Rick Warren: Follow Jesus Like Nazis Followed Hitler. To which I can only say: WHAT. I. WHAT. Pam’s House Blend: Obama’s inauguration brings mixed feelings for many Black LGBTQ Americans. No sh*t, really?
And now, three links via Making Light…
* Our Quote of the Day– Fred Clark says:
Reflexive or visceral anti-government sentiment, in a democracy, is strangely popular given that it is both a form of self-loathing and a self-fulfilling prophecy. Right now, for instance, there’s a pseudo-libertarian reading this very paragraph and shouting, “How naive! The government isn’t of, by or for the people — the government is against the people!” He’s wrong, of course, but if everyone believed that, then his nightmare could become reality. If all the citizens of a democracy abandon any belief in government as the servant of the people for the common good, and if they oppose every attempt to make it so, then they’re not going to remain the citizens of a democracy for very long.
* The Bush years — then and now. Some simple figures that capture the effect of the Bush administration.
* From Tom Geoghegan’s See You in Court: How the Right Made America a Lawsuit Nation
The economist John Maynard Keynes put it best: “Nothing corrupts society more than to disconnect effort and reward.” That’s what did in the old Soviet Union: no matter how hard one worked, one could not get ahead of someone who did not work at all. All that is what is happening in the United States, too. Of course, in a certain way our country would seem the very opposite of the Soviet Union. Here, if people dont’ work, they’re going to end up homeless. Then again, if they do work, they may end up homeless, too.
And some links via Shakesville or commenters at Shakesville:
* Regarding whether the Obama administration should investigate the preceding administration, Paul Krugman’s op-ed Forgive and Forget? observes:
…to protect and defend the Constitution, a president must do more than obey the Constitution himself; he must hold those who violate the Constitution accountable. So Mr. Obama should reconsider his apparent decision to let the previous administration get away with crime. Consequences aside, that’s not a decision he has the right to make.
* Short and pithy, Orcinus: Typical Americans.
* Throw Your Shoe at Bush on January 20, 2009 and How to Choose your Bush-Throwing Shoe.
* Alternet: “The recession is GREAT because women will suffer more!” (paraphrase by YRTB)
Other required reading:
* Dday at Hullabaloo points to a Marcy Wheeler post about “that daring rescue of all those airline passengers in the Hudson River yesterday. Turns out that almost everyone involved in the rescue, top to bottom, was a union member.” Click through to Wheeler’s post. It made me blub.
* The Turning Point: How the Susan Crawford interview changes everything we know about torture.
* Hullabaloo: Q&A With Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney about sexism, politics, the economy, and her book Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated: Why Women’s Lives Aren’t Getting Any Easier–And How We Can Make Real Progress For Ourselves and Our Daughters
* Police States: They’re What’s For Dinner. In this post, Jesse Taylor does not exactly draw a straight line from the new Supreme Court ruling to police states, but it seemed intuitive to me. See exclusionary rule and fruit of the poisonous tree.
Jonah Goldberg claims that by declining to prosecute an alleged criminal against whom the evidence was obtained by illegal means, we are punishing the law enforcement officer who stepped over the line. What he overlooks is that if we eat the poisoned fruit, so to speak, then we are rewarding the law enforcement officer for his/her own crime. A society which intends to be free cannot afford to provide incentives for police lawlessness.
* Dday observes in Hullaballoo (emphasis added by YRTB):
Republicans are committed to opposing a popular plan (extremely popular – 80-85% support job creation on various initiatives like energy and infrastructure) for nakedly ideological reasons. At this point, their support is going to be meager at best. Ultimately, this could be a very good lesson. Obama extended the hand of friendship and it was rebuffed.
The Quote of the day & link roundup by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.