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McCain Shows His True Colors in His VP Slate

While John McCain considers the effects of adding one of three politicians to his ticket – he has meetings scheduled with Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindal, or Charlie Crist – we ought to take the chance to consider what this says about McCain’s true colors. And it’s not anything good.

Here’s the problem. McCain has built himself up an image as the “maverick,” the moderate, willing to work across party lines. While this is good rhetoric – and heartening, if it’s true – try to remember that we’ve heard it all before. Bush was a “compassionate conservative” in 2000, and look what we got. No, candidates show their true colors by deeds more than words, and the three people McCain’s considering are indicators that he’s not a maverick: rather, he’s just another far-right conservative. Let’s consider two of the three.

First, Mitt Romney should need no introduction. This is a man who would sooner double Guantanamo’s size than close it, who supported gay rights and choice before he opposed them, and who campaigned as one of several “true conservative” picks in the Republican nomination contest. Even chatting with Romney about the possibility of selecting him as VP sends a strong message, that McCain is willing to do what it takes to get his right-wing credentials, even if it means selling out his principles in the process.

Bobby Jindal is no better. While young, charismatic, and – to harp on this election’s theme – different (he’s Indian), he’s also a member of the religious right, through-and-through. He opposes stem cell research and abortion in any case. And he favors teaching intelligent design. This is a man who can’t bring Louisiana into the twentieth century; why should we hope he’ll do better for America?

These choices for potential vice presidents reveal a common trend in the McCain candidacy: McCain likes to talk moderate, but counts on his appointments and political allies to do his dirty work for him. We can expect conservative judges from McCain, and we can expect a conservative administration to grow up around this “moderate” straight-shooter, who for some reason, keeps aiming back for the right.

Carnival of the Liberals 65…

…wherein we are, again, featured!  The topic is “Skepticism and Politics” which, as my reader(s) will know, is a common topic over here, and ought to be a common topic in political discourse, period.

How Is This Good Enough?

Well that took long enough.

McCain has finally rejected John Hagee, after it came to light that Hagee considered Hitler & the Holocaust “part of God’s plan” to drive the Jews to Israel. But how is this late and partial rejection good enough? People have used the Reverend Wright incident to attack Obama’s judgment, reducing Wright’s entire history – and Obama’s entire relationship with him – to a few admittedly ridiculous schpeels. But the mistakes of Hagee, whose history of hate is continuous, whose few remarks are representative thereof, and whose history McCain knew while seeking and winning his endorsement, have not been imputed to McCain, or used to attack his judgment.

The reason, Salon argues, is that Obama’s relationship plays into a popular media misconception of Obama, while lunatics like Hagee are given free passes, because white Christianity somehow excuses bigotry.

No, this is not good enough. This needs to surface in debates, this needs to surface in ads, and this needs to surface in more places than just this site and Salon.

The Nonsense of Anti-Gay Rhetoric

But this makes me angry.

All we hear from the right about California’s gay marriage decision is that the unelected officials have overruled the “will of the people,” namely, the will to discriminate. But apparently ultra-right conservatives don’t care about unelected officials overriding the law?

Incidentally, we also know that they don’t really care about the will of the people: remember Colorado’s Amendment 2? In the early 1990s, when a few major Colorado cities made it illegal, only within those cities, to discriminate against gay men and women, the Colorado voters (largely in the rural areas) passed a constitutional amendment to invalidate the statutes. So a few municipalities set a higher constitutional bar to protect gay men and women, and the unaffected areas tear the protections down. How petty. And why? It didn’t affect them. The only thing anti-gay activists are out to do is to hurt.

What really gets me, though, are articles like this one, which seems to argue that the right to discriminate is a religious right. Clearly these people haven’t thought through the logic of their arguments. Free exercise is not a free pass to do whatever you want. All this goes to prove that homophobia is entirely emotion, no sense, no logic, no reason. Just bitter hatred.

Momentary Reprieve

Sorry for not posting today: I just started at Unnamed Law Firm LLP as a summer associate, and I’m short on time tonight.  Come back on Thursday (later today) for more.

According to a Facebook Blog Application…

PZ Myers reads our little blog.  Hi PZ!

Rapture Irresponsibility

John Hagee (analyzed in a recent broadcast of Fresh Air) inhabits a world of Manichean duality. Christians must ensure the unity of Israel and defray attempts at peace (thus leaving the pot simmering for an eventual imaginary holocaust and Armageddon), or otherwise risk forestalling the Second Coming. Apparently fate needs its hand held (?). And Muslims – who Hagee condescendingly calls “Islamics” – are either terrorists, or dishonest followers of the Qu’ran. Compromise is unnecessary; thus, it needn’t be sought.  There is neither ground nor reason for peace, after all, if you believe that by dogmatic adherence to your position, you’ll be scooped off of the Earth relatively quickly.

Religious politics – and especially “rapture-based politics” – are the ultimate form of selfishness and irresponsibility. The most fundamental injunction of the politician and the statesman is that he (or she) act for the good of the country and the world. Although the latter may be subordinated to the former, it may not be forgotten.

Rapture-based geopolitics subvert the good of humanity, and the good of the country, for the good of the sect. Such a recently invented fairytale, which requires one to only look out for co-religionists – and the rest, quite literally, be damned – is not a religion that deserves respect, and it is not a religion that deserves any access to power. Hagee is dangerous, and his continued proximity to McCain speaks increasingly poorly for McCain’s judgment.

16% of US science teachers are creationists

From the New Scientist, and as reported on Pharyngula:

Despite a court-ordered ban on the teaching of creationism in US schools, about one in eight high-school biology teachers still teach it as valid science, a survey reveals. And, although almost all teachers also taught evolution, those with less training in science – and especially evolutionary biology – tend to devote less class time to Darwinian principles.

Read the article here.

Politics & Virtue

Whenever I express a belief that sex is over-sold, or should be restricted to meaningful relationships (although… maybe not saved until marriage), I worry that I’ll get pigeonholed as a social conservative. This couldn’t be farther from the truth, as regular reader(s) will know. But a certain personal morality, I think, is and ought to be unlinked from political belief, religion, or creed. That is to say, political liberality is not personal liberality. Although we ought to have the right to make our own choices on this matter, I think we as a culture would be happier and better off if some of the mystique and specialness of sex were restored.

So thanks to The Art of Manliness for a socially responsible and apolitical take on the subject. Maybe it’s just because I don’t “get” hook-ups – I’ve been in a serious (and fantastic!) relationship for quite a while now – but it rings very true to me that sex is special. It’s at least more special than how we commonly treat it.

Of the People

Images like this win a nation’s heart.

To ensure that McCain and the Republicans won’t succeed at defining Barack Obama negatively – namely, as the out-of-touch elitist – Obama needs to constantly project himself not only as a populist, but as a humble man of the people, caught up in something bigger than himself. A President should be powerful, constantly projecting power and intelligence – that’s what’s been lacking the last couple years – but the power needs to derive from the masses, not from somewhere above the masses. The above picture (from the New York Times) shows the simple family man swallowed by the crowd and the moment, and drives home just that message. This is a baseline image to which everyone can relate.

If I were Barack Obama, this picture would be on my campaign website’s front page, and in a couple ads, too. It underlines a broader campaign theme that Obama needs to start hitting: his own personal story. His history didn’t just begin last year. Before that, he struggled from humble beginnings, worked for the poor, and turned down a Supreme Court clerkship to do so… although that’s not the part of the story that I’d be stressing. Obama needs to show this softer side, and expose himself a little more. It’s only in seeing the big picture that any scandals of the moment will disappear.