Do you have a strong enough stomach to eat pizza and ranch dressing with a side of fries for lunch every day?

If so, then it might also be strong enough for you to watch this video about school-lunch policy without becoming ill:

Biden's addition to the internets/connected tubes/etc. lexicon

Vice President Biden: "Do you know the Web site number?"

My friend Dave, in an e-mail: "The next time he plugs his internet into the web, he should just ask the operator if she would connect him to the building where the bailout lives. No fancy numbers needed."

America wants to know: When will our highways start making some MONEY already?

Tom Laskawy names a frustration I share: why do we insist on talking about Amtrak like it's a private-sector business and should be turning a profit? It's a publicly owned agency that provides a clear service, analogous to roads and parks and the armed services. Why does everyone compare it instead to airlines and cars? (Well, maybe they don't NOW, but they did back when Amtrak suffered from the comparison...)

Re-framing the question

Economics is notoriously a field in which there is rarely broad consensus on really major questions. In times like the present, the ideological fault lines may shift considerably, but they don't go away. This is one reason--along with others, not least of which is the fact that I'm not now nor have I ever been an economist--that I don't like to get bogged down by abstract debates about overarching ways of looking at economic policy. It's hard to appeal to "the experts" when they're split, and I get tired of playing pick-an-expert or regurgitating talking points.

So, while a person of my political persuasion may be glad to see an ad in the Washington Post in which a long list of prominent economists offers support for EFCA, I think Ezra has exactly the right response:

Expect, of course, to see a counter-letter of economists opposing EFCA shortly. Which is just the point: Economists disagree on the impact of unions. So the question ends up being whether you want to err on the side of distributing more to the workforce or err on the side of distributing more the executive class.

So the question for the purposes of laypeople like me isn't which group of economists has a more persuasive methodology. How the hell do I know? The question is rather whether you want to put the burden of proof on the folks advocating for the haves or on those advocating for the have-nots. For me, that's a pretty easy call.

Duking it out on the sides of buses

This from Raffi Shahinian--it's the winner of his Alternative Atheist Bus Slogan Contest:

It makes me sick that we even need to resort to such an argument, but since we obviously do:

Md. Gov. O'Malley: end the death penalty, because it's a vindictive and dehumanizing outrage against everything decent, one that scoffs at core theologies Catholic and Protestant alike expensive.

Well, whatever it takes. God bless the governor for his ongoing leadership on this issue.

Some basic understanding=the ability to respond when people start in with their blaming-the-poor

For all us economics laypeople, this video's one of the most helpful primers I've seen:

Congressional candidates forum

Just came back from a candidates forum for the special election to replace Rahm Emanuel in IL-5, my district. The format was to ask a question and give each candidate (18 in attendance; several others weren't there) a minute to respond. So far so good-as-can-be-expected, but then somebody decided to have the 10 Democrats go first and then switch gears and do the whole things again--afterthought style--with the four Republicans and four Greens. Several of the non-Dems were justifiably upset by this arrangement, though to the organizers' credit they did manage both to keep most of the audience there for the second half and to keep the whole thing on schedule and finished in two hours.

The candidates are predictable: the Dems all come off about the same, especially when all you get is 60-second sound bytes of them all answering the same couple of questions. Several of them are old Chicago/Springfield hands. They're for jobs, support for homeowners, health care reform, and not scapegoating undocumented immigrants for problems they didn't cause. They like the president well enough. Sure, count me in--but I'm still not sure who to vote for in the only election anyone's paying attention to the Democratic primary.

Actually, I do have a favorite, though I'm very much undecided: Tom Geoghegan, a labor lawyer w/ a lot of public service experience but none of it in the Chicago Dem machine.

The Republicans, again predictably for these parts, seem mostly to fall somewhere on the moderate-to-RINO continuum. Tom Hanson called himself a "liberal Republican" every time it was his turn to talk. Jon Stewart, an "independent Republican," applauded points the Green candidates made on multiple occasions. But the other two guys, for all their common-sense-moderate populist talk, at least had the decency to pivot repeatedly to some good old-fashioned taxation-trashing.

As for the Greens, three of them made solid enough cases for their candidacies but got overshadowed by Matt Reichel, a lefty activist-journalist who just acted super angry most of the time. He's even younger, even more liberal, and even more bombastic than yours truly (calling into question my three main reasons for deciding against a run myself...). Afterwards, he stood outside the door smiling at people as they left, but he seemed even more intense than he had on stage.

The primary's in eight days.

Vilsack's garden

USDA's such a mess it can't even pull off a proper publicity stunt.

Eddie walks us through, step by excruciating step.

"All we have to do to find compromise is admit that we wrong [sic] about everything"

You think you're mad about centrist equivocation and triangulation and selling-out-of-core-values?

You've got nothing on pastordan. His righteous fury is even leaving behind VERBS. This whole post reads as though he saw something that pissed him off, took a deep breath, held it while he wrote a few hundred words and clicked "publish," and then finally exhaled.

VA legislator: How will I comfort the mourning without...including sectarian prayers at public events?

From the Washington Post:

RICHMOND, Feb. 18 -- As a former Virginia state trooper who has visited horrific crime scenes and notified families of the death of a loved one, Charles W. Carrico Sr. learned the value of prayer and turned to it many times, he says.

So Carrico, who now represents Grayson County as a member of the House of Delegates, said he felt he had to act after Virginia State Police chaplains were ordered last summer to give only generic prayers at public events, a ruling several interpreted as a ban on uttering "Jesus." Rather than comply, six of the agency's 17 chaplains resigned. Carrico wrote a bill to address their stance.

"As a Christian, I must pray to Jesus Christ," Carrico said. "I'm being told not to. Why should I even pray?"

Why indeed--a good question. I'm as much a separation supporter as the next "Christian" liberal, but I couldn't agree more that bland, least-common-denominator prayers at public events are pretty much useless. Of course, my objection is to calling God's blessing on such events in the first place--I think prayer's too important to use it as a stamp-of-divine-approval on a non-religious function. Still, ultimately I agree with Carrico's point here.

Except...what does praying to Jesus for strength and comfort amidst a difficult and wrenching job have to do with offering prayers at public events? Well, actually not much. That's right--it's the same old bait-and-switch we know from school-prayer debates: public-school students should have the right to pray in whatever way they want! (Yes!) So teachers/other authority figures should be able to lead them in specifically Christian prayer during school. (Huh?)

From Third Way to the Poverty Forum: Yawning down faith-based-incrementalism lane

Jim Wallis and Mike Gerson: center-left and center-right Christians agree that we shouldn't just let all the poor people die!

The leftier folks are naturally unimpressed: Sarah Posner, Peter Laarman.

As usual, more interesting criticisms from Mark Silk: Does Gerson really support a higher minimum wage? (If so, when did this happen? And if not, what exactly does this coalition mean?) And why are these guys stepping all over Christian Churches Together, anyway? What's the point of duplicating CCT's impressive work in this way-- "we're like those guys, but less bold and with a less diverse coalition" ?

When I was a boy, Republicans and Democrats walked uphill both ways between bipartisan cooperation on the Hill and friendly drinks after work

James Morone on the myth of a less partisan past.

Pelosi and Benedict

So the Speaker of the House met with the Pope, and he naturally isn't thrilled with her views on abortion.

RNS says he gave her a stern reprimand.

Really? Looks more like a standard we-spoke-and-it-was-nice-but-we-don't-agree-about-everything statement to me. Which, the RNS story points out, is an uncommon move on the Vatican's part for a meeting with a political leader who isn't even a head of state.

Doesn't Pelosi come out of this ahead by getting the meeting and the statement at all?

Hooray for transportation spending slightly less dramatically tilted toward highway expansions!

Here's some small-scale good news: high-speed rail actually got an INCREASE in funding during the reconciliation process for the stimulus bill. Which isn't to say that we're actually going to invest anything remotely approaching what we're spending on roads and bridges--and why should we? Passenger rail is less invasive, accessible for more people, vastly superior environmentally, less dangerous, super fun...all in all, a total bummer.

Forgive my pesky sarcasm. This is good news.

Phil Rizk's new blog

His old Google blog was compromised by the Egyptian authorities. Here's his new wordpress.com blog.

"Why Most Christians will Die and Go to H-E-L-L"

This is the title of a tract that a man handed Nadia outside a coffee shop in my neighborhood. It's from a fundie Baptist church nearby. Lot's of raging quotes; here are a couple, complete w/ colonial-style over-capitaliziation-of-Nouns:

"Churches and Pastors and Christians today do not know anything about holiness. They are so worldly and the world is so churchy. Preachers today do not preach against the sins they preached against in yesteryear. Where's the Prophet? Where's the Man of God? Who'll cry out against the sins of the Church members."

"Most preachers are controlled by pulpit committees and the IRS."

"Call us if you're searching for a hellfire & brimstone Baptist Church in your area that believes the King James bible and stands for something"

"We welcome all Religions & Cultures"

This last one is particularly rich given that the man who handed the tract to Nadia is Latino and speaks very limited English. While one never knows, it's a safe guess that he's not a cradle fundamentalist Baptist, and neither are his friends and family--but good chance they're Christians. Nothing like being "welcomed" by being told your faith isn't good enough and you're going to burn in h-e-l-l.

This is the thing that makes it hard for me to go too far down the "conservative and liberal Christians each have their blind spots and intolerances; let's meet in the middle and try to understand each other better--we're all equally guilty in this area." (And yes, I know that this tract comes from some pretty fringy folks, but the mainstream religious right sentiment is softer and kinder more than it's substantively different.) But, while the liberal church may read the Bible just as selectively as the religious right, ignore just as many of its own doctrinal tensions and contradictions, and look down on people who disagree, I've never, ever heard a left-leaning mainliner--fringe or otherwise--say or even imply that conservative Christians aren't real Christians, or that they're going to hell.

This is a difference that matters.

The cutting edge of hating on the LGBT-affirming liberal church

Then: You're not really Christians.

Now: You don't even EXIST--see, that prayer you just prayed didn't really happen!

Phil Rizk talks about his detainment

He wasn't physically harmed, but otherwise a pretty rough go. From this NYT story:

“I was held for four days, but the people of Gaza continue to be held in a form of prison, and there are others in Egypt who are also being held,” he said. “I want to move the attention to others who are still in this situation.”

61 votes: appeasing the incoherent center

Smart words on the stimulus from Ross Douthat:

[The centrists have] done absolutely nothing to widen the terms of debate about what should go into the bill, and they've shaved off just enough money to reduce its effectiveness if Paul Krugman is right - but not nearly enough to make it fiscally prudent if the stimulus skeptics are right.

More.

I agree with Ezra: end the filibuster.