No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Goddidit

Well, that didn't take long, did it...

Religious right group, heralded by top religious right leaders, says God destroyed New Orleans because of gays (Link)

Or perhaps God was aiming for Hugo Chavez but his aim was bad.

DUMP THE CHIMP

George Bush Junior responds to 9/11 by sitting in a kindergarten class, dazed, way out of his educational depth, holding the book "My Pet Goat" upside down.

Junior responds to last year's tsunami by spending $40 million on his re-coronation.

He responds to the destruction of New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast by sucking his thumb and playing his super-duper presidential guitar.

It's not about partisanship any more. George Bush Junior is the most appallingly, spectacularly, criminally incompetent head of state in human history. He is a liability and an embarrassment, and we can't afford another minute of his blundering and ineptitude.

CHIMPEACH NOW!!!

The Greenhouse Effect

I was toying with using "Bunny Greenhouse is Missing" as a headline, but figured the reference was too obscure. Hey, you try coming up with a steady supply of cutesy or snarky headlines in response to the never-ending avalanche of sleaze and scandal pouring out of the RRR regime.

Anyway, in case you missed the story buried in the links in yesterday's post, Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse, the highest-ranking civilian at the Army Corps of Engineers and by all accounts an outstanding public servant with a 20-year record of integrity and top performance, has been demoted in reprisal for testifying to Congress about rampant waste, fraud and abuse in the no-bid process by which Dick Cheney (with a little help from partner-in-crime Rummy) awarded billions of taxpayer dollars to his own company, Halliburton (or to be precise, the KBR subsidiary).

Greenhouse called it "the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career." She observed much that was flat-out illegal, such as KBR representatives sitting in on what was supposed to be a confidential Corps meeting to decide the terms of the contract. She exposed the waste and misuse of billions of dollars on the public's money, so the Junior Junta reacted instinctively in the only way it knows how - firing her, Swift-boating her, and working to destroy her career. (Valerie Plame, Colleen Rowley, Sibel Edmonds - do we see a pattern yet?)

The lunatic extreme-right useful idiots at the Clue-Free Republic were spewing their hatred and racism against Bunny Greenhouse last year, when the media briefly covered her story. Even as we speak, the droids are no doubt getting the memo from Karl Rove and gearing up for an even more despicable and mouth-foaming attack.

Amidst all the carnage and destruction of the Iraquagmire cluster-cheney, it's east to forget that our lords and masters in the religio-corporatist industrial complex see things very differently and in a much sunnier (no pun intended) light. The war against Iraq has brought them astronomical amounts of cash in a feeding frenzy of corruption and corporate pork with virtually no oversight or accountability. Literally billions have disappeared without a trace, out of our paychecks, out of the budgets of our schools, hospitals and police departments, and into their Cayman Island numbered accounts.

For the ruling elite, every day is Christmas on steroids. They're already richer than God, but the longer this Iraqi nightmare drags out, and the more our troops and the Iraqi people suffer, the higher the elite's ill-gotten gains pile up. It's the most lucrative crime in human history. How long will they continue to get away with it?

What Noble Cause?

Why did we go to war against the people of Iraq?

9/11 link? BZZZT!

WMD's? BZZZT!

Closing down the rape rooms and torture rooms? BZZZT!

Fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here? BZZZT!

Freedom on the March? BZZZT!

As the lunatic extreme right's cynical lies are exposed one by one, the last straw for them to cling to is: "Stay the course." We must ensure the previously sacrificed cannon fodder didn't die in vain, by sacrificing fresh cannon fodder.

But wait a minute, let's try one more reason:

Halliburton's bottom line? Ding-ding-ding-ding!

The Big Easy faces the Big One

Oh crap... this is very scary. New Orleans is facing a Category 5 storm with 165 mph winds and a 30-foot storm surge. As much as 80% of the city's housing could be destroyed by winds, which together with flooding could leave a million people homeless.

As the article linked above makes clear, human disregard for the environment will greatly exacerbate the crisis. Building levees along the Mississippi has caused New Orleans to sink below sea level as the land is deprived of silt from seasonal floods. The destruction of wetlands downstream deprives the city of the protection and buffering action they would have afforded. And the levees will trap a huge stagnant pool of water in the city, poisoned by toxic waste, sewage, and dead bodies. And it's very likely that global warming is a factor in the severity of the storm.

We are paying the price for our cavalier treatment of the planet that sustains us. And yet our lords and masters continue to dismiss environmentalism as an extreme fringe movement that cares more about spotted owls than people. No it isn't - it's about our very survival! What will it take to get the message through?

Unintelligent deceit

Ah, the joys of living in the most powerful and yet most backward country on earth. Every so often there's a flare-up of ignorance, stupidity and superstition that embarrasses all civilized beings. From the Salem Witch Trials, to the riots against Chinese and Irish immigrants, to the KKK rallies and lynching parties, to the ongoing crusade to force the Book of Genesis into the science classroom, USAliens never miss an opportunity to parade, in the most arrogant and aggressive manner possible, their dumb-assery and lack of education.

Creationism, or cretinism as I prefer to call it, is the multi-headed beast that will not die. The scientific debate is settled, and it's no contest - evolution wins hands down. Virtually every scientific discovery over the last 150 years, in the life and earth sciences, confirms and strengthens Darwin's basic idea while extending it in countless new directions and opening it up to vast new vistas of exploration.

But the religious-right flat-earthers, trapped in their fetid swamp of fundamentalist backwardness and beholden to their belief in the word-for-word literal truth of an ignorant screed written thousands of years ago by a bunch of bare-assed savages, simply cannot accept reality. And so they keep on banging the drum for a fairy story that is laughable on its face.

Unfortunately for them, they can't come up with new facts or arguments to counter the dizzying pace of progress on the scientific front. After all, the buybull, the only book in the cretinist library, hasn't changed in centuries. All that has changed is their tactics and the degree of dishonesty which they are willing to embrace to further their agenda.

All through the 20th century, cretinists saw that insisting on the literal truth of the Adam/Eve/Noah story was a losing strategy in the face of rapidly developing scientific knowledge. The kicker was the 1987 case of Edwards v. Aguillard, in which the Supreme Court ruled that teaching cretinism in the classroom was an unconstitutional advancement of religion.

Cretinists reacted by changing their tactics, and "intelligent design" was born. Although they still believe that "goddidit" is the answer to all scientific questions, they were prepared to dissemble and give the credit to some generic "intelligent designer", who might or might not be the christian god (nudge nudge, wink wink).

Attired in this cheap tuxedo, the cretinists are now trying to crash the ball and take what they consider their rightful place among the scientists and educators. Hey, they cry, we're legitimate now! We deserve equal time! Anyone who criticizes us is a staunch evolutionist who doesn't believe in fair argumentation!

Of course, you can dress a pig in a tuxedo, but he's still a pig, and "intelligent design" is still a hoax. Real scientists have earned their place at the table by putting in the hard work that science is all about - you know, observing the natural world, formulating hypotheses, making predictions, performing experiments, improving or rejecting their hypotheses as the outcome dictates, and so on. What have the cretinists got? Nothing - there's no there there. "These people are ignorant idiots. They are anti-scientific snake-oil salesmen. And they are damaging this country."

"Intelligent design" is as much a religious dogma as old-style Adam-and-Eveism. It has no scientific content. It is simply an argument from ignorance; "I don't understand how such-and-such could have evolved, therefore it didn't. Case closed." Its assumptions and conclusions are one and the same. It makes no predictions, proposes no mechanisms, does not relate known facts to one another, and does not grow from any recognized branch of science. It does not advance our understanding of the universe one iota.

Sometimes I feel that cretinists calling for their religious belief to be taught in the science classroom are like dogs chasing a car - they wouldn't know what to do with it if they caught it. What exactly would they teach? "Evolution can't explain the complexity of nature, so Intelligent Designer did it. Thus endeth the lesson." Cretinists can't point to a single accredited college course, or published paper in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, supporting their claptrap. That's why they spend all their time filing lawsuits and lobbying politicians, unlike real scientists who do their work in the lab.

In essence, cretinists are spouting William Paley's 1802-vintage watchmaker argument over and over again - an argument which was comprehensively refuted even before Darwin came along. Percy Shelley, among others, pointed out the obvious problem with saying that the universe is so complex, it could only have been designed by an even more complex designer: who designed the designer? How do we avoid an infinite regress? Darwin showed that no designer was necessary in the first place; complexity, and the appearance of design (which cretinists insist on confusing with design itself), can arise from less complex systems. "Modern" cretinism, if I can term it such, totally misses the point when it attacks evolution by bringing up questions evolution has already answered, and ignores 150 years of scientific progress. It is the Rip Van Winkle of ideas.

Anyone who still imagines that cretinists are simply searching for the truth, just like scientists, should read the Wedge Document. This internal memo of the Discovery Institute, which was inadvertently posted on the web, reveals in chilling detail the real agenda behind the "intelligent design" movement. Very tellingly, the document does not offer a single word in rebuttal of evolution - it tacitly accepts that evolution is true. Its real beef is with science in general, which the cretinists fault for leading people away from a biblical worldview. They pick on evolution simply because it is the scientific theory that has the weakest acceptance among the ill-educated US public. Once evolution has been vanquished, the strategy is to pick off other branches of science one by one until the whole scientific worldview has been swept away and medieval thinking reigns supreme once again. In a nutshell, it's a return to the Dark Ages.

Cretinism has no scientific merit whatsoever. What makes it very dangerous is its political power and access to the bully pulpit, its wallowing in ignorance and scientific illiteracy (with which it seeks to infect other countries), and its eagerness to use trickery and fraud to get its way. Anyone concerned with science, with education or with the ability of the US to compete in the high-tech global economy must fight this pernicious crap!

The dumb leading the blind

The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act was introduced by [Senator Sam] Brownback and would require women who were seeking an abortion past 20 weeks of pregnancy be notified of possible pain an abortion might cause to the fetus.

It would also require women be offered an anesthetic for the fetus. (Link)

Dr. Catherine DeAngelis is a staunch Roman Catholic, used to give communion to her patients and says she strongly opposes abortion.

So The Journal of the American Medical Association's editor-in-chief says she had to take a walk around the block after receiving dozens of "horrible, vindictive" e-mails condemning her for publishing an article that says fetuses likely don't feel pain until late pregnancy. (Link)

I've had it with the anti-choice brigade (ACB). They have zero credibility as far as I'm concerned. For all their pious mouthing about the emotional bond they feel with the contents of a stranger's uterus, it's pretty clear what their real agenda is - control. Control over women mostly, but also control over people they resent for being smarter and better educated than them - doctors. And women doctors - that's like a red flag to a bull!

Not long ago it was "partial-birth abortion" - a term with no medical meaning whatever - which got politicized by the ACB. Now fetal pain has suddenly become their rallying cry. In addition to Brownback's bill, several states are in the process of passing bills requiring doctors to tell pregnant women that fetuses feel pain from the earliest stages of development - a highly controversial assertion, to say the least - and offering them anesthetics for the fetus, which have very dubious utility and may cause medical problems for the woman. Are these people really saying that it's okay to murder unborn children, yada yada yada, as long as you give them anesthesia? Does anything more need to be said about their dishonesty and hypocrisy?

The lunatic right is making it increasingly difficult to provide health care in the US. Doctors are being saddled with more and more mandates to feed their patients false and often harmful information, for example the baseless claim that abortion causes breast cancer. Culture of life, my arse - the bully boys of the ACB want to scare and intimidate women out of exercising control over their own bodies and choosing legal medical procedures. Their message: just lie back and think of Jesus, and be a good little incubator!

In a civilized country, public policy - especially on health care - would be based on the best available science, and on empathy for the people involved, while recognizing their autonomy as adults. Instead we get ideological idiots ranting away in blissful ignorance, setting policy based on their primitive superstitious dogma, and using force and fraud to shove it down our throats.

"Intelligent Design" is only one weapon of these backward theocrats in imposing their will on us. They want control over every aspect of our lives, and they want to drag us down to their level of know-nothingism. We need to fight back. Their ignorant, anti-science and anti-human rights crusade must be aborted!

None dare call it Vietnam

...At least, none of the cowardly, craven, supinely subservient Dems in Congress. Although the Iraq-Vietnam parallels are stacking up higher every day, it takes a Republican Senator (one of the very few who have the faintest clue what it is to serve in the military) to state the obvious and utter the dreaded V-word.

You know, the Dems have an incredible genius for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Look at their total lack of response to the Pat Robertson fiasco. This was an amazing gift for them, an infinitely bigger deal that the "Dean Scream" or pictures of Kerry windsurfing. A religious leader with unprecedented access to the White House, a man Junior has been pandering to for his entire presidency, calls for the murder of a popularly elected foreign leader, and what to the Dems do? Sweet Fanny Adams! And when the extreme right comes out swinging against science and medicine, you can't see the Dems for dust as they frantically scurry away from the debate, or else rush to hold the Repugs' coats.

But it's on the Iraq issue that the Dems most clearly show their abject, quivering spinelessness. Having allowed themselves to be bush-boozled and stampeded into a quagmire war against the wrong country, they cannot bring themselves to admit their appalling mistake and naivete for fear of being labelled flip-floppers. Oh come on! There is no shame in admitting that you gave Junior the benefit of the doubt, because that's what you're supposed to do for the President of the United States, and he lied to you and abused your trust.

But in any case, it's too late for the Lieberman-Biden quisling faction of the Dems, with their street-junkie dependence on corporate contributions, and their naive, babes-in-the-wood demeanor in Congress which leads them to take Nerf sticks to fights in which the Rethugs use machine guns.

If we are to have any chance of taking back our country, we must first of all take back our party. People are tired of panty-waist Dem candidates who stand for nothing and cheerfully sacrifice every Democratic principle just to be in on the action in Washington. They respond fantastically well to people like Howard Dean and Paul Hackett, men with backbones who speak their minds. We need thousands more like them. But where are these thousands going to come from?

Answer: be the change you want to see! Don't let the Dem milquetoasts drop the ball and let Johnny-come-latelys in the Repug party pick it up, and claim credit for bringing the troops home (if it ever happens). Stand up and be counted - let everyone know you condemn Junior's illegal and immoral war against the people of Iraq.

Make no mistake, Iraq is this generation's Vietnam - on crack cocaine. It was the elephant in the living room in last November's election, with Kerry milking his service in Vietnam, and Rove unleashing his Swift Boat Liars to counteract the damage this was doing to his AWOL boss. Now let's bring it all out in the open - the lies, the corruption, the arrogance and incompetence of the Junior misadministration. Stop worrying about the political consequences of being an inch to the left of the Neonazi-cons. Let's face it, we have nothing to lose. The only way is up!

He rose again on the third day...

Apologies to anyone who couldn't reach this site yesterday. No, I didn't give up blogging for Lent. Hosting Carnival of the Godless blew away my bandwidth quota. I purchased a bunch more bandwidth to get through to the end of the month. Please consider supporting this blog by clicking on the Barnes & Noble icon for your book shopping, or visiting my gift shop on the way out, or even leaving a tip in the Paypal jar. (Or if you don't feel like spending money... well, I'm not supposed to tell you to click on the ad sidebar, so don't do that. :-)

So, what's been happening while I was off the air? Well, it looks like Mad Mullah Pat Robertson is once again calling for a hit on a public figure. Two years ago, Robertson's aptly-named "Prayer Offensive" marked a new low in church-state separation with his calls for God to take out three "liberal" Supreme Court justices. Even Christ himself must by now be Christ-weary of this despicable little troglodyte and his hate-mongering bombast. Which is apparently why Robertson didn't give Baby Jesus the contract to kill Hugo Chavez, but instead called for US Special Forces to perform that function. Hey Pat, why don't you do it yourself, you were a marine in combat in Korea, weren't you? Oops, no, you weren't. You don't seem to have much of a grasp of the Ten Commandments either.

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch... Cindy Sheehan is still waiting for an answer to the question, "What noble cause?" As are more and more of us, even in the reddest state in the Union. The extreme right responds the only way it knows how - with craw-thumping bluster, dishonesty and intimidation. A bogus astroturf group called "You don't speak for me, Cindy", which seems to be mostly a creation of various hate-radio motormouths, is dragging its dog-and-pony show across the Southwest, bound for Crawford where it will establish "Camp Bush" and confront Cindy and her supporters.

First of all, Sheehan never claimed to speak for anyone but herself. Secondly, what are these people so afraid of? Why do they have to organize a bandwagon to bully and shout down a private citizen exercising her right to free speech? And isn't a "Camp Bush" outside Bush's camp a little redundant?

Back to Washington, and let's check in with Johnnie Roberts, former child star. It looks like his confirmation process will be anything but the smooth sailing it was predicted to be. So many skeletons are turning up in his closet that the White House had to dispatch two lawyers to Simi Valley to remove files from the Reagan Presidential Library and shred them, to keep Roberts' views on affirmative action from being exposed to the light of day. Now the two unnamed lawyers have magnanimously agreed to "reconstruct" the missing files - that's Gaelic for "re-write them in line with the Bush version of reality." Of course it's all Clinton's fault, with Sandy Berger setting a bad example and everything. Where's Ken Starr when you need him?

Well, that's all the news that's fit to fisk, or at least all I have time for at present. Be seeing you!

Happy Twenty-First Carnival of the Godless!

It's carnival time here at No More Mr. Nice Guy! Welcome to the twenty-first Carnival of the Godless. We have quite a turn-out today, with about twenty floats celebrating god-free living, rationality, and the occasional bit of snarkiness.

Leading the parade is PZ Myers of Pharyngula, with a cranky manifesto: "Warning: this weblog is run by an atheist." His message: atheists are not gonna stay in the closet! Amen brother, so to speak.

Jeff Shaumeyer at Bearcastle Blog has a more conciliatory tone on how Christians can accept the apparent contradictions between science, especially evolution, and what their scripture tells them. In "Mystery and Creationism", he suggests that believers takes these words to heart: "Truth cannot contradict truth. Believing Christians should accept the perceived contradiction as a mystery, rejoice in it and move on." Heh heh... pretty sneaky, Jeff.

Religious attacks on evolution are on many bloggers' minds in the wake of George Bush's endorsement of teaching "intelligent design". Kid Various at The Idiom laments, in "Oh Man, Why Does He Say This Kind Of Stuff?" "Why do let him go unscripted like this? What could this possibly get us? Solidify the base? What does he need that for? All this does is make it more difficult to prosecute his agenda, including The War." I feel your pain, Kid.

Amid disturbing signs that the Catholic Church is backing off from its previous stance in support of evolution, Ricardo Azevedo of Newton's Binomium, in a post called "Murky Waters" is encouraged by some remarks of George Coyne, the Director of the Vatican Observatory. "If he got rid of the God bit, then we would be in almost complete agreement."

In "Quit pretending they're compatible", Chris Hallquist of The Uncredible Hallq comments on a Slate article on evolution and religion. Somewhat confusingly, it's the Slate article that says religion and evolution are incompatible, and Chris feels that this argument is counter-productive. I'm reminded of the response of the wife of the Bishop of Worcester on learning of Darwin's theory: "Let us hope that it is not true, but if it is, let us pray that it will not become generally known."

Over at Atheist Revolution, vjack asks: "What if Religion Isn't the Core Problem?" He considers the possibility that religion is a tool used by those in power to manipulate the people in service to a larger strategy.

A Rational Being would no doubt completely agree. In "Intelligent Wedge", he makes the case that ID is simply being used as a wedge issue. Expect to hear lots more IDiocy as the 2006 U.S. elections approach.

Personally, I feel it's a bit too simplistic to say either that the religious right controls the corporatist elite, or vice versa. In reality there is a symbiosis and cosy working relationship between them. And many of those in power really do swallow all that BS, as Will Franklin at WILLisms demonstrates with a pair of posts: Religious Denominations In The U.S. House Of Representatives and Religious Denominations In The Senate.

Surprisingly enough (at least to me), Catholics form significant majorities in both houses. Maybe it's because the Catholic Church is a little bit like the Hotel California; Once in, Never out, as Stephen Brophy puts it. Have you ever though about how hard it is to get yourself excommunicated?

Meanwhile, the fur really flies at The Common Man, where Playing With Fire features two anarchists ("so-called" in each other's eyes) plus a supporter of a radical Muslim group, in a wide-ranging discussion about who is a real anarchist, the importance of class warfare and violent revolution, and the privacy rights of bloggers. Okay, just let me know when the dust settles...

Lawrence Manes writes, Pity the Poor Atheist with no god to tell him who to kill. Yes, I know it's unusual to include a "letter to the editor" in a blog carnival, but Mr. Manes graciously gave me his godless blessing to be listed. Besides, it's my carnival, so there. (HT to Brent for the link.)

Let's wrap up the political section of the Carnival with one of Peter Fredson's trademark rants: How Horror Came To Us. I'm a connoisseur of anti-Bush rants, and I approve this message.

Moving on to sports, unfortunately it's Another Black Eye for Pro Sports, as Hank Fox investigates the growing Pray for Play scandal.

No word yet on whether Quidditch is affected, but Gullyborg in Schools: fantasy v. reality explains why Christian conservatives should approve of the Harry Potter books. "Hogwarts teaches Defense Against the Dark Arts, which, if anything, is like a fantasy-world equivalent to having the N.R.A. come to your school to teach your kids how to lawfully defend themselves against criminals and terrorists!" Damn straight! You can have my magic wand when you prise it from my cold dead hands! But wait a minute - how come the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher gets offed every year?

Next time you're staying at a hotel, you should remove the Gideon's bible, says Seth at Spoiled Honey in a post entitled To arms. There's some discussion in the comments about whether this is theft. Maybe we should get a bunch of bible warning stickers and stick them on the cover. But then, that would probably be considered defacement. Rats!

To be honest, I went five years as a road warrior spending every second week in a hotel, and Gideon's bibles don't make my list of top ten peeves. One thing that does, however, is when there's an accident like the recent crash landing of a jet in Canada, and everyone gushes about what a miracle it was that no-one died, while ignoring the rescue workers who deserve the credit. Darwin's Little Darling takes up the theme in "That's the thing about miracles..." in which he describes a friend's near-death experience in what sounds like just another day on Phoenix freeways.

Steve Pavlina waxes philosophical on near death experiences in "Unraveling the Mortality Conundrum". If you knew today was the last day of your life, how would you live it? As Steve says, "The finality of mortality endows reality with vitality."

Scott Hagaman at Scottish Nous also waxes philosophical in "What If S Would Have Believed Otherwise?" At least, I think that's what he's doing... "When the obtaining of some contingent epistemically irrelevant factor f is a part of the cause of S believing that [y exists and is identical to x], then would S have believed that [y exists and is identical to z and x is not identical to z] if f' had instead obtained, S is not justified in believing that [y exists and is identical to either x or z]."

Umm... okay... but have you considered the implications of the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? I say, teach the controversy! Let children see both sides, and decide for themselves! Matt at Pooflingers Anonymous has some words of wisdom on the issue in Pasta: Chapter 23.

Richard at Philosophy, et cetera, in his post "Expecting Infinity", shows that if Pascal's Wager is sound, then going down to the pub for a beer has infinite expected utility. Now that's the kind of philosophy I can get behind!

Finally, I didn't have time to write a post for this carnival, so here's one I prepared earlier (as Julia Child would say): "They hate us for our freedom from religion", in which I dissect the religious right soundbite about America being founded on "Freedom of religion, not freedom from religion" (FORNFFR).

Well, that wraps up another Carnival of the Godless! Thanks to all who participated, and to Brent for working tirelessly behind the scenes, and especially for starting the grand COTG tradition. The next Carnival will be at Austin Cline's About Atheism on September 4. So get writing and send your posts in! Make Baby Jesus cry! See you next time!

Bicycle riders of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!

This story suggests that George Bush Junior still has at least some support from the bicycle-riding vote: on the San Juan Islands in Washington state, during a vigil in support of Cindy Sheehan, "One bicycle rider shouted, 'Support the war,' from across the street." How brave of him, supporting the Bicycler-in-Chief.

Of course the harsh realities of the consequences of Junior's policies rarely pierce the bubble that surrounds Crawford, where seldom is heard a discouraging word. After all, as the Vacationer-in-Chief told reporters, "I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life." He then fell off his bike. (Junior may be a fan of intelligent design, but I doubt he'll be promoting the new theory of intelligent falling any time soon. Every time he gets on his bike, we see an example of stupid falling.)

Of course it's important that the Exerciser-in-Chief should be fit and well rested, so that when he eventually returns to Washington, he will be able to, um, spend two hours riding his bicycle in the middle of the day.

Man, I wish I had that job. Tell ya what, elect me president and I won't even pretend to care about being seen in Washington. I'll just ride my bike all day, every day. I won't invade any countries, drill in any national parks, or gallivant around the country shilling for the destruction of Social Security. I'll let a trained chimp delegate for me, and he'll do a better job than the untrained chimp we're currently saddled with. It's a win-win!

Bicycle, Bicycle, I want to ride my bicycle...

What, did he fall off his bike again?

Oh gawd... Junior doesn't just take vacations, he takes a vacation from his vacation! I guess Crawford is getting too hot for him, so he has to skedaddle to the one state where his approval rating isn't alongside the Koran in the toilet. That would be Idaho, the last refuge of every whacked-out white supremacist, militiaman, neonazi and Aryan-Jesus loonie. Junior ought to feel right at home there. Sheesh...

I'm off to the nearest Cindy Sheehan vigil. See you tomorrow!

Missing Inaction

Bush MIA, Day 10... America's Vigil. The nation holds its breath. Will our Glorious Leader ever be seen in Washington D.C. again?

The Runaway President continues to dominate the headlines... though probably not the way his handlers want. He managed to blow off his National Guard obligations (being too much of a coward even to face a champagne unit) while the sons of the less privileged were dying in Vietnam, and now the Chickenhawk-in-Chief is once again showing his craven spinelessness by cowering in hiding from a 48-year-old woman from Vacaville.

It's a PR nightmare for Junior's sycophants, who are openly praying for more shark attacks to change the subject of the headlines. Kathleen Porker, who tries to come across as the cuddly, cute face of stark raving religio-reactionary lunacy (but see this rebuttal), plaintively asks: "Where is Jaws when you need him?" Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh is being his usual obnoxious, drug-addled self: "I mean, Cindy Sheehan is just Bill Burkett. Her story is nothing more than forged documents. There's nothing about it that's real, including the mainstream media's glomming onto it. It's not real. It's nothing more than an attempt. It's the latest effort made by the coordinated left."

My god - the pure evil of that woman! Having her son killed as part of a vast left-wing plot to discredit His Bushiness! You know, I seem to recall that Limpballs got out of having to go to Vietnam by having an ingrown hair on his ass - no doubt from having his head up there most of the time. Which means he is well suited to the task of defending the Boy King from anyone who would commit the heinous crime of questioning his motives.

Of course, the mouth-foaming neanderthals of the lunatic extreme right blogosphere are going absolutely berserk over this whole affair, and spinning so fast, they are turning themselves into magnetic monopoles. The latest shocking revelation: Junior kissed Cindy Sheehan on the cheek at their first meeting! Ummm... so what? And the photo may not even be genuine - read the comments.

And so our national crisis continues, as America continues to lurch blindly without leadership. Maybe it's time to start putting out yellow ribbons in Washington. To paraphrase Tony Orlando, "String the yellow rogue up from an old oak tree..."

The Vultures of Life are gonna love this...

...A Colombian airliner carrying French tourists crashed early this morning in a mountainous region in western Venezuela, killing all 160 people on board. Of course the rightards hate both Venezuela and France, and they're probably not all the crazy about Columbia.

I predict that the lunatic right blogs are going to be full of gloating about this incident. It's their Manson Family values, you see. It's like the moron who supports the troops by mowing down white crosses at Camp Casey.

Help! I'm surrounded by America hating idiots!

Cindy Sheehan is a "whore" and "hates the Jews"... is there no depth of sleaze and venality to which the lunatic extreme right will not plunge? Every time I think they've hit rock bottom in unspeakable, nauseating depravity and moral cowardice, they plummet to previously unplumbed levels of filth and scuzziness in their berserk crusade to smear and destroy anyone who stands up to their snivelling little chimp of a leader.

PZ at Pharyngula gives the rightards what for. And thanks to Bad Jim in the comments for this link.

So you're looking for a scandal, huh?

Quick followup to my previous post: Evan Cohen is a native of Guam, which is one of many places where Jack Abramoff (Tom Delay's good buddy) is currently under investigation by a grand jury. Guam is a very small place, and the Republican establishment there is even smaller, so they must know each other and have almost certainly done business together. There's a connection there, just waiting to be found! Get digging, Kosmonauts!

If all the facts about the so-called Air America scandal ever come out, it'll be the rethugs, not the liberals, who will be stinking...

When assholes attack

Imagine Karl Rove without his evil genius, Robert Novak without his writing ability (such as it is), or John Bolton without his moustache. In other words, imagine a generic, vanilla older-white-guy with no talents or distinguishing features, but a surfeit of extreme-right partisan bile, anger and hatred, and no regard for facts, logic, reason or basic fairness. The result would be something very much like Doug MacEachern.

The Arizona Repulsive, as it's affectionately known, is the only daily newspaper in the sixth-largest city in the US (apart from the parochial East Valley Tribune). As such, it has a special responsibility to be what used to be called "fair and balanced" (before Fox Noise deprived those words of all meaning), to practice responsible journalism with at least some effort to get at the facts of an issue, and to allow diversity of opinion. Instead, it's nothing but a shill for the George Bush Junior regime, with its stable of crapped-out, bottom-tier scribblers carrying water and mindlessly regurgitating talking points for the junta's attack machine (with the honorable exceptions of Steve Benson, Jon Talton and maybe E.J. Montini on a good day). But by far the least able of the bunch is also the most obnoxious, hypocritical and out of control - the aforementioned MacEachern.

MacEachern has a long record of writing editorial hit-and-run pieces that are stunning in their amateurishness, bile and double standards. For example, when Whoopi Goldberg made some lame remark about keeping Bush where it belongs, not in the White House, MacEachern was incandescent with rage about the infinite depravity and evil of the Democrats, the potty-mouthed profanity the likes of which had never before sullied Washington, yada yada yada. A short time later, the President of Vice, Cheney the Dick, picked a fight with Senator Pat Leahy and screamed "Go f*** yourself" on the Senate floor. MacEachern's response? He gushed effusively about the manliness of Cheney and his "lively greeting."

Another example: when the story broke about John Bolton chasing a female subordinate and throwing a heavy stapler at her head, MacEachern sneered about "ill-founded allegations of wadded up paper sheets being thrown at a hotel room door." MacEachern, as you may have gathered by now, has no moral compass and nothing but contempt for the facts. Any behavior by a kindred spirit, however outrageous by objective standards, is praiseworthy in his eyes. Anything done by a non-reactionary is infinitely evil and likely to provoke a meltdown of extreme-right rage.

In a way, MacEachern's jaw-dropping hypocrisy is almost endearing. Does he really think we don't notice it? It's like the child that's caught with his hand in the cookie jar and chocolate smears on his face, stamping his feet and screaming: "Didn't neither!"

But MacEachern has been especially tiresome in the last couple of weeks, as he pursues a berserk crusade against Air America Radio. It seems he glommed onto some pseudo-story that has been buzzing around the extreme-right blogs; one of those periodic outbreaks of mad wingnut disease where they all work themselves up into a lather and cite each other as the source of some earth-shaking scandal that, after the most cursory investigation, turns out to exist only in their fevered imagination. Now this tenth-rate hack, who has been promoted way past his level of incompetence, is abusing his position to wage partisan war based on lies and smears in the pages of what some still imagine to be a reputable newspaper.

Here's the story: Evan Cohen, a Republican businessman with a shady past as a political operative in Guam, was one of the original investors in Air America Radio. He somehow managed to "borrow" several hundred thousand dollars from Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club, a Brooklyn-based charity of which he was Director of Development, in the name of AAR. He has since absconded with the money, and AAR never saw a penny of it. However, they have made an ex gratia payment to the charity to make good their loss, though the payment has been put in escrow due to the fact that the charity has gone bankrupt. The Republican Evan Cohen is now rumored to be in Hawaii and still scamming charities.

Needless to say, it's a tragedy that Air America Radio and a worthy charity were ripped off by this Republican crook, but AAR are to be heartily commended for doing the decent thing even though they are not at fault and had no legal liability to compensate the Club. But of course any story involving Air America and embezzlement is blood in the water to the sharks that are continually circling the right blogosphere. Now there is a feeding frenzy going on, based on total and willful ignorance of the facts, and outright lies about Al Franken stealing from underprivileged kids. Barbara O'Brien has a good summary of how the rightards have hyped up this sordid story into an all-out attack on Air America. Notice that as soon as she did what journalists are supposed to do, investigate the sources, the story quickly fell apart.

Doug MacEachern, however, isn't a journalist, he just tries to masquerade as one. He thinks that means mindlessly and credulously repeating the breathless claims of far-right partisan extremists who have no pretensions to objectivity or journalistic credentials. He makes no effort to do even the most basic, cursory checking of the facts of the case or get the other side of the story. He doesn't give a rat's ass what the facts are - all he cares about is having another stick with which to beat the liberals. Today's bloviation is only the latest in a series of attack pieces, all of them basically lifted wholesale from the wingnut blogs.

Of course, we can't expect anything better from MacEachern. What's troubling is that the Repulsive, instead of sitting on him as it should, has apparently given its blessing to this mouth-drooling private crusade. It hasn't done any objective reporting on the story, or done anything to rebut MacEachern's egregious lies and distortions, outrageous libel and shoddy non-journalism. It's been left to the readers to answer MacEachern's frenzied attacks in letters to the editor, and if it were not for the one or two letters published, most readers would have no idea of the real story behind the crock of BS MacEachern is dementedly spewing. It's a prefect example of the transmission belt that carries the deranged rants of the ultra-extreme right from their trial-balloon stage on the fringes to a position of respectability in the mainstream.

MacEachern is a tenth-rate, no-talent partisan hack and a disgrace to a paper which is itself a disgrace to journalism. If the Repulsive had an iota of integrity, it would fire his flabby ass.

Cindy in Crawford

MoveOn writes:

MoveOn is taking out an ad in President Bush's local newspaper in support of Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq who is camped outside Bush's ranch in Texas asking for a meeting with the president. They'll publish the number of signers and the best comments in a full two-page spread in the newspaper nearest to Crawford (The Waco Tribune Herald) while Cindy holds her vigil. Can you sign and spread the word before the 3:00 PM Friday print deadline?

http://political.moveon.org/meetwithcindy/

When the time is right, one woman with truth on her side is more powerful than the misleader of the free world. She is exposing the chimperor's nudity and shaming him into cowering in his toy ranch, afraid to face her. Give her some support - go to the above link and sign the letter! Now! That's an order!

The dominos are starting to fall

Looks like George Bush Junior may have to end his 5-weeks vacation (hell, that's even more than the French get) earlier than expected. High-ranking GOP operative and sleazocrat Jack Abramoff has been indicted by a federal grand jury and arrested for one of the many scams in which he is up to his eyeballs.

The last time Abramoff was in danger of getting his come-uppance, Junior intervened within a matter of hours, demoting a Guam prosecutor and causing the investigation to fizzle. But Junior will have to work 24-7 to shield Abramoff from the consequences of the scandals in which he is immersed, which are too numerous to list here. If Abramoff goes down, the next domino to fall will be his partner in crime, Tom Delay, the most corrupt man in Congress and the center of a web of Rethuglican sleaze, venality and criminality.

The dominos are starting to fall, one by one. It's only a matter of time before the Dumbino himself bites the dust!

Scotland the Foolhardy

Did you know that Scotland once tried to found a Scottish colony in Central America? I didn't either, but in 1695 the Scots raised £400,000, equal to half the country's gross national product, to send five ships with 1,200 people on board to start the settlement of New Edinburgh in the Darien area of Panama.

However, the venture didn't last long. Malaria, starvation, and English and Spanish hostility to the colony led to its abandonment after less than a year. Scotland, driven to near bankruptcy by the scheme, was annexed by England in the 1707 Act of Union.

I could make a Bush-bashing point about empires never lasting long, but I just present this tidbit for your enjoyment as an obscure historical oddity.

Coming soon to a blog near you...

Carnival of the Godless is a great tradition started by Brent Rasmussen, to showcase the best of blog writing from a godless perspective. Every two weeks or so, bloggers from every shade of political opinion - but usually united by a snarky attitude to organized religion and supernatural dogma - get to share their opinions on such subjects as church-state separation, creationism vs. evolution, living as an apostate in a predominantly religious society, and many other topics, with the blogosphere in general - or such portion of it as happens to visit the current host's site.

The first Carnival of the Godless is lost in the mists of time - yea verily, even the mighty Google cannot find it - but COTG's #2-20 have been handed down to us on tablets of stone:

2. Pharyngula
3. Science and Politics
4. Philosophy, et cetrea
5. Smijer & Buck
6. The Raving Atheist
7. The Frozen Texan
8. Nanovirus
9. yeah whatever
10. Wolverine Tom
11. Freespace
12. Radical Russ
13. Scottish Nous
14. deanpence
15. What You Can Get Away With
16. Positive Liberty
17. Tobias Bucknell
18. Saint Nate's Blog
19. The Evangelical Atheist
20. Silly Humans

The 21st Carnival of the Godless will be held right here at No More Mr. Nice Guy! on August 21. So get cracking, you goddam heathens! First, read the guidelines and browse some of the above to get your creative juices flowing. Of course, we like it when you write a shiny new post specially for the carnival, but you can also submit a recent blog post. And you don't have to be an atheist - we've had contributions from various flavors of Christians (mmmm, Christians.) Brent sez: "We will even consider posts criticizing godlessness in general, or atheism in particular. We recognize that there are some damned interesting theists out there who will have written relevant posts. We only ask that you do not submit a post that is just a short linking post, but rather something that shows off yours or someone else's writing ability."

So when you're ready to bow in submission, I mean submit your post, I need the following information by Friday, August 19:

• The name of the blog where the post is from.
• The post title.
• The post author's name or handle.
• The post's permanent link.
• A short description of the post.

You can send the information to , or click on "Feedback" in the links page. Look forward to hearing from you!

The Lone Ranger and Able Danger

The Vacationer-in-Chief has once again high-tailed it to Crawford to spend the month of August clearing brush. Remember what happened just over four years ago today? He was given a Presidential Daily Briefing entitled, "Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside the United States." And of course he swung into action and, umm, brushed off the report, determined to rest up for a month at the Ranch before facing the challenge of reading "My Pet Goat" to a kindergarten class.

Now it emerges that a U.S. Army military intelligence program known as "Able Danger" (since disbanded) had known for at least a year previously about Mohammed Atta and three Al-Qaeda colleagues - but the information wasn't passed on to the FBI. In fact, intelligence officers were directed to put yellow stickers over the faces of Atta and the others.

Then of course there was the steadily increasing level of intelligence chatter prior to 9/11, and the Phoenix Memo showing that several Al-Qaeda operatives were in the US, preparing a major operation involving civilian aircraft - all of which was ignored.

Even more remarkably, 9/11 was the first day on the job for national hijack coordinator Ben Sliney. Though a veteran air traffic coordinator and intimately familiar with protocols, Sliney refused on several occasions to contact NORAD and request an intercept of the hijacked aircraft, while precious minutes ticked by. Sliney has never satisfactorily explained his actions, and has since been promoted - which, under the George Bush Junior regime, is a flat-out admission of guilt and/or ineptitude.

It's tempting, and comforting, to think that it was all a series of bad breaks coupled with a culture of official incompetence. But once 9/11 had happened, notice how our luck suddenly turned 180 degrees from bad to good. First, Mohammed Atta's passport was found unsinged, sitting atop several tons of rubble two blocks from the WTC, after the aircraft he arrived on had been vaporized in the explosion. Then there was the discovery of an Arabic-language flight manual in a parked car at Logan Airport in Boston, plus a cropdusting manual and Atta's suicide note. Those were only the beginning of a stream of serendipitous discoveries that helped stampede the US into war - against Iraq. What are the odds!

Now, over 1,800 dead troops and hundreds of billions of dollars later, Bring-em-on Bush is back at the ranch, hiding from a woman who wants to know the truth. He's very brave when it comes to sending other people's children off to die for his oil buddies, but he's too much of a craven coward to face the mother of one of the many men he cavalierly used as cannon fodder.

Keep on hiding your face, Junior. Some day your luck will run out. We will get answers!

A brush with stupidity

Wanna know a secret? A double-dog-dare super secret?

The real threat to our nation's security isn't Al-Qaeda. It isn't skyrocketing oil prices, or the hemorrhaging of jobs to other countries. It isn't Janet Jackson's left nipple. It isn't even those icky liberals. It's... come closer, let me whisper in your ear...

Brush!

Yes, it's that nasty, prickly brush that grows like wildfire, choking and smothering everything in its path. If we don't take action, it will spread all over this great country, from sea to shining sea! This sounds like a job for...

Junior-Man!

Faster than a speeding bullet, dumber than a box of rocks, George Bush Junior bolts from Washington on yet another urgent mission to the Ground Zero of the creeping menace - Crawford, Texas. Brush is such an overwhelming problem, Junior has had to leave the affairs of state behind, over 50 times in the last five years, to clear it. For he alone has the manliness and charisma to face down this dread scourge. The most recent outbreak of brush is the worst yet - it's estimated he'll face over 5 weeks fighting it back! Swoon - what a man! How could we survive without him!

(Finally, it can be revealed why Junior went AWOL from his champagne unit of the National Guard in Texas. He had to undergo far more important training - how to clear brush that would one day rise to the level of a national emergency.)

Of course there are some ungrateful liberals who don't appreciate his sacrifice. Like that Cindy Sheehan woman, for example. The gall of her! Surely she can put her petty concerns behind and understand why he might seem detached from humanity and forget her dead son's name. After all, there's brush to clear! Brush never sleeps, and neither can the Brush-Clearer-in-Chief!

We can only look forward to the day when our fearless leader returns in triumph, under a "Mission Accomplished" banner, to intone the words we have awaited so long: "Major brush-clearing operations have ended in Crawford..."

A pot of green at the end of the rainbow

I'm not an economics wonk, but as a long-time resident of both Ireland and Arizona, I was interested in the focus on Ireland's booming economy in today's Repulsive. I'm especially impressed that the Repulsive managed to cover the subject without the usual ignorant and patronizing Irish stereotypes - unlike the time they printed a Thomas Friedman article under the headline: "Faith and Begorrah, look at Ireland!" Cringe...

Apparently, several Arizona state-level pols and Repulsive talking heads went on a junket to Ireland, and came back to record their impressions on its new-found prosperity and what it lessons, if any, it had for Arizona. Predictably, their impressions were often filtered through their own preconceptions.

For Rob Robb, the take-away is: "Maybe Ireland should look to Arizona as a model." Yeah, Ireland should ditch its high-tech economy for one based on sprawl and minimum-wage Mcjobs. Robb-squared, of course, is one of those "government is the source of all evil, the beast that must be drowned in the bathtub" guys, so for him it's all about the magic of tax cuts. Not so, ripostes his colleague Jon Talton: "The Irish corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent is well above Arizona's rate of 6.969 percent." Umm, Jon, you know there's such a thing as federal income tax, don't you? It's a strange gaffe from one of the few voices of sanity at the Repulsive.

(And now that I think about it, the figure 6.969 seems very fitting in a state where the whole basis of government is the pols and the corporations, umm, servicing each other with corporate welfare and campaign contributions, while the most basic needs of ordinary working people are ignored.)

For Jose Cardenas (print edition only), "Ireland's greatest strength was its collapse in the 1980s." Well, I was there at the time, and times were tough but "collapse" is stretching it. There is a saying: "In America, things are often serious but never hopeless. In Ireland, things are often hopeless but never serious." Cardenas also asserts rather fatuously: "Our higher-education system more than holds its own against Ireland's." Total BS! Even without the Cretin-in-Chief endorsing cretinism. I taught at the University of Arizona years ago, and my classes were full of dumb, rich Californian kids who weren't smart enough to get into a decent California school, so they were shipped across the state line to party, suntan, and attend an occasional class. They hated being there, I hated having to pound information into their heads, and I doubt the situation has changed since then.

Of course, the situations in Ireland and Arizona are more different than they are similar. Ireland was gutted by centuries of colonialism and exploitation, followed by decades of narrow, inward-looking conservatism and isolationism. Arizona, in addition to being a much younger entity, has many advantages over Ireland, such as climate, abundant mineral resources, and large injections of cash from military bases and defense contractors. On the other hand, Arizona is not a nation-state and is constrained by federal policies. Of course Ireland is also constrained by the European Union and the vagaries of the Euro, but as a nation-state it has more freedom of action.

No doubt, tax cuts were important in Ireland's rise in prosperity (from being the North Dakota of Europe, as Lester Thurow put it), but clearly the two most important factors were the partnership between government, industry and labor unions to turn the economy around, and secondly, the investment in a world-class educational system and the respect given to science and education. Even in the depths of the 80's, the Irish government was investing heavily in education, and now this investment is reaping handsome dividends. (And Ireland never jettisoned its national health insurance or welfare schemes, or went on a union-busting spree, all of which the right-wing rant tanks would have us belief are absolutely necessary actions for prosperity.)

All of which means that the Irish economic miracle is not going to be repeated in Red-state America, where "government is evil" and "abolish public schools", along with hostility to science, are the mantras of the rigid extreme-right ideologues.

It's not a question of big government versus small or no government. Ireland shows that the key is efficient, focused government making the investments that otherwise would not be made. By contrast, the US under the Bush crony-capitalist regime is a case study in Walmartization and the accelerating hemorrhage of professional jobs offshore.

The right-wingers talk a good game about raising standards of living, but almost everything they do has the opposite effect. When are the people who voted for "fiscal conservatism" going to wake up and realize they have been conned big time?

Bush inserts foot in mouth, takes aim, fires

George Bush Junior has long tried to sit on the fence regarding evolution, claiming "the jury is out" on the most thoroughly tested scientific theory ever and the central organizing principle of all modern life sciences. Now, no doubt feeling he still has "political capital" to spend, he is finally showing his true colors; he is, surprise surprise, a cretinist (oops, I mean creationist). The stupiding of America continues apace.

I couldn't be arsed reiterating why cretinism, whether you call it "intelligent design" or anything else, is a complete and total crock. Suffice is to say that this is yet another bad policy decision by the most science-hostile administration ever. Anyone who cares about science and/or education must be horrified at this development.

Go to the first link above for PZ Myers' forthright denunciation of this act of stupidity, and for a list of other blogs speaking out against it. And send PZ a link if you want to join the chorus. Not that it'll make much difference, of course, but don't let silence be mistaken for consent!

They hate us for our freedom from religion

For the sake of my blood pressure, I should refrain from reading the editorial page of the Arizona Repulsive (and the B.C. comic strip). I know it's going to be full of mindless craw-thumping, ignorant cheap shots and lowest-common-denominator jingoism and pietism as a substitute for thought. But like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football, every day my eyes scan over the page looking for the faintest hint of intelligent life, and almost every day I am doomed to disappointment.

Today's page was particularly annoying, as it contained a hackneyed old bromide that always pushes my button: "Our country was founded on the freedom of religion, not freedom from religion." At the risk of swatting a mosquito with a sledgehammer, what are people thinking when they trot out this hoary old chestnut? Do they think it makes more sense than, say, "our country was founded on freedom of speech, not freedom from speech"?

In most cases, I think what they are struggling to express is the idea that "people of faith" have, or should have, a special privileged position in the US over non-religious people. "We have the right to practice our religion on the taxpayer's dime! Everyone else can love it or leave it!" And of course, "people of faith" means fundagelicals - or, if they are trying to appear inclusive and intolerant, they will make mealy-mouthed noises about the USA's "Judeo-Christian heritage." Tough luck to all you traditional Native Americans, Wiccans, Buddhists etc.

Some of the more articulate users of the "FORNFFR" shibboleth are, or appear to be, a little less triumphalist. They mean that the federal government should be neutral to religion, not hostile to it - something no reasonable person disputes. The trouble is, they are far too inclined to interpret neutrality as hostility when their favorite sacred cow is gored. And as for those who assert that church-state separation applies only to the federal government, not the states, or that the framers of the Constitution never intended to have church-state separation, or that they intended the wall of separation to be a "one-way wall" allowing the church to control the state but not the reverse - don't get me started!

It seems to me that a big part of the reason this issue is so clouded and thorny is that people confuse religion in the abstract with particular instances of religion. They try to make out that the clash is between some generic religion - "ceremonial deism", say - and the hordes of godless heathens who want to smash their altars and tear down their sacred images. Of course, this generic religion, if examined in detail, happens to look remarkably like that of the speaker who is promoting religious entanglement in government.

Here's the crux of the matter. How many people do you know who list their religion as "ceremonial deism"? Or claim that they are religious, but whose religion is so generic it has no links with any recognized religion? I would venture to say none. Just like it's impossible to speak intelligibly without speaking in a specific language, it's impossible to practice religion in any coherent sense without practicing a particular religion.

This is why "freedom of religion" and "freedom from religion" are one and the same. No-one has freedom of religion (or non-religion) if we don't have freedom from some other guy's religion being shoved down our throats. Freedom from religion protects everybody, religious or not.

If the RRR (reactionary religious right) had a single functioning neuron between them, they would realize that church-state separation protects them and benefits them. As Barry Goldwater noted, "By maintaining the separation of church and state, the United States has avoided the intolerance which has so divided the rest of the world with religious wars." Such wars have always been the bloodiest, precisely because religious differences cannot be settled conclusively by evidence or reason.

The theocrats love to spout "FORNFFR" because they identify "religion" with their flavor of religion. In their wet dreams of a religiously-controlled USA, they cannot conceive of any other flavor winning. Needless to say, if the shoe were on the other foot - say, hypothetically, observance of Ramadan were to be declared compulsory in the US - they would be the first, and loudest, to clamor for freedom from that particular religion. But just try making that point to the Jesus-bots - it sails right over their heads.

Oh well, maybe some day I'll succeed in kicking that football...