New Year's Day

The Best of 2011

What a great year for music, film and television. There were so many great entries in each category that it was very hard for me to choose this year. But I still managed to do it so here are my picks

MUSIC

Both the track of the year and the album of the year are from the same group this year. Pala, by Friendly Fires is an absolute corker of a record. The soundtrack to my summer and, indeed, the entire year. I think I have played this disc at least 200 times start to finish since it came out and I still find layers to it previously unheard. Pala sets a mood that is sorely lacking today, not just in music, but in our culture in general. I'm not entirely certain I can describe it in words but it's reminiscent of what the most gorgeous flower would sound like as it blooms...in a club at 1:30am with piles of sweaty bodies writhing around to massive and thumping beats. And if it could tell Robert Browning-esque love stories. Like their self titled first release, Pala deserves to be forever enshrined in any Hall of Fame.

And "Blue Cassette" is not simply the best track of 2011, but one of the best of all time. Friendly Fires really outdid themselves with this stunning song that waxes nostalgic about cassette tapes and lost love. My heart melts every single time I listen to it.



FILM 
I had the toughest time with this one. Three films came out at the beginning of the year that made my inner geek howl with delight. The Adjustment Bureau, Limitless, and Source Code were all amazing and for several months, I was toggling back and forth between these three as my pick for Best Film of 2011.

But then the Woodman released Midnight in Paris and it was all over. This film crushed me on a number of levels and I think it is one of the most romantic films of all time...right up there with Casablanca. Plus, any film that describes the Tea Party as "crypto-fascist zombie airheads" is going to get my nod!


TELEVISION
Most of you know that I am big sci-fi, comic book, fantasy geek and for the past three years I have watched Fox's Fringe develop into a truly magnificent show. The third season saw the series really hit its stride. Alternate realities...time travel...ancient machines of doom...creepy, weird and fucked up shit...romance and love...and Walter (wonderfully played by John Noble) being Walter. If you haven't seen this show, start watching it immediately.



Those are my picks for 2011. How about you?

How it All Ends

Among the columnists I usually read, Charles Krauthammer is the one who most reliably galls me. But the other day he wrote a thoughtful column in the Washington Post about why we haven't discovered other intelligent life in the universe.

In the article Krauthammer discusses the Drake equation. The most troublesome term in the equation is the lifetime of a civilization. Krauthammer raises the concern that we don't find other civilizations because they quickly destroy themselves after reaching a high level of technology, when fanatical nut-jobs create plagues, or worse:

And forget the psychopaths: Why, a mere 17 years after Homo sapiens — born 200,000 years ago — discovered atomic power, those most stable and sober states, America and the Soviet Union, came within inches of mutual annihilation.

I finished the article pleasantly surprised that Krauthammer had written it. But the first reader comment was a snide snipe at President Obama and that spoiled my mood immediately. But it got me thinking.

The paragraph above mentions that Homo sapiens emerged 200,000 years ago. The time can't be exact, though the fossil evidence and genetic analysis give us similar numbers coming at the question from different directions.

But the irony is that the Republican candidates for president -- save Jon Huntsman, who has no chance of winning the nomination -- have just fallen all over themselves to assure Republican caucus-goers in Iowa that they don't believe in evolution. Which means they don't believe that Homo sapiens arrived on the scene hundreds of thousands of years ago as Krauthammer stated.

Now, it's obvious that Krauthammer will support any one of these candidates over Obama in the next election. Yet he knows that they have all just rejected one of the most basic tenets of modern science in favor of a 3,000-year-old Egyptian creation myth. How can you trust someone to be president who will make critical environmental and foreign policy decisions based on fairy tales?

Well, because they won't. I'm sure Krauthammer, like all of us, knows that most of these candidates don't really believe that the earth was created by God in six days 6,000 years ago. We all know they're lying when they say they don't believe evolution is true. We know they're just saying it to please bible-thumping fundamentalists, who vote in large numbers. And the candidates know intelligent people will know they're just lying to curry favor. Just like we all know they're lying when they say that humans have no role in global warming. And we all know they're lying when they say that lowering taxes raises government revenues.

And that's what galls me most about guys like Krauthammer. They know better, but they go along with the lie for temporary political advantage. They're smart, well-read, educated people. Yet when their candidates stand there and lie about basic facts to sharpen the political divide  —  often reversing positions they themselves took only a few months or years ago — the Krauthammers go along with them.

Which leads me to the sad conclusion that civilizations actually meet their doom when otherwise intelligent people go along with the lies that demagogues tell to spur their populations into action against their enemies, foreign and domestic, causing them to unleash the universally destructive forces of fratricide.

Where is the Republican Outrage?

A sign posted outside a row of temples tells women they cannot walk on the sidewalk outside their doors. An eight-year-old girl who dared walk there is spat on by adult men who call her a whore. Members of this ultra-conservative sect throw rocks and eggs at police. More than 60% of the male members of this sect live on welfare, spending all their time studying holy books, whose restrictive laws they wish to impose on the whole country.

Are these temples madrasahs? Is this country Pakistan or Saudi Arabia? Are these men Muslims? Do they want to impose Sharia law? No, no, no and no.

The temples are synagogues in Beit Shemesh, Israel. The eight-year-old girl is Naama Margolese, who wears glasses, long sleeves and a skirt as she walks by the synagogues on her way to her religious school. The men are haredim, ultra-conservative Orthodox Jews, who spend all their time studying the Torah.

The haredim make up about 10% of the Israeli population, but they have much bigger families on average, made possible by welfare benefits and child allowances. Many in Israel are concerned:

“We have a few years to get our act together,” warned Dan Ben-David, an economist and director of the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel, an independent research institute. 

“If not, there will be a point of no return.” 

Several months ago the center issued a report that caused widespread alarm: If current trends continue, it said, 78 percent of primary school children in Israel by 2040 will be either ultra-Orthodox or Arab.

In short, Israel is in danger of becoming like Saudi Arabia, only with the Torah replacing the Koran.

One would think such stories would raise concerns among Republican candidates for president. The United States sends billions of dollars in foreign aid to Israel. I'd expect Rick Perry and Ron Paul to be asking, "Why should my tax dollars help finance all these Torah-reading, high-birth-rate, silly-hat-wearing welfare bums?" But the current field of Republicans have been falling over each other trying to curry favor with Israel and bash President Obama's Middle East policies. Newt Gingrich went so far as to call the Palestinians an "invented people" in his attempts to undermine their push for statehood.

Israel is an important ally in the Middle East, a reliable democratic partner. But after winning an the unprovoked war launched against them, they are still occupying territories they seized more than 40 years ago and are in the process of permanently taking land away from people who have lived on it for centuries. Whether those original inhabitants call themselves Palestinians or Arabs or Philistines is irrelevant. Israel has legitimate security needs, but their sometimes indiscriminate use of force and collective punishments of the people in Gaza and the West Bank have at times been as oppressive as any totalitarian regime in the region. The small, ultra-conservative religious parties in Israel have made it impossible for Israel to resolve the issue, keeping Palestinians prisoners in their own homes. All these things are corroding the soul of Israel.

It would be wrong to condemn all of Israel for the actions of the haredim and the settlers stealing Palestinian land. Just as it's wrong to condemn all Muslims for the actions of Al Qaeda and Iran. Or to blame all of American Christianity for the actions of militias who plot to kill judges, police officers and IRS employees.

I was at a party a couple of months ago where a man recalled fellow Jews welcoming the support of American fundamentalist Christians. He cautioned them against believing Christian Zionists are true allies of Israel. The impetus for their support of Israel does not arise from their love of the Jews, he said, but from their wish to fulfill their interpretations of prophecies in the Bible.

They say they believe these prophecies foretell that when Jerusalem is restored as the capital of Israel Jesus will return and the battle of Armageddon will be joined. That is, these fundamentalist Christians wish to see Jerusalem restored only to be destroyed in the fiery end of the world.

But once Jerusalem becomes the capital of Israel, and the world does not end, will these false friends of Israel become impatient for the Rapture? Will they point to the above stories and turn on the Jews, casting them in exactly the same light that they cast Muslims today: fanatical, intolerant, wishing to impose their laws on others? And will they once again heap upon Jews the scurrilous epithets they freely used not so long ago? And, one wonders, have they ever stopped thinking them?

Is Lying Protected Speech?

Next month buying airline tickets should become less misleading:

Beginning Jan. 24, the Transportation Department will enforce a rule requiring that any advertised price for air travel include all government taxes and fees. For the last 25 years, the department has allowed airlines and travel agencies to list government-imposed fees separately, resulting in a paragraph of fine print disclaimers about charges that can add 20 percent or more to a ticket’s price.

It seems reasonable to have a more uniform way of advertising ticket prices, since the fees and taxes on air travel aren't as well-known as things like sales tax.

And before anyone gets on their high horse about "government fees," those fees pay for the airport, FAA flight controllers, TSA inspectors, and all the infrastructure that makes it possible for the airlines to do business. Fees on people using government services are preferable to funding them from general revenues, aren't they?

But the fact is, the government fees are actually small potatoes compared to the other fees airlines charge:

Spirit has built its business around advertising $9 fares, then charging additional fees for checked and carry-on bags, advance seat assignments and now a “passenger usage fee” of up to $17 each way for tickets booked online.

Since no one will ever pay $9 to fly on Spirit, advertising a $9 fare is a bald-faced lie. But several airlines are suing to stop the new regulations:

"We think it’s unnecessary and violates the First Amendment," said David Berg, general counsel at Airlines for America. “The D.O.T. simply has not been able to justify that the current advertising is misleading in any way to support a restriction on free speech.”

Does the First Amendment really guarantee companies the right to lie in their advertisements? And now the airlines are saying that the new rule restricts their right to political speech. Are the airlines really saying that "political speech" is lying, and therefore all lies are protected speech?

Spirit has trotted out the hoary old "burdensome consumer protection regulations" argument:

[I]n its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Spirit cited “burdensome consumer protection regulations” as a risk factor for its business model, saying, “We are evaluating the actions we will be required to take to implement these rules, and we believe it is unlikely that we will be able to meet the 2012 compliance deadline in every respect.”

Apparently, since everyone "knows" that Spirit's $9-fare business model is based on lying, somehow that makes it acceptable. What does that say about business ethics in this country?

A lot of people are outraged by these sorts of government regulations. Their anger would be better directed at the liars and cheats who make these regulations necessary in the first place.

Racist?

Recently I had this link sent to me (from one of Kevin Baker's followers) which contained the following quote.

I know that Obummer is taking yet another multi-million dollar vacation with First Wookie to Hawaii on the tax-payer tab.

Is referring to the First Lady as a hairy, giant ape-like creature racist? Again, just checking my gauge to make sure I'm not race baiting.

The Federal Deficit Through The Years

Eight Days Away

We are now eight days away from the Iowa caucuses and I predict that Ron Paul is going to win that election with Mitt Romney coming in second. Paul's ground troops are well positioned in many key counties and his supporters are fervent. I also think that we'll see a couple of the lower tier candidates drop out although Michele might stick around and make things interesting from an emotionally hysterical drama angle.

What are your thoughts? Who wins Iowa?

Christmas Night

"Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept. " (taken from A Child's Christmas In Wales by Dylan Thomas)

An Eve's Reminder

"One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six." (taken from A Child's Christmas In Wales by Dylan Thomas)

In the Zeitgeist

Making folks on the right blow a bowel is a pretty easy thing these days. But, boy oh boy, did a big one explode after this came out.

Time's Person of the Year was The Protester.

They spent most of the last few months trying to shift the narrative away from what is clearly a losing battle for them (inequality). It's a real stinker largely because it's true.

And it's obviously resonated with people. There is very little doubt in my mind that this will be the center issue of the election next year and is now part of the zeitgeist.

But if you read the article more closely you will see that it's not just the 99 percenters that are highlighted. This is an international movement of people with various concerns that have realized that they still have a voice. A Facebook page literally changed the government in Egypt. Libya has a new government. Syria won't be far behind.

All in all, this is a good thing. Change is tough for folks on the right and they don't like to bend much. Yet, as the tide turns, I think many of them are going to realize that if our country is going to remain significant in the world, we are going to have to address the issue of inequality. I'm not a huge fan of Larry Summers and it's fairly clear he had a hand in the Economic Collapse of 2008 but his recent piece in the Washington Post is an excellent primer on how to combat our rising inequality.I'll be talking more about this in the coming weeks as I break out each point and discuss whether or not it's feasible.

In the meantime, well done, people of the Earth. You shouted and now our leaders have to listen.

The Elite Sense of Entitlement

Like many first-tier airlines, Delta has clubs at airports where members can find a quiet place to plug in their laptops and get free wi-fi, a safe and convenient place to stash their luggage while waiting for their flights, and a comfortable place to rest and get drinks and snacks. It was nice: my wife and I used it a couple of times when she worked for a company that had memberships for their execs.

Recently the airline has discounted the cost of entry through various promotions. Normally it costs $450/year or $50/day to gain entry, but Delta has recently made it cheaper to visit  the exclusive lounge by making half-off and $89 five-visit passes available on Groupon.

This has not gone over well with many of Delta's most-frequent fliers:

"The cheaper they make it for somebody to go in, the more it's like the regular concourse," said Rick King, a technology executive at Thomson Reuters. "If it's like the regular concourse, the benefits for me go down." 

King, who gets in the lounges free with his Diamond Medallion status, worries that more visitors could make it harder to grab seats with his colleagues before his flights. Some fliers have complained that it's already too packed during peak flying times, with passengers having to wait in line for orange juice in the morning. 

"It's like a Greyhound Bus depot. Way too crowded," said Edward Bertsch, a Minnesota IT security consultant. "The club to a certain extent should be a club. It shouldn't be a profit center for the rest of Delta."

Why is Delta doing this?

[The airline] said the expansion into Groupon aims to attract the website's loyal clientele of younger female shoppers. Delta said 54 percent of the Groupon buyers were women and 70 percent were ages 26 to 50.

Like my wife, the majority of the mostly older, mostly male execs in the club probably have their memberships paid for by their employers. The majority of the Groupon customers are probably paying for these one-off memberships with their own money. Why are old men on the corporate dole more deserving of a nice quiet place to wait for their flight than young women who pay their own way?

Airlines are having a tough time of it, charging extra for checking bags, extra carry-on luggage and seat assignments away from the lavatories, ditching food service in coach, and so on. Yet these pampered execs don't think the airline should try to make money from club rooms that stand empty most of the day.

Conservatives have long criticized "liberal elites" for being snobbish and disconnected from the concerns of real Americans. But corporate elites are even richer, more snobbish, and more disconnected from the realities of every-day life. When they fly they go business class, with wide seats, ample leg room and sometimes even beds. They board first, get special check-in lines with no invasive TSA security checks, have private lounges, and get fed decent food. Yes, it costs more. But they're not actually paying for it, their companies are. And since the companies deduct travel from their taxes as a business expense, the rest of us are really paying for all these fabulous perqs.

Now that their cushy private airport hangouts are being forcibly stripped from them by penny-pinching airlines, the trials and tribulations of dealing with the unwashed masses are just too much for these high-flying execs. But the airlines will be sorry: these titans of industry won't take this lying down. They'll go back to flying their own private corporate jets to avoid waiting in line for their orange juice.

Did They Get The Memo?

Well, it looks like the new saviors of the Republic in the US House of Representatives didn't get the memo on how to govern. 

Republicans have also achieved the small miracle of letting Mr. Obama position himself as an election-year tax cutter, although he's spent most of his Presidency promoting tax increases and he would hit the economy with one of the largest tax increases ever in 2013. This should be impossible.

Yes, it should. I've been watching with mouth agape as the House does the exact same fucking thing they did in 1995 which resulted in President Clinton winning a second term in 1996. I mean, when you piss of the Wall Street Journal...well...your butt is seriously in a satchel now!

This Is Going To Be Really Tough

If Mitt Romney is the nominee, it's going to be very difficult for me to go after him because I like him so much personally. Granted, I only know him by his media personality but I can't help but find him endearing on a number of levels. The video below is a great example of why I feel this way.

Number 9 just about made me wet my pants.

The "Dear Leader" is Dead

Lots to talk about today but I thought I would start out with the passing of Kim Jong Il. I find it remarkable that this year has seen three truly despicable men (bin Laden, Gaddafi, Kim) depart this plane of existence. The world is most definitely better off without them.

The question now is will North Korea change? My initial thoughts are skeptical. Kim's son, Kim Jong Un, seems more of a puppet of the military so in the short run we won't see much in the way of new policy. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to flex their military muscle a bit just for show. It's going to be interesting to see what China does in the next few weeks.

Regardless, North Korea can't last much longer the way they are going. With Cuba now selling private property in the hopes of not being left out of the global market, it's only a matter of time before we see serious change in the Korean peninsula. Sadly, it will more than likely be messy.

What are your thoughts?

Oh, Joe, Say Ain't So...

Speaking of Kim Jong Il, our very own version of him, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is having all sorts of problems these days. For those of you who don't know, Sheriff Joe became quite popular several years ago when this email went viral.

Shierff Joe - Re-elected TO THOSE OF YOU NOT FAMILIAR WITH JOE ARPAIO - HE IS THE MARICOPA COUNTY SHERIFF AND HE KEEPS GETTING ELECTED OVER AND OVER. THIS IS ONE OF THE REASONS WHY: Sheriff Joe Arpaio (in Arizona) who created the "tent city jail": He has jail meals down to 40 cents a serving and charges the inmates for them. He stopped smoking and porno magazines in the jails. Took away their weights. Cut off all but "G" movies. He started chain gangs so the inmates could do free work on county and city projects. Then he started chain gangs for women so he wouldn't get sued for discrimination. He took away cable TV until he found out there was a federal court order that required cable TV for jails. So he hooked up the cable TV again only let in the Disney channel and the weather channel. When asked why the weather channel he replied, so they will know how hot it's gonna be while they are working on my chain gangs. He cut off coffee since it has zero nutritional value. When the inmates complained, he told them, "This isn't the Ritz/Carlton. If you don't like it, don't come back." He bought Newt Gingrich' lecture series on videotape that he pipes into the jails. When asked by a reporter if he had any lecture series by a Democrat, he replied that a democratic lecture series might explain why a lot of the inmates were in his jails in the first place.

More than likely, you got this email from that right wing relative or friend who sits up, sticks out their tongue, and pants when hearing such dog whistles.

Problem is, though, Sheriff Joe isn't doing his fucking job and hasn't for awhile now.


In El Mirage alone, where Arpaio's office was providing contract police services, officials discovered at least 32 reported child molestations — with victims as young as 2 years old — where the sheriff's office failed to follow through, even though suspects were known in all but six cases.

I guess he was too busy being a tough guy and proving Democrats wrong to prevent actual crimes from being committed. But here's the kicker.

Many of the victims, said a retired El Mirage police official who reviewed the files, were children of illegal immigrants.

Well, that explains it. Their here illegally...fuck 'em.

Poor Joe, though, because it gets worse.

The report outlines how Arpaio's office has committed a wide range of civil rights violations against Latinos, including a pattern of racial profiling and discrimination and carrying out heavy-handed immigration patrols based on racially charged citizen complaints.

Ah, but that's nothing. Who cares about civil rights? Certainly not 40 percent of this country. How about some real old school stuff?


Apart from the civil rights probe, a federal grand jury also has been investigating Arpaio's office on criminal abuse-of-power allegations since at least December 2009 and is specifically examining the investigative work of the sheriff's anti-public corruption squad.

Abuse of power? Nah, it can't be. The email above says that Joe is cleaning up our country and getting rid of the bad guys. This must all be some sort of liberal plot. I bet Barney Frank is behind all of it!

Also Too Far?

Apparently, there's a Tea Party guy out in California named Jules Manson who has made quiet a stir on Facebook recently. On his page, he posted his displeasure with the president's signing of the Defense Authorization Bill (he's a Ron Paul supporter) and in a later comment he wrote

“Assassinate the fucking nigger and his monkey children”

Here's the image below that has since been removed.

I guess what I'm wondering is am I playing the race card for calling him out in this? Just wonderin'....

Are Conservatives Sabotaging Marriage?

I heard an interesting discussion on NPR this morning. The bad economy is hurting both the institutions of marriage and divorce. The marriage rate is down 5% from last year, probably in large part because of bad economic times. Paradoxically, the divorce rate is also down. Researchers have found that as unemployment goes up, divorce rates go down. Opinions are divided: it may be because getting divorced is expensive (who wants to waste thousands of dollars on lawyers?), or it may be because troubled couples are coming closer together and sticking it out.

But one key statistic stands out: the divorce rate among the college-educated is only 11%, much lower than the approximately 50% national average. It's easy to see why: the biggest causes of divorce are money, sex and kids. And since well-educated couples have fewer kids, and kids = money, and more kids = less sex, it's really about the money.

Furthermore, out-of-wedlock childbirth, which used to be considered a "black problem," is becoming common among all low-income Americans. This suggests that poverty was always the reason that many black Americans had kids outside marriage, and now that white America is on the skids the same problems are hitting them.

How much of an effect are the massive disparities between upper- and lower-income Americans having on marriage? Conservatives like to say that income inequality is simply the fault of those people who are too lazy to work. But the fact is that millions of Americans have been losing well-paying jobs for 30 years as American industry has shipped production to other countries in a very successful attempt to destroy unions. That's had the effect of drastically lowering average incomes in the United States. And the recent downturn has hit millions of solid middle-class non-union white-collar workers who toiled hard every day till they lost their jobs because of Wall Street's malfeasance.

As I've noted before, divorce rates are higher in "red" states than "blue" states. Are Republican states less moral than Democratic states? I doubt it; it really has to do with money and education. Blue states have higher incomes and education levels, as a result of blue-state policies and priorities.

One of the reasons marriage rates are down, according to the story, is that many young people, especially men, are deferring marriage. They want to get a good job and build up a nest egg first. But the truth is, two people really can live more cheaply together than they can apart. Working together as a team, couples can do better for themselves than they can alone: they can get a house sooner, build up their savings more quickly, all because there's much less waste and overhead maintaining a single domicile. That's why so many couples cohabitate. How many of them don't get married because they're worried about divorce and all the pain and trouble it brings?

But the conservative sabotage of marriage started in earnest these last few years. To fight gay marriage, conservatives now insist that the only purpose of marriage is procreation. So if you're not having kids right away, you obviously shouldn't get married. The opposition to birth control and abortion by Catholics and many conservatives present further obstacles to getting married. Having kids presents a double whammy: you lose a wage earner and drastically ramp up expenses. Not to mention the stress and tension children cause with their incessant crying and whining...

These conditions force many young people to stay home for years longer than their parents and grandparents did. What effect does this extended childhood have on the quality of mates? Does Mom nagging a 30-year-old man to stop playing video games and make his bed irreparably damage his self-image? Getting married at a younger age has its problems, but it also means you aren't already set in your ways, which means you and your spouse live and grow together before your personalities are set in stone. Are people who get married at 30 less mutable for their mates, and more self-centered and self-absorbed than people who get married at 25?

And then there's the whole notion that gay marriage will destroy the institution of marriage. It's like saying that you can't support the New York Yankees because gays can wear Yankees caps. Or you can't have children because lesbians can have children. Or you can't believe in Christ because the socialist Poles and Germans who've been running the Catholic Church for the last 30 years believe in Christ.

How can gays getting married possibly affect anyone else's marriage? The only effect it can have is the effect you let it have on you. If your faith in your marriage is so weak that it can be destroyed by the fact that a gay person can get hitched, you never really had any faith to begin with.

One could much more convincingly argue that gays aren't destroying marriage, it's conservative opinion leaders like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan, Mark Sanford, John Ensign, and David Vitter who are destroying marriage by constantly making a mockery of their vows, who then turn around and mouth platitudes about the sanctity of marriage. Their hypocritical examples do far more damage to the institution than the prospect of monogamous gays.

Monogamous marriage has been an economic, social and political union in most cultures regardless of religion: Judeo-Christianity, Hinduism, Shinto, ancient Roman and Greek paganism, Chinese Taoism, and most nativist religions in the Americas, Asia and Africa. Children were necessary to supply workers and heirs, for very functional non-religious reasons. Religion, love and romance had nothing to do with marriage. Parents and matchmakers and privy councilors arranged marriages and it was simply assumed that you would come to love your spouse in time.

If conservatives really want to improve the marriage rate and reduce the divorce rate, they should stop ranting about gays, birth control and abortion, stop encouraging large families in bad economic times, stop trying to legislate morality, and instead work to create new jobs, increase the quality of education, and reduce the huge income inequalities that are eating away at this country like a cancer.

Another Republican Adulterer Bites the Dust

Markadelphia has long said that he thinks it's foolish to call politicians out for having affairs. I can see the point: if your spouse can live with you banging the babysitter, what's the big deal? Newt Gingrich's recent rise in the polls indicates that even evangelicals are giving politicians who cheat on their wives a pass. As long as they admit their error and then sign a pledge not to do what they've already done twice...

But there are some times when marital infidelity says something about candidate's fitness to hold office. In Herman Cain's case there were charges of sexual harassment, which he denied, and when it was came to light that Cain was having an affair until very recently those charges gained a lot more credibility. His reaction to those charges told us more about his character than the charges themselves. In hindsight, Cain must realize that he should have acknowledged his harassment of those women, and publicly apologized to them, finessing the issue by calling his advances honest misunderstandings instead of demonizing the women publicly. Had he done that, it's entirely possible his paramour would have kept quiet and he'd still be in the race. But he ticked her off with his rank hypocrisy.

The reason extramarital affairs are bad has nothing to do with the immorality of them, but more to do with how vulnerable they make you to blackmail. One summer in college I obtained an application for the CIA. One of the questions asked about using heroin. That's nuts, I thought. Who would ever admit to using heroin? But answering yes doesn't immediately disqualify you. By answering such a question truthfully you can't be blackmailed by future revelations, and you show a certain ... flexibility that can actually be very useful in CIA operations. The CIA doesn't need angels.

Last Thursday Amy Koch, the Republican Minnesota Senate majority leader, resigned without any credible explanation. Friday the news broke that she was having an affair with a male staffer, and four high-ranking Republicans had demanded she step down immediately. Koch is married and has one child.

Why is this relevant?

In 2010 Republicans won a majority in both the Minnesota House and Senate. They immediately set to shoving their agenda through the legislature, making big cuts to programs, including huge cuts to cities, counties and schools, and making a bunch of gimmicky short-term accounting changes instead of actually solving the problem. Democratic governor Mark Dayton shut down the government to try to force them to give him a decent budget, but the Republicans wouldn't budge.

Another big push was to put an amendment to the state constitution to ban gay marriage on next year's ballot. It's the same old thing about a union of one man and one woman, the sanctity of marriage, blah blah blah.

The question then becomes: if Republicans constantly violate their marital vows, how can they possibly be serious about the sanctity of marriage? To avoid making the argument next year about Amy Koch's violation of her marriage vows, the Republicans had to jettison her as fast as possible. This, along with tidbits like Republicans getting divorced more often than Democrats, Herman Cain's harassment and infidelity, Mark Sanford's Appalachian hike, John Ensign's payoffs, and thrice-married Newt Gingrich potentially winning the Republican nomination, puts the lie to the idea that the Republican Party is the party fighting to preserve the sanctity of marriage.

Instead, they look like the party that won't stick it out when the going gets tough, breasts start to sag, or hubby can't get it up. How can people like this claim the moral high ground if gays want to declare their eternal love for each other? It makes the marriage amendment look a small-minded attempt to stop people Republicans don't like from getting a benefit that the majority of people enjoy. So their answer is to boot Amy Koch out the door and hope everyone forgets her before next November.

The right answer is for us all to cut each other some slack and stop telling people who aren't hurting anyone how to live our lives. How can you preach about freedom when you want to take away the most basic freedom to be with the person you love?

Stopping the Big One

Last month a 400-yard wide asteroid came within 200,000 miles of earth, inside the orbit of the moon. NASA had been tracking it, so there wasn't any real concern that it would hit us.

But the close approach prompted Edward Lu, a former astronaut, to renew his call for the United States to improve our capabilities for predicting and preventing asteroid collisions. Such a collision is widely believed to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs by drastically changing the climate in the aftermath of the collision (the Alvarez Hypothesis).

Movies like Deep Impact and Armageddon popularized the threat the earth faces from comets and asteroids. An asteroid the size of 2005 YU55 wouldn't destroy the planet, but it would have the force of small nuclear bomb and could wipe out a city, or inundate several coastal cities with a tsunami if it hit the ocean.

We don't know of any big asteroids or comets that pose an immediate threat, but we aren't tracking many of the smaller objects. Also, the gravity of the outer planets, especially Jupiter, changes the orbits of asteroids and comets in the outer solar system, causing them to drop in on us unpredictably.

The chance of a collision is small, but the sheer magnitude of the calamity has prompted many people to  take the issue seriously. Though people like Mitt Romney derided Newt Gingrich's idea of mining the moon for its minerals, there are many conservatives who believe that the United States should take the lead in space with asteroid collision detection and prevention projects, as well as space exploration in general. Not only would it potentially save humanity, but it would help the United States regain the initiative in space by allowing us to develop the technology to do big projects in space. Own the high ground!

Conservatives harshly criticized President Obama for canceling Bush's botched Constellation moon program, and Obama's decision to have NASA do less and private companies do more in space. As recently as last month Herman Cain blasted Obama's space initiatives and blamed Obama for canceling the shuttle program, even though it was Bush who canceled the shuttle in 2004, forcing us to rely on the Russians to get our astronauts to the space station.

But Obama's strategy appears to be bearing fruit: recently NASA announced that the first private launch to dock with the International Space Station was authorized: SpaceX will launch its Dragon spacecraft in February, 2011. Paul Allen and Burt Rutan are building a successor to SpaceShipOne that will have an operational launch in 2016.

Bottom line: NASA scientists predict there's a small but real chance that an asteroid will strike the earth and wreck the earth's climate. So why are conservatives so resistant to NASA scientists who predict that human activity will drastically affect on the earth's climate?

The bigger, more immediate threat to is human-caused climate change, not an asteroid.

Even though Newt Gingrich now says admitting that global warming is real was his biggest mistake, some Republicans like Jon Huntsman are brave enough to acknowledge the truth. (There was a big noise when Huntsman appeared to recant his stand on global warming, but when he reiterated his support for climate science he was roundly ignored.)

The real issue with conservatives and climate change doesn't seem to about the science. As the Gingrich example shows, they know it's real: anyone who's 50-plus years old has seen the changes for themselves and knows it's happening. Their real concern seems to be that the United States will get stiffed in any kind of international agreement and countries like China will cheat, and we'll be stuck paying for it with lower economic growth. That's a legitimate issue. But it's a lousy excuse for inaction, like a ten-year-old saying he shouldn't have to brush his teeth because his baby brother didn't have to.

Climate change won't cause the extinction of mankind. But it will raise sea levels and increase the incidence of extreme weather like hurricanes, floods and tornadoes, as well as cause drought, disease, famine, mass migration and war. Those things will destabilize markets, international trade and our economy far worse than our current troubles have.

If only there were some flashy way to stop global warming by having Bruce Willis nuke something...