No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Once again, the Arizona Repulsive asks the tough questions...

And its readers show what sticklers they are for law and order.

In a poll conducted yesterday, 59% of readers answered the question "Should Roger Clemens be investigated for perjury?" by agreeing with the statement: "Yes, he clearly lied to Congress."

Here's what I want to know. Why aren't George Bush Junior and his entire cabinet held to the same standards as some dumb overpaid jock?

I got an E...

Wow! I got an award! The Nicest Girl has bestowed the coveted "E for Excellence" on this blog. Thanks, girl!

Now I feel kind of guilty because I haven't been blogging much lately. I'm still following the political scene and noting with an increasing sense of dread how Hillary is splitting the Dems apart in her frenzy to win at all costs, the 'thugs are holding their noses and rallying behind the odious (and criminal) John McCain, and the Rove-style dirty tricks have already started against Obama. It's going to be a long, dirty summer. Will the ruling elite allow a black man a real shot at the presidency, or will there be a lynching party?

Oh well, back to business. I guess I am supposed to pass the award on to ten other blogs. I don't think I even read that many, and most of the ones I read regularly are too well known to need a link from me. So here are a few other blogs that I have enjoyed at one time or another:

Unscrewing the Inscrutable
Godless Mammy
Shrimplate
Severian Rants
Atheist Revolution

I know that's only five, but it's late and my brain is fried. I'll try to get back into the blogging groove - I have to, I'm hosting Carnival of the Godless in a few weeks' time.

Be seeing you...

The Iseman cometh

The "liberal media" is unanimous in shooting the messenger and making the New York Times the story, rather than John McCain's trysts with a blonde lobbyist and his lapping up corporate largesse. Actually, the NYT new of the story since at least last December, and sat on it for as long as they could - at the McCain campaign's request. All the evidence suggests that it was conservatives who leaked the story.

One of the reasons McCain is so hated by many rethugs is that he's always been a moralizing prick, preaching "do as I say, not as I do." His positions on everything from campaign finance reform to global warming have been postures of convenience, taken on and discarded like a suit of clothes as the occasion demanded. Many of his colleagues resented his lecturing them on ethics immediately after the Keating 5 scandal, and his bloviation on family values and what not is equally grating after his well-documented catting around and frat-boy behavior for most of his life.

If McCain gets into the White House, he will be even worse than Junior, hard though that may be to visualize. Let's hope that this latest scandal derails the Straight Talk Express!

Someone geld that maverick!

Vicki Iseman's love song to John McCain (to the tune of Magic Man, and with apologies to Heart):

Long ago in Washington
Met a US Senator
Named John McCain
Went to parties at his side
Took him for a mile-high ride
In my corporate plane

Come on girl
He said with a snarl
I play Goody Two-Shoes
But I'm sleazier than Karl
Try to understand, try to understand
Try try try to understand
I'm a Maverick Man

The Passion of the Huck

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - Mike Huckabee said Tuesday passion for his beliefs - not his ego - was the reason he remains in the Republican presidential race despite near-impossible odds. Rival John McCain collected another primary win in Wisconsin and moved closer to the 1,191 delegates needed to clinch the nomination. Huckabee hasn't won a contest since Feb. 9.

The guy who majored in miracles and doesn't believe in math (or evolution) hasn't got a prayer, but I'm glad to see he is still in the race, refusing to admit defeat. And after McCain is crowned heir-apparent to Junior, I hope the Huckster will run as an independent, appealing to the white fundamentalist vote and splitting the overall rethug vote right down the middle.

If only the Dems had a dirty tricks team like the rethugs do (apart from Hillary's anti-Obama team), the general election campaign would be rife with opportunity for creative mischief. We could start a petition asking Huck to run as a third-party religious right candidate. We could phone in to Limbaugh et al, posing as conservatives disgruntled with McCain and stoking resentment against him. Then we could encourage McCain to lash back against Limbaugh and the other hard-right hatemongers. The whole GOP could cannibalize itself and melt down in an orgy of infighting and backstabbing. Sweet!

Run, Huck, run!

Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown

Update: 24% Boy is now 19% Boy.

Does he have to go into negative numbers before we can chimpeach?

Oh, good friggin' grief...

Truly, wingnut stupidity is infinite. In fact, "infinite" doesn't even begin to describe it.

A local mouth-breather gives this reason why Obama shouldn't be president: he is so eloquent as a speaker, that as president he would spend all his time giving speeches, and everyone else would spend all day mesmerized by him, and no work would get done. Think I'm making this up? I only wish I were. But it is impossible to satirize wingnuts, they are such black holes of stunning ignorance and stupidity.

In other stupid-Arizona-wingnuts news: local tinpot dictator Joe Arpaio, America's stupidest sheriff, is unhappy with a Phoenix police policy on asking suspects about their immigration status. His words of wisdom: "I wish that the Phoenix police would arrest everybody." And let God sort 'em out, presumably. Sheesh!

Welcome to the Valley of Dimness...

Entitlement programs

George Bush Junior figured he was entitled to the presidency because of who his poppy was. And so even after losing the election, he used rent-a-yuppie-thug crowds and a partisan Supreme Court to shut down the voting and get himself appointed Grand Poo-Bah of the American Empire.

Junior inherited the presidency from his poppy, Hillary expects to inherit it from her husband. John McCain thinks he is entitled to the office because of his family's long connection with the Navy and the rethug power elite. All three believe the Oval Office is theirs by right, divine or otherwise, and the will of the people be damned. It seems to me that public disgust at this sense of entitlement is what is driving voters to Obama in droves.

I don't know what to make of this story, but my best guess is that the Hillary camp floated plans to "flip" pledged delegates, then saw what a backlash there would be against the idea and promptly went into damage control mode, muddying the waters by demanding that Obama clarify his "intentions" on the tactic. Well, I hereby call on Clinton to clarify her intentions regarding drinking the blood of babies. If she refuses to respond to me, I will take that as confirmation that she drinks baby blood. See how that works?

This bogus hoo-ha over alleged plagiarism by Obama has the stench of desperation about it. As far as anyone knows, Clinton's speeches are written for her by pollsters and focus-group consultants. She should be the last person to criticize anyone else for not using their own words.

The Hillary Clinton campaign is self-destructing in an orgy of Karl Rove dirty tricks and Swift Boat attacks, not caring if they take the entire Democratic Party down with them and saddle us with four more years of rethug misrule. John McCain as president would be even more arbitrary, arrogant and hubristic than Junior. Clinton's win-at-any-cost mentality makes us all losers.

Trouble delegating

It looks like the Democratic superdelegate kerfuffle is greatly overblown. I'm not sure whether this is another case of hapless Democrats shooting themselves in the foot and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, or whether it is the "liberal media" playing up the narrative of hapless Dems shooting themselves in the foot etc.

The superdelegate process has been in existence for the last few elections, and it's only now that the Dems stand their best chance in years of taking back the White House that the supers have become newsworthy. I've been racking my brains trying to think how the Dems could screw up this election, but the answer is clear - Billary storms into the convention, twists arms, changes the rules for Florida and Michigan, and gets the supers to coronate Hill despite Obama having the majority of regular delegates. Fortunately, it seems most of the supers are conscious of the need to respect the will of the voters, and are backing away from premature declarations of support for one candidate or the other.

I still think that if Hillary is the nominee, she will lose to McCain. And I think Obama is the better candidate in any case. But it should be emphasized that the Dem's dilemma is having two very strong, credible candidates. The rethugs' problem is having to choose the least bad candidate, who seems to be a cranky old geezer who wants to wage wars for Jeezus and Junior in perpetuity.

This ought to be a slam dunk for us, which makes me nervous. But after the last eight years of unimaginable nightmare, surely even the Dems can't screw this up. Can they?

Pay no attention to the chimp behind the curtain!

George Bush Junior and his tantrum-throwing rethugs are going all out with their fear-mongering and deranged feces flinging. If we don't grant the telcos retroactive immunity for their illegal mass spying on US citizens, we will all die screaming in our beds!

Except that it's weak, pathetic bullshit, and for once the Dems are calling Junior on it. Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Silvestre Reyes are - diplomatically of course - calling Junior a liar. Olberman calls him a fascist. And Junior's own words condemn him as - like all extreme-righters - a bully and a coward.

Let's be clear. The ability of the US intelligence agencies to conduct surveillance is not being diminished by one iota. FISA remains in effect. But Junior hates FISA because it requires him to get a warrant before (or after) spying on someone - thus leaving a paper trail. This isn't about immunity for the telcos - it's about immunity for Junior himself! He has been spying on political opponents on a massive scale, beyond the wildest dreams of Richard Nixon, and he is shitting his pants with fear that his crimes -and those of his accomplices - will come to light.

After years of caving faster than a West Virginia coalmine every time anyone said "boo" to them, the Dems are finally growing a pair. Not a pair each, just a pair between them, but it's a welcome start.

Despicable

Rethugs intentionally disrupt Tom Lantos' memorial service.

Uncle Tom's babblin'

Thomas Sowell may not be the most jaw-droppingly stupid of the extreme-right pundits out there - the competition is intense - but he is certainly a front-runner.

Take yesterday's column, where "column" is shorthand for "crazed, demented, non-sequitur bleatings of a mouth-foaming loonie-right in terminal meltdown." Sowell babbles pathetically about everything from the Antarctic ice cap (whose growth does not refute global warming) to Bill Clinton replacing all the US attorneys when he took office, a clapped-out rethug ranting point that was totally lame and bogus even a year ago, the last time anyone dragged it up.

Most pathetically of all, Sowell is ranting about the media being partisan and putting politicians' interests ahead of the public's. Well, duh! For years, Sowell was a happy part of a media that was proud to be the rethugs' mouth-piece (or some other orifice), constantly spewing the vilest hatred, propaganda, lies and distortions against all things liberal and everyone not on the extreme right-hand edge of the political spectrum. But now that bumfights are breaking out between McCain supporters and the Hannity-Limbaugh axis of stark raving lunacy, Sowell boo-hoos about nasty mean journalists "betraying the trust of the public and corrupting their own profession." Look in a mirror, asshole.

And of course no extreme-right psychotic tirade would be complete without playing the Nazi card. I don't know why I'm spending so much time analyzing this incoherent pile of puke. Let me close by quoting Sowell's first sentence: "Even before Mitt Romney bowed out -- with class, by the way..."

You know, I've thought long and hard about the most appropriate response to Sowell, and I've decided it's the same one Jon Stewart gave to Romney.

The Dummysberg Address

The Quaker's Colonel imagines what the Gettysburg Address would sound like if delivered by George Bush Junior.

Ding Dong The Wicked God is Dead

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

--Nietzsche, The Gay Science

"God is dead" is one of the best known but least understood quotes in modern culture. What Nietzsche was lamenting was not the physical death of an imaginary being called God, but the death of an external, absolute basis for morality. This leaves us with the responsibility of coming up with our own morality, and the burden may be too great for ordinary mortals; only an übermensch has the strength to live in a godless world without falling into nihilism.

It sometimes seems to me that Christian apologists like their atheists to be like Nietzsche, Sartre or Camus - tortured souls wracked by existential angst. They can point to this intellectual suffering, contrasting with their own smug certitude, as validation of their fairy tale. What affronts them about the "new atheists" is the latter's scientific objectivity and matter-of-fact rejection of posthumous aerial pie. So what if this life is all that exists, let's make the most of it instead of cowering on our knees, say Dawkins and Hitchens. To which the apologists can only respond with incoherent outraged spluttering.

Anyway, Nietzsche was wrong, and the basis for a morality without God already existed as he wrote his words. Actually, morality is the wrong word - we need to distinguish it from ethics. Morality is something you impose on children because they aren't old enough to work out right and wrong themselves. Morality is external, imposed from above in a power relationship.

On the other hand, why do so many professions have a code of ethics, not a code of morality? Why do we have bioethics, for example, instead of biomorality? Because ethics is something you come up with by yourself or with your peers, and then commit to live up to. As adults we have a responsibility to live ethically, and that includes the onus of sorting out right from wrong depending on the situation. This is especially important as technology exposes us to new problems - stem cell research for example - which no ancient, dusty scroll has anything to say about.

To insist on absolute morality is to attempt to keep the human race infantilized and push the genie of technology back in the bottle. Moreover, absolute faith-based morality is always arbitrary and irrational, and actually stultifies rather than develops the human moral sense. Switch off your brain and blindly swallow a package deal of someone else's ideas of right and wrong, and you inevitably succumb to group-think which dehumanizes everyone outside the group. They are the spawn of Satan, they are doomed to eternal infinite torture in the Lake of Fire, so their suffering in this life is of no account.

Furthermore, adhering blindly to an ancient list of thou-shalt-nots leads to injustice more often than not. A perfect example is the condemnation of the vaccine for human papilloma virus by conservatives. Apparently it's better that women should suffer from cervical cancer than that someone should get the idea that sex is a natural and healthy part of life!

In any case, the idea of God as the one and only arbiter of what is moral leads inevitably to the Euthyphro dilemma. If God commands you to murder or rape a young girl, as he frequently did in the Old Testament, does that make it a moral act? Some Christians say yes. It seems to me that they are the ultimate moral relativists - and very scary people.

So, what is the alternative to absolute morality? How do we avoid arbitrariness? As I hinted at above, while Nietzsche was penning his anguished thoughts on the death of God, Darwin's Origin of Species had already hit the bookstores - and solved an analogous problem in biology. How can the complexity of life arise without an external designer? Who designed the designer, and how do we avoid infinite regress? Darwin swept away these problems by showing that complexity need not be imposed top-down; it can develop from the bottom up.

The same applies to the morality/ethics problem. If there were early human societies where murder was no big deal, they would surely have died out. Ethics evolved, and the ethical system that worked best is the one on which there is general consensus today - the Golden Rule, or various minor variations thereof. Basically it requires us to empathize with our fellow beings and avoid causing them unnecessary suffering. This in turn requires us to use our reason to know what causes suffering and what can alleviate it. Reason and empathy are the twin pillars of a good, solid, working system of ethics that does not depend on any gods or sacred parchments interpreted by priests and shamans.

As technology continues to develop, revealed religious morality will become increasingly irrelevant while reason and empathy become ever more important in deciding how to act ethically. For any intelligent and decent person, this should be an exciting and challenging prospect, not a cause for despair.

God is dead. Rejoice, rejoice!

If McCain becomes president...

Then we can all look forward to less jobs, more wars.

Leave Mittney alone!

I started working on a "Leave Mittney alone" riff but found that someone has already done it here.

I guess Mitt got tired of being McCain's bottom.

Mitt's idiot strings

Mitt Romney, the blow-dried empty suit, exits stage right, flip-flopping to the last. He rants and raves about Democrats putting more people on Medicaid, barely two years after a Boston Globe story headlined "Medicaid rolls surge with Romney aid" reveals, "At a time when other states are kicking people off Medicaid to save money, Massachusetts is headed in the opposite direction... Governor Mitt Romney has promised to provide health insurance to everyone in Massachusetts, and his administration has concluded that signing more people up for Medicaid is one way to accomplish that goal."

And so the ultra-suave and savvy MBA venture capitalist yada yada yada blew $35 million of his own money, at a cost of $119,454 per delegate, and got nowhere. "Mitt's concession speech was almost as delusional as the rest of his vanity trip."

Good riddance, Flip Flopney, and I hope the door hits you in the ass extra hard on your way out.

Just what the world needs...

A bluetooth-enabled burqa. Invented in Germany, it sends a picture of the wearer (or at least a picture chosen by the wearer) to every bluetooth-aware cellphone in the vicinity.

The inventor Markus Kison assures us, "Laws of the Koran are not broken." Though I very much doubt this would stop the religious police in Saudi Arabia or any sharia-ruled area from stoning to death any woman caught using this burqa. After all, women are the property of their father and brothers until they marry, and their husband afterwards, so they are not allowed to take the initiative in dealing with others in any way, and are certainly not allowed to do anything that could be interpreted as flirting.

One really wonders how far we must go in accommodating radical Muslims who emigrate to the West and demand all its benefits but reject its values. Remember the woman in Florida who demanded the special privilege of being allowed to hide her face behind a full veil for her driver's license photo? Presumably the irony that she would not be allowed to drive at all in Saudi Arabia was lost on her. Fortunately, common sense prevailed in this case, though the ACLU made themselves look stupid by complaining that the woman's religious freedom had been violated.

In many European countries there are growing calls for the Burqa or Niqab to be banned, and while I can see why people would take this position - especially in the case of schools, where veils can be disruptive and divisive whether worn by teachers or students - I would hesitate to support an outright ban. But let's cut the crap - if you're a woman wearing a veil that hides your face, and you're denied a driver's license or permission to board an airplane as a result, that is not religious persecution! Nobody is tearing the burqa off you, or preventing you from practicing your religion. You freely chose the action of cutting yourself off from other people and hiding from them, and you must accept the consequences of your choice. Religious freedom does not give you the privilege of imposing unilateral obligations on anyone else.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali reminds us that a woman who chooses to wear the veil is making a political statement: "It says: I'm different from you and I reject what you stand for." I would guess it's also a case of women internalizing their suppression and objectification by a violently misogynistic religion. Should we in the West be encouraging this oppression in the name of political correctness? I don't think so.

Romney to spend more time with his magic underpants

Mitler has announced the suspension of his campaign, saying: "If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or (Barack) Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror."

You got that? Voting for a Democrat equals surrendering to terrorism. I'm glad to see the back of Romney, but, Jesus, what an unmitigated jerk.

One who leads the cattle

James Dobson, head of the ultra-right-wing Focus on the Family (aka. the North American Man-Boy Shower Association) is a presbyterian. So is Ian Paisley, the ranting buffoonish hatemonger who has done more than any other individual to foment sectarian violence and hatred in Northern Ireland.

Let's look up "presbyterian" in the dictionary:

1640, as name of Scottish church governed by elders (as opposed to bishops), from presbyter "an elder in a church" (1597), from L.L. presbyter "an elder," from Gk. presbyteros "an elder," also an adj. meaning "older," comparative of presbys "old," possibly originally "one who leads the cattle," from *pres- "before" + root of bous "cow."

Amazing what you can learn from a dictionary. Look up Malkin and see if it doesn't describe Michelle Malkin to a T.

Tinfoil-hat rethugs

I have mixed feelings on reading this column entitled How the Republican Party Committed National Suicide. On the one hand, the part of me that enjoys schadenfreude really loves seeing rethugs flailing around in despair. On the other hand, it's scary that someone so massively deluded and out of touch with reality has a platform to spew his raving paranoia. Here are some of the juicy bits:

McCain is not being nominated by conservatives or for the most part, even by Republicans. He is being nominated by liberal voters from liberal leaning states who hold the earliest primaries and vote to eliminate all conservatives from the race before "fly-over" Republicans get a chance to cast a single vote.

Yeah, there's a vast left-wing conspiracy to infiltrate the rethug party and take it over! No wonder corrupt criminal traitors like Dick Cheney and stark raving theocratic loonies like the Rev. Mike Huckabee wield so much power.

You can't invite liberals to your table without inviting their ideologies along. Try this at home with your liberal neighbors if you think I'm wrong on this. They will be happy to eat your food and drink your wine, while they tell you all about the progressive benefits of socialism.

Somehow I don't think this guy has any liberal neighbors, or too many neighbors of any description. He probably lives in a Unabomber shack in the mountains and has a minefield all around his property.

Even in many "closed primaries" in Democrat stronghold states, where Republicans seldom have even a chance of carrying the state, many Democrats and Independents register as Republicans for the sole purpose of skewing the Republican nomination.

Oh my god... he actually does think there is a huge liberal conspiracy! If only it were true!

Find a way to be part of the solution, not just an angry part of the problem acting out in childish temper tantrums and protest votes.

Okay, that's all I can take of this drivel... my irony-ometer just melted down.

Movin' on up

MoveOn.org has endorsed Barack Obama. On top of the Kennedy clan's blessing (and Hulk Hogan's support), this is quite a coup.

I remain concerned that Obama is not quite as progressive as his many admirers think he is, insofar as it is possible to discern where he stands on any given issue. A year ago, I wrote:

He seems to be a Zelig, a human chameleon that everyone can identify with. Black, white, liberal, conservative, urban, rural - you can see yourself reflected in him.

It seems to me that people are so desperate for leadership, they are projecting onto Obama all the qualities they seek in a presidential candidate. Whether he actually possesses these qualities is a different question. My fear is that Obama is just another timid, triangulating, DLC Democrat. There isn't much to choose from between him and Hillary. Does he actually stand for anything? Is there anything that he is really passionate about? If so, I haven't seen any evidence for it.

I still have these fears, but I've come to see that Obama has something none of the other candidates of either party have - the power to inspire even the most jaded and cynical voters and non-voters. He can get people to the polls in droves, where they will, in the best case scenario, vote other Democrats for Congress and put a solid progressive majority in control. Because it seems to me that the most important reason to have a Dem in the White House is to ensure that good legislation is signed into law and bad legislation is vetoed. And of course to get out of the Iraq quagmire and avoid getting us bogged down in fresh meat grinders.

It's not enough to have just the White House (although Bill Clinton managed pretty well, despite the insane witch hunt that the rethugs waged against him for years), and it's not enough to have just Congress. We must have both, to begin recovering from the nightmare years of Junior's misrule and to stop further packing of the Supreme Court with hard-right dominionists.

Besides, it seems to me that Hillary Clinton has no chance of becoming president - even if, like Al Gore, she wins the election. She is such a hate figure to the mouth-foaming rethug base, there is simply no way the GOP would let her take office. Tom Delay once boasted that the rethugs had a plan B if the Supreme Court failed to anoint Junior as president. They drew up impeachment articles against Gore, and were ready to hold an emergency session of Congress the very minute he took the oath of office. (And if they had succeeded in deposing Bill Clinton, Gore would have followed in short order.) Can anyone doubt that articles of impeachment have already been written against Hillary?

In any case, Hillary is our Gerald Ford. She represents the past, the discredited Democrat establishment, the appeasers and accommodationists. Not that Obama is the anti-Hillary, but least he is perceived as a break with the past, a breath of fresh air. And sometimes the perception is as important as the reality.

That is why I now hereby endorse Barack Obama. Yeah, I know - stop the presses, and all that. I'm well aware that this endorsement is less newsworthy than that of Hulk Hogan. Still, for all his lack of substance, the important thing about Obama is that he gives many people hope - something that has been in desperately short supply over the last seven years.

The War on Terra

The Junior regime is hell-bent on destroying over 11 million acres of the most beautiful, ecologically sensitive, and archaeologically significant wilderness in the United States by giving free rein to oil and gas rigs, and to noisy, smelly and destructive off-road vehicles (ORV's). Bipartisan legislation is pending in Congress to permanently protect a tract of Utah canyon country, but Junior and his oil cronies are rushing ahead with their incredibly destructive plans.

Click here to send an urgent message to the director of the BLM, telling him to abide by environmental law and stop the devastation.

(Image courtesy of the Wilderness Society)