When I was in college, my program had an arts requirement, that is, one needed several performance credits to graduate. I chose to take acting classes, and I confess: I sucked. But I did learn something about how the art of acting is to be found in so many parts of the rest of our world, even those in which truth telling and reality are supposedly paramount. I believe the saying goes, “If you can’t afford a meal, go see a show. If you can’t afford a show, go to the zoo. If you can’t afford the zoo, go see a politician.” I’ll let you ponder that order for a minute.

That said, Matt jumps on a bandwagon I’m proud to say we’ve been all over for some time now here at Corrente. It’s not Homeland Security, it’s The Homeland Security Show on Fox. Matt is 100% correct in pointing out that Republican policies on “securing our X” are usually ineffective, costly, wasteful and do little more than feed the fear-guzzling base addicted to the adrenalin rush of ’hate/fear/kill.’ Show me the last 100 million spent on new “security” programs, and I promise you I’ll show you a Republican crony now richer by 99 million, and some Potemkin village approximation of a device/program/training that makes no one safer. Moore pointed this out in Farenheit 911, in which he noted that for all the talk about borders and increased watchfulness, no real money has gone to places that are literally wide open to attack.  Read more 

Matt has a nice essay about the Left of the 1960s and the Left of today. Go contribute. I think about this sort of thing all the time, and I confess I’m not as ambitious as Matt; I’m not sure how I’d construct such a comparison.  Read more 

Sirota has two good pieces up about the foolishness of clinging to terms like "Democrat" and "Republican" and of worrying about "bipartisanship" and "centrist mandates." They're very good, and I want to be among the first voices joining his, as progressives understand the opportunities and challenges of this incoming Congress and what can be done there.  Read more 

At Orcinus, Sara Robinson (via) makes some great points about how to beat the bullies of Beltway High.

If I may nitpick, I think she’s a tad over-optimistic when she says: “it won’t take too much conscious effort to make our spokespeople look like serious grown-ups by contrast.”

IMHO, it’s an enormous challenge because, to the general public, Republicans — despite their petulance, naïveté, and incompetence — own all the imagery of paternalistic adulthood.  Read more 

Quote of the day, or at least for me, from the ever impressive Nur AC:

Concerning the “Kill them all” thread below, the US is doomed to “cut and run” for the following reason: The Arab world has only 25% of the oil.  Read more 

“Wartime president.”

Those words have an amazing power over the American mind it seems. Along with the myth that *we* only go to war for good causes, and invariably in self-defense, we buy into the myth that we must cede greater power than is usually considered to be the norm to The Leader in such times. Because all our experience from childhood on seems to confirm that when you have a big job to do, you need one person to direct things, and for everybody else to do what that person says, or else everybody just runs around higgledy-piggledy or Keystone Kopsishly, getting in each other’s way, whacking each other’s heads with long boards, trying to go through narrow doorways three abreast, and the like.  Read more