Former Vandy Prof Says Huckabee/Romney-Style Rhetoric Horrifies Non-Believers

Former Vanderbilt Sociology Professor Darren Sherkat, who specializes in the sociology of religion, tells the Aussie media that American non-believers are "disconcerted" by the partisan rhetoric within the presidential campaigns that suggests that those who are not religious are immoral.

There is a subliminal disdain reflected in Republican Mike Huckabee's "compelling" Christmas commercial if you listen for it:

Tennessee's Republican Senators Vote for $70 Billion for Iraq & Afghanistan; No Dem Candidates Vote

While Senators Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander voted to continue to fund George W. Bush's War in Iraq without stipulating any deadlines, none of the Democratic Senators running for president (Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Obama) voted at all.

Insight on Iowa

The NY Times on the candidate carrying the mantle of reform of absolute corporate power:

Now, Mr. Edwards, a former trial lawyer, is offering yet another closing argument to his jury of voters here. And there is evidence — from the size of his crowds to the decision by an opponent, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, to challenge him more directly in the past few days — that it may be working.

In the process, though, Mr. Edwards is raising questions about his political identity that have followed him throughout this campaign ....

[H]e is issuing a defiant pledge to fight big business, to voters in a state that has been buffeted by national and global economic forces and is still reeling from the closing of Maytag plant in Newton in October. He is accompanied on some of his stops by one of the 3,900 Iowans who used to work there, and points to the closing as evidence of the damage that trade agreements have done to the middle class.

The Obama Campaign's attacks on Edwards have mainly to do with questions over whether he appeals enough to the big money contributors to compete with the locked-in-to-donor Democrats and Republicans.

I doubt that we will see any other candidate this committed to common middle and working class interests if the field narrows without Edwards. Big money has a way of beholding. And, excuse my jadedness, but the survivors are going to owe some rich people some suck-up.

Dems and Mainstream Media Start Winnowing Out the Liberals?

Gore Vidal on the Iowa Democratic Debate:

I don’t know how many of you were as appalled as I was at the way that the presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich was totally erased from the last Democratic debate held in Iowa. This was a decision that was made, I can tell, jointly by the one-time voice of AIPAC, Mr. Wolf Blitzer, and, at the same time, The Des Moines Register—or whatever it is called—a paper of no consequence for the United States of America.

Quote of the 2008 Political Season

After 10 full years inside the GOP, 90 days among honest criminals [in prison] wasn't really any great ordeal.

- -Former Republican Operative Allen Raymond, who went to jail for taking $15,000 from the GOP to jam phone lines during the 2002 elections, as quoted at TPM

State of Tennessee "Streamlines" Highways and Environmental Protection

And TennViews asks whether it amounts to resolving or to circumventing environmental concerns.

The Fed Finally Takes the First Step toward Recovery By Admitting the Problem

From tomorrow's NY Times:

The Federal Reserve, acknowledging that home mortgage lenders aggressively sold deceptive loans to borrowers who had little chance of repaying them, proposed a broad set of restrictions Tuesday on exotic mortgages and high-cost loans for people with weak credit.

Hallelujah! The authoritative and legitimate voice in the world of finance finally acknowledges corporate deception in the mortgage market and is proposing to regulate such deception out of the market in the future.

The Fed's proposals will undergo 3 months of public feedback before becoming law. This is a baby step compared to what needs to be done and maybe Congress will move regulatory measure along to govern the market at a steeper angle, but hopefully the Fed's fessing up will release the last brake on housing market reform.

How to Help a Girl Out This Holiday Season

CMCT is buried by standardized reporting, and she is diverted from fighting the good fight at the moment. She sends out an SOS to all within range for a little assistance this holiday season.

Dear Santa's little helpers:

So, if you want to help a girl out, take some action that I, unfortunately, cannot until after January 15th. Here are some ideas:

1. Call Jim Fyke (Parks Commissioner)--(615) 532-0109
2. Call State Senator Thelma Harper--(615) 741-2453
3. Call State Representative Mary Pruitt--(615) 741-3853
4. Call Governor Bredesen--(615)532.4562
5. Call Mayor Dean-- (615) 862-6000

Or, for faster dismissal, cut and paste this block into your email browser: phil.bredesen@state.tn.us, james.fyke@state.tn.us, karl.dean@nashville.gov, thelma.harper@state.tn.us, jeff.themm@nashville.gov, shain.dennison@nashville.gov, roy.wilson@nashville.gov, ronal.serpas@nashville.gov, brady.banks@nashville.gov,erica.gilmore@nashville.gov, rep.mary.pruitt@legislature.state.tn.us, editor@tennesseean.com, editor@nashvillecitypaper.com

Remind them that it is now three months since a new Nashvillian was raped in the shadow of their offices. Remind them that our downtown districts will thrive or fail based on their livability, and that part of livability includes not getting raped for two hours on your way home from the coffee shop. Ask them for common sense patrolling in the Bicentennial Mall.

You won't get a response. I can promise you that, but maybe someone in one of those offices will think for an extra second or two about their role of government. There are a lot of great things that our local and state officials do. But the primary responsibility of our government is not lighting Christmas Trees and it's not making community access PSAs and it's not going to Councilmen's holiday parties. The primary responsibility is to protect us. At the end of the day, it just doesn't matter if you've done a whole lot of cool things to assure your re-election if there aren't any voters left upright to vote for you.

I'll be doing my share before the holiday to help her out. Will you?

Pith Reports that CSX Railroad Corporation Once Again Cuts Off Small Neighborhood

The Scene's PJ Tobia is reporting at Pith in the Wind that he has received e-mails from a South Nashville neighborhood association charging that once again the CSX Railroad Corporation is cutting off the small Sadler neighborhood from the rest of Nashville for long periods by leaving their trains parked across the only street in and out of that community. PJ has already told the story of how Sadler children have to scale idle boxcars to catch their school buses and how a neighbor nearly died when emergency vehicles could not get past the tracks to treat him.

The Scene Reporter points out that CSX Railroad Officials met with residents earlier and promised change, but it looks to me that CSX Railroad Corporation was only yanking the community's chain. Jump to PJ's update and ask yourself if CSX Railroad Corporation is serious about being "relentless in the pursuit of customer and employee excellence." They obviously aren't involved in the relentless pursuit of keeping neighborhood right-of-ways unobstructed.

Blade Runner No Longer a Mere Movie

Welcome to the apocalyptic world of synthetic biology, where as usual a few corporate interests are starting to take control, this time of the very building blocks of life. Not long for this mortal coil.

Tonight's Another Tuesday Night Metro Council Night

The "Cat Herd" meets tonight: head 'em up and move 'em out.

Do They Just Recycle This Story Every Christmas?!

Seriously. This is man-bites-dog? Now if stores closed earlier the closer we got to Christmas: that would be a news story.

Presidential Candidates Play Catch Up To States on Energy, Health Care, and Families

The Progressive States Network has a new report out evaluating the Presidential Candidates, Democratic and Republican, based on state initiatives in energy policy, health care reform, and working families. They conclude that while the states are well ahead of the federal government in progressive policies, the Presidential Candidates (some more than others) are at least trying to play catch-up in their priorities. It really is a mixed bag, in which Republicans generally lag behind but the Democrats don't excite me with the prospect of new and dramatic change at the policy level. Jump to the details, including candidate-by-candidate evaluations.

Neither Nashville Nor Tennessee is Among the Best Cities or States for Savings

In fact, there is not a southern city or state among the top 10 on either Forbes' list. The study uses 12 categories, including 401(k) plan participation, household income, net worth, pension or other retirement plan participation and savings propensity to gauge savings' ratings of various communities.

Oh, and both lists are populated by locations in mostly blue, generally Democratic strongholds. Does that mean that progressives are wiser long-term money managers than conservatives?

Corker and Alexander Vote to Allow Retroactive Immunity to Proceed in the Senate

Tennessee's U.S. Senators, Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, joined every other Republican and some Democrats to allow a bill that would legalize warrantless federal wiretaps of any American's phone calls to proceed without harm of a Chris Dodd filibuster. The Wired Blog Network has a list of the Democrats who voted against allowing the bill to progress:

Barbara Boxer (D-California), Christopher Dodd (D-Connecticut), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Ben Cardin (D-Maryland), John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin), and Maria Cantwell (D-Washington).

They also list the Senators who were absent, which includes some noteworthy Democratic Presidential Candidates:

• Joe Biden
• Hillary Clinton
• Barack Obama

The debate on the immunity bill is expected to move through tomorrow with the consideration of amendments, and we should keep an eye on how and whether the Democratic Candidates vote on this.

We should also keep tabs on whether Mr. Corker and Mr. Alexander vote to give the telecoms special legal privileges that you and I would never even come close to getting.


UPDATE: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid withdrew the FISA bill and delayed it until January in order to avoid a Chris Dodd filibuster.

Kevin Drum uncovers the real wizard behind the curtain:

The Senate as a whole clearly wants the immunity provision to pass, including a majority of Democrats, which means Reid should hardly be held up for any special opprobrium. He's just doing the will of the people.

But why is nearly every senator so anxious to provide telecoms companies with immunity? .... Attorney General Michael Mukasey wrote recently that "in the future we will need the full-hearted help of private companies in our intelligence activities," and evidently we want that cooperation whether the government's requests are legal or not. Thus the immunity. It's a message for the future.

Drum goes on to point out that next to no one would have objected immediately after 9/11 if the Bush Administration got telecom cooperation as a temporary emergency measure to catch terrorists, but that this goes way beyond catching terrorists to satifying the Bush Administration's obsessive mission to consolidate government power in the Executive Branch.


Query: Has any local mainstream media source picked this story up today? AT&T has a headquarters in Nashville. And the local media is ignoring the fact that a Presidential Candidate left Iowa to go back to the Senate and possibly filibuster a bill that would shield AT&T from prosecution; yet, no reporters called local AT&T officials for a response? Nobody wants to ask Corker or Alexander how they intend to vote and why?

Instead, we get stories about white plastic nativity scenes and the opening of another Democratic Presidential Candidate's headquarters absent the Democratic Presidential Candidate and the "busiest day of the shipping year." An amateur could have written this. The professionals are supposed to write the hard-hitting stuff, for Pete's sake.

BusinessWeek Raises the Prospect of Government Intrusion into Social Networking

BW blogger Heather Green considers a Pew Project's findings on the internet and warns of some ominous fears coming true:

Here’s what’s rather ironic about privacy pre-Sept. 11. The thing that the privacy folks used to warn about but which I think most people didn’t take as seriously was the notion that the government could be one of the biggest abusers of your right to privacy.

Then of course, we had wiretapping and the involvement of the phone companies in providing access to their trunk lines for domestic calls. And we learned about the FBI infiltrating group meetings that didn’t seem to have much to do with Al Qaeda, such as PETA and Greenpeace.

So, at the most basic, it seems to me that one of the places that folks might be concerned when it comes to privacy is social networks and what the government might do with information like that.

Jump over to BusinessWeek to read the rest, especially regarding the generational differences in attitudes about privacy.

Getting Wound Up for 2008

I've not been following the campaigns doggedly like some politicos, because I don't start getting jazzed about them until around December 1 on the eve of each presidential campaign season. However, now that Iowa and New Hampshire are practically here, I'm paying more attention.

And if I had to refer you to any single one source for keeping up with the campaigns and media chatter about the campaigns it would be Talking Points Memo. This is an example of the quick-hit type of updates they do via YouTube:

Taking Christ Out of the Wise Use of Class Time

British school bans student Christmas cards, but not for the reasons you might think.

Saudi King Has to Pardon Rape Victim to Keep Her Out of Jail; and These Are Our Allies

Word of a pardon for a rape victim--convicted of "being alone with a man" not her relative--may disappoint those locally who believe that any woman walking around our own city neighborhoods at night deserves to be raped.

Now why are we supporting the Saudis in the Middle East again? Was it become of their progressive, democratic society?

Storming the Black Gate: Big Senate Showdown Today

There is a showdown in the U.S. Senate today between the dark forces of telecom-lobby-backed Senators and an outmatched band of rebels lead by Democratic Presidential hopeful Chris Dodd on granting AT&T et al. retroactive immunity for violating the privacy of its customers by turning their records over to the Big Brother Bush Administration.

If you have not contacted either Lamar Alexander or Bob Corker to encourage them to strip immunity from the telecommunications bill, then please do so. Else, be prepared to have some nefarious third party rifling through your calls and e-mails in the future, and not because you're suspected of terrorism, but just because they can.

Here is a relatively time-efficient link for contacting them, but a phone call to their offices has a bigger impact.

UPDATE: In spite of Chris Dodd's promises to filibuster the FISA bill "for as long as he could hold out," the Senate voted to advance the bill without stripping out the President's desired retroactive immunity for phone companies from being charged with illegal activity in turning over private records to the government. Here are some of Senator Dodd's comments quoted by the NY Times:

For the last six years, our largest telecommunications companies have been spying on their own American customers .... Secretly and without a warrant, they delivered to the federal government the private, domestic communications records of millions of Americans — records this administration has compiled into a data base of enormous scale and scope.

I have seen six presidents — six in the White House — and I have never seen a contempt for the rule of law equal to this.

Senator Patrick Leahy is introducing an alternative that does not include retroactive immunity. Something has to be passed by February, before the previous FISA legislation runs out.