Here’s my thought for the day. The Tea Party people say they’re angry about socialism, but maybe they’re really angry about capitalism. If there’s a sense of being looked down upon, it’s that sense of failure that’s built into a system that assures everyone they can make it to the top, but then reserves the top for only a tiny fraction of the strivers. Capitalism is also a system that lives off of change. When people say this isn’t the America they grew up in, they’re right. Nobody gets to grow old in the America they grew up in.

This is nothing new, of course. There is no logical reason for religious conservatives, the lower middle class, and rich businesspeople to belong to the same political party. It’s a pretty neat trick that people like Dick Armey and Glenn Beck have pulled.

The Oval Office was redecorated while Obama was on vacation — not at taxpayer expense, mind you.

When he moved in last year, he made some minor tweaks, changing some of the artwork, but now it’s a full-blown redesign.

The walls are striped. Hmm… it’s certainly different. The walls have been solid-colored ever since the current Oval Office was built under FDR. Now it looks less regal, more soothing. I wonder if it was redesigned by Michael Smith?

Here’s video.

I was fortunate not to have to take out student loans to pay for college, but for law school I did. So I began accumulating debt when I started law school in the fall of 1996. I graduated in 1999 and my first student loan payment was due in December 1999. On Thursday I finally paid off the loan. It took me 10 years and 8 months.

Back in 1999, paying off the loan looked daunting. I graduated law school without a job lined up, and I didn’t make a whole lot over the next year. Making the payment each month was basically putting one foot in front of the other, knowing that the finish line lay far in the unimaginable future but just trudging forward step by step in the meantime.

In addition to the student loan debt, I graduated law school about $4,000 in debt to a therapist I’d seen twice a week during school (stupid idea). And during my first year after graduating, I accumulated about $3,500 in credit card debt. It took me a couple of years to pay off the latter two debts, but the student loan has hung around my neck for the last decade. Now, student loan debt is considered “good” debt because it has a relatively low interest rate and it’s supposedly an investment in yourself, but I have never liked the idea of being in debt; I guess I’m old-fashioned that way. But I do hope to own property someday, so a mortgage is something I can live with, I guess.

For now, however, I am free and clear of any debt to anyone at all. I say this not to toot my own horn; I’m just really happy about it, and where else to write about it but here. It feels good to be debt-free.

Now I can start catching up on retirement savings, in which I’m woefully behind.

Looks like stuff doesn’t really kick in for me until September 20.

For example, I’ve always remembered that I moved into my first-year dorm at UVa on August 24, 1991. (Oddly, I started law school on the exact same date, five years later — though maybe it’s not so odd; each date moves ahead one day further in the week each year, so five years plus two leap days (in 1992 and 1996) equals seven days, and therefore August 24, 1996 fell on the same day of the week as August 24, 1991, and UVa always does its move-in on a Saturday in late August. Geekitude!)

So this afternoon I realized that it was 19 years ago today that I moved into my college dorm. And then I realized, wow — 19 years ago, most of today’s entering college students weren’t even born.

God, I feel old.

Laura Schlessinger quit her radio show yesterday (which she was apparently going to do soon anyway), and in an interview with Larry King, she said, “I want my First Amendment rights back, which I can’t have on radio without the threat of attack on my advertisers and stations.”

Linda Holmes at NPR has pointed out how ridiculous this statement is. Schlessinger’s First Amendment rights were never infringed.

But the First Amendment doesn’t guarantee that speaking your mind will have no economic consequences. Proclaiming that those without thick skins probably shouldn’t marry outside their race is always going to be, let us say, commercially risky if you’re aiming for a broad audience — or if your sponsors are. General Motors and Motel 6 both reportedly pulled their sponsorship over the flap, prior to Schlessinger’s decision to leave her show. But whether that’s the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do, it doesn’t implicate the government; it implicates the profit motive.

In fact, the organization of a boycott is itself the exercise of First Amendment rights — GLAAD, or the American Family Association, or Sarah Palin, or Laura Schlessinger, anyone can publicly advocate for an end to the economic support of someone else’s speech. If you want, you can boycott them back — “Okay, if GLAAD is boycotting Laura Schlessinger, then I’m boycotting anybody who donates to GLAAD.” It becomes reductive and unhelpful at some point, and it may or may not be justified, and one side or the other may be substantively right or wrong — but all of it, from every angle and every political position, is consistent with the idea of free expression.

Because the “free” in that concept means “free from government interference,” not “free from consequences.”

Awesomely put.

Here’s what he said in his first remarks:

As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable.

Here’s what he said the next day:

My intention was simply to let people know what I thought. Which was that in this country we treat everybody equally and in accordance with the law, regardless of race, regardless of religion. I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about.

A bit wishy-washy? Maybe. Contradictory? No.

The First Amendment is about the powers of the government. It begins:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…

The First Amendment restricts the power of Congress (and, through incorporation, the power of state governments). It says nothing at all about the actions or opinions of citizens. I think the creators of Park51 are completely justified in building the cultural center on the site they’ve chosen, and at this point I think they would be caving in to disgusting bigotry to build it elsewhere. On the basis of stubborn principle, they should build it wherever the hell they want.

But I also think it’s possible to disagree with this while still supporting the First Amendment.

Simply put, it’s impossible for a citizen to violate the First Amendment. The First Amendment is about the power of government. Just because you think there should be no law preventing the cultural center from being built in lower Manhattan doesn’t mean you can’t oppose it personally. Now, don’t get me wrong: I think those who oppose it are completely misguided, or uninformed, or opportunistic. But are they contradicting or violating the First Amendment? No.

In fact, on Rachel Maddow’s show the other night, Chris Hayes was the guest host, and he made hay out of some Republicans’ apparently contradictory statements that “yes, yes, we support the First Amendment but come on, it’s a really bad idea to build this cultural center in lower Manhattan.” How is this a contradiction?

I can see how it could be perceived as such. Yes, the First Amendment’s religion clauses are about the power of government, but read more broadly, they are a national declaration of principle, a declaration of an American ideal; they proclaim our obligation to collectively tolerate the rights of religious minorities to freely practice their religion wherever they wish.

So I understand where this is coming from. Some people are disappointed in Obama because they wanted a ringing, unambiguous declaration of religious freedom. Hell, Democrats want a ringing, unambiguous declaration from Obama about something. Meanwhile, the yahoos in the media love harping on any misstatement or apparent contradiction they can find, because it makes for a story.

So yes. Once again, our ploddingly professorial president has overestimated the intelligence of the American people and muddled his message. But did he contradict himself?

… sort of.

This is a situation where it would be really great not to be able to say I told you so.

And it’s great and all that Obama spent some political capital supporting religious freedom. I completely agree with him that an Islamic group has every right to build a community center wherever the hell it wants. But it would be nice if he spent some political capital on things that most Americans care about: jobs and the economy. When was the last time he gave a major White House speech on the economy and job creation? It’s not like there’s nothing he can do about it. If he grew some balls and proposed a job creation program, at least we’d have something constructive to talk about. Because the country will talk about whatever the president wants to talk about, as we can see.

And apparently what the president wants to talk about are these wonderful intellectual ideals instead of the meat-and-potatoes issues that are important to most people.

Bob Herbert is right:

President Obama missed his opportunity early last year to rally the public behind a call for shared sacrifice and a great national mission to rebuild the United States in a way that would create employment for millions and establish a gleaming new industrial platform for the great advances of the 21st century.

It would have taken fire and imagination, but the public was poised to respond to bold leadership. If the Republicans had balked, and they would have, the president had the option of taking his case to the people, as Truman did in his great underdog campaign of 1948.

Obama sucks as a leader. I am so tired of his inaction and timidity.

Be a fucking leader, god dammit.

Maybe we would have been better off with Hillary Clinton after all.