your caring, sharing GOP

Full marks to the Washington Post, who published yesterday an op-ed by McCain financial advisor Donald Luskin telling us that we're all just a bunch of whingers and there's basically nothing at all wrong with the US economy:

Quit Doling Out That Bad-Economy Line

. . . A housing "slump," a housing "crisis"? A "severe" price decline? According to the latest report from the National Association of Realtors, the median price of an existing home is up 8.5 percent from the low of last February. And according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median price of a new home is up 1.3 percent from the low of last December. Home prices may not be at all-time highs -- and there are pockets of continuing decline in some urban areas -- but overall they've clearly stopped going down and have started to recover. So why keep proclaiming a "crisis" after it's over?

"Turmoil" in the debt markets? Sure, but we've seen plenty worse. . . .

McCain campaign adviser and former U.S. senator Phil Gramm was right in July when he said that our current state "is a mental recession." Maybe he was out of line when he added that the United States has become "a nation of whiners." But when it comes to the economy, we have surely become a nation of exaggerators.

Yet Gramm was pilloried for his remarks, and McCain had to distance himself from his adviser by joking that in a McCain administration, Gramm would be ambassador to Belarus. What does it say about our nation that it has become political suicide to state the good news that our economy is not in recession? . . .

A matter of mere hours later, of course, the Lehman Brothers bank filed for bankruptcy, and the talk now is of how many other US banks will go the same way before the end of the year. Yet according to Luskin everything in the economic garden is rosy. I suppose those thousands of people who've lost their homes are going to wake up tomorrow and discover it was all just a dreadful dreram.

And this is the quality of advice a President McCain would be getting?

(Aside, of course, from his veep telling him, in between demanding Pentagon funding for helicopter gunships to use on her wolf hunts, that anthropogenic global warming's a myth and that dinosaurs co-existed with cavemen.)
 

I'm overjoyed for these two people . . .

. . . and saddened for all those others for whom this door is still firmly bolted shut. Only a couple of decades late,

Star Trek's Takei marries partner

Former Star Trek actor George Takei has married his long-term partner in a Buddhist ceremony in Los Angeles.

Takei, 71, who played Mr Sulu in the sci-fi series, married business manager Brad Altman, 54, in front of a number of his Star Trek co-stars.

They included best man Walter Koenig, who played Chekhov, and matron-of-honour Nichelle Nichols - Uhura.

The wedding - at Japanese American National Museum - came after California lifted a ban on same-sex marriage.

[. . .] 

Speaking before the ceremony, Takei said: "We have a relationship that's been stronger and longer-lived than some of our straight friends and yet we were not equal.


 

science is bosh, education is bosh . . .

. . . at least according to Senator John McCain, who today echoed the worst anti-scientific instincts of the Bush Adminstration. As reported by AP, he said of Barack Obama's support for various federally funded projects:

"That's nearly a million every day, every working day he's been in Congress," McCain said. "And when you look at some of the planetariums and other foolishness that he asked for, he shouldn't be saying anything about Governor Palin."

Where do they dig up these Neanderthal attitudes? I find it, quite honestly, baffling. Recently my daughter and I spent a happy few hours exploring the Rose Center for Earth and Space/Hayden Planetarium at NYC's Museum of Natural History. The fact that about a billion schoolchildren were enjoying it with us meant that sometimes the noise was deafening, but it was impossible not to be amazed and delighted by how much many of the kids were obviously benefiting from the experience. Those were kids glowing with the joy of learning.

Which means, of course, they're likely to go on and lead happier and more productive lives, which is what civilized societies are supposed to be all about. They'll be happier; the rest of us are likely to gain, too, either because those might be tomorrow's innovators, educators and the like or, at the very least, because they'll be less likely to be earning a living as a mugger or a housebreaker or worse.

So for John McCain to describe the building of planetariums as "foolishness" is not just deeply offensive, not just a display of the profundity of his own complacent ignorance and stupidity, but also an indicator of the considerable contempt in which he holds average Americans.
 
Yes, some people did lack a silver spoon in their mouth at birth, and did fail to adulterously seduce and then marry someone with so much money it's a bit of a problem remembering how many houses they own. But that doesn't mean those people should be deprived of the educational opportunities you, Senator McCain, are patently too stupid even to desire.