Meanwhile, in Barcelona

I've written before about Reverend Billy Talen. His latest action was in Barcelona:

About 80 people accompanied Reverend Billy and Savitri D - founders of the New York City based Church of Stop Shopping - to a political ritual, "Naked Grief" in the lobby of the Deutschebank in Barcelona's Placa Catalunya at noon today. The action was organized with activists and artists of The Influencers Festival. After entering the bank lobby, the crowd began dramatically weeping. Savitri D disrobed, and as the Barcelonans around her cried, Reverend Billy implored the "God of Deutsche Bank" to stop investing in CO2 emitting coal-fired power plants. Eventually coal was poured over the head and shoulders of the "Naked Mother" as the crying crowd shouted "Earthalujah!"

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Conservative Fantasy Role Playing

I wonder sometimes how a modern conservative maintains. Romney has won the New Hampshire primary.  All the buzz now is how he’s going to have a much tougher fight in South Carolina, primarily because of the religious and social conservatives who will see him as “not conservative enough.”  There is a consortium of social conservatives meeting this week in Texas to discuss ways to stop him, to elevate someone more to their liking to the nomination.  And right there I have to wonder at what it means anymore to be a conservative. I grew up, probably as many people my age did, thinking of conservatism as essentially penurious and a bit militaristic.  Stodgy, stuffy, proper.  But mainly pennypinching.  A tendency to not do something rather than go forward with something that might not be a sure thing. I suppose some of the social aspect was there, too, but in politics that didn’t seem important.  I came of age with an idea of fiscal conservatism as the primary trait. That doesn’t square with the recent past.  The current GOP—say since Ronny Reagan came to power—has been anything but fiscally conservative, although what they have spent money on has lent them an aura of responsible, hardnosed governance.   Mainly the military, but also subsidies for businesses.  But something has distorted them since 1981 and has turned them into bigger government spenders than the Democrats ever were.  (This is not open to dispute, at least not when broken down by administrations.  Republican presidents have overseen massive increases in the deficit as opposed to Democratic administrations that have as often overseen sizable decreases in the deficit, even to the point of balancing the federal budget.  You may interpret or spin this any way you like, but voting trends seem to support that the choices Republican presidents have made in this regard have been supported by Republican congressmen even after said presidents have left office.) [More . . . ]

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Funding ignorance

At Common Dreams, Bill McKibben offers this staggering statistic:

The Chamber of Commerce spent more money on the 2010 elections than the Republican and Democratic National Committees combined, and 94% of those dollars went to climate-change deniers. That helps explain why the House voted last year to say that global warming isn’t real.

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