(cross-posted at Goodtithings.com) 

We're fat.  Americans are the fattest people on the planet, bar none.  We (as a people) don't exercise, and we eat like shit.  And part of the reason for that is that we have a corporate welfare system that extends to those large commercial farmers that produce products that are horrible for our health like corn, white rice, and sugar, driving down the price of those products while causing the prices of vegetables to rise. 

But, it isn't just our physical health that suffers, it's our economic health.  Those small and organic farmers that may in fact need the help, don't get it.  And those farmers from 3rd world countries that are still farming by hand, are pushed into poverty because they can't compete with the bohemeth tractor-farms in the US who are getting billions of dollars a year in government handouts, causing massive poverty and death.

On the bright side, the new Farm Bill does provide some money for conservation, but it amounts to little more than 10% of the funding.  I'd suggest we double or triple that amount for conservation efforts and then cut the rest of the subsidies to zero.  We'd save money, allow for the free market to do it's thing, have cheaper healthy food, and drive the price of crap-food up a bit to reflect not only it's natural market price but also it's negative effect on the human body. 

I thought republicans didn't like welfare?

(Cross-posted @ Good Tithings)

The Justice Department has been in the ICU for some time.  If I'm not mistaken (correct me if I am) the top 5 seats have been vacant for a while.  This can't be good for one of the most important branches in the executive. 

President Bush has Nominated someone he feels would be right for the job: Michael Mukasey. 

We are in an age of pressing questions:  Military commisions, National security, terrorism, wire tapping, and weakening civil liberties.  Just to name a few.

Is Michael Mukasey the guy to take on these issues?   And should the Democratic congress jump in to confirming him?

Scott Horton makes the case in favor of saying, "yes":

Mukasey is a true conservative in much the same sense that Edmund Burke was a conservative. And perhaps that’s the strongest argument that can be mustered for his confirmation. 

If that is true (that he is a Burke-styled conservative) then we can only hope that he's conservative enough to believe that each individual deserves a fair trail, and is entitle to hear what crimes he is being charged with before he's locked away for 5 years.   We can only hope that he has a strong enough belief in the constitution that he'll not allow illegal wire tapping.  And we can only hope that he is enough like Burke to abhor torture and unnecessary violence.

But the only way for us to know these things is if the Democratic Congress has the guts to ask him the hard questions.   I'd hesitate rushing into confirmation of anyone, particularly anyone that has the blessing of our current President.  I understand that the office of Attorney General is one that must be filled.  But, there is no use filling it with a Bush Patsy.

With a very likely transferring of executive power coming in 2008, it may seem futile to worry too much over who gets the job (since they'll likely be outed immediately after).  But,  one year would be one year too many for those who's lives are being torn apart by the Administrations current policies.  

The justice department has a far reach and a strong hand.  We must be brutally aware of who we give that hand to.

(Cross-posted @ GoodTithings.com) 

There is much question recently about the current changes in journalism in response to outlets like Fox News and the Internet. And the questions are valid. Does the rise of opinion journalism—blogs, O’Reilly, Air America—do a disservice to our democracy? Is the loss of the presumption of objectivity in the media mean that voters and the populace at large will cease to trust the news that they get? Or, worse, will they be perpetually misinformed?

Opinion journalism is hardly new. It’s existed as long as the field of journalism itself has existed. But, the first seriously modern op-ed pages didn’t come around until September 21^st, 1970 in the pages of the New York Times. And ever since, the op-ed page and the editorial have been sharing an awkward coexistence with the mantra of objectivity in journalism. Modern Journalism is typified by the idea that a reporters own personal beliefs should not in anyway influence his writing, nor should they ever be apparent to the audience.

It hasn’t always been this way. In the early days of our American Democracy, opinion journalism was the order of the day. Newspapers were nearly exclusively biased. Are we returning to the old way? I think we are in many respects. And I think this is good. The idea of any human being being truly objective is bunk, and we all know it. There are facts, and those facts are independent of the person who reports them, but the facts themselves are only part of the story. It is the interpretation of those facts that makes them relevant to a human audience. And humans can’t help but come to the table with a stance and an opinion, no matter how hard they try and hide from it. To pretend that a journalist can be objective is to lie to ourselves.

The death of your own father is not news to you unless you have a subjective reason for caring about his death. Would the death of a squirrel make the nightly news? Of course not. But, why not? It’s the death of a living being. The reason is that humans have no serious emotional attachment to squirrels (well, my grandmother does, but she’s an exception). We do have serious emotional attachments to our own fathers. We have a vested interest, a subjective one, in politics, world affairs, and local happenings. That is what makes news news—our subjective interest.

Science is mistakenly seen as a bastion of objectivity. It is a place where the facts speak, and the scientist reports, or so goes the thinking. But, it isn’t true. Science is worthless without analysis. Charles Darwin wrote, in response to critics who felt The Origin of Species was too theoretical, that “All Observation must be for or against some point of view if it is to be of any service.”

Darwin:

About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorize; and I well remember someone saying that at this rate a man might as well go in to a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!

Journalism, like science, is not the act of counting pebbles. It is the act of deciding what is and what is not important for all of us to know. And that is a personal decision on the part of the journalist, or on the part of the Paper that employs that journalist. As such, it cannot be objective—It would be a contradiction in terms.

Most blogs are not Journalism at all. Mine is certainly no such thing. But, they are certainly prone to opinion. And this “pronation” (is this a word?) coupled with true fact gathering may indeed produce the best kind of journalism—fact gathering with a purpose—and it will all be instant, searchable, and available to anyone with an Internet connection. Blogs (at least the best of them) have the potential to represent Darwin’s Philosophy of Science applied to Journalism.

I don’t think the shift has happened yet. The best true journalism out there is still occurring largely in traditional print media. And traditional print media is the least comfortable with what is happening in their field. But the shift is happening.

Of course, the criticism of the kind of journalism I’m proposing has teeth. The worst possible “journalism” is of the Bill O’Reilly variety. (In truth, Bill is NOT a journalist. But, his audience often confuses him as one. And to be fair, he confuses himself as one). The fear is that his version is exactly what journalism will devolve into if we aren’t careful. (I think we’ve already opened up that can of worms, and the worms ain’t going back in.)

The beauty of blogs is that they are transparent. You don’t have to ask the question, “what does the writer believe.” It’s all out in the open. I know that if I goto Andrew Sullivan’s Blog that I’m reading a blog by a British-Gay-Republican who once was a de facto attack dog for the administration but has, in last number of years, turned on them with a vengeance. It’s all there. In traditional media, we don’t know, or we aren’t supposed to know, what the writer thinks, where they are coming from, and as such we have a hard time seeing fact from opinion.

Whether we like it or not, there is change-a-brewin’. Journalism has been forever changed by blogs and by cable television. And, I for one, am optimistic.

(cross-posted @ Goodtithings.com)

Conservatives in the latter half of the 20^th century have plunged themselves down into the depths of irrationality and fundamentalism. They have buried their heads in the sand, and refused the advances of scientific knowledge with the greatest of passion. But, this refutation of reality has sown the seeds of their demise.

Unlike John Locke, who suggested that ones ideas should change as the facts change, fundamentalist (and people generally) have a tendency to change the underlying facts to be more in line with their belief. There is a new movement among some conservatives that aims to change that perception.

“I do indeed believe conservatives need Charles Darwin,” said Larry Arnhart, a professor of political science at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, who has spearheaded the cause. “The intellectual vitality of conservatism in the 21st century will depend on the success of conservatives in appealing to advances in the biology of human nature as confirming conservative thought.”

The trouble is that jumping from certain particulars of evolutionary theory and biological science to an acute case of cultural morality is idiotic and shows a distinct lack of understanding of how complex the field really is. It is true that everything we see, every act of consciousness, every societal construct, every political system, and all of our perceived morality is born out of our biological evolution and what it has meant to be a species evolving on this planet. But, we aren't anywhere near close to understanding all of the facts of the case, let alone the implications of those facts.

In the most general sense, I think liberal democracy, capitalism, and moral pluralism are (relatively clearly) norms that society has evolved to better itself. (But the latter claim would give a fundamentalist the “heebee-jeebees”.)

In “The Moral Sense” (1993), followed by “The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families” (2002), James Q. Wilson used evolution to explain the genesis of morality and to support traditional family and sex roles.

Mr. Arnhart, in his 2005 book, “Darwinian Conservatism,” tackled the issue of conservatism’s compatibility with evolutionary theory head on, saying Darwinists and conservatives share a similar view of human beings: they are imperfect; they have organized in male-dominated hierarchies; they have a natural instinct for accumulation and power; and their moral thought has evolved over time.

Policies that are in tune with human nature, for example, like a male military or traditional social and sex roles, he said, are more likely to succeed.

There is a difference between what seems natural to humans, and what is good for the species. That is the point of evolution: to weed out the bad traits and promote the good ones. A male dominated, hetero-only, barbaric, violent, xenophobic, slavery-laden society is VERY natural for humans. Our societies (taking a historical view) have been more oppressive and cruel than open and caring. But, that doesn't mean we should have continued down that path. The greatest of modern societies evolved to combat these problems. And the pluralism in modern American society reflects that.

Conservative Fundamentalists will never embrace Darwinism because they can't embrace change—even if it's for the better. That's the political definition of the word “conservative”. But, they might embrace some bastardized version of Darwinism, one that includes what's natural but doesn't include the tenet of evolution as a continuing process. And that is itself quite frightening.