That's not change. That's more of the same.

Most of the time I love Obama, but sometimes he utterly disgusts me (see in particular his voting for the inexcusable FISA bill after vowing to filibuster it). Sadly, today is one of the latter times. Obama has invited christianist mega-church paster and homophobe Rick Warren to give the invocation to the inauguration. I'm not naive enough to expect the secular ceremony that I would prefer, but this is unacceptable. Warren has compared gay marriage to statutory rape (among other things) and most recently has said that he opposes gay marriage because allowing it would violate the first amendment, demonstrating that Warren is not only bigoted but also has a grasp of the US constitution that rivals Sarah Palin's for sheer ignorance (clearly neither of them have any idea what the first amendment means). Just when I thought my January 20th birthday would be a good thing for once, Obama had to go and ruin it by giving a big Fuck You to anyone who supports equal rights. I hope a good portion of the millions who show up for the inauguration boo when Warren gets on stage.

Update: on a tangentially related note, google chat and blogger need to learn that 'Obama' is not a mispelling of 'Alabama,' 'mamba,' or 'bamboo.'

Later Update: Obama's rebuttal, courtesy of Talking Points Memo:



My response is that there's no way Obama would simply disagree without being disagreeable if Warren also opposed racially mixed marriages on religious grounds. By giving Warren a position of prominence at the inauguration, Obama is signaling that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is more acceptable than discrimination on the basis of race. Sadly, this is probably a view shared by the majority of americans. However, we didn't elect Obama so that he could do whatever the polls say people prefer (we could have chosen Clinton if that's what we wanted), we elected him because we wanted him to lead, and to inspire americans to do the right thing in spite of themselves.

Even Later Update: Sarah Posner of The Nation says it better than me:

Warren represents the absolute worst of the Democrats' religious outreach, a right-winger masquerading as a do-gooder anointed as the arbiter of what it means to be faithful. Obama's religious outreach was intended, supposedly, to make religious voters more comfortable with him and feel included in the Democratic Party. But that outreach now has come at the expense of other people's comfort and inclusion, at an event meant to mark a turning point away from divisive politics.

Absolutely Last Update, I Swear: Here's Jon Stewart vs. Mike Huckabee on gay marriage (see the comments to understand why this is here):

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mike Huckabee Pt. 2

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Oregon and Colorado politics

Oregon was the least corrupt state over the last ten years.
[graph created by Lee Sigelman and John Sides, acquired via Ylesias]

Ok, I don't really think this is a perfect indicator of corruption since plenty of corrupt politicians never get caught (and arguably the most corrupt states are the ones where prosecuters and judges are bought and unwilling to charge or convict their partners in crime), but I expect that there is a positive correlation between corruption conviction and corruption, and this is probably the best data we are going to get. Regardless, this is yet another reason to love Oregon politics. Not only do opposing candidate each have better policies than anyone in other states--making it a joy to vote there--but those candidates are also honest (for politicians).

I seriously miss Oregon. Right now I'm in Colorado, where Senator Ken Salazar has just been tapped for Secretary of the Interior, which I think was one of Obama's few bad choices in his appointment picks. Salazar is on my shit list for being one of the biggest advocates for giving Joe Lieberman everything despite his being incompetent and essentially a Republican. Further, Salazar was a choice for interior that oil companies like, which is a terrible sign. The interior department is in terrible shape (remember that department officials were found to have been bribed with money sex and drugs by oil companies, and that they have been ignoring, distorting, and sabotaging scientists concerning energy, endangered species, etc.) and will need someone impeccable to rehabilitate it. Oh well. Actually, Salazar is generally good about environmental and interior issues (he stopped Bush and the oil companies from exploiting areas in Western states), except that he's for off-shore drilling and farm subsidies (he voted against a bill that would have reformed farm subsidies and used the saved money for conservation). The real reason Colorado sucks politically is the fact that Salazar is one of the best representatives we've had in my lifetime. The Republican most likely to run against his appointed successor is Tom Tancredo, the guy from the 2008 primaries who hates Mexicans so much that he wants to stop all legal immigration (on the bright side, CO is getting bluer and Tancredo has a very slim chance of winning). Colorado has had representatives who on national television told the black host that gay people aren't obviously different from good normal people the way blacks are. Also, Colorado is home to extremist conservatives (I have seen a yard sign that says 'Fight terrorism: vote Republican' and a billboard that says "Help end terrorism: get the US out of the UN' [which I desperately wanted to spray paint to change 'UN' to 'Iraq']). In particular, my hometown of Colorado Springs is the central location of James Dobson's Focus on the Family. Again, I miss Oregon.

Strict

A South Korean actress was sentenced to eight months in jail (after two years of a suspended sentence) for adultery. I assume they define adultery as extra-marital sex committed by married persons, as opposed to any extra-marital sex including pre-marital sex, in which case I'm in trouble.

In general, South Korea has very little crime, probably due in part to the serious and strictly enforced laws. Good thing I am a law-abiding person...

Blogging from the deep

I'm ripping off Andrew Sullivan again, but this is awesome.

It's official

I now have a visa to Korea for a year in my passport and tickets to Seoul for Saturday, December 27th. Presumably I'll take the train to Daejeon.

The whole thing seems less surreal than it did earlier, but it still hasn't really sunk in that I'll be leaving in less than two weeks.

The View From My Window

Colorado Springs, CO, USA, 10:50am

(This post is a blatent rip off of Andrew Sullivan)

Meta-meta-blogging

I'm amused but not surprised to see that I'm not the only Reedie who uses the label 'metablog' for posts pertaining to blogs. I'm a big fan of the prefix and concept meta-, at least when it is used in the epistemological sense of 'an X about X'. For example, the strongest section of my thesis was meta-ontology, i.e. an inventory of all the possible ways to inventory existence. Other fun metas are metalanguage (Tarski!), metafiction (David Foster Wallace!), metaphilosophy (Wittgenstein!), and metajoke:

A performative poet of Hibernia
Rhymed himself into a hernia
He became quite adept
At this practise, except
For the occasional non-sequitur.

~Tom Stoppard, Travesties

On the flip side of this, I hate it when people misuse the word ("that's so meta" which is probably intended to mean so postmodern; 'metaphysics' as 'beyond physics', a mistranslation that has soiled the word 'metaphysics' by making it synonymous with 'whatever mystical bullshit people make up'; etc). I am indifferent towards the prefix when it means simply 'after', as in the word 'metaphysics' as used in philosophy, which originated from a book by Aristotle which was so titled because it was the book that came after his book of physics, and has nothing to do with aliens or angels or auras or other laughable nonsense.