I wouldn’t have thought American politics would be able to find new ways to appall me, and yet: Senate Approves Resolution Denouncing MoveOn.org Ad. Further stupidity:

Mr. Obama had voted minutes earlier in favor of an extremely similar resolution proposed by Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California.

Ms. Boxer’s proposal, which failed, called for the Senate to “strongly condemn all attacks on the honor, integrity and patriotism” of anyone in the United States armed forces.

This is one of those strange limit-cases of contemporary liberalism: it’s an important principle of liberal democracies that the civilian government has formal control the military, but only, apparently, on condition that it never disagrees with the military.

Unexpectedly, the SFPD seem to be taking a leaf out of the Moscow police department’s book, discouraging people from coming to various Gay-Pride related events for “safety” reasons. This comes on the heels of the city’s idiotic response to the other main gay festival, Halloween, where their plan for the past few years has been to first claim the event can’t possibly go ahead safely, then refuse to engage in any planning as to how it might be organized, then try and shut it down while people are still arriving, then claim that the resulting chaos proves that the city was right all along. The SFPD’s problem here probably isn’t homophobia, though, but a more general hostility to any kind of collective use of public space (see also critical mass or the love parade, for instance).

The decision by tATu to attend Gay Pride in Moscow does strike me as genuinely admirable and even courageous; they are as charming as ever in an interview on the topic. And, in other tATu news, part of the novel on which tATu’s forthcoming film is based is available on the website of its author, Russian MP and pornographer Aleksey Mitrofanov.

I see that the theme for this year’s parade is “Pride Not Prejudice.” Good to see some innovative thinking there. The previous years’ themes of “Shame and Discrimination” and “Hatred and Regular Violence” were surprisingly poorly received.

The pious outrage Thursday over heiress Paris Hilton’s “early release” from jail in Los Angeles, accusations of “special treatment” and the vindictive demands that she receive “justice,” i.e., punishment, have nothing healthy or progressive about them.

Excellent article about Paris Hilton on the World Socialist Website. While k-punk’s criticisms of the musical defense of Paris Hilton are on target, that doesn’t rule out the value of a political defense. Or, not a defense of Paris Hilton herself (she hardly needs communists fighting her battles for her), but a defense of left-wing politics against the kind of thinking that goes into much of the hostility toward Hilton. An awful lot of the dislike of Paris Hilton really is misogynistic but that is, hopefully, easily identified and disposed of. But, as the WSWS argues, there’s a criticism of Paris Hilton that presents itself as left-wing but which is just as reactionary.

Hilton seems to get a lot of stick not just because she’s rich, but because she hasn’t either earned her wealth or used it in some kind of worthwhile way. To a communist, on the other hand, this is one of Hilton’s most positive qualities. Certainly, on any reasonably calibrated ethical scale, Paris Hilton is obviously superior to, say, Bill Gates or George Soros. Read more »

I didn’t really think it would be possible to come up with a way to make the American healthcare system worse, but our fine Governor has managed it. Worried about a system that leaves six million people without health care? Well then, just make it obligatory to buy health insurance! Who knew universal healthcare was so easy?

There was an exciting blogosphere controversy a little while ago, when John Edwards let himself be forced by some right-wingers into sacking some people from his campaign team because of stuff they’d said on their blogs. As Adam rightly says, this is a depressing but predictable example of the willingness (one might even say eagerness) of the supposed American left to capitulate to pressure from the right, even when the complaint being made is one that only makes sense in right-wing terms (see also Barak Obama, passim).

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One shouldn’t go around believing in them, of course, but I think there’s something to be said for the construction of conspiracy theories as a mode of political analysis; trying to come up with an entertaining conspiralogical explanation for events is a nice way of exploring the various interests and affects caught up in them. My current research focuses on who is really responsible for the Celebrity Big Brother racism row. My money is on the BNP and Ken Livingstone, hand-in-glove; doubtless one of the housemates was their cat’s-paw (Jo O’Meara, perhaps? Or Ian “H” Watkins, his lovable camp persona just a front).

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Now that Hillary Clinton has announced her candidacy:

The Democrats will, with the 2008 election of Hillary Clinton as President, finally succeed in their long-term goal of bringing real, live communism permanently, irrevocably, to our shores.

“If only,” you’re saying.

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The Guardian last week saw some particularly high-quality entries in the competition to write the stupidest thing possible about religion. Tobias Jones is terrified of “totalitarian” Richard Dawkins, who is apparently poised to carry out a genocide of religious believers. A. C. Grayling fights back, accusing homophobic protestors of “an obscenity against human rights” (whatever that means), and a desire to institute widespread torture. Grayling loses in the “who’s the stupidest” stakes because the particular religious people he is incoherently attacking are indeed bastards; but Jones does say one thing that is slightly suprising and might be worth a bit more comment:

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Well, that’s not what John Denham is actually saying. He doesn’t need to say it or even think it, as it’s the implicit New Labour model behind this bold policy initiative:

Unemployed people convicted of crimes should receive tougher sentences than those with full-time jobs or caring responsibilities, a leading Labour MP will say today.

John Denham, chair of the influential home affairs select committee, will call for an overhaul of community sentencing to enable courts to mete out tougher punishments for the jobless on the grounds that they have more time on their hands.

California is, politically, an odd place. It has a reputation as one of the “bluest” states (which, in America’s curious chromo-semantics means “left wing”); but it’s also a home of libertarianism, which coexists with the left in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles. This combination makes California an interesting testing-ground for neo-liberalism, a form of right-wing politics adapted to post-New Deal (or post-Fordist) politics. One of the first moves here was Proposition 13, which capped tax rates, with predictable disasterous consequences not just for particular public services in California, but for the ability of the state to function as a political agent at all. We now face a new neo-liberal experiment, Proposition 90, which, in the guise of a “progressive” reform of eminent domain, would require any administration within the state to compensate property owners if their property lost value as a result of legislative measures. This is a staggering attack on the very idea of politics: the community will now have to pay in order to enage in collective decision making. In this, it is neo-liberalism in its purest form.

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