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May 31, 2006

The big one that got away?

Greg Sargent has a story that will make your jaw drop.

The short version: Judith Miller had information--before September 2001--that Al Qaeda was planning a large-scale attack on the US, former NYTimes editor Steve Engelberg held back the story because it wasn't firm enough, and managing editor Bill Keller (above Engelberg on the organizational chart) never heard about the story until much later.

Read the whole thing, and wonder what might (not) have been--if an editorial call had gone the other way, or if Miller's reporting had been less worthy of suspicion.

Oregon angle: Engelberg, whose middle name is "hindsight", is now managing editor of the Oregonian.

Posted by Nothstine at 07:26 PM |

Cadence

Brother Bill Moyers, a man who should be declared a national treasure, has a wonderful piece on why public broadcasting can't simply be replaced by 400 channels of commercial television. It has a historical perspective that few but geezers remember first-hand (honestly--how many of you knew that public television got its birth certificate when television was barely a decade old?). Excerpt:

The bill passed. When he signed it, the President said that the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 "announces to the world that our nation wants more than just material wealth; our nation wants more than 'a chicken in every pot.' We in America have an appetite for excellence, too…At its best, public television would help make our nation a replica of the old Greek marketplace, where public affairs took place in view of all its citizens." He got it. Even a man hardened and compromised by the dog-eat-dog, knock-down-drag-out backroom brawls of hardball politics knew that a vigorous artistic, cultural, and intellectual forum is important to the health of democracy. So he said at the signing, "Today we rededicate a part of the airwaves - which belong to all the people - and we dedicate them for the enlightenment of all the people."

And Moyers not only tells the story most of us have forgotten--the story of how people once dreamed that we could get news, learning, and even entertainment that wasn't completely whored out to commercial interests, and that this would be a good thing--he manages to tell it with a rhetorical signature, an ear for the well constructed phrase, that's largely missing from public discourse today:

It's right in our own PBS guidelines. Go to Paragraph F, under headline "Courage and Controversy."

You will read there: "The ultimate task of weighing and judging information and viewpoints is, in a free and open society, the task of the audience."

You will read there the pledge we have made as public broadcasters to seek "content that provides courageous and responsible treatment of issues, and that reports and comments, with honesty and candor, on social, political and economic tensions, disagreements and divisions."

You will read there the promise that our "overall content will offer a broad range of opinions and points of view, including those from outside society's existing consensus" - those from outside society's existing consensus.

We couldn't ask for a clearer statement of our mission.

We couldn't find a more affirmative reason for being.

We couldn't want a more resounding call to action.

I read those guidelines from time to time when I grow faint of heart, or my knees turn weak, or my resolve falters after I've been attacked by people who don't like us - people representing power, privilege, or ideology who despise any journalist who shatters the silence. Reading them, I realize again how corporate media pollutes the meaning of "fair and balanced" with the pretense that two well-rehearsed sound bites by representatives of self-serving interests constitutes "analysis" of the news.

I believe in "fair and balanced."

I say let's be more fair than anyone else. Let's be as fair to Main Street as we are to Wall Street - to the working men and women of America as we are to the big corporations, big government, and big investors.

Let's be as fair to poor families as we are to the First Family and the Royal Family (Yes, I looked up one evening, as more deaths were occurring in Iraq, more suffering was being endured on the Gulf Coast, and more Americans were losing their healthcare, and there on my public television screen was a special on "The Royals and their Pets.")

Let's be as fair to the skeptic of official policy as we are to its spokesman, as fair to the commoner as to the celebrity, and as fair to the lived experience of ordinary people as we are to the calculated opinion of think tank experts.

I'm for balance.

Let's balance the spin with the evidence, the rhetoric with the record, and opinion with reporting.

It's a little thing we like to call cadence.

(Cross-posted at p3)

Posted by Nothstine at 03:54 PM | | TrackBack

Comments issues whilst we battle the Dark Side

Dear PKers:

I've been getting emails from folks who are frustrated that they've been unable to leave comments.

We've been getting another deluge of comment and trackback spam. What's likely happened is that in my effort to combat the bandwidth thieves trying to shop their porn and pharma, I've set the Blacklist too tight.

I'll try and go through the Blacklist tonight and see if I can't loosen things up a little.

I'm sorry for the frustrations. Please bear with us while we get this right.

Posted by Carla at 03:35 PM | | TrackBack

Everything is On the Rise in Iraq

Iraq war apologists are bringing out an old argument to try to allay concerns about the war. They're saying that "Iraq is less violent that Washington, DC." Supposedly, it is also less violent than Detroit, Baltimore, Atlanta, and St. Louis. The whole point is that things are all hunky-dory over there and we should quit worrying about all the violence we are reading about in the newspapers. Those daily car bombings? No big deal.

I'm not the only one who doubts the statistics that form the basis of these statements in the first place. But even if they are correct, it's important to note that the murder rate in Islamic countries is traditionally far lower than in the West, and the death rates being cited are only those caused by Coalition forces. Civilians are dying at a much higher rate today than they did when Saddam Hussein was in control of Iraq. But don't just take my word for it. A team of senior British academics last year said Iraqi civilian deaths had "spiraled upwards."

Data collected by Iraq Body Count - an independent organization set up to monitor the human cost of the war - also revealed the number of violent incidents has soared during the past 12 months.

"Violent incidents" - that means violent crimes in addition to murders.

They criticize the U.S. and British governments for failing to track civilian deaths while painstakingly logging their own dead and wounded, creating a distorted picture of the human cost of the war.

The war has resulted in a dramatic increase in suffering for the Iraqi people that is largely being ignored by media outlets such as Fox News:

Malnutrition rates in children under five have almost doubled since the US-led invasion - to nearly 8% by the end of last year.
Sectarian tensions are on the rise.
Acid attacks on immodest women are on the rise.
The Christian murder rate is on the rise.
Militias are on the rise.
Kidnapping is on the rise.
Killings and expulsions are on the rise.
Tuberculosis is on the rise.
Drug abuse is on the rise.
Rape is on the rise.
"Temporary marriages" (legalized Islamic prostitution) are on the rise.

Can the Administration just for once stop the bullshit here? You broke it – it's time to own up to it.

Posted by Becky at 11:48 AM | | TrackBack

Choosing women's health over sexual politics

Every once in a while our paper of record here in Oregon hits one out of the park. This editorial on the craven political pandering by the Food and Drug Administration looks like a dinger over the Green Monster:

The Food and Drug Administration knows it could prevent scores of unintended pregnancies and devastating abortions by approving emergency contraception for over-the-counter sale. It hasn't, despite the best available medical advice, because of pressure from conservative religious groups.

This decision to value sexual politics over women's health has damaged the reputation of this federal agency. More important, it has needlessly hurt women and their families. Next month, the FDA has a chance to mend some of the damage by approving a new vaccine against a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.

The idea of vaccinating young girls against a sexually transmitted disease causes discomfort among some of the same groups that oppose contraception. But the chance to prevent cancer is too powerful and extraordinary to deny.

I've always said that the "abortion" debate from the so-called "pro-life" crowd was never about ending fetuses. Not really. Its about controlling the choices women have over their bodies and lives.

The fact that these conservative religious organizations would put the lives of women at risk because the disease they may contract is sexually transmitted is antithetical to anything resembling pro-life. Its what I've always said it is: ANTI-CHOICE.

The O sums it up nicely:

A cervical cancer vaccine will mark an important landmark for women's health. But as long as the FDA, against medical advice, keeps emergency contraception behind a hurdle, it will send a signal that politics matters more to this administration than health.

Which would put the FDA pretty much on track with the rest of the Executive Branch under President Bush.

Posted by Carla at 07:35 AM | | TrackBack

May 30, 2006

Christian Youth Being Indoctrinated to Kill Infidels

A couple of weeks ago I asked the question Should We Fear the Teen Mania Battle Cry? Today I came across an article that answers that question for me: Yes, we should.

Pastor Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life," with the full support of Tim LaHaye, author of the "Left Behind" series, has created a new video game which he intends to release by October – just in time for Christmas. The video game is an extremely violent game in which born again Christians prowl the streets of New York City giving people an opportunity to convert or be killed. Then, as they blow the infidels away, they say, "Praise the Lord." If you wish, however, you can be part of the army of the Antichrist and release demons to devour Christians when you find them.

This video game, in my opinion, validates the fears of people who have been saying that Teen Mania's Battle Cry language may, indeed, be more than simply a call to be dedicated to Christ. It may be a part of a planned fundamentalist indoctrination of children intended to pursue a violent takeover of our country.

Mr. Warren … describes himself as a "stealth evangelist" and describes his training programs as "a stealth movement, that's flying beneath the radar, that's changing literally hundreds, even thousands of churches around the world."

Warren is not limting his goals to changing the U.S. only. He has decided to turn other nations into "purpose-driven" nations based on his dominion theology as well. He's chosen a real plumb to start with:

Celebrants included Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, a tiny east African country that lost hundreds of thousands of people when it suffered genocide in 1994. Catholic and Protestant clergy have been convicted in connection with that genocide. Yet Mr. Kagame announced that he would allow Mr. Warren to turn his country into the first purpose driven nation.

Perhaps he has chosen Rwanda because he already knows the people there are so hateful of each other after decades of war atrocities that many are willing to accept any reason offered as an excuse to resume killing each other. But what about people here at home?

On both sides of the political aisle lately I am increasingly hearing off-handed comments about a French Revolution or a second civil war. People seem to feel they have no alternative left to just killing those who are destroying the country. For some it's the damned liberals and for others it's the damned neocons, but across the board people feel something is desperately wrong and we are running out of options. Meanwhile the damned radical Christian fundamentalists are continuing to build their militaristic movement right under our damned noses. And I'm damned uncomfortable with it.

Posted by Becky at 10:42 AM | | TrackBack

Big Energy Takes to Authoring School Textbooks

You might at first think it's a good think that a 7th grade science textbook is telling children to use sun block. That is, until you learn what kind of sun block the book is talking about.

One father is raising the alarm after reading his child's 7th grade science textbook which teaches that chemtrails and the air pollution generated by coal burning are creating a helpful sunscreen to protect us from getting skin cancer.

The chemtrails section is found in the Centre Point Learning Science I Essential Interactions science book. Under "Solutions for Global Warming", section 5.19 features a photo of a big multi-engine jet sporting a familiar orange/red paint scheme.

The caption reads: "Figure 1- Jet engines running on richer fuel would add particles to the atmosphere to create a sunscreen".

It seems the energy moguls have taken to authoring textbooks (did it ever occur to you they would do that?). If that wasn't bad enough, they're only giving the kids one side of the story.

Airborne soot also blocks sunlight, lowering greenhouse temperatures. Volcanic eruptions like Krakatoa and Pinatubo - and globe-circling soot from 1,000 burning oil wells during Desert Storm - belched enough sulphur into the stratosphere to cause a plunge in world temperatures, temporarily slowing global warming.

World scientists looking at deliberately putting megatons more sulphur into a closed, recirculating atmosphere already smoggy enough to depresses orbiting astronauts, decided that a sulphur sunscreen is not a swift idea.

But not this Jr. High science text. "Creating either kind of sunscreen would be cheap," it tells young readers. As if "cheap" is the only consideration.

Like this concerned dad, I'm wondering why the book isn't teaching kids about "planting trees, or turning down thermostats, or bicycling, or any of the other ways not to add to the problem?"

Posted by Becky at 09:26 AM | | TrackBack

Terrorizing Journalists to Preempt Real News?

The Iraq war is now officially the deadliest war for reporters in the past century. 71 journalists and 26 members of media support staff have been killed in Iraq, and 42 journalists have been kidnapped.

"It is absolutely striking," Ann Cooper, the executive director of the CPJ, said on Monday. "We talk to veteran war correspondents who have covered everything going back to Vietnam and through Bosnia. Even those who have seen a number of different wars say they have never seen something like this conflict."

Back in January, Kimberley Dozier, who was seriously injured over the weekend by a roadside bomb, wrote about the fear that journalists, soldiers, and the Iraqi people confront on a daily basis.

It took us a while to admit we were targets, and start to change the way we work — adding bodyguards, armoured vehicles, blast walls outside our hotels, and so on. But now going into Iraq is like being flung into a pot of water you can see boiling from a great height from far away. Inwardly, you’re screaming, “Arghh,” then you stifle it with a mental “Ulp.” […]

I’m fine. That is, until I get myself and a cameraman, soundman and perhaps a producer invited on a trip across town with the US military, just like our ABC colleagues Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt did.[…]

But if you want to tell their story, you have to take their risks. If we, the journalists, are sitting in hot water, the troops are hopping around on Hell’s coals. It’s even worse for the Iraqi army and police. And then you’ve got the Iraqi people, who are not restricted to tours of duty and have no ticket out.

A writer for Al Jazeera has concluded that the U.S. forces are actually allowing journalists to be killed on purpose in order to prevent them from telling the world what is really going on in Iraq.

Last week, Isam Rasheed, a freelance journalist, and Fumikazu Nishitani, head of Osaka-based NGO Rescue the Iraqi Children, briefed a public gathering in Osaka on the true situation in Iraq. "It is now virtually impossible for foreign journalists to move around independently in Iraq," Nishitani said.

One of the biggest secrets the U.S. is trying to hide, he writes, is the results that will forever be visited on the Iraqi people of our use of depleted uranium munitions.

[H]ow can the world know about the true extent of the devastation in Iraq, if reporters, who complain that harassment and intimidation by American soldiers in Iraq is growing, can’t do their job well. Journalists are the only people who’re able to transfer the Iraqis’ sufferings to the entire world.[…]

“U.S. military fire is the second-leading cause of death. At least nine journalists and two media support staff have died as a result of US fire in Iraq in the last 23 months."

Has killing become part of the Pentagon “Press Policy”?

Interesting question.

Posted by Becky at 09:23 AM | | TrackBack

May 29, 2006

Support for Marriage Amendment Based on a Fallacy

Jeff Hall spells out in an excellent editorial entitled Since When Did Marriage Become a Christian Institution? precisely why the arguments in favor of Bill Frist's "Marriage Protection Amendment" (S.J. Res. 1, which the Senate will begin debating in a week) are based on a false understanding of Christian history. The amendment in question reads:

“Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.”

Christians are rallying in support of the amendment as a means of protecting an institution they believe was created by God and which they see as symbolic of Jesus's relationship with the Christian church. What they don't realize is that neither the Bible nor early Christian history supports their position. It is no secret that the Old Testament is replete with polygamy (one of the bogeymen that supporters of the marriage amendment say it would prevent) and disrespect of women and marriage (which we must only hope is not representative of how God views his relationship with mankind).

But what about the New Testament? Contrary to the assertions of The Da Vinci Code, Jesus was actually quite averse to marriage. He often preached against it, saying, for example, "I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life." (Luke 18:29) Jesus also claimed in Matthew 22:30 that no one would be married in heaven (if that is the truth, think about what it means for all those happily married Christians who won't be married anymore when they meet up with their spouses in heaven).

Early on, Romans felt that Christians were the ones who threatened the fabric of the traditional family. Conservative Romans like Celsus (ca.185) were disturbed by Christian calls to renounce traditional religion, the Roman state, and the traditional family.

When it came to marriage, historian Edward Gibbon writes that early Christians tolerated it as “a defect,” and exalted celibacy “as the nearest approach to the divine perfection.” According to Gibbon, the early Church fathers believed Adam would have best served God had he remained a virgin: “The use of marriage was permitted only to his fallen posterity, as a necessary expedient to continue the human species, and as a restraint…on the natural licentiousness of desire.” […]

In his book, The Confessions, church father Saint Augustine repeatedly acknowledges that chastity is the most Christian path to take. In one instance, he points to Matthew 19:11-12, in which Jesus recommends being a eunuch (a castrated or sexless man): “The one who can accept this should accept it.”

Two well-known Christian historians also disdained marriage. Origen wrote, "Matrimony is impure and unholy, a means of sexual passion." Tertullian characterized marriage as "more dreadful than any punishment or any death." I suppose many today might agree. Fortunately, I am not among them.

But make no mistake, the anti-gay marriage amendment is really about taking steps toward theocracy based on a particular, modern version of Christianity, which aims to claim the institution of marriage as its own and define it in a particular way when in fact, throughout history, it has been viewed in many ways by many cultures, including Jewish and Christian cultures.

Posted by Becky at 11:42 AM | | TrackBack

Attacking the messenger

The heroic John Murtha is once again speaking out against what appears to be another atrocity committed by US forces in Iraq, this time in Haditha.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Marine General Peter Pace is cautioning folks to wait until an investigation has ensued. Unfortunately for Pace--the Abu Ghraib scandal showed us that not only will the government actively work to cover up scandal like this--they'll send their attack dogs in force to rip apart anyone who questions the government on it.

It would seem the memo has already gone out to the rightwing attackosphere:

Michelle Malkin says Murtha has rushed to judgement.

John at Powerline calls Abu Ghraib "overblown" and that we must wait for the investigation to wrap up. He also blasts Murtha for saying that killings "may" hurt our cause in Iraq, calling Murtha's behavior "disgusting". Earth to John: Looking for disgusting? Read your blog. Anyone who believes that sexual humiliation of prisoners is "overblown" lacks morals and scruples. Continuing to carry water for this Administration and the horrid acts committed by some in our military is disgusting. Enough is enough.

Some hack calling itself California Conservative goes completely over a cliff:

The issue is not about whether or not a crime was committed and should be investigated (Note: the matter remains under ongoing active investigation) or, if found guilty, whether the soldiers should be held accountable, everyone can agree on that.

The issue is what Jack Murtha is seeking to accomplish by eagerly airing the dirty laundy in public? His actions are purposefully damaging the reputation of our military, and also providing political ammo to our enemies here and in the Middle East who can point the finger at “evil” America and continue to incite violence in the region.

Just because the local 6 o’clock news, “reporting” in accordance with the guidelines of political correctness, doesn’t identify the race/skin color of a rapist or murderer doesn’t mean that a crime hasn’t been committed and that the investigation isn’t serious. Or does it?

Murtha certainly knows better. And maybe he should exercise some true political correctness when it really counts: protecting

If we've done something wrong in our efforts in Iraq..we should own up to them: publicly. It absolutely undermines any good thing we do there when there's even a hint of wrongdoing, much less an all-out murder of civilians.

Murtha's actions are purposefully helping the military. Its forcing the military to examine its actions and training. And it holds the military accountable to the people--whose tax dollars pay for it and who sanctions its existance.

Conservatives erode any progress we make in Iraq by continually trying to cover up and make excuses for wrongdoing. They demand zero accountability for anyone who isn't a Republican. It ruins the credibility of our nation and demonstrates a fundamental dissrespect for everyone: including themselves.

Posted by Carla at 09:09 AM | | TrackBack

May 28, 2006

Taking a (hopefully) short sabbatical

Several weeks ago I was given a preliminary diagnosis by my doctor of Hyperthyroidism and had it confirmed Friday by the endocrinologist that she referred me to. Some of you are probably wondering what that has to do with PK. Well, if I might flatter myself just enough to presume that at least some of you noticed my conspicuous absence over the last few days, that ties in with the hyperthyroid issue... I think.

I remember vividly when my doctor called me a month ago with the initial results of the bloodwork she'd sent me to get done. I'd been having racing pulse-rate and according to the blood test results hyperthyroid was the culprit. It was a short conversation, but she told me that I'd be "hard to live with" and then after a short half-laugh she expressed sympathy for those close to me. I mentally brushed it aside thinking it was preposterous because I've always been known far and wide as a very easy going guy. Some have suggested that I'm too easy going, particularly as a single parent.

The thing is, while I know the starting point of my diagnosis, neither I nor my doctor know when it started. Although we're both assuming that it is fairly recent. At least not going back beyond the beginning of this year.

I kinda got into with Carla and TJ in comments the other day and haven't posted or commented since. Long story short, that disagreement moved to email and continued on. Which was probably a mistake because the disagreement only deepened into a rift. But, convinced of the rightness of my position I doggedly held out, not wanting to give an inch of ground.

So anyway, in frustration I decided to take a long drive this afternoon, contemplating quitting PK and who I was going to transfer ownership of the domain name to. And it wasn't until I was on the return trip home that something clicked in my head. You see, on Friday night I was watching Oregon Public Broadcasting TV as usual and there was a documentary on called Out of the Shadows which is about the mother of the woman who made the documentary. Her mother is schizophrenic and the movie was a very interesting glimps into the life of a child who was raised by a schizophrenic mom. Most of which is irrelevant to the point of this post. What is relevant, and which kinda clicked in my head as I was driving home, was that this extremely articulate and clearly very intelligent mom, even when she was on her meds and doing well, was completely oblivious to her schizophrenia. As far as she could tell she was perfectly normal and everyone else was just picking on her, including this daughter who had stuck with her thru thick and thin. She knew that she was supposedly schizophrenic and she was able to describe what schizophrenia is. But she couldn't agree that she was anything but rational. From her perspective, the fact that she kept ending up in mental institutions was conclusive evidence that she was being picked up unfairly.

Now I'm not suggesting that I'm schizo - LOL. But I do have to concede to myself that even though inside my own mind I'm perfectly rational..., that perhaps, not unlike this poor mother, I can't see my own irrationality caused by this hyperthyroidism thing bedeviling me right now. Then I remembered back to when I saw A Beautiful Mind and how at the end the character played by Russell Crowe was asked if he still saw the people who had played the central role in his schizophrenic implosion. He said that no, he still saw them but that he knew now that they weren't real.

That's kinda where I'm at right now. I still think that I'm perfectly rational and anyone disagreeing with me has either misunderstood me or is just actively disrespecting me. But, I can't honestly deny the very real possibility that it's all the hyperthyroid issue and that perhaps this is exactly the kind of thing that my doctor was talking about when she said that I'd be hard to live with.

So, I've got my first appointment with the endocrinologist under my belt as of this last Friday. I have two appointments not this week but the following week to undergo a diagnostic scan so that they can conclusively figure out what the extent of my thyroid problem is and then the endocrinologist's office will call me and make an appointment where I believe I will be given the one-time treatment which he told me Friday, based on his preliminary confirming diagnosis, will fix me up permanently. So I figure that I'm looking at the very least another couple weeks or maybe longer because it took me nearly a month of waiting just to get in to see him for the first appointment.

So for now I need to take a sabbatical from PK because I am presently entirely too argumentative and quite likely not in a place where I can even rationally argue anything. Or at the very least I can't trust what I think is a rational arguement originating in my own head right now. And I have no desire to offend any of you, much less my blog partners.

Oh, when I walked in the door after my long drive my oldest daughter (18 going on 30, naturally - LOL) was sitting on the couch in the living room. I asked her if I'd been hard to live with lately and her response was to give a half-laugh not unlike what my doctor had given and she said, "yeah, just a little," which I could tell by the look on her face was meant to be taken as an understatement.

So anyway... to TJ and Carla: Although I can't honestly say that I see it this way as of right now, I also have to honestly concede that you both could very likely have been entirely right and I was wrong, vis-a-vis our disagreements. If that's the case, and it seems likely that it is, then I apologize now and hopefully once the chemical soup running my brain right now is stabilized I'll be able to see it for myself.

Posted by Kevin at 07:59 PM | | TrackBack

Even the Pope Wonders Why People Suffer

One of the most difficult questions faced by those who believe in a loving God who is personally involved in the lives of each individual is why does God allow suffering?

Even the Pope asks that question. During his visit to Auschwitz today, he said:

"In a place like this, words fail; in the end, there can be only a dread silence, a silence which itself is a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"

Christians have come up with a variety of answers that satisfy the mind of someone who really wants to believe them:

The suffering of this world makes us long for our eternal dwelling with God in the heavens.

Who could argue with the notion that suffering makes us want a perfect world without suffering? But the more in-depth answer for those who keep asking is a bit more sinister, in my opinion:

We ourselves do not establish the standards of what is right. Only the Creator of all reality can do that. We need to settle it, in our minds and hearts, whether we understand it or not, that whatever God does is, by definition, right.[…]

Since "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23), there is no one who has the right to freedom from God's wrath on the basis of his own innocence.

As far as babies are concerned, and others who may be incompetent mentally to distinguish right and wrong, it is clear from both Scripture and universal experience that they are sinners by nature and thus will inevitably become sinners by choice as soon as they are able to do so.

This view, that we all deserve to suffer, is the natural probable consequence of a belief built upon one primary concept: that one can only be saved from the well-deserved punishment for their sins through the blood of Christ. The belief forces one to come to all sorts of unsavory conclusions, such as that even good people who never had a chance to hear about Jesus will burn in the eternal fires of hell, and they deserve it.

The Christian salvation concept includes the notion that Christ will come into one's heart and have a personal, one-on-one relationship with each individual who accepts his sacrifice; hence the "why does God allow Christians to suffer" dilemma. And really, no answer that I have ever heard satisfies that question. Christians claim to feel "safe in the arms of Jesus," yet simultaneously accept explanations of the book of Job that point to a punishing God who uses suffering to discipline his people. It is an extreme version of the "spare the rod and spoil the child" philosophy that serves only to terrify if you really think about it, because it means that once you belong to God, anything horrible that happens to you is a punishment or correction from God and you must bear it humbly.

I suppose many Christians would say Auschwitz and the rest of the Holocaust nightmare was God's attempt to punish/correct the Jewish people who had rejected the Messiah. The Old Testament is chock full of punishments visited by God upon Israel, and this fits right in.

Personally, I don't believe in a God with a personal interest in individuals or a desire to interfere with the natural ebb and flow of good and evil that constantly convulses our planet. I guess I subscribe to a form of the yin and yang concept that the universe is in balance in all things, whether black and white, good and evil, male and female, or living and dying. You see this concept throughout the universe, even to its very origins in which matter and antimatter were created from nothing.

And if I may be so blasphemous, I would point out that the Bible itself recognizes the fundamental yin/yang balance throughout the universe: the reason God did not want Adam and Eve to eat of the forbidden tree was that they would become like God, knowing good and evil.

"In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these: a righteous man perishing in his righteousness, and a wicked man living long in his wickedness. Do not be overrighteous, neither be overwise- why destroy yourself? Do not be overwicked, and do not be a fool- why die before your time? It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other. The man who fears God will avoid all extremes." -Ecclesiastes 7:15-18

Posted by Becky at 03:06 PM | | TrackBack

Oh, Sweet Mystery of Life

Mark Morford, a columnist for SF Gate, has penned a wonderful light-hearted look at the mystery of the sexes. Here's a teaser:

Yes, it is a wonder humans manage to communicate at all. It is a wonder the sexes make some sort of adorably vain attempt to bridge that rainbow chasm between us just long enough to remain wildly attracted to one another and still have sex and eat together at restaurants and laugh at each other's jokes and pretend we understand what the hell is going on. We do not. This is the great cosmic joke. And the punch line is being delivered every day, in a million scenarios exactly like the one I describe above.

Posted by Becky at 11:45 AM | | TrackBack

Cameras Get U.S. in Trouble Again

We really ought to outlaw and confiscate all cameras, both still and video. They just keep getting us in trouble in Iraq.

If it hadn't been for cameras, we would have been able to keep the Abu Ghraib prison scandal from erupting. Nobody would have believed our military did what those released terrorist suspects were saying they did. After all, what credibility do former prisoners have, especially brown-skinned ones?

Now the camera has us in trouble again. When angry Marines murdered a couple of dozen civilians last November, they and their higher-ups decided to cover it up. They might well have succeeded except for the fact that someone had a video camera and gave the tape to Time magazine and Arab television stations.

Now, the military is investigating and John Murtha is speaking out again, calling the incident "worse than Abu Ghraib." Our ability to find any kind of diplomatic solution to the problems in Iraq is further undermined, as is our reputation in the Middle East. Darned cameras, anyway.

Posted by Becky at 11:36 AM | | TrackBack

Still weaseling

The President's recent news conference in which he declared his greatest mistake as using too much "tough talk" is a pretty interesting development. Although made much too late to actually repair any damage he's done, at least the President's handlers understand that the smug and arrogant tones haven't played well outside of Texas.

But sadly, Elizabeth Bulmiller of the Times still plays into the myth that Bush is some sort of plain spoken Texan:

Mr. Bush's Texas twang intensifies and recedes depending on the setting. But he has always prided himself on being plain spoken. When it comes to military and national security, he made the heaviest use of Texas talk in the first term, initially after the Sept. 11 attacks and then after the Iraq invasion.

On Sept. 15, 2001, Mr. Bush declared that he would go after the perpetrators of the World Trade Center attack and "smoke them out of their holes." On Sept. 17, 2001, Mr. Bush declared that he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." On July 2, 2003, Mr. Bush taunted militants attacking American forces in Iraq with "bring 'em on."

White House officials have defended his Texas talk as the kind of plain-spoken language Americans like to hear, but Laura Bush has at times tried to rein him in. In a widely reported comment at the time, Mrs. Bush sidled up to her husband after he said he wanted Mr. bin Laden "dead or alive" and asked, "Bushie, are you gonna git 'im?"

I suppose the definition of "plain spoken" is up for debate. Bush's supporters defend his mispronounciations and garbled delivery as part of his unsophisticated, every-man approach. As if we're supposed to be pleased that our President is just like everyone else with no special intellect or abilities. Personally, I'd prefer that the Leader of the Free World be smarter and more capable than I am. This is a guy with his finger on the nuke button...not someone I'm headed to the local pub to down a few beers with.

But the "plain spoken Texan" thing is utter bullshit--part of Rove's created caricature. Bush was born in Connecticut. His family moved to Texas when Bush was a young boy and he lived there until he left for prep school in New England. After than he attended Yale.

This is hardly a born and bred Texan.

Posted by Carla at 08:15 AM | | TrackBack

May 27, 2006

The Electric Burger Acid Test

Now that the strange stories here, here, here, and here, of the split between the GOP and Frank Luntz (language strategist, and Rene Belloq to my Indiana Jones) have been replaced by news of their happy reunion, we can turn to the next big--actually, to the big--meta-story of the next two election cycles:

The Republican candidate for president in 2008 will have one major-party opponent, a Democrat. The Democratic candidate will have two: The Republican candidate and the Washington press corps.

Let's start with Bob Somerby, who's been right about this--sometimes depressing, and often over-written, but unquestionably, uninterruptedly, and incomparably right--for at least six or seven years:

When it comes to the notion of “liberal bias,” the other side keeps saying things which are false. And we keep refusing to say what is true! This tendency will badly damage Dems in Campaign 2008, as the press corps rolls out its familiar script: Dem contender are fake, inauthentic. Republicans are straight-talking straight-shooters. This script has been killing Dems for the past fifteen years—and party leaders simply refuses to address it.

(Read the whole thing.)

At Huffington Post, Eric Boehlert spells it out, and connects it to the most recently-emerging strain of the meme: The private lives of Democrats are worthy of intense, sheet-sniffing inspection, because it reveals all about their politics and governing, while precisely the opposite is true of Republicans (and, of course, of the Washington press corps).

Folks, consider yourselves warned. And in fact, the Daily Howler has been sounding the alarm for some time now that the press is ready and waiting to roll out its 2008 presidential narrative about Democrats being phony ("inauthentic," they "play it safe" -- and they're "poll-tested") and the Republicans being genuine, comfortable in his own skin. Joe Klein fills up his new book with page-after-page of this Beltway-pleasing narrative; Democrats lose national elections because their candidates aren't real and voters can sense that. […]

[A]nybody on the left who's crossing their fingers hoping the press puts down its RNC talking points long enough to come in from the cold for the 2008 campaign and finally treat Democrats fairly, is simply kidding themselves. They didn't do it with Gore, they didn't do it with Kerry. The press refuses to change willingly […]. Because there are prominent people within the Beltway pundit ranks who think what's on Hillary Clinton's iPod is a) revealing because b) it proves she's a phony.

(Read the whole thing. Also, for grins and giggles, check out Atrios, who's initiated a sauce-for-the-goose series on the marital lives of mainstream media bigshots.)

Why would this be so? Many hold that the explanation can be reduced to two words: cocktail weenies. The Washington press corps is so addicted to attending the "right" dinner parties that they daren't risk biting the hand that feeds them (hor d'ouevres), even if they could imagine it.

My take is slightly different, but only slightly: It's a combination of the Cocktail Weenies Theory and a class snobbishness in DC that's always felt more at home cuddling up to Republicans than to Democrats. After all, Democrats have cocktail parties too, but the full-year residents of DC would say, as Sally Quinn wrote in a too-honest-to-live little essay back in 1998:

When Establishment Washingtonians of all persuasions gather to support their own, they are not unlike any other small community in the country.

On this evening, the roster included Cabinet members Madeleine Albright and Donna Shalala, Republicans Sen. John McCain and Rep. Bob Livingston, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, PBS's Jim Lehrer and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, all behaving like the pals that they are. On display was a side of Washington that most people in this country never see. For all their apparent public differences, the people in the room that night were coming together with genuine affection and emotion to support their friends -- the Wall Street Journal's Al Hunt and his wife, CNN's Judy Woodruff, whose son Jeffrey has spina bifida.

But this particular community happens to be in the nation's capital. And the people in it are the so-called Beltway Insiders -- the high-level members of Congress, policymakers, lawyers, military brass, diplomats and journalists who have a proprietary interest in Washington and identify with it.

They call the capital city their "town."

And their town has been turned upside down.

With some exceptions, the Washington Establishment is outraged by the president's behavior in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The polls show that a majority of Americans do not share that outrage. Around the nation, people are disgusted but want to move on; in Washington, despite Clinton's gains with the budget and the Mideast peace talks, people want some formal acknowledgment that the president's behavior has been unacceptable. They want this, they say, not just for the sake of the community, but for the sake of the country and the presidency as well.

In addition to the polls and surveys, this disconnect between the Washington Establishment and the rest of the country is evident on TV and radio talk shows and in interviews and conversations with more than 100 Washingtonians for this article. The din about the scandal has subsided in the news as politicians and journalists fan out across the country before tomorrow's elections. But in Washington, interest remains high. The reasons are varied, and they intertwine.

1. THIS IS THEIR HOME. This is where they spend their lives, raise their families, participate in community activities, take pride in their surroundings. They feel Washington has been brought into disrepute by the actions of the president.

"It's much more personal here," says pollster Geoff Garin. "This is an affront to their world. It affects the dignity of the place where they live and work. . . . Clinton's behavior is unacceptable. If they did this at the local Elks Club hall in some other community it would be a big cause for concern."

"He came in here and he trashed the place," says Washington Post columnist David Broder, "and it's not his place."

"This is a company town," says retired senator Howard Baker, once Ronald Reagan's chief of staff. "We're up close and personal. The White House is the center around which our city revolves."

Bill Galston, former deputy domestic policy adviser to Clinton and now a professor at the University of Maryland, says of the scandal that "most people in Washington believe that most people in Washington are honorable and are trying to do the right thing. The basic thought is that to concede that this is normal and that everybody does it is to undermine a lifetime commitment to honorable public service."

"Everybody doesn't do it," says Jerry Rafshoon, Jimmy Carter's former communications director. "The president himself has said it was wrong."

Pollster Garin, president of Peter Hart Research Associates, says that the disconnect is not unlike the difference between the way men and women view the scandal. Just as many men are angry that Clinton's actions inspire the reaction "All men are like that," Washingtonians can't abide it that the rest of the country might think everyone here cheats and lies and abuses his subordinates the way the president has.

"This is a community in all kinds of ways," says ABC correspondent Cokie Roberts, whose parents both served in Congress. She is concerned that people outside Washington have a distorted view of those who live here. "The notion that we are some rarefied beings who breathe toxic air is ridiculous. . . . When something happens everybody gathers around. . . . It's a community of good people involved in a worthwhile pursuit. We think being a worthwhile public servant or journalist matters."

"This is our town," says Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, the first Democrat to forcefully condemn the president's behavior. "We spend our lives involved in talking about, dealing with, working in government. It has reminded everybody what matters to them. You are embarrassed about what Bill Clinton's behavior says about the White House, the presidency, the government in general."

And many are offended that the principles that brought them to Washington in the first place are now seen to be unfashionable or illegitimate.

Muffie Cabot, who as Muffie Brandon served as social secretary to President and Nancy Reagan, regards the scene with despair. "This is a demoralized little village," she says. "People have come from all over the country to serve a higher calling and look what happened. They're so disillusioned. The emperor has no clothes. Watergate was pretty scary, but it wasn't quite as sordid as this."

"People felt a reverent attitude toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," says Tish Baldrige, who once worked there as Jacqueline Kennedy's social secretary and has been a frequent visitor since. "Now it's gone, now it's sleaze and dirt. We all feel terribly let down. It's very emotional. We want there to be standards. We're used to standards. When you think back to other presidents, they all had a lot of class. That's nonexistent now. It's sad for people in the White House. . . . I've never seen such bad morale in my life. They're not proud of their chief."

NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell adds a touch of neighborly concern. "We all know people who have been terribly damaged personally by this," she says. "Young White House aides who have been saddled by legal bills, longtime Clinton friends. . . . There is a small-town quality to the grief that is being felt, an overwhelming sadness at the waste of the nation's time and attention, at the opportunities lost."

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss sees this scandal not only from a historical perspective but from a resident's. "There's never been a sex scandal affecting a president while in office," he says. "In a distilled way, the sense of centeredness, stability and order depends on who is in the White House and what's going on there. When everything is turned upside down it affects our psyche more than someone who might be farming in Wyoming."

Lloyd Cutler, former White House counsel to Presidents Carter and Clinton and considered one of the few "wise men" left in Washington, gives yet another reason why people take the scandal more seriously here. "This is an excitement to us, a feeling of being in on it, and whichever part of the Washington milieu we come from, we want to play a part. That's why we're here."

(Read the whole thing. And if it makes you want to put people up against the wall, consider that that impulse may be on the right track.)

The point remains the same: The Republican candidate for president in 2008 will face one opposing party; the Democratic candidate will face two.

Lance Mannion has a good take on it, unpacking (I loathe the abuse of "deconstructing") the "have a beer and a burger with him" master trope. His punchline:

This beer and burger thing, it’s another way of describing the common touch.

This being a democracy, having the common touch is in fact a qualification for public office.

Not the qualification, but certainly a qualification.

Some aristocrats have it, and some sons and daughters of the working classes don’t.

And whatever it is, it is not a matter of being a charming frat boy, or of not being the kind of A student who always has his homework done.

And whatever it is, should the Democrats find and nominate someone who has it, you can bet the Media Elite will do their best to tell us that that person doesn’t really have it or that the Republican candidate has it more authentically.

Or if they find someone who has it and the Media Elite can’t deny it, they’ll change the rules. Having the common touch will be a sign of the Democrat’s bad character. He, or she, will be dismissed as being someone who tries to be "all things to all people."

This has already been done.

You may remember that the Democrats had someone who was at home among the people, who liked crowds, who loved to talk with voters, who wasn’t just someone voters felt they could share a beer and a burger with but who wanted to share beers and burgers with them, who was someone people felt they could tell their problems too because he felt their pain.

You probably also remember how the Media Elites felt, and still feel, about that guy.

Lance finished up, a few days later, with a delightfully allusive piece, for which this is the punchline:

The Democrats can take control of both houses of Congress, they can put a Democrat in the White House, but unless they take control of Vanity Fair as well, the MSM will likely remain dismissive and hostile and in league with the Republicans to regain their power.

Read the whole thing. (And not just because it's Lance.)

(Cross-posted at p3)

Posted by Nothstine at 04:23 PM | | TrackBack

Soldier's Religion Isn't Good Enough

The family of an Army National Guard Seargent whose helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan last September is still waiting for a headstone for their son's grave because his religion, Wicca, is not an officially approved religion. Although the Veterans Affairs' National Cemetery Administration recognizes thirty different religious symbols for use on fallen soldiers' headstones, the Wiccan pentacle is not one of them.

Approved religious symbols include the Jewish Star of David, the Christian cross, and the Islamic crescent and star, as well as symbols for the Tenrikyo Church, the United Moravian Church, the Sikhs, and even atheists.

[Nevada's] top veterans official, Tim Tetz, said he was "diligently pursuing" the matter with Gov. Kenny Guinn, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev.

"Sergeant Stewart and his family deserve recognition for their contributions to our country," said Tetz, executive director of the Nevada Office of Veterans Services. "It's unfortunate the process is taking so long, but I am certain Sgt. Patrick will ultimately receive his marker with the Wiccan symbol," he said Thursday.

But when? According to the Rev. Selena Fox, senior minister of the Wiccan Circle Sanctuary in Barneveld, Wis., Veterans Affairs has been sitting on a decision over the Wiccan symbol for nine years.

It really is amazing how successful the Christian church has been in demonizing the symbols of a religion that is based on respect for the earth, nature and the cycle of the seasons, so that people today refuse to view it as anything other than the worship of Satan and evil.

Posted by Becky at 01:16 PM | | TrackBack

Mom and Dad Need Safe Sex Education

Now that they're retired, have plenty of Viagra, and can't get pregnant, it seems the parents of the "free love" '60s generation are following their children's example and enjoying themselves like never before. Unfortunately, they seem to be ignorant of the potential downside of free love.

Doctors said sexually transmitted diseases among senior citizens are running rampant at a popular Central Florida retirement community.

A gynecologist at The Villages community near Orlando, Fla., said she treats more cases of herpes and the human papilloma virus in the retirement community than she did in the city of Miami.

"Yeah, they are very shocked (to hear the diagnosis)," gynecologist Dr. Colleen McQuade said. "I had a patient in her 80s."

It might be a good time for the Baby Boomers to sit Mom and/or Dad down and give them a little talk about condoms.

Posted by Becky at 01:01 PM | | TrackBack

You'll Find Out We're Right in the Afterlife

Jewish leaders are irritated with Mormons because they haven't kept their part of a deal to remove the names of Jewish Holocaust victims from their genealogical database, nor will they quit adding new Jewish Holocaust victims' names.

The conflict is over much more than the mere matter of Jewish names being a part of the Mormons' genealogy. The problem is that their presence in the database means they have been posthumously baptized into the Mormon church.

Posthumous baptism is a sacred rite practiced in Mormon church temples for the purpose of offering membership in the church to the deceased. Church members are encouraged to conduct family genealogy research and forward their ancestors' names for proxy baptism.

Church President Gordon B. Hinckley has said the baptismal rite is only an offer of membership that can be rejected in the afterlife by individuals. "So, there's no injury done to anybody."

Is it really harmless? To someone who does not believe in an afterlife, it might seem comical that such angst is occurring over a non-existent phenomenon. But the real matter at issue here is that Jews are being insulted by Mormons who believe that they alone have the truth and that deceased Jews in the afterlife will realize it and be grateful that someone back in the real world loved them enough to give them a second opportunity to be saved.

Posted by Becky at 12:49 PM | | TrackBack

The Smirking Phony

Normally I can't tolerate listening to the President anymore because I am so averse to being lied to, but as nothing else interesting was on the radio during my evening commute Thursday I gave him and Tony Blair a listen.

Toward the end of their press conference, Bush really surprised me with his response to a question:

Asked what "missteps and mistakes'' he regretted the most, Bush responded with uncharacteristic reflection, citing his July 2003 admonition to Iraqi insurgents to "bring 'em on,'' and his declaration shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the U.S. wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive.''

"Kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people,'' Bush said. "I learned some lessons about expressing myself, maybe in a more sophisticated manner. ... I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted.''

Of course, I didn't buy it for a moment, but I was impressed that someone had finally convinced him to address this issue. Any positive reaction I had was entirely erased this morning, however, when I read how immediately following these comments, he turned to the press corps and smirked. My lack of techno-know-how prevents me from posting the photo here, but I urge you to go to the site and look at it.

Richard Wolffe from Newsweek, joined Keith Olbermann and said that Bush's more realistic tone and mannerisms seemed rehearsed. Bush was photographed smirking to the front row of the press corps after his 'humble admission' that tough talk like "bring 'em on" had been a mistake.

Bush's phoniness is really getting old. But this smirking thing is, in my opinion, the most depressing, outrageous display he has ever made because it shows very clearly what he thinks of the American people.

Posted by Becky at 12:27 PM | | TrackBack

May 26, 2006

Flowchart of Republican corruption

Larger, more readable version found here.

(Blatantly stolen from Editor At Large)

Posted by Carla at 03:14 PM | | TrackBack

Get your toke on

For those of you choosing not to light a doobie cuz you're afraid of the lung cancer risk, fear not:

The largest study of its kind has unexpectedly concluded that smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer.

The new findings "were against our expectations," said Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.

"We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use," he said. "What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect."

Federal health and drug enforcement officials have widely used Tashkin's previous work on marijuana to make the case that the drug is dangerous. Tashkin said that while he still believes marijuana is potentially harmful, its cancer-causing effects appear to be of less concern than previously thought.

Me..I'm not a drug user. Never have been. I don't even like to take aspirin. This is what comes from being a high maintenance control freak.

Posted by Carla at 12:29 PM | | TrackBack

Watch out, Bolivia! The Liar Cometh ...

Why can't President Bush for once tell the truth about why he is criticizing or threatening one country or another?

His latest such disingenuous statements regard criticism of Bolivia's "erosion of democracy". I'll admit, I don't pay as much attention as I ought to the goings-on in a lot of countries around the world, so this whole Bolivia problem is news to me. I thought Venezuela was our southern problem. Why would the President suddenly start criticizing Bolivia when its President is only four months into his term and has done nothing to undermine the country's efforts to create a participatory democracy there?

Answer: Because Bolivian President Evo Morales has decided to nationalize the country's natural gas exports. And he's buddying up to Venezuela, which under the leadership of Hugo Chavez, is also beginning to nationalize his country's oil industry.

This falls right in line with the lies about why we're saber-rattling at Iran over its efforts to develop nuclear energy. The truth is, Iran has pissed off the same group of energy moguls as Venezuela and now Bolivia by beginning to trade its oil in euros.

Why can't someone just fess up about the fact that we're fighting for oil and gas, not the cause of democracy? Or are they afraid Americans would not be willing to spend their grandchildren into debt and send their sons to die for oil rather than spend more money developing renewable energy sources for transportation?

Posted by Becky at 10:59 AM | | TrackBack

Jesus Has Returned!

My heart leapt for joy when I read this today. In the person of Dr. Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, Jesus Christ the Man, our Lord and Savior has returned to earth and is now revealing spiritual truths long hidden by the formal Christian church (I don't quite know yet what this means for our officially crowned Messiah, the Reverend Sun Myong Moon).

Like the Da Vinci Code suggests, religion as we know it today has, in fact, kept secrets from humanity for over 2000 years. There is undeniable proof that further truths exist than what this film suggests, which have been hidden from the world for ages. The renowned singer/actress Martita Roca of ‘LOVE FOR RENT’ (HBO) can attest to this with great evidence, and has indicated she will not stop until the entire planet learns about these mysteries that are now being decoded.

What, you might ask, are these mysteries that Jesus Christ the Man himself is decoding?

[T]he same Founder of the actual religious system, the Apostle Peter, utilized deceitful mechanisms to keep the world in darkness. In fact, there is proof that the same disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, were responsible for the murder of the Apostle Paul. But there is more, much more.

And why is Jesus Christ the Man decoding these mysteries?

“My purpose," he explains, "is to close down every church so the true church can begin. You could say I’m leading the greatest reformation that has ever happened."

Unfortunately, there will always be a few who are unwilling to accept the truth into their hearts.

One observer went so far as to label the Mestizo Messiah as nothing less than a "false prophet" leading a "cult."

How could someone say such a thing about the Savior? How could they so lack faith as to consider him no different than other wacky self-proclaimed messiahs?

Posted by Becky at 10:26 AM | | TrackBack

Al Franken Might Have to Go Back to Comedy

A 16-year-old Indian prodigy may have finally given the world what it needs most: a highly reliable truth machine. 16-year-old Tricia Pasricha of Galveston, Texas worked with her father (who is director of the Division of Gastroenterology at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston) to develop a machine that records the electrical activity of the stomach – an indicator of lying. By all accounts, the machine works much better than the poloygraph.

Can you imagine being able to conduct a simple test and thereby solve some of the greatest mysteries of our time?

Dennis Hastert would have to tell us the truth about his relationship with Jack Abramoff.

We could find out how Scooter Libby really learned about Valerie Plame's identity and whether Vice President Cheney or Karl Rove were involved.

We would have known long ago that Ken Lay was guilty.

President Bush would not have been able to mislead us for so long about our being spied on by our own government. While he was hooked up to the machine, we could even ask him what really happened on 9/11. We might have to hook Cheney up for this one, too.

And Pat Robertson wouldn't get away with claiming he can leg press 2,000 pounds so he could sell his magical protein shakes.

Posted by Becky at 09:51 AM | | TrackBack

May 25, 2006

Bush Appoints Another Neocon Insider

Karl Zinsmeister has just been appointed the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy by President Bush, replacing Claude Allen. The appointment is resulting in some very interesting spin.

Zinsmeister is being described as having "a pronounced aversion to Washington," and his appointment is said to be "part of an ongoing revamp of Mr. Bush's staff" that includes another "outsider," Tony Snow. Of course, when Grover Norquist, talking points coordinator for the vast right-wing conspiracy, says anything, you know it is part of a carefully crafted message. It is true in this case, as well:

"There's new blood and it's not just for show," a conservative activist, Grover Norquist, said in an interview yesterday. He called Mr. Zinsmeister "an intellectual's intellectual" and praised the White House for turning to a true outsider.

Granted, few Americans have probably ever heard of Zinsmeister. But is he really an outsider? Not even close.

As Editor in Chief of the American Enterprise Institute's (AEI) magazine, The American Enterprise since 1994, Zinsmeister has not only actively promoted neocon philosophy, including outspoken support for the war and opposition to the Kyoto protocol and most environmental regulation, but he has also gained some pretty noteworthy financial and political connections.

With funding from conservative foundations and large corporations, AEI is one of the richest and most influential think tanks in the U.S. … AEI climate science skeptics include James K. Glassman, also of ExxonMobil-funded Tech Central Station. ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond is on the AEI board of trustees. … American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research has received $1,625,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.

Prominent AEI scholars, trustees and fellows include (or have included) Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Robert H. Bork, Lynne V. Cheney, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Irving Kristol, and Norman J. Ornstein, among others. President Bush claims to have moved twenty of the AEI's people into various positions within his Administration.

The "outsider" Zinsmeister's resume includes several government policy and director positions. He was an embedded reporter in Iraq and has written extensively about how great things are over there, including creating a comic book promoting the war. Oh, yes, and he graduated from Yale, Bush's alma mater.

Zinsmeister notably served on the advisory board for the Foundation for Community and Faith-Centered Enterprise, which was founded in 2001 at the behest of Karl Rove to push for the president's faith-based initiatives. All the grant money for that project came from a single source: the John M. Olin Foundation, which funds a lengthy list of right-wing think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Judicial Watch, the Manhattan Institute for Public Policy Research, the National Center for Policy Analysis, and the Hoover Institute of War, Revolution and Peace. It also grants hundreds of thousands of dollars each (in some cases, millions) to ivy league universities and has even granted an enormous amount of money to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Looks to me as if Bush has appointed himself another insider.

Posted by Becky at 02:18 PM | | TrackBack

Stupid, stupid, stupid

What are these guys thinking?

The Hill News:

Furious black lawmakers, rallying behind Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.), were pulled back from the brink of open revolt against House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in an emergency meeting with her yesterday.

The meeting with a handful of CBC members was called after Pelosi wrote the embattled lawmaker, who is at the center of a massive bribery scandal, a curt note requesting his immediate resignation from the powerful Ways and Means Committee.

Outraged that one of its members was being picked on even though he has not been charged with a crime, the Congressional Black Caucus had intended to issue a defiant statement against their leader but agreed after the meeting to pause, at least briefly, for reflection.

You've got to be kidding me.

Jefferson is under investigation for a massive bribery scandal. He has no business holding a committee seat under those circumstances. Pelosi is absolutely right on this. Congress must avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Does the CBC really want to paint themselves as willing to look the other way during a major criminal investigation?

That's so bonehead that I hardly know where to begin.

But it gets boneheadier:

Most lawmakers would not comment afterwards, but a CBC aide summed up some members’ frustration, saying, “Congresswoman Pelosi, by preemption without any legal justification, has now created a new precedent for how members are going to be treated. Unfortunately, she’s chosen to single out an African-American for this honor.”

Then the aide added an electoral threat, saying, “The African-American community, which overwhelmingly backs the Democratic Party, will not take this lightly. I hope she enjoys being minority leader.”

So if it was a white person..the CBC wouldn't give a shit? Or the black community wouldn't give a shit? Or the black community is willing to allow a black guy to hold an important seat while he's being investigated for criminal activity simply because he's black?

What an insulting pile of rhetorical diarreah.

Posted by Carla at 09:51 AM | | TrackBack

Courts "Ill-Equipped" to Judge Harm to National Security?

An assistant attorney general and other U.S. officials said yesterday that the government, and not any court, is best suited to judge whether secret programs such as eavesdropping on American citizens should be kept in place.

I'm no legal expert, and perhaps legal precedent and rationale exist to support what U.S. officials are saying, but all I can say is wow.

Peter Keisler, an assistant attorney general, and other U.S. officials made the claim in the latest filing to a lawsuit alleging that telecommunications firm AT&T illegally allowed the government to monitor phone conversations and e-mail communications.

"In cases such as this one, where the national security of the United States is implicated, it is well established that the executive branch is best positioned to judge the potential effects of disclosure of sensitive information on the nation's security," they wrote in a filing on Wednesday evening.

"Indeed, the Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that courts are ill-equipped as an institution to judge harm to national security."

"National security" is an excuse being used with far too much frequency by this Administration in its efforts to erode civil rights. Even the conservative Cato Institute is up in arms about it. In an article entitled Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush, Gene Healy and Timothy Lynch take Bush to task for his undermining of the Constitution.

Unfortunately, far from defending the Constitution, President Bush has repeatedly sought to strip out the limits the document places on federal power. In its official legal briefs and public actions, the Bush administration has advanced a view of federal power that is astonishingly broad, a view that includes

* a federal government empowered to regulate core political speech—and restrict it greatly when it counts the most: in the days before a federal election;
* a president who cannot be restrained, through validly enacted statutes, from pursuing any tactic he believes to be effective in the war on terror;
* a president who has the inherent constitutional authority to designate American citizens suspected of terrorist activity as "enemy combatants," strip them of any constitutional protection, and lock them up without charges for the duration of the war on terror— in other words, perhaps forever; and
* a federal government with the power to supervise virtually every aspect of American life, from kindergarten, to marriage, to the grave.

President Bush's constitutional vision is, in short, sharply at odds with the text, history, and structure of our Constitution, which authorizes a government of limited powers.

The article is well worth downloading and reading in full, and because it is a Cato Institute report, your conservative friends might even find it a reliable source.

Posted by Becky at 08:52 AM | | TrackBack

Brain Waves

This new science is unbelievable: the Japanese are working to perfect a technology that allows a person to use brain waves to control a machine.

In a step toward linking a person's thoughts to machines, Japanese automaker Honda said it has developed a technology that uses brain signals to control a robot's very simple moves.

In the future, the technology that Honda Motor Co. developed with ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories could be used to replace keyboards or cell phones, researchers said Wednesday. It also could have applications in helping people with spinal cord injuries, they said.

In a video demonstration in Tokyo, brain signals detected by a magnetic resonance imaging scanner were relayed to a robotic hand. A person in the MRI machine made a fist, spread his fingers and then made a V-sign. Several seconds later, a robotic hand mimicked the movements.

What an amazing thing. What is this energy that a magnetic resonance imaging scanner can read? Is it something that other people can pick up on? Is it why people who have been together a long time begin to read each other's thoughts? Does it explain "group mentality"? Is it what keeps flocks of birds or schools of fish moving in unison? Is it why my grandmother broke down crying for no apparent reason at the moment my grandfather suddenly died many miles away from her?

Posted by Becky at 08:50 AM | | TrackBack

Same Story, Different Message

The government tells us that the depleted uranium munitions being used by our military are not causing radiation-related health problems for either the soldiers or the civilians living in war areas where they are being used. Many experts and reporters are saying otherwise: that upon impact, the depleted uranium is basically particalized and is then breathed in by both soldiers and civilians, causing a range of horrific illnesses, birth defects, and cancers. Most of the main-stream media is taking the government at its word.

Yesterday, several media outlets reported on a couple from Putnam County, Florida who found a depleted uranium cylinder the size of a child's fist in a box they had purchased at an auction. Although I was amused that the solid chunk of depleted uranium, which is apparently harmless when particalized and inhaled in a war zone, was treated as a highly hazardous material here at home, I was even more interested in the variation in focus in the reporting of the story.

Fox talked about the dangers of the material:

Putnam County responded to make sure no one went into the area. Officers say Greninger lives in a remote wooded area, and officials are keeping people 1,000 feet away while HAZMAT crews investigate.

Department of Environmental Protection officials have reportedly taken Geiger counter measurements and discovered low-level readings of radio-active material. However, officials say it is possible to be around that kind of low-level radiation readings for hours and be okay.

Unfortunately for the couple who found the DU, it had been in their house for months.

Local media also focused on the danger of the find:

The state Bureau of Radiation Control retrieved the cylinder. They said the piece is toxic, but does not pose a health hazard to the community. They did say that if the couple had walked around the house with the uranium in their pocket, they would get radiation sickness.

The Rev. Sun Myong Moon's UPI, however, focused on the emotions of the couple, implying they were overreacting to something that really wasn't dangerous:

"We freaked out and we started calling people." … Afterward, Greninger said she and her mate calmed down with a beer. "My husband was having a nervous breakdown," she said.

Is that a liberal bias, or a conservative bias? Or is it a supreme ruler bias?

Posted by Becky at 08:48 AM | | TrackBack

May 24, 2006

Mom, I Really Am Thinking

Ever since I left Christianity, I've been in fear of upsetting my mother, whom I dearly love and respect. She is deeply committed to her Seventh-Day Adventist faith and I am quite convinced of my own views of the Bible and Jesus. Perhaps I think too highly of my persuasive abilities, but I believe if I shared with my mother the things I have learned about the history of the Bible and Christianity, she would either cover her ears and pretend to herself that I was speaking clever deceptions crafted by the Devil, or change her views and have to endure the heartbreak I did when I first realized none of what I believed was true. Neither option brings with it anything positive, so I have steadfastly refused to discuss with her why I believe as I do.

But she almost pushed me over the edge two days ago when she said that she had always thought of me as a thinker and now she isn't so sure, then proceeded to give me all sorts of evidence of the historical accuracy of the Bible (none of which was relevant to my having changed my mind). Ugh. I was half-tempted to send her this hilarious article, "Set Free from Rationality." I restrained myself.

But the incident has pushed a sore spot in me that was created when I turned coat on Bill Sizemore and then dared write favorably about Al Franken's book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them." At that time and ever since, I have repeatedly had my intelligence attacked (thankfully, only in private) by loved ones and former colleagues, including Sizemore, saying virtually the same thing my mother said to me. They used to believe I was a thinker. What happened? Why am I not thinking anymore? Have I lost my mind? Ugh.

I found a great article that I think really explains my own view on this issue of being a thinker better than I could ever explain it myself. It starts out explaining the difference between being "open minded" and "closed minded" – neither of which is good. People who criticize me are, in my opinion, being closed minded and are accusing me of being open minded. The truth, as I see it, is that I have become objective minded.

An objective mind is open in a very important sense. It is open to all facts, and their connection using logic. In other words, it is open to the use of reason but closed to the use of anything else-unjustified feelings, faith, "divine revelation," hunches, or cultural heritage.

The objective approach to knowledge is the only way to discover any truth, because it entails looking at reality. Newton discovered the laws of mechanics by observing reality and finding relationships among the physical behavior of objects. He was not open to the groundless idea held in many primitive countries that the movement of physical objects is due to the will of some supernatural being. Darwin formulated the theory of evolution by observing the similarities in bone structure among different species. He was not open to the idea that the Bible trumps all evidence.

I won't quote the rest of the article for you here – you really should go and read it in its entirety.

Maybe next time my mother makes a comment about my thinking abilities, I'll send it to her. And maybe next time Sizemore sends me an email accusing me of having become "mentally ill" I'll send it his way, as well. It will make me feel better, anyway.

Posted by Becky at 11:24 AM | | TrackBack

NFL Commissioner: Perfect Job for Jeb Bush

It seems Jeb Bush has been approached by Patrick Rooney Sr. (brother of Dan Rooney, who owns the Steelers) about replacing Paul Tagliabue as the next NFL commissioner.

Dan E. Modea has made the case for years that the NFL is closely tied with organized crime, documenting the ties of at least 26 past and present NFL team owners with either gambling or the syndicate, producing evidence of at least 70 fixed professional games, and claiming that at least 50 investigations into NFL corruption have been suppressed.

Jeb Bush has his own resume of corruption that demonstrates his fitness to head up the NFL in a manner that will preserve the status quo for organized crime. He is simply perfect for the job, so long as they can hold it open long enough for him to finish his term as Governor of Florida. If not, he always has the option of taking over his big brother's criminal enterprise in 2008.

Posted by Becky at 10:06 AM | | TrackBack

Do Something About Telephone Spying

The ACLU has launched a national "Don’t' Spy On Me" campaign and is urging the public to go to its website and add their names to complaints the group is filing with the FCC and state utility commissions in several states, including Oregon.

I love the campaign logo – a telephone with the Illuminati eye on it.

An independent investigation appears unlikely to do any good because the NSA's activities are so highly classified that no investigators can even look into the agency (which seems to me to violate everything about the concept of a democratic republic). Still, a massive show of public disdain for spying on Americans without warrants is important.

Well, at least it feels important. Just ignore my cynicism and add your name to the list, will ya?

Posted by Becky at 10:05 AM | | TrackBack

McCain Reminds Me Why I Loved Him

I've always been a fan of people who dare to be real. Perhaps that's why I love Taylor Hicks. I know it's why I have, until recently, been a John McCain fan. I have been somewhat broken-hearted over McCain's transformation into an ass-kissing phony politician. I had almost forgotten why I ever liked him. His latest speech has served to remind me.

One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, "Stop the bullshit."

Classic, wonderful McCain. Who cares if it's a statement from la-la land. How can you not love it?

What I loved most from this speech was McCain's jumping all over Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, and Michael Savage for helping to "fuel the problem" of ghettoizing immigrants. He actually called Republicans "nativists."

But I don't think McCain will ever be able to win my support back in a Presidential campaign. Unless, of course, he's running against Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.

Posted by Becky at 09:40 AM | | TrackBack

Wyden says no

Hats off to Sen. Ron Wyden, one of three members--three! only three!--of the Senate Intelligence Committee who voted against confirmation of General Michael Hayden, architect of the NSA domestic surveillance plan, as head of the CIA.

Gordon Smith, meanwhile, is biding his time until summer 2008 to show his moderate credentials.

Posted by Nothstine at 09:00 AM | | TrackBack

Westlund to Use Paid Petitioners

Oregon Independent gubernatorial candidate Ben Westlund has decided to use paid petitioners to gather signatures so his name can appear on the November ballot.

I hope Westlund selects a reputable signature gathering company (are there any?) or, even better, hires someone experienced in petition drives to manage the effort in-house. I would caution him to be very careful that he can trust his team - petitioners have been known to intentionally sabotage drives they did not support.

As much as one might be concerned about paid petitioning, he really does not appear to have a choice here. Volunteers tend to be unreliable, and mass mailings, even to good lists of supporters, produce negligible returns. To gather the nearly 19,000 valid signatures he needs, he really needs to gather 25,000 – and maybe more, considering the confusion he is likely to run into with people who don't realize that if they voted in the Primary on a Republican or Democrat ballot, they can't sign Westlund's petition. With typical mass-mailing return rates, he would have to mail ballots to every person in Oregon, and of course, not every person in Oregon is actually registered to vote.

That said, I share some of the concern that is being expressed about what the campaign's inability to gather signatures actually means.

Lisa Grove, a Portland pollster who works for Kulongoski's campaign, says Westlund's use of paid petition carriers undercuts his claims that he has lots of "grass roots" supporters.

The problem could also be a matter of inexperienced staff on the campaign. With the right staff to oversee a signature drive of that size, it is possible, even without tremendous grassroots support (which is likely a name recognition problem), to find volunteers to get the job done. Possible, but not easy and not cheap. In fact, volunteer petition drives can cost as much as – or even more than – paid petition drives.

The Westlund campaign certainly has a tough battle ahead. I hope they are able to get things pulled together quickly. If they don't, however, they can always mount a write-in campaign.

Posted by Becky at 06:29 AM | | TrackBack

May 23, 2006

Arcane secrets revealed!

I doubt if my return will be as exciting as Carla's, but then I doubt it if my time away was as well spent either, so I won't get all sulky about it.

But I'm back and I haven't forgotten you all. No way. And just to prove it, I brought with me a religion 'n' feminism two-fer to pay my way back in the door. You just don't find 'em like this very often.

Standing in line at the local supermarket yesterday, I glanced down at the magazine rack and there . . . there in the middle of the rack . . . away from everything else on the rack . . . was the latest issue of Woman's World magazine.

Not my bag, you say? Hah! Woman's World, a magazine with an off-and-on history reaching back over 120 years, has carved out a nice contemporary niche for itself as the sole repository of all wisdom regarding non-celebrity oriented women's health and recipes. Ignore their trend-spotting prowess at your peril.

Still, even by WW standards, this was a gem. I borrowed a pen from the cashier and scribbled the cover info down onto my receipt, but I quickly realized that one picture was worth a thousand receipts.

I mean, yes, I could tell you that the cover story of this week's Woman's Week is

Lose a pound a day on The Da Vinci Code Diet! Hidden inside the best-seller:
The secret, scientific formula that unlocks fat!

. . . or I could just show you.

Now you know why the Men in Black keep close watch on the supermarket tabloids. And why Mary Magdalene always looked so svelte in those pre-Raphaelite paintings.

Makes you wonder what "Lose 6 lbs before Passover on the Galilean loaves-and-fishes diet" would sound like in Aramaic.

It's good to be back.

Posted by Nothstine at 08:19 PM | | TrackBack

He's either lying his ass off or so ill informed as to be laughable

Beginning with the headline:

Democrats Rally Around Crooked Congressman

The Congressman in question is William Jefferson of Louisiana. Jefferson is being investigated for bribery. The FBI apparently entered Jefferson's offices in a raid as a part of the investigation.

Had the blog author in question ACTUALLY READ the Washington Post piece he cites in his blog post, he'd have noted that its not Democrats rallying around Jefferson's potential corruption and investigation, its Republicans:

Republican leaders, who previously sought to focus attention on the Jefferson case as a counterpoint to their party's own ethical scandals, said they are disturbed by the raid. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said that he is "very concerned" about the incident and that Senate and House counsels will review it.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) expressed alarm at the raid. "The actions of the Justice Department in seeking and executing this warrant raise important Constitutional issues that go well beyond the specifics of this case," he said in a lengthy statement released last night.

"Insofar as I am aware, since the founding of our Republic 219 years ago, the Justice Department has never found it necessary to do what it did Saturday night, crossing this Separation of Powers line, in order to successfully prosecute corruption by Members of Congress," he said. "Nothing I have learned in the last 48 hours leads me to believe that there was any necessity to change the precedent established over those 219 years."

Idiot.

Pelosi expressed concerns about the Constitutional issues surrounding the raid..but has been anything but supportive of Jefferson:

Pelosi refused to appoint Jefferson to the chairmanship of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee after the 2002 election, and early this month she called for an investigation of his case by the House ethics committee. Last week, the committee announced it would investigate Jefferson and Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), who is also the subject of a federal corruption probe.

Another difference between Republicans and Democrats: When Republicans get into ethics/legal troubles..their leadership changes the rules to support the accused. When Democrats get into that sort of trouble, the Leader calls for an investigation and doesn't give them committee assignments.

But that doesn't stop conservatives from writing assinine contrary blog posts with absolutely no supporting evidence.

Posted by Carla at 07:42 PM | | TrackBack

Church/State separation in living color

Chaplain Faces Court-Martial for Praying in Jesus' Name

Chaplain Lieutenant Gordon James Klingenschmitt has been formally served with court-martial papers for the "crime" of publicly praying in Jesus' name in uniform.

Councilman Not Allowed to Pray in the 'Name of Jesus' at City Meetings

The Fredericksburg City Council has told the Rev. Hashmeal Turner that he is not allowed to pray in the “Name of Jesus,” at City Council meetings.

Faith Coalitions' News Conference on National Call to Save Mount Soledad Cross

Christian Defense Coalition and Faith and Action issue national call to save Mount Soledad Cross, in San Diego California, and to stand against the erosion of religious freedom and liberty.

It must be constantly stressed that the Constitution promises ‘freedom of religion’ and not ‘freedom from religion.’ - Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition.

Discuss...

Posted by Kevin at 03:59 PM | | TrackBack

Worth your time

Chuck Currie:

This afternoon at 4:05 Pacific time I’m scheduled as a guest on The John Carslon Show to talk about the “religious left.” Carlson, the 2000 Republican nominee for governor in Washington State, broadcasts on Seattle’s 570 KVI. You can listen live on their website.

Unfortunately I'll be mid-commute somewhere on Portland's eastside trying to go west, so I'll miss it. But, I would really like to hear what Chuck says. Anyone who catches it please update us via the comments.

Posted by Kevin at 02:08 PM | | TrackBack

It's the Children, Stupid

Dahr Jamail has written a heartbreaking article, Easily Dispensable: Iraq's Children about the effects of US foreign policy on Middle Eastern children.

US foreign policy in the Middle East manifests itself most starkly in its impact on the children of Iraq. It is they who continue to pay with their lives and futures for the brutal follies of our administration. Starvation under sanctions, and death and suffering during war and occupation are their lot. Since the beginning of the occupation, Iraqi children have been affected worst by the violence generated by the occupying forces and the freedom fighters.

I would wager that most Americans either haven't given the children of Iraq a second thought, or have believed that while a very few were accidentally injured or killed, most are doing well. Au contraire.

In a report released by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) on May 2nd of this year, one out of three Iraqi children is malnourished and underweight. The report states that 25% of Iraqi children between the ages of six months and five years old suffer from either acute or chronic malnutrition.

A study conducted by Iraq's Health Ministry in cooperation with Norway's Institute for Applied International Studies and the U.N. Development Program has found that 400,000 Iraqi children are suffering from "wasting," (chronic diarrhea combined with severe lack of protein). Some reports say that U.S. sanctions against Iraq have resulted in the deaths of half a million children.

The malnutrition is just one part of the damage being done by our war in Iraq. If you look for them, you can find stories and photographs of dead or horribly injured Iraqi children who have been the inevitable victims of war. Add to that the potential of radiation poisoning by depleted uranium, and without a doubt, these children will grow up hating the United States on an enduring level similar to the hatred that exists beween Israelis and Palestinians.

But the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes. - Carson McCullers

What shapes will result in the 107 children, some as young as 10, who are being raped and tortured while detained in coalition jails? Or the tens of thousands of children who have been wounded or seen friends and family wounded or killed by coalition forces? What wrath will our children and grandchildren face in a future of payback by these victimized Iraqi children?

Posted by Becky at 11:06 AM | | TrackBack

Failure in War on Terror: It's Women's Fault

You may remember a couple of weeks ago that Shelby Steel opined in a Wall Street Journal editorial that America was unable to effectively fight the War on Terror because of "the world-wide collapse of white supremacy as a source of moral authority, political legitimacy and even sovereignty." Clearly outrageous.

But now David Usher is claiming the reason we are ineffective in fighting that war is because of feminism.

Shelby’s theory is wrong. The collapse of white moral authority is not the problem. The replacement of male authority with feminism is. To Steele’s credit -- he was gazing in the general right direction – but missed the real target. In America, there is one place where white supremacy and radical feminism existed: The Ku Klux Klan.

The crucial relationship Shelby missed is this: post-modern feminism (which has clearly admitted to being a supremacist movement) is the living granddaughter of the Women’s Ku Klux Klan (WKKK), where second-wave feminism (as we know it today) was gestated and borne.

Steel says feminism is a "bifurcated" movement, with "legitimate" feminists who "seek reasonable social equality between the sexes, and strongly oppose the egregious destruction of marriage and men's social rights caused by second-wave feminists." The "second-wave feminists," he says, are "steered by the National Organization for Women," and are really looking to achieve the WKKK goal of "women’s supremacy."

Betty Friedan told contented wives that marriage was a trap. They should throw off their apron strings, become sexually liberated, get rid of that awful husband, and make something of themselves. This first wave of the feminist separatist movement brought on an immediate explosion of divorce and illegitimacy rates.

Clearly outrageous. What contented wife is going to throw away her perfectly good family and way of life? It makes no sense, particularly since the role of wife and mother is very natural and desirable fit for a whole lot of women. Isn't it more reasonable to believe that some women wanted a little more out of life, but until the feminist movement gained force they had no choice but to be traditional housewives and mothers?

Getting back to why feminism is interfering with our ability to wage war, Usher writes an awful lot of right-wing hooey, which you have to read to believe, but this part takes the cake:

Feminists are deeply aware that war spending needs translate into reductions of federal funding on the war against marriage. This is why Jane Fonda, Barbara Streisand, and all known feminists staunchly oppose the war at all costs. … Many of the major federal problems that Congress has repeatedly taken up and put aside, such as health care and Medicaid, would abate substantially if Congress walked away from feminism and enacted simple, inexpensive, marriage-positive policies.

If you are like me, you are still trying to find out what all this has to do with fighting what President Bush has labeled "WW III." If you are like me, you won't believe his conclusion:

Marriage assures a robust economy, with many men ready to vigorously defend their homes and families, women willing to live on less to ensure the survival of a free democracy, and deficit spending is unlikely."

You heard it. It's all women's fault. Deficit spending (the direct result of feminist demands to fund social programs), a feminism-caused decline in marriage (which saps men of their interest in defending their homes and families), and women's inability to live frugally so as to save our democracy are the reasons we can't effectively fight the war.

Posted by Becky at 09:31 AM | | TrackBack

Culture of Corruption 2.0

MARCY GORDON, AP Business Writer:

Employees at mortgage giant Fannie Mae manipulated accounting so that executives could collect millions in bonuses as senior management deceived investors and stonewalled regulators at a company whose prestigious image was phony, a federal agency charged Tuesday.

...

"The image of Fannie Mae as one of the lowest-risk and 'best in class' institutions was a facade," James B. Lockhart, the acting director of OFHEO, said in a statement as the report was released. "Our examination found an environment where the ends justified the means. Senior management manipulated accounting, reaped maximum, undeserved bonuses, and prevented the rest of the world from knowing."

Now why oh why does that remind me so strongly of the Bush White House?

Posted by Kevin at 08:49 AM | | TrackBack

Sour Grapes

Don Swarthout, head of Christians Reviving America's Values (CRAVE) is on the warpath. It seems he's pissed about Bush's plan for the southern border.

President Bush’s so-called “plan” to close the border between the United States and Mexico is nothing but a great American Scam.

But he's pissed at more than just the White House.

“When will America wake up to the fact that our elected officials in Washington DC are only concerned about how to get re-elected,” said Don Swarthout, President of Christians Reviving America’s Values.

Interesting choice of sentiments considering Swarthout tried and failed to win the Republican nomination just two years ago for Republican Ernie Fletcher's open Congressional seat. And yes, that's the same Ernie Fletcher who is now Kentucky Governor and facing corruption charges.

Swarthout sounds more like a jilted lover, spurned by the very system he tried so hard to become a part of, then he does a patriot concerned about America's safety. Not that that should surprise anyone. He is a conservative Republican after all...

Posted by Kevin at 08:34 AM | | TrackBack

Is Google next on the conservative hit list?

The main reason that conservative blogs and websites exist is to destroy those who disagree with their beliefs. In general, they don't go after the ideas..they go after people personally. They did it to the Dixie Chicks. They did it to John Kerry. They did it to Tom Daschle. On a "closer to home" level, I watched Stefan Sharkansky at Sound Politics try to do it TJ at AlsoAlso blog by trying to get his real life information.

It isn't about an exchange of ideas or debate with these people. Its about utterly destroying the individuals that disagree with them.

That makes this mornings hand wringing by uber conservative blog Newsbusters worth noting.

According to them, Google recently yanked the Jawa Report from Google News for "hate speech":

As reported by NewsBusters, the most recent occurrence of this unexplained phenomenon was Friday, May 19, when Frank Salvato, proprietor of The New Media Journal, realized that his content that day hadn't been disseminated at Google News as it had been on a daily basis since he reached an agreement with the search engine in September 2005.

After sending the Google Help Desk a query concerning the matter, Salvato was informed that there had been complaints of "hate speech" at his website, and as a result, The New Media Journal would no longer be part of Google News. As evidence of his offense, the Google Team supplied Salvato with links to three recent op-eds published by his contributing writers, all coincidentally about radical Islam and its relation to terrorism.

Unfortunately, this was not the first conservative e-zine to be terminated in such a fashion. On March 29, Rusty Shackleford, owner of The Jawa Report, received a similar e-mail message as Salvato informing him that: “Upon recent review, we've found that your site contains hate speech, and we will no longer be including it in Google News.” For those unfamiliar, The Jawa Report focuses a great deal of attention on terrorist issues and how they relate to radical Islam.

Two weeks after Jawa was cut from Google News, Jim Sesi’s MichNews.com was banished on April 12. In Sesi’s case, the three pieces provided as examples of “hate speech” were articles by conservative writer J. Grant Swank, Jr., all about – you guessed it – radical Islam and terrorism.

See a trend here?

As a sidebar, the NewsBusters article that first broke this story on May 19 cannot be found by doing a Google News search even though other recent articles by NewsBusters can.

Newsbusters failed to link to any of the articles in question so I have no idea if there is hate speech within the content of those pieces. But having read the Jawa Report multiple times, I'd agree that their site contains hate speech on a regular basis:

Killing Americans and Jew can be great! Just like frosted Flakes! The westerners are justifiably outraged. So are we intolerant for making war and killing those who murder us and call us pigs. Of course the Islamic terrorists always blame it on being “oppressed” or “mistreated” when in fact they are responsible for the state of their nations. But when did they ever work at making anything better? Never, they are lazy! They destroy and whine hoping someone will come in and fix their lands which they have ruined. Why? Because it’s easy, Taking responsibility for their actions and building a future for themselves is just too much work. So their brilliant minds all seem to land on, “Lets blow shit up”. The lazy cowards, how about you Mr. Abu Ayman, when will you martyr yourself? Or, being the coward that you are, will you leave that to some brainwashed teen?

That's pretty mild. They've written much worse (its what I had time to cut and paste this AM).

So how long until Google is Dixie Chicked?

Posted by Carla at 07:15 AM | | TrackBack

May 22, 2006

Alas, My Conservative Friends

Sometimes I just have to shake my head at my conservative friends and their inability to look at things rationally. Such is the case whenever I receive a forwarded political email.

The following one just popped into my inbox today from a very dear friend.

Subject: Something You Won't Read About In the Papers During the Immigration Debate

As you all listen to the news about the student protests over illegal immigration there are some things that you should be aware of.

My wife is in charge of the English-as-a-second-language department at large southern California high school which is designated a Title 1 school, meaning that its students average lower socio-economic and income levels. Most of the schools you are hearing about South Gate High, Bell Gardens, Huntington Park, etc., where these students are protesting are also Title 1 schools.

My wife tells me that 100% of the students in her school and other Title1 schools are on the free breakfast, free lunch program. When I say free breakfast I'm not talking a glass of milk and roll... but a full breakfast and cereal bar with fruits and juices that would make a Marriott proud. The waste of this food is monumental, with trays and trays of it being dumped in the trash uneaten. She estimates that well over 50% of these students are obese or at least moderately overweight. About 75% or more DO have cell phones. (But not enough money for food & essentials - something wrong with priorities here?)

The school also provides day care centers for the unwed teenage pregnant girls (some as young as 13) so they can attend class without the inconvenience of having to arrange for babysitters or having family watch their kids.

She was ordered to spend $700,000 on her department or risk losing funding for the upcoming year even though there was little need for anything; her budget was already substantial. She ended up buying new computers for their computer learning center. Half of which, one month later, have been carved with graffiti by the appreciative students who obviously feel humbled and grateful to have a free education in America.

She has had to intervene several times for young and substitute teachers whose classes consist of many illegal immigrant students here in the country less than 3 months who raised so much hell with the female teachers, calling them "Putas"--whores--and throwing things that the teachers were in tears.

Free medical, free education, free food, day care etc... etc... etc... Is it any wonder they feel entitled to not only be in this country but to demand rights, privileges and entitlements?

To my bleeding-heart liberal friends who want to point out how much these illegal immigrants contribute to our society because they LIKE their gardener and housekeeper and they like to pay less for tomatoes: spend some time in the real world of illegal immigration and see the TRUE costs. Higher insurance, medical facilities closing, higher medical, more crime, lower standards of education in our schools, overcrowding, new diseases etc… etc… etc... For me--- I'll pay more for tomatoes.

We need to wake up. The guest worker program will be a disaster because we won't have the guts to enforce it. Does anyone in their right mind really think they will leave and return voluntarily? There are many hardworking Hispanic/American citizens that contribute to our country and many that I consider my true friends. We should encourage and accept those Hispanics who have done it the right and legal way. It does, however, have everything to do with culture. A third-world culture that does not value education, that accepts children getting pregnant and dropping out of school by 15 and that refuses to assimilate... and an American culture that has become so weak and politically correct that we don't have the will to do anything about it.

If this makes your blood boil, as it did mine, forward this to everyone you know. Sure thought provoking.

The most obvious response is that the author of this message is blind to his own racism, and so are the people who are forwarding it around the Internet (it was third generation when I received it, and obviously had been cleaned up after multiple previous generations of forwarding).

There is just enough truth to what has been written to get the unthinking worked up into a tizzy, but it doesn't stand up well if you really look at it. To assume that only illegal immigrant children are responsible for this behavior is ridiculous (though if you read between the lines you can tell that the blame is being laid on all Mexican immigrants). The sort of disrespect for authority and lack of appreciation cited by the author is a problem throughout our entire society. If anything, based on the newly arrived immigrants I know, the Mexican immigrants displaying this behavior are more likely to have learned it from the angst-ridden, media-saturated, poorly fed, neglected kids who were already here than to have brought it with them.

My kids went to Woodburn schools for several years. In Woodburn, so many of the students are low income that breakfast and lunch are provided free of charge to ALL students and none are allowed to pay, so my children participated in the program along with their low-income classmates (I would imagine day care is provided at the high school, as well - and ought to be if we want these girls to get a diploma so they can earn enough to be independent of the welfare system). The children are required to take a full meal, including food they don't want and so they throw it away uneaten. But federal requirements of the program create that and many other problems which must be addressed at the federal level. They are certainly not the fault of the children or their parents.

Anyway, I pass this on to you because its author specifically spoke to "bleeding-heart liberal friends." As always, I think it is a good idea to understand the perspective of others in hopes that a way can be found to reach out to them.

Posted by Becky at 04:15 PM | | TrackBack

People Powered Howard gives Drudge a smack

Another reason Matt Drudge is a know-nothing hack:

Conservative heavyweight Matt Drudge has all but retracted a story about Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean after receiving a letter from the DNC's lawyers, RAW STORY can report.

Saying he took the DNC at their word -- and declining to mention the fact he had received a letter from a DNC lawyer asking him to take the story down -- Drudge posted an update to a story claiming that Chairman Dean had intervened in the New Orleans mayoral race. His update noted that the DNC had vehemently denied the report.

"The DRUDGE REPORT takes chairman Dean and his spokesman at their word," Drudge wrote. He did not offer an explicit retraction.

DNC communications director Karen Finney said the move came only after the Committee's lawyer had penned a note to Drudge asking him to take the story down.

The only reason conservatives take Drudge seriously is because he once scored on the blue dress story. Being 1 for 258,756 is enough to get you carte blanche with the conservative media.

I love that Dean takes no shit from these cowards.

They'll piss and moan and complain about the "trial lawyer" that forced Drudge to yank his BS, I'm sure. Everyone knows that Republicans hate lawyers. Except the ones that they use to defend them from corruption, bribery and doctor shopping charges.

Posted by Carla at 04:10 PM | | TrackBack

Albright Concerned About Bush's Fundamentalism

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says she is concerned about the role President Bush's Christian beliefs are playing in his foreign policy approach.

"I worked for two presidents who were men of faith, and they did not make their religious views part of American policy," she said, referring to Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, both Democrats and Christians.

"President Bush's certitude about what he believes in, and the division between good and evil, is, I think, different," said Albright, who has just published a book on religion and world affairs. "The absolute truth is what makes Bush so worrying to some of us."

To any true believer of fundamentalist Christianity, the clear message in these statements will be that President Carter and President Clinton were Christians in name only, so they were acceptable, but because President Bush is actually living his Christianity, that makes him dangerous.

Fundamentalist Christians are suspicious of what they see as the "intentional discrediting" of President Bush, known to be a born-again Christian, as part of an orchestrated effort to turn the world against all of fundamentalist Christianity. Albright's new book, "The Mighty and the Almighty," will certainly further fuel their fears.

"Some of his language is really quite over the top," Albright told Reuters on Sunday during a trip to London to promote her book. "When he says 'God is on our side', it's very different from (former U.S. President Abraham) Lincoln saying 'We have to be on God's side.'"

The fundamentalist true believer cannot understand how anyone could both truly believe in Christianity and at the same time not have it be central in their lives. The liberal form of Christianity exhibited by President Carter and the casual form exhibited by President Clinton appear to the fundamentalist to be apostate and dangerous. They will certainly see this as an attack on "true" Christianity.

Posted by Becky at 01:16 PM | | TrackBack

Foodie-Politics Blog for Oregon?

For about five months or so I've pondered off and on the idea of a foodie blog covering northwestern Oregon, mostly because that's where I live. I'm a self-confessed foodie and think it'd be fun. But, what'd really be cool would be to find some way to cross it over into the Oregon portion of the political blogosphere. Yet I've found no way to do that. Of course I don't really spend that much time thinking about it. So there may be an easy way to cross it over which I've just not thought of.

Torrid wrote a post over at Loaded Orygun about a couple of new food/beverage publications hailing from Portland and that got me to pondering yet again how much fun a foodie blog would be.

What would really be fun would be to do one that covers a broader portion of the state - say the Willamette Valley, Northern Coast and the Metro Area - and include our fine wines and microbrews since every meal needs a good beverage.

LOL I'm salivating just thinking about it. But then it is lunchtime...

Where the heck is the common ground between food and politics, though? Or is there any?

Posted by Kevin at 12:28 PM | | TrackBack

Today's Republican Party All About Tax Cuts

Here is what happens when an otherwise "good Republican" dares to think for himself: He gets ousted by the people who are really running the show.

When Republican state Senator Charles Starr decided to vote in favor of a tax increase he knew voters would overturn later so lawmakers could pass the budget and go home, he sealed his doom. Freedom Works, part of the neocon, corporate-run power structure in Washington, DC, decided he had to go and backed a Republican party loyalist with $50,000 to rip Starr to shreds.

Starr, 73, championed charter schools and home schooling. He opposed same-sex unions, claiming homosexuality has long been considered a mental disorder.

But that just isn't conservative enough anymore in the new corporations-are-king Republican party, where traditional conservative values take a back seat to tax cuts and the destruction of government. If you refuse to do exactly what you are told, if you show even the slightest bit of independent thinking, you are gone, and that is particularly the case if you stand in the way of the effort to shrink the government down to the size where they can drag it to the bathtub and drown it.

I now believe that is why Washington-based Americans for Tax Reform, under the leadership of Neocon Master Grover Norquist, has stressed tax cuts and the destruction of the primary mouthpiece against tax cuts - Big Labor - above all else. It is why even in a time of war, Republicans continue to cut taxes and decimate services.

No wonder long-time Republican stalwart Richard Viguerie is telling grassroots Republicans to not vote for Republicans for awhile, get them out of office, and teach them a thing or two about what it means to be conservative.

As long as Democrats controlled Congress or the White House, Republicans could tell conservatives they deserved support because of what they would do, someday. Now we know what they do when they have control. Their agenda comes from Big Business, not from grass-roots conservatives.

Posted by Becky at 10:16 AM | | TrackBack

Controlled Demolition

Was anyone else reminded by the controlled demolition of Trojan of what the twin towers looked like when they fell on 9/11?

Eerie, wasn't it?

Posted by Becky at 09:30 AM | | TrackBack

The $1.625 Million Dollar Dog

The Oregonian has an interesting story today about the value of animals and animal rights. The launching point for the article is the effort by an Estacada family to convince a jury that the loss of their family dog in a cruel attack by their neighbor is worth $1.625 million in loss of companionship.

The real question here is not so much whether the family will experience $1.625 million dollars worth of missing their dog as it is whether animals have the same value as humans do. On the one side you have people who view animals as mere property and a tradition in law that loss of companionship only applies to spousal relationships (it doesn't even apply to the loss of a child). On the other side are animal rights activists who view our traditional treatment of animals as speciesist ( "A rat is a pig is a boy is a dog").

Pet owners commonly say that their pet is a member of their family, and as a dog owner myself I understand that sentiment. We love our dog very much and feel that he is a part of our family. But given the choice between one of our children and our dog, we would certainly choose the child. And given the choice of spending $1.625 million to save our dog's life or euthanasia, we would have to choose euthanasia. If the cost to save our child's life was $1.625 million, on the other hand, we wouldn't even think twice about it.

There is no doubt that people's relationships with their pets have value, and there is no doubt that people ought to treat animals with decency and do what can be done to avoid causing them suffering. The misery of animals matters and we shouldn't act as if they have no right to companionship, contentment and comfort. But in terms of law, this is a very tricky issue. Logic and precedent can quickly overrun common sense.

For example, if a pet is given equal standing in court to a spouse, in terms of valuing of the companionship it provides to its owner, the next question is why is the life of a wild coyote any less valuable than the life of a dog, who by virtue of luck was able to be born into a civilized existence? Isn't that like saying that an Ethiopian child's life is less valuable than the child of a wealthy American? Could a person who accidentally runs over a dog someday be jailed for dogslaughter? Could it become illegal to eat meat?

In trying to pull animal rights up to the level of human rights, don't we run the risk of ultimately reducing human rights to the level of animal rights?

Posted by Becky at 09:25 AM | | TrackBack

Don't let them run away from Oregon's problems

Don't let them run away from Oregon's problems is an OP-ED piece from yesterday's Oregonian discussing the Governor's race. One small snippet:

On health care, which candidates are serious about tackling the issues of skyrocketing health care costs and the growing rate of uninsured in Oregon? Westlund is pushing initiatives that would make health care a constitutional right in Oregon and increase the cigarette tax to pay for coverage for uninsured kids. Kulongoski has endorsed the cigarette tax and has tossed out other health care ideas. Saxton is proposing health savings accounts and tort reform.

My enduring memory of the 2002 Gubernatorial race between Kulongoski (D), Mannix (R) and Cox (L) is of the televised debate they had in Medford. During the entire "debate" Mannix and Kulongoski dodged questions and gave wordy responses virtually devoid of specifics. Cox was the only one who directly answered questions and gave specific, detailed answers as to what he saw as the issues and what he'd do about it.

I ended up voting for Mannix. But I would take it back if I could. It's the only vote I've ever cast which I regret. If I could do it all over again I would go back and vote for Cox. Right, wrong or indifferent on the issues, he was the ONLY one who didn't routinely insult the intelligence of Oregonians by spewing out meaningless platitude after meaningless platitude.

Meaningless platitudes won't fix anything! As the OP-ED title says, don't let them run away from Oregon's problems.

Posted by Kevin at 08:58 AM | | TrackBack

May 21, 2006

She's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!

Yes ladies and gentlemen...I've returned!

I'm up to my armpits in laundry, too. :)

Trying to catch up here on all of the previous week's events. I watched no TV (except for the weather report) so other than a quick perusal of PK and Loaded Orygun, I'm blissfully ignorant of current events.

I had a lovely time on my vacation with my family. Had a nice chance to catch up with my folks and spend some extra special quality time with my peeps.

I'm sure I'll be back to my curmudgeonly self soon. I see Bush hasn't resigned and Wyden had to take the presumptive CIA chief to the woodshed.

Oy.

Posted by Carla at 03:46 PM | | TrackBack

There's the Ideal, and Then There's Reality

Oklahoma gay couples can relax now that a federal judge has struck down the state's ban on adoptions by gay couples.

A federal judge struck down a 2-year-old law that prohibits Oklahoma from recognizing adoptions by same-sex couples from other states and countries.

U.S. District Judge Robin Cauthron ruled Friday the measure violated due process rights under the U.S. Constitution because it attempted to break up families without considering the parents' fitness or the children's best interests.

I have long believed that the best environment for a child is to be part of a loving family with a mother and a father. A balance between masculine and feminine input and guidance is essential to optimal emotional and mental development. Sort of like our democratic republic, which does best when Democrats and Republicans share power equally.

But that's the ideal, and the fact is we don't live in an ideal world. In the real world, a huge percentage of kids grow up every day in homes with just one parent, or in homes where their parents aren't getting along, or in homes where they are abused or neglected. Nobody is making laws against single parent families or against fighting between parents in front of children. Many babies are born to parents who are unable to care for them properly, who hope that someone out there will adopt their child a give them a chance at a good future. And many same-sex couples want to formalize the love of both partners for the children they are raising together through adoption.

My children went to school once with a family of children that had two moms. My boys were good friends with the boys those two moms were raising together. The boys were healthy, loved, and happy. I'm sure the same would be true if they had been raised by two men. What matters is the ability of the parents to put the child's needs first, to sacrifice their own desires to make certain their children have a good start in life.

Who do we think we are to judge same-sex parents? In my opinion, any time a child can grow up loved and cared for, I'm not going to fuss about whether the parents are one thing or another. None of us really grew up in ideal circumstances anyway, if we're going to be honest. In an imperfect world, ideals are important, but they are never as important as the realities of life.

Posted by Becky at 12:37 PM | | TrackBack

Humanity Itself is at Risk in War on Terror

Two Christian missionaries, who have dedicated their lives to saving souls, have literally saved twenty young boys from a lifetime of misery at the hands of a senior member of an Al-Qaeda-linked group once funded by Osama bin Laden. In a dangerous sting operation, they collected evidence to prove that Gul Khan, a senior member of Jamaat-ud Daawa, has abducted Christian boys aged 6-12 and attempted to sell them into the slave or sex trades in Pakistan in order to fund his organization.

Using a secret camera, they filmed him accepting $28,500 (£15,000) from a Pakistani missionary posing as a businessman who said he wanted to set up an operation in which the [twenty] boys would beg for cash on the streets. The boys were eventually freed in a dishevelled and malnourished state after being locked in a room for five months during which they suffered frequent beatings.

The missionaries had first learned about the boys when they saw their pictures. They were so concerned about the plight of the children that they hatched a plan to raise the money to buy them so they could be returned to their families. But they knew buying the boys was not enough and would only serve to fuel the slave trade – they needed to also collect the evidence that would allow authorities to prosecute.

The children's sale was intended to fund a center that would create a "pure Islamic environment" that would be superior to the "depravity" of the West.

My heart breaks every time I hear stories of the cruelty some people exhibit toward children. But that is not why I'm bringing this story to your attention.

Sometimes, in our disgust with the Bush Administration's handling of the war on terrorism and doubts about the government story of 9/11, we can find ourselves open to looking at the Islamic terrorist movement with a grain of sympathy. Randi Rhodes, for example, has spoken on numerous occasions about the factors that pushed Osama bin Laden into reacting to the West with violence, and the story is compelling. It is natural for big-hearted people to try to understand where others are coming from and I believe that reaction is helpful in crafting an intelligent and effective response.

But stories like this one highlight the reality that when people resort to war, it is a very short leap to the dehumanization of those on the other side. I see little difference between the fundamentalism that leads an Islamic militant to sell Christian children into the slave or sex trade to fund his "worthy cause" and the furor over 9/11 that has led our own soldiers to abuse and torture Iraqi prisoners, including women and children, on behalf of America. In times like these, we must all closely guard our humanity, as it is this, more than anything, that is in danger.

Posted by Becky at 11:45 AM | | TrackBack

This is disturbing...

Alabama women's clinic probed for late-term abortions, violations
PHILLIP RAWLS
Associated Press
MONTGOMERY, Ala. - A state medical board has taken action against a doctor and nurse practitioner at a Birmingham abortion clinic where state health officials found women were getting second trimester abortions without a doctor determining the viability of the fetus.

Determining viability is a state law in Alabama. I don't believe the law prevents abortions after the second trimester. It just requires that viability be determine before an abortion can be performed. Jeff lives in Alabama and maybe he can shed more light on this.

On Wednesday, the state Board of Health issued an emergency license suspension for the clinic located on Birmingham's Southside. Health officials said a woman was told she was six weeks pregnant but, after an abortion was induced, she went to an emergency room and delivered a nearly full-term stillborn infant whose head was protruding.

In a report released Friday, state health officials said they found "egregious lapses in care, including non-physicians performing abortions, severely underestimating the gestational age of a fetus, failure to appropriately refer or treat a patient with a dangerously elevated blood pressure, and performing an abortion on a late-term pregnancy."

"This is the first time I've ever issued an emergency order to close an abortion clinic," said Don Williamson, Alabama's health officer for 14 years.

From the description it sure sounds like some pretty serious medical malpractice was taking place there.

It'll be interesting to see how NARAL and Planned Parenthood respond, if at all.

Posted by Kevin at 11:19 AM | | TrackBack

What's an Oregonian to do?

I just got done watching Outlook Portland with Nick Fish, a local program covering Oregon politics. Nick's guests were two political beat reporters, one from the Oregonian and one from Willamette Week, the two largest newspapers in the Portland Metro area and perhaps in the state. The Oregonian for sure is the largest in the state. But I don't believe Willamette Week is widely read outside of the Metro area. Anyway, I missed the first half of the show but the second half was about the recent primary election and how those results play into the general election this coming November. In particular I found the discussion of the Governor's race interesting.

Much has been said about how the moderate Republican Ron Saxton tacked to the far right in order to win the GOP nomination over two more conservative candidates, even so he only won 44% in a measly 38% turn-out, and how unpopular Governor Kulongoski is, even with his base. The task facing each man is similar because both, "at least superficially, are cut from the same cloth", which goes a long way towards explaining their respective primary challenges. If they tack to the middle, which virtually everyone assumes is necessary in order to win, then they risk alienating their respective party bases which they absolutely must have in order to win. If they tack towards their bases to shore up support then they risk alienating the middle. In a two-way race that wouldn't pose as big of a problem. But this is a three-way race with the newly minted Independent Ben Westlund clearly staking out the middle.

Kulongoski has already come out swinging by labeling Westlund as "the other Republican" in the race. Both political beat reporters on Nick Fish's show fully expect Saxton to label Westlund as the other Democrat in the race because, although he is a fiscal moderate-to-conservative (supports a cig tax, repeal of the "kicker" law, universal health care, wanted to raise income taxes in '03, wants to reduce capital gains taxes, etc), on social issues he is "moderate-to-progressive" (universal health care, civil unions, pro-choice, etc). And he has teamed up with the very popular (and very progressive) former Governor Kitzhaber to push a bio-fuels measure on the November ballot called Oregon Apollo which in the current market of sky high petro-fuel prices is sure to appeal to all sides.

Usually when both extremes are taking pot shots at you, trying to label you as part of the hated "other side," you must be doing something right.

As Willamette Week reporter Nigel Jaquiss said in his April 26 cover story on Westlund, the "(t)wo parties bludgeon each other endlessly for scant benefit. Polls show that most voters believe Oregon is headed in the wrong direction; reams of data show our tax system, schools and healthcare are inferior."

Perhaps of more consequence to Oregonians is Westlund's similarity to legendary Oregon Governor Tom McCall, as Jaquiss quotes in his piece:

"He's cut out of the same cloth as Tom McCall," says lobbyist Roger Martin, who worked closely with the legendary maverick Oregon governor. "Whether he can grow into that role remains to be seen."

While the partisans spar to paint Westlund into a partisan corner, Oregon continues to struggle with partisan political gridlock in the state capital.

Posted by Kevin at 09:51 AM | | TrackBack

May 20, 2006

Did Iran Do It, or Didn't They?

Yesterday I wrote about the news that Iran had passed a law that would require color-coded arm bands for Jews, Christians, and others – a move reminiscent of Hitler's Nazi regime.

The link to the story was soon broken as people began to come forward to counter the story. Iranian officials are categorically denying that the story is true.

The law that was passed, they say, merely institutes an Islamic dress code, or "national uniform," for Muslim women.

[A] spokesman for the Iranian Embassy in Ottawa, Hormoz Ghahremani, sent an email to the Canada’s National Post Friday to “categorically reject the news item. These kinds of slanderous accusations are part of a smear campaign against Iran by vested interests, which needs to be denounced at every step.”

The question I'm asking is how did this kind of report happen? Did the Canadian press follow journalistic ethics and verify the story? Considering the rapid spread of the story around the world (sans the withdrawal of the story by a skeptical Canadian press) and the linking of the story to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent statements that the Holocaust did not happen and that Israel will someday cease to exist, one has to wonder whether the story was manufactured and intentionally spread to turn the tide against diplomacy with Iran. Meanwhile, Nazi sympathizers are planning a rally in support of Ahmadinejad.

Pardon me, but with a history of manufacturing documents to achieve its aims, I don't have a lot of faith in this Administration and its partners around the world, and it would not surprise me to see this sort of thing planted to build support for Bush's planned war on Iran.

Posted by Becky at 10:07 AM | | TrackBack

Kulongoski by the (polling) numbers.

Survey USA just released their latest monthly tracking poll on Oregon Governor Kulongoski. The numbers are a mixed bag. Kulongoski's overall approval rating ticked up a couple percentage points from 33 to 35% while his overall disapproval rating ticked up another percentage point to 58%. Those not stating an opinion was at it's lowest in the last year at a mere 7% undecided, which means that Kulongoski has a tough task on his hands. He's got until November to convince a lot of Oregonians that he's their best option.

The good news for Kulongoski: Among Democrats his approval rating is back in the top half. After temporarily dipping all the way down to 42% in April, he's now back up to 50% with 45% disapproving. Among Liberals the numbers are nearly the same except on that track he's up to 51% approval with 43% disapproving - numbers that have got to make his campaign happy even though they're still not exactly great numbers for him. And outside of the Portland Metro area his disapproval number stayed the same at 56% while his approval rating jumped from 33 to 38%, with most of that gain appearing to come from the undecided column.

The bad news: Among Independents (roughly 25% of registered voters) his disapproval numbers ticked up from 57 to 64% while his approval rating ticked down from last month's 32% to this month's low of 27%. And his numbers in the Portland Metro area continue to suck, although at roughly the same rate that they did last month. Both his disapproval and his approval numbers ticked up one percentage point in the Portland area: Disapproval - 59%, Approval - 34%

The lukewarm news: In a three-way race with Saxton (R) and Westlund (I) and with each candidate holding some form of a pro-choice position, the polling numbers for Kulongoski among pro-choice adults is predictably a mixed bag. The numbers trended in his favor over the last month with the approvals going up and the disapprovals going down, but he's still clearly unpopular with pro-choicer Oregonians even though his is the most liberal pro-choice position among the three main candidates. 52% disapprove of Kulongoski and 41% approve. Last month those numbers were 54 and 38%, respectively. So, he's gained ground, but not much.

The battle for the middle: Among the demographic that all three candidates are most keen to capture, Kulongoski gained ground with Moderates. He's not popular, with 55% disapproving and 38% approving of Kulongoski. But those are better numbers than last month's figures when it was 59% disapproving and only 33% approving. However, perhaps more importantly for his campaign, this month's numbers show the first break in what had been a steadily rising disapproval rating among Moderates going back to last November. So here again his campaign has to at least feel like they've reversed a trend which would have spelled certain doom in the general election.

There are a few other ways to break down Kulongoski's numbers. So go knock yourself out if you want. However I think these numbers that I've cited are the most relevant.

Posted by Kevin at 10:00 AM | | TrackBack

Why Christianity is Threatened by Da Vinci Code

No doubt about it, Christians everywhere are upset about "The Da Vinci Code." And while it's being over-discussed on blogs and news sites everywhere, I simply cannot resist doing a bit of blogging about it myself.

As I read the commentary, it seems to me that many people are confused as to why the big uproar in the Christian world over a work of fiction. Vatican officials have been "unusually outspoken and aggressive" about the film and all around the world Christians are boycotting, warning, proselytizing, and more.

The book has upset many Christians by suggesting that Jesus fathered a child by Mary Magdalene, the first in a line of Christly descendants still extant today, and that the Catholic church has covered this up for 2,000 years. Mixing fact and fiction in a way that religious leaders say might confuse readers, the book also suggests that Christ's divinity was an idea that the Emperor Constantine imposed on the Council of Nicea in 325 AD for political reasons.

This Christian site offers the best explanation I have found for the fits the film is causing in the fundamentalist Christian community.

1) If Jesus never died, then He never rose again and, therefore, the Christian faith is vain! If this story is true, then all Christians depending upon Jesus ALONE for salvation are deceived and cannot look forward to Heaven for eternity with our risen Lord!

2) If Jesus was just a human prior to His baptism, then He could not have been sinless. Without Jesus being sinless, His sacrifice on the cross is meaningless, because God the Father could only accept a blood sacrifice from a sinless One.

3) If Jesus married and had a family, then the Gnostics were right all along in saying that Jesus was just a human who never had any thought that He was the Jewish Messiah until the "Christ Consciousness" spirit descended upon Him at His baptism. At that point, Jesus knew He was the Messiah to the Jewish people. This "Christ Consciousness" spirit left Jesus at the cross. Thus, Jesus is not unique, because this "Christ Consciousness" spirit came in times past to Buddha and to Krishna, and later, to Mohammed. People who believe this lie will consign the uniqueness of Christianity to history's "dustbin".

4) If Jesus is not God as He claimed and proved by His miracles, the New Testament is not inspired, and neither are Paul's Epistles; then the Christian Church has no real foundation.

Whether many people will change their views on the humanity of Jesus as a result of this film is hard to say. As I have mentioned before, the book was a part of my own research on the story of Jesus and did launch me into further study, which eventually led me to conclude Jesus, if he existed, was a human being and not God.

Posted by Becky at 09:33 AM | | TrackBack

How Children Learn About God and Science

How Children Learn About God and Science by Live Science is an interesting peek into the widely studied area of childhood learning, albeit from a somewhat unique perspective.

A new review of scientific studies supports the idea that children do not take all the teachings of parents and teachers at face value.

Most parents would hope and expect as much—nobody wants an automaton.

But the study revealed an interesting sidebar that is tougher to explain. Among things they can't see, from germs to God, children seem to be more confident in the information they get about invisible scientific objects than about things in the spiritual realm.

"We don't have a firm view on why it is they're a bit more confident on the scientific information," said Paul Harris, a professor of education at Harvard University. "But one possible plausible reason is that when we talk about things like germs or body organs, we talk in a very matter-of-fact fashion. We don't say, "I believe in germs," we simply take it for granted that they exist."

On the other hand, adults tend to assert the existence of God more strenuously, possibly raising doubts in children's minds as to the existence of an unseen deity, Harris said.

Science, particularly from a darwinian perspective, has been taught in schools for decades now and yet poll after poll shows a majority of Americans believe in God with most believing in a monotheistic God.

So, how do we resolve those facts with this new study? I've got my own explanation, but I'm curious what you think.

Posted by Kevin at 08:59 AM | | TrackBack

May 19, 2006

The Gender Wars re-examined

Last week Live Science published a piece about a new interpretation of why women live longer than men. The idea was floated in the spring edition of the journal Human Nature.

While it is tough to be a woman, being a man can be downright deadly.

Women live longer than men. And now scientists suggest a simple Darwinian reason: Competing for a mate can wear a guy out or get him killed.

"Women live longer in almost every country, and the sex difference in lifespan has been recognized since at least the mid-18th century," said Daniel Kruger at the University of Michigan. "It isn't a recent trend; it originates from our deep evolutionary history."

The reason is simple enough: competition for a mate.

Males of many species must fight vigorously for the right to mate. Think of rams butting heads. Spectacular male bird plumage is another example of biological effort required to succeed, effort that uses energy and can shorten a life.

Of course with humans it's a bit more complex.

Though society may be changing dramatically even from this generation compared to the last, some things never change. Women still have to bear the greatest burden of raising a family—giving birth—and often take on more of the day-to-day responsibilities for the ensuing 18 years. So just as in ancient times, they remain very choosy in selecting a mate.

Now, if you buy all this logic, here's the critical part: To impress women, men remain prone to risky behavior, just as they have been for millennia and just as other male animals are.

In caveman days, being good with a club was one way to get a mate. Now, the ability to purchase a blinged-out SUV has similar value, the scientists suggest.

"Men compete for resources and social status, which are criteria men are valued for in mate selection," Kruger told LiveScience.

This reminds me of a German study I read about several years ago which found that men who drive a BMW get laid a hell of a lot more then men who drive a Porche. I mentioned the study to Carla one time and after pondering it for a few seconds said that it made sense to her. She ventured that a BMW suggests power and financial success first and foremost - desirable traits according to Kruger, while a Porche is more suggestive of compensatory or play-boy issues - obviously not very desirable traits to a women scoping out a potential mate to raise children with.

A more recent piece by Live Science examines how women analyze the faces of men for cues to which will make good fathers.

The study wasn't all bad news for men not interested in settling down. It found that women can look at men's faces and figure out which of them have the highest testosterone levels. Those men -- rated the most masculine by the women -- turn out to be just the kind of guys they would want for a fling.

Higher testosterone levels cause more angular features while lower levels cause more rounded features. But in addition to that, if we look back at earlier periods of human history, a more rounded face implied that the man could afford to eat well and thus would make a good provider... which ties back in with the drive to compete for a mate by risking our own health and well being.

Look at the generations of coal miners alone. These men were severely shortening their life spans and they did it because they were driven to provide for their families or to demonstrate the capacity to provide for one in order to attract a mate. The same motivations can been seen in many, many other vocations.

But that's only one facet of the issue... for both genders.

The pressures of mate selection might be most intense for those just coming into adulthood. And likewise the recklessness of youth, as previous researchers have suggested, is a foundation for human social systems. Young men form the front lines in wars, for example.

One old study on the topic put it this way: "Lacking the opportunity for warfare, some [young adult men] will find other ways to place their lives at risk."

This is an aspect of manhood which I think most men intuitively understood long before anyone decided to study it. And it's an aspect of manhood which I don't think many women really get. Usually, and I see this all over, it's summarized as simply a good example of male aggressiveness... sometimes coupled with a lament about how the world would be better off if run by women. Which seems to make sense until you stop to examine why men are aggressive. Finding a mate is one reason. Others include the instinctive drive to protect a mate and/or children.

Another is the well known propensity by many women to go for the "bad boy" type. It's a raw sexual attraction that often overlooks self-destructive effects for the women themselves - drugs, risky driving, physical abuse, etc. According to the first study it's all instinctively driven... for men and women. And it's as contradictory a drive for men as it is for women.

It's not unusual to read or hear about a middle aged couple getting divorced once the kids have left the nest. The man who had exhibited desirable provider traits when they were both younger now presents a significantly less desirable mate. The same workaholic who provided bountifully hardly knows his wife and she's sometimes resentful even though his traits are part and parcel of why she chose him in the first place. Trust me on this... we guys talk about this and understand the dynamic. But of course that cuts both ways too. The guy who chose a mate because she had those oh so sexy curves - good biological traits for successfully bearing and raising children... even though guys never, ever think of it in those terms (!!!) - now has lost her curves and and she's no longer very attractive to him.

We all know, both men and women, that members of both genders can and do use each other. But we rarily seem to look beyond the offensive surface to what drives it all.

I wonder... if this kind of stuff were taught and talked about more openly in schools... if perhaps future generations would enter the dating game with more understanding of their own drives and perhaps make better, more informed choices?

Maybe... maybe not. What I do know is that, having been twice divorced myself (which is how I ended up raising two daughters by myself), it's not all fun and games. Beyond just the biological side of the equation which these studies examined, emotional scars can often do more to inhibit the quality of life for an individual than anything else. And both genders bear equal responsibility for it.

Posted by Kevin at 11:17 AM | | TrackBack

More Silly Trashing of the ACLU

It seems that no matter how much the ACLU fights to protect the rights of Christians to worship freely, that community is never grateful. Take, for example, its April 19, 2006 federal lawsuit against the city of East Point, Georgia for discriminating against the Tabernacle Community Baptist Church in its implementation of its zoning code.

But because the ACLU isn't biased in favor of Christians, but rather is unbiased in favor of civil rights, it is subject to incessant attacks from members of the Christian right, such as this ridiculous piece by Ted Piccolo claiming that the Portland City Club's invitation to the ACLU to speak somehow shows that the City Club has become partisan.

The persecution complex of the Christian right is sure to be reinforced by the fact that today a federal judge gave the ACLU another win, ruling that the graduation exercises at Russell County High School (a public school) cannot include an official prayer. The response of the anti-ACLU crowd is predictable and wrong:

Once again the ACLU deny the rights of the majority to appease the over sensitive feelings of one lone individual.

The U.S. Supreme Court has been issuing clear decisions in this matter since the early 1960s, but the supporters of prayer in school just cannot get over it. Because it was once allowed, they think it ought to always be allowed. Christians who are so knotted up over school prayer because they believe their civil rights are being infringed ought to do a little research into the history of First Amendment law.

It wasn't until the 1930s that the right to criticize the government finally became a settled matter. People were sent to jail for publicly criticizing a judge's decisions. If Christians truly want to set the clock back on school prayer, then they'd better be prepared to give up a lot of other rights, including the right to criticize the judges who make other decisions they don't like.

Meanwhile, leave the ACLU alone. We have no better ally in our fight to defend the civil rights of citizens against an overbearing, intrusive government than this group, and it's high time the "limited government" crowd realized it.

Posted by Becky at 10:54 AM | | TrackBack

Saddam Novel not a Likely Best Seller

A novel by Saddam Hussein is about to be released by a Japanese publisher. The book, entitled "Devil's Dance" (or "Get Out, Damned One" in Jordan) is set in about 500 AD. An unauthorized publication of the book has been in circulation in the Muslim world for at least a year.

It tells the story of a man, Ezekiel, who plots to overthrow a town's sheik but is defeated by the sheik's daughter and an Arab warrior.

Saddam apparently intended his novel to serve as a metaphor for a Zionist-Christian plot against Arabs and Muslims. Obviously, Ezekiel symbolizes the Jews.

The novel opens with a narrator, who bears a resemblance to the Jewish, Christian and Muslim patriarch Abraham, telling cousins Ezekiel, Youssef and Mahmoud that Satan lives in the ruins of Babylon destroyed by the Persians and the Jews.

Ezekiel is portrayed as greedy, ambitious and destructive. Youssef, who symbolizes the Christians, is portrayed as generous and tolerant — at least in the early passages.

This is the third book Hussein has written. Last year, Christopher Hitchens wrote about the book for Slate in a column entitled "Casualties and Causalities, How to ruin an occupation."

Saddam Hussein was so deluded and deranged during the final days of his despotism that he spent time writing, or dictating, another of his pulp novels. Titled Get Out Damned One—hardly a polite way of suggesting a date for withdrawal—the adventure story invokes a mythic Arab hero who "invades the land of the enemy and topples one of their monumental towers." More wish-thinking, I dare say.

Another review written the day before (July 4, 2005) also criticized the book.

The unpublished novel "Get Out, You Damned One" will not win any literary awards. A forgettable piece of pulp, it features a scheming traitor, an invading army of Zionist-Christian infidels and an Arab liberator. The only thing that sets the novel apart from numerous others like it in Arab bookstores is its author: Saddam Hussein.

It's doubtful the book will make the best seller list here in the U.S. where quality seems to matter as much as ideology in terms of media consumption (take, for instance, the slamming that "The Da Vinci Code" is taking from movie critics so far). But in the Muslim world, due to declining support for the U.S., the book is seeing strong sales where it is available.

Posted by Becky at 10:30 AM | | TrackBack

Tony Snow's Speaking Problems

Everyone was talking the other day about what it meant when Tony Snow used the term "tar baby" twice in a press conference. Some said it was proof he was, consciously or subconsciously, a racist. And to be fair, Fox News has been pushing the race button quite a bit lately, so it is a short leap to make.

At the time, however, my reaction was wow, shouldn't someone who makes their living working with words and ideas know better than to use a term like that? I know our lexicon retains a few terms from slavery days (such as "cotton pickin'"), but people who have risen to the level of Tony Snow ought to have long ago made a mental note about such terms, thought about the meanings of the words they use, and learned to be a little quicker on their feet than that.

Yesterday Snow slipped again. At a White House press briefing Snow actually referred to a non-Fox news outlet as a "competing network." Naturally, the buzz today is he still thinks he's part of the Fox News team. Personally, I think it was a matter of habit. But like the racism charge the other day, Snow's slip of the tongue is giving people an opportunity to spout their negative opinions of the Administration.

I think Tony Snow has a problem, but it's not that he's racist or that he's owned by Fox News. I think Tony Snow's problem is that he is not serious enough about his new position to think about the words that are coming out of his mouth, and he is not treasuring the language that is the primary tool of the legitimate journalist. These weaknesses will, like Bush's oratory malfunctions, provide us with a lot of entertainment over the coming months, but we should take with a grain of salt the notion that his slips of the tongue are eminently meaningful.

Posted by Becky at 09:20 AM | | TrackBack

Saving Iran from Hitler

The Bush Administration will be happy to learn that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has moved a giant step closer to Adolph Hitler. According to today's news, he has requested, and the Iranian parliament has passed a new law that will require all Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians to sew colored-coded cloth badges onto their clothing. The badges will, it is said, help Muslims avoid interactions with non-Muslims.

"This is reminiscent of the Holocaust," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis. …There's no reason to believe they won't pass this," said Rabbi Hier. "It will certainly pass unless there's some sort of international outcry over this."

And here I thought the only tools in the President's toolbox that would be able to bring the American people around to supporting a war in Iraq were the threat of terrorism or the threat of a mushroom cloud. Now it looks as if we'll all get to feel proud of our war on Iran because we'll be saving the world from Hitler II.

Posted by Becky at 06:12 AM | | TrackBack

May 18, 2006

Christian History 101

Gregory Elder, a professor of history and humanities at Riverside Community College in California, is offering a fascinating course on the history of Christianity, which he lays out briefly in an article entitled, The history of Christianity's greatest debate.

[W]hat most modern Christians believe about Jesus of Nazareth is drawn not only from the Bible, but also from several centuries of debate in antiquity which tore apart the Christian community and racked the later Roman Empire. This was the age of the seven great councils from the fourth to the eighth centuries A.D. which formed the Christian religion, which would go on to be the largest in the world in a multitude of different churches and denominations.

I can't wait for next week's installment.

This would actually make a great high school class, too – maybe one of those electives the kids can choose to attend every trimester. My 7th grader is learning all about the ancient Greek gods. Why not give kids a chance to learn a little about the history of the dominant religion in our own country?

Posted by Becky at 03:28 PM | | TrackBack

Venezuela-Terrorist Connection Claim Smells Bad

After all the terrorism-Iraq link lies we were told in order to garner the public's support for a war in Iraq, I have a very hard time believing terrorist-anyone link stories anymore – particularly when they're linked to oil-producing countries. I must say, the fact that I can no longer trust my government on something like that pisses me off.

That's how I feel about today's news that Venezuela has ties with Middle East terrorists. Particularly when that news is coming from The Washington Times, mouthpiece for the Messiah, aka the Reverend Sun Myong Moon.

I can't help but wonder if the powers that be are just miffed that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has, much to the dismay of Big Oil and The Washington Times, nationalized the country's oil supply, is helping the poor in his own country and offering to help those elsewhere, and is standing up to our government despite the role it played in the failed coup attempt in 2002 (only to have all those oppressed citizens rise up and demand he be returned to power).

I'm not claiming to be knowledgeable about any of this. With regards to Venezuela, I only know a few snatches of things I've heard or read here or there – such as Pat Robertson's calling for Chavez's assassination and his seemingly wild accusations of a Venezuela-al Qaida link. I don't know how accurate any of it is or whether Chavez is just kicking Bush's butt in playing the media. But I do know that I smell a real big stinky rat here and I think I'm going to have to spend a little time digging into why we're suddenly so obsessed with Venezuela and why we're whipping out the terrorism card again.

Posted by Becky at 02:51 PM | | TrackBack

Beware the Thought Police

Michelle Goldberg has a really interesting piece in the In These Times magazine titled Saving Secular Society

Whenever I talk about the growing power of the evangelical right with friends, they always ask the same question: What can we do? Usually I reply with a joke: Keep a bag packed and your passport current. I don’t really mean it, but my anxiety is genuine. It’s one thing to have a government that shows contempt for civil liberties; America has survived such men before. It’s quite another to have a mass movement—the largest and most powerful mass movement in the nation—rise up in opposition to the rights of its fellow citizens. The Constitution protects minorities, but that protection is not absolute; with a sufficiently sympathetic or apathetic majority, a tightly organized faction can get around it.

I don't disagree with her there or, for the most part, in the rest of the piece. Her title troubles me, though, because it touches on the flip side of the same coin.

The mass movement I’ve described aims to supplant Enlightenment rationalism with what it calls the “Christian worldview.” The phrase is based on the conviction that true Christianity must govern every aspect of public and private life, and that all—government, science, history and culture—must be understood according to the dictates of scripture. There are biblically correct positions on every issue, from gay marriage to income tax rates, and only those with the right worldview can discern them. This is Christianity as a total ideology—I call it Christian nationalism. It’s an ideology adhered to by millions of Americans, some of whom are very powerful. It’s what drives a great many of the fights over religion, science, sex and pluralism now dividing communities all over the country.

Christianity isn't the problem. Neither for that matter is Christian Nationalism. The problem is the attempted union of Church and State. By couching it in the terms she does it leaves one with the distinct impression that the ideology she describes is the problem. And that my friends is very troubling.

The same Bill of Rights which champions the inalienable right of Americans to disbelieve that extreme pseudo-Christian ideology also champions the inalienable right of Americans to believe it or even to make a religion out of secular humanism if that's what one wishes to do. The belief or disbelief isn't the real issue at stake here. Unless you act upon your beliefs in a way that infringes upon my inalienable rights then your beliefs not only can't hurt me, but they are really none of my business unless you choose to make them my business by discussing them with me... which is your inalienable right just as it's my inalienable right to ignore you, walk away or to engage you in discussion as I see fit.

What troubles me is that often the backlash against one dogmatic bigoted extreme involves attempting to supplant it with another dogmatic bigoted extreme. And whether Ms. Goldberg intended such a reaction, the reality is that "secular society" doesn't need to be saved any more than a mythical spiritual past needs to be saved as so many of those very same evangelicals firmly believe.

Not long after I first got online back in '95 or '96 I stumbled into the ongoing Creation/Evolution debate on the long defunct MSNBC message board system. I jumped in as a Young Earth Creationist which was the belief system which I had been taught growing up. I was instantly hooked. Not so much with the particulars as with the mental jousting. As a college drop-out I absolutely loved attempting to match wits with scientists and other evolution advocates who had vastly more academic knowledge and training.

I ended up deeply involved in the online portion of the long running debate. First at MSNBC and then later at several BBS which catered specifically to that debate. I continued it for the next two or three years. Along the way I learned a great deal of humility, had my views moderated and found myself on an extremely short list of Creationists whom the evolutionists actually seemed to like and respect. Largely, I suspect, because I would admit when I knew that I'd been wrong and because I demonstrated that I was actually reading and considering what they had to say. I even ended up getting an honorary PhD from a spoof diploma mill called By Bayou University, which was created to mock the credentials of a few of the less reputable Creationist "scientists." It only cost me the promise of a case of beer... which I didn't even have to deliver on. All in good fun, of course.

Towards the end of that period I started getting more and more into politics... driven largely by the breaking Clinton/Lewinsky affair.

Shortly before I left for good I found myself in a sidebar with a guy named Scott who had always been on the evolution side of the debate. He was an agnostic biologist nearing the end of graduate school at that point. I'd mentioned in passing that I was a registered Independent and it turned out that he was too. We got to talking and quickly found that we were both moderates and began discussing the relative merits both the Left and the Right and which side's extremists we feared the most. Very much to my surprise he said that he feared the far Left the most, although only by a hair.

The point of my anecdotal story here is that it is more than just the "Christians" on the far right who percieve some secular humanists as a threat. Scott was an agnostic scientist with no love whatsoever for evangelical Christians of any stripe. Yet he saw that despite the profound ideological differences which motivate both extremes, they share many characteristics once you get past the ideology. And what he saw troubled him.

I submit that fighting fire with fire still leaves a conflagration with the very real capacity and likelihood to destroy. It's one thing when a forest or homes are trying to be saved. It's another thing when citizens civil rights could be destroyed. The ends very rarily justify the means.

Posted by Kevin at 11:33 AM | | TrackBack

Dweebs Shouldn't Try to be Cool

We've all known the dweeb who mistakenly thinks if he says the right words or wears the right clothes he'll suddenly be cool. Usually, all that happens is it highlights the contrast between the dweeb and the people who are actually cool. A dweeb is always better off coming to terms with who he is and just being a dweeb. This is advice that the President really should heed.

Yesterday, the President welcomed members of the U.S. Winter Olympic team to the White House. Attempting to look cool, the President gave an especially warm greeting to the very cool snowboarders:

"We want to thank all the dudes of dudesses of the snowboarders who are here."

A flub like that is pretty obvious to people who are actually cool. Snowboarder Kelly Clark thought the President's term "dudesses" was "different."

"We don't really use that one too much."

That wasn't the only uncool thing the President did. Last week he met with Jeremy Bloom, who was just signed by the Piladelphia Eagles, and told Bloom that he was a big football fan. Bloom promised the President he would bring him a signed jersey. After the speeches yesterday, Bloom kept his promise and tried to give the President a jersey he'd had Donovan McNabb sign. The President, however, was too busy playing movie star and autographing the other athletes' bobblehead dolls, posters, and jackets to notice Bloom.

So Bloom, who was drafted last month by the Eagles, did the next best thing: He gave the jersey to first lady Laura Bush.

That's too bad. It would have been a lot of fun to see the President try to balance his friendship with Rush Limbaugh against his desire to be cool by accepting a jersey with the autograph of a quarterback who is only famous because he's black.

Posted by Becky at 09:04 AM | | TrackBack

When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful...

...a miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical.
And all the birds in the trees, well they'd be singing so happily,
joyfully, playfully watching me.
But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible,
logical, responsible, practical.
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable,
clinical, intellectual, cynical. - Super Tramp

Spirituality May Help Lower Blood Pressure

THURSDAY, May 18 (HealthDay News) -- Religion and spirituality may have a positive effect on blood pressure, according to a study of more than 5,300 black Americans.

Researchers found that people in the Jackson (Miss.) Heart Study who were involved with or participated in religious activities had significantly lower blood pressure than people who did not, even though the people involved in religious activities were more likely to have high blood pressure, higher body mass index (BMI) scores, and lower levels of adherence to medications.

...

"Our findings show that the integration of religion and spirituality -- attending church and praying -- may buffer individuals exposed to stress and delay the deleterious effects of hypertension. These practices can be useful for individuals to incorporate into their daily lives," Wyatt said.

I don't really have anything to add. I just found it interesting.

Posted by Kevin at 08:01 AM | | TrackBack

God Hates the Pacific Northwest

Pat Robertson says he's heard from God, and God says the Pacific Northwest is in big trouble this year. My guess is if he is correct he will say God punished us because Portland, known as the San Francisco of the northwest, is a haven for gay people. So we're on Robertson's God's bad list.

The Rev. Pat Robertson says God has told him that storms and possibly a tsunami will hit America's coastline this year. The founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network has told viewers of "The 700 Club" that the revelations came to him during his annual personal prayer retreat in January.

"If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms," Robertson said May 8. He added specifics in Wednesday's show.

"There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest," he said.

It would seem God has also been talking to disaster officials, who have been engaged in preparing plans for a megathrust earthquake in the Pacific Northwest. Such a quake could cause a tsunami, and would be our equivalent of Hurricane Katrina.

Former Pacific Northwest weather man Scott Stevens also believes the Pacific Northwest is in trouble. Only he postulates that the reason is Russian bad guys or our own government are intentionally preparing the area for a major man-made earthquake. He must not be talking to God.

Naturally, we're not ready for that kind of disaster. I'm sure God knows this.

Too bad. I'm not leaving Sodom. In my opinion, it's Heaven on earth.

Posted by Becky at 06:14 AM | | TrackBack

May 17, 2006

Oregon election results - back to the future

The Oregonian reports that Democratic incumbent Governor Ted Kulongoski won with 54% of the vote in the contested Dem primary and Republican Ron Saxton won with 44% of the vote in the contested GOP primary. Both won in what early predictions of a mere 32% turnout would be a record low turnout for a primary election in Oregon.

The Hotline (via Westlund's campaign) says that the winner was the guy not on the ballot: Indie Gubernatorial candidate Ben Westlund, citing in large part the anemic support for both Saxton and Kulongoski in the primary.

Torrid over at Loaded Orygun notes some not so great national coverage of the Kulongoski campaign. Meanwhile over at Blue Oregon Jeff Alworth's Election Winners and Losers tally gives the nod to the Oregon GOP because the relatively moderate Saxton beat out two more conservative Republicans for the GOP nomination and Oregon Republicans presumably wanted a moderate who could win. But I disagree with his reasoning when he cites Westlund as a potential contributing factor to the Saxton campaigns race to November. Mostly because Westlund is himself a moderate.

Setting aside my current personal gubernatorial preference for Ben Westlund as best I can, it seems to me that there is no scenario which won't find Westlund and Saxton vying for moderates. And that seems to me to potentially help Kulongoski because his biggest threat - a moderate revolt - is potentially diluted by virtue of the most moderate Republican having won the GOP nomination. Had Mannix or Atkinson won then I think we would in November have seen a three-way division largely along ideological lines, with most of the left going with Kulongoski, most of the middle going with Westlund and most of the right going with Mannix or Atkinson. But Saxton's win changes that dynamic.

Of course Saxton had to tack far to the right to win the GOP nomination. And Kulongoski will be doing his damndest to try to keep him painted into that corner. Here again I disagree with Alworth's reasoning because Westlund has every incentive in the world to try to do the exact same thing, thereby potentially multiplying Kulongoski's efforts.

Your thoughts?

Posted by Kevin at 05:52 PM | | TrackBack

"Da Vinci" Actor Calls for Disclaimer on Bible

Here's an statement that is sure to upset the already sensitive Christian world: actor Ian McKellen of "The Da Vinci Code" told Matt Lauer this morning that the Bible should have a disclaimer that it is "fiction."

Lauer asked director Ron Howard:

"There have been calls from some religious groups, they wanted a disclaimer at the beginning of this movie saying it is fiction because one of the themes in the book really knocks Christianity right on its ear, if Christ survived the crucifixion, he did not die for our sins and therefore was not resurrected. What I'm saying is, people wanted this to say 'fiction, fiction, fiction'. How would you all have felt if there was a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie? Would it have been okay with you?"

Howard just sat there, so McKellen responded:

"Well, I've often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction. I mean, walking on water, it takes an act of faith. And I have faith in this movie. Not that it's true, not that it's factual, but that it's a jolly good story. And I think audiences are clever enough and bright enough to separate out fact and fiction, and discuss the thing after they've seen it."

The "truth" – or lack of it – in the Bible is a matter that is probably never going to be sorted out. I spent a good deal of time looking for proof that it was either infallible or a pack of lies and found that neither extreme was true. Based on what I've learned, I now believe the Bible is made up of a lot of politically-tainted real and imaginary history, wise sayings, symbolism, allegories, mythology, and ancient knowledge, and is a cultural treasure. It would be nearly impossible to put an accurate disclaimer on the book.

But I must admit I found McKellen's comment delightfully ironic.

Posted by Becky at 12:09 PM | | TrackBack

Where Does Education Become Indoctrination?

All parents have certain beliefs and approaches to life that they value highly and feel compelled to pass on to their children. Both religious and political beliefs are clear examples of this. The question is, when does education become indoctrination?

It is a delicate subject because if one believes parents are indoctrinating their children in a way that is harmful to the children or society, then one must consider whether it is appropriate for the State to step in and take action. I know many fundamentalist Christians who fear that someday they could lose their children for raising them to believe as they do. Rumors have floated around for years about the possibility that parents who raise their children to believe homosexuality is abhorrent in God's eyes could be arrested, for example.

On the other hand, sometimes religious or political beliefs can be perceived as having negative consequences for society, and in many cases educators have responded by working to broaden children's minds in the classroom. This is why many religious fundamentalists view schools as indoctrination facilities and pull their children out. The book Heather Has Two Mommies, which was the 11th most banned book from school libaries in the 1990s, is an excellent example of the sort of tug-of-war between parental authority and societal responsibility.

In light of this tug-of-war, this story is particularly interesting.

The Hamas terrorist organization, ruler of the Palestinian Authority, has been publishing comics educating Arab children to hate the State of Israel and support terrorism against the Jewish State.

The comics are deeply disturbing forms of indoctrination that breed and intensify hatred, guaranteeing another generation (at least) of war. What is unusual here is that the material is essentially coming from the government. Parents, even if they were inclined to do so, have little, if any, ability to protect their children from the indoctrination. It reminds me of the Hitler Youth.

I have written before on the importance of educating children about the factual history of modern religions – how they came into existence and how their sacred texts were written and compiled. I know that many would view that as interference in the parent-child relationship. In fact, frequently one person's education is another's indoctrination.

These issues are very sticky, to be sure, but in a world on the edge of a massive explosion, they are issues we must sort out very quickly.

Posted by Becky at 10:01 AM | | TrackBack

Hurricane Damaged Billboards to be Restored

Some are complaining because Congress has included in its hurricane recovery funding bill a provision allowing billboard companies to rebuild billboards that were destroyed in recent hurricanes Rita and Katrina. The legislation, sponsored by U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett, is being called a "Billboard Regeneration and Highway Uglification Act."

Bennett's measure runs counter to the federal Highway Beautification Act, the legacy of Lady Bird and President Lyndon Baines Johnson. It would plant the federal highways with new billboards that could stand for another generation.

Here's the problem with this argument. Congress in 1978 amended the Highway Beautification Act to require that just compensation – in the form of cash – be paid when billboards are ordered removed. Billboards that were legally erected in Florida and destroyed by the hurricanes, like any other lawful land use, by law can be rebuilt. If they are not allowed to be rebuilt, they are being taken and the state must pay compensation.

What a lot of people don't understand about billboard compensation is that the value of a billboard is far higher than the cost of the structure itself. It also is based on the income that structure can produce for the billboard company – several hundred to several thousand dollars a month. And because the number of billboards has been severely limited under the Highway Beautification Act, existing billboards are even more valuable. Compensation per billboard could easily run into the millions of dollars – a financial burden that Florida can ill-afford.

Too few people realize how important billboards are to the small business community. In a 1995 Study entitled "The Economic Impact of Outdoor Advertising in Rural, Small-Town America," William Lilley and Laurence J. DeFranco found that 90% of billboards in small American towns serve small local businesses. The billboards work to attract customers they needed to compete against chains and franchises.

In Florida's larger cities, billboards are an essential part of the state's tourist economy, telling out-of-town visitors what attractions are available and where, as well as what deals can be found at which restaurants and motels.

Charles R. Taylor, Ph.D., Professor of Marketing at Villanova University, published an article in The Journal of Advertising Research recently about a study he did that found these businesses had no viable alternative to billboards for their advertising needs. No other advertising medium was as effective for attracting new customers. He also conducted a meta-analysis of several independent studies and found that 85% of travelers find billboards useful, and 70% of people believe the benefits of billboards outweigh the costs.

In short, the billboard legislation added to the hurricane recovery funding bill does not harm the scenic beauty of Florida because it only restores pre-existing boards – whose quantities have already been reduced as a result of the Highway Beautification Act. The legislation works responsibly to save Florida money, keep its local economy moving, and serve the needs of its tourist industry.

For further information on the importance of quick replacement of all types of signs following natural disasters, go to this site and download "The Role of the Regulator in Sign Repair Following Natural Disasters."

Posted by Becky at 09:18 AM | | TrackBack

May 16, 2006

End of Religion = Beginning of Peace?

This is one of the more interesting interviews I’ve read in awhile: Why Religion Must End, by Laura Sheahen.

Sam Harris is not your grandfather's atheist. The award-winning writer practices Zen meditation and believes in the value of mystical experiences. But he's adamant in his belief that religion does more harm than good in the world, and has sparked controversy by suggesting that when it comes to faith-based violence, religious moderates are part of the problem, not the solution.

Harris says religion organizes people into groups and prevents them from identifying with others:

On the subject of religious belief, we relax standards of reasonableness and evidence that we rely on in every other area of our lives. We relax so totally that people believe the most ludicrous propositions, and are willing to organize their lives around them. Propositions like "Jesus is going to come back in the next fifty years and rectify every problem that human beings create"--or, in the Muslim world, "death in the right circumstances leads directly to Paradise." These beliefs are not very contaminated with good evidence…. this whole style of believing and talking about beliefs leaves us powerless to overcome our differences from one another. We have Christians against Muslims against Jews, and no matter how liberal your theology, merely identifying yourself as a Christian or a Jew lends tacit validity to this status quo. People have morally identified with a subset of humanity rather than with humanity as a whole.

He believes faith-based actions are of such consequence that challenging those core beliefs is essential, despite current taboos:

[P]eople are highly indisposed to having their core beliefs challenged. But we need to lift the taboos that currently prevent us from criticizing religious irrationality. …Whenever you're standing at a podium or publishing a book or article or an op-ed, that's when it's time to be really rigorous about the standards of evidence. …[I]f the president of the U.S. started talking about how Saturn was coming into the wrong quadrant and is therefore not a good time to launch a war, one would hope that the whole White House press corps would descend on him with a straitjacket. This would be terrifying--to hear somebody with so much power basing any part of his decision-making process on something as disreputable as astrology. Yet we don't have the same response when he's clearly basing some part of his deliberation on faith.

Harris makes some very valid points, but I’ll have to ponder awhile his assertion that the end of religion is essential to a peaceful future and that moderate religion (such as the liberal form of Christianity) is just as harmful as extremist religion as far as preventing a peaceful co-existence. I see his point, but it just doesn’t feel right. Any thoughts?

Posted by Becky at 03:56 PM | | TrackBack

Only a fool would trust this man

SFGate.com:

The Bush administration has launched a multipronged attack on a lawsuit that accuses AT&T of collaborating with the U.S. government in illegal electronic surveillance, arguing that customers can't prove their phones were tapped or that the company or the government broke the law -- and that, in any event, the entire case endangers national security.

Those assertions in a move for dismissal were based on arguments and evidence that the government submitted to a federal judge under seal, keeping them secret from the public and from the privacy-rights group that filed the suit on behalf of AT&T customers.

The sealed documents and a heavily edited public version were submitted in federal court in San Francisco early Saturday along with declarations from John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, and Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency. Both officials attest to the need for secrecy as a reason to keep the lawsuit, filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, from going forward.

Negroponte... Negroponte... now why is that name familiar? Oh yeah, he was a key figure in the blatently unconstitutional, 100% Republican run, Iran/Contra criminal enterprise.

You remember the Contras. They were the rightwing FASCIST group who massacred 10,000 Nicaraguan CIVILIANS with the full support of scum like Negroponte and the rest of that cabal.

I can easily believe that Negroponte sincerely wants to keep a shroud of secrecy over the current NSA domestic spying operation, just like he continues to shroud his activities with the Contras in secrecy.

Given his fascist-loving past it's more of a damnation than a defense that Negroponte submitted a declaration on behalf of the Bush Administration. And of course that's patently obvious to everyone. But... this is Bush World where up is down and down is up, white is black and black is white.

These people make me ill...

Posted by Kevin at 12:52 PM | | TrackBack

"Insulting" Films are Nothing New

In an editorial entitled Civility, not Censorship, is Issue in 'Da Vinci Code' Debate, John Leo Sun addresses various arguments at issue for Christians with regards to the film.

Sun doesn't side with either Tom Hanks, who says the film is simply a story "loaded with all sorts of hooey and fun kind of scavenger-hunt-type nonsense," or with the Christian Council of Korea, who says the film "belittles and tries to destroy Christianity." But he does believe the film is "mounting the powerful argument that Christianity is rotten to the core, based on lies and political conspiracy."

I think Sun is missing the point entirely.

This film is no different from Monty Python's "Life of Brian" or Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ." In "Brian," the clear message was that the people were so hungry for a Messiah that just about anyone would have filled the bill. In a time of such superstition, repression, and poor education, it would have been rather simple to fool a lot of the people and make up the entire gospel story based on the life of a human being. That's my reading of the film. I haven't seen "Temptation," but it would seem to me that was also focused on depicting Jesus as a human being rather than as God in the flesh.

And if Christians will be honest, that - and not the political conspiracy implication - is the very matter that is so scandalous about the Da Vinci Code – that it dares to humanize Jesus and, thereby, undermines the notion of his divinity. If Christians cannot handle the secular world's questioning of their core belief, nobody is twisting their arm and making them watch the film. They have survived cinematic expressions of doubt about Jesus's divinity before; they'll survive it again.

As for the film's supposed denigration of Opus Dei, the exaggeration of certain characteristics or stereotypes for the sake of entertainment is common in the industry. I would actually expect albinos to be more upset about the film than members of Opus Dei. I mean, isn't this even worse than Goldie Hawn's and Chevy Chase's film "Foul Play," which featured a murderous albino, but was loaded with all sorts of hooey?

Posted by Becky at 11:02 AM | | TrackBack

It is OUR Responsibility

How embarrassing is this: the European Parliament is investigating our CIA's rendition of terrorist suspects to countries that allow torture – something that our own Congress refuses to do.

Starting in 2002, when lawyers in the Justice Department were advising the president to expand the "renditions" that Clinton had started, some of their internal memoranda expressed concern that someday, an independent prosecutor here would charge those responsible for the kidnappings and torture with war crimes. But the lawyers assured the president that there was "a reasonable basis in law" that the 1996 War Crimes Act would not apply. Bush, with no background in American or international law, went right along. …

But the CIA can't shut up the European Parliament; the Council of Europe, a human rights organization; or reporters enthusiastically on the case in Britain, Italy, Sweden, Germany, and elsewhere, including Eastern Europe.

Moreover, European Parliament investigator Giovanni Fava and his committee come to Washington this month. He has some additional questions for Bush administration officials, members of Congress, and human rights groups here about the renditions around Europe. Also among those inquiries are other possible CIA crimes, including torture, in the CIA's secret prisons.

We claim to be a nation that respects the law and human rights. But we the people are allowing our government to thumb its nose at both federal and international law. It's time to put some very harsh pressure on Congress to end this lawlessness and investigate and prosecute those responsible for it. That we are standing down from this responsibility and leaving other countries to pursue it is shameful.

Posted by Becky at 09:11 AM | | TrackBack

Better not peek into Sen. Smith's closet...

... you might find a (gasp!!) Liberal.

According to Concerned Women of America Senator Smith's brother, a judicial nominee to the 9th Circuit is a "Liberal Rookie."

Posted by Kevin at 08:08 AM | | TrackBack

May 15, 2006

Morgellons Disease a Biblical Plague?

When I read on the Drudge Report over the weekend that a strange disease, known as Morgellons, was spreading across California, Texas and Florida, my interest was piqued. When I read about what Morgellons is, I was really freaked out.

Basically, artificial-looking colored fibers and strings grow out of lesions on the body, creating a crawling feeling all over the skin, and it's incurable. The stuff of science fiction. One young person recently committed suicide over it, and I honestly can't say I blame the man.

If you read the coverage, which is headline news on Drudge and Rense, you might well believe this is a brand new disease. One writer even suggested it might be the product of genetic manipulation of Lyme disease that has been intentionally released on the population for the purpose of monetary gain for the drug company that suddenly has the cure. The Rapture believers are calling it a fulfillment of the Book of Revelation prophecy that painful sores are one of the seven last plagues in the End Times (I remember when they said that about AIDS, too).

The thing is, Morgellons has been around since the 1600s. You would think that would make it a bit hard to explain it away as an End Times plague. But, in fact, I found that bit of information in the article posted on this End Times believing site, where it is conveniently overlooked because to notice it would undermine the site's "plague of boils" thesis. It would appear to undermine the intentional disease-spreading theory as well.

Still, Matt Drudge would have an awfully difficult time keeping the Rapture believers all worked up for his neocon friends if he didn't regularly toss them a bite.

Posted by Becky at 04:43 PM | | TrackBack

Same song, different verse

Remember president Bush's much lauded Coalition of the Willing?

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is banning arms sales from the U.S. to Venezuela, America's fifth-largest source for oil imports, because of what it says is a lack of support by President Hugo Chavez's government for counterterrorism. - Associated Press

Ah well... Rove's got better things to do these days. Besides, his little catch phrase worked well enough when he wanted it to.

Posted by Kevin at 03:00 PM | | TrackBack

Persecution Complex is Selectively Blinding

Everyone knows Saddam Hussein is unrepentant for his war crimes and is prepared to die for them. His lack of remorse is shocking to many, but really it is common for people to believe the ends justify the means and to feel persecuted when they are punished for their crimes.

In her lengthy article The Battle Cry of G.I. Jesus, Debra Schaffer Hubert explains how many of the Neocon Christian Fundamentalists who are under scrutiny for their activities in pursuit of a theocracy are also remaining defiant, because to these people, "persecution is seen as a compliment or confirmation of following in Jesus' footsteps of crucifixion."

Ever wonder why George Bush looks so proud, smug and arrogant in the face of his current 70% disapproval rating? The bible writes in its own free ticket to be happy if people yell at you. From the bible one is instructed to expect persecution. It is the religious right's loophole from accountability for the rising tide of distress the public naturally exhibits in response. Justified fingers are pointed at "evildoers", while military "solutions", pushing Armageddon, are pursued.

Tom Delay received a standing ovation at the "War on Christians" conference, reports The Washington Post of March 29, 2006. Speaking of DeLay's forced resignation due to his affiliation with lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Rick Scarborough, convener of the conference said "I believe the most damaging thing that Tom DeLay has done in his life is take his faith seriously into public office, which made him a target for all those who despise the cause of Christ."

When DeLay finished speaking Scarborough said to him,"God always does his best work right after a crucifixion." DeLay basked in the rapturous ovation that followed. "Keep your eyes on Jesus," Scarborough called after the fallen leader as he departed the stage. If the left thinks that the right is embarrassed or ashamed for the Abramoff scandal, they are wrong. It is proving to them that God's "chosen ones" will be persecuted.

Peter Perl writes in his article in the Washingon Post April 9, 2006 titled "DeLay's Next Mission From God," "DeLay may be leaving Congress, but he will be back with a vengeance, in a new and potentially more powerful role, because he is a ferociously determined man who believes he is on a politico-religious mission from God."

It is often quite easy for people engaging in illegal or unethical behavior in pursuit of an ideology or religious goal to recognize wrongdoing in others, whose views are different from their own, while being unable to see their own wrongdoing. For instance, Saddam Hussein was reportedly shocked when he saw the notorius pictures from Abu Ghraib prison - this despite the unspeakable horrors he perpetrated on others. He did not understand that the men in the photos were impeding the establishment of a Christian New World Order at the direction of God Himself and under the leadership of God's appointed President of God's Christian country, the United States. If he knew that, he would surely repent for having stood in the way of God's plans to restore his dominion over the earth.

Posted by Becky at 01:51 PM | | TrackBack

Danger! Colored People Are Taking Over!

This weekend I had the unfortunate opportunity to listen for about an hour to Michael Savage on the radio. I was more than a little horrified at his message of white racial superiority.

Media Matters has an excellent write-up about what Savage said and I suggest you read it, though they haven't quoted some of what I considered the more memorable points he made. But in a nutshell, Savage said that the influx of Latinos in the U.S. is being allowed to continue because the ruling elite know that they cannot control an enlightened white society, and the lesser races are easier to control and manipulate. He also cautioned that these people will bring their form of corrupt government with them (which makes me wonder how much he knows about the extent of government corruption in the U.S.).

Discussing the immigration debate on May 10, Savage stated that "our brown brethren, who are so nationalistic and so anti-gringo and anti-Anglo," are not "as enlightened as the European-American." Warning that "the European-American, or the white person, is being erased from America's future," Savage doubted that "minorities, when they take over the country, will be quite as benevolent and as enlightened as the European-Americans today."

I have a couple of problems with Savage's rant that to me seem painfully obvious. At the risk of sounding like an elitist myself, I have to wonder whether the man has ever watched a local newscast and seen the white people routinely interviewed to comment on whatever newsworthy event they witnessed. Has he ever visited a mall, a Wal-Mart store, or an amusement park and just watched the white people? Are the dull, fat, foul-mouthed and foul-mannered, sloppy white people you see everywhere really all that "enlightened" and difficult to manipulate?

On the other hand, has he ever actually talked to non-white immigrants to see how enlightened they might be? I have. I have met Mexican immigrants, both legal and illegal, who are the American ideal: in tact families and well-behaved children, who work hard, love America, and are bright and politically aware. The point is, you cannot make blanket statements about people based on race. People are people.

All these little minority kids Savage is so worried about are growing up Americans. They are going to American schools, watching American television, wearing American clothes, playing with American children, and eating American food. I can't imagine that they'll be anything other than American when they're old enough to run for public office. Aside from the fact that, unlike most Americans today, they'll probably be bilingual.

People of color are already serving in public office all over the country, and many of them have proven to be more enlightened, by far, than Michael Savage or John Gibson, Fox News host, who told white viewers on Saturday that they weren't having enough babies, and thereby were allowing Latinos to take over the country. Gibson instructed his presumably white Republican viewers to "procreate," rather than "recreate," and to "Do your duty. Make more babies." It will be a crying shame to see such enlightenment disappear over the next 25 years.

Posted by Becky at 11:18 AM | | TrackBack

Database of Phone Calls Just the Snout of the Pig

Greg Palast, whose investigative reporting broke the story of how Jeb Bush gave the White House to his brother by purging 94,000 legal voters from the Florida voter rolls, is bringing a new scandal to light in his article, "The spies who shag us."

I know you're shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that George Bush is listening in on all your phone calls. Without a warrant. That's nothing. And it's not news.

This is: the snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration's Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI -- though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB.

ChoicePoint, Inc., a data mining company, is raking in billions of federal contract dollars doing what the federal government is not allowed to do itself. It is matching up all that phone call information with your medical records, your purchases, your voter registration information, and more. Next they plan a DNA database to go with all that other information.

Five years ago, I discovered that ChoicePoint had already gathered 16 billion data files on Americans -- and I know they've expanded their ops at an explosive rate.

They are paid to keep an eye on you -- because the FBI can't. For the government to collect this stuff is against the law unless you're suspected of a crime. (The law in question is the Constitution.) But ChoicePoint can collect it for "commercial" purchases -- and under the Bush Administration's suspect reading of the Patriot Act -- our domestic spying apparatchiks can then BUY the info from ChoicePoint.

ChoicePoint also happens to be the company who helped Jeb Bush purge Florida's voter rolls. Oh, yes, and it's Board of Directors is very Republican.

You just have to ask yourself why the government needs all this information on ordinary citizens. And can we really trust anyone with that much knowledge of each of us and that much power over us – power this Administration has already shown such willingness to abuse?

Posted by Becky at 06:09 AM | | TrackBack

May 14, 2006

Plant Head Firmly in Sand

Laura Bush says she does not believe polling about her husband's approval ratings.

Interviewed on Fox News Sunday, Laura Bush said she did not think people were losing confidence in President George W. Bush, despite a series of polls showing support for him at its lowest point in his five-year presidency and among the lowest for any president in the past 50 years.

"I don't really believe those polls. I travel around the country. I see people, I see their responses to my husband. I see their response to me," she said. "As I travel around the United States, I see a lot of appreciation for him. A lot of people come up to me and say, 'Stay the course'."

In the political world, we call this living in an echo chamber. When your associations with people are limited to those who are like-minded, you only hear views that are similar to your own. Being that the Bush Administration has consistently blocked opponents from appearing anywhere near the President, it's no wonder Laura Bush isn't seeing them.

I guess she won't be too bothered, then, that a new poll shows Americans believe President Clinton outperformed Bush on "a host of issues."

Respondents favored Clinton by greater than 2-to-1 margins when asked who did a better job at handling the economy (63 percent Clinton, 26 percent Bush) and solving the problems of ordinary Americans (62 percent Clinton, 25 percent Bush).

On foreign affairs, the margin was 56 percent to 32 percent in Clinton's favor; on taxes, it was 51 percent to 35 percent for Clinton; and on handling natural disasters, it was 51 percent to 30 percent, also favoring Clinton. Moreover, 59 percent said Bush has done more to divide the country, while only 27 percent said Clinton had.

Posted by Becky at 11:33 AM | | TrackBack

Fitzgerald Looking at Cheney Next?

Could it be that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has his eye on Vice President Cheney?

The prosecutor in the CIA leak case said more than six months ago that he was not alleging any criminal acts by Vice President Dick Cheney regarding the leak of agency operative Valerie Plame's identity. Today, the prosecutor is leaving the door open to the possibility that the vice president's now-indicted former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, was acting at his boss' behest when Libby allegedly leaked information about Plame to reporters.

It seems Cheney hand wrote notes in the margins of Joe Wilson's New York Times opinion column asking whether Valerie Plame had sent Wilson to Africa. The exact wording of Cheney's notes: "Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an Amb. to assess a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?"

Cheney's notes on the margins of Wilson's opinion column in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, reflect "the contemporaneous reaction of the vice president," Fitzgerald said in the court filing late Friday. ...Cheney's notes "support the proposition that publication of the Wilson op-ed acutely focused the attention of the vice president and the defendant — his chief of staff — on Mr. Wilson, on the assertions made in his article, and on responding to those assertions," according to the file.

Excluse me for my optimism, but if Fitzgerald successfully goes after Cheney and the Democrats take the House, then we might be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Posted by Becky at 11:30 AM | | TrackBack

Taking a stroll down history lane...

The anti-Da Vinci Code inquisition continues unabated.

SPRING GROVE, Penn., May 13 /Christian Wire Service/ -- The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) and its America Needs Fatima campaign are inviting concerned Catholics to join a petition against The Da Vinci Code. So far, the effort has garnered 100,946 signatures and steadily continues to gain steam.

“A growing number of Catholics are expressing their unequivocal rejection and disgust of the blasphemous Da Vinci Code film,” said America Needs Fatima director Robert Ritchie. “The more Hollywood mocks our faith, the more it demonstrates a brazen contempt for God.”

Interesting choice of words - "blasphemous" - considering the Catholic Church's long and sordid history of persecuting any who didn't march lockstep with the Church. That American Evangelicals are marching lockstep with Catholics on this particular Inquisition reveals a certain myopic ignorance of the fact that they are themselves guilty of blasphemy for not being Catholics. Most of them would have been burned at the stake for their "crime" just a few centuries ago.

Interestingly enough, separation of Church and State was a "crime" of heresy according to the historic Catholic Church (Lea, History of Inquisition of Middle Ages vol 2, p. 476).

Why aren't these Catholics out protesting the Constitution which allows the heresy of The Da Vinci Code movie to be shown in theaters against the inherently better (i.e., Divine) judgement of The Church?

Posted by Kevin at 10:45 AM | | TrackBack

May 13, 2006

Rove indictment: Yes? Maybe?

This is strange: Truthout.org is charging ahead with Jason Leopold's juicy follow-up to his story yesterday, this time with a lot more authentic-sounding details:

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent more than half a day Friday at the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm representing Karl Rove.

During the course of that meeting, Fitzgerald served attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an indictment charging the embattled White House official with perjury and lying to investigators related to his role in the CIA leak case, and instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 hours to get his affairs in order, high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said Saturday morning.

Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, did not return a call for comment. Sources said Fitzgerald was in Washington, DC, Friday and met with Luskin for about 15 hours to go over the charges against Rove, which include perjury and lying to investigators about how and when Rove discovered that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative and whether he shared that information with reporters, sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said.

It was still unknown Saturday whether Fitzgerald charged Rove with a more serious obstruction of justice charge. Sources close to the case said Friday that it appeared very likely that an obstruction charge against Rove would be included with charges of perjury and lying to investigators.

And there's more.

It's puzzling that this is still totally off the radar screen of the rest of the media. There are some high-wattage people following this story, in the blogosphere as well as the big papers and the networks. One would expect that, if Leopold is reaching, his story would have been subjected to the withering dissection that is the blog world's signature; and if he really does have the story it would seem likely that someone else would have picked it up and run with it--or at least covered his story in one of those "reporting about the rumors we're unwilling to investigate ourselves" pieces that sometimes pass for journalism these days.

Wouldn't you think?

One other odd point:

Although I confess I love the sound of the sentence "he has 24 hours to get his affairs in order," I don't completely get what it refers to. What happens in twenty-four hours? Maybe I've watched too much "Law & Order," but it seems to me that even if Rove is indicted not only for everything he did, but for everything we might even dream he did, it's still just an indictment: Fitzgerald's staff talks to Rove's legal staff, papers are exchanged, Rove makes some appearances in federal buildings where other people do most of the talking, any bail that might be set gets paid with cash from K-Street (in those cool titanium briefcases the money men always give away like party favors when they make payoffs), and then Rove goes on his way. "24 hours to get his affairs in order" suggests he'll be taken into custody, which seems unlikely.

Posted by Nothstine at 05:12 PM | | TrackBack

Assault Rifles Aimed at Protesters in America!

The Daily Kos has some eye-witness accounts of peace protesters at whom assault rifles were aimed from the Presidential motorcade.

We stood with about 50 others on rte 674 and when the motorcade came by there was assault rifle OUT the window pointing at ALL of us and the cars all looked like I remember seeing in the Hitler motorcades in the movies when I was a child, all boxy and black and one had the Pres seal and American flag on the sides. It was absolutely chilling!

I have been in such a situation before - when I was in Zimbabwe. The Korean-trained Fifth Brigade soldiers were on the rampage. I was in Ndebele territory, and they were trying to intimidate and subjugate the Ndebele on behalf of the ruling Shonas. When shopping in Bulawayo, I would see tanks rolling down the street with guns pointed at civilians for purposes of intimidation. And it worked.

Is the President trying to intimidate protesters? One protester had this to say:

At the time September 11th happened, I worked at a military base near where I used to live before we moved to FL. Immediately after 9/11, our base was at Threatcon D, meaning that the military personnel guarding our base had to be armed. Yeah, I saw sharp-shooters and automatic rifles; but I took some kind of comfort in the notion that these measures were meant for the "bad guys."

On Tuesday, the message that the sniper hanging out the window with his automatic weapon had for us was that we peacefully-protesting Americans were the "bad guys." And that thought alone gave me the chills.

Or does the President actually believe these peace-loving people would turn violent and attack him? That was what one protester concluded:

It wasn't the rifle that was scary it was knowing that this madman is so insecure and scared and psychotic that this is how he must travel.

Either way, I never would have thought this would happen in the U.S.A.

Posted by Becky at 07:31 AM | | TrackBack

May 12, 2006

R &R time

I'm off for a 10 day vacation with my family. I haven't been able to write much lately...so I don't know that you'll miss me much anyway. :)

Hence the need for a vacation. I've been working my ass off in my real job--you know, the one I actually get paid to do.

Kev, Becky, Jeff and Bill will keep the home fires burning.

See you all a week from Monday!

Posted by Carla at 08:15 PM | | TrackBack

Rove resignation rumors

Truthout.org is running the story that Karl's already told Bush and Bolten that he's going to be indicted and will resign immediately upon the public announcement of the indictment by Fitzgerald.

It would be totally in keeping with White House standard operating procedures to leak a story this bad late in the day on a Friday. But I've been scouring around, and so far nobody--I mean nobody--else has this story, which makes me wonder if TO got a serious scoop, or if someone jumped the gun.

So. Heard anything?

Posted by Nothstine at 07:07 PM | | TrackBack

Wal-Mart Shuts Down ND Businesses

An aquaintance of mine works for a Wal-Mart Supercenter that just went in over in Bismarck, ND, and he had the most fascinating story to tell me. It's something I hadn't heard before.

We are all used to the stories about Wal-Mart forcing businesses out of business by underselling them. But in this case, the new Wal-Mart has forced at least two fast food restaurants - a Wendy's and a Long John Silvers - out of business by offering the limited work force so much more money than the fast food industry that there are no workers left to run the businesses, forcing them to shut down.

Even a local meat-packing plant that pays more than Wal-Mart but offers less desirable working conditions is unable to fill empty jobs. Not a single application has been placed.

Apparently, anyone who wants a job in town can have one at any number of fast food restaurants, who have replaced specials on their marquees with "now hiring" notices. But with hiring still ongoing at Wal-Mart, it seems the low-wage workforce has just been given a major boost up. Who'd have thought?

Posted by Becky at 06:35 PM | | TrackBack

Mel Gibson Attacks President Bush

Okay, calm down. He didn't physically attack the President. But he did pretty much rip him a new one. And I've got to say, after the whole "Passion of the Christ" thing I'm a little surprised by this.

Mel Gibson, who is finishing up his next big movie, Apocalypto (about the fall of the Mayan civilization), is comparing Bush to the barbaric Mayan rulers of his film.

The epic, due for release later this year, captures the decline of the Maya kingdom and the slaughter of thousands of inhabitants as human sacrifices in a bid to save the nation from collapsing.

Gibson reveals he used present day American politics as an inspiration, claiming the government callously plays on the nation's insecurities to maintain power.

He tells British film magazine Hotdog, "The fear-mongering we depict in the film reminds me of President Bush and his guys".

And here I thought it was intended to play to the same fundamentalist Apocalypse-believing Christian crowd as his last film, what with a name like "Apocalypto."

Will Gibson pay a price for speaking out against a Republican Christian President? Will Christians decide the liberal press was right about him and his father's extremist views? Or will Christians think to themsleves, "If that fine brave Christian Mel Gibson doesn't like George W. Bush, then maybe it's OK if I don't like Bush, too"? Could go either way, if you ask me.

Posted by Becky at 02:54 PM | | TrackBack

Weapons Disappear en Route to Iraq

It looks as if weapons are joining pallets of cash in Iraq, disappearing without a trace.

The Pentagon has secretly shipped tens of thousands of small arms from Bosnia to Iraq in the past two years, using a web of private companies, at least one of which is a noted arms smuggler blacklisted by Washington and the UN.

According to a report by Amnesty International, which investigated the sales, the US government arranged for the delivery of at least 200,000 Kalashnikov machine guns from Bosnia to Iraq in 2004-05. But though the weaponry was said to be for arming the fledgling Iraqi military, there is no evidence of the guns reaching their recipient. Senior western officials in the Balkans fear that some of the guns may have fallen into the wrong hands.

Are we secretly arming some force somewhere? Is this Iran Contra all over again? Are there any rebel forces or, god forbid, terrorist groups showing up with huge numbers of Kalashnikov machine guns? Or are we to believe that, like the millions of dollars in missing cash, the problem here is a paperwork error and not a matter of interception, covert redirection, or misuse of resources?

Posted by Becky at 02:22 PM | | TrackBack

Should We Fear the Teen Mania Battle Cry?

Sunsara Taylor is calling attention to a growing movement within fundamentalist Christianity that is sounding pretty frightening, taking the "Onward Christian Soldiers" theme to new heights with the new "Battle Cry" effort by Ron Luce.

My first inclination is to believe that it is paranoid to worry about violence growing out of this movement. I grew up with Christian battle talk, and it was always about battling evil in your own heart, battling for people's minds and hearts, etc. And if you go to the Teen Mania website, you find pretty innocuous material there (I even joined so I could look at members only sections). The worst thing I could find was advice to teachers on how to get Christian books into their school libraries.

But here's what gives me pause: kids all across the social spectrum are different now than they were when I was a kid 30-40 years ago. More of them seem more willing to engage in violence. It seems obvious to me that this trend would also touch the Christian community, as every other trend appears to do. Add to that the horrors of anti-abortion killers and Timothy McVeigh and I can see where there is room to be nervous. While I believe most of the youth involved in this movement likely see war as a metaphor (though Taylor does not believe it is a metaphor), I fear others will, like Muslim extremists, take it literally. Hence, I think we should look at some of what Taylor is calling to our attention.

Ron Luce, Battle Cry's leader and Teen Mania president and founder, makes clear this is not mere metaphor: "This is war. And Jesus invites us to get into the action, telling us that the violent -- the 'forceful' ones -- will lay hold of the kingdom."

Taylor lays out a comparison between Battle Cry's Honor Academy and Islamic fundamentalists that is sobering. She also reveals the group's links to the Bush Administration, which is even more sobering.

What most of these figures have in common is their insistence that the Bible be read literally and obeyed as the inerrant word of God. And, as Ron Luce leads youth to pray, "I will keep my eyes on the battle, submitting to Your code even when I don't understand. . . . outside my comfort zone in the battle zone," it would be foolish to expect that there is any part of the Bible's literal horrors this movement would be unwilling to enforce.

I think it is this call to blind obedience, disregarding one's own inner voices, that most chills me. This December, 2002 review by a fundamentalist Christian of a televised discussion on Christianity is a very good example of the sort of brainwashed thinking that will result if these kids are not taught to think for themselves:

There is absolutely no compromise, no middle ground, no reaching across the aisle ... This battle, which began in heaven in Satan's rebellion, has now moved to the earth and is dividing the hearts of men. It has no ethnic, geographic, or socio-economic boundaries. It is a battle over life and death!

…This battle … is not a battle that any of us on earth started, but it is one that requires each of us to choose whose side we will be on. ... Christianity versus the world and all of its false religions.

… One cannot peacefully coexist with Adolf Hitler - it is either you or him. The seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman cannot peacefully coexist together. … Jesus is right and the whole world is wrong! …Satan is a liar and a murderer. He is leading the whole world astray. He must be dealt with by forceful men of God.

I understand the concern over such rhetoric, but I also think it is a mistake to get ourselves worked up just yet. Yes, there are many, many verses in the in Old Testament in which, at God's direction, holy men took forceful action against those who worshipped other gods (see below), but the fundamentalists I know still view this as a spiritual war, not a physical war. What remains to be seen is whether their leaders succeed in sufficiently changing the tone so that young people believe God is calling on them to cleanse the earth of the ungodly as they believe he did in Old Testament times:

Of King David: "And he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under the axes of iron, and made them pass through the brickkiln: and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon." (II Samuel 12:31)

"If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers… thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die…" (Deuteronomy 13: 6-10)

"Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." (I Samuel 15:2-3)

"Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree: And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place." (Deuteronomy 12:2-3)

"The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance. He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked." (Psalms 58:10)

Posted by Becky at 02:12 PM | | TrackBack

The credibility gap of BushCo

KnightRidder's Washington Bureau is reporting that the Defense Department's "accounting practices are in such disarray that defense officials can't track how much equipment the military owns, where it all is or exactly how they spend defense dollars every year, according to a report Thursday by a nongovernmental group."

The report by Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities called the Pentagon's financial-management practices "an embarrassment" that wouldn't pass muster in the private sector.

"Today, if the Defense Department were a private business it would be involved in a major scandal," said Kwai Chan, a former top official with the Government Accountability Office and the report's author.

Chan said that the findings lend credence to accusations by defense analysts that the DOD squanders billions of dollars every year on weapons "that are irrelevant to fighting terrorists and the Iraq war."

That's only one of the issues this troubling report raises, though.

Condi Rice and Donald Rumsfeld have denied the International Committee of the Red Cross access to secret detainees. Of course they deny that there are any secret detainees. But wouldn't a deplorably f-ed up DOD accounting system create a very convenient way to funnel taxpayer $$$ to just such an operation without leaving any tell-tale traces by which to hold them accountable? Especially since it's already a known fact that the DOD created secret detainee facilities in Iraq and didn't list any of those detainees on the official reports of who was in custody and where.

Here's what I am 100% convinced of: I do not trust anyone in this administration to tell me the truth. Period. No exceptions. Maybe they're telling the truth on certain issues. But, the trust has long since been broken and I am no longer willing to accept anything they say which can't be independently verified by another source.

Posted by Kevin at 09:54 AM | | TrackBack

Strummin' with the Devil

I heard some clips from this bluegrass tribute to Van Halen listening to a radio morning show on my commute to work this morning and I gotta say it was impressive as hell. Particularly impressive were the signiture Eddie Van Halen guitar solos replicated with fiddles. Having David Lee Roth perform the vocals on several of the tracks added to the effect, IMO. He may be an arrogant prick, but that's just the flip side of the same A+ personality that sky-rocketed Valen Halen into superstars.

If you want to hear clips of the songs on this CD just go here.

I definitely plan on buying a copy.

Okay... now back to your regularly scheduled mud-slingin'.

Posted by Kevin at 07:05 AM | | TrackBack

Bush Losing Conservative Support

Apparently, almost every group of conservatives is rapidly abandoning President Bush over his out-of-control spending and his inability to deal satisfactorily with the illegal immigration issue.

The Gallup polling organization recorded a 13-percentage-point drop in Republican support for Bush in the past couple of weeks. These usually reliable voters are telling pollsters and lawmakers they are fed up with what they see as out-of-control spending by Washington and an abandonment of core conservative principles.

There are also significant pockets of conservatives turning on Bush and Congress over their failure to tighten immigration laws, restrict gay marriage and put an end to the Iraq war, as well as the rash of political scandals, according to lawmakers and pollsters.

I think it's fair to say that Bush will do one of two things: either he will keep his head buried in the sand and "stay the course," believing that 100 years from now everyone will suddenly realize what a great president he was, or he will move to restrict gay marriage. Everyone knows he won't end the war. Karl Rove wants him to cut taxes, amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage, and further restrict abortion. I'm sure someone will throw in an anti-flag burning amendment. But don't expect any progress to be made on eliminating corruption, ending the unjustifiable war on Iraq, avoiding war in Iran, or stopping the massive spending. That's just too much to ask!

Bush won two presidential elections by pursuing a political and governing model that was predicated on winning and sustaining the loyal backing of conservatives. The theory, as explained by Bush strategists, is that the president would enjoy a floor below which his support would never fall. It is now apparent that this floor has weakened dramatically and collapsed in places.

I would not have predicted this was possible. But now only 52% of conservatives approve of the job Bush is doing, and only 33% approve of the Republican-run Congress. This is good news for Democrats and pro-impeachment voters in November (I fall into the latter category, which is why I intend to do something I have never done before: vote for a Democrat for Congress).

Posted by Becky at 06:32 AM | | TrackBack

May 11, 2006

De-fund the NSA

Yesterday's abrupt cancelling of the NSA probe by the Justice Department has me steamed. Who the hell do the NSA people think they are..not giving Justice proper security clearance so that they conduct the investigation?

They seem to think they're not answerable to the Congress and the American people. And that, dear readers..is a heaping pile of putrid, repulsive, fetid, offensive bullcookies on toast.

Congress should refuse to grant another cent to the NSA until Justice Department lawyers are given the proper security clearances and allowed to conduct a thorough investigation of this matter.

If its possible, Congress should freeze the current funds the NSA has as well.

They're looking more and more like a rogue agency. Enough is enough.

Posted by Carla at 04:00 PM | | TrackBack

Attention-Grubbing Hussies Always Hate the Wife

This is just precious: Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick are attacking Hillary Clinton.

You may remember Kathleen Willey was the woman who had the hots for President Clinton, tried to get his attention, and when she got it went running breathlessly to Linda Tripp to tell her all about it, but later claimed it was an awful thing that deeply upset her. Basically, she lied to get attention.

And Juanita Broaddrick claimed Clinton had raped her. Of course, she had in an earlier sworn statement categorically denied that he had raped her. So basically she lied to get attention.

Hillary Clinton was the wife of Bill Clinton - the other woman who was actually getting all the attention. Of course they hate her. It doesn't even matter if Hillary Clinton is as awful as they say; it's just so damned funny that these two women are saying it I can't stop chuckling.

Posted by Becky at 03:52 PM | | TrackBack

Oil Company Profiteering is a Good Thing

This article has to be the most intriguingly titled piece I've seen in months: "Profits of Doom? Americans should be happy that oil companies are making money."

Okay, I'm game. Tell me, Brendon Miniter, why should I be so happy that I am now spending nearly $100 a week to get to work when it used to cost me $45?

[W]hat's wrong with large profits for large oil companies? If a healthy profit margin--about 10% for the oil giants--is a problem, it comes with a built-in solution. Large profits create large incentives to increase supplies, build more refining capacity, and create new technology to meet energy needs.

First of all, lest we forget, oil is not really the same as other commodities. We actually view it as a matter of national security (which is why we're at war, if we're being honest). It's kind of like water, electricity, and food. Gotta have 'em. So the rules of the free market that we generally accept in other categories really don't apply here – at least not normally. Of course, when an oil man is President, I suppose that rule doesn't apply, either.

Fat profits also allow American companies to keep and even expand their workforce inside the U.S.

Of course! Why didn't I think of this? The solution to the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries has been right in front of us all along: raise the price of gasoline! Big Oil has saved us! And check out this very bright observation:

The problem isn't oil company profit, but rather the price of a gallon of gasoline and the negative effect that has on family budgets and the political crisis that creates. But that too will create political pressure that could be used to finally make the hard choices for a more rational energy policy: One that involves more drilling (Artic National Wildlife Reserve, here we come) as well as more efficient uses of energy.

Yes! Why should we worry about oil company profits when at long last the pressure at the pump will finally break down our opposition to ANWR drilling? Even liberals can find something to shout about here: energy efficiency is finally worthwhile!

Here's my favorite reason why we should be happy for high gasoline prices:

[I]t creates an incentive to move oil to where it is needed at a price that will ensure that gasoline is widely available. In open markets, prices convey information. And the message high prices send to oil companies is to increase the supply of gasoline inside the United States.

Yes, we should be happy because it ensures that the United States will continue to have gasoline made available to us instead of someone else because we still have enough money to be able to afford it.

God bless Big Oil. God bless oil company profits and $400 million compensation for oil executives. God bless my $100 a week to get to work. I'm so happy I could cry.

Posted by Becky at 03:22 PM | | TrackBack

NSA Wiretapping Good for Republicans?

Linda Chavez believes the more Americans talk about the NSA wiretapping scandal, the better off Republicans will be in November. Yes, you read that correctly.

In her column this morning, entitled, "CIA Choice Is Savvy Politics," she actually argues that President Bush's selection of Gen. Michael Hayden to head up the CIA is a good thing because it will call the public's attention back to the NSA's practice of wiretapping American citizens without warrants, which Hayden oversaw, and which she believes Americans see as protecting them from terrorist attacks.

For the most part, the legal issues were debated more on the opinion pages of the newspaper than they were around kitchen tables, where the reflexive attitude was, maybe if we'd been doing this all along, 9/11 might not have happened.

I hope Chavez is wrong, but based on the comments I am hearing from my Republican friends and family, I fear she is at least correct about that group, who actually believe we are engaged in a war against terrorism. Chavez's logic is interesting:

[T]he one area in which Bush continues to show strength is fighting terrorism. In the USA Today/Gallup poll taken April 28-30, Americans were almost evenly split on whether the president was doing a decent job on terrorism. With congressional elections just months away -- and prospects for the GOP not looking particularly cheery -- the White House should be trying to play to its strengths, and Gen. Hayden's nomination does just that.

I'm curious if today's revelation that the NSA has also been collecting information on the phone calls of millions of U.S. citizens and sharing it with other intelligence agencies will make any difference. But then, with so many Jack Bauer fans out there, perhaps not.

Then we have Christopher G. Adamo, who, in an all-around offensively ignorant piece of writing, argues that the illegal wiretapping was alright because the NSA was tapping people who were the equivalent of Timothy McVeigh, not "average citizens," so the President's having broken the law does not matter. Call me paranoid, but if the NSA was wiretapping bad guys rather than average Americans, then surely the FISA Court would have granted them warrants, right? Am I missing something here?

To save the sorry butt of their President, Republicans simply will not acknowledge that a little trip after the fact to the FISA Court would have saved the President – and themselves – all this embarrassment. And one can only ask why he did not pursue the warrants when doing so would not have interfered with the NSA's ability to conduct the wiretapping he claims was so necessary to protect the safety of the American public from the Bogeyman – I mean the terrorists.

Posted by Becky at 02:49 PM | | TrackBack

Anti-Feminist Doesn't Get It

Stephen Baskerville on American Daily is making some fairly harsh attacks on feminism. And while I'm no radical feminist, what he is saying makes me angry. The reason is that he appears to be taking the position that it is nobody's business what fathers-gone-bad do to mothers and children.

Relabeled "deadbeat dads," "batterers" and "pedophiles," fathers are now railroaded into jail … Knee-jerk calls to "get tough" on criminals have unintended consequences when the penal apparatus has been commandeered by ideologues who redefine criminality to include an assortment of gender offenses that bear little relation to what most Americans understand as crime.

I'd like to see a few examples, please. Where have fathers been jailed for doing things to their families that weren't crimes?

The .. Justice Department’s Office of Victims of Crime … has … been hijacked by Feminists, and most of the "crimes" have been redefined in Feminist terms. By definition, the "victims" are all women, the "perpetrators" are all men and the "crimes" are mostly political: sexual harassment, date "rape" (which is seldom rape), domestic "violence" (that is not violent), child abuse (that may be ordinary parental discipline), "stalking" (fathers trying to see their children), and so forth.

About those crimes that Baskerville doesn't believe are crimes: sexual harassment (a product of the belief that women exist solely to gratify men), date rape (where young women are pushed beyond where they were willing to go, or are supplied with drugs or alcohol to break down their personal barriers), domestic violence (verbal abuse can be as intimidating and demeaning as being hit), child abuse (excessive spanking or other excessive punishment of children), and stalking (it is very threatening when someone who scares you follows you around and has access to your children) – these are the concern of society, because victims of these crimes are unable to protect themselves.

Men rarely understand what it feels like to be dominated and controlled. Even women like me, who like a strong man and don't mind letting their husband be the boss of the household, don't want a man controlling what they think, wear, do and eat, who their friends are, how they vote (if they are allowed to vote), etc.

What Baskerville, who is President of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, seems not to understand is that men simply are more powerful than women and children and can easily dominate and victimize them – and regularly do in other parts of the world where feminism doesn't exist. I wouldn't want to be a woman anywhere else on the planet, but thanks to feminists I am safe here and able to choose the kind of woman I want to be. Yes, feminists go too far sometimes, but show me where in the world men haven't regularly gone too far. Like everything else in this world, the pendulum swings, and sometimes it takes a bit of extremism one direction to pull us back to a point of balance from extremism in the opposite direction.

Posted by Becky at 10:08 AM | | TrackBack

May 10, 2006

They just keep glibly rolling along

Having had their cockamaimy plan to give every citizen a paltry $100 to off-set the high price of gas, you'd think that Senator Frist and his fellow Republicans in Congress would get a clue that tossing us a scrap here or there instead of dealing with root causes isn't what we want. But if so then you'd be quite wrong.

Now they have a new tax cuts deal which would give middleclass Americans a whopping average of $20.

Why would Republicans pursue such a plan?

Because the wealthiest 0.02% would get an average $42,000.

Oh yeah... that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy about Republicans. How 'bout you?

Posted by Kevin at 03:43 PM | | TrackBack

Another of the many reasons that the Democrats are completely different from the GOP

Democrats believe in oversight:

In a recent spate of interviews, Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi has emphasized her party's fast-forward version of its first Hundred Days in power -- in this case, what the Democrats would do in their first week running Congress. They would raise the minimum wage for the first time since 1997. They would repeal the section of the Medicare drug plan that forbids the government from negotiating lower prices with the drug industry. They would fully implement the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, and they would restore the congressional rule, suspended by Republicans, requiring that all new programs be paid for by a specific new spending source or offset by a commensurate cut in another program.

Pelosi doesn't deny that Congress would resume its oversight functions, but she has made clear that any decision to impeach anybody (which is not on her agenda) would be hers and the caucus's -- not John Conyers's, certainly not the Democratic blogosphere's.

Or to phrase it a different way: The Congress will hold the Executive Branch accountable to the Constitution and the laws of the land.

The Republicans aren't scared of impeachment. That's a long way off if it happens at all (and I believe it should). The Republicans are paralyzed to death at the idea that law and order will be restored in government. That means a bunch of them will be caught and held responsible for their actions.

And for the GOP, that's going to be a bitter pill indeed.

Posted by Carla at 12:58 PM | | TrackBack

President Bush III

Are you ready for President Bush III? Jeb Bush's name is now being floated – by the current President – as the next Republican candidate for President.

This could be frightening. The man is smarter than his older brother and more disciplined. His record of civic service and his political accomplishments could easily overcome Republicans' doubts about the Bush name.

They won't recall – or won't care about – his role in the 2000 Florida election problems that resulted in the selection of his brother by the U.S. Supreme Court, or his pressing forward with the elimination of felons from the voter roles just prior to the election (simultaneously eliminating thousands of legitimate Democrat voters whose names were similar to the names of the felons). They'll love him for trying to save Terri Schaivo's life. I doubt his daughter Noelle's drug problems or even any of the dirt in his own background will be an impediment to Republican grassroots support, particularly if voters are faced with a choice between Jeb Bush and that devil incarnate Hillary Clinton.

What most concerns me about Jeb Bush is his active involvement in the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). It is that involvement that most leads me to believe he will, indeed, be the next President. Without another Bush in the White House, the conversion of America to a fascist state may not be able to stay on schedule.

Posted by Becky at 12:43 PM | | TrackBack

A Rebel Alliance Against the Evil Neocon Empire

Many thanks to Spyder for sending me the link to a very impressive article that made me want to jump out of my chair and shout "hooray!"

Thomas R. Eddlem begins his article, "Now Is the Time for a Left-Right Alliance: A rebel alliance already exists that could stop Bush administration attacks on the Constitution," by saying:

I'm currently a life member of the John Birch Society and formerly served on the staff of the organization for 13 years.

So why should any left-winger reading this care a fig about what I have to say?

Because of a conversation I had with another conservative magazine writer recently. In frustration at the unconstitutional excesses of the Bush administration, I blurted out to him: "The only people doing any good out there are the people at Air America." I expected to shock him with the statement, but his two-word reply shocked me: "And MoveOn.org."

We were both exaggerating for effect, but fact is, as my journalist friend continued, "We probably only disagree on, maybe, 25 percent of the issues." I'd have put the percentage a little higher, though I tacked an ending onto his sentence: "…and those issues aren't especially important right now."

Please read the entire piece, send it to every Republican you know, and urge them to join Eddlem in the new Rebel Alliance:

Down with the neocon Evil Empire! Long live the new Rebel Alliance!

Posted by Becky at 11:57 AM | | TrackBack

Vatican Astronomer: Creationism is “Superstitious Paganism”

Here's one for the history books. According to Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno, believing in the Biblical account of a six day creation is a form of superstitious paganism.

Brother Consolmagno, who works in a Vatican observatory in Arizona and as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Italy, said a "destructive myth" had developed in modern society that religion and science were competing ideologies.

He described creationism, whose supporters want it taught in schools alongside evolution, as a "kind of paganism" because it harked back to the days of "nature gods" who were responsible for natural events.

Brother Consolmagno argued that the Christian God was a supernatural one, a belief that had led the clergy in the past to become involved in science to seek natural reasons for phenomena such as thunder and lightning, which had been previously attributed to vengeful gods. "Knowledge is dangerous, but so is ignorance. That's why science and religion need to talk to each other," he said.

"Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism - it's turning God into a nature god. And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not be a good thing to do."

Wow. It makes so much sense, it's scary. And Consolmagno even went so far as to debunk the concept of papal infallibility, calling it a "PR disaster."

What it actually meant was that, on matters of faith, followers should accept "somebody has got to be the boss, the final authority… It's not like he has a magic power, that God whispers the truth in his ear," he said.

Considering that Pope Benedict XVI is widely thought to be very traditional, Consolmagno's outspokenness in these matters is surprising. It will be interesting to see whether and how the Vatican responds.

Posted by Becky at 09:54 AM | | TrackBack

Former Bush Administration Official Says 9/11 an Inside Job

Another former government insider has come forward saying he believes 9/11 was an inside job. Dr. Morgan Reynolds, Professor Emeritus at Texas A & M University, who served as Chief Economist in the Department of Labor under George W. Bush from 2001-2002 and the former director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis, says the President and Vice President, as well as former joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Meyers and others, conspired treasonously to make 9/11 happen in order to psy-op and coerce Americans into supporting war in the Middle East and the rollback of civil liberties.

(Several weeks ago, Dr. Robert M. Bowman, the former Director of Advanced Space Programs Development, including the Star Wars missile defense program, for the U.S. Air Force under Presidents Ford and Carter, came out publicly stating his belief that the official version of 9/11 false, and that he believes the architect of 9/11 is most likely Vice President Dick Cheney.)

Reynolds stated that everyone in the worldwide intelligence community knew that 9/11 was an inside job as soon as it happened, with the obvious stand-down of US air defenses, controlled demolition of the World Trade Center, and non-protection of the President in Florida being the biggest tip-offs. The head of the Russian equivalent of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the former head of the German intelligence service Andreas Von Bulow, former National Security Agency official Wayne Madsen, and former MI-6 agent David Schayler have all openly called 9/11 an inside job, while former CIA official Ray McGovern has confirmed this directly in private, and indirectly in public by way of his ringing endorsement of David Ray Griffin’s work on 9/11.

An extensive explanation of why Reynolds does not believe the government’s explanation of 9/11 can be found here and links to more information about Reynolds, as well as articles that take on his assertions can be found here. Not being an insider, I can only do what we all can do – look at the evidence and consider the credentials of those who are bringing their arguments forward and make up my own mind.

Reynolds argued that 9/11 truth is a matter of extreme urgency, since the perpetrators seem to be preparing another 9/11-style terror hoax as a pretext for attacking Iran with nuclear weapons. He said that exposing the 9/11 fraud is the best way to stop Cheney’s plan to stage an unprovoked nuclear attack on Iran, and the military draft and Pinochet-style prison camps and death squads for dissenters that might accompany it.

Reynolds would like to see a demonstration of 100,000 9/11 truth supporters at Ground Zero next year, which he says would be hard for the Media to ignore. He is also urging people to attend the international 9/11 truth conference, "9/11: Revealing the Truth, Reclaiming Our Future," in Chicago June 2-4, 2006. More information can be found here.

And for a good read about the miracles of 9/11, check this out.

Posted by Becky at 09:48 AM | | TrackBack

Don't look now, but the King is stark naked

Russian President Vladimir Putin responded today to Vice President Cheney's criticism of Russia. Which was not unexpected. But he made a statement which exposes a fundamental flaw in President Bush's foreign policy and which I think is critically important.

Putin was making his 7th State of the Union address since taking power in Russia. Most of it focused on military spending and his reasons why it's important for Russia to have a strong military. He spoke about foreign aggression without specifically naming the United States, but it was clear that's who he was referring to.

"We must always be ready to counter any attempts to pressure Russia in order to strengthen positions at our expense," Putin said. "The stronger our military is, the less temptation there will be to exert such pressure on us."

That last line is key. Every nation around the world knows that the way to gain barganing power with the United States is to have a strong military. The stronger their military, the less temptation there will be to exert pressure on them by the United States.

BushCo spends a lot of time talking about peace around the world. But, it's just talk, as Putin so bluntly exposed in his speech. When Bush talks about wanting to prevent this nation or that nation from having nukes but also pushes programs to create "bunker buster" nukes for our military, or talks about using such nukes on a "tactical" basis in Iran to stop their alleged nuke program, it's a dynamic which has inevitable consequences. It simply adds more incentive for other nations to acquire nuclear weapons by whatever means available.

Posted by Kevin at 07:52 AM | | TrackBack

Hillary Making Nice With Republicans

What's up with Hillary Clinton? Yesterday we learn Rupert Murdoch is doing a fundraiser for her, and today she's being quoted in the press singing the praises of President Bush.

This only adds fuel to the fire that Democrats and Republicans are really two faces of the same ruling party. Is that intentional, the conspiracy theorist in me asks, or is she being set up? Or is it just a strange coincidence of timing?

Posted by Becky at 06:24 AM | | TrackBack

Fox News Update

Prior to writing about the latest reports stating that Fox News had a noteworthy influence on the outcome of the Presidential and Congressional elections, I had tried to contact the authors for an explanation as to why, just last year and using what appeared to be the same data, they had concluded exactly the opposite. Not having heard from them, I went forward with my own assessment that it was basically much ado about nothing.

This morning I received a response from one of the authors:

Becky,

Sorry for the delay in answering. You are exactly right. Early on, we had different results, and were confident enough about them that we had this written up in the NYT.

We were wrong! Upon substantial additional work, Ethan and I added 4 additional states, cleaned up some outliers in the voting data, and corrected the excessive weighting of small towns. This gives the new results, of which we are as confident as one can be in research. This is explained in Appendix Tables 2, but I understand this is non-transparent.

Ethan has posted a reply along these lines at the blog: www.marginalrevolution.com.

Best,
Stefano

So there you go. My opinion is still that the effect, though real, is very limited.

Posted by Becky at 06:15 AM | | TrackBack

May 09, 2006

Here's an idea

Vote them all out and start over.

Posted by Kevin at 06:02 PM | | TrackBack

Values and principles

I'm gre