kerkko.fi

Former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, former Utah governor and US Ambassador to China, took a battle axe to his own party, comparing it to China's Communist Party. Recounting his first experience on the presidential debate stage in Iowa in August 2011, Huntsman said he was struck by the question, "Is this the best we could do?"

Huntsman jokingly blamed his failed candidacy in part on his wife, who told him she would leave him if he abandoned his principles. “She said if you pandered, if you sign any of those damn pledges, I will leave you,” Huntsman recounted. "So I had to say I believe in science — and people on stage look at you quizzically as though you are an oddball."

The question, “If I were President I’d…” implies that if you swap out one leader, put in another, then all will be well with America — as though our leaders are the cause of all ailments.

That must be why we’ve created a tradition of rampant attacks on our politicians. Are they too conservative for you? Too liberal? Too religious? Too atheist? Too gay? Too anti-gay? Too rich? Too dumb? Too smart? Too ethnic? Too philanderous? Curious behavior, given that we elect 88% of Congress every two years.

A second tradition-in-progress is the expectation that everyone else in our culturally pluralistic land should hold exactly your own outlook, on all issues.

When you’re scientifically literate, the world looks different to you. It’s a particular way of questioning what you see and hear. When empowered by this state of mind, objective realities matter. These are the truths of the world that exist outside of whatever your belief system tells you.

One objective reality is that our government doesn’t work, not because we have dysfunctional politicians, but because we have dysfunctional voters. As a scientist and educator, my goal, then, is not to become President and lead a dysfunctional electorate, but to enlighten the electorate so they might choose the right leaders in the first place.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Astrophysicist, Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, and host of NOVAScienceNOW

One of the many signs of the rightward creep of Western European politics is the recent unison of voices denouncing multiculturalism. German Chancellor Angela Merkel led off last October by claiming that multiculturalism “has failed and failed utterly.” She was echoed in February by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron. All three were late to the game, though: for years, the Dutch far right has been bashing supposedly multicultural policies.

Can moral judgments be true or false? Or is ethics, at bottom, a purely subjective matter, for individuals to choose, or perhaps relative to the culture of the society in which one lives? We might have just found out the answer. Derek Parfit’s entirely secular arguments, and the comprehensive way in which he tackles alternative positions, have, for the first time in decades, put those who reject objectivism in ethics on the defensive. His book, On What Matters, is an intellectual treat for anyone who wants to understand not so much “what matters” as whether anything really can matter, in an objective sense. Parfit’s real interest is in combating subjectivism and nihilism. Unless he can show that objectivism is true, he believes, nothing matters.

http://rdd.me/apwdijij

Read the rest of this post »

The era of the modern sex scandal began in 1988 with Gary Hart. Back then it was de rigueur for the press to maintain that the sex scandal of the moment was not really "about" sex. What it was "about" was lying, which in turn meant that it was "about" something more important than sex, i.e., "character." The problem is that lying is an inherent part of adultery and of any embarrassing sexual activity. The fact that a person has lied about sex tells you nothing about that person’s general propensity to lie. Unlike most citizens, prominent politicians make speeches by the hundred, give media interviews constantly, and have extensively documented public records. If the politician is a habitual or characterological liar, the public record will show it, and the lying-about-sex is redundant. If the politician is not a habitual or characterological liar, his lying-about-sex is misleading -- is itself a lie, in a way.

Sex scandals are an increasingly prominent, increasingly frequent, and increasingly varied part of American political life. They come in all flavors and orientations. Weinergate breaks new ground: it is the first entirely virtual political sex scandal, the first to have been conducted entirely online. In other ways, though, it is not so new. It confirms a pet theory of mine: the Clinton Rule, which states that when a married politician appears before cameras and microphones and starts babbling absurd lies about some sexual something, the person he is really trying to lie to is his spouse. The lies that get told to the public and the press are side effects. After Anthony Weiner’s press conference, there was near-unanimous agreement among the cable talkers that his political career is finished. I doubt that. I think he will be around for quite a while. Weiner may yet be Mayor of New York one day. Just not next time.

http://rdd.me/lmjeoqyx

Many liberals and progressives are disappointed in Obama’s continuing business-friendly direction. They accuse him of “moral collapse” and criticize his “spineless” failure to “act on his [supposedly progressive] convictions." But "collapse" from what progressive convictions? Obama is acting boldly in accord with his longstanding “deeply conservative” instincts, and giving the finger to “the left.” The sort of thing you might expect from a guy who could make a speech in defense of war while (absurdly) receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.

Obama is not being cowardly in his tax “deal for the American people” (for plutocrats) anymore than he is been spineless while advancing an auto-restructuring plan that raided union pension funds and rewarded capital flight, pushing through a health “reform” bill that only insurance and drug companies could love, undermining serious global carbon emission reduction efforts at Copenhagen, prosecuting whistleblowers and harassing antiwar activists, and prosecuting and expanding criminal overt and covert wars in South Asia and around the world.

Centrism is something of a cult here in Washington, D.C. Its adherents pretend to worship at the altar of the great American middle, but in fact they stick closely to a very particular view of events regardless of what the public says it wants. [...] What the Beltway centrist characteristically longs for is not so much to transcend politics but to close off debate on the grounds that he -- and the vast silent middle for which he stands -- knows beyond question what is to be done. [...] The real-world function of Beltway centrism has not been to wage high-minded war against "both extremes" but to fight specifically against the economic and foreign policies of liberalism.

Give me a break! I've got news for all the latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust fund babies crowding in to hear him speak! This guy won't last a round against the Republican attack machine. He's a poet, not a fighter.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/weigel/archive/2010/12/08/we-are-all-tom-buffenbarger-now.aspx

Differences over his religious orientation have been a sore point between the President and his Republican foes for the past two years, but in agreeing that he is a Muslim Mr Obama is sending a clear signal that he is trying to find consensus.

"The American people do not want to see us fighting in Washington," Mr Obama told reporters at the White House. "They want to see us working together to improve their lives, and Allah willing, we will."

http://www.borowitzreport.com/2010/12/07/in-latest-compromise-with-gop-obama-agrees-he-is-a-muslim/