I know where God comes from now

"It's time to go to bed, Sophie."

"Why?"

"Because it's dark and cold out."

"Why?"

"Because the sun went down."

"Why?"

"Because it's bedtime, even for the sun."

"Why?"

"Because... the laws of physics, that's why."

In our house it's TLoP, but I can totally see why someone would finally devolve to Goddidit or even just because-I-said-so. The invention of theology is a consequence of having two-year-olds.

Peggy Noonan accidentally mentions the truth

While bitterly complaining about Romney's mismanaged campaign, Peggy Noonan remarks:

A campaign is a communal exercise. It isn't about individual entrepreneurs. It's people pitching in together, aiming their high talents at one single objective: victory.

And so is a country, Ms. Noonan, except the goal is survival, which is somewhat more important than victory.

Amazing, isn't it, that Republican philosophy asserts that all economic progress comes from the genius of Promethean job-creators, that without the direct oversight of these individual, singular heroes we would all starve like lemmings... but the trivial act of winning a dog-and-pony show apparently requires communism.

Nothing like watching a Reagan speech-writer throw the entire Republican philosophy under a bus just so they can win an election. Tells you what they really think is important, doesn't it?

Reality has a liberal bias

The whole article is well worth reading, but it is summed up here:

My old Republican worldview was flawed because it was based upon a small and particularly rosy sliver of reality.  To preserve that worldview, I had to believe that people had morally earned their “just” desserts, and I had to ignore those whining liberals who tried to point out that the world didn’t actually work that way.

Why I left the GOP

I have heard that sentiment from people who should know better; people who actually worked their way up from nothing and somehow decided that because they could, anyone can. People who acknowledge that they have been lucky - people who have literally won the lottery - and yet still feel that economic success is directly tied to personal character.

The bias of self-justification is strong. It affects all of us. Many people seem afraid to acknowledge the true strength of luck in their success, as if that would somehow cheapen its value. That, itself, is an absurd concept: there is no success, anywhere, ever, that did not depend upon a thousand factors aligning out of the blue. In the old days they knew this, and counted such luck as the favor of the gods; in our modern, secular era, we think men are gods and make their own luck - or lack of it. As little as I value the concept of gods, it was a still a superior theory than the Ayn Randian fantasy of self-creation.

Two years before the mast

I've been in Australia two years now. Honestly, it feels like one. Maybe time just goes slower on this side of the globe?

The only line you need to hear from Obama's speech

"Climate change is not a hoax."

Forget all the policy, and the economics, and everything else: those are details. At the core of everything is process; details are merely a product of process. Science, for example, is a process for generating facts/details; theology, ideology, and pulling things out of your ass are other processes.

And in that one statement, in the mere fact that Obama had to even issue the statement, it is revealed in stark clarity that one political party chooses science as a process, and one does not.

Regardless of your position on any other issue, this single fact alone compels rational voters to one and only one choice.

(I feel compelled by fairness to point out that this did not use to be true; that the Republican party has a long tradition of hard-nosed rationality while the Democrats were into moonbeams and unicorns; but things have changed.)

The only line you need to hear from Bill Clinton's speech

"Since 1961 … our private economy produced 66 million private-sector jobs. So what's the jobs score? Republicans 24 million, Democrats 42 million."

Politifact says...
Clinton’s figures check out, and they also mirror the broader results we came up with two years ago. Partisans are free to interpret these findings as they wish, but on the numbers, Clinton’s right. We rate his claim True.

The horses won't shut up

More Republican-bashing, from Republicans:

Today’s Republicans strongly believe that individuals determine their own fates. In a Pew Research Center poll, for example, 57 percent of Republicans believe people are poor because they don’t work hard...

The fact is our destinies are shaped by social forces much more than the current G.O.P. is willing to admit. The skills that enable people to flourish are not innate but constructed by circumstances.

David Brooks

Is it fair to call it bashing when it's just the simple truth?

I would be remiss if I didn't link to this:

Paul Ryan's speech in 3 words- dazzling, deceiving, and distracting

Bobo is a well-known shill for the Republicans, so his criticism carries a sting; I don't know Sally Kohn, but her criticism appears on Fox News website, so I think that counts as a Republican source.