Thursday, January 31, 2008
The Mark of McCain
There's a very good chance that John McCain will be the next president of the United States, so it behooves us all to see what's behind the carefully cultivated "maverick" image. Matt Welch's McCain: The Myth of a Maverick is an excellent place to start.
Journalists love McCain because he gives them access, and seems almost always willing to be interviewed. This superficial openness with the media fuels the "straight talk" narrative while concealing McCain's actual positions, which have received less scrutiny than any other candidate except Edwards. It's a sad commentary on how low US journalism has fallen. Journos are so pathetically eager for access that they wag their little puppydog tails and wet themselves if an august figure like McCain condescends to sit down with them, and they never notice that he isn't actually saying anything of substance.
Looking at McCain's career, he has always been a carpetbagger and an opportunist. He's ridden on Barry Goldwater's coat-tails, bounced back from the Keating Five scandal by making a big show of supporting campaign finance reform while ignoring his own legislation when it suited him, and generally stepped on a lot of toes in his dash up the career ladder. His foul temper and disdain for "the little people" in his state are both legendary. The GOP establishment in Arizona hates his guts, and it isn't entirely because of any putative maverick tendencies.
McCain has been a prolific author (assuming his books aren't ghost-written), though his writings tend to be paeans to macho American exceptionalism and shed little and contradictory light on his policies. Welch makes the interesting point that the books, and McCain's speeches, are steeped in the language of twelve-step programs. Admit your faults, acknowledge that you are helpless without a higher power, resolve to serve a greater cause - those are the themes McCain hammers home again and again. The "greater cause" seems to consist of the US projecting its power around the world, staying in Iraq a million years, and what not - in other words, precisely the neonazi-con agenda continued into perpetuity. And do we really need another dry drunk in the Oval Office?
I've heard some Democratic voters say that if Hillary is the nominee, they will vote for McCain. Anyone taking such a drastic step would be well advised to read Welch's book first.
The Three R's: Readin', 'ritin', reloadin'
Arizona's gun loonies never cease to amaze with their utter stark raving idiocy. Unfazed by the failure of their pet legislation to allow guns in bars, a cretinous crusade that was deservedly lampooned by the Daily Show and brought worldwide embarrassment to the state, these mouth-foaming gun worshippers now want to force guns into schools.
This lunatic idea is being rammed through the Arizona legislature by a couple of extreme hard-right imbeciles, Senate Leader Thayer Verschoor and "worst legislator of the year" and five-times-married defender of family values Karen Johnson. Because, is there anything scarier that a classroom full of unarmed children?
Proponents of the measure frame their arguments in terms of the usual mindless gun-fetishist theology about "good guys" and "bad guys", and the good guys should be allowed to fire back at the bad guys, yada yada yada. The problem of course is that Cho Seung-Hui, the shooter at Virginia Tech, was a "good guy" right up to the moment he killed his first victim. Will the gun fetishists guarantee that a "good guy" who has been dumped by his girlfriend or flunked an important exam will never turn into a "bad guy" and start shooting?
This is the point that gun nuts (deliberately) never get. They just take it for granted that the bad guys will be armed and there is nothing we can do about it - the guns just fall out of the sky into the hands of the bad guys - so the only thing we can do in response is arm the good guys to the teeth, and keep them in an arms race against the bad guys. The solution to the problem of gun violence is always more guns. How convenient for the gun industry, the beneficiary of the gun nuts' frantic efforts at gun proliferation! The nuts refuse to acknowledge the obvious fact that this crazy and dysfunctional system creates a vicious cycle that makes it even easier for "bad guys" to get all the guns they want.
It's too bad that our insane gun laws have created the need for armed security in schools in the first place. But armed security must be provided by trained law enforcement officers. A roomful of Walter Mittys blasting away only makes a bad situation even more nightmarish. This stupid and brain-dead legislation is all about letting immature juvenile wannabes indulge their macho fantasies - it is not about protecting children.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
On with the show
I'm bummed that John Edwards has dropped out of the presidential race. Unfortunately, given the wall of silence the "liberal media" built around him, he never had a chance. The media is never going to allow a candidate who challenges the corporatist status quo to have his say. That's why we were barraged with attack stories about $400 haircuts but never heard word one about Edwards' policies.
On the plus side, it looks like 9/11 Boy will be the next candidate to take the walk of shame. This headline says it all: "Elderly candidate wins elderly vote in Florida, Rudy set to withdraw to spend more time with 9/11." Not that it makes a whole lot of difference. The rethug slate is just a bunch of pasty-white old millionaire males screaming at each other, "You're a liberal poopy-head," "No, you are," with the obligatory mouth-foaming about taxes, cutting and running, and what not. How sad for rethugs that their political discourse has long ago devolved to the level of toddler tantrums.
Oh well, on with the show. But I have to say, this never-ending ordeal of a three-ring circus is no way to elect a president.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Gotta love that conservative eliminationism...
Spotted on a wingnut site:
Obama-Edwards '08
It looks like the Democratic presidential campaign has come down to a two-person race: Clinton vs. Obama. Of course John Edwards is still in the race, but he seems to have little hope of winning the nomination at this stage.
Which is a pity. Edwards is the candidate who most clearly gets, and articulates, the central problem in US society today: Two Americas. One consisting of the mega-corporations and the wealthiest 1% of individuals, which is constantly being showered with tax giveaways and handouts, and gets to write its own laws in order to evade its social and legal responsibilities. The other containing the remaining 99%, the people who have to work for a living generating the wealth that the first America enjoys unearned.
As for the two front-runners, my reaction is: well, okay, whatever. There's no doubt that either of them would make an infinitely better president than any rethug. Hillary is very smart, tenacious and resourceful. Obama has charisma to burn. But what do they stand for? Would they be a president of the people, or of the mega-corporations who have injected vast sums into their campaigns? I know that the perfect is the enemy of the good, but neither of them truly inspires me to drop everything and devote every waking minute to working for their election.
If I had to choose between them, it would be Obama over Clinton. I'm getting more and more disgusted at Billary's dirty tricks and their win-at-any-cost mentality. And I want to see at least a symbolic break with the past, with the DLC establishment and its instinctive triangulation, its cozying up to the corporate power elite and its focus-group-driven posturing.
It always depresses me that Democrats fight so fiercely against each other but then meekly surrender to rethugs every time, caving in on their principles and selling their voters down the river. At least the bitterness of the Hillary-Obama infighting makes it very unlikely that we'll see a Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton ticket. That's a good thing.
What I want to see is Edwards as Obama's running mate, providing some substance to all the vague and lofty rhetoric about change and new beginnings. Change from what? It's the economy, stupid! I want a change from the corruption and greed that has been the foundation of conservative misrule. A change from the shameful poverty and illiteracy figures in one of the richest countries on earth. A change from the glaring inequalities of wealth and the arrogance and lawlessness of the ruling elite. And of course a change in the makeup of Congress, with solid, filibuster-proof majorities of genuine, progressive Democrats who know what they stand for and are willing to put up a fight for it.
No more dynasties, no more carpetbaggers. Obama-Edwards '08!
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Science vs. religion: no contest.
This column, though milder than most examples of atheist-bashing, makes all the standard mistakes when it complains about "evangelical atheists" abusing science and creating false dichotomies.
What the author fails to acknowledge is that religionists want to have it both ways. They want to say that science confirms their beliefs, but when it fails to do so, they complain that science should keep its grubby hands out of their bailiwick.
It's one thing to say that there is some ineffable, indefinable being inhabiting some non-material plane that science can never understand. But if you assert that this being interacts with the material universe, responding to prayers and suspending the laws of physics etc., then you are making a scientific claim that can and should be tested. And if the claim doesn't hold up, then honesty demands that you retract it.
I'm always amused in a way by the frantic efforts of cdesign proponentsists to wrap themselves in the mantle (or cheap tuxedo) of scientific respectability by attempting to force their personal religious beliefs into the science classroom. If they had a single functioning neuron between them, they would realize that not only are they parading their appalling ignorance of science, but they are making a mockery of their religion, and diminishing and demeaning their god. You have to wonder how strong their faith really is if it must be buttressed by such frenzied exercises in power-wielding, indoctrination and intellectual dishonesty.
On a tangential note, another religious talking point I often hear is that religion creates a sense of awe, and science kills it. "How can you look at a sunset or a newborn baby, and not believe in God..." etc. etc. The truth is exactly the opposite. The more science you know, the more awe you feel, but it is the genuine awe of understanding (or at least beginning to understand) rather than the cheap phony awe of ignorance.
When you look up in the sky on a frosty night and know that there are billions of stars in this galaxy, and billions of other galaxies out there, or when you stand on the rim of the Grand Canyon and think about a stream of water slowly and steadily carving out this huge gash in the earth's surface over millions of years, then you experience a much more profound sense of awe than if you close your mind down and wallow in some childish just-so story. "Goddidit, the end" - how can anyone find satisfaction in that, unless they are totally bereft of intellectual curiosity?
The bible says that we were made from dirt, or from the rib of a thing made from dirt. Science tells us that our atoms were forged in the heart of stars! It also tells us that all life on earth is related. I find this incredibly uplifting, while the simple-minded genesis myth is petty and tawdry. And yet the religionists are constantly braying that the scientific picture is depressing and degrading: "We evolved from monkeys, therefore we are nothing but monkeys." This not only smacks of the crude reductionism they constantly accuse us of, it is self-refuting on its face.
If science and religion are in conflict, too bad for religion. The universe is not going to rearrange itself to conform to anyone's ignorance. It's no contest: science wins!
I wish they knew how to quit religion
The death of Heath Ledger has brought the usual cast of extreme-right everyone-hating religiots crawling out from under their rocks. Not just ol' Leatherface Phred Felps and his clan of inbred hillbillies, but Christmas Warrior John Gibson of Fox Noise are demonstrating typical Christian love and charity. How charming.
This is the perfect example of religion as a tantrum. Muslims going berserk over cartoons and teddy bears, Bill O'Donohue getting his knickers in a knot over a movie that nobody saw, Jewish extremists, Hindu extremists... they're all overgrown children throwing tantrums. Why? Because they know they'll get away with it.
Every parent knows that when you indulge a child's tantrums, you'll get more tantrums and worse tantrums. The child will always push the envelope, trying to see how much it can get away with. And because of the taboo in our society against criticizing religion, because of the impenetrable force field of knee-jerk deference and unearned respect which constantly cocoons it, religion gets to be more of a spoiled brat all the time.
I think this is the main reason there is such a hugely disproportionate backlash against the handful of authors like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens etc. who refuse to play the game. The very virulence of the counterattack demonstrates what an unhealthy, dysfunctional situation we have when an oppressive, irrational power structure is declared off limits to valid criticism. It isn't just lunatic fringe assholes like the Felpsoids who exploit religion's privileged position; every religion can be a breeding ground for ignorance and fanaticism if protected from the disinfectant of sunlight.
If religion can't grow up and stop acting like a two-year old, it should die out altogether!
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
The song remains the same
I'd forgotten he was running, but Duncan Hunter apparently dropped out of the presidential race several days ago. He has endorsed Mike Huckabee, which makes sense; both of them are nutzo lunatic fundy dominionists.
As for Fred Thompson, he was never exactly running. More like tottering along on his walker frame. I have no idea why he bothered. Anyway, his lazy, somnambulant candidacy, which nobody wanted anyway except the media, has finally fizzled out with a whimper.
Which still leaves the rethug field crowded with rich old pasty-white guys. It's almost as if George Bush Junior has finally succumbed to mental meltdown and developed multiple personality disorder, and each personality is running to succeed him as president. I'm not sure "succeed" is the right word there, after Junior's dismal record of abject failure. But anyway, Huckabee is the manic religious element of Junior, the chimp God talks to. McCain is the crazed warmonger, Giuliani is the sleazy crony capitalist, Romney is the vacuous stuffed suit with nothing inside, and so on. And Ron Paul is in the race because it's a constitutional requirement that we have a loon from Texas who panders to white supremacists and neonazi skinheads.
What I find fascinating is how all the rethug candidates mindlessly intone the mantra of change without ever mentioning what we need a change from. Isn't the fuzzy promise of change an admission that untramelled conservatism, with its monopoly on political and judicial power, has been a ghastly, unmitigated disaster? Does anyone with the IQ of a sea cucumber imagine that any rethug candidate can really bring change, let alone change for the better?
As for Clinton, I grow ever more sickened by her Karl Rove tactics and dirty tricks. If she's elected, she sure as hell isn't going to change anything. We'll still have endless war, endless evisceration of the Constitution, and endless unaccountable rule by the megacorporate elite. Why isn't the Dem establishment lifting a finger to roll back Junior's destruction of our civil liberties? Because they fondly imagine they'll get to exercise those illegal "unitary executive" powers themselves.
No privileged millionaire insider, regardless of skin color, is going to change the system. Change must come from within, as the saying goes. And change must come from below, from the grass roots upwards.
Do we really want change? How badly?
There will be blood
It looks increasingly likely that the November line-up will be McCain vs. Hillary Clinton. This is an immeasurably sad and dreary prospect. Whoever wins, we lose.
Both are carpetbaggers who have dined out on a family name to get where they are. Both have been bought and paid for, over and over again, by the megacorporate ruling elite. Clinton has shown herself willing and eager to fight dirty and use every trick in the book against her fellow Democrats, but will appease the warmongers and corporate slavemasters every time while selling those who voted for her down the river. As for McCain with his legendary foul temper and his eagerness to keep US troops bogged down in the Iraquagmire for more than a century, he is the last person on earth I want to see with his finger on the nuclear button.
After eight nightmare years of the most spectacularly incompetent, corrupt, criminal and traitorous misadministration in US history, you'd think that people would wake up and demand genuine change, instead of being fobbed off with placebo "change" and mindless talking points from Washington insiders who will deliver nothing but more of the same. Sometimes I despair for this country. Anyone got a spare desert island where I can hibernate for the next year?
Bush lied, thousands died
935 lies, almost 4,000 dead troops and over a million dead Iraqis later, neither Junior nor any of his corrupt criminal treasonous puppetmasters have ever been held accountable.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
What "far left"?
I've often blogged about my annoyance with the lunatic extreme right's mindless habit of declaring anyone who isn't an ass-kissing George Bush Junior worshipper to be "far left". Goddamit, there is no far left in the US! All mainstream politicians are significantly right of center by international standards.
Take a look at this page, which makes the point in graphical form. Of the current presidential candidates, only Kucinich and Gravel are in the "left/libertarian" quadrant. All the others are in the "authoritarian/right wing" quadrant, with Hillary more right-wing than Obama but Obama more authoritarian than Hillary, while Romney and his fellow rethugs zoom to the furthest fringes of right-wing authoritarianism. I think that's why rethugs are always associated with the color red - it's the relativistic light shift as they speed away into the most distant recesses of wingnut lunacy.
I think the graph grossly underestimates Ron Paul's authoritarianism, considering his positions on women's rights and church-state separation - he's agin 'em. Anyway, compare this picture with corresponding pictures for other countries, and note how severely US politics are skewed to the right and to authoritarianism.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
The American Swastika
Where McCain flip-flopped, Mike Huckabee is wading in with both feet in mouth; he declares that the Confederate battle flag is a state issue. "If somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell 'em what to do with the pole." Yeah, well, you can do the same with that bible that you want to shove down all our throats.
For the life of me, I can't understand how anyone can claim - except of course by gross dishonesty - that the Confederate battle flag is just a historical symbol of Southern heritage yada yada yada, and not a racist symbol. Let's have a brief history lesson. We are talking about the flag of an entity that seceded from the United States; that opposed everything the United States stood for; that declared that slavery was its cornerstone and that it was founded on the notion that all men are not equal, the "negro race" being forever inferior and divinely ordained to be slaves of the white race; that declared war on the United States and launched a sneak attack; that was defeated by the United States at a horrific cost in bloodshed, and has not existed for over 140 years. So why is this still an issue?
You could make a case that flying the Nazi Swastika in New York was a state's rights issue, but it would be a very weak and despicable case. Morally, the duty of South Carolina and other states that preserve this symbol of slavery is clear; dump the American Swastika in the dustbin of history where it belongs.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Sleeping with the enemy
Remember how the extreme-right lunatics browned their underpants, magic or otherwise, at the news that a Muslim had been elected to Congress? Remember the barrage of ignorance, stupidity and racism that was the rethug reaction?
Well, guess what I just read in the headlines: Former Congressman Is Indicted Over Ties to Islamic Charity. The congressman was accused by a federal grand jury in Kansas City of accepting $50,000 in stolen government aid money as his lobbying fee from a group that funneled $130,000 to an Afghan warlord labeled a terrorist by the United States government. No, it's not the Muslim Democrat, Keith Ellison - it's a conservative rethug!
Mr. Siljander, 57, was best known in the House for his fierce opposition to abortion and gay rights. He tried to block a $581,000 Justice Department grant to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence in 1985 because he considered the group to be run by "pro-abortion, pro-lesbian, anti-Reagan radical feminists."I've said it before and I'll say it again: the lunatic extreme religious right and the Taliban, al-Qaeda etc. have far more in common with each other than either has with normal, sane Americans. Both of them hate the United States for what is liberal about it. They hate women, gays, anyone who wants to control their own body and choose whom they have sex with in private.
The US extreme right and the Taliban are natural bedfellows!
Self-abuse by the Arizona Repulsive
That's funny, I thought our lords and masters of the media who do our thinking for us were always whining that election turnout was too low? That more people should be participating in the machinery of democracy and what not. But noooo... if you don't vote the right way, or vote for the right candidate but for the wrong reasons, that's abusing the primaries.
According to Doug MacEachern, writer of today's editorial in the Arizona Repulsive (though it's unsigned, the whiny, smarmy tone could only have come from his pen), "self-appointed leftist field marshal, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga" mounted a campaign to "sabotage" the Michigan primary by encouraging Democrats to take advantage (in a perfectly legal way) of the state's open primary process.
Strangely enough, the outright illegal and well-documented election fraud and theft of 2000 and 2004 raised ne'er a peep from the Repulsive, or pretty much anyone else in the corporatist media. Rethugs have a long history of abusing Democratic primaries in Michigan and other states whether the primaries are open or not. Not to mention secretaries of state who were also Bush-Cheney state campaign chairmen abusing the process and flat-out breaking the law to disenfranchise legal minority voters. Vote suppression, criminal sabotage and election theft are SOP for the GOP.
I was amused by Kos's campaign, though I'm not sure if it had any significant effect at the end of the day. However, it's good to see the constant churn among rethug candidate with no clear leader emerging. Let's hope it continues!
I want to see Thompson winning in South Carolina, Giuliani in Florida, Paul in Texas - the rethug nominee should be someone who just barely squeaks in with a small minority of the votes. Then Bloomberg runs as an independent candidate representing the corporatist wing of the rethugs, Huckabee or some other loonie dominionist theocrat runs as an independent representing the American Taliban, and the vote gets split six ways to Sunday. The rethugs finally implode under the weight of their corruption, arrogance and incompetence.
Then maybe we the taxpayers will finally get a break from all the abuse the rethugs have heaped on us!
Monday, January 14, 2008
How rethugs win elections
This article tells you all you need to know about how rethugs monopolize political power despite having an agenda that caters only to the wealthiest 1% at the expense of everyone else. It didn't begin with Karl Rove: rethugs have been playing the dirtiest of dirty tricks since at least the time of Goldwater. A veteran ratfucker boasts: "When it came to playing in the gutter, we were the professionals - the Dems weren't even junior varsity."
When I read websites like Dailykos and see people taking for granted that there will be a huge Democratic landslide this November, I'm frustrated and scared by their naivete. Look, the rethugs control the media, the courts, the Secretary of State offices in key states, and the black box voting machines. And there is no way in hell they'd allow the massive unconstitutional power they've illegally amassed to fall into the hands of a Democrat, or even a half-sane and not totally criminal Republican (if there are any left). They've already shown over and over again that they have nothing but contempt for democracy, the Constitution, and the will of the people, so how can anyone believe they will allow a fair election, and simply hand over power meekly when they lose?
Even if the polls lean so heavily Democratic that a rethug victory would simply not be believable - and slobus vulgaris americanus has shown that he will believe anything the compliant "liberal media" spoon-feeds him - then they will make sure the victory goes to a Liebercrat who is just as compromised by mega-corporate cronyism. Someone who can be bought and sold by the military-industrial-polluter-jesus complex. In a nutshell, someone like Hillary - not that Obama is much better.
Remember the bumper sticker: "If voting could change the system, it wouldn't be legal."
Friday, January 11, 2008
I beg your pardon, I never promised you the Rose Garden...
Maha has an interesting post on Mike Huckabee's inconsistent record with death row prisoners. Apparently, if you rape a relative of Bill Clinton, that qualifies you for a full pardon, but if you convert to a religion other than Christianity, you get executed sooner.
Two points struck me. First, Huckabee is quoted as saying with respect to multiple rapist-murderer Wayne Dumond (who raped and murdered again after Huck had sprung him and written him a love letter): "None of us could've predicted what [Dumond] could've done when he got out." This is eerily reminiscent of George Bush Junior whining: "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
Secondly, there was the following detail from the case of another Arkansas prisoner, Frankie Parker: "Frankie had requested a Bible, the only book allowed in solitary confinement." Good grief, isn't solitary confinement punishment enough - why throw in the Book o' Blood as well? Seriously though, this strikes me as a rather glaring violation of church-state separation. And is it really the best book for rehabilitating violent criminals? It's packed full of violence, brutality, rape, incest, murder, genocide, and every imaginable evil - all either performed or commanded by Jehovah.
Anyway, this whole ghastly story underlines the moral bankruptcy and infantility of the Rev. Huckabee and his version of hard-right Christianity. If he gets into the White House, we're all on Death Row.
Ron Paul: white supremacist
The more I find out about Ron Paul, the uglier he looks.
I previously wrote about a racist article which appeared in the Ron Paul newsletter during the 80's. The article was ghost-written for Paul and thus he bore full legal and moral responsibility for it. Needless to say, the Paulinista hordes are screaming that Paul knew nothing about the article, it was totally different from anything that appeared in the newsletter before or since, it was the work of an "incompetent" or an agent provocateur etc.
Well, take a look at the decades-long history of racism and white supremacism in Paul's newsletters. There's also steaming piles of homophobia, antisemitism, and unqualified support for extreme-right violent militias. The dust had hardly settled from the Oklahoma City bombing before Paul (or his ghost writer) opined that the rise of militias was "one of the most encouraging developments in America."
Either Paul is the ideological blood brother of David Duke, Tim McVeigh and the lowest dregs of violent racism in the US, or (as his supporters imply) he is a clueless moron who allowed a large and profitable newsletter operation to continue for many years, spewing out racism, sedition and incitement to terrorism in his name with no oversight whatsoever. Either way, he is not fit to be a public servant.
In any case, the second explanation just doesn't hold water. Paul has a long association with neo-Nazis, has happily accepted donations and endorsements from them, and has repeatedly refused to condemn them.
The conclusion is inescapable: Paul himself is a racist, white supremacist neo-Nazi.
Monday, January 7, 2008
The Preacher-in-Chief
I never thought anyone could be a more dangerous White House resident than George Bush Junior (he never was and will never be the president as far as I am concerned) - but Mike Huckabee keeps getting scarier all the time.
A Blog From Hell reports on Huckabee leading a dominionist rally at a New Hampshire church. No reporters were allowed inside the church but plenty of juicy stuff came out:
"When you give yourself to Christ, some relationships have to go," he said. "It's no longer your life; you've signed it over." [...] "When we become believers, it's as if we have signed up to be part of God's Army, to be soldiers for Christ," Huckabee told the enthusiastic audience. [...] Likening service to God to service in the military, Huckabee said "there is suffering in the conditioning for battle" and "you obey the orders."Jawohl, Herr Huckenjesusführer! Good grief - hasn't the lunatic extreme religious right done enough damage already? Do we need Huckabee - with Chuck Norris in tow - to destroy the last vestiges of sanity in this country?
Jesus warriors
Two very worrying statistics: 40% of active service personnel in the US military, and 60% of taxpayer-funded military chaplains, are evangelical fundamentalists.
One can speculate that born-agains would be over-represented in the military since it tends to recruit mostly from the lower socio-economic strata. Still, the even more glaring discrepancy for chaplains must be looked at in the context of the George Bush Junior regime's ongoing campaign to stuff the military at all ranks, from the top downwards, with openly dominionist nutjobs like William "My god is bigger than your god" Boykin, who is currently pimping an "official" evangelical bible published by the Southern Baptist Convention, or Josh Llano at Camp Bushmaster [sic] in Iraq, who coerced soldiers into getting baptized. Or the bright sparks in the Army and Air Force who tried to sponsor a right-wing evangelical rally at Stone Mountain, the confederacy's Mount Rushmore.
This hijacking of the military by the extreme Christian right goes hand in hand with increasing harassment (official and unofficial) of troops of other faiths and especially atheists and agnostics in the military. I wonder how many atheists have been fragged, and whether this was a factor in Pat Tillman's death?
No wonder there are no atheists in foxholes - they get stabbed in the back by their own side!
Bipartisanship for me, but not for thee
Isn't it interesting that when the rethugs are riding high, enjoying a monopoly on political power, bipartisanship is derided as "date rape" and Grover "Drown the Government in the Bathtub" Norquist boasts, "we are trying to change the tones in the state capitals - and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship."
But when rethugs are looking at an electoral bloodbath as their arrogance, corruption and incompetence finally provokes a backlash among disgusted voters, suddenly bipartisanship gets elevated to the most important principle, nay the very cornerstone of democracy.
In other words, bipartisanship always means the rethugs telling the Dems "our way or the highway." And far too often, the hapless Dems fall for it. Barack Obama seems particularly eager to make a virtue of his failure to clearly enunciate his principles, the main reason why many progressives are a little concerned about him.
Bipartisanship is all very well, as long as it doesn't mean Democratic cowardice and capitulation. But by far the most pressing need is for sound progressive principles to begin the desperately needing healing from the nightmare years of the Junior Junta. We need a leader with a clear vision of how the US can recover its former greatness - by forswearing unprovoked greed-driven wars of aggression against other countries, by renouncing torture and holding accountable those who practiced it and those who ordered it, by restoring Habeus Corpus and abolishing illegal Total Information Awareness black programs, by shining a harsh spotlight on the criminality and treason of the Junior regime and vowing that it will never be allowed to happen again.
We also urgently need action on global warming, on health care, on a host of other pressing issues that were taken off the table which the rethugs bloviated to their black hearts' content on their stupid wedge issues. We need to stop blundering around the world spreading "freedom and democracy" by dint of overwhelming firepower, and start practicing it at home, caring for the hard-working people who create the wealth in this country instead of pandering to the richest 1% who hog the lion's share of it. The only way to be a moral leader is to lead by example.
Their way or the highway? Let the rethugs continue to crawl in the gutter of their sleaze and dirty tricks. We will take the highway.
Restore democracy in '08!
Sunday, January 6, 2008
The War on Knowledge
The trouble with the War On Christmas (TM, Faux News) is that it's very much a one-sided war - being waged only by the alleged victims. Consider the attacks against the Tree of Knowledge on the Chester County Courthouse lawn in Pennsylvania. Erected by the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia, it was decorated with copies of books such as Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species and Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. The tree was repeatedly attacked while nearby religious displays were untouched.
Although there has frequently been controversy over gaudy and grandiloquent religious displays being erected on public property with tax dollars, I'm not aware of any atheists physically attacking such displays. So much for Christians spreading peace and goodwill, huh!
I'm constantly amazed at the fear and dread the mere existence of atheists provokes among the believers. Only a profound and debilitating fear could cause the wildly disproportionate backlash we constantly see, whether it is the mindless, brute vandalism of the lumpen knowledge-haters or the panicked sneering and bloviating of the likes of Dinesh D'Souza, Alister McGrath, Terry Eagleton and so forth.
For all the blather about "fundamentalist atheists", "crusading atheists" and what not, we see over and over again that it is the religious who resort to violence when the other side has out-argued them. Could it be that the true believers dimly sense at some subconscious level that the elaborate and beautifully constructed edifice which is their religion is a house of cards built on quicksand? Are they afraid that if atheists are allowed a voice, if reasonably intelligent people are allowed to hear what atheists have to say and to think for themselves, then the whole rococo structure will come crashing down?
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Go impeach yourself
Let's catch up on the news about everyone's favorite dick. Wouldn't you know it, Darth Cheney apparently had a hand in recently killing California's emissions law (and that of sixteen other states) after meeting with auto industry executives. Could this fascist bastard by any more blatantly corrupt?
Of course there's also the factor that Cheney is an alien who requires an atmosphere of carbohydrate smog to breath. Toxic waste courses through his veins, and he is kept alive only by the weekly transplant of a heart torn from the living body of an Iraqi orphan. But he's still a corrupt bastard.
The cowardly craven quisling Dems in Congress continue to insist that impeachment is off the table, and to shield Monkeynuts and his sinister puppetmaster from accountability at all costs, in defiance of the will of the majority of Americans of both parties. But the call for the Dark Lord's impeachment grows stronger every day. From the East Coast to the Heartland, from Telluride to the heart of the Mormon-Industrial Complex, the demand for accountability is getting increasingly harder for the "liberal media" to ignore.
Let 2008 be the year we shoot Cheney in the face! (Speaking figuratively, of course.)
"I'm God, and I vote."
Not that he is at all relevant to the presidential race, but if you needed any more reasons to oppose the corrupt, racist Duncan Hunter, here's one: he is endorsed by godvoter.org. This far-right outfit (which hides behind a proxy domain registration) sent an extremely intrusive and dominionist questionnaire to all the candidates, seeking to rank them on their slavish adherence to fundagelical dogma.
Only two candidates replied, Hunter and Tom Tancredo. Tancredo subsequently withdrew his answers, citing bigotry against Mormonism (he had at that point dropped out and endorsed Romney), so Hunter won by default - and his answers are very scary. For example, in answer to "If you had to choose between God and country, which would you choose?", he wrote: "By choosing the Lord, I honor my country."
Although none of the Dems answered the questionnaire, apart from Hillary (C-) they all get grades of D, D+ or D-. The lowest ranking candidate of either party is Romney, who gets an F (and a disdorsement [sic]) specifically because of his Mormonism.
The fact that Hunter has happily accepted the endorsement of these batshit raving christofascists makes him flat-out unacceptable for any office of public trust, let alone the presidency.
In a way it's amusing to watch the rethug candidates frantically chasing the loonie extreme-right christianist vote, and hopefully scaring the few remaining sane Republicans into voting for the Democratic nominee. Still, it's scary that the American Magisterium combines so much power and insanity.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Georgie Bush's War
I went to see Charlie Wilson's War yesterday. It was very good, very funny in places but ultimately depressing. After shovelling untold billions at the Mujahideen (and calling them the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers, a title also lavished on the brutal contras), the US couldn't cough up a lousy million dollars to reconstruct Afghan schools once the Soviets had been driven out.
It's always the same story. The US has no trouble coming up with infinite billions of dollars to blunder around the globe raining death and destruction in the name of spreading "freedom and democracy" (at the point of a gun), but loses interest when the kick-ass phase ends and the hard work begins. Of course in the current quagmire, the billions are still flowing, just into Halliburton's bank account instead of Iraq. (And Junior is perfectly happy to stealth-veto a long overdue pay raise for the troops to keep the gravy train rolling.)
Will we ever wise up and outgrow our toddler-like attention span? Wait, look over there! Bright shiny object! Iran! Nukes! Crazy brown people! Let's roll!
