Current affairs

The more it looks like the United States is heading for a political and financial train wreck over raising the federal debt limit, which has to be done pronto to avoid a massive panic in the stock and bond markets, not to mention drastically increasing the government's future borrowing costs, the more I put the blame for this fiasco on religion. Why? Because Congressional Republicans who are "negotiating" with President Obama and Democratic leaders are acting like thou shalt not raise taxes is a divine decree rather than a ridiculous pledge cleverly engineered and promoted by Grover Norquist, a decidedly…

The Republican stance on negotiating an increase to the federal debt limit is illogical and ridiculous in so many ways, it's difficult for me to know where to focus my outrage.  First, it's deeply irritating to have the national interest held hostage by a quasi-religious "Thou Shalt Never Raise Taxes." And just as absurd, "Thou Shalt Always Have a Balanced Federal Budget." The first commandment is Grover Norquist pontificating, who knows zilch about economic reality. Conservative (but not a crazy one) David Brooks gets it exactly right in his The Mother of No-Brainers column. Over the past few years, it…

Wild and crazy can be fun. But not in politics, not now, because there's too much extreme'ish freaking out going on in both Congress and state legislatures. So thank you, 2011 Oregon legislature, for showing that Republicans and Democrats can still work together productively to serve the public. The Oregon Legislature wrapped up business Thursday, putting final touches on a no-frills budget and heaping praise on each other for what they called the most congenial, businesslike session in many years. ..."We have been blessedly boring all session," summed up Rep. Vicki Berger, R-Salem. Yes, there were some partisan spats, especially…

All the hue and cry over whether, or how, the federal debt ceiling should be raised again seems increasingly ridiculous to me. After all, Congress and the President already have agreed to every dollar of spending that requires this new borrowing. So the debt ceiling must be raised for both legal and moral reasons. It'd be reprehensible for politicians to disown the legislative decisions that Republicans and Democrats alike have made, saying "Yeah, we voted for more spending, but now we refuse to supply the money to pay for it." Thus I really like the idea that's starting to be…

Anyone who values honesty, forthrightness, and straight talk should look at how Michelle Bachmann responded to some questions from Bob Schieffer about her horrible PolitiFact accuracy record. Then, vow never to vote for her. This is why many politicians are so distrusted. They even lie about their lying, being able to face the truth about their not facing the truth.

Many people consider that liberals tend to be warm-and-fuzzy emotional types, while conservatives are just-the-facts thinkers. Well, a scientific study found the reverse to be true. The amygdala, which processes fear, was bigger in conservatives, while liberals have a bigger cortex, which processes complexity. Everyone knows that liberals and conservatives butt heads when it comes to world views, but scientists have now shown that their brains are actually built differently.Liberals have more gray matter in a part of the brain associated with understanding complexity, while the conservative brain is bigger in the section related to processing fear, said the study…

Ah, I needed this: a sign that the United States is on a positive track. Last night my wife and I went to a Salem Social Dance Club event. Periodically I'd check my iPhone to see if the New York legislature had passed a law legalizing same-sex marriage. When we were about to leave the dance, I checked one last time. Learning that New York had become the sixth state to make same-sex marriage legal lifted my spirits almost as much as the dancing had. I felt that a milestone had been reached, that our country had finally turned the…

Recently Jon Stewart sort of apologized on his The Daily Show for saying that watchers of Fox News are the most consistently misinformed media viewers. Well, he shouldn't have. Stewart was right, and the usually accurate PolitiFact was wrong in this case. PolitiFact came in for a lot of justified criticism when it ruled that Jon Stewart's June 19 statement, ""Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? … Fox viewers, consistently, every poll," was false. For one thing, PolitiFact often gives a lot of leeway to politicians and public figures who make similarly bold statements. Meaning, Politifact's rulings can…

So here we are in the middle of 2011, with an economy that isn't great. But it's still a heck of a lot better than it was in late 2008 and early 2009, when Obama took over the presidency. Remember how horrible it was to watch your retirement or investment portfolio drop 30, 40, 50 percent? Maybe even more, if you were into really risky stuff. I didn't enjoy those days. When the stock market went back over 12,000, I began to relax some, feeling that the biggest economic shocks were behind us and the United States was on a…

Back in 2008 I blogged about how Sarah Palin is hot! (and wrong). Today I was pleased to see that another guy has analyzed Palin's and Michele Bachmann's popularity from an attractiveness angle. Marty Kaplan asks a good question, if Bachmann and Palin weren't pretty. I wonder how much airtime Michele Bachmann would get if she didn't look the way she does. I wonder how much of Sarah Palin's political appeal arises from her physical appeal.I have a feeling that wondering this will get me in hot water, but what the hell.

It drives me nuts -- or rather, nuttier than I already am -- to hear congressional Republicans blathering on about how not raising the debt limit is key to cutting federal spending. Here's a fact (ooh, scary! a fact!) for these Tea Party types: the federal debt limit has absolutely nothing to do with new future spending by the government. If you read the information below you will discover that the debt ceiling that the Republicans are using to blackmail President Obama really has nothing at all to do with “increased spending.” The debt ceiling is a formal acknowledgement of…

I'm sorry to do this, because several relatives on my wife's side of the family live in Indiana. But I have to. Today I'm adding Indiana to my unofficially official list of right-wing crazy states. Governor Mitch Daniels and the state legislature have decided to pull all federal funding for Planned Parenthood, even though no federal money pays for abortions and Planned Parenthood's family planning services prevent many more abortions than the organization performs. This illogic and general nastiness puts Indiana in the same league as states like Arizona, Texas, North Dakota and other parts of the country that make…