I’ve stayed away from Daily Kos because y’all know why, but there’s one poster there, DogEmperor, who is the go-to guy for all your Christianist/Dominionist research needs:
I started out with Palin, went to Assemblies of God and the cell-church movement (in which he might fail to account for Saddleback and their adaptation of that approach for more mainstream megachurches), and fell into Amway, Hobby Lobby and US Plastics — the corporations that back the takeover (steeplejacking) of non-cult churches until they spill out with feral Russian murderous homophobes. It’s like a horror show with Air Force access to nukes, and The Family having access to Senator Clinton. Read more
Now I heard squat about the roll call vote today. Did you? Searched for “roll call” on my papers’ websites, and found nothing. Found this through Google:
“Sarah Palin’s speech may have been the highlight of Wednesday night’s Republican National Convention, but the official business was to formally nominate John McCain as the Republican candidate for President. Read more
Any two people interested in whether Amanda Beard is dating fellow Olympian Michael Phelps, and who clicked on the Boston Herald tidbit that raced around the Web last week, got the same piece of gossip.
Rumored galpal Amanda Beard on Phelps: No Thanks!
What was different was the political ads that appeared — or didn’t — beside the story.
Readers who had visited Barack Obama’s Web site received as many as three Obama ads alongside the gossip. “Help Elect Barack Obama President of the United States” and “Visit the Barack Obama Website,” the ads said. Read more
Stephanie Coontz makes all the so-called relationship, marriage and family experts from the conservative thinktanks look like the frauds that they are. Her most recent book, Marriage - A History, is a masterpiece of scholarly research made accessible to the general public through great writing.
Scott Jaschik was at the ASA meeting (I had breakfast next to him on Saturday morning) and he has an interesting article in Inside Higher Ed regarding the relationship between sociology, criminology and criminal justice. These disciplines are usually considered to be "cousins". Sociology broadly provides most of the background that goes into criminology, understood as the study of the ins and out of the criminal justice system with a theoretical background. Criminal Justice often includes the more vocational aspects of the field, something often nicknamed the "cop shop" aspect of teaching. So what are the issues here? Read more
Have you ever started out with what seemed like a good plan, what might even be thought of as a delicious plan, and then had it linger on a little too long without completion? So long, in fact, that you are forced to consider that maybe the plan wasn’t quite thought through properly in the first place, that maybe you hadn’t considered all the consequences? So very long past any hope of actually achieving what you set out to do that it starts to smell a little odd, to appear discolored, to get all soft and mushy but still, against all reason, you just can’t bring yourself to let go?
Of course you have. It isn’t a secret; everyone knows, and you don’t have to be ashamed.
You aren’t alone, we’ve all had it happen at least once in our lives, and there is hope. You don’t have to cling, bitter and weeping, while little flies start to gather and circle the slowly corrupting remnants of your decomposing dream; come with me, let me show you how to get past the grief. Read more
Via Context Crawler, thanks to a new article in the American Sociological Review, we should revisit the zombie meme of Opt-Out, the already-debunked idea that women are leaving the workforce to return to homemaking responsibilities. It is a meme that won’t die (hence, the zombie part) because it seems to validate the social conservative and "family values" crowd that women REALLY belong at home with their children and if everyone understood and abide by that, the entire society would be better off.
The correlated belief is that the family is the base institutional structure of society, which has not been true in several centuries, as Stephanie Coontz has aptly demonstrated. But then, social conservatives and "family values experts" are never really bothered by facts and truth. After all, they still maintain that abstinence-only program and virginity pledges work, despite the evidence.
Via Le Monde, everybody hates tax havens but they do not exist at the margins of the global financial system. If anything, they are an integral part of it and every year, billions of dollars land there. They are an integral part of the infrastructure of international finances.
What circulates through tax havens? Clean and dirty money (proceeds from illegal activities that end up there for purposes of money-laundering), tax-evasion money. Tax havens were allowed to prosper by all the economic powers, but now, they are worried because they have realized that these havens make funding terrorism easier and more discreet. In the past months, we also discovered that these place facilitate tax fraud on a grand scale, as the case of Liechtenstein where more than a thousand Western people deposited their funds. So, it is not really a surprise that this topic has come up at the G8 meeting. Read more
Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog. This is by popular demand (Translation: Lambert asked me to do this)
In this first post, we start human behavior from a microsociological perspective – the view from below (I have some more macro stuff later). The very fact of being in the presence of others influences what we do and how we think of ourselves in profound ways. In other words, the sociological approach described here focuses on the architecture of everyday life : these aspects of life that we take for granted and are often invisible to us because they are so familiar but that sustain society in fundamental ways. Read more
It’s Memorial Day. Veterans of wars are heard on the radio, many of them are veterans of the Iraq war. We are supposed to honor the soldiers, their families scarifies and honor the dead. But then you remember that most soldiers don’t go to college and come home to blue collar jobs.
The new Democratic Party does need these soldiers. It says to them get lost. We are now the party of the fortunate that don’t need to go to war.
Dear soldiers, just line up to be thrown under the bus with many other the new Democratic Party does need anymore.
After extensive audio-visual analysis and comparisons to old films archived in the labyrinthine bowels of the Mighty Corrente Building, we’re going on the record to reveal that Barack Obama’s top campaign official, David Axelrod, has been quietly replaced by Smokey the Parrot.
Judge for yourself with this footage from today’s press conference in Montana:
The Obama camp has yet to issue an official explanation, but an anonymous source assured us that the crackers and newspaper will be funded entirely by small private donors.
UPDATE: The Obama camp has blamed the odd appearance and behavior of their spokesman on a “microphone malfunction”; apparently, unable to hear the questions from the assembled reporters, David Axelrod began reading from Senator Obama’s prepared remarks for tomorrow’s scheduled rally in South Dakota. To back up their claims, Obama ‘08 cites the voice of David Gregory saying “Hello? Hello?” at 13 seconds. The veteran reporter’s questions were, unfortunately, drowned out by the chorus of kissing noises from the rest of the Washington press corps.
Read more
So someone put up a link to this graph and my jaw fucking dropped. I thought, OK- you’re no economist. Ask one what this means. This is the email I just got:
It means the banking system is insolvent.
So I was right to take it seriously. SN has been on economic fire lately too, and this is another of his powerful posts about why high gas prices have to do with the fuckups in the banking/financial/Fed system as much as theiving, murderous, greedy oil men. Not to send you to the same place over and over, but Sean-Paul is also harping on some related things, and this sticks with me b/c I know it is true, despite the fact that a lot of us don’t want to hear it:
that is the tax-burden of we GenXers—a very small age cohort in the grand scheme of things—is going to climb and climb and climb, being saddled as we are with massive amounts of soon-to-be retirees and war debt and 25 years of profligate government spending. And that’s a huge tax increases to sustain a lower standard of living—or at least one that doesn’t rise.
As Mish notes, one of two things is going to happen: boomers will get less than their promised benefits or we get the crap taxed out of us. I’m thinking it will be a combo of both, except most of the burden will come in taxes, the AARP being as strong as is. The piper, excuse the cliche, has to be paid. And he wants coin, not IOUs.
Does anyone else have an opposite conclusion? If so I’m happy to hear about it. But we’re hosed. Plain and simple.
Oh, and oil hit $132 a barrel today. Feels good, yeah?
I want to hear hardcore, policy based responses from anyone who supports the remaining Dem candidates: what is your candidate’s plan (not a speech, but a plan) and how does it address the utterly rotten (and at this point, also murderous) clusterfuck we call the financial world? Harvard (and Chicago, ya, ya) MBAs and prize-winning “economists” got us into this mess. From my reading (and I admit I could be wrong) both the Dem candidates, and obviously McCentury, have clustered about them very Mediocre Economic Minds. If that’s true, I don’t expect to see the kind of truly progressive, visionary economic policy in the next administration we desperately need. And I’m starting to get really pissed about it.
I already have sacrificed for the political and economic decisions of others, others whom I told over and over again, “It won’t work and it’ll end up costing us both more if you do it that way.” Now, millions of people, not just my age but all of us, are being forced to accept similar burdens. And of course, no Rich People are worried right now. And why should they be? No one is expecting them to shoulder anything but this fall’s pret-a-porter. Read more
So busy. And so bitchy! That’s me. I’m an evil bitch; trust me it’s true. And thus you shouldn’t ever listen to me. Still, something woke me up this morning faster than the coffee.
I’m not going to make the claim that I know this graphic to be absolutely true. But it rings true, to my mind. Via the comments in this post. Which you need to read, all the way thru. SN is spot on in this point:
Powerful forces want to keep society in its current shape. For good reason, there is not only physical capital, but the doctrine of incorporation to contend with: we become physically the shapes and habits that they live.
Moses never reached the promised land, and there is a desert to cross to take this generation out of the desert and into the land of milk and honey. Either we will face a reactionary century, or a new, progressive century, there is no third choice.
I guess that’s really been my problem with HRC and BHO supporters all along. And I’ll even admit that my guy would’ve hardly been better, perhaps a little, perhaps not. Read more
Verizon Business, a unit of No. 2 U.S. telephone service provider Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N), said on Wednesday it has won a contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security worth around $678.5 million over 10 years.
…
AT&T Government Solutions, a business unit of AT&T Inc (T.N), won a $292 million contract to serve as the secondary network service provider in the Eastern and Western region.
Barack Obama knew better than to rely on the existing infrastructure, created by the blogosphere, to fight back against the Bush administration and the media. We are too stridently partisan to be messengers of a new kind of politics. He had to step around the gatekeepers of the blogosphere, much to their chagrin. Barack Obama’s greatest accomplishment is the organization that he created. He used our tools and his own message. And he won. He could not have won any other way. And that makes him both our greatest representative, and someone who doesn’t really need us at all. All of you should go join up on his website and meet your neighbors that are supporting him, and get organized. For presidential stuff, there is no reason to use the blogosphere at all. Use Obama’s own tools.
Dear God. I’ve held back on the Obama cult accusations for a while now; many of my friends and family support him. But Booman… wtf? I don’t even know where to begin with this. It is the Borg. No, wait, it’s the Heaven’s Gate cultists leaving behind their earthly bodies to merge with the higher consciousness.
Actually, I’ve got it! It’s like in the Matrix, where the humans created the machines and then after they fought it out the machines kept the humans alive as tiny generators, feeding them the liquified remains of their brethren.
Not because they had to. Not because we even deserved it, as strident and partisan as we were. But because they’re merciful!
So, come on, everyone. Leave your individual thoughts behind. Take the blue pill and relax. Ignorance is bliss!
Now: The problem with the DLC
Submitted by lambert on Sat, 2008-05-03 21:45.
Is that it’s an institution that the Obama Movement doesn’t control. Period. That’s all it is. That’s why Kos has a problem with it too. http://www.correntewire.com/so_why_is_it…
And then:
DLC loses tax exempt status
Submitted by lambert on Sat, 2006-09-16 20:09.
* DLC
It couldn’t happen to a nicer crowd of Bush enablers. Although silly Forbes still thinks the DLC are Democrats: Read more
Last year Rolling Stone magazine published an article about Barack Obama called “Destiny’s Child” by Ben Wallace-Wells. The story deserves a second look, because at the time Obama was a virtual unknown to most of the public.
The piece begins with Obama’s arrival in Washington D.C., then shifts to his meteoric rise in the Democratic party: Read more
/Dominionist research needs:
***BREAKING***