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It's been a week of circular logic from the political world.
To begin with, Mitt Romney gave a speech on religion. This speech was brilliantly summed up in a comment to Chris Kelly's recent Huffington Post column:
1. We should all be tolerant of religions, even ones we don't agree with.
2. Secularism/atheism is a religion.
3. Let's all hate on those traitorous, treasonous, blasphemous secularists/atheists!
[While I generally abhor writing about the subject-du-jour, I decided to challenge myself today and write about Mitt Romney's speech on religion while not making any references to John F. Kennedy's speech on religion while doing so. This alone, I believe, will set this post out from the pack, since I'd be willing to bet nobody else has managed to do so.]
While many have commented on various different quotes from Mitt Romney's speech on religion today, there was one passage that stood out for me:
Today's generations of Americans have always known religious liberty. Perhaps we forget the long and arduous path our nation's forbearers took to achieve it. They came here from England to seek freedom of religion. But upon finding it for themselves, they at first denied it to others. Because of their diverse beliefs, Ann Hutchinson was exiled from Massachusetts Bay, a banished Roger Williams founded Rhode Island, and two centuries later, Brigham Young set out for the West. Americans were unable to accommodate their commitment to their own faith with an appreciation for the convictions of others to different faiths. In this, they were very much like those of the European nations they had left.
President Bush has been proven wrong in some big and spectacular ways this week. But while he continues to channel his foreign policy advice from Pluto, Bush is right about one thing, even though he's just playing it up for political gain. The Democrats should be ashamed that they haven't gotten their act together on the budget.
Now, I've been called a partisan Democrat before, but I reject the accusation. Being a partisan means being blind to mistakes made by your side, and trotting out spin and excuses for such mistakes. While I admit to a lefty bias and have to agree that it's more fun to write about Republican follies than Democratic blunders, I pride myself on holding the spotlight of criticism up to either side when it fully deserves it. Which, in this case, the Democrats do.
Back in the old Soviet Union, official groups both large and small always had at least one "political officer" in them, to guarantee that whatever the group did was in step with current Party ideology. The Bush White House, taking its cue from this Soviet-era practice, decided that this was a good idea, earlier this year (after the Democratic takeover of Congress in last year's elections).
We're now about a month away from the first caucus in the nomination race for president. The Democratic race in Iowa is currently neck and neck and neck. Obama, Clinton, and Edwards are all roughly even in the polls, and it's anybody's guess who will emerge the victor. This is partly due to the bizarre caucus rules in Iowa, it's partly due to the notorious instability of the state (victors often emerge late, in the last few days before the caucus), and it's partly due to the possible overestimation by all three candidates on who will actually turn out on caucus day.
Iowa caucuses are not normally well-attended events, and the percentage of eligible voters that actually turns out for the caucuses is often extremely small. But compounding this low turnout, all three candidacies are (to one extent or another) falling into the New Voters Expectations Disease, which Democrats seem to always be more susceptible to than Republicans.
Welcome back to the weekly roundup of the good, the bad, and the ugly, and (as always) my humble suggestions of things Democrats should say in media interviews this weekend.
Because I've been away for a few weeks, I have to apologize in advance if I've missed something obvious this week (I'm still getting back up to speed on the American political scene). Hopefully I won't have missed too much!
Having said that, let's jump right in....
Eileen Sullivan of the Associated Press wrote a shocking story this week, to which little attention is being paid. That's a shame, because it details how the effort to fight "terrorism" in America is being morphed into something else entirely. Federal dollars which are supposed to go to anti-terrorism are being used by the states pretty much any way they feel. The Bush administration gave the money to the states with no guidelines as to how to spend it, so it's really not even the states' fault that they decided to use the money how they saw fit.
When some Americans travel to Europe these days, they are shocked at the anti-American (or more precisely, anti-Bush) attitudes expressed by the Europeans. Me, I'm used to that sort of thing, so when I heard such sentiments on my recent vacation, they didn't surprise me much. But what did shock me was the airport currency exchange counter. To buy one Euro on the day I arrived, it cost me $1.56.
It seems I was unlucky enough to be traveling during the week the Euro hit a historic high against the dollar. I have to admit, it was my first time in the "Eurozone" -- the group of countries who have adopted the Euro (€) as their currency. I had previously visited London since the Euro's introduction, but since the U.K. refuses to give up the pound sterling, I didn't handle Euros at all. Until now.
The reason a dollar-fifty-six is a shocking price for one Euro is that when it was introduced, the Euro traded around one-for-one with the U.S. dollar. It fluctuated a bit, between about $0.85 and $1.15, but during the transition period it averaged out at about even. One dollar equaled one Euro. But the really shocking thing is: this wasn't that long ago.
While on vacation last week, I chanced upon an article in the Irish Times that I found interesting, if merely for the fact that it's the type of thing Americans just aren't going to hear about from our own mainstream media. It was a story about Bill Clinton being in Dublin for a fundraiser for his wife's presidential campaign.
From the article [Note for the culturally challenged: "Paddy" = an Irish person, "Yank" = an American]:
"The place was awash with Paddies," said one attendee. "You were left wondering where were all the Yanks."
. . .
