My pet Congressional candidate this year outside Ohio has been Ashwin Madia, running in Hennepin County, MN. Lawyer, Marine, Iraq veteran. He's a little bit Blue Doggy on fiscal issues (a former Republican), but he's young, he's sensible on Iraq, and he's very good on LGBT issues. He'd be the only Hindu in Congress. It's a 50-50 district, and he's been running a very good campaign.
Larry Kissell in North Carolina's 8th District. His insurgent campaign was ignored by the DCCC last cycle but Larry still came within 330 votes of ousting one of the most odious GOP members out there. Larry is a former textile worker and now social studies teacher who really touched a chord with voters last time around, and the DCCC has learned from its mistake and is featuring this race this time around. That said, his feisty campaign could use a few bucks:
http://www.larrykissell.com/contribute.asp
Tom Perriello, in Virginia's 5th, running against incumbent jackass Virgil Goode.
http://www.perrielloforcongress.com/
Doesn't the anonymous reader read Kos or MyDD? They're all about under-the-radar or barely-on-the-radar Congressional races.
If you want to contribute to a race that genuinely might go our way, I'd second NCP's recommendation of Larry Kissell and add Darcy Burner (WA-08).
If you want to take a punt on a longish shot, I recommend Ann Barth (WV-02). Two arguments for Ann: (1) By rights this should be a blue district, and if we win it back, it will stay Dem for many cycles to come; (2) The incumbent, Shelley Moore Capito, needs to be knocked down and humiliated soon, because she has a real shot at winning the election to fill the Senate seat vacated by Sen. Byrd when he finally goes to meet his maker.
Here is the link to the Kos-sponsored "Orange to Blue" page at ActBlue. The whole panoply of deserving challengers to loathesome GOP incumbents is laid out for you.
In fact, how about we all take a five minute break from whatever we're doing and go over there and make a donation to one of the featured candidates.
I don't know if donations would help much, but I was pretty happy to see a poll recently suggesting there's a good chance Mitch McConnell could lose his Senate seat.
I just chipped in a few bucks to a couple of Dem challengers on ActBlue.
I gave a token about to Jim Himes (CT-04), who is challenging Chris Shays, just because I'm filled with delicious anticipation at the thought of kicking out the last remaining House Republican in all of New England.
He'd be the only Hindu third seekrit Muslim in Congress. Oh noes!
As it happens, Al Franken sent me an e-mail on this very topic. Take it for what it's worth.
- Jeff Merkley, running for the Senate in Oregon, led Habitat for Humanity in Oregon and then cracked down on predatory lenders, passed ethics reform, and cut taxes for working people in the State House.
- Larry Kissell, running in North Carolina's 8th district, worked in textiles for 27 years and taught high school civics. In 2006, he ran for Congress against Republican Robin Hayes, one of the oil industry's biggest cheerleaders--and lost by 329 votes. This year, the oil industry is gushing with cash for Hayes, but my money (and, I hope, your money) is on Kissell.
- Me. I'm running for Senate in my home state of Minnesota. It's not just that six years of Norm Coleman in the Senate is already six years too much. I'm running because it's time for change, and because change is going to take progressives--like Jeff, Larry, and myself--who are willing to stand up and fight.
Neil the Ethical Werewolf was very big on Victoria Wulsin in southern Ohio last year. With much DNC support, she came very close to unseating the R in 2006 -- maybe as little as 1%; I can't remember. Turning out Democrats in southern Ohio would be a very good thing.
I heard your mom could use a "contribution," if you know what I mean.
11: No, I don't know what you mean. Could you please explain? Remember that most of us have never read Zizek.
Heaven knows Michelle Bachmann of MN deserves a big take down but her DFL opponent is named - I'm not making this up - Elwyn Tinklenberg.
Yeah, yeah, I know, politics ain't showbiz, but come on. Come on DFL. Come On. Sheesh.
3: Hey, that's my district! And yes, Goode is the snot that gave Keith Ellison shit about swearing in to Congress on a copy of the Koran (and Ellison ended up using Jefferson's copy). Perriello can certainly use a bit of help; it's a close race.
OT: I hadn't noticed that BO's team has designed like a million little versions of the campaign logo for different groups of people. They're very cute.
My sister posted this one on her blog about adopting her daughter.
Which reminds me that I hadn't added pictures of her to the pool. They're there now.
15: Those are awesome! I have to say, I really like their design sensibility.
It's Nintendo Miis for the election! Great logos.
The logo made me click on the thing about sportsmen, and it's one of the clearest and most sane statements I've ever read on the issue. One of the craziest ways that people vote against their own interests is assuming Dems will take your rifles away (we won't) and voting for people who will privatize hunting and fishing grounds and allow them to be polluted. My dad, an avid fisherman, keeps talking about how there just aren't many good clean public lakes to go to anymore, and it's a big enough issue for him, but he doesn't seem to connect that problem with the Republican deals to privatize and pollute. Also, even as a lifelong anti-gun person, I think Obama's statements in defense of the 2nd Amendment make a lot of sense.
Why would we, as Democrats, want to make enemies of the tens of millions of Americans who (a) like nature, (b) hunt for their own food, and (c) have some interest in the Constitution? The weird fear the NRA has generated that "They" will take your Precious away is responsible for making that relationship hostile, and we haven't responded in ways that make that natural relationship tempting.
20: It's good. I hope they've got a strategy for getting that out to the right audience.
Sir Kraab,
Speaking of the pool, may I ask for an invite? I have a flickr account now, my normal ID (trippd11) at yahoo.com.
I promise to be well behaved.
15: Heh, yep. The head of their design team will basically be able to do whatever the hell he wants after this. His resume is set for decades.
22: Armsmasher is the gatekeeper, not I. specialcapps at geemail
SK: You'd never guess you two were sisters, would you?
I can't tell you how often people ask if we're twins.
26: Yeah, I saw the resemblance right away. Also: baby = ADORABLE.
22: For the flickr pool, you need to email Ogged or Armsmasher, I think.
Sir K, that is one crazy cute baby.
Thanks, all. She's also happy and playful and seems to be adjusting ok. My sister has been spending 24/7 with her to forge a strong bond. That will start tapering down.
Tom Udall in New Mexico, running against Steve Pearce, an incumbent who is backed by oil and gas interests
Cute kid. In the one picture, she looks like she is looking over her head for that tall woman in the glasses. "Why havent you been smooching my cheeks!?!?!?!?"
Pearce is not an incumbent. Well, he's an incumbent Representative (so is Udall) but he's running for the Senate.
20: Ducks Unlimited has been a very effective lobby for cleaning up rivers and streams. It's centered around hunters who want plenty of ducks to shoot, presumably since they don't have to fall back on the game bird hunter's second choice, 78 year old lawyers. They helped push the switchover to non-lead shot, for example.
I didn't click the link on Obama's site, so maybe that's already covered there.
Good for them. Issues of land use are one of these really emotional issues for my parents, and I'm repeatedly shocked by how they think so-called "less government" means that land will be preserved for public use. My mom's from the Gulf, and every time we go down there, it gets harder and harder to find public beaches. All the really beautiful ones described in her tour books have been privatized by gated communities and corporate interests, and the ones left over are ugly and poorly maintained. (Seriously, we once drove twenty miles trying to find beach access that didn't have NO TRESPASSING signs on it. Mom kept saying, "Let's just go in. We're Americans. This beach is ours.") How hard is it to figure out that the Republican government in Florida has put the interests of the wealthy over protecting public beaches for citizens? That would require the government to have a spine.
In California the Coastal Commission is a very powerful body, but even they have trouble getting the Malibu types to allow beach access, which is the law. Noted Republican David Geffen fought them for years.
http://www.malibutimes.com/articles/2007/02/14/news/news5.txt
The Rural Americans for Obama page features an Old West style font and what appears to be an outhouse (but which presumably is a barn). It calls to mind the "When you a kill a man ..." scene from Unforgiven.
presumably since they don't have to fall back on the game bird hunter's second choice, 78 year old lawyers.
"I'd sooner kill a man 78 year old lawyer than a hawk" as Robinson Jeffers didn't write.
In South Carolina, "Flat Top" Bob Conley is running as a "Ron Paul Democrat" against Lindsay Graham. If you're feeling quixotic or you have a love for old Dick Tracy villains, I'm sure he wouldn't turn down a donation.
OT: I hadn't noticed that BO's team has designed like a million little versions of the campaign logo for different groups of people. They're very cute.
AND WHERE ARE THE WOMEN? AT THE BOTTOM OF THE LIST.
SCREW YOU, TOO, OBAMA.
Can I gripe about the Obama campaign in one small, dopey, regard? If possible, I would have bedecked my family in Obama gear -- the kids would really like it (Sally actually spontaneously picked up and asked for a kids biography of Obama she saw in a bookstore). But the only t-shirts that I can find that they're selling in kid sizes have the crayoned "Kids for Obama" logo, which is butt-ugly. And because I can't buy non-ugly kid t-shirts, I haven't bought myself one.
I posted this in another thread, but maybe I'll have more luck getting an answer in this one:
So I'm thinking of signing up to be a legal observer during early voting in Nearby Battleground State. But I'm not clear, and no one will explain to me, what exactly do legal observers do? Just watch the polling place and write down violations? What would I be doing that any non-lawyer couldn't do?
Is this just going to be a boring time suck, and would Barry O be better served if I just donate him the money that I would have to spend on transportation + hotel?
I think the idea is that as a lawyer, you'd be more confident about being bullshitted by poll operators doing something questionable. Not different in kind from a non-lawyer, but with more personal resources to demand to be allowed to inspect what you're supposed to be able to inspect, and so on, or to demand that voters being maltreated be allowed to vote or whatever.
So, Peter Singer is kind of an asshole, right? This seems like a place where people would have opinions on the matter.
(I was planning to attend a talk he was giving on "Ethics and Climate Change", but I arrived a few minutes late to find the place already crammed with people standing in the aisles, and I wanted no part of that. Now trying to convince myself it would have only served to piss me off anyway.)
38 - The thing is, there has been a serious effort on the part of extractive industries using federal lands to promote the exact view your parents hold. In Oregon the anti-government types get lots of money from the forest products industry, which makes tons of money cutting timber on federal land. When environmentalists promote less intensive cutting it's seen as government intrusion, completely ignoring the fact that it's government land in the first place.
43: Have you tried Café Press? They won't be "official," but they will be something. Or MoveOn?
I guess. I feel goofy buying Obama t-shirts where the money doesn't go to his campaign. Maybe there's a Cafe Press store that donates their proceeds to the campaign.
I'm just surprised they don't have the regular t-shirts in kid sizes.
I am the resident Peter Singer apologist. John Emerson probably is the biggest Singer hater on the list. I thought his description of utilitarianism as autistic ethical thinking was kinda funny.
Aw, I like the "If I were 18 I'd vote for Obama" shirt, mostly because I have (and whose it was I don't know, because my folks were old enough) a "If I were 21 I'd vote for Kennedy" button. Also, a lot of Humphrey/Muskie buttons (but we will not speak of those).
49: Well, it might enable you to buy 2 grown up sized shirts from the campaign.
I was going to say that Pete Seeger was more or less OK, but nevermind.
Singer's opinions are so very, very wrong, but it is a good mental exercise to figure out why. He wrote an essay on why everyone who didn't immediately donate 90% of their income to the poor of the Third World was a bad person. I found it useful to spend half an hour figuring out why this was wrong.
LB, if you go on etsy.com, there's lots of homemade Obama gear that you can buy. Add the keyword "proceeds" or "donations" in the descriptor search, and you can find stores that will send a portion of the profits to the campaign.
54: Hrm. I've got to say that coming up with a response to that would take me more than a half hour. What's yours?
54: What constitutes a morally sufficient amount of giving to others seems awfully ambiguous, doesn't it? Somehow I'm OK with saying that, collectively, we are bad people, but not OK with individually saying we are bad persons. I dunno.
One of the reasons I was wanting to hear what Singer had to say (but not enough to stand through the whole thing in a crowded lecture hall) is an argument I recently had with someone who insisted that anyone with a consequentialist view of ethics can't think that we have to do anything about climate change, because we can't know the long-term outcomes. Part of the argument went something like: given that we agree that humans are of greater moral worth than insects, suppose you had found yourself somehow in a position to prevent the K-T extinction event. If you believe ethics is determined by the consequences of the choices, aren't you forced to conclude the extinction event is a good thing, and shouldn't be prevented, because it allowed mammals to evolve to the point where we could be us? And who's to say global warming won't eventually play a similar role to that extinction event, and in some sense be morally a good thing? And even if you don't buy that some living things are morally worth more than others, or you think the longterm outcome of global warming is that primitive organisms survive and flourish while a lot of higher organisms die, how do you do the ethical calculus to conclude that this is inherently bad?
I'm probably butchering this argument a bit, but it made me uncomfortable, although I found it hard to disagree with, because for me a central consideration in the ethics of climate change is that we're screwing with things. In other words it's not only that the outcome looks bad, it's the fact that we've been taking an active role in shaping that outcome. So my viewpoint on this isn't consequentialist, but I still feel like a consequentialist argument that we have to avert climate change should be feasible.
And who's to say global warming won't eventually play a similar role to that extinction event, and in some sense be morally a good thing?
It takes some pretty crappy consequentialism to let a single distant outcome which you cannot assign a concrete probability to completely outweigh measurable immediate consequences.
For me a central consideration in the ethics of climate change is that we're screwing with things. In other words it's not only that the outcome looks bad, it's the fact that we've been taking an active role in shaping that outcome.
A standard reply is that you are working with a bad human/nature dichotomy. Why worry that *humans* are changing the composition of the atmosphere rather than anaerobic bacteria?
The other standard reply is that you are simply too late. Humans affected global environmental change more or less when we spread from Africa to the rest of the world. If you hanker for a world not altered by humans, you need to go to Saturn or something.
59: The latter doesn't get you very far. Accepting that humans will by nature alter their environment doesn't make all such possible alterations equivalent.
Yeah, but when you start looking at the actual alterations we made, especially the mass extinction of mega-fauna, the changes are clearly significant.
58, 59: Yeah, I'm sure these arguments are naive in many ways; it was an argument between physicists, not ethicists. But to try to elaborate:
58 It takes some pretty crappy consequentialism to let a single distant outcome which you cannot assign a concrete probability to completely outweigh measurable immediate consequences.
I'm probably not doing complete justice to the argument; that is, obviously, a concern, but on the other hand it's plausible that after some time there will be a new explosion of genetic diversity (it's happened before). So the probability is probably an order-one number, not something completely tiny. And given that it's unknown, it's hard to make a consequentialist argument that we have to do something to stop climate change, at least without some sort of serious discounting of the far future. But those discounting arguments are exactly what we're uncomfortable with about arguments that some economists make that from an economic perspective we shouldn't do anything about global warming; can we comfortably use them to argue that from an ethical perspective we should?
59 Why worry that *humans* are changing the composition of the atmosphere rather than anaerobic bacteria?
Well, I am grateful for the climate change they caused billions of years ago. But is this a fair argument? They didn't have the capacity to make a rational decision about what they were doing, and in any case, it was their basic biological functioning that accomplished the change. Neither is true for us.
The other standard reply is that you are simply too late. Humans affected global environmental change more or less when we spread from Africa to the rest of the world. If you hanker for a world not altered by humans, you need to go to Saturn or something.
There's a pretty huge discrepancy in scale. Yes, we've altered the world a lot, but increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations by a third, and acidifying the ocean to an extent that will probably collapse vast ecosystems, is a different thing altogether. Plus, much of the environmental change effected by humans in the past was beneficial to humans. This one, not so much.
Yeah, but when you start looking at the actual alterations we made, especially the mass extinction of mega-fauna, the changes are clearly significant.
No argument they've been big changes. That doesn't mean we have no choice and no information. I just think it's a terrible argument for `do nothing', is all.
Can someone pass this picture along to Catherine? Kthx.
He wrote an essay on why everyone who didn't immediately donate 90% of their income to the poor of the Third World was a bad person. I found it useful to spend half an hour figuring out why this was wrong.
no, it's right. Most of us are bad people. It's human nature. Even the people who give away a lot of money to the poor are probably pretty bad. But we should all just chill out about that and try not to be totally vicious assholes.
Exhibit #1567 in why I am not an ethics professor...
65: Agreeing with an ethics professor is not really an effective demonstration of why you are not an ethics professor.
People are assholes
http://origin.theonion.com/content/node/30572
56: I had two objections to the argument. First, why is the per capita GDP of Japan $35,000 and that of Cambodia $600? Is it because Japan's indigenous population of leprechauns keep leavings pots of gold everywhere? It's because Japan makes a lot of stuff, and Cambodia doesn't. Singer is trying to solve the wrong problem. The problem is not that Japan has stuff and Cambodia doesn't. The problem is that Cambodia makes less stuff than it could, given the talents of its people.
My second objection is that imagine Singer carried the day, and we all agreed that 90% of our income should go to the global poor. You and I might continue cheerfully working as hard as we do, but most people would say fuck it, and start slacking off. If we switched to Singer's regime, suddenly that 90% would be a lot smaller than when we started. So from a purely utilitarian perspective of maximizing the amount of redistribution, simply declaring that everyone should give 90% doesn't make sense.
The problem is that Cambodia makes less stuff than it could, given the talents of its people.
Is it so clear that this is a situation that can't be changed by throwing money at it? I mean, sure, there are a lot of issues about how the money is distributed and who is in charge of it and whether it's put to good use, but it at least seems conceivable that it could make a difference.
69: But that's not what Singer proposes, as far as I can tell. His view (at least in the essay I read) is pure zero-sum, there's this much stuff to go around, so we should distribute it more evenly.
I just think it's a terrible argument for `do nothing', is all.
I wasn't saying "do nothing" I was saying "we shouldn't ever change the climate is a bad reason to be concerned about global warming."
70: That's not his view at all. He doesn't say that we can solve everything with massive handouts. He doesn't deny that the mechanics of economic development are complicated. Really what he wants is for you to give 90% of your income to organizations like Oxfam which aid the global poor, advocate for them, and try to develop realistic strategies for aid. And lets face it, if everyone gave 90% of their income to organizations that work for the poor, the economy would be very different.
Poverty is a complicated problem to solve, nevertheless the major barrier to solving it is a lack of will power, not a lack of ability.
Poverty is a complicated problem to solve, nevertheless the major barrier to solving it is a lack of will power, not a lack of ability.
Um, not to mention countries with functioning institutions.
Granting that the Bushies are Midas-in-reverse, we've pumped $600B with utter discretion into a disfunctional nation and turned it into a nonfunctional nation. I'm not especially convinced that the only thing keeping Oxfam from turning Burma, Somalia, and Sudan into Denmark is a lack of donations.
That's not to say that Oxfam doesn't do good work, etc. But it's to say that, in terms of net human potential, NGOs are marginal.
But you know what? I'm a fucking architect who should be preparing a base drawing for a weirdo Ron Paul supporter. I'm not going to convince anybody in a discussion with actual ethicists and people who've given these matters approx. 100X more thought than I have.
And lets face it, if everyone gave 90% of their income to organizations that work for the poor, the economy would be very different.
It'd be different enough that there's no reason to believe any predictions about how it would actually be.
My income derives from people buying internet advertising, and some of the income the people use to buy those ads comes from me buying their products. If I take the money that I would have spent on motorcycle parts and consumer electronics and give it to people in burma so that they can upgrade their thatch-roofed mud hut to a brick hut with a tin roof, my income stream will dry up in a hurry.
What if you buy your motorcycle parts from a factory in Myanmar, and the worker uses his wages to upgade his roof on his own. But globalization is evil, so that wouldn't work.
Singer's opinions are so very, very wrong, but it is a good mental exercise to figure out why. He wrote an essay on why everyone who didn't immediately donate 90% of their income to the poor of the Third World was a bad person. I found it useful to spend half an hour figuring out why this was wrong.
It wouldn't take me half an hour if I was starting from scratch [it'd take me bloody ages].
Luckily I don't have to, since I've found versions of Bernard Williams line about utilitarianism and personal identity fairly convincing in the past.*
* although my (possibly half-)remembered version of the argument isn't quite the version presented in the wikipedia article on Williams.
I'm kind of bitter there are no logos for White People. White People love Obama! Couldn't they work a stand mixer into the logo?
Come on, can't you claim to be some kinda European American?
European and Mediterranean Americans (sometimes known as Ethnic Americans) are Americans of varied backgrounds - from the newly naturalized citizen building a family and laying down roots to the fourth-generation family in the US with ties and heritage connected to the land of our ancestors. New Polish-American citizens in Toledo, Irish-Americans in Scranton, Italian-Americans in greater Detroit - these are just some of the stories of American families, stories of resounding hope and affirmation in the American dream - and it is Barack Obama's story as well.
Nope, I don't qualify. My people are WASPs who have been here longer than the fourth generation statute of limitations. Is the assumption that I should therefore be a Republican?
My people are WASPs who have been here longer than the fourth generation statute of limitations.
In that case, you might be related to Emerson, whose WASP ancestry is well-established, if more notorious than illustrious. Cotton Mather once preached a sermon about one of his female forebears. I believe she hanged for the crime of "lewdness."
My eight-times-great-aunt was far ahead of her time. Cotton Mather explained that her lewd behavior was motivated by her belief that we should enjot the here and now rather than waiting for the afterlife. And lo! everyone believes that now.
We have only Mather's word for that being her actual belief.
Lewdness, eh? Well, I can see why Obama doesn't want to be associated with that sort....
81: I teach your Aunties on Thursday.
Their story makes you wonder about whether maybe all those horrible myths were true after all.
Two sisters, the good sister who kills bad people, and the bad sister who kills innocent babes. If they were in the Bible or the Iliad, people would do structural and Jungian analysis and so on. But they were historical.
"In this myth, Kali is bifurcated. One Kali is strong and nurturing, protecting her children from the murderous Other. The other Kali is evil and hateful, destroying her own brood". [Pages of diagrams follow]
My peeps were dirt-poor and not-literate, and the men occasionally prone to real (brother-in-law upon brother-in-law, for example) violence (not saying the Crown never brought charges for manslaughter or anything, but I can explain...), but the women were always accounted faithful and 'dacent,' and that accounting was deemed a form of wealth in and of itself, and something to be proud of and treasured. And not just in terms of 'the patriarchy' or what have you, either. There's some real leverage to be held by anyone who's anyone's 'sainted mother,' and I'm not even kidding about this.
John's family interests me. I can't help suspecting there's a novel in there, somewhere, or perhaps an off-Broadway play.
Chris Rothfuss of Wyoming doesn't stand a chance, but is a truly great young candidate and is poised to bring the Obama young democrat revolution to this reddest of red states.
Chris Rothfuss of Wyoming doesn't stand a chance, but is a truly great young candidate and is poised to bring the Obama young democrat revolution to this reddest of red states.
I have to say that Mary Catherine's anecdotes only confirm my belief that her people are the only North Americans who can really claim to be Irish in the same sense as the Irish-in-Ireland.
Ah, Mary Catherine, I gotta say, if you were a red-head I'd be swoonin'. No offense intended.
My sainted mother can whip anyone else's sainted mother.
Alas, MC shares the taste of the Brits (and their low-budget imatator states) for syrupy beer.
90: I was talking about my ancestors, of course. My people today are as thoroughly Canadian as Emerson so often accuses them of being.
