filibuster…

The filibuster serves a real purpose in legislative proceedings. It prevents a mere majority from trampling over the concerns of a minority. It forces even a majority to build consensus – to appeal to the public and across partisan lines to forge agreements on important issues.

The problem that Democrats face in the Senate is threefold: 1) Republicans have locked arms in simply opposing everything put forth; 2) Their inept messaging lets Republicans frame things like the denial of unemployment benefits as a positive thing (or allows it to be ignored entirely); and 3) Their own partisanship is too weak, and their majority too small, to overcome Republican efforts. But not the filibuster.

And, yes, better messaging would have led to a very different political landscape in 2010. Democrats allowed Republicans to bottle up unemployment benefits for millions of Americans while our economic recovery was held in stasis by its “jobless” nature. What was the overriding news story? Lindsey Lohan going to jail. Under-regulation and under-enforcement of the oil industry led directly to the debacle in the Gulf. What is the news meme? “Is this Obama’s Katrina?” Republicans kill the campaign disclosure bill and Democrats’ messaging is no where to be found – meaning that Republicans can openly say that they are willing to denying corporations the ability to buy elections hurts Republicans and Democrats are too feeble – while holding a majority – to even put out a competing message.

There has been a complete lack of messaging and outreach on everything Democrats have undertaken since George W. Bush left office. Can anyone actually believe that Americans were protesting having the ability to see a doctor if they actually wanted to see one? Death panels – that was where the meme went. The Obama Cadillac of Messaging that drove him to the White House stayed in the garage. No one in the House or Senate has done anything, either.

So Democrats will likely lose this November, and they might even lose their majority in both Houses. But it won’t be because of the filibuster. It will be because they let a crippled and crumpled GOP dictate the public tone of the debate…while they stamped their feet and said, “But we have a majority!” and mocked anyone that pointed out their own failures.

A fuller examination of Sherrod’s remarks display a much different story than what the Tea Party activist portrayed them as. Yes, Sherrod is admitting to having racist thoughts that impacted her job performance. However, her full story is that: 1) She had second thoughts and went back to give full aid to the person in question; and 2) She says that it taught her that racism is wrong, no matter which side of the color-line a person lives on.

It’s a story that is unusual in its candor and its topic. First, to have a public official of any level admit to ever having had a racist thought is practically unheard of – even when they are caught doing and saying things that are blatantly racist. Second, it’s a story about black against white racism, which is also a topic that is practically taboo. Third, it’s a story where a poor white person went to the government for held (more taboo). Fourth, it’s a story where the person involved comes to understand that racism is a double-edged sword that damages the person wielding it as well as the person on the receiving end.

In short, it’s the type of story we, as a nation, need to hear more of so we can understand ourselves better. It’s the type of candid conversation on race that can actually move us forward rather than having the same stupid arguments again. Unfortunately, it has turned out to be nothing of the sort because a nitwit with an agenda was looking for something he could manipulate, rather than a story to tell.

It’s one thing to fabricate things to use as a general illustration – as long as the audience is told that it is a fabrication. It’s quite another to purposefully ruin a person’s life because they happen to say or do something that fits into a political agenda. It wouldn’t even matter if the other side had done the same – it is wrong, bordering on evil to shatter someone’s life for a cheap moment in the sun.

Almost as disgusting as the origination of the non-story has been the right-wing’s reaction to the revelation of a hoax. It is filled with equivocations and hyphenations and parenthetical remarks that make it clear they are really hear to bury Ceasar, not praise him. No one needs to say that the activist’s future work might stand on its own merit – let us see it and judge it in the light of this atrocity.

It’s a statement on our total inability to see the other political side as people rather than as pawns. And it’s a statement on how some people on the left are still stuck in reacting to those on the right rather than in doing the hard work of public education and framing. In other words, it’s an example of everything that’s wrong with our political system, and our nation.

American political scientists sometimes like to talk about something they call “realignment.” It’s a concept that seeks to explain, and perhaps predict, when an entire generation will suddenly and irrevocably change their political identity. It was first identified in the sudden switch of New England “rock-ribbed” Republicans to Democratic New Dealers. It was extended to explain how a generation of black voters left the Party of Lincoln to become the most reliable pro-Democratic voting bloc in the country. There was even a theory that American politics lent itself to a periodic and regularly occurring realignment.

But then there was the missing realignment. Sometime in the 1970s, or perhaps 1980s, we should have seen a massive shift. But we didn’t. Oh, there were the “Reagan Democrats” – but they were simply the conservative Democrats that were always there. And they remained Democrats, for the most part. This led to the idea that we were in a period of dealignment. A time when partisanship didn’t really matter so much.

But, for realignment to happen, there has to be stark differences between the two parties. For most of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, there really didn’t seem to be that much of a difference at all. Or, to be more correct, the differences seemed to revolve around social issues – abortion, welfare, etc. There was an ideological basis for these arguments, but while those issues created a cleavage between the two parties, they only forced a roughly equal alignment between the them.

Michael Gerson thinks that may be changing. But it will not be the ascendancy of Obama that causes it, so much as it will be the self-destructive realization of the disparate parts of the Republican coalition…specifically, the anti-government tea-party segment that has given the long-standing libertarian segment a popular voice.

Gerson cites Sharron Angle (GOP Senate candidate in Nevada) and Rand Paul (GOP Senate candidate in Kentucky) as being prime examples of this – and he’s right. Both are being severely limited in their press time because they don’t want their actual beliefs to come under public scrutiny. It isn’t that they make good old fashioned gaffes, like Joe Biden – those can be explained away and tend to become endearing in an odd way. And it’s telling that both of them are running well behind where they were expected to run.

If they go down in defeat, then more moderate elements may regain power in the GOP. If they win, they will be seen as THE path to victory. And THAT, more than anything else, may actually cause the realignment that political scientists have been looking for.

But I’d note – it’s a change of parties, not of ideology. A failing GOP will lead to a more conservative Democratic Party. The ideology realignment, if it happens, will happen later.

Today CNN was saying that the spill is “roughly the size of South Carolina.” Again – most people simply don’t have a clue how big South Carolina is…especially compared to the Gulf of Mexico. Here’s some data to put things in perspective: South Carolina contains 32,020 square miles (more or less) while the Gulf of Mexico covers over 615,000 square miles. The United States, alone, is over 1,680 miles long.

The reason the newsies are saying “the worst in American history” is that the US has been relatively clear of oil-related disasters. It has already surpassed the Exxon Valdez, but that isn’t saying much, in global terms. Only about eleven million gallons of oil were released. Compare that to the “granddaddy of them all: The Persian Gulf spill during the Gulf War released well over 240 million gallons of oil. The BP Gulf spill currently ranks about 19th.

It is informative, however, to understand that the current number two spot is held by Ixtoc 1 – also an offshore well blowout. That started in June of 1979 and it wasn’t fully under control until after relief wells had been completed in March of the following year. Over 3.5 million barrels were spilled. And that was with an intact blowout preventer (that was closed, but had to be reopened because of high pressure).

I’m not trying to say that things aren’t going to be desperate for folks in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama (and parts of Florida). Where the slick hits, it is going to be really, really bad. What I’m trying to say is that the coverage of the disaster is a disaster of its own. The real question, in my mind, is why no one involved had a plan for dealing with a blowout. After that, it’s why they had no plan to deal with containment. Beyond that, I’m asking why the Gulf States apparently had no plan in waiting for dealing with such a problem.

More than 30 years ago, many religious denominations courageously passed resolutions in support of women’s moral agency and their right to a safe and legal abortion. Despite numerous legal challenges and social, scientific and medical advances, this theological commitment remains: Women must be able to make their own moral decisions, based on conscience and faith. Choosing abortion often means choosing life, especially when making that choice upholds and protects the lives, health and futures of a woman, her partner and her family.

There’s a whole world of theology in that short paragraph. I think an important part of that theology lies in recognizing that many of what we refer to as “mainstream denominations” have continued to support the right of women to have an abortion, should they choose to do so. In other words, even among Christians, there is a diversity of opinion as to the place abortion holds in the world of moral reasoning. It is not, as most anti-abortion advocates would have it, a clear-cut bright line where the Believers are on one side and the Damned are on the other.

The sad part is that Debra has to spend a few hundred words getting to this. The state of the public debate on abortion is such where a clergy member is automatically assumed to want to stop abortion – and anyone who has helped people arrive at decisions with which they can live is automatically assumed to hate religion. Having waded into the waters of public commentary myself, I can understand the need to explain one’s work from attacks on both the right and the left.

Since I’m both a liberal and a Christian, I understand the place where Debra is coming from, even as I lament it. In general, I agree with Debra’s statements. So file the rest of this under “nit-picking.”

Debra writes: “Virtually all faith traditions affirm the sanctity of life.” As someone who deals a lot with political rhetoric, I have to take exception to the term “sanctity of life.” It has entered the public lexicon to an extent that no one ever bothers to think about what it means – and what it’s place in theology might actually be.

Simply put, “sanctity” is the quality of sacredness, or being dedicated to a deity. I believe a blanket statement as to whether or not all life is dedicated to God is going a bit far. One does not have to dig into the Bible very deeply before one finds many an example of life being held as rather mundane. The Old Testament laws demanded forfeiture of life for a whole range of misbehaviors…and endorsed slavery, which has to be considered a loss of life of sorts.

I’ll make a slight digression as a means of trying to shift the focus and then come back. The Nativity – the birth of Jesus in a filthy manger – is often interpreted as showing the humility of God. I think that sells short the wonder of a simple manger. Consider the billions of life-forms that are sustained by dung, not to mention the billions more that go into creating dung. A dung-laden stall is pretty impressive from a basic standpoint. Think of it this way – what has man created that can compare?

If a filthy stable is as worthy of wonder and astonishment as the Taj Mahal (or whatever man-made wonder you want to substitute); then how might God look at life and death? According to basic theology, God exists beyond life and death. In fact, most Christian theologies teach that death functions as a means of bringing us closer to God. Why, then, would life be devoted to God when it, in a sense, stands in the way of coming closer to Him?

I think one way to interpret the teachings of Jesus is, “This life of yours that you hold so precious is really nothing. Only when you lose it will you understand what life really is.” This is often used as justification for following a career in the clergy, but I think that is also short-sighted. If humans can exist after death, then death is but a portal through which we pass to become what we are actually meant to be.

None of this means that we should embrace death or try to move towards it quickly. We each have a bit of time in which we are alive, and we can use it to help take care of each other – which the Bible makes clear is what we should be doing – or we can use it to do whatever we want and squander the gift. The choice is ours.

So, from God’s point of view, is an abortion “squandering the gift” (as I put it) or is it embracing that gift? The same question needs to be asked of any health decision. Organ transplant, for example, often kills the donor. Squandering or embracing? Turning off life support for a person – squandering or embracing? Giving a terminally ill patient enough pain killers to overdose and end their suffering – squandering or embracing?

Answering those questions takes a radical reworking of the theology of death – and therefore the theology of life. It also depends very heavily upon the exact application of that theology. The details matter and no blanket statement as to right and wrong can be offered. By engaging on the idea of the “sanctity of life” and “defending life” and any of the other variations of the right-wing framing of the abortion issue, we give up ground that demands so much more of us as individuals and believers.

In a way, it can be an intellectually lazy way of brushing aside some very difficult questions. It can also be theologically lazy, because it casts God in terms of human public policy. I’ve heard it say that theology seeks to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable – and, in that sense, those who are the surest about what God wants in terms of abortion policy are not that different from those who are the surest about what God wants in terms of foreign policy. It is those who are the surest of their theology who lead the headlong rush into fanaticism – and that isn’t something limited to abortion.

In the end, I believe we are left with the decision that abortion needs to be left in the hands of the women themselves. Some will make bad choices. Some will make morally reprehensible choices. That is the way life is. But, just as Pakistan cannot make people stop joking about Muhammad by banning Facebook, we cannot make a better world by giving people fewer choices. If an eternal God dispenses justice at the end of time – as most fundamentalist Christian doctrines teach – then there is nothing to fear from doing so.

Now, I think Arizona’s actually gone off the deep end, or they’re playing a practical joke on us now. Because now they’re going after minotaurs.

Following the link gives you this:

The Arizona state Senate on Thursday passed a bill making it illegal for a person to “intentionally or knowingly creating a human-animal hybrid.”

The bill, which passed 16 to 12, would prohibit anyone in the state from “creating or attempting to create an in vitro human embryo by any means other than fertilization of a human egg by a human sperm.”

The measure would also outlaw “transferring or attempting to transfer a human embryo into a nonhuman womb,” “transferring or attempting to transfer a nonhuman embryo into a human womb” and “transporting or receiving for any purpose a human-animal hybrid.”

The stupidity here is astounding.

First, there is nothing about minotaurs. That line indicates the author really hasn’t bothered to learn much about genetics research.

Second, the law is stupid on several accounts. A human embryo, whether created in vitro or anywhere else, can only be made by joining a human egg and a human sperm. If someone manages to figure out how to join a human egg with a non-human sperm (or the other way around); then the result would not be a human embryo. Example – a donkey egg is joined with a horse sperm and the result in a mule…not a donkey and not a horse.

Then there’s the part about transferring human embryos into a nonhuman womb is a bit of a red herring, as well. Sort of. It depends on how one defines “human embryo” and based on the problem immediately above, I don’t put a lot of faith in the Arizona legislature’s ability to define it properly. What the law literally means is that some other mammal can’t be used as a surrogate mother for a human embryo – the living result of a human egg being fertilized (it should be obvious that this would have to be by a human sperm).

What I think it is aimed at is outlawing the use of human stem cells in lab animals. Why would anyone do this? There are reasons. I don’t know enough about the research to comment on its benefits or costs, but I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable to try and regulate this area of research.

The problem, of course, is that such regulation must be done with an understanding of the subject matter. None of the research described in the National Geographic article, I believe, would be banned by the Arizona law. Even injecting mice with human brain cells to see if they develop human brains is so far from the actual definitions of the words in the Arizona law that it wouldn’t be impacted – unless, of course, the law is widely construed. And if that is the case, then heart surgeons are going to have to quit using bovine and porcine valves to save human hearts.

Unfortunately, instead of picking at the legislature for passing a law on a topic they obviously don’t understand enough to even write a sentence about competently, TAPPED decided to just view the whole topic with derision. To adapt Jeremy Rifkin’s quote in National Geographic, one does not need to be a radical religious freak to wonder about the wisdom of possibly growing a human brain in a mouse.

The case involves AstraZeneca promoting Seroquel for uses that are not approved by federal drug regulators, including insomnia and psychiatric conditions besides schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Oh. My. FREAKING. God.

They develop a drug for schizophrenia and tell doctors that it’s okay to use it for a sleep aid? Those two problems are worlds apart. Worlds. I mean, if you can’t fall asleep, you can try drinking a beer. But that ain’t gonna help you with the hallucinations or delusions. Seems like a medication aimed at hallucinations and/or delusions would be a bit much for a sleeping pill.

U.S. Attorney Michael Levy of Philadelphia, where the settlement was filed, said that the company had “turned patients into guinea pigs in an unsupervised drug test.”

And you know what? They’ll do it again – because of this following paragraph:

Partly because of all the off-label use of Seroquel, the drug brought in $4.9 billion to AstraZeneca in 2009, making it the company’s second-best seller.

Here’s the deal: You advise doctors to over-medicate their patients and make $4.9 billion in one year and then they only have to pay a half-billion-dollar fine (not even, actually)…and any businessman in the world will say that it’s a good deal.

One of the primary reasons for regulation is to enforce some sort of morality on the open market. On that point, this “record settlement” is an epic failure.

Rufus, over at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen, ties this self-deception, or lack of self-criticism, to the tea-party movement. I label it self-deception because the tea party folks believe they are rebelling against an unjust system…in which most of spurned active participation. Don’t believe me?:

Earlier today, Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips, organizer of the convention, told a crowd, “Complaining is not enough. We need to replace bad leadership with good leadership.”

He asked, “How many of you – before the tea party movement – were never involved in politics?”

Phillips smiled and scanned the room as more than 90 percent of people in the crowd eagerly raised their hands. To which he responded: “Thank you, Barack Obama.”

Even their name is seeped in self-deception. The Boston Tea Party was an act of sabotage in protest for the British government awarding a monopoly over colonial trade and for taxing the colonies without allowing them representation in Parliament. Compare that with today when the protest is…kind of muddied. But no one can accurately say that they don’t have representation in Congress. It may not be good or the kind of representation they want, but it is there.

In short, the Boston Tea Party didn’t happen because people had some input into the government and were rebuffed, or lost an electoral cycle. It happened because they had absolutely no input, by design, in their political system.

These sorts of things are easy to dismiss. Except that we are confronted today with two examples of how self-deception can have deadly consequences.

The first is from Kansas City. The short version is that a man, known to be violent and use weapons, was confronted by the police. He grabbed a woman and held her hostage, putting a knife to her throat. The cops shot him.

If you read the story, you’ll discover the tragic fact that the hostage was also the man’s mother. She was, understandably, distraught at her son’s death by police sniper. But, honestly, only someone lost in the depths of self-deception could have seen any other outcome. I know it was her son, but this guy was a career criminal. Anger at the police is simply misplaced…better to be angry at the dead son who willfully decided to cause destruction in the lives of those around him (what sort of son takes his own mother hostage?). It doesn’t change the tragedy, but the way it ended shouldn’t surprise anyone. Sadly.

The same is true for Joseph Andrew Stack. His manifesto is riddled with self-deception, leading to blaming other people for his own shortcomings. This isn’t to say he didn’t get a raw deal a time or two. He did. Tellingly he riffs on the “taxation without representation” issue…all the while neglecting the fact that he did have a representative.

He talks about how hard he worked to get a Congressman, any Congressman, to talk to him. This shows his political ignorance. No Congressman other than your own ever wants to talk to you. They aren’t there to represent people outside of their district. He’d have been better served to simply trying to elect a more responsive person in the single district in which he lived.

A bit later on, we find that he willfully entered into a tax evasion scheme, believing it was legal, but with the purpose to keep from paying taxes. Only the self-deceived would take that action and then be surprised when they earned the ire of the IRS. Yet, it seems, he was exactly that.

Ignorance has consequences. And mixing ignorance with flammable rhetoric is irresponsible because it leads to predictable tragedy. My friends from Armenia once told me that a wise man has the duty to share his wisdom, otherwise all of society will end up run by very likable fools. I think it’s time the wisdom was shared a bit more broadly. Even if it angers a few people to tear down their self-deceptive calves of gold.