Your Weekly Rush: If I Wrote a History Book

Rush Limbaugh is thinking about writing a history book for kids. But as he explains that isn't the real problem. The real problem is the text books. They are all liberal!

I said yesterday that what needs to happen now with this great victory here and this alignment of political parties, conservatism needs to constantly be referenced and taught. Take the opportunity here to realign the country ideologically as well. It's a long-term project and part of it is wresting control back of the public school system from the left.

Teaching the History the Rush Limbaugh way is simple. All you do is ignore any historical fact that conflicts with conservatism. Any historical fact that conflicts with conservatism is to be expunged from the record.

Take for example Civil Rights. You will teach that the party that opposed integration was the Democratic party. You will teach that the Civil Rights bills passed because of Republican Votes. You will not teach that those who opposed integration and supported segregation made a beeline for the Republican Party. You will not teach that the civil rights movements was spearheaded by liberals. Simple, right?

Because the purpose of schools isn't to pass on correct and complete knowledge, but to pass on ideology. Conservative ideology.

Talkin' Thanksgiving Blues

I was offline yesterday by choice for two reasons, I was out eating turkey and I was playing World of Warcraft. For those non-Gamers out there, it's one of the online RPGs like Everquest or Ultima Online. It's pretty fun, and the graphics are, if not the most advanced, some of the most attractive.

Anyway I want to get back to playing it right now, but I did want to point you to an article by Mr. John Conosan on the future improvements President Bush wants to make to our tax system. He mentions that the Bushies plan to eliminate the ability for private citizens to write off state and local taxes and the tax deduction for those companies who provide health care to their employees. This in order to give Barbara Streisand and other Hollywood creampuffs more money to spend. He neglects to mention that both of those items may very well be bargaining chips; placed on the table so they can be taken off to protect more important parts of this new "Tax Reform."

Have a nice Friday.

You May Be Doing This, You May Be Doing That

The Plaid Adder, a columnist for Democratic Underground, has a review of the lost Lynne Cheney Novel Sisters, which is mostly famous because it contains a lesbian subplot (although it does not, in fact, contain any lesbian sex). Anyway the review is worth checking out. If nothing else, it reminds us all that we are fundamentally screwed up when it comes to Sex and to Class.

Boy life in the 1920s was great wasn't it?

Conservative paradise. The 1920s had a tiny bit of regulation (brought on by the progressive movement and "The Jungle") but not nearly as much as it would gain later. If only we could go back to those wonderful times before Franklin D. Roosevelt.

At least that's the take of Raymond J. Keating, writing for the Small Business and Entrepreneurship council. He makes fun of a plan by which Thanksgiving was briefly the third Thursday rather than the fourth, because businesses convinced President Roosevelt that it would extend the shopping season. Congress passed a law mandating it be on the fourth Thursday and that was that.

FDR's "Thanksgiving economics" turned out to a real turkey. But it was emblematic of the misguided economic thinking put forth throughout his administration. FDR's economics was about putting more control and resources in the hands of politicians and government bureaucrats. His policies and often his rhetoric attacked the businesses, investors and risk takers that create economic growth and jobs. That simply led to a deeper and more prolonged economic downturn. Rather than engaging in pointless efforts like changing the date of Thanksgiving, it would have been far more productive for FDR to roll back the enormous tax and regulatory burdens that he and his predecessor (Herbert Hoover) had placed on the private sector.

This isn't an entirely accurate depiction of Roosevelts policies by the way. It helps Mr. Keating's argument for us to forget that corporations were guilty of some real atrocities in the 1920s and 1930s. On March 7, 1932, for example, Thugs under the employ of General Motors shot down peaceful Union protesters. Unions weren't even allowed to exist in 1932, incidentally. Workers had no recognized rights.

But the larger point is a fundamental difference in the way Mr. Keating looks at the world and the way others might look at it. Compare and contrast the following two statements.

The American entrepreneur is the fundamental force in our society. He alone is responsible for creating America's success and therefore all other societal concerns should be suborned to his needs.

The American worker's ingenuity and labor is responsible for creating the prosperity we all enjoy. Without the hard work done by the American Working Man and Working Woman, America would be nowhere. We should therefore protect him and her, economically and physically.

Fundamentally different. Personally I would say that both miss the mark, although the first one misses it by more. Particularly when you realize that by Mr. Keating's standards an entrepreneur's needs are pretty much whatever he would like. Anything that cuts into an entrepreneur's profits should be done away with, regardless of how that would hurt other American citizens.

But they both miss the mark a little, in the sense that we need everybody in society. It reminds me a bit of a scriptural reference.

14 For the body is not one member, but many.

15 If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?

16 And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?

17 If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling?

18 But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him.

19 And if they were all one member, where were the body?

20 But now are they many members, yet but one body.

Granted this passage (1 Corinthians 12:14-20) is meant to refer to Christ's church, but the point I think is equally applicable to American Society. There are people who want to lop off a part of our society under the assumption that that would make us better. Get rid of those snooty professors? First thing we do is kill all the lawyers? You get the idea. The truth is that we need everybody in America, and therefore America needs to work for everybody. To quote Toby Ziegler from the West Wing. "We have to say what we feel. That government--no matter what its failures were in the past, and in times to come, for that matter--the government can be a place where people come together and where no one gets left behind."

Anyway something to think about.

Daily Howler

I really enjoy the Daily Howler, and I think all of you should read them regularly. Particularly those of you who believe that the media is liberal should check it out. This last week they have discussed the NFL / Desperate Housewives flap with a lot of perceptiveness.

Why might some folks have objected to the MNF skit? Duh! For the reason these people have endlessly stated—because they were watching the program with their kids, and found the skit inappropriate. As we’ve said, you don’t have to agree with that judgment, although we ourselves are inclined to. But if you want to be a sentient being on the planet Earth, you have to be able to consider the possibility that people who found the promo inappropriate aren’t hypocrites, liars, sexists, sleazeballs or racists. You have to consider the possibility that there’s more than one way to react.

These words are dead on, in my opinion.

Good News from the Rockies

Interesting article at the Nation that suggests that Democrats may not be as endangered in the Rocky Mountains as previously thought.

On the same day that George W. Bush was winning nationally and Republicans were increasing their majorities in Congress, Democrats in the eight states of the Rocky Mountain West were winning state and local contests at a rate not seen in decades and offering valuable lessons for the national Democratic Party, organized labor and progressive activist groups that are sorely in need of new models for campaigning. "Before the pundits write this off as the year when nothing seemed to work right for the Democrats," says Montana Democratic Party executive director Brad Martin, "there is a Western story that needs to be told."

Nice to know. The article covers how the Democrats are doing better and why they are doing better. One somewhat scary thought for the Republicans is the idea that issues of Morality might eventually play themselves out.

For instance, while many pundits saw in the national election results a signal that Democrats were out of touch with "moral values"--the hot code phrase for opposition to gay marriage and abortion rights--Western Democrats found that one of their big advantages was a growing sense among voters that Republicans had gotten a little too in touch--or, to be more precise, obsessed--with that theme.

Anyway interesting and heartening article. For Democrats, at any rate.

The Old Bait and Switch

This is a popular tactic. Today it applies to the budget an an article by Cal Thomas. One popular technique of some conservatives (and some liberals too, actually) is to pull out some particularly egregious budget expenditures, as Mr. Thomas does here.

Other "golden eggs" laid by the Congressional geese include $450,000 for the Baseball Hall of Fame, $200,000 for the Dennison Railroad Depot Museum in Ohio, $350,000 for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, $1.5 million for the Anchorage Museum/Transit intermodal depot in Alaska, $250,000 for the Country Music Hall of Fame, $100,000 for the Municipal Swimming Pool in Ottawa, Kan., $35,000 for the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, $300,000 to build the Great Falls parking garage in Auburn, Maine, and $1.5 million for departing Congressman Richard Gephardt's archive at the Missouri Historical Society.

Let's see what we got here. Nine items. Six of them are museums of one kind or another. One is a swimming pool, one a parking garage. And finally we have a plan to preserve the papers of Richard Gephardt. I have to say I don't have much problem with any of these items. I like museums. I think the government should help to preserve our culture, even if that culture is something like Country Music. I think it's telling that Cal Thomas picks Museums as his target.

On a side note, Tom Tomorrow captured a quote from Rush Limbaugh back in the nineties that Cal Thomas, a fellow talk show guy, might enjoy. "I don't go to museums because they don't have golf carts . . . If you put a golf cart in a museum I'll go. You can get around a lot faster."

Anyway back to the old bait and switch. Let's take the most expensive item on the list--$1.5 million to preserve the papers of Richard Gephardt (who, as a liberal, can go to hell). Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? Well the President's proposed 2005 budget has expenditures of $2,853 billion. So to put that in perspective, all that money wasted on preserving the papers of a long-time and influential member of congress? Comes to approximately 0.0000526% of the total budget. Reading down in Mr. Thomas's article we see that Citizens Against Government Waste has rounded up all of these wasteful type programs and their total comes to nearly $23 billion in wasteful projects. Let's be charitable and round up to the nearest billion. That still only accounts for 0.81% of the budget.

Here's where the switch part comes. Cal Thomas has dozens of other massive programs he wants you to support. Things like a national sales tax (because the poor have it too easy in this country). Things like passing a non-defined taxpayer bill of rights. Somehow tort reform (in other words making it harder for citizens to defend themselves against corporations on the theory that Americans can't be trusted to sit on juries) will also help with the budget as well.

The one thing Mr. Thomas is hoping you don't think about is the other side of the equation. A budget involves two parts, an input and an output. Revenues and expenditures. Maybe having the wealthy among us pay a bit more would somehow allow us to let the kids of Ottawa Kansas to have a swimming pool.

Confusion Beats

I just noticed this in the comments section of my post on Tom Delay, and felt it required a more prominent place on my board.

YOU ARE WARNED

The following rule WILL BE enforced on this blog as is required of all DUers.

Troops Support will be faked.

We know you are a terrorist sympathizer, but you WILL NOT post such on this board.

Failure to obey this rule will result in dire consequences.

We required the same at DU and enforcement of this rule is now in effect at DU.
DU Link 1
DU Link 2
DU Link 3

You will see derSkinner has chosen to adopt this enforcement rather than face our wrath.

This will be your only warning.

Here's my dilemma; this mandates that I fake support for the troops. But I actually do support the troops. How can you fake something you actually have? Is that logically possible? Epistemologically possible?

I mean how can you pretend to believe something you actually believe?

For those who don't know I strongly support our troops. I have a brother who served in the Marines and a father who served in the Air Force. I have friends who will probably be in Afghanistan next year. If anything my respect and admiration for our troops is one thing that prompts me to be very critical of how President Bush has used them.

It goes without saying but I have no fear of the wrath the DU Wolverines, incidentally. It should be clear to all that they are bunch of losers with delusions of masculinity.

Red State, Blue State

Here's an interesting statistic; the state with the fewest divorces? Massachusetts. Which is interesting when you set it against some of the claims made on behalf of the red states (many of which have divorce rates well over the national average) by pandering politicians and pundits.

Now that's some nice alliteration.

But it's not as meaningful as it looks; sure things aren't as wonderful in the red states as some would like to pretend, but that doesn't mean that the only answer is that people in Massachusetts are more moral than people in, say, Texas. There are any number of other explanations possible.

The Hammer

This is a story I haven't spent a lot of time on, but it's worth being aware of. Tom Delay, the House majority leader, is being investigated for campaign finance violations in the 2002 election (the election which, if you will recall, gave him the power to redistrict the state to ensure a conservative majority). House rules require him to set aside his leadership status for the duration of the investigation. So naturally Senate Republicans are rewriting the rules to allow Delay to stay in power.

My favorite quote by Tom Delay was when he said, "Emotional appeals about working families trying to get by on $4.25 an hour are hard to resist. Fortunately, such families do not exist."

For the record, they do exist.

Anyway E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes on this issue today, and makes a telling comment.

Recall how Republicans dismissed any and all who charged that the investigations of President Bill Clinton by special prosecutor Ken Starr were politically motivated. Ah, but those were investigations of a shady Democrat by a distinguished Republican. When a Democrat is investigating a Republican, it can only be about politics. Is that clear?

We'll have to see how far this goes. I'm a little surprised that some other ambitious republican isn't suggesting they keep to the rules. I mean if Delay has to step down there's going to be an opening, isn't there? I guess it's a tribute to the Republican spirit of unity.

Interesting

43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

St. Matthew 5:43-44

It defies reason and upends morality to claim that God loves both Saddam Hussein and the innocent Kurds he gassed to death -- that He bestows His love on Osama bin Laden no less than on the 3,000 souls he butchered on 9/11. Of course we should pray that an evildoer will realize the awfulness of his ways and atone for his crimes. But to love him even if he doesn't? To bless him when he dies? God forbid! To bless the Hitlers and the Arafats of this world is to betray their victims. That we must never do.

Jeff Jacoby, When Hatred is Necessary

Interesting contrast.

Now in all fairness, Mr. Jacoby is not a Christian and can hardly be expected to see the world in that light. And he does make it clear that he understands Christian belief, but this passage seems to attack a central belief of Christianity as unreasonably and immoral.

New Quote, New Format!

And here you go. New Quotes page as well. Enjoy!