That’s the debate I’ve been having with an old college friend whom I’ve recently reconnected with.  He’s become a Catholic since we knew one another back in the ‘80s, and is a deep-thinking, deeply principled man.  He will not be voting for Barack Obama in November.  Nor will he be voting for John McCain.  He will vote, but he will cast a blank ballot.  He urges me, if I am serious about my moral commitments, to do likewise.  Neither candidate, in his opinion, cares enough about ‘life issues’ to merit an affirmative vote. 

The New York Times reports that other Catholics are struggling with what do with in the upcoming election. The most troublesome issue for many remains abortion.  Some, like Joe Biden, believe we must make accommodations for differing views in a pluralistic society, despite his own embrace of personhood at conception.  Others, like my old friend, see Biden’s support for legal access to abortion as no different from espousing the Holocaust – if not in deed, then in complicity. 

Can a Catholic possibly vote for a Democratic candidate who has regularly received a 100% approval rating from Planned Parenthood and indeed, as a state senator, voted against an Illinois version of the Born Alive Infant Protection bill passed by Congress?  Can I, as a person of faith who believes all life is sacred?  I am going to answer ‘yes,’ and in so doing, proclaim myself also a utilitarian and a realist, with all the moral conundra that pragmatism involves. Full Story »

Yo, Barack! Hey, John! I know you’ve been busy, cruising around the country, giving those same ol’ stump speeches over and over again. (Doncha get tired of that? We sure do.)

Park for a minute and tell us something. After you’re elected president, what are you gonna do with those buffoons running the Minerals Management Service that collects each year oil and gas royalties of $10 billion from oil companies? The Interior Department’s inspector general says top officials there have been involved in “financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.”

And while you’re at it, what about Nancy Nord, the acting chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission? You plan to let her keep on defending “trips she took that were paid for by the industries that her agency regulates“? You gonna let her keep on telling Congress that her agency does not need a larger budget to police the the industries that produce the nation’s consumer goods?
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In an unexpected development, jurors in the UK acquitted six Greenpeace activists in a case involving £35,000 ($62,591) worth of damages to a coal-fired power plant. The defense had argued that a 1971 law (Criminal Damage Act 1971) permitting damage to property in order to prevent even greater property damage applied to the activists. Specifically, the Greenpeace activists claimed that they were preventing “damage to properties worldwide caused by global warming”. And the jurors agreed.

This case defines a precedent for UK law that will be difficult to sort out. Does it mean that Parliament comes back through and refines the law to prevent this kind of “abuse” in the future? Or does it mean that the UK cannot build any more new coal plants without carbon capture and sequestration (CCS)? Full Story »

Link of the Week (as opposed to the Weakest Link):

Jonathan Freedland at the Guardian: “Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood. … But if McCain wins in November, that might well change. Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique, but Americans themselves. For it will have been the American people, not the politicians, who will have passed up a once-in-a-generation chance for a fresh start — a fresh start the world is yearning for.” [Emphasis added.] Full Story »

Some of you might recall that back in July, I ran a piece criticizing Newt Gingrich’s “Drill here. Drill now. Pay Less.” campaign. Since then, a number of people have had the opportunity to dig into the people supporting his supposedly non-partisan 527 group American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF). The result is that we now know who’s supporting this supposedly non-partisan group, and they’re a thoroughly Republican and highly partisan bunch. Full Story »

John McCain’s campaign advisers have made a potentially election-changing, tactical error.

They’ve started lying.

Lying in campaigns isn’t new, of course. The GOP has made big lies central to their campaigns since Nixon and Harry Dent, refining the technique with Reagan and his campaign manager, Lee Atwater, and have since kicked it up 20 or so notches in the Rove era. Most of us know about Rove, but he learned at Atwater’s knee, and it’s Atwater who accused Kitty Dukakis of burning an American flag and Dukakis, himself, of being treated for mental illness.

Generally, campaign lying works. The GOP knows that. The Democrats know it, too, and they’ve done some lying of their own. Unfortunately for them, they’re just not as good at it as the Republicans, so their lies tend to be smaller and less prolific, aimed at a constituency that is very different from the GOP one. In other words, lying doesn’t work as well for them. Full Story »

— a letter to the editor of The New York Times from Candida Pugh of Oakland, Calif.; Sept. 10; emphasis added.

— Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on the exit pay packages of Daniel H. Mudd of Fannie Mae and Richard F. Syron of Freddie Mac who, The Times’ Eric Dash reports, are eligible for as much as $24 million in severance, retirement benefits and deferred compensation; Sept. 10.
Full Story »

by Joshua Booth

This is not about Sarah Palin. If you want gossip about Sarah Palin read The National Enquirer. If you want to do something about the terrible state of the American economy, health care system, military, media, and government, read on.

Sarah Palin’s pregnant teenage daughter hasn’t taken money out of your pocket. The Republican Party Platform did that. Republicans know that the wealth doesn’t “trickle down,” that instead the national deficit balloons. Did you know Warren Buffet has stopped insuring bank deposits? Eleven banks have failed this year, seven of them in the last two months. This is the direct result of President Bush’s tax cuts for the rich and deregulation of the mortgage market. Full Story »

Well, well, well….

Links of the Week (as opposed to the Weakest Link):

Paul Begala: “I was for Hillary in the primaries, but when she endorsed Sen. Obama, I proudly sent him a check for the legal maximum. On the memo line of the check I wrote, ‘FOR NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING ONLY.’”

Billmon calls Palin: “McCain’s speed date soul mate.”

No one is covering Palin better than the Alaskan blog Mudflats, which called Palin: “McCain’s Bridge to Nowhere.” Full Story »

Isn’t it ludicrous even to ask such a question? Apparently not, in the presidential race of 2008.

I’ve spent the better part of the last two weeks absorbing and reflecting on the drama of the conventions. I got so whupped up alongside the head with the Palin pick, followed by incredulity at the delirious embrace by her party, that I’m only just now managing to mobilize some reactions. One of the strongest is that I don’t want – and we don’t need – “just a regular Joe – or Jane†– at the helm of this nation, whether as president or vice president. Full Story »

If you live in America, undoubtedly you drive on roads and highways maintained by the state in which you reside. And, just as certainly, many miles of those byways are in poor repair. They’re not safe. The rutted, pot-holed macadam causes expensive damage to your vehicle. Don’t count on this changing any time soon.

Friday, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters asked the Senate to prop up the federal highway trust fund with $8 billion. The fund, established in 1956 as the national financial engine of road building and repair, has a deficit. The fund provides the money the federal government uses to reimburse states for up to 80 to 90 percent of highway construction and maintenance costs. The House has already approved the extra cash.

If the Senate fails to add its approval, at the end of this month the federal government will delay and occasionally reduce the payments it sends to the states for construction it has agreed to underwrite. That means you’ll keep on driving your vehicle over the same badly damaged, poorly maintained roads that you have been, probably for years.

What should anger you is that every time you fill your tank, you’re paying 18.4 cents a gallon into that fund (24.4 cents if you’re tanking with diesel).

Why has this deficit come to pass?
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We’re still trying to make sense of the spectacle that was last week’s DNC in Denver, and the same goes for many of the city’s residents. Our friend Karl Christian had some thoughts on the proceedings, and has agreed to let us repost this article, written on Day 2 of the DNC.

beerkitty has a lot more photos here.

This is actually not my first political convention, but my third (2000 in Philadelphia with the Republican Convention and 2004 in Boston with the Democratic Convention.) I just always happen to live where the political action apparently likes to move to. Full Story »

— from “The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule” by Thomas Frank; p. 39; emphasis added.

— statement from Republican presidential candidate John McCain after the Labor Department reported that the national unemployment rate rose to a five-year high of 6.1 percent last month as American companies cut about 84,000 jobs; Sept. 5.

— statement from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama following the jobs report release; Sept. 5.
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In part two of the S&R Interview, comedian Lee Camp talks with me about the relationship between politics and comedy and has high praise for those who, like Jon Stewart and Chris Rock, are able to infuse their work with important insights about our society.

“Thank god for The Daily Show,” he says. “I wish there was a network that 24 hours [a day] played Daily Show-esque clips of ‘Bush said this and a month ago he said this and it’s completely the opposite. McCain said this and it conflicts with this‘.”

Camp also offers his personal experience on how the networks and media corporations use their money and the promise of wider exposure to co-opt and undercut the message of comedians with something more serious to say. Full Story »

On February 23, comedian Lee Camp appeared on FOX News, where he proceeded to sound off on the hosts and their audience.

Obviously Camp is a man with some political convictions. He’s also a very, very funny guy, as he demonstrated during the recent DNC festivities in Denver. Appearing with several other noteworthy names (SNL’s Fred Armisen, Sam Seder, Eugene Mirman, and the guys from BarelyPolitical.com, to name a few), Camp stole the show with a set that touched on everything from whether America is ready for a black president to whether we’re ready for Miley Cyrus.

Afterward, Camp made a few minutes to answer some questions for S&R and its readers. Full Story »

Link of the Week (as opposed to the Weakest Link):

Interview with Middle-East expert Joshua Landis at Right Web: “For instance, we just had a Syrian delegation that came to Washington. … For reasons that remain a little murky to me, that fell through. A friend in the State Department told me that part of the reason was that it was just too much for the Bush administration to absorb. Washington had just announced that it was going to meet with the Iranians in Geneva … and they could deal with only one meeting with one ‘axis of evil’ power at the same time.” Full Story »

Over the years, I’ve found that my ability to put my feelings on the shelf has served me well. The distance and perspective that this ability gives me is part of what makes me such a good engineer and, I like to think, a reasonably skilled journalist. But last Thursday, and every day since, I’ve been left wondering if this skill has cost me more than I realized. Full Story »