If, horror of horrors, Mitt Romney were to win the election, do you know what this means?

PAUL RYAN would be only a lack-of-heartbeat away from the Presidency!

So, foreclosures. They're happening a lot, a lot more than they should, and for bad reasons. We all know this.

I came upon this story here, in which a group of Occupy Atlanta people set up camp on the lawn of a police officer whose home is being foreclosed upon, to try and block the eviction. I applaud this move and any like it. But, it seems, the commenters were not all of the same mind.

I noted a number of posters complaining about this as somehow immoral, allowing people to "live in homes they haven't paid for" or something like that. Two things I have to say in response.

First, we know that the banks have been engaging in widespread fraudulent foreclosures. We know that the banks have engaged in fraudulent mortgage lending, and fraudulent securitizing of known high-risk mortgages. Given this fact, ANY foreclosure in today's economic and regulatory circumstances is highly suspect. So, why do they want to blame the victims, instead of the perpetrators? I suspect the "just world" fallacy, but I can't entirely rule out less savory mindsets.

Second, it is in society's best interests to keep people in their homes. Foreclosure should be a last resort, not a routine action, and loan modification, restructuring, payment assistance, even forgiveness of debt in extreme hardship are all preferable and very supportable actions by the banks, or by the government. Kicking people out of their homes and disrupting their lives is bad for society at large, and constitutes a much greater moral hazard than "letting" people "get away with" not repaying the full mortgage, if they are truly unable.

So, in closing, I say that this moralizing about "rules are rules" and "how dare someone get away with this" is entirely misguided. Contracts are not the highest moral law, and in fact, it is often necessary to abrogate them, and to forgive debts, when the social and economic landscape has become too unbalanced. The mentality that those less fortunate who need help are "getting away with" anything is highly immoral.

"We don't allow faster than light neutrinos in here," said the bartender.

So, this neutrino walked into a bar.

So, apparently, Osama bin Laden is dead. That's interesting, and I suppose it marks some symbolic victory, but what have we gained?

Our hyped up state of fear of the rest of the world, particularly the Muslim world, is not going to vanish overnight. Our excessive and unnecessary curtailing of civil liberties, resurgence of paranoid right-wing reactionaries, and broadening of the "national security state" will not be stopped by this.

We have killed a terrorist leader, but only after being terrorized by his specter for ten years. And let's not pretend that the worst elements of our own society, which have cynically used the (overblown, post-9/11) threat of bin Laden to gain power and influence, will simply go back to the margins like they should. The overt racism and religious bigotry, the rampant resurgence of overt misogyny, all galvanized by "us or them" thinking on the part of our leaders and fed by an extreme right-wing that has been seeking an excuse for years if not decades, these things will not fade away.

Nor will the paranoid overbroadening of police powers disappear. We still have Gitmo, the use of torture against civilians, two wars, warantless wiretapping and surveillance, and the overall abandonment of our moral high ground on the subject of human and civil rights on our national conscience. We have, these past ten years, fought monsters so hard that we have become monsters.

In the final analysis, Osama bin Laden has won. So why are we celebrating?

It's funny how, when Joe Stack flies a plane into an IRS building because he hates paying taxes and wants to strike a blow against the government, he's clearly a guy who just snapped.

But when Nidal Malik Hassan shoots up Fort Hood after enduring years of harrassment and intimidation by his fellow soldiers, he is immediately branded a terrorist and no talk of "just snapping" is tolerated by the media.

So, the Atlantic Monthly and National Journal, bastions of traditional media, conducted a survey of prominent members of the news media whether they thought the internet was helping or hurting journalism.

Three guesses which one they said. The first two don't count.

That's right: Media Insiders Say Internet Hurts Journalism was the Atlantic's headline.

Color me shocked.

I found this story on Shakesville, in a story Melissa McEwan had titled "Maybe You Should Try Not Sucking". Other suggested headlines from the comment thread: "Media Insiders Admit to Cluelessness About How to Make Money on the Internet", "Media Insiders Resent Being Caught And Called Out On Their Pathetic, Lazy, Biased Screed Masquerading As News. Details at 11.", and my own, "Media Insiders Hate Competition, Being Shown Up For Falling Down On Job".

To be fair, they are right in one sense: the internet IS hurting journalism, if you define "journalism" the way they do, namely "pronouncements of our opinions as The Truth From On High".

The internet has done a huge number on their monopoly on public discourse, and they're really mad about that. They're important people, dammit! They know this is true because they say so!

Put more generally, they've defined journalism as "what it is that we do, as Important Journalists". Since they have, over the past thirty years, stopped doing actual journalism (in the dictionary sense) and taken on the role of blathering opinion-spouters who speak in soundbites and often don't bother actually researching, that, in their mind, is journalism.

So when people on the internet start actually doing research, and presenting nuanced and detailed views of the world, it feels like an attack on their world of "journalism", and they react with hostility. Because, hey, if just any person can present opinions and soundbites, and amateurs on the internet can present real journalism better than they can, then that might mean that they really aren't as Important and Vital as they insist they are! Why, then the common people might start doing journalism, and we can't have that!

I keep seeing posts on the blagosphere, and hearing in the news, about people who are absolutely infuriated at the mere idea of using any bailout money to help people with failing mortgages directly. Give it to the wealthy corporations who leveraged those bad mortgages into oblivion and wrecked the economy? Sure, no problem. But give money to people who might otherwise lose their homes? Gasp, no! We can't have that! Those people were stupid and didn't do their homework! We can't be going around rewarding stupidity and failure! They should have KNOWN that this would happen!

Really?

Well, let's have a look at this clip from the Daily Show, which once again proves that the best news reporting in America is coming from comedians, of all places:



So, really...who was stupid? Who was a loser? Who failed?

I was just thinking about the apparent passage of Proposition 8 in California, which re-bans same-sex marriage by amending the state constitution.

Now, that same state constitution guarantees equality before the law to all citizens. This amendment clearly violates that principle.

Absent a successful legal challenge based on that conflict (several have already been filed), it seems to me that there is only one way to resolve it: while Prop 8 remains in effect, the state of California must refuse to issue marriage licenses to anyone.

It's not likely that this would happen, especially considering that the legal challenges to Prop 8's passage have a good chance of succeeding...but wouldn't it be awesome, in an odd way, to see? It would certainly stick in the craws of the fundies who pushed so hard for this discriminatory measure to succeed.

I got linked to this by neintales. It's from dark_christian: "Block African witchcraft curses against McCain and Palin NOW!"

According to this post, Muslim Kenyan relatives of Obama are using witchcraft to curse McCain and Palin, "weaving lazy 8's around McCain's mind to make him look confused and like an idiot".

My favorite comment in the community: "I'm a witch, and trust me, wasting effort casting spells to make water flow downhill and ice be cold is not what we do."

Never mind the fact that no self-respecting Muslim would EVER use anything akin to "witchcraft" or ritual magic. Hell, in some Muslim countries, they still execute people for it!

Following the primaries, I'm still very much undecided whether I want to support Obama or not. Both my first choice (Edwards) and my second (Clinton) have come out in support of him, and that says a lot to me.

But then I hear about stuff like this, in which protestors and dissenters at an Obama rally were systematically excluded and dismissed by his campaign's operatives. And it makes me wonder...isn't this Bush stuff? If Obama means to unify the party, how come his campaign's actions seem geared toward unity through purge?

Very discomfitting. If Obama turns out to be Bush Lite, then my choices at the ballot box will be Bush Lite or Bush Redux. Not much of a choice, is it?