Short Thoughts: Prop 8, The Orthodox Statement on Gays, and Cordoba House

I haven't been blogging as much as I'd like, so I thought I'd throw out some quick thoughts on various current events:

Prop 8 Ruled Unconstitutional

Congratulations to California gays and lesbians, their children, and all who care about them! Congratulations to America for taking another step in the right direction. I wish this issue were over and done so millions of people could move on with their lives, but it's great to watch America continue to overcome the small-mindedness of social conservatives.

Statement of Principles

Some of the Jblogs and various news outlets are praising the Orthodox rabbis who signed a Statement of Principles on the Place of Jews with a Homosexual Orientation in Our Community for preaching a message of tolerance and inclusion and patting themselves on the back for being tolerant Orthodox Jews. While I agree it would be far better if Orthodox people followed these principles rather than continuing to shun, mock, and abuse gay people, I don't think you can be genuinely tolerant as long as you support Orthodox Judaism.

What good is it to preach tolerance when you maintain that God himself wrote that men who have sex with men should be killed? When you stand against not only gay sex, but gay marriage and even commitment ceremonies?

It's not enough to send mixed signals. You can't convince your gay son that you fully love and accept him if you also tell him he can never marry or even have sex. You can't convince the bullies that they should stop bullying gay teens into mental illness and suicide when you also teach that God thinks gay sex is an abomination worthy of death. You can't teach your children that gays and lesbians are people to be loved and accepted and also that halakha is a good thing. It just doesn't compute, not at a gut level, no matter how clever your apologetics are.

Looking down the list of signatories, I recognize some of the most liberal Orthodox rabbis in America, people whose natural inclination would be -- if they were not Orthodox -- to recognize and accept gays and lesbians as equals and embrace gay marriage as wholeheartedly as they do straight marriage. But they are Orthodox. And so we get half-measures and mixed signals.

If you're genuinely for tolerance, you cannot continue to support the tenets of Orthodox Judaism. The two are mutually exclusive. Still, something is better than nothing, and I commend the rabbis for going as far as they have to reduce harm. I hope it helps.

Cordoba House

Various Republicans including most famously Sarah Palin but also lesser luminaries like Rudoph Giuliani and demi-Republican Joe Lieberman have been ranting and raving about plans for a Muslim cultural center to be built several blocks from Ground Zero on the grounds that Muslims perpetrated the 9/11 attacks and therefore it's insensitive to allow the center to be built nearby. Or something.

They disgust me. They do not get what makes America great. They're small-minded and hateful and eager to exploit the average American's fear for political gain. They think the difference between America and (e.g.) Afghanistan is that we are (Judeo-) Christian and they are Muslim. It's not. There were Christian countries for centuries that engaged in slaughters much larger than 9/11. What makes America great is not that so many citizens are Christian or Jewish but that in spite of that religiosity, we are a pluralistic and tolerant country.

I have no illusions about Islam. Traditional Islam is without a doubt worse than Orthodox Judaism or any of today's mainstream Christian denominations. Worse for women, worse for gays, worse for nonbelievers, worse for intellectuals, worse even for the pious -- pretty much worse in every way. But it doesn't have to stay that way.

Ancient Judaism was much like modern Islam -- just open the Torah and you'll find exhortations to execute gay people and those who don't keep the Sabbath, condoning of child marriage and slavery and treating women as property -- pretty much everything we rightly revile Islam for today. And yet Judaism changed. The largest denomination of Judaism today allows for and encourages total equality between the sexes, full rights and tolerance for homosexuality, and total engagement with secular scholarship. Even the Orthodox holdouts have long since jettisoned the implementation of most of the Torah's horrible rules and mostly restrict their bigotry to words and social ostracization.

Christianity for centuries engaged in the kind of mass slaughter and forced conversion that the pathetic al-Qaeda could only dream of, and even they reformed. (I'm not speaking of Luther's Reformation -- Luther was probably as bigoted a man as ever existed -- but rather the reformation that occurred as Christians absorbed the secular ideas of modern humanism and modern science. The Catholic Church today can't even convince a majority of American Catholics to oppose legal abortion.)

The Cordoba House, rather than helping the likes of al-Qaeda, is instead part of the solution to al-Qaeda. We can't beat radical Islam by killing people. Every radical we kill has children and siblings and cousins and friends who now hate us more than they did before, if they did hate us before. Every civilian we kill or maim has loved ones who hate us perhaps even more passionately.

But every Muslim we welcome and influence for the better just by our example (not by Palin's or Lieberman's but by everyday Americans') takes a piece of Islam away from the fanatics and turns Islam into a less dangerous ideology. It demonstrates that modernity and Islam can coexist and that you don't have to hate America to be a good Muslim.

But that's not even the point. The point is, this is America. We're supposed to stand for freedom, regardless of religion or ideology. Palin, Giuliani, and Lieberman are a disgrace to the country they so ostentatiously claim to love.

NEWSWEEK: How He Did It

I've only read chapter 1 of 7 so far, but this story about the campaign looks pretty interesting.

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE Endorses Obama!

The Chicago Tribune endorsed the Democratic candidate for president for the first time in its 161-year history:

On Nov. 4 we're going to elect a president to lead us through a perilous time and restore in us a common sense of national purpose.

The strongest candidate to do that is Sen. Barack Obama. The Tribune is proud to endorse him today for president of the United States...

On Dec. 6, 2006, this page encouraged Obama to join the presidential campaign. We wrote that he would celebrate our common values instead of exaggerate our differences. We said he would raise the tone of the campaign. We said his intellectual depth would sharpen the policy debate. In the ensuing 22 months he has done just that.

Many Americans say they're uneasy about Obama. He's pretty new to them.

We can provide some assurance. We have known Obama since he entered politics a dozen years ago. We have watched him, worked with him, argued with him as he rose from an effective state senator to an inspiring U.S. senator to the Democratic Party's nominee for president.

We have tremendous confidence in his intellectual rigor, his moral compass and his ability to make sound, thoughtful, careful decisions. He is ready.

The change that Obama talks about so much is not simply a change in this policy or that one. It is not fundamentally about lobbyists or Washington insiders. Obama envisions a change in the way we deal with one another in politics and government. His opponents may say this is empty, abstract rhetoric. In fact, it is hard to imagine how we are going to deal with the grave domestic and foreign crises we face without an end to the savagery and a return to civility in politics...

The Republican Party, the party of limited government, has lost its way. The government ran a $237 billion surplus in 2000, the year before Bush took office -- and recorded a $455 billion deficit in 2008. The Republicans lost control of the U.S. House and Senate in 2006 because, as we said at the time, they gave the nation rampant spending and Capitol Hill corruption. They abandoned their principles. They paid the price.

We might have counted on John McCain to correct his party's course. We like McCain. We endorsed him in the Republican primary in Illinois. In part because of his persuasion and resolve, the U.S. stands to win an unconditional victory in Iraq.

It is, though, hard to figure John McCain these days. He argued that President Bush's tax cuts were fiscally irresponsible, but he now supports them. He promises a balanced budget by the end of his first term, but his tax cut plan would add an estimated $4.2 trillion in debt over 10 years. He has responded to the economic crisis with an angry, populist message and a misguided, $300 billion proposal to buy up bad mortgages.

McCain failed in his most important executive decision. Give him credit for choosing a female running mate--but he passed up any number of supremely qualified Republican women who could have served. Having called Obama not ready to lead, McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. His campaign has tried to stage-manage Palin's exposure to the public. But it's clear she is not prepared to step in at a moment's notice and serve as president. McCain put his campaign before his country...

McCain calls Obama a typical liberal politician. Granted, it's disappointing that Obama's mix of tax cuts for most people and increases for the wealthy would create an estimated $2.9 trillion in federal debt. He has made more promises on spending than McCain has. We wish one of these candidates had given good, hard specific information on how he would bring the federal budget into line. Neither one has.

We do, though, think Obama would govern as much more of a pragmatic centrist than many people expect.

We know first-hand that Obama seeks out and listens carefully and respectfully to people who disagree with him. He builds consensus. He was most effective in the Illinois legislature when he worked with Republicans on welfare, ethics and criminal justice reform.

He worked to expand the number of charter schools in Illinois--not popular with some Democratic constituencies.

He took up ethics reform in the U.S. Senate--not popular with Washington politicians.

His economic policy team is peppered with advisers who support free trade. He has been called a "University of Chicago Democrat"--a reference to the famed free-market Chicago school of economics, which puts faith in markets...

When Obama said at the 2004 Democratic Convention that we weren't a nation of red states and blue states, he spoke of union the way Abraham Lincoln did.

It may have seemed audacious for Obama to start his campaign in Springfield, invoking Lincoln. We think, given the opportunity to hold this nation's most powerful office, he will prove it wasn't so audacious after all. We are proud to add Barack Obama's name to Lincoln's in the list of people the Tribune has endorsed for president of the United States.

Read the whole thing.

Wow. What's next, The Wall Street Journal? FOX News? Maybe if they knew him as well as The Chicago Tribune does.

Washington Post Endorses Obama

No surprise, but worth reading:

THE NOMINATING process this year produced two unusually talented and qualified presidential candidates. There are few public figures we have respected more over the years than Sen. John McCain. Yet it is without ambivalence that we endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president.

The choice is made easy in part by Mr. McCain's disappointing campaign, above all his irresponsible selection of a running mate who is not ready to be president. It is made easy in larger part, though, because of our admiration for Mr. Obama and the impressive qualities he has shown during this long race. Yes, we have reservations and concerns, almost inevitably, given Mr. Obama's relatively brief experience in national politics. But we also have enormous hopes.

Mr. Obama is a man of supple intelligence, with a nuanced grasp of complex issues and evident skill at conciliation and consensus-building. At home, we believe, he would respond to the economic crisis with a healthy respect for markets tempered by justified dismay over rising inequality and an understanding of the need for focused regulation. Abroad, the best evidence suggests that he would seek to maintain U.S. leadership and engagement, continue the fight against terrorists, and wage vigorous diplomacy on behalf of U.S. values and interests. Mr. Obama has the potential to become a great president. Given the enormous problems he would confront from his first day in office, and the damage wrought over the past eight years, we would settle for very good.

Read the whole thing.

VP Debate Reaction

Palin

Palin did much better than I expected and, admittedly, far better than I'd hoped. I was hoping she'd do so badly that the race would be over. That did not happen. Unlike Couric, Ifill did not (and could not, according to the rules as I understand them) press her for an answer when she was non-responsive, so she could just filibuster when she didn't (I assume) have a pre-scripted answer or just deliver an answer to a different question. So there were no deer-in-the-headlights moments, although that's a pretty low standard. She did not to my mind exhibit detailed knowledge of any topic and I'm not sure how her admission that she wasn't going to necessarily answer all the questions will go over.

I thought the message that she is an expert in energy policy was a strong one, especially for low-information voters who may take her at her word for it and not realize it's not actually true. Voters might think it's okay that she doesn't know foreign policy or Supreme Court history if they think she has a different area of expertise.

I'm not sure how her folksiness will play. To me, it seemed like she was trying too hard. I watched it with my (liberal) fiance and Palin was driving her nuts. Some of her folksiness was so over-the-top I have trouble believing that many women will fall for it. "Did she just wink at the camera?!" was one thing I said out loud.

The only real gaffe I noticed was that she kept referring to our military leader in Afghanistan as "McCellan." (It's McKiernan.) I myself couldn't recall the name, although I knew immediately that it was not McClellan. Biden didn't call her on it, although he was a little conspicuous about not using his name. I don't think it was an important mistake, but it may become one, depending on how it plays out.

Regarding the substance, I think she was (perhaps unknowingly) dishonest. The line about Obama voting for taxes on families making $42,000 a year is a lie that was debunked long before the debate. Her speech about being tolerant of gay people was nice, but I wish someone had asked her whether she agreed with McCain's vote against the Employee Non-Discrimination Act.

Biden

I thought Biden did great. His most important task was to assure older white voters that Obama is ready and not a scary Muslim or something, and I think he did that. He was also quite charming and even chivalrous and he did not do anything that could be perceived as being sexist or disrespectful of Palin. His thousand-watt smile may do to older white women what Palin's looks to do men of all ages.

The moment where he choked up will be remembered, and I think that combined with the fact that his son is going to Iraq, may soothe the worries of some voters about the Obama/Biden foreign policy. It was also a great reminder that Sarah Palin isn't the only candidate in the race with a family.

Biden did an excellent job of emphasizing the middle class. He gave a strong defense of progressive taxation with an implied attack on McCain's trickle-down economics, and his mentions of Scranton and his home town appeared genuine and may have established him as a "real" person in the minds of middle-class watchers. I think his explanation of McCain's health care plan was devastating as well.

He didn't have any major mistakes or gaffes. I laughed out loud when he said "Bosniaks," thinking it was a mistake, although apparently he used the term correctly. (It is the correct term for the ethnic Muslim in Bosnia, as opposes to the Serbs and the Croats.) And I was shocked when I thought he said he supports gay marriage, but he later clarified and said he does not. (Needless to say, I strongly disagree with Obama and him on that stance.)

Conclusion

All in all, Biden was the clear winner if we are to judge them by the same standards, but Palin will probably be held to the low standard of "she didn't humiliate herself and her party," which she succeeded on. I thought Biden seemed much more real and Palin appeared to be trying too hard to be folksy, but we'll see how that plays with the undecideds. Between Obama's serene and competent performance last week and Biden's charming one today, I think they may have sealed up the older white Democrats who may have been skeptical about voting for a relatively young Black man. I doubt Palin convinced anyone she's ready to be the backup president, but she at least stopped the hemorrhaging. In the end, the debate probably won't have a strong effect on the election.

It's Like an SNL Skit, Only Real

The Sheltering of Palin

Palin should be laughed right off the ticket (and Hannity should be laughed right off of cable. And radio.) She's had one legitimate interview, one infomercial, and zero press conferences. They wrote the rules of the VP debates so that she won't even have to debate, just prettily recite the talking points.

The election's in less than a month. This is ridiculous.

The Ultimate Test of the Media

McCain and Palin are doing something interesting. They've apparently decided that if the media covers only controversy and that the media will not call people on lies, but dutifully report "both sides," then they're going to just lie and see what happens. They get to not only frame the debate, but take ideal positions having nothing to do with reality.

Ezra Klein wrote brilliantly about this:

The McCain campaign's decision to lie about, well, everything, really needs to be understood as more than the outcome of John McCain's consuming ambition. It is a rational and obvious response to the rules laid down by the media. Indeed, McCain's spokesperson Brian Rogers says this directly to The Politico's Jonathan Martin. "We ran a different kind of campaign and nobody cared about us. They didn’t cover John McCain. So now you’ve got to be forward-leaning in everything."

And it's true. Earlier this year McCain made poverty tours and offered policy speeches. No one cared, Obama retained his lead. It was only when he began offering vicious attacks and daily controversies that he began setting the pace of the coverage. The McCain campaign learned something important about the media: It's an institution that covers conflict. If you want to direct its coverage, give it more conflict than your opponent. And so they have.

None of this, of course, absolves McCain of what he has done. He has sacrificed his honor and dignity with astonishing enthusiasm. He has become much worse than "just another politician." He is a politician who was once more than that, and used that reputation to go lower than the rest. But the fact remains that he wouldn't be doing this, that no one would do this, if the media ignored or censured the behavior. If lies were covered as lies and an allergy to substance was treated as evidence of an unfitness to govern, the tenor of campaigns would lift. These are, at the end of the day, rational beasts, and they hunger for good coverage. The McCain campaign has found its best coverage comes from its worst campaigning. And so they are following the incentive structure laid out by the media.

I don't think it's going to work. There's too much time until the election and the evidence is too obvious.

Here's Andrew Sullivan on the Bridge To Nowhere lies:

In her speeches, Sarah Palin routinely and repeatedly uses the phrase: "I told the Congress 'thanks, but no thanks,' for that Bridge to Nowhere." In the McCain-Palin ads, the claim is that she "stopped the Bridge to Nowhere."

These are, again, demonstrable lies. Again I will cite Wikipedia, since it's the fairest summary of the facts of the case, and includes all the links for you to see for yourself:

In 2006, Palin ran for governor on a "build-the-bridge" platform,^[101] attacking "spinmeisters"^[102] for insulting local residents by calling them "nowhere"^[101] and urging speed "while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist."^[103] About two years after the introduction of the bridge proposals, a month after the bridge received sharp criticism from John McCain,^[104] and nine months into Palin's term as governor, Palin canceled the Gravina Bridge, blaming Congress for not providing enough funding.^[105] Alaska will not return any of the $442 million to the federal government^[106] and is spending a portion of the funding, $25 million, on a Gravina Island road to the place where the bridge would have gone, expressly so that none of the money will have to be returned.^[101] Palin continues to support funding Don Young's Way, estimated as more than twice as expensive as the Gravina Bridge would have been.^[107]

Your call.

Probably much more important is this picture:



Unfortunately, I think the "lipstick on a pig" lie and the "Obama voted for comprehensive sex ed for kindergartners" lies won't hurt them. McCain can simply stand by the "Lipstick on a pig" lie, as he did on The View, and it's not something one can really prove to be false. The sex ed one won't hurt him, because the refutation doesn't make a good sound bite. Any day talking about "sex ed" and "kindergartners" is a win for McCain.

If he is brought down by his lies, it'll be the lies about Palin. The bridge, the earmarks, and McCain's and Palin's standing by them long after they'd been revealed as lies. The Obama campaign must frame the issue: "Is John McCain a liar?" The contrast between the honorable soldier he presents himself as and the dishonerable campaign he's leading represent a great opportunity for Obama. Rove took Kerry's greatest strength and turned it into his greater weakness, and Obama has the opportunity to return the favor with the message "John McCain is dishonest and dishonerable."

For My Conservative Blog-Friends Still Defending Palin

Republican strategists Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan, believing themselves off mic:

Mike Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys -- this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it's not gonna work. And --

PN: It's over.

MM: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

CT: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.

PN: Saw Kay this morning.

CT: Yeah, she's never looked comfortable about this --

MM: They're all bummed out.

CT: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

PN: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this -- excuse me-- political bullshit about narratives --

CT: Yeah they went to a narrative.

MM: I totally agree.

PN: Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it.

MM: You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical.

CT: This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.

MM: Yeah.

In an alternate universe, television pundits would be smart people giving honest analysis even when they know the mics are on.

Palin Vetoed Funding for Homeless Teen Moms

Wow.

ST. PAUL -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live.

After the legislature passed a spending bill in April, Palin went through the measure reducing and eliminating funds for programs she opposed. Inking her initials on the legislation -- "SP" -- Palin reduced funding for Covenant House Alaska by more than 20 percent, cutting funds from $5 million to $3.9 million. Covenant House is a mix of programs and shelters for troubled youths, including Passage House, which is a transitional home for teenage mothers.

According to Passage House's web site, its purpose is to provide "young mothers a place to live with their babies for up to eighteen months while they gain the necessary skills and resources to change their lives" and help teen moms "become productive, successful, independent adults who create and provide a stable environment for themselves and their families."

I've got nothing to add.

Palin's Daughter

Besides the cheap (but truthful) shots about abstinence-only education and the correlation between religious fundamentalism and unwed pregnancy, the latest revelation that Palin's 17-year-old daughter is pregnant raises serious questions about Sarah Palin's "family values." She knew that accepting the VP nomination would thrust her daughter, already going through a trying time, into the national news and probably turn her into the butt of late-night television jokes. I have nothing but sympathy for the daughter, who is after all just a kid and not a national political figure, but I can't see how Sarah Palin is okay putting her through all of this.

I guess it does reinforce her anti-abortion cred. It also puts human faces on the abortion debate. Between Palin's new granddaugher and her own recent newborn with Down's, we'll see two adorable (aren't they all?) babies on that national stage that many people would have aborted as fetuses. I'm not sure who that helps, politically, but at least the Palins are wealthy and powerful enough that the children will have all the health care and other services they need. This isn't a 17-year-old who's going to be on her own raising her child, and this won't be a Down's Syndrome baby who wants for all of the various therapies he will need throughout his life.

Palin

I'll be honest, I thought her speech the other day was great. If McCain successfully becomes the anti-corruption candidate with her help, that would possibly distance himself enough from Bush and the Republicans to win. However, he'll now look hypocritical if he makes the experience argument against Obama after officially vouching for Palin, whose sole job as VP is to be ready to step into the presidency "from day one."

And McCain is crazy if he thinks a pro-life woman is going to get Hillary voters just because she has a vagina.