God is not subject to US foreign policy

I got this bit of news on an evangelical's view of God and politics from Juan Cole this morning:

' The Houston-based preacher said he believes that the Bush administration has delayed the second coming because U.S. foreign policy has blocked Christian missionaries from working in Iraq, Iran and Syria. . . "Somebody needs to say enough is enough," he said to worshippers who stood, waved and called out in support. . . Paul, who claimed to support conservative political leaders in the past, is launching "a crusade to save America from the wrath of God and Republicans abusing their power," according to his press materials. . . "God is mad at this country," Paul told the congregation. He described the war in Iraq as "unnecessary genocide."

It is wonder that religious people actually believe that God can be manipulated by human beings. It is good to see the preacher comdemn the FUBAR Iraq War, but W is delaying the return of Christ? I am not a fan of the current popular interpretation of the Book of Revelations. But that aside, if Jesus wants to come back there is no policy by W or anyone else that is going to "delay" him. For a preacher to be condemning any politician as preventing the return of Jesus Christ to Earth in physical form is...okay I'm just going to say it. It is stupid.

I shouldn't be surprised. Given this comment, I doubt it would be hard to find a quote from this preacher claiming the Supreme Court "kicked God out of schools" when they barred states from using coercive state power to make school kids pray by order of the state. That's what was banned folks. No one ever banned "prayer in school." They banned the state telling kids when to pray and in many cases what to pray. Yep, He made the universe but 9 old guys in ropes can "kick God out of schools" and George W. Bush controls the timetable for the Second Coming.

And people think Dick Cheney is powerful.

Incumbency Still Rules

With the midterm elections only 18 days away, Democrats are nervously wondering if they could possibly regain control of the US House and/or Senate. Given the political unpopularity of GW Bush andthe GOP Congress, numerous corruption and ethics scandals against Republicans at both state and federal level, the FUBAR Iraq War, and the continued freedom of Osama bin Ladin, there should be no question that change will occur. Democratic activists across America fear another loss due to hesistancy and downright wimpiness from party candidates. What should really concern all of us is that so few incumbents are facing any danger.

The power of incumbency is such that we political geeks are focusing on only about 50 races in the House and 8 or 9 in the Senate. This isn't because of GOP status with voters or their fantastic Get Out the Vote (GOTV) operation. This is because incumbency is the great protection provided to both parties in American politics.

More than 3 decades ago, David Mayhew wrote the first paper examining the decline in turnover of House seats. Political scientists, political journalists and political observers of all kinds have known that incumbency has gotten more and more powerful and fewer and fewer opportunities exist for voters to make dramatic changes in who occupies congressional office. The Senate has a innate check upon voters' efforts in any single election by having only 1/3 of the Senate seats exposed at any one time. The House, however, has 435 elections every two years. The House should be the most vulnerable to an electorate angered by the policy choices and in-office behavior of the party in power. Not anymore.

The largest number of House races I have seen discussed as "in play" is 60. That's less than 14% of the House seats. It is enough to give the Democrats a shot at the majority, but more seats in play would make change more likely and make elected officials more responsive to more voters. The less any politician or party fears the threat of voters demanding change, the greater the likelihood of the kinds of corruption and arrogance that seems to be so prevalent today. Tom Delay and other Republicans cannot start the "K Street Project" and insist on campagin contributions before listening to lobbyists and hold veto power over who is hired as lobbyists if incumbency doesn't provide the protection it provides today.

I'll skip the debate amongst political scientists about how much gerrymandering plays a role in this and go right to answering what can be done. The biggest advantage incumbency provides after name recognition is in fundraising. Incumbents have a huge advantage in raising money, which means they are on TV and radio with ads to reach voters that their challengers struggle to match. Go to opensecrets.org and check out your House and Senate races and see the difference for yourself. Both parties have turned to wealthy candidates, particularly in the Senate, to provide an instant source of funding a challenge. You can figure out for yourselves how this distorts the view from Congress.

The most direct and easiest solution is public financing. With public funds it is completely constitutional to limit how much a candidate spends on a race. This means that the ability to raise the most money from the biggest interest group contributors no longer is the way to win. Elected officials can tell (insert your least favorite interest group here) to take a hike without fearing the loss of neededcampaign funds. This also means incumbents cannot eliminate potential challengers by raising multiple millions that would need to be matched by a competitor.

Public financing alone won't end the incumbency advantage, but it can put a significant dent in the power of incumbency that currently turns winning congressional office once into almost permanent employment.

Clearly Not Creating an Impression

When you are on sabbatical as a professor you can do things that can be bad ideas during semesters when you face students. One is to check your ratings on one of the various sites on the web. If you take it too seriously, you might take it out on current students. I checked my rating on ratemyprofessor.com. I was a bit disappointed with only 3 ratings, but my courses were called difficult and I was called arrogant. I was called boring too and these ratings suggest that is accurate.

Come on people, where is the degrading of my fashion sense, the questioning of my sanity because I am a liberal moonbat or the classic questioning of my sexual preference. Where is the imagination? Where is the virulence?

Clearly I have work to do when I return to the classroom in January.

Fly the Flag Upside Down

It is time to send out the distress signals. Drag yourself away from the partisan battles of the moment. Drag yourself away from the latest congressional sex scandal. The US Constitution is being rewritten by bad law and executive fiat. W and the Republicans in Congress along with the acquiesence of Democrats in Congress have decided that it is okay for the president to decide what is and is not torture, to indefinitely jail whomever he declares to be an "enemy combatant" and remove from many of those we hold as alleged terrorists the ability to challenge the government's decision to detain them. They can challenge a conviction as a terrorist before a military court with limited rights at whatever time we bother to try them, but not whether or not they should have ever been held in the first place.

This is the debate from last week. We're on to sex scandals with salacious emails and instant messages now. Everyone look away. This will just be about nasty foreigners whose name we will never know widely. Why should we worry?

Simple. This is unchecked power. Unless the Supreme Court, increasily featuring fans of executive power, decide otherwise, no one can stop this. This is no "emergency" measure. This is the law of the United States. God protect the next US military or intelligence member captured by any enemy anywhere. The US government has decided to make your life more dangerous by making us exactly what our enemies say we our -- arrogrant, power-hungry and lying in our desire to spread "democracy." What democracy okays waterboarding? What democracy sends a Canadaian citizen to Syria to be tortured? It is now the United States of America.

Early this year a friend of mine was surprised that I didn't think post-9/11 US was at its worse. No, I said, I thought things would be worse than this. Now, they are.

To escape for a bit, I'm off tomorrow to my first ever October vacation in North Carolina. I'll update only if I feel I must. Look for more from me in a couple of weeks.