Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Well, my darlings, I hope you're enjoying our first evah Carnival of the Elitist Bastards. I do believe we have achieved what you might call a success. A heartfelt thank you! to all who contributed, and all our readers, without whom such enterprises are worse than useless.

And now, on to our regularly scheduled Discurso, because the stupid never sleeps.

Some of you may wonder just how divorced from reality our nation's right-wing media is. Judging from what Glenn Greenwald has to say, they've never been more than perfect strangers:

Speaking of Politico's sycophantic service to the GOP, Allen's colleague, David Paul Kuhn, today has an article about how gay marriage is going to help McCain win the election and doom Obama among independents and working class voters. Last week, Kuhn wrote an article reporting that GOP operatives were excited about the prospects of McCain winning in a "blowout." Several weeks before that, Kuhn wrote an article about how the Iraq War's growing popularity among Americans would be a huge asset for McCain and doom the Democratic candidate. Not even the most shameless GOP hack makes such absurdly optimistic claims about the GOP's electoral chances -- at least not out in the open. They just have Kuhn and Politico do it for them.

When you have silly fuckers claiming the Iraq War is gaining in popularity and that the GOP's excited about McCain's stellar prospects, you know that no divorce from reality has taken place. You can't get a divorce from something you've never been married to.

Lest you think it's confined to the avowed right-wing insaniacs, observe our Mainstream Media in action:

The central excuse offered by self-defending "journalists" is that they didn't present an anti-war case because nobody was making that case, and it's not their job to create debate. This unbelievably rotted view found its most darkly hilarious expression in a 2007 David Ignatius column in The Washington Post. After explaining how proud he is of his support for the attack on Iraq, Igantius explains why there wasn't much challenge made to the Administration's case for war (h/t Ivan Carterr):

In a sense, the media were victims of their own professionalism. Because there was little criticism of the war from prominent Democrats and foreign policy analysts, journalistic rules meant we shouldn't create a debate on
our own. And because major news organizations knew the war was coming, we spent a lot of energy in the last three months before the war preparing to cover it.

They were "victims of their own professionalism." It's not up to them to create a debate where none exists. That's the same thing Charlie Gibson, David Gregory, and Tim Russert -- among others -- have all said in defending themselves.

That's odious enough - supposed "journalists" merely parroting what they're told without digging up facts to verify that what they're repeating is true. Even if it were the case that "there was little criticism of the war," real journalists don't take a politician's word on faith: they do actual reporting and try to confirm or debunk what's being claimed. I think we're all grown up enough to understand that politicians lie. Our MSM, however, is not. Still, let's grant them the "it's our job to report what people are saying, and nobody important was speaking out against the war" defense, just for the fun of watching what happens next:

But beyond that, this claim is just categorically, demonstrably false. As Eric Boehlert and Atrios both demonstrated yesterday, Ted Kennedy in September, 2002 "delivered a passionate, provocative, and newsworthy speech raising all sorts of doubts about a possible invasion." Moreover, Al Gore (the prior presidential nominee of the Democratic Party) and Howard Dean (the 2003 Democratic presidential frontrunner) were both emphatically speaking out against the war.

Thus, three of the most influential voices in the Democratic Party -- arguably the three most influential at the time -- were vehemently opposing the war. People were protesting in the streets by the hundreds of thousands inside the U.S. and around the world. In the world as perceived by the insulated, out-of-touch and establishment-worshiping likes of David Ignatius, Brian Williams, David Gregory, and Charlie Gibson, there may not have been a debate over whether we should attack Iraq. But there nonetheless was a debate. They ignored it and silenced it because their jobs didn't permit them to highlight those questions.

Question for our "journalists:" in what universe, exactly, was there "little criticism of the war"? I'm just curious.

Does anybody else get the impression it's high time for a Carnival of the Media Clowns?

Using The Bible as an Elitist Bastard Weapon

by Karen Simon, special to En Tequila Es Verdad

Editor's Note: Karen Simon is one of our regular commenters here, and she's proven to be wise and wonderful and a boon to thought-provoking conversation. Alas, she hasn't a blog of her own. But she wanted to join the rest of us Elitist Bastards, and so I post her submission here. How could I resist after that title? Enjoy!

My naughty little indulgence is to disarm intolerant fundies with their own weapon , the Bible.

When I hear someone spouting intolerance in the name of God and a verse from the Bible to support said intolerance I can quickly come up with at least three or four verses that not only refute their argument but also condemns them as the bigoted assholes they are.

The beauty of the Bible is that the the authorship is so vast and the opinions expressed so varied that you can justify almost anything.

Why it is so useful for my purposes is that as a Christian I am not trying to tell them not to believe in God so they trust me. They can't call me a liar because I just quoted their divinely inspired owners manual, but I just trumped them.

What to do? Usually they just walk away stunned , angry and confused because they don't have the critical thinking tools necessary for a legitimate argument because they are taught never to search and never to question. It would be a much more tolerant and happy world if we allowed ourselves and others to be questioners and searchers.

Friends, Americans, countrymen, lend me your dictionaries!

Allow me to introduce myself. I am Nicole Palmby. You killed grammar. Prepare to die.

Okay, not really. But I needed some sort of introduction for my first post as sub-blogger of Dana's Wonderful World of Snark. I am Nicole Palmby. And while you may not have killed grammar, it certainly is on its deathbed, and, as grammar is my mama, I plan to avenge its impending death.

I wrote this article late last week and edited it earlier this week, but I was a little reluctant to post it following Kaden's beautiful piece on grade inflation. I think, though, that what I have to say needs to be said, and I look forward to what you have to say about it, as well. Enjoy.

-----

My current day gig is shaping the literary, grammatical, and writing minds of the future leaders of your local Target team.

Okay. Maybe that's an unfair assumption. I could be shaping the minds of future political leaders. For example, I could be grading the vocabulary assignments of the next George W. Bush! Some days I feel like I am.

Regardless of the future endeavors of the attitude-wielding, SMS-ing, bleary-eyed nodes of apathy, I am entrusted to ensure each pile of flip-flops and hoodie is able to identify the theme of classic but boring novel title here> and write a competent, even if uninteresting, five-paragraph essay.

Anyone who knows me might smile and mutter some comment about the ease of my vocation--"You mean you get to talk about books and writing all day and get paid for it? Man! Your life is rough, innit?"--but let me assure you that getting paid to talk about books and writing is not what it once was.

There was a time during which schools valued the education gifted to their students (because education really is a gift) and parents cared about what their children were doing all day. It wasn't so long ago that students went to school because they knew they had to, and the community was proud if it was the custodian of a "good district."

It seems that while the days of the "good school districts" still exist (I teach in one), much of what makes a school "good" has morphed into something wholly unrecognizable.

It used to be that, upon graduation, students were not only capable of writing a five-paragraph essay, but an 8- to 10-page research paper in MLA style with print sources. They understood the mechanics of the English language. They were able to communicate their thoughts and ideas effectively within those mechanics.

However, I have received numerous essays this year completed--grudgingly, mind you--in what is known as text-speak. Yes, that's right: English Honors students turned in formal essays that used the number 2 instead of "to" (and in place of "two" AND "too," for that matter), used "ur" for "you're" and "yr" for "your."

While I love the ease technology gives my workload, I can't help but shake my head at the price American children are paying for the conveniences they have. My junior students--also Honors--have difficulty placing apostrophes properly. They can't tell me the difference between "there," "their," and "they're."

Programs that proofread, while I admit they can be helpful, have created a dependency. Students have no accountability for their own writing skills. After all, why should they remember that it should be "all right" not "alright" when Microsoft Word in its infinite wisdom makes the correction for them as soon as they strike the next key?

When I was younger and still taking math classes, my teachers usually allowed us to use calculators to check our work--after we had done the problems ourselves. Their logic was simple: you have to know the long way before you can use the shortcut. I think the same logic should follow in writing. Yes, you do need to know to correct the spelling of "there" to "their" so that when, later, the computer does it for you, you'll know why.

Students today put no value on their education.

Although perhaps I shouldn't put all the blame on the students. If they could they'd text and watch Flavor of Love all day. They don't know enough to value their education.

Besides, it isn't only students who devalue education in the United States. Some parents have a decreasing amount of involvement in their (not they're) children's educations. They blindly trust that the school is taking care of things.

Unfortunately, when a school budget is dangled by a thread of standardized test scores, many schools find themselves focusing the curriculum on test-taking skills rather than academic skills. I don't agree with the practice, but when it comes down to teaching "real" curriculum or not having to eliminate instructional positions, I can't say I'd act any differently.

I have my opinions about standardized testing, but that's for another carnival.

Regardless, there is still a significant decline in the emphasis put on education in our nation. And yet, college enrollment (and graduation) is higher than ever. What kind of message are we sending to our children when they barely graduate high school and are admitted to colleges and universities once thought of as prestigious?

The result is a nation of employees who rely on the automatic proofreader in their word processors, and who are unable to be accountable for what they write.

The written word is a powerful weapon. Writers wield whole worlds with their pens, and, unlike surgeons, lawyers, and real estate agents, there is no examination that must be passed in order to become certified. Anyone can become a writer with just an idea, paper, and pen.

And instead of sanctifying this power, we reduce it to busywork assignments, let students take it for granted, and eventually, take it for granted ourselves. In fact, a colleague of mine suggested encouraging students to take their notes in text-speak in order to practice summarizing and resist the urge to write every single word. What an optimistic way of ensuring students are incapable of doing what every employee must do at one time or another: write intelligently, following general writing standards.

Unfortunately, this travesty has become so widespread as to be seen in every media outlet all over the world. Just today, in fact, while watching TV, the closed captioning on the television clearly read “presidentsy” instead of “presidency.” Really? I mean, really?

As what often feels like a single, tiny voice shouting into the wind, I fear there will be no end to the apathy toward the English language. Today prepositions are generally accepted at the ends of sentences. (I’m guilty of this myself when the “proper” grammatical construction reads/sounds awkward.) What happens tomorrow? “You’re” and “your” become one interchangeable word? Come on. (Oops! Preposition!)

Are Americans really so lazy that we’ve gone from omitting the “u” in various words—color, honor, etc.—to accepting English essays that use “yr” in place of “your,” which should really be “you’re”? I’m curious what Lynne Truss would say about American students (and adults, for that matter) English education and writing styles.

As a writer, as a teacher, as an American, I urge citizens and political leaders to work to effect (and that’s effect, not affect) a change in the state of English education in the United States. Write to your senators, representatives, school board presidents, governors…whoever will listen! We need to act fast or No Fear Shakespeare will become Shakespeare for Americans, and the Bard’s famous line, “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” (Julius Caesar III.ii.74) will quickly become “Peeps, lstn ↑!!1!”

Submissions!

(Repost from the official Carnival of the Elitist Bastards site)

Just a few hours left! If you're planning to sail with us, time to jump on board.

Gmail's acting strangely. To be safe, cc me on your submissions: dhunterauthor at yahoo dot com.

Here's the list of contributors so far:

Brian
Ames
Etha
Lirone
Blake
Mike
Efrique
Cousinavi
Bitter
John Pieret
George W.
Paul
NP

If you don't see your name on the list, and it should be there, please do resubmit your link to me at dhunterauthor at yahoo dot com.

Paul's got some new badges up in the sidebar - WE HAZ ELITUST BASTARDETTES!! Grab a badge, show your Elitist Bastard pride, and have your grog ready for the maiden voyage on Saturday!

Kaden: A few quick updates

Hey bloggers!

Well, our wonderful hostess should be picking from the dozen or so options for a banner for the Carnival right about now. In the meantime, a few orders of business.

I wanted to post the fourth segment in the Academia series, but I don't know what to say. I don't want to bore everyone with accounts of my experience that has no valuable insights. Perhaps if there is anything in particular that people would like to hear more about? I'm not sure what an eighteen year old would know that would interest the general population but I got a few comments on my earlier posts, so there must be someone other than Dana slogging through all this crap I write.

Next, before the Carnival gets right under way, I wanted to invite you all to a preliminary round of applause for our wonderful Dana, for being the flag carrier and putting this carnival together! I figure that my hoorah's might go buried beneath the various contributions, so I'm abusing my godly powers of co-blogger and taking the initiative! Ha!

In addition to Dana, thank you to those who helped out with suggestions for the banner, names for the celebrated egg heads, and our awesome badge-maker.

So as preparations come to their close, I hope everyone has fun. This carnival could have some implications for me; see, with the people I know, the high school and virtual environment I saunter through, and the generation I'm growing up in, Dana hit the nail on the head when she explained how elitism is seen in a negative light. At first I thought that this carnival was supposed to be mocking elitists, because the idea of celebrating them was entirely foreign to me, so this should be quite an experience! I look forward to everyone's contributions.


And everything changes
And nothing is truly lost
-Neil Gaiman

(I have got to get my own sign-off phrase...)

Carnival Business #5

Postdated to stay up until the bitter end.

Just a few short days left to get your submissions in for the Carnival of the Elitist Bastards! Email your links to elitistbastardscarnival@gmail.com by the end of day, Friday. Our maiden voyage launches Saturday, May 31st. Don't miss the boat!

Kaden's working on a title bar. If you want to be part of the creative process, or just an opinionated bastard as well as an elitist one, get your suggestions in asap.

All aboard! Eggheads, Unite!

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Usually, I try to go a bit further afield than The Carpetbagger Report on Fridays, because I can spend more than 20 minutes hunting down political fuckwittery for your reading pleasure. However. Today is the last day before the first ever Carnival of the Elitist Bastards launches.

I have a boatload of entries to sort through and organize.

I haven't even written my bloody entry.

Carpetbagger it is! Thank you, Steve, for finding all the tasty tidbits so I don't have to. What do you have for us today, sir?

Oh, now, this could get interesting:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said Friday he would be willing to comply with a rumored Congressional subpoena to discuss the administration’s handling of pre-war intelligence, telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer he’d be “glad to share my views” if asked to testify.

Steve Benen asks the important question: "And what about the White House?"

In today’s press briefing, Dana Perino suggested the White House could put a stop to this.

QUESTION: Could the White House block him from testifying, if he wanted to testify? Or how does that work?

PERINO: Conceivably?

QUESTION: Yes.

PERINO: Hypothetically, which I’m not supposed to answer a hypothetical, yes, I think so. The law would allow for that. But by saying that, I’m not suggesting that that’s what would happen or not happen.

Not surprisingly, this isn’t about classified information, but rather, executive privilege — which might apply, even if McClellan were willing to appear voluntarily.

There you have it, my darlings. The White House is desperate to shut Scottie up. You should really skip over and have a look at the amazing batch of fuckery Steve's collected on this - the Right Wing Noise Machine (patent pending) has been kicked into overdrive trying to discredit dear ol' Scottie. They're terrified.

I'm amused. Wexler & Co. seem delighted - the actual watchdogs in Congress are salivating. If they were cats, they'd be purring. They've got a claw hooked gently in their victim, and they're just waiting for the right moment to reel in and bite. This should prove a very interesting summer indeed.

And it only gets worse for the White House:

Twenty former U.S. attorneys, both Republicans and Democrats, urged a federal judge Thursday to intervene in a constitutional battle over whether two White House officials should be forced to testify before Congress about the firings of nine U.S. attorneys. The former top prosecutors, including two who served under President Bush, argue in court papers that the judge should reject the Bush administration’s assertion of blanket immunity for presidential chief of staff Joshua Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers in the congressional investigation.

Struggle, little White House. Try to flee. But the cat always wins over the mouse, and every dog will have its day.

I feel a change coming. I feel a drumbeat. Do you? I think the people are finally fed up with the lies, obfuscation, manipulation and stupidity. McCain, on the other hand, can't seem to get enough of it.

He's spectacularly wrong about Iraq - again.

He's moving goalposts to cover up his stupidity - again.

He's using the United States military for political gain - again.

He's not practicing what he's preaching - again and again and again.

This is all from just the last week, my darlings.

If there's anyone in the cantina who still thought McCain wouldn't be such a bad choice, who bought into his straight-talkin' maverick marlarkey, I do believe it's time for you to think again.

Moderate Christians: If You Wanted to Clean Your Own House, You'd Best Fetch Your Brooms Now

It's time to sweep the cockroaches off the public stage and back into the cracks where they belong.

Coral Ridge Ministries hosted the Reclaiming America for Christ conference in March of this year. The conference didn't gain the media scrutiny it should - after all, there was no angry black man ranting from the pulpit. It's stocked to overflowing with rich white fuckers spewing venom, hate and ignorance, and we all know the media has bags full of free passes they hand out for rich white fuckers who spew venom et al, at least until an outraged blogging community forces so much attention on matters that a few of them end up treated sarcastically on ABC so that the media can claim its independence from... well, you know.

Cute illusion, that, and useful as far as it goes, but an illusion only. When the right-wing fucktards can get a Dunkin' Donuts commercial pulled over the terrorist-idolizing properties of a black-and-white paisley scarf, but no attention is paid to the terrorist-idolizing speeches of far right evangelicals, you know something's rotten and the media's refusing to admit it can smell.

Observe:

“I am not here to call the church to partisan action,” Perkins explained. “I am not here advocating for a political party. I am here advocating for Christian citizenship.”

Lest any of the assembled miss the point, Perkins offered up the story of Phineas, grandson of Moses’ brother Aaron, from Numbers 25. Phineas was rewarded by God with an “everlasting priesthood” for killing an Israelite and his Midian lover because God had forbidden the mixing of the men of Israel with the women of that tribe.

The story is, essentially, the vindication of the criminalization of “miscegenation” — a sentiment consistent with Perkins’ past courting of such racist groups as the Ku Klux Klan and the Council of Conservative Citizens, America’s largest white supremacist organization, according to journalist Max Blumenthal. (Perkins bought, on behalf of political client Senator Woody Jenkins, a phone-bank list from former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke.)

[snip]

“We read that Phineas arose and he took action…,” Perkins said.

“Not only is prayer required…I warn you that if you begin to pray for our nation that, at some point in time, you’re gonna be prayin’ and you’re gonna feel a tap on your shoulder and hear, ‘Son, daughter, I’ve heard your prayer; now I want you to do something about it.’”

Just in case his message should be misconstrued, however, Perkins offered this caveat: “Now, let me be clear, in case the media’s here,” he said, “I’m not advocating you go home and get a pitchfork out of your storage shed and run into your neighbor’s house.” Phineas, the Bible tells us, used a javelin.

Stop. Let's take note of several things here.

1. Tony Perkins believes that one day, God will literally tap these frothing haters on the shoulder and direct them to do something about their prayers. We know what the prayers of the theocons are, don't we? Rid the world of non-believers, homosexuals, abortion providers, Muslims, and sundry other undesirables; bring about Armageddon; bring America back to their narrow brand of noxious Christianity. Can we guess what the "do something about their prayers" might be?

2. In case not, consider carefully the story he tells. A man murders two people for no greater crime than some intertribal nookie in the Tabernacle, and is granted "everlasting priesthood." Seems like this "Thou shalt not kill" thing comes with a fuckload of exceptions.

3. Take especial note of that "in case the media's here" line. What might he have said if there was no possibility of somewhat sane people with recording devices being present, I wonder?

Prup at The Reality-Based Community calls Perkins' speech a "dog-whistle shout-out to Christian Identity terrorists." And he has some nervous-making detail on the subtext of that speech that should have you feeling very thoughtful indeed after reading it.

Anne Coulter, another august speaker at the conference, has no such sense of subtlety:

In her remarks to those who pledged to reclaim the nation for Christ, Ann Coulter equated the lives of aborted fetuses with those of the doctors and abortion clinic workers who were murdered by anti-abortion
terrorists.

“Those few abortionists were shot or, depending on your point of view, had a procedure with a rifle performed on them,” Coulter told her audience, which responded with laughter.

Ah, yes, those perfect Christians. They do so lurves them a good, clean joke about murdering doctors.

And what does the media do with people who surreptitiously celebrate and encourage such acts of domestic terrorism? They invite them on to speak - over and over and over and over again. While a Dunkin' Donuts gets booted for having Rachael Ray dressed in the wrong sort of scarf.

Let me be crystal clear: these fuckwits aren't Christians. I know it, and you know it. They wallow in the darkest, filthiest verses of the Bible. To them, Christian love is something you administer with a rifle. They lambast divorce, but they happily divorced reality long ago. And they're taken seriously in our political and spiritual arenas.

They want nothing less than a theocracy, dictated by them, with only their views aired and practiced. They'll advocate any means to get there, up to and including violence and terrorism. Those things, they say, are righteous as long as they are the ones doing them.

They're making Christianity look less like a religion and more like a dangerous pathology that must be quarantined every day.

So, moderate Christians: if you want to rescue a shred of your faith intact, I'd suggest you get busy now. Get up, get loud, and sweep these fuckers out of power before they pick up their javelins and their rifles and murder your faith.

Care to Take Some Action?

My inbox is filling up with fuckwittery. Would you do me the great good favor of helping me clear it out?

They Kill Kids.

Well, that certainly got my attention. Go on.

Dear friends,

Final negotiations are underway right now in Dublin, Ireland on a treaty to ban cluster bombs. Arms manufacturers are pushing governments to riddle the treaty with loopholes and delays -- and the final text will be decided in the next 72 hours.

Cluster munitions don't just kill during war. They scatter small, shiny, unexploded "bomblets" on the ground that hold their deadly charge for years. When children pick them up, they are often maimed or killed. Most governments agree that these weapons should be outlawed, but back-room pressure is rising to undercut a strong ban.

If enough of us act before the treaty is signed on Friday, we can drown out the weapons merchants and convince our governments to ban cluster bombs once and for all. Click below to send a message, and then forward this email to friends and family:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/ban_cluster_munitions/13.php?cl=92415442

Canadian Cynic has a great post up this. Don't know about you, but I think we need to do a little something to let our governments know that maimed and murdered children are not an acceptable by-product of war.

Next message:

If Bush says it's legal...

Oshit. No good can come of this. What's the stupid fucker done now?

Dear ACLU Supporter,

It’s okay to break the law if the President tells you it’s okay.

That’s the outrageous proposition at the heart of a new FISA “compromise” that Republican Senator Kit Bond is pushing on
Capitol Hill.

His goal: to let off the hook telecommunications companies that willfully cooperated with illegal spying.

Senator Bond wants to bury lawsuits filed against telecom companies in a secret court. And, when they get there, he wants cases dismissed if the companies can show that the President gave them a note saying his request for customer information was legal.

Tell your representative: Just because the president says it's legal doesn't make it so!

Over and over, you and the ACLU have drawn a clear bottom line for Congress. We’re demanding:

Real accountability for telecommunications companies that broke the law.

No government spying on Americans without an individual warrant.

So far, we’ve persuaded Democratic leaders in the House to hold the line.

But now, some Democrats who want to look tough on national security are getting nervous, and they’re being tempted to support this flawed “compromise” spying bill.

Senator Bond’s proposal wouldn’t actually look at whether
telecom companies broke the law; it would just look at what the Bush administration told telecom companies was the law. Legitimate cases against telecom companies could be dismissed by a secret court, simply because the Bush
administration issued a sham certification.

Don’t let it happen. Your representative needs to hear
from you now before Congress comes back to work next week.

Tell your representative you demand accountability.

Thanks for all you do in defense of freedom.

Oh, for fuck's sake, yet more FISA fuckery? It's starting to look less like legislation and more like a zombie every day: it keeps coming back from the dead. How many more mutations are the Republicons and the fucktard Democrats who enjoy licking Republion balls going to force on this bill?

Let's get something clear: in a democracy, breaking the law isn't legal just because the President said so. That's how dictatorships work. Are we dictatorship or democracy? Why the fuck do I have to ask this question in my own damned country?

Muster up your outrage and do some signing for me, would you, darlings? Thankee kindly.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Well, this is interesting. Looks like the authorization to leak Valerie Plame's identity was given by none other than George W. Bush:

Scottie McC doesn't know it yet. But that's basically what he revealed this morning on the Today Show (h/t Rayne).

During the interview, Scottie revealed the two things that really pissed him off with the Bush Administration. First, being set up to lie by Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. And second, learning that Bush had--himself--authorized the selective leaking of the NIE.

Scottie McC: But the other defining moment was in early April 2006, when I learned that the President had secretly declassified the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq for the Vice President and Scooter Libby to anonymously disclose to reporters. And we had been out there talking about how seriously the President took the selective leaking of classified information. And here we were, learning that the President had authorized the very same thing we had criticized.

Viera: Did you talk to the President and say why are you doing this?

Scottie McC: Actually, I did. I talked about the conversation we had. I walked onto Air Force One, it was right after an event we had, it was down in the south, I believe it was North Carolina. And I walk onto Air Force One and a reporter had yelled a question to the President trying to ask him a question about this revelation that had come out during the legal proceedings. The revelation was that it was the President who had authorized, or, enable Scooter Libby to go out there and talk about this information. And I told the President that that's what the reporter was asking. He was saying that you, yourself, was the one that
authorized the leaking of this information. And he said "yeah, I did." And I
was kinda taken aback.

You don't say. That's a pretty serious leak, mind. Seems the fuckers in office won't stop at anything to strike at a political enemy, even if it means destroying that enemy's wife's CIA career out of spite. Scottie may be "pretty taken aback," but myself, I'm pretty fucking pissed.

In light of that, I could use some good news. And this promises to provide endless entertainment:

Nothing about John McCain’s outreach to radical, evangelical preachers has gone well. After securing the support of right-wing televangelists like John Hagee and Rod Parsley, the Republican presidential candidate has faced a series of headaches, with one nutty revelation about the preachers after another. Were it not for the media largely giving McCain a pass for his radical associations, it might have been a total disaster.

Once reporters did start paying attention to this, McCain had a choice — stand by the extremists (and offend sensible people everywhere) or reject the extremists (and offend their rabid religious-right followers). McCain gambled, probably correctly, that it was worth the backlash from the GOP’s theocratic base, and decided to dump Hagee and Parsley last week.

Ever since, the evangelical grumbling has gotten louder.

The candidate’s abrupt turnabout brought criticism not only from secular viewers, who questioned why he had aligned himself with controversial religious voices, but also from evangelicals, who said he may have alienated a powerful bloc of potential Republican voters.

“He wants us to support him, but as soon as his back was against the wall, he overreacted. He is now less likely to get the evangelical vote and will have a difficult time getting strong endorsements from other ministers,” said Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., founder and chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition, an evangelical group that advises ministers on political and policy issues.

“For McCain to have to repudiate these people is much worse than ever having their endorsement in the first place,” said Doug Wead, a political consultant who ranked 1,000 evangelical pastors for former president George H.W. Bush to court for endorsements. “If evangelical Christians feel this is an attack on them, even if they don’t agree with Parsley and Hagee or follow them, it could galvanize them against McCain.”

It’s the worst of both worlds. Sensible people are bothered by McCain reaching out and campaigning with certifiable lunatics in the first place, and unhinged religious-right activists are bothered by McCain throwing two of their high-profile leaders under the bus.

Gorgeous! Somebody pass the popcorn. And get me some lighter fluid: it's time to set the evangelicals afire. I can't wait to see how this election turns out with that segment all hot with rage.

And finally, I'll leave you with a glimpse into the dark, twisted, fetid passageways of the neocon mind:

On Wednesday, Republicans collectively went completely berserk after Obama said a great-uncle had helped to liberate the Auschwitz death camp at the end of World War II. Once they realized Obama had a great-uncle who had actually helped to liberate Buchenwald, the first camp liberated by Americans, and Obama just misspoke about the Nazi camp in question, conservatives slinked away, waiting for the next manufactured outrage to come up.

But before we leave this non-story altogether, it’s worth pausing to consider what else Obama’s GOP detractors said about this.

Fox News, for example, was even more shameless than usual. One of the hosts of “Fox and Friends” said, “It wasn’t Auschwitz. It was a labor camp called Buchenwald.” As part of the same segment, Fox News ran this all-caps message on its bottom-of-the-screen ticker: “Ohrdruf was a work camp, rather than an extermination camp.”

In other words, Obama’s great-uncle may have served in the 89th Infantry Division, and may have played a part in the liberation of a Nazi camp, but let’s not suggest that this was too important. After all, Ohrdruf was only a Nazi slave labor camp.

It wasn’t just Fox News. John Cole highlighted a post from a far-right blogger, who argued:

Buchenwald, on the other hand, while atrocious beyond normal human understanding, was merely a slave labor camp, and not historically abnormal in a time of war. The people who died there did so under the stress of work and disease, rather than as a deliberate attempt to wipe them off the planet. [emphasis added]

I honestly can’t begin to relate to such a twisted worldview. I can appreciate the temptation to criticize politicians they disagree with, but how far gone does one have to be before they think it’s appropriate to diminish the atrocities at Buchenwald because Obama had a family member who helped liberate the camp? How rabidly partisan must one be to disrespect the bravery of U.S. troops in the 89th Infantry Division?

Very rabid, indeed. And what do we do with rabid dogs, my darlings? That's right. Friends don't let friends vote rabid fuckwits into power.

Fuckwittery Knows No Bounds

I've been employing the Smack-o-Matic rather heavily on religious assclowns lately, with the occasional good whack at my favorite whipping-boys: politicians and the media. But let's not forget that stupidity is a human universal, and irrational assclowns abound in every endeavor and creed.

Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars, we have a shining example from the teaching profession. She's threatening to sue Dartmouth College and her students for creating a hostile work environment.

If you thought she was an IDiot forced out for her IDiotic views, you'd be wrong.

No, she wasn't sexually harassed, either.

Nope, not physically attacked.

Give up?

She's upset because her actual students used actual critical thinking skills to - oh, the horror! - disagree with her.

Absorb this a moment. Savor it. Appreciate the complex bouquet we are sampling here: an Ivy League professor, entrusted with the task of teaching young minds to engage ideas, understand, appreciate and critique ideas, is pitching a fit because her students had the temerity to actually understand, appreciate and critique ideas.

The Wall Street Journal snarks. Observe:

Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of "French narrative theory" that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will "name names."

The trauma was so intense that in March Ms. Venkatesan quit Dartmouth and decamped for Northwestern.

My goodness, that's some trauma. Those Freshman English students - they're vicious buggers. Especially when they actually pay attention in class. The nerve!

Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. "My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful," she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. "They'd argue with your ideas."

Egads! The rogues! How dare they show any sign of thought process more complex than "vegetable!"

Ms. Venkatesan's scholarly specialty is "science studies," which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, "teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth." She continues: "Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct."*

And her students weren't impressed by this impenetrable woo? Shocking!

The agenda of Ms. Venkatesan's seminar, then, was to "problematize" technology and the life sciences. Students told me that most of the "problems" owed to her impenetrable lectures and various eruptions when students indicated skepticism of literary theory. She counters that such skepticism was "intolerant of ideas" and "questioned my knowledge in very inappropriate ways." Ms. Venkatesan, who is of South Asian descent, also alleges that critics were motivated by racism, though it is unclear why.

My powers of snark fail me. It's paddle time.

Why isn't this silly bitch working for the Discovery Institute or teaching Sunday school in some fundie church somewhere? I suppose it's because she's too "liberal" and would probably describe herself as "enlightened," but let's deconstruct this for a second here:

She presents intellectually vacuous arguments as rarefied, profound truths. She teaches that science is just a social construct. She pitches a fit when people disagree with her. She can't handle the least bit of skeptical thought or criticism, especially valid skeptical thought and criticism, because she has no valid response. Instead of being able to hold her intellectual ground, she has to resort to temper tantrums, lawsuits, accusations of harassment, and on top of all of this, plays the race card (read: persecution).

Tell me. How the fuck is this different from the right-wing fucktards who rely on the same damned bullshit arguments to bolster their indefensible positions? Is this really any different than the snivelling "Evilutionists are so mean!" cowardice we hear from IDiots? No? I didn't think so.

But - and wait for it - she doesn't stop there. Oh, hell, no. She's going all the way. She has to play a card worthy of Expelled:

After a winter of discontent, the snapping point came while Ms. Venkatesan was lecturing on "ecofeminism," which holds, in part, that scientific advancements benefit the patriarchy but leave women out. One student took issue, and reasonably so – actually, empirically so. But "these weren't thoughtful statements," Ms. Venkatesan protests. "They were irrational." The class thought otherwise. Following what she calls the student's "diatribe," several of his classmates applauded.

Ms. Venkatesan informed her pupils that their behavior was "fascist demagoguery."

It's our old friend Godwin's Law! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Reductio ad Hitlerum can't be far behind! My darlings, I think we just found the star of the next Expelled travesty.

The fact that her students PWND her this thoroughly gives me hope for the next generation. Apparently, the Wall Street Journal columnist feels the same way:

The remarkable thing about the Venkatesan affair, to me, is that her students cared enough to argue. Normally they would express their boredom with the material by answering emails on their laptops or falling asleep. But here they staged a rebellion, a French Counter-Revolution against Professor Defarge. Maybe, despite the professor's best efforts, there's life in American colleges yet.

I think we should all make it a point of honor to encourage rebellion in the face of fuckwittery, no matter which side of the spectrum the fuckwit is on, no matter the cost.

Viva la revolución!

*Update: It appears this bit was quotemined in the grand tradition of DIsco. However, the basic fuckwittery of the good professor still stands, based on emails sent to her students and slightly more reputable sources than the WSJ and Dartmouth Review. Read the rest of the comments in Ed Brayton's post, should you wish to form your own conclusions.

I Was a Victim of New Math

Efrique has two posts up that I'm certain are a tour de force of mathematics. I deduce they are not because I understand the math, but because I know that Efrique is a genius and his logic in other areas has never failed me.

I don't understand the math because of this:



Back when I was in school, I sailed through English and foundered on mathematics. My brain looks at numbers, screams, and flees. I blame the way math is taught.

I struggled with basic math for many years, until I hit a point in early middle school when things went "click." My sails filled with a good wind. I skimmed the waves of numbers. Each new concept slotted perfectly into place: we were plotting a good course, and there seemed nothing ahead but open ocean and the shores of Calculus sometime after a pleasant journey.

As soon as I reached 5 knots, my teachers, in their infinite wisdom, decided I could skip the rest of the basics and move right on to pre-algebra. For some children, this might have been a good move. They're the ones who "get it" intuitively. For me, it was a disaster. It was like telling a sailor that since he's so good at navigating by sight, he's ready to strike out across the open ocean.

And then, there was the Book.

I can't really describe my pre-algebra book. I remember very little of it. I just remember the look on my father's face when, disappointed by his daughter's inability to understand the simplest algebraic concepts, he sat down one night and lectured. Couldn't understand why I didn't understand, why I was failing, math is the easiest thing in the world, it's simple and obvious and -

-then he opened the book, looked at a problem, and stopped mid-rant.

And stared.

His forehead creased. A little thunderhead formed above his eyebrows. He turned red. He opened his mouth, closed it, looked at a few more problems, and looked at me in utter disgust as I quailed.

"No wonder you don't understand math," he snapped. "What is this shit?"

We then spent a delightful hour wherein he ripped the book a new one, while I watched his wrath in awe. He hated that book with a passion.

I never did recover momentum. The wind had been sucked from my sails, the hull staved in, and not even my father could right the ship. Part of that was because he worked 16-hour days and just didn't have the necessary time. Part of it was because we couldn't find any sane math books. And the rest was because I'd already taken a berth on another ship, and was starting to chart a literary course.

I would have focused all of my energy and attention on comprehending math, however, if I'd known that as an SF author, I'd someday need the bloody stuff for incidental details like planetary mass and gravitational force, orbits, and a billion other things that go into making a story universe work. I can't do even the simplest calculations.

One day, I keep telling myself, I'll take the time to rebuild the ship. I'll start with regular math and follow every iteration until I finally reach the promised land of calculus. Only, there's never time. And that impoverishes me. There's a whole world described in math that I'll never see and only vaguely comprehend.

When it comes for the math underlying my books, I'll just have to fake it.

Good thing I can cuss like a sailor, then, eh?

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Well, at least he says we don't have to worry about a last-minute power grab:

When asked today about the attempts of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to distance himself from President Bush, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino inadvertently admitted that even the President sees the value in moving away from the policies of the past seven
years.

He’s been involved in this for a long time and you can’t wish for something that’s not going to happen — he doesn’t wish for a third term. He thinks it’s good that we have a two-term limit in the United States. It’s good for the country to have that smooth, peaceful transition of power every four or eight years; one where you get new energy and new ideas across the board — from the President on down, throughout the administration.

I have to admit, I've been vaguely worried that Bush & Co. would attempt a coup, but then again, this is George "Vacation Man" Bush. As long as Darth Cheney doesn't get any bright ideas, we might be in the clear.

I just love the wording, here: does this "new ideas across the board" statement mean Bush wants the Democrats to win? Possibly. You know the Republicons will take the opportunity to blame the Dems for all of the insanity that will ensue as folks are cleaning up the spectacular mess Bush leaves behind.

It sure as fuck won't be a new administration with McCain:

The fine folks at Progressive Media USA have an interesting item about John McCain’s voting record in relation to the Bush White House’s wishes.

CQ’s Presidential Support studies try to determine how often a legislator votes in line with the President’s position:

CQ tries to determine what the president personally, as distinct from other administration officials, does and does not want in the way of legislative action. This is done by analyzing his messages to Congress, news conference remarks and other public statements and documents.So, these studies only track
votes when the President has an explicit, stated opinion on a bill.

According to CQ, Senator John McCain has voted with President Bush 100% of the time in 2008 and 95% of the time in 2007. (emphasis in the original)

So... what exactly is the change the Republicons are yammering about again? I see no prospect of change, here. No wonder my stepmother would rather get a gun to the head than vote for this assclown.

Speaking of assclowns... Just in case you were worried:

Good news — as far as a few unhinged conservative activists are concerned, you can now go back to enjoying Dunkin’ Donuts without inadvertently supporting a terrorist-sympathizing ad campaign.

For those of you who don’t read reactionary right-wing blogs, Dunkin’ Donuts recently unveiled an ad featuring television personality Rachael Ray, holding a latte, standing in front of blooming trees. Ray, however, is wearing a scarf, and for conservatives, a scarf is never just a
scarf.

Michelle Malkin noted that the scarf is black and white, which she insisted meant that it looked too similar to an Arabic keffiyeh.

[snip]

This week, unwilling to take any chances against the coordinated efforts of unhinged Fox News commentators, Dunkin’ Donuts backed down and gave in.The Boston Globe reported:

The company at first pooh-poohed the complaints, claiming the black-and-white wrap was not a keffiyeh. But the right-wing drumbeat on the blogosphere continued and by yesterday, Dunkin’ Donuts decided it’d be easier just to yank the ad.

Said the suits in a statement: ”In a recent online ad, Rachael Ray is wearing a black-and-white silk scarf with a paisley design. It was selected by her stylist for the advertising shoot. Absolutely no symbolism was intended. However, given the possibility of misperception, we are no longer using the commercial.”

(In case you’re wondering, the stylist who selected the offending scarf was not Gretta Enterprises boss Gretchen Monahan, who appears on Ray’s TV show as a style consultant.)

For her part, Malkin was pleased with Dunkin’s response: ”It’s refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists.”

That's right. All of this drama, all of this outrage, is over Rachael Ray wearing a black-and-white checkered scarf. Everybody knows that anybody who wears a black-and-white checkered scarf is automatically in leauge with the terrorists. Yep.

Good to know Dunkin' Donuts caves so easily to batshit insane right-wing mouth-breathers: I now know where not to purchase a donut.

My country 'tis of thee: silly land of insanity.

Can anybody give me a reason why we should take these idiots seriously? Other than the usual "watch out because rabid dogs bite" warning, of course.

On the Other Hand, I have Good News...

...No, I didn't save a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico. But I found this gold nugget in my inbox:

Your dad is going to vote for Obama. Can you believe it? If he gets nominated that is who he will vote for. If he doesn’t, then he will vote for McCain. Me, on the other hand, if he doesn’t get nominated, then I can do a write in vote, and I will still vote for him. I would rather put a gun to my head than vote for Billary or McBush.

He is crazy and she is a socialist. No thanks.

My father. My bloody father, who I don't think has ever voted for a Democrat, is going to cast his ballot for Barack.

And my stepmother, who is even more conservative than he is, won't even dream of voting for McCain.

When the fuck did I step down the wrong leg of the Trousers of Time? This can't be the same universe I woke up in this morning...

Fuck the Courtiers and Their Admirers

I'm tired, I'm behind in my work, and I'm getting cranky, so this is going to be a quickie.

I am godsdamned motherfucking sick and bloody tired of this ridiculous idea that religious ideas are somehow beyond critical thought and criticism.

The moment an advocate of a religious idea tells me I should live by that idea, I start to question it. Why? What's the evidence that this is better than the 2,684,879,413 other religious ideas I'm told I should live by?

The very instant I'm told "because [insert deity/deities here] said so," that idea gets flushed. I've had it.

I'm out of patience with special pleading. Religion is no better an idea than any other. Just because someone says a god is behind it doesn't mean it's automatically more valid than the non-god endorsed good ideas that humans have had.

Frauds tell you not to question. Liars tell you to believe. Folks who are telling the truth welcome inquiry. Good ideas withstand skepticism.

I'll tell you the #1 reason I can't have faith in God. It's because God, according to the Christian Bible, doesn't welcome doubt. God can't stand to be questioned. And that tells me either God is an illusion created by people who are now desperate to keep that illusion from being revealed as such, or God is a psychopathic liar who isn't telling me the truth.

I don't believe because there's no evidence, but that's a diatribe for another day. What I'm dealing with here isn't belief, but faith. The requirement that we live by certain principles because they are religious. The demand for respect for something simply because it's religious.

As PZ said,

When someone advances remarkable claims of remarkable phenomena, like N rays or cold fusion or polywater (or natural selection or chemiosmosis or endosymbiosis), we demand evidence and skeptical evaluation…but not for religion. God always gets a pass from the people who already believe. They claim the existence of the most powerful, all-pervasive force in the universe, yet will provide not a single shred of support. And worse, this bozo calls the demand for evidence "hooliganism".

If that's the case, I'm proud to be a hooligan.

Too fucking right. Maybe I'm more tolerant of other people's faith than PZ is, maybe I'm more willing to let them that likes it have it, but their beliefs don't get my automatic respect because they're religious beliefs. "It's what I believe" isn't enough. Give me a fucking good reason. Especially if you're demanding more than my mere toleration.

The bastard who called PZ a hooligan likes to drop the names of a lot of religious luminaries, such as Ghandi, the Dalai Lama, Krishnamurti, etc., and then crow, "What, are you gonna call them liars, PZ?"

Why the fuck not?

Just because the courtiers had good ideas on how to be decent human beings doesn't mean they were right about the Emperor's clothes.

Being religious people doesn't give their ideas greater weight than the great ideas of non-religious thinkers.

It doesn't put them beyond reproach.

And anyone who claims it does is showing me they're too afraid to let those ideas and the actions that spring from them stand on their merits. Fuck you if you think I'll respect that.

Woozle vs. Pastor Dean: FIGHT!

Rule #1 for a Christian dealing with atheists: do not get into a philosophical pissing match unless you really like wet trouser legs.

Yesterday, I posted the outrageous gauntlet Pastor Dean threw down in an attempt to prove that his special version of Christianity was the only valid worldview. I asked Woozle to be my champion.

He more than rose to the challenge. Grab your beverage of choice, get comfortable, and enjoy the joust if you haven't already.

In response to 2008-05-26 Open the Door to Conversational Evangelism by Paul Dean, by Special Request from Dana

There's a type of argument I've frequently run into which is really quite pathological, when you get down to it. I call it "mirror arguing".

The technique is basically to accuse your opponent of being guilty of your own sins, regardless of whether you have any reason to believe this is true.

Despite its outrageousness from a rational perspective, it seems to be quite effective -- especially in a situation where you're mainly playing to an audience (the less sophisticated the better) rather than trying to convince the other person of the correctness of your point. Your opponent then looks quite pathetic if he (rightly) points out that it is in fact you who is the wife-beater; it reduces what should have been a totally devastating point to something about as convincing as "well... double dumb-ass on you!"

Seems pretty clear to me that we're looking at that kind of argument here. Let's go on a little magical mystery tour through the lovely distortions of reality which are the result of too much religion on the brain, shall we? Okay!

Pastor Dean says: "One of the basic dynamics that attends any worldview that is contrary to the Christian worldview is a lack of philosophical justification for it." (Jeez, Dana, I was looking for some nice meaty arguments to tear apart, and you're passing along this shit? ;-) But okay, doody calls...)

-- First: What do you mean by "philosophical justification"? If this means something other than "justification based on reason", then you'll need to be clearer. I'm going to assume that's what you mean.

-- Next: Christians believe what they believe based on a circular argument. God exists because the Bible tells me so. The Bible is the word of God, because the Bible says so. I can believe the Bible when it says this because the voice in my head, which is God, because the voice tells me it's God, says that the Bible is true! If that's justification, then there is no logic in the universe, and we might as well give up and go back to the middle ages.

-- And finally: "Atheism" is the refusal to believe without convincing evidence -- or, in other words, without philosophical justification.

So basically no; Christians have no philosophical justification for anything, and "unbelievers" (nice term, that) generally won't do anything without justification. Your claim is backward. (Qualification: I'm speaking about principles here; many Christians manage to get past their doctrine and allow bits of reality in around the edges. Some of them seem almost sane as long as they stay away from stuff where they've been trained give an answer from doctrine. Also, admittedly not all atheists are as nit-picky about consistency as I am, but the principle is that belief requires evidence.)

The fact that you are sophisticated enough to be able to pull this 180-degree switcheroo so smoothly in your writing makes me think that either you must know exactly what you are doing (which means you are knowingly being dishonest) or else you have been carefully schooled in this twisted mode of thought. Which is it?

Pastor Dean says: "the unbeliever has no basis for knowing anything." And you do? Backwards again.

Pastor Dean says: "When an unbeliever makes a statement concerning God, the world, man, morality, ethics, or any other subject, he asserts it as an absolute certainty." No, dude, that's you (again!). Do I need to point out that this is also an unsupported straw man attack? If you really believe this is representative of atheistic discourse, show me some examples -- but I don't think you will, because I'm not convinced that you care about truth.

(And don't come back by saying "Hey look, you just claimed my argument was backwards as if you were 100% certain of that!" If I were 100% certain, would I be asking you for counterexamples? Would I even be bothering to try and engage with you on a rational level? I may be pretty near certain of the assertions I'm making there, but I leave that small wedge of uncertainty open. Without uncertainty, you may find that you are certain of the wrong thing. This is why religion is so screwed-up; someone decided what truth was, many centuries ago, and now you're not allowed to correct it in the face of new evidence.)

Pastor Dean says: "For example, an atheist who believes in evolution may say that God does not exist." First of all, you can leave out the "evolution" bit; it's redundant, and lots of theists are able to follow a line of reasoning from evidence to conclusion and hence "believe" in it too (remember what I said about some of them seeming almost sane?).

So that boils your statement down to "an atheist may say that God does not exist." This certainly might happen. Yep. Can't argue with that. Nope. You've certainly hit the nail on the head with that particular observation of yours. Yessirree.

Ever tried reading back what you just wrote? Doing that helps me catch all kinds of howlers like this before they go out into public and make me look bad; it might do the same for you. Or were you just trying to casually associate "atheism" and "evolution" in the minds of your gullible audience?

Pastor Dean says: "However, on his worldview, he has no basis to make such a statement. On his worldview, knowledge is obtained through observation (or the scientific method). His problem is that he has limited knowledge and ability to obtain that knowledge. He does not have the ability to search every square inch of the cosmos to determine whether or not there is a God. On his worldview, he cannot know that there is no God. His statement of certainty is rendered completely uncertain."

Funny you should bring this up; I was just addressing this issue the other day.

I'll summarize.

The argument over whether or not God exists is a red herring, a bait-and-switch tactic. The God-nobody-can-disprove is totally harmless, a God of no consequences. Saying that this god exists is logically equivalent to saying "This sentence is true!".

Any consequences you claim from God's existence, however, are testable.

It looks like you claim some consequences near the end of your article, so I'll discuss them there. The God you believe in apparently does have consequences, and evidence for or against its existence can therefore meaningfully be collected.

Pastor Dean then goes pacing in circles some more about how you can't prove the non-existence of God. Since I've already brought up the red herring / bait-and-switch aspect of this -- i.e. it's not the existence of "God" per se that anyone really gives a flying spaghetti monster about, it's whether or not this same being hates gays, has a particular opinions about our laws, etc. -- I'll just add a mention of the well-known objection often referred to as Russell's Teapot. The argument is basically that if you claim something exists and I say it doesn't, the burden is on you to show me why you think it exists -- not on me. In the absence of evidence, the default position is to not believe that any particular thing exists. Otherwise why stop with God? Boiled eggs floating in the atmosphere of Jupiter! A giant stone octopus living in the earth's core! You get the idea (I hope).

People who are religious seem to think that God gets some kind of special exemption because they say so. Nope, sorry, I don't at all see why I (or anyone!) should buy into that.

But really, I think the "red herring" point is far more powerful. I could go around saying "Yes! YES! I utterly and completely believe in God and accept that he is the blessed creator of all things! However, he told me personally that the Bible was written by a bunch of power-mad priests back in the early Middle Ages and is mostly screwed-up shit which nobody should listen to, except for a few good bits here and there. He also says Jesus never existed as an individual, although the ideas attributed to him are generally pretty nifty and it would be nice if more so-called Christians would pay attention to them. Except the stuff written by that jerk apostle Paul, of course."

If I said that, though, I don't think it would make you very happy, because just the pure idea of "God" isn't what you really want me to believe in; the key elements of "belief in God" would seem to be a particular set of THOU SHALTs and THOU SHALT NOTs, apparently derived from a somewhat arbitrarily-assembled set of writings whose true meaning is open to a wide variety of interpretations -- of which you choose one as being "the truth", excluding all others.

Ok, enough about God. I hope I don't have to come back to that again; I'm getting tired of it. Can we agree now that it's IRRELEVANT? That the real issue is what you claim God wants us to do? Good.

Pastor Dean says: "We have an explanation as to why we don't know everything." The phrase "willful ignorance" springs to mind. If your answer to every question is "because God did it", you're not going to get very far in your investigations. ("Because God did it" is what's known as a "curiosity stopper" or fake explanation; it is clearly designed and intended to stop inquisitive folk from asking too many questions and thereby spotting the glaring inconsistencies and errors in Biblical doctrine.)

Pastor Dean continues: "In addition to the fact that God's general revelation takes time to investigate, God has not revealed everything to us..." Look, it's fine not to know everything. Science doesn't know everything. Mathematics has proven that it's literally impossible to know everything (for some reason, God neglected to mention Gödel's incompleteness theorems in the Bible, even though it would have been considerable evidence for non-human origins of the Bible and could have shut up a lot of uppity scientists). But your religion puts up deliberate roadblocks to acquiring new information, especially if that information contradicts the Absolute Truth which you believe you have. Give me a break.

And anyway. I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make here, so I'll move on.

Pastor Dean says: "We must pray for courage to ask a simple question of those with whom we dialogue: why?" Don't be afraid, we don't bite. ...Well... okay, not physically... we probably are a deadly threat to the underpinnings of your current worldview, yes, and intend to continue being one, but we do not threaten you or your families (despite anti-gay rhetoric), nor do we seek to dissolve the social organizations represented by your families and churches. We seek only to clean out the ideological bullshit you've allowed to accumulate, since you don't seem to be doing it yourself -- and it has now grown into such a fetid pile that it threatens civilization.

We are (as you seem to believe you are) seekers of truth; in that regard, opening dialogue with us certainly will not harm your cause -- but the truth may sometimes hurt. We welcome challenges to our worldviews, but apparently yours sets you up to be helplessly dependent on its essential inerrancy, or at least to believe that you are dependent. People have actually survived "losing faith", however, and they tend to be much happier afterwards. The pattern seems to have a lot in common with any other addiction.

We completely welcome that question, "Why?", and we wish you would ask it more often. A lot of the time when we try to ask it, we are rebuffed with claims that we shouldn't question faith, or that reason and faith are separate magesteria, or some such rot.

But you're not saying that, so let's start with this one: Why do you believe in God? Why do you believe that anyone who doesn't believe in God is going to be in trouble somehow? What is this God that you believe in, anyway? (Oops, that was a "what" question; is that off-bounds?)

Pastor Dean says: "When it comes to questions concerning God, morality, ethics, religion, origins, and the like, the answer will have no basis on a non-Christian worldview." I think I've already creamed that one. If you define God, we might have something to discuss. If you can't define God, then why are you bothering to discuss it? What do you hope to gain? (On the other subjects, though, I think the evidence is plain that we have quite a lot to say, thanks very much.

Pastor Dean says: "Here are some sample questions: why do you believe spanking is wrong? Why do you believe homosexuality is not sin? Why do you think there are many paths to salvation? Why do you believe embryonic stem-cell research is a good thing? Why do you say there is no absolute truth? Why do you think pre-marital sex is okay in certain circumstances? Why do you believe in evolution? How do you know the sun will come up in the morning?"
Taking these one at a time -- in order to demonstrate how this "reasoning" thing works, since you seem to be unfamiliar with it:

• 
  Spanking: Well, I don't believe it is exactly wrong, at least in moderation; I've just never known it to be terribly helpful or effective. I'll suggest that for some kids, it may be necessary under some circumstances, but if it becomes the default way of coping with disobedience, it may lead to moral stagnation as children fail to learn that there are better reasons to be good than fear of pain.
• Paths to salvation: This question is meaningless to me; I don't know what you mean by "salvation", or why it is necessary/important. Whatever it is you think I believe about it is probably not what I believe.
• Embryonic stem-cell research: Is this a trick question? Okay, there's apparently a widespread belief in anti-abortion circles that this research encourages abortions. This is TOTAL B.S. The fetuses from which stem cells are drawn for research have already been aborted. Stem cell research does not cause a demand for aborted fetuses. (If you believe any of these claims to be false, please provide your evidence and I will go find mine.)
  

• Also, as far as I'm concerned, those who act against stem cell research may have prevented the discovery of nerve-regeneration techniques which might have saved Christopher Reeve, among countless others. In other words, to phrase this as an emotional argument (which anti-abortionists seem to like): YOU KILLED SUPERMAN.
• Absolute truth: I sure as hell never said that. Without getting into quantum physics, I'll just say that there is an absolute reality which exists regardless of what you believe, and discovery of the nature of that reality requires experimentation to test your hypotheses. Religion has made countless absolute statements about the nature of reality (and continues to do so), and generally gotten it demonstrably very wrong over and over again. Cast out the beam in your own eye, dude.
• Pre-marital sex: Why should I think it is wrong? Give me something to work with here.
• Evolution: Only because of the vast mountains of mutually-reinforcing evidence from a wide variety of disciplines, and the fact that nothing in biology makes much sense without it, and the fact that creationism (including the repackaged version called Intelligent Design) ultimately make no sense at all. In fact, creationists keep bringing up the same "evidence against evolution" over and over, even though all of it has been shown to be fallacious and much of it is simply downright false (that's LIES, to put it in
  nonscientific terms; isn't there a commandment against that or something?), showing that they're not interested in understanding the truth – or even in being moral – but merely in swaying the gullible.

If you really want to understand the details, I highly recommend Daniel Dennett's book Darwin's Dangerous Idea. I can probably find you some good evolution books by Believers like Ken Miller, if you don't want to be seen reading a book written by a godless atheist.

• The sun: Well, first of all, there's this thing called "inductive reasoning" which is basically "if something has always happened, it will probably continue happening". Being a member of a scientific civilization, however, I have a bit of understanding of why the sun comes up each morning -- i.e. it's actually the earth's rotation which causes the sun to appear to move across the sky; this in turn is due to inertia, which will slowly bleed off over the ages because of tidal effects, but this won't cause any noticeable changes during my lifetime; the sun itself has a finite lifetime but is not expected to go out or pose a threat to Earthly life anytime in the next few billion years -- and so can say with some degree of certainty (more than, say, the Romans or the early Christians could do) that this pattern will continue for quite some time and (more to the point) is not subject to the whims of any deities or other supernatural entities.

Pastor Dean says: "The unbeliever will have no philosophical justification to believe or know anything." Um, excuse me, what did I just say up there [points]?

Pastor Dean continues: "He will attempt to justify his answer or knowledge apart from God, something he cannot do logically." What other method is there of justifying anything? How can you justify something logically based solely on a circular argument? You've got it mirrored again.

The rest of Pastor Dean's paragraph assumes the rightness of his previous two sentences, which are factually backwards, so I'll leave them alone. (They're either false or meaningless taken by themselves.)

Pastor Dean asserts: "It is at that point that we can point out that the Christian worldview is the only worldview that makes sense of our experience or knowledge in any one of these areas." Backwards again. You can only make sense of experience or knowledge if you have experience (observations) or knowledge (tested hypotheses) to make sense of.

Pastor Dean continues: "God is the one who tells us what to believe about spanking, homosexuality, how to be saved, embryonic stem-cell research, truth, pre-marital sex, our origin, and the laws of nature in effect until Christ comes." This statement is so full of crap that it's difficult to know where to begin. But I shall try:

• 
  "God is the one who tells us what to believe..." If I'm a Christian. If I'm a Buddhist or a Confucian or a Wiccan or a Godforsaken Devil-Worshipping Baby-Eating Atheist (hi!), then you're already wrong without even finishing the sentence.
• 
  "...about spanking, homosexuality,..." you know, I thought Jesus said the Levitican laws didn't apply to Christians. Did I somehow misinterpret the Bible? How could this possibly happen?? "...how to be saved,..." assuming one needs rescuing (from what?)... "...embryonic stem-cell research,..." O RLY? There's mention of embryonic stem-cell research in the Bible? Which verse would that be in? And why didn't God just give us all the knowledge of the stuff we're trying to learn via such research, if he didn't want us doing it? Or is it true that he hates amputees? "... truth, pre-marital sex, our origin, and the laws of nature in effect until Christ comes." The Bible probably does say all kinds of things about those items, but the evidence is that it's wrong about our origin, that it says things are morally wrong which shouldn't be, and there's also no evidence to support the idea that it was written by God. There is, however, lots of evidence that it was written by a lot of different people, none of them divinely guided (if that term even has meaning), and many of them with personal agendas. “In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3).” So... when Christ comes back, we do an autopsy? Why is he keeping this stuff hidden?

Also, this is the point where you have made some assertions about the nature of God. You haven't actually come out and said these things, but reading between the lines it sounds like you're saying (for instance) that:

• 
  God approves of or requires corporal punishment of children. What's your evidence for this? If you want to use the Bible as evidence, you'll have to explain how the Bible was written by the same entity or force which created the universe about 13 billion years ago, and why you believe this to be true. The burden of proof is on you, dude, because it is simply an absurd assertion on the face of it. I wouldn't believe that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor either, or that light has a measurable speed, if there weren't mountains of evidence -- but neither of those is as absurd or arbitrary as your claim, which you expect me to swallow on your say-so.
• 
  God sees homosexuality as an abomination. Again, the burden is on you to explain why you are convinced that the force which created the universe as a lifeless ball of superhot fundamental particles, presumably watched (or not) as those particles condensed into atoms, molecules, gas clouds, planets (billions of years later), pre-biotic organic molecules, and single-celled life-forms which eventually discovered sex, and suddenly (within a time-span of mere millions of years) became more and more complicated until eventually we have the vast array of species we have today (minus the ones which have become extinct, of course) -- including humans, marmosets, octopuses, asexual slime molds, creatures living in oceanic volcanic vents, creatures who reproduce using all kinds of different methods sexual and nonsexual -- would just have this Thing against humans who are more attracted to others of their own reproductive configuration. WTF??

Look, even if I was tempted to believe that the ruler of the universe had written this lame book containing very little of use to us today and much that is counterproductive, and even if I believed that Jesus Christ was a real person who was somehow the "son" (are we talking genetic offspring? Does that mean God was human? Did he have DNA? Why or why not? Don't start spouting mystical doctrine at me or I'll have to slap you; give me a straight, rational answer, please) of the creator of the universe those 13 billion years ago, I'd be feeling rather manipulated by them, and hence rather bloody peeved.

If the god of the Bible, who damns people to eternal torment for going against his (poorly-expressed and often ambiguous) wishes even when they have the best of intentions, really exists -- then I deny his authority over me. I answer to a more moral power than that being (i.e. my own conscience -- which isn't especially conceited; it doesn't take much to be more moral than the Biblical god). I would choose that eternal torment rather than go against my own conscience -- just as I would stand up to any bully or terrorist who tried to get me to commit a crime or hurt someone.

All I can say in conclusion is this: I appreciate your attempt to reach out, but you don't seem to understand the idea of rationality. Stop pedaling drivel as sense, and get your house in order if you want religion and non-religion to get along peacefully. Those of us outside religion have been watching with great anxiety and alarm as religious ideas, which are generally not subject to rational debate or negotiation, have spread across America and other parts of the world. It would be different if these ideas were the good ones, like "love your neighbor" and "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" and "turn the other cheek" and "let ye among you who is without sin cast the first stone", but unfortunately it seems to be all the worst ones which are gaining popularity.

If your idea of religion says that certain things are wrong, end of discussion, and won't even admit to an alternate interpretation of the scripture which you bizarrely claim as ultimate truth let alone admitting reality as evidence, then we simply can't let it stand. If your ideology won't negotiate, then we have to work against it by other means.

It'll have to go. I'm sorry.

Game over.

WOOZLE WINS

Tomorrow, we'll have the melee - all of you who wanted to pile on, get your comments or links in by midnight Pacific time today.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

From the It's Only Appeasement if a Democrat Proposes It Department:

Sometime in the next few weeks, a special envoy of President Bush plans to meet with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, whose government sheltered Osama bin Laden and pursued a scorched-earth policy in southern Sudan that resulted in more than 2 million deaths.

Bashir's government has been accused by Bush of participating in a "genocide" in Darfur, the only U.S. government use of such a strong accusation. Yet Richard S. Williamson's visit to Khartoum follows a series of direct contacts by senior Bush administration officials with the Sudanese president, including Secretaries of State Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice,
Rice's deputies, and several special presidential envoys.

Bush has spoken to or exchanged letters with Bashir on numerous occasions, underscoring how White House policy has departed from his pointed public call to shun talks with radical tyrants and dictators. His appointees have also pursued aggressive diplomacy with North
Korea and Libya and have even conducted limited business with Cuba, Syria and Iran.

Can you say "hypocrisy," boys and girls? These fuckers infuriate me with their "Do as we say, not as we do" bullshit.

Carpetbagger observes, "No word yet on whether the president is prepared to denounce himself." I somehow doubt he will.

In other stupid news, McCain's finally putting some distance between himself and Bush - by embracing a policy Bush abandoned as an abject failure:

One of the more glaring and obvious flaws in John McCain’s pitch to voters is that he’s fundamentally running on a more-of-the-same platform when voters are desperate for a change. It appears that McCain has realized it’s to his advantage to break with the president more than he has been. Unfortunately, in this case, McCain is abandoning one of the few issues Bush got right (eventually).

McCain and (who else?) Joe Lieberman teamed up this morning for an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on U.S. policy towards Asia, and specifically presented McCain’s preferred approach towards North Korea.

American leadership is also needed on North Korea. We must use the leverage available from the U.N. Security Council resolution passed after Pyongyang’s 2006 nuclear test to ensure the full and complete declaration, disablement and irreversible dismantlement of its nuclear facilities, in a verifiable manner, which we agreed to with the other members of the six-party talks.

This, in addition to McCain’s remarks in Denver this afternoon, led to headlines like this one: “McCain Breaks with Bush Over North Korea.” One might be tempted to think, “Great! Bush has been incoherent on North Korea, seemingly going years without any policy at all, and McCain has decided to ‘break’ with this. Maybe McCain’s learning after all.”

But this would have the situation backwards. The approach McCain described today is the same policy Bush embraced for the better part of six years. It failed miserably, undermined global security, and led to an expansion of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. Bush eventually reversed course, did a complete 180, and decided the Clinton administration’s policy was the
right one after all.

McCain is “breaking” with Bush, inasmuch as he wants to take the U.S. back to the policy that was a dangerous and humiliating failure. In other words, he thinks Bush is too liberal on North Korea, and we need to go back to Bush’s first-term failures.

Great idea! According to McCain, the problem isn't that America's fucked up, it's that it's not fucked up enough. We now have the opportunity, if we vote for McCain, to destroy America right. None of these half-measures, oh, no. If you're gonna ruin, ruin utterly.

Fantastic.

And, maxing out the stupidity meter for the day, we now have a "clarification" on Liz Trotta's "Osama/Obama - hell, assassinate 'em both!" quip:

On Monday, Ms. Trotta went back on Fox News Channel to apologize. “I am so sorry about what happened yesterday in that lame attempt at humor,” she said. “I sincerely regret it and apologize to anybody I’ve offended. It’s a very colorful political season, and many of us are making mistakes and saying things that we wish that we hadn’t said.”

“Clarification noted,” said her interviewer, the Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer.

Thanks so much for that "clarification." I'm happy to hear that such an appalling faux pas was the result not of deep-seated animosity toward America's black Democratic candidate, not a horribly revealing Freudian slip, but just one of those incidental slip-ups you get in a "colorful political season." I feel ever so much better. In fact, I feel so much better, I'm willing to sell you that beachfront condo o' mine in Yuma, AZ at a very nice price.

Buying it? Neither am I.

Academia: Grade Inflation

Academia Series:
Part One
Part Two

In the world of business economics, inflation is defined as a general increase in the cost of goods and/or services. In education, grade inflation is the general rise in the expected standard grade level of students, which is accompanied by an uneven difficulty in achieving said expectations.

Everyone is familiar with the standard letter grade system in most American high schools. A through F (excluding E), these grades are supposed to gauge the student's performance in class, which is usually derived from a combination of factors such as attendance, in-class focus and participation, homework, and test scores.

Now, not too long ago, straight-A students were part of the rare elite, the best-of-the-best valedictorians who seemed to know everything anyone could ever need to. This is because C was actually considered "average". It was the baseline, the starting point. A C was what you used to get when you did an okay job - something that every student should, with only a little effort, be able to achieve. B was above-average. They tried a little bit harder, they studied longer, but a B was a good grade. Bright students were B averages. An A was "exceeding expectations". "A" students went the extra mile. They aced most of the tests, they turned in all the homework, they were early to class every day. It took effort to get an A in some classes.

These days, however, parents are constantly expecting more from their kids. Now, a C is a "bad" grade. You're not trying hard enough. You can do better. B's have become the new average, though many parents still consider it to be barely "acceptable". Now, A is the goal, and often the expectation.

In some classes, it has become easier to get an A. If you show up on time, you turn in all the assignments, and you study for the tests, it's expected that you'll get an A. Many teachers now grade homework based on if you tried, even if you didn't get all the questions right, leading to an easier grading system. Other teachers provide lots of extra credit and easy opportunities, knowing that many of the students want and expect an A. Students will sometimes freak out if they are not getting an A.

Other teachers, however, do not buy in to grade inflation. Shindledecker, the amazing Biology teacher who was mentioned before, believed that a B or a C grade was still good, that it was a heartfelt effort on the part of the student. When we took his tests, he felt that all students should feel challenged by the test, so I cannot recall a single test where even one student got 100%. He said, "If you get 100% on everything, you shouldn't be in this class." There were even questions that he would get wrong on his own tests. So the tests were difficult, the homework was involved and required actual thought. If half the class only got a C, he felt that was as it should be. It shouldn't be easy to get an A, because then it robs from those who actually try hard to do so.

So where does that leave us students? What effect does it have on the teachers? If everyone knows about this whole inflation thing, it can't be a big deal, right?

Wrong.

Not everyone fully "gets" the concept of grade inflation, and that while some classes will grant you an A for sitting down and not speaking, other classes make it far more difficult. So if a student tries hard but still struggles, perhaps because an A is reaching beyond their ability, they get a "low" grade of a B or C.

Which is better for the student: To try hard and to struggle and to push yourself, and only get a C, or to slack off in an easy class and get a free A without learning anything?

Parent's don't always care, though, what experiences matter and what builds character. They just want the grades. So when a pressured student is falling behind, they freak out, and they talk to the teacher. Often it dissolves into "Please give me an A, if you don't my parents will be really mad at me and they won't get me the car they were gonna give me for graduation." So teachers feel the pressure, too.

To put myself in the situation: I am in AP Calculus. I'm also close to failing the class. Mostly due to a lack of motivation, but it could've legitimately been due to me struggling to understand the material. So if I had a C, or even worse, a D or an F, which are in no way acceptable by my parents, then I am led to believe that I have failed myself in some way, that I was not good enough. Yet, I tried, and certainly I must have learned something. Yet, I could just as easily have dropped out and enrolled in a Geometry or Algebra class, not learning anything because I already know it, but skating through the class and taking away an A. Clearly, another A means another success, right?

Letters are a poor indication of a student's worth or ability. What you don't see is how hard they tried for that grade. How long they studied, or how often they goofed off and went on a date rather than practicing their Spanish homework. No, instead expectations of students are rising, which in some ways is good but overall puts pressure on the student.

Don't judge by grades. There is a general shift in the way colleges view grades, which gives me hope. Instead of looking just at the G.P.A, many colleges now look at what the actual classes were. How many of them. How challenging were they. It's a positive trend that I hope continues to parents.

The trials and tribulations of a young student's mind cannot be summarized through the use of a single letter. Grades do not tell you the journey, only the end destination; but in the words of Book, "How you get there is the worthier part."


And everything changes
And nothing is truly lost
-Neil Gaiman

I'm Such a Geek

I just pre-ordered Batman and Philosophy: Dark Knight of the Soul.

I own Lord of the Rings and Philosophy.

One entire wall of my room is filled with Sandman stuff.

Yep. I'm a geek. Just so's you know.

Share your geeky goodness with me. Bonus points to whoever knows where this Parthian shot comes from:

"Well, that was fun. Who's for Chinese?"

Exactly So

One more, and then we're done with the Christians vs. Atheists: FIGHT! theme for a bit.


I just want to point out a few comments that illustrate beautifully what I'm saying.


In a comments thread on Pharyngula, I came across this from an anecdote Wazza was relating:

And he knew my parents were agnostic at best, and probably atheist except that they never really cared that much. And my mother still treasures something he said to her; "Jo, I know you don't believe in God, but you're the best Christian I ever met."

And that's what these people forget. Christianity isn't about Leviticus, it's about love.

(These people, BTW, are the kind of people who put out this ad. Knowing the Christians in my cantina, I doubt the nausea will be all on the atheist side.)


Right. So. Bet you're expecting me to whip that Smack-o-Matic off the wall, aren't ye? Nope. Let's look at what this good Christian gentleman said again, once more with feeling: "Jo, I know you don't believe in God, but you're the best Christian I ever met."


There it is. There's the respect. That's what makes that an "Awww you're so sweet" comment rather than a "Look, you rat bastard, I'm NOT CHRISTIAN!" one. He's not saying that morality only ever comes from God. He's not playing gotcha! games. He's just saying, "Although you don't believe in God, you live the ideal of loving one another." And whatever else he meant by "best Christian," which doesn't seem to require adherence to the letter so much as the spirit of the law.


Exactly so. Now, when we can get to a point where an atheist can say, "Bob, I know you're a Christian, but you're the best atheist I ever met," and the Christian preens, then we'll know we're making abundant progress.


Segue: you're probably wondering what such a comment would mean. Well, some of the best traits of an atheist are the ability to think rationally, avoid arguments from authority, and celebrate human life, right? Don't know if an atheist would ever say such a thing to a Christian, but if so, that's probably what they'd be getting at. "You're a damned fine logical thinker, you don't resort to silly authoritarian answers, and you care about all people without having an ulterior motive (conversion)."


End segue. We now return to our regularly scheduled program.


From our very own Cobalt comes this:

Even though I do believe in The Divine Power OMGZ, that doesn't mean everyone is in a place where that's productive for them. It doesn't mean they or I or anyone is "further along" than anyone else. It just means that different people have different needs, and just as I expect not to hear from atheists that my way of fulfilling my needs makes me a backward irrational savage, atheists won't hear from me that their way of fulfilling their needs is somehow morally deficient.

Exactly so. And we atheists would do well to remember that, just as much as Christians and all other religious sorts should. I know many people who need the Divine, magic, something beyond themselves and beyond the empirical world, and I wouldn't take that from them, just as I expect them not to cram their belief down my throat. I've said before, and I say again, I don't want a world without religion. I want a world without religious strife. I want a world where belief and non-belief can live side-by-side in harmony - but not without argument, because damn it, arguing this stuff is fun.


Another segue: when I was taking comparative religion, our Buddhist Jew professor was explaining that in Judaism, things aren't taken for granted. You're not expected to just swallow the dogma. You're expected to think about your faith. You wrestle with it. Someday, hopefully, I'll track down my notes, do a bit o' extra research, and go into that a bit further, because I loved that idea then and I love it now. If you came by your faith after wrestling with it, I can wholeheartedly respect that. And it gives me hope that you can respect the fact that I, too, wrestled with these things, that my atheism isn't a knee-jerk reaction to religious intolerance, but is something I thought about and struggled with and came to after long consideration.


Here endeth segue the second. I suggest you read Cobalt's comment in full, because she says a lot of things I can fully agree with, and there's a lot of wisdom and insight in there. Then read all the other comments, because they're all insightful. Okay, so there's only one other in there right now - but there's other good stuff in my requirements for conversion post.


Onward.


Nicole said:

I love you. The God I believe exists loves you. And neither of us wants you to change because you're already doing good in this world.

I had a hard time accepting that one. No, not because of the "God loves you" part. I will absolutely accept anybody anywhere telling me that God loves me just the way I am, because that's an expression of love, not an implied threat. A hellfire-and-brimstone type saying "God loves you," on the other hand, always struck me as a prelude to getting condemned: "God loves you so much He's gonna smite your ass if you don't shape up and start worshipping." The first, Nicole's God, doesn't need me to believe to love me, and really, what atheist could have a problem with that?


No, it's the second bit of that last sentence I struggle with: "...because you're already doing good in this world."


Me?


Angry, ranting, foul-mouthed, lil ol' me?


Doing good?


WTF???


*looks at Smack-o-Matic 3000*


Oh. Oh. Yeah. Wasn't there some other guy somewhere who threw tantrums, wielded a verbal sword, and stirred the place up? Beat on the folks with power, reached out to the folks excluded from power, all that rot?


That's right.


And no, I'm not saying just like Jesus, not even remotely close. I'm just saying: now I get it. You don't have to be sacchrine sweet to do some good. No, in fact, there's a long tradition of contentious, argumentative, loud-mouthed, fighting-mad, iconoclastic buggers who managed to do some good. And hey, even Jesus could get tetchy at times, and look what he did (ignoring what fuckwit followers came in and did later). I think that's what she means. You don't have to be endlessly nice to do good in this world. You just have to try to make things better, and if that means throwing a fit, then by all means, throw.


All right. I can accept that.


What all of the above comments illustrate, I hope, is a sense that there are plenty of us who can find common ground without stepping on each other's toes. We do have a lot in common. We care deeply for each other. We can share good ideas without sharing beliefs. We don't have to force the other person to think just like us in order to love and respect them. In the end, no matter what your belief or lack thereof, it really is about love.


Exactly so.

I See Your Gauntlet and Raise You an Attack Woozle

John Pieret has found a self-righteous fuckhead of a Christian pastor who's stupid enough to challenge atheists:

Paul Dean, pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Greer, South Carolina, has an article at Crosswalk that throws down a gauntlet:

One of the basic dynamics that attends any worldview that
is contrary to the Christian worldview is a lack of philosophical justification for it. This dynamic holds true even in the realm of simply knowing something to be true. In other words, the unbeliever has no basis for knowing anything.

I'm too busy right now to give this man the sound thrashing he deserves. I invite you all to have your way with him: Christians, atheists and agnostics alike. I'm just going to give him a few quick swats with the trusty Smack-o-Matic before letting you take over, if you like.

And I'm making a special request. I need a champion. I need a warrior who's already proven himself in battle to take up this challenge.

I hereby call upon my Attack Woozle.

Take him down, my love. I'll put up your response as a post of its own.

I'll do another post with quotes and links for any of you who decide to take Pastor Dean to the woodshed either in comments or in your own territory.

Right. Let me begin:

One of the basic dynamics that attends any worldview that is contrary to the Christian worldview is a lack of philosophical justification for it.

What Pastor Dickhead - excuse me, Dean - has just done here is sweep aside every other faith and philosophical system, some far more advanced than his self-righteous brand of Christianity. I'm sure the Buddhists, Confucians, Taoists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus - oh, fuck it, everybody - would be very interested to know that they lack a philosophical justification of their worldview.

If that's how you're going to start the game, you've already lost.

In other words, the unbeliever has no basis for knowing anything.

Descartes already kicked your ass on that one. Cogito ergo sum, fuckhead. Not that I like Descartes, but you wouldn't be able to comprehend the Zen Buddhist answer, so Descartes it is. Or any grad student in a lab. Next.

He does not have the ability to search every square inch of the cosmos to determine whether or not there is a God.

And you do? You've done it? No? Then shut the fuck up before you really embarrass yourself. When you're trying to prove your philosophy is superior, "God told me so" is not a good answer. Next.

Of course, Christians have a basis or a philosophical justification for their assertion that there is a God. On our worldview, we know there is a God because He has revealed Himself to us. We are not bound to the limits of empiricism/observation. We know that some knowledge is revealed.

Yes, some knowledge is revealed. You've just revealed to me that you can't philosophize your way out of a brown paper bag. You're just spouting dogma. Next.

Oh, we're on to the "atheists can't answer questions" section of our program. What fun! Let's play:

[W]hy do you believe spanking is wrong?

Because scientific studies have discovered links between spanking and psychological problems in children. What's your justification? The Bible? Brilliant! Let's consult it:

Proverbs 13:24(KJV): "He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes."

Heh heh heh whoops. Boy, is your face red. Let's just move on, then, shall we?

Why do you believe embryonic stem-cell research is a good thing?

Because it could lead to a lot of cures for a lot of horrific diseases and defects, and those little frozen embryos end up in the trash anyway. Is it more ethical to throw them out or use them to help human beings live better, healthier lives?

Why do you say there is no absolute truth?

I don't. In fact, the absolute truth is, you and idiots like you annoy the bugfuck out of me.

Why do you think pre-marital sex is okay in certain circumstances?

What do you mean by "certain circumstances"? And why do I need a philosophical system to justify sex without marriage? Just because you have unhealthy hang-ups about sex doesn't mean I have to.

Why do you believe in evolution?

I don't believe in it. I accept it based on the overwhelming evidence. Not that you're capable of understanding the distinction.

How do you know the sun will come up in the morning?

I don't, but the probability's pretty good, so it's so close to knowing as makes no difference.

Without a biblical worldview, one cannot know for certain the sun will come up in the morning. On an evolutionary worldview, it may not.

I think I begin to see your problem, Pastor. You've got this pathological need for certainty, whereas the non-believer (and the more relaxed believer) is just fine with uncertainty.

Let me just quote Sisters of Mercy, here, can't resist: "And all I know for sure / all I know for real / is knowing doesn't mean so much." I like knowing things. I like certainty (well, some kinds: if anybody knows for certain that I'm going to get hit by a bus tomorrow morning, I'd appreciate not knowing so I can enjoy the rest of my night, thanks ever so much). But I'm not obsessed with absolutes, certainties and knowing absolutely everything. Which is probably why atheism, Zen Buddhism and I get along just fine, and Christianity grates worse than a file on sensitive teeth.

Given time, I could come up with snarky responses to the rest of your bullshit, Pastor Dean, but I have research to do, a book to write, and a blog to maintain. I bid you good day, sir.

Woozle. You're up.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

In Memorium 4,083 United States soldiers and 312 Coalition soldiers killed for a lie.

How did it come to this? How the fuck did America end up with a rabid bunch of insane power-mongers at the helm, perfectly willing to steer our nation straight into disaster for their own enrichment and aggrandizement? When did vicious lies become the order of the day? How did we end up with an executive branch that will say anything, do anything, to further their own ends, and use, abuse, then discard the people they hoodwinked into their madness?

So glad you asked. HBO aired a movie called Recount last night that exposes just that issue:

I don't know about you but last night after watching Recount, I had nightmares. Nightmares of screaming at the television for 30 days at the shameful spin of the Bush people. Nightmares of watching a purely political power game lay bare the rickety foundations of our democracy. Nightmares of Tim Russert and that stupid goddamned tote board of his.

It certainly brought back all the memories. As I'm sure is true with most of you who watched it in real time, it was obvious to me from the moment Gore retracted his concession that the Republican establishment and the Bush Florida machine had more levers of power to work with in a battle like this. But it wasn't obvious to me that they would use it so blatantly, with the media egging them on with endless hand wringing about the "uncertainly" weakening the fabric of the country. Like all the Democrats in the movie, I completely dismissed the idea that the US Supreme Court, when put to the test, would end up as the final enforcer for the Republican Party.

That's how we came to this. Bush & Co. lied, cheated and stole their way into power, and they've lied, cheated and stolen to stay there since. And don't forget the fear-mongering.

Have we learned a lesson? Digby doesn't think so.

And here we are, six years later, actually debating whether the Bush White House has been manipulating the electoral system. For god's sake --- of course they have been. This administration was installed through crude manipulation of the rigged levers of power in the Bush family's political machine and they see such outrageous conduct as perfectly legitimate.

This movie could not have come at a better time. We have to remember what these fuckers are willing to do in order to retain power. Don't think they're going to go down without as much lying, cheating and stealing - and let's not forget fear-mongering - as they can muster.

They lie. It's what they do.

The Republicon politicians lie. Their supporters lie. And their press lies. Here's what John Harris, editor-in-chief of the Politico, told Glenn Greenwald last year when Greenwald accused him of blowing up political gossip into major stories just to get attention:

One point you made that resonated with me as a journalistic matter is the danger that reporters might orient their thinking around chasing the needle, and measure their success by web traffic and links. Conscientious reporters and editors should resist this, and I believe we do. This is reflected in the range of serious reporting we do about Congress, the 2008 presidential election, and lobbying and fund-raising. Although we are a new publication, Politico has several reporters and editors who have been in this profession for two decades or more. They know that what counts is reputation over the long haul, not any individual story or any uproar du jour on the blogs.

And here's what he said in a column yesterday:

Trivial stories -- the kind that are tailor-made for forwarding to your brother-in-law or college roommate with a wisecracking note at the top -- can dominate the campaign narrative for days. . . .

As leaders of a new publication, Politico's senior editors and I are relentlessly focused on audience traffic. The way to build traffic on the Web is to get links from other websites. The way to get links is to be first with news -- sometimes big news, sometimes small -- that drives that day's conversation.

Harris detailed numerous examples where he and other journalists blew up unimportant items into huge stories that dominated the news narrative because they thought that doing so would attract attention for themselves.

In other words: John Harris lied.

They will continue to lie. They'll spew all the venom they can muster, and they'll even joke about assassination:

For those who can’t watch clips online, Fox News contributor Liz Trotta was talking about Clinton’s Kennedy comment and said, “And now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama, uh Obama. Well, both, if we could.”

In other words, Trotta first mixes up Osama bin Laden and Barack Obama, and then casually suggests both should be killed. She, of course, found her own quip hilarious.

In what twisted political world is this considered acceptable?

In this one, Carpetbagger. In the one the Republicons created, and we allowed.

No more.

No more.

Get the word out. NO MORE. It's time to fight. Sign petitions. Send letters to your representatives. Donate money. Let the media know you won't tolerate any more bullshit. Talk to as many people as you can, as loudly as you can. Democracy is a voice: start shouting. Scream, if you have to.

When November comes, vote. If it's Obama and you loved Hillary, get the fuck over it. Vote for Obama. If it's Hillary and you loved Obama, get the fuck over it. Vote for Hillary - she may be a Republicon wanna-be now, but by gods, she's still a Democrat and she's still better than McLame. Get the fuck over it and pull the fucking lever for the one party that's got at least some chance of salvaging something from the debris Bush leaves behind.

As for you conservatives who aren't batshit insane, but absolutely can't bring yourself to vote Democrat, I have a viable alternative for you: Bob Barr just won the Libertarian Party's nomination.

It took a while — six rounds of balloting — but eventually yesterday, Barr won out.

[snip]

Ironically, Barr became more principled and serious after serving in Congress. After departing Capitol Hill, Barr became disillusioned with what had become of his Republican Party. He was nearly apoplectic about Bush’s conduct in the NSA warrantless search scandal, suggesting the president “deliberately order[ed] that federal law be violated,” and “ignored” the Constitution. Shortly thereafter, Barr agreed to introduce Al Gore at an event in which Gore blasted the president’s “excessive power grabs.” He was also highly critical of the Bush administration in the prosecutor purge scandal.

About a year ago, Barr left the GOP altogether and began talking to the Libertarian Party, calling for a “multidecade effort” to build a movement to make the party nationally competitive. He added that many “real conservatives” have become disheartened with Republicans. “They are eager for a philosophical home,” Barr said. “There are enough of them out there that a significant number can be weaned away” from the GOP.

Let your conservative friends who are disillusioned with McCain and the Republicons know that they have a choice. Stump for Barr. Bleed Republicon support away. Leave all of the crazy fuckwits to tear each other apart over the carcass of the grand old party. Start something new.

We owe it to our country. We owe it to those dead soldiers and those dead and dying Iraqis. We owe it to our dead and dying Constitution to stand up and say, No More.

No more lying us into wars. No more stealing elections. No more cheating. No more propaganda. No more fear-mongering. No more power grabs. No more destroying this democracy.

It stops.

Now.

How To Convert Dana Hunter

After the diatribe below, we can all stand some laughs.

So here it is. Driving home tonight, I got to thinking: what would it really take to convince me, on a personal level, that God exists? Aside from God descending from Heaven, subjecting Himself to a battery of scientific tests that prove His divinity, and then going around smacking fundies upside the head and saying, "UR DOIN IT WRONG," then bringing about world peace and harmony after apologizing for letting the lunatics take over the asylum, amazing what people get up to when you sneak out just for a few millennia to play golf the next universe over, terribly sorry, won't happen again.

That would work. So might this:

1. God knocks on the door. Not a Jehovah's Witness, not a Mormon, God Himself. Or Herself. Or Itself. Or selves. Or whatever.

2. God has Christian Bale standing there with him/her/it/self or selves.

3. God makes introductions.

4. Christian Bale, after reading this blog and my website, has fallen head-over-heels, but since I blog under a pseudonym and he was too chickenshit to just email, hasn't been able to track me down to say so in person.

5. God decided to take matters in hand/s and play matchmaker.

6. God then vanishes, leaving us to our own devices.

7. But the beautiful moment doesn't last, because there's another knock at the door.

8. It's a publisher, coming to personally beg me to finish my magnum opus, here's a million dollar advance, and just look at this marketing package we've whipped up.

9. The publisher passes Neil Gaiman on his way down the stairs.

10. Neil has come to invite me to speak with him on writing matters at some prestigious convention.

11. And has already written a blurb for my book.

12. Because God gave him an advance copy.

13. Of a book that hasn't been written yet.

14. Which has also been read and praised by all of my other favorite authors.

15. Who couldn't show up personally because they're too busy reading my second, as-yet-unwritten book, and can't put it down.

16. Neil then says, And would you and Christian Bale like to have dinner with all of us next week?

17. Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers will be providing the music.

18. Roger secretly worships you, although you understand, he does love his wife.

That, my darlings, is roughly the sequence of utterly impossible events it would take in order for me to, fully, truly and without a single doubt, believe in God.

Christians who wish to convert me: get praying.

Dear Smarmy Christians: Knock it the Hell Off

I've been hanging about more in comments threads lately than I ordinarily do, and I've noticed an annoying trend: some Christians seem to have an overwhelming compulsion to jump into the midst of a pool of atheists, splash water, and crow, "Hey, look - you're baptized!"

Knock it the fuck off.

It's annoying. It's childish. It doesn't win anyone over except for maybe your fellow smarmy Christians.

Why the need to twist definitions until they squeal just so you can claim, "Really, atheists, you're religious and you don't even know it!"

Case in point:

Personally, I don’t believe that all self-described atheists are all that far away from God, whether they admit to a set religion or not.

I see. So we're not non-believers, we're believers-in-denial. Right.

If you have the stomach for it, read the whole thread. (Sorry to be beating up on one of your commenters, Webs, but he was the supreme example ready to hand.) Webs does an excellent job of engaging this bugger calmly, rationally, kindly, and thoughtfully. I'm not that nice a person.

Had I come into that conversation while it was in full swing, I would've been hard-pressed not to call this - ahem - gentleman out on his assumptions in terms far less gentle than Webs employed, because, well, I'm me. Diplomatic? Not often. Especially not when I'm seeing red over comments such as, "I mean, the Bible-thumper meanness can be rationalized that they believe they are doing God’s work. I honestly can’t figure a rationalization why atheists are mean to, make fun of, or discriminate against the religious."

Because humans can be right assholes. At least atheists know they're assholes. They don't whimp out by whining, "God wants me to do it!"

There's also that little point about the religious often being mean to, making fun of, and overwhelmingly discriminating against us. Even when they're playing nice. And I'm sorry, but atheists are no more saints than the rest of humanity - well, not much - just a tad more rational. When we've been slammed over and over and over, well, don't be so surprised that some of us get snippy.

But I'm not going to spend this post deconstructing this bugger's remarks. I just want to point out a little something that gets even further up my nose than Robert T. Bakker:

Now, I would never dream of engaging a convicted Lutheran, Evangelical, Jew, or Hindu over who’s religion is the surest shot to God’s favor. I will, however, engage an atheist over the question of Faith.

Maybe he meant that as "I'm genuinely curious about how you atheists get on without faith," but in the context of this self-righteous bullshit-

It’s just, without a spiritual roadmap, an atheist might be more compelled to act on urges that lead down wrong paths. True, there are Lutherans who gamble, slander, ridicule, hoard, discriminate, and cheat… but they have a doctrine than warns against those activities. What hindrance does an atheist have stopping them from engaging in acts that work against pahalah?

-I'm thinking not.

What this bugger is saying is, it doesn't matter what religion you are as long as you're religious. And then he displays the disease of so many Christians who, when confronted by an atheist who is kind, generous, and good, instead of admitting that a non-believer doesn't need God to have good qualities, proclaims that "atheists aren't all that far away from God." He flat-out states we're religious and just not admitting it.

Newsflash: we're not fucking religious. We don't need to be religious to be good human beings. We're not in denial about being religious. We're not in denial about God. We've reached this point of unbelief after a long and often painful struggle. There's no denial left: we are not denying God, because it's utterly pointless to deny something that doesn't exist.

Do not mistake extreme annoyance at being disrespected for a denial of God.

Do not mistake a rational decision to act in a way that benefits fellow human beings as a tacit admission of faith. Especially don't do it after claiming you respect our right to not believe. When you pull bait-and-switch bullshit like this, what you're really saying is that you can't possibly respect an atheist: therefore, this person you respect must not really be an atheist.

To put this in a context that a Christian might possibly understand: how do you feel when some smarmy atheist pounces on some small admission you make, such as maybe having a different understanding of God than more doctrinal Christians, or having gone through moments of doubt, and gleefully proclaims, "See? You're really an atheist in denial!"

You're not. You know you're not. Now, turn that around, if you can, and understand that an atheist respecting another person's faith is not a sign that we believe in God but just won't 'fess up. Go ahead and believe that God's really guiding us, if you must - I can't stop you there - but keep it the fuck to yourself if you're so fucking concerned about respect.

If you wouldn't challenge a Lutheran or a Hindu or a Jew on their faith, what possible reason can you have for not showing an atheist the same courtesy in regards to their lack thereof?

I really don't mind being engaged in a discussion about my atheism. What I absolutely have no tolerance for is smarmy fuckers who, instead of engaging in actual debate where there's actual respect shown for the other person's position, declare, "Anything you say proves either that you're really religious, I win!!"

No, you don't. You declared a hollow victory that has no more meaning than IDiots pouncing on a simplified rendering of the inner workings of a cell and declaring, "See, it looks designed, therefore it is. I win!"

Bullshit. What you show is ignorance. You've proven nothing, except to yourself, and pissed off the person you were pretending to have respect for.

Why not take a lesson from Karen, here, smarmy Christians? She's Christian. And she's shown remarkable respect for the atheists she's hanging about with. She hasn't tried to claim us for God. Hasn't tried to twist every argument into a victory for God. Hasn't tried to proclaim that anything we do that's good and just and moral must necessarily come from God, because it couldn't possibly come from being human. She and I haven't discussed what her views on that are. The point is, she respects our atheism. When she says she respects our right to not believe, she truly does.

I think she understands that to tell an atheist they're not really an atheist is almost as offensive as telling a black person they're not "really" black, or a gay man he's not "really" gay, or, indeed, a Christian that they're not "really" Christian.

What you're telling me by saying I'm not "really" an atheist is that I'm a lesser being if I am. You're trying to take something precious away because it's not worthy to you. And while your opinion does not change what I am, the fact of you even attempting to do so is offensive in the extreme.

We can argue points of evidence. We can explore how we reached our respective positions. There's plenty to discuss here. But let's not deny what each of us is just because we're not comfortable with the facts.

Dancing on Top of the World

You know that giddy kind of excitement when you can't sit still, your eyes start to tear up, you randomly squeal, and your face is twitching?

Yeah. That's me. Right now.

Lots o' reasons.

For one, this blog has attracted an amazing group of truly incredible people, and a whole passel of truly incredible people joined the incredible people already here over this weekend. That would have been enough to set my feet a-tappin'.

Then work was slow, and I actually got to catch up on some of my blog reading. Why can't I find a company willing to pay me to read your blogs? That's how I want to spend my days. I don't get enough time with you guys. The fact that I got time today has me ready to jig.

But wait! There's more.

Got an email from PZ. Seems I'm going to be among the hosts of the Tangled Bank. There's finally going to be real science in this cantina!!1!11!!

The neighbors are now wondering if we're having an earthquake. But there's more:

Next week, I have my best friend flying in from North Carolina. I haven't seen him in person since 2005.

Plaster falls from the ceiling. And there's still more:

I get to attend PZ's lecture at the Pacific Science Center for the Northwest Science Writer's Association.

Science writers! PZ! My best friend! WOOT!

The building begins to shake. Tibetans reach for some pegs. And that's not all:

PZ is also speaking to the Seattle Society for Sensible Explanations. PZ! Seattle skeptics! Alliteration! Fine dining! SUPER WOOT!

Dana has now left the building and is headed skyward, Tibetan efforts to nail her down be damned. And as if that's not enough:

Brian Switek's book-in-progress is going to have a whole chapter on horse evolution! He'll write up horse evolution in terms even I can understand, which means I'll understand enough horse evolution to be able to figure out how the fuck my Unicorns evolved. Triple WOOT!

The air. Grows thin. Limbs. Akimbo. And we're not done:

Blake Stacey saw Neil Gaiman speak, the elitist bastard. I haven't seen Neil Gaiman since 2001. I didn't get my application in for Clarion, and so missed the chance to maybe possibly attend a writing workshop with Neil fucking Gaiman omfg!, but Blake's writing up the lecture soon, and AND it'll be out on DVD. Not enough WOOTs in the damned world.

This is the top of the world. This is me dancing on it. Just in case you were wondering what the hell all that shaking was about.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Alas, I'm in a good mood. Work is slow, the sun's been out, it's a mellow day, and hard to drum up enough angst to be the cantankerous cantinera you've all come to expect. But let's see what we can do.

I just have a quick question here: what the fuck is wrong with white people?

Newsweek published the results of a new poll, which shows John McCain doing quite well
among white voters, leading Barack Obama by 12 (52% to 40%), and leading Hillary Clinton by four (48% to 40%). This isn’t especially surprising — white voters overall preferred Bush to Kerry in 2004, Bush to Gore in 2000, Dole to Bill Clinton in 1996, and H.W. Bush to Clinton in 1992.

But Newsweek went further in analyzing the results, and found that Obama’s race “may well explain his difficulty in winning over white voters.”

In the NEWSWEEK Poll, participants were asked to answer questions on a variety of race-related topics including racial preferences, interracial marriage, attitudes toward social welfare and general attitudes toward African-Americans. Respondents were grouped according to their answers on a “Racial Resentment Index.” Among white Democrats with a low Racial Resentment Index rating, Obama beat McCain in a hypothetical match-up 78 percent to 17 percent. That is virtually identical to Clinton’s margin in the category, 79 percent to 13 percent. But among white Democrats with high scores on the Racial Resentment Index, the picture was very different: Obama led McCain by only 18 points (51 to 33) while Clinton maintained a much larger 59-point lead (78 to 18).

Who exactly are these high Racial Resentment Index voters? A majority, 61 percent, have less than a four-year college education, many are older (44 percent were over the age of 60 compared to just 18 percent under the age of 40) and nearly half (46 percent) live in the South.

I've never understood this mentality. I'm white. I was raised by Midwestern farm folk who were white. I lived in areas that were heavy on the whites. But race has never been a factor in my friendships, ethnicity doesn't mean jack shit except as incidental interest, and I don't lie awake at night worrying about brown people changing my country. Actually, I lie awake at night hoping brown people will change my country. I just can't wrap my mind around the racist mentality.

And I sure as shit can't wrap my mind around this:

The same poll, meanwhile, not [sic] that white people are also thrown by Obama’s name and confusion over his faith tradition. Only 58% of white voters correctly identified Obama’s Christian faith, while 11% still believe he’s a Muslim. Just as ridiculous, “18 percent of white Democratic voters say they judge the Illinois senator less favorably because of his name.”

We’ll have a lousy economy, more wars, and a right-wing Supreme Court, but at least our president won’t have a funny sounding name.

Carpetbagger trumped me on the sarcasm. All I can manage is a disgusted, "What the fuck is wrong with these people?"

Ah, well. Unlikely to solve that issue today. Let's move on.

Digby has a post up that's as entertaining as it is disturbing, comparing some media lackwits to stalkers:

I'm a pragmatic sort and I am more than willing to take advantages where they come. But the fact that journalists like [Kurt] Anderson are all swooning over Obama is a very mixed bag. Right now it will be helpful in that the press corps also swoons over McCain so perhaps we'll get a little balance. But boys like him tend to get very nasty when their idols turn out to be
mortal.

This swooning between Obama and the press could very well end up being a classic Dangerous Relationship. One of the most important signs of a potential abuser is if they put you up on a
pedestal:

Being on a pedestal may feel great at the time, but all idols are bound to fall. The higher the pedestal, the harder the fall.

Take notice if a person has assigned you a position or qualities that are completely unrealistic given where you are in the relationship. For a new
lover to say, "you are the light of my life" or "you are everything to me"
in the first few weeks of dating is scary. They are impossible to live up
to. Your lover knows too little about you. Inevitably, he is projecting onto
you all kinds of qualities you may or may not have.

It is flattering to have all these fops of the village press corps drooling all over a big Democrat. But they have issues. Big ones. They have the attention spans of a six week old ferret and the fidelity of a cat in heat. It's extremely foolish to trust these abusers with our future. Caveat Emptor.

Well said. And when you look at the history of previous media swoons, yes, they do behave this way: they have their crushes, then when their crush disappoints them, they crush their crush. Pathological, that. Viewing the media as deranged stalkers actually explains quite a lot about our current political press debacle, comes to that.

My question is this: when are they going to fall out of love with Bush? Didn't he disappoint them long ago? Or are they that fucking stupid?

Right.

Moving on.

Glenn Greenwald is wielding the Spank-o-Matic to good effect today. He's got a wonderful piece showing just how much influence the telecoms are buying:

Just in the first three months of 2008, recent lobbyist disclosure statements reveal that AT&T spent $5.2 million in lobbyist fees (putting it well ahead of its 2007 pace, when it spent just over $17 million). In the first quarter of 2008, Verizon spent $4.8 million on lobbyist fees, while Comcast spent $2.6 million. So in the first three months of this year, those three telecoms -- which would be among the biggest beneficiaries of telecom amnesty (right after the White House) -- spent a combined total of almost $13 million on lobbyists. They're on pace to spend more than $50 million on lobbying this year -- just those three companies.

[snip]

Last year, AT&T paid $400,000 to Black's firm. Black was taking money from AT&T to lobby on FISA and simultaneously advising McCain. McCain, needless to say, voted in favor of granting amnesty to AT&T and the other telecoms at exactly the time that his close adviser, Black, was taking money from AT&T to influence Congress on its behalf. And, of course, AT&T and Verizon are among McCain's top donors.

While we're subjected to all sorts of prattle from our pundit class and political leaders about how telecom amnesty is so urgent if we want to be Safe from the Terrorists, this is the sleaze that fuels how the process works. And the sleaze is spread around in a nice bipartisan way.

Equal opportunity sleaze: the American dream.

If you want some good suggestions on what to do about it, check out Digby's missive. The money of the masses may yet speak.

Literal vs. Philosophical: FIGHT!

Admitting I'm an atheist has seriously damaged my research, but not my enjoyment of cheesy martial arts fantasy films. Go figure.

Allow me to 'splain. Or at least sum up.

I'm deep into research on the soul for the upcoming short story my Wise Readers have valiantly volunteered to vet. That research involves digging into the idea of the tulku, which seemed like a good philosophical idea to riff on. So I'm reading a book on Tibetan Buddhism.

It's not a great book on Tibetan Buddhism. In fact, it's shallow and silly. It focuses more on what you might call popular practice than the ideas. I know Buddhism, even the more religious kinds replete with gods and other such things the Buddha would've had no truck with, has some excellent philosophical depth. But this book wants to focus more on things like folks staking bits of the land down so they won't run away.

So here I am, reading this, and instead of thinking, "Interesting - that could be useful for an alien culture, suitably camouflaged," I'm thinking, "Do people really believe that silly shite? I mean, on a scale of everyday concerns, is this really important to them?"

I'm gonna have to stay away from the popular stuff for a while. Avoid people running around driving stakes through bits of ground so it doesn't get filched by demons in favor of the stuff that treats such matters as allegory and philosophy rather than as matter of fact. Gah.

I must be an Elitist Bastard. Even with religion research, I prefer the hoity-toity, scholarly, metaphorical, very complicated theological systems advanced by deep thinkers than the stuff practiced by the simple folk. That's not new, mind, just more pronounced.

And yet I can go to a movie like The Forbidden Kingdom and have absolutely no problem at all with Monkey gods and a lot of extreme silliness. Bronx geek with an unhealthy fascination for martial arts films ends up transported to another kingdom, has to return the Monkey King's staff? Not a problem! Runs into a Taoist immortal who's perpetually drunk? Better still! Nothing makes logical sense? Who cares! It's beautiful and it's fun and it works in the context of the story, even when it's cheesier than a truckload of Cheez Whiz.

I thoroughly enjoyed picking up on bits and pieces of myth, legend and philosophy. There's a lot more Zen in there than you typically run in to in Chinese flicks - a great moment where Jackie Chan's drunken Taoist character, Lu Yan, is teaching Jason kung fu, and pours him a cup of tea as Jason's going on and on about all the martial arts moves he knows from the movies. I knew what would happen: Lu would keep pouring.

It's an old Zen story. A man comes to the Zen master for teaching, bragging about all the things he already knows about Zen. The Zen master nods and smiles and pours tea - and keeps pouring, until the cup overflows and runs all over the floor. "Stop!" the visitor protests. "The cup's already full!" "Exactly," the master says. "How can I teach you anything when your cup's already full? Empty your cup!"

This is exactly what happens in the movie, and it's a sheer delight.

Lu Yan's based on Liu Ling, I'll bet you a dollar to a donut hole. Don't know Liu Ling? Hang about me for any length of time and you soon will. He was one of the legendary Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. One story about him says that he was followed around by a manservant who carried a jug of wine and a shovel. The wine was in case he sobered up too much. The shovel was in case he drank himself to death.

Now, that's a man comfortable with his life!

Seeing as how Wikipedia already butchered my favorite story of Liu Ling, I shall retell it here:

One day, a Confucian friend of Liu's went to his house and found him nude. Confucians, of course, put a lot of store by propriety, so the friend was a little discombobulated by this unashamed nakedness. They're sitting there chatting, and the Confucian friend is getting more and more disturbed, until finally he can take no more. "Why aren't you wearing any trousers?" he splutters.

"The universe is my house. This room is my trousers," Liu says to him. "What are you doing here inside my trousers?"

I think you can begin to see why I love Taoist philosophy so very much.

And I think that may be what's missing from that book on Tibetan Buddhism: the playfulness. The spontaneity. The delight in the absurd, the deeper meaning behind the seemingly meaningless. It's one thing to go around staking down plots of earth in all seriousness. It's quite another if it's treated as something of an in-joke. The simple folk may seriously believe those stories about the land flying away if you don't nail it down, they may believe in the objective reality of the demons and the gods, but that's just a surface meaning. It's not, when you get right down to it, what it's really all about.

And I'm not even sure those Tibetan peasants are so literal. I have to wonder if that's just the artifact of a Western mind trying to comprehend the Eastern. After all, Western religion got right out of the joyful absurdity business and took things way too literally for far too long. I find that strange, when you look at the New Testament and see how often Jesus taught in parables. If you ever wonder why I tend to giggle when fundies proclaim every word of the Bible is literal truth, there it is: Jesus himself said otherwise. So if you're using the Bible to prove the Bible... watch out.

After a long and winding journey, we have finally looped around to the point: I can enjoy The Forbidden Kingdom without the slightest hint of annoyance because I know that while there's serious stuff in there, it's not meant to be taken seriously. No one is claiming these things happened in actual reality. These are true stories, but in an allegorical, not empirical, sense. This movie is sheer entertainment with a little bit o' good philosophy mixed in. And there's no silly Western bugger going, "Wow, people actually believe the story of the Monkey King, and we have to treat it as The Truth, 'cos it's their religion."

Unlike this bloody book.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go track down some bugger who knows what the tulku are really all about so I can tell a ripping good story meself.

*Bonus points to anyone who caught the Mortal Kombat reference in the title.

A Re-Introduction

Well, it seems that I'm not such an incompetent blogger as I thought! It seems that one of our host's friends, George, took notice of my "Candidates and Classrooms" post - it was mentioned over at Decrepit Old Fool. I am flattered for the mention, and my thanks go out to the author!

One minor point, though...

I am very much male.

*checks trousers*

Yep. Definitely.

A simple mistake, especially given that I popped up out of the blue without any real introduction or description of myself. So here's a quick moment for me to hog the spotlight and tell you what kind of human I am!

As mentioned, I am a guy. An 18 year old guy, about 6'2 with hazel eyes and brown air. My heritage is an eclectic mix of various European countries, nothing particularly strong enough to influence me more than the others. English is, allegedly, among the stronger of my ancestors - though my father was adopted, so this information is questionable. I have Native American on my maternal grandfather's side, and Dutch Irish on my grandmother's. I live in the beautiful pacific northwest, and I spend most of my time writing, reading, exploring the bright centers of the internet, and video gaming. I write for myself, in the form of a science fiction novel, and for others, as is the case with my game design projects, in which I work under an independent designer working on his debut project. I might decide to actually use my own Blogger blog (Musings Of A Teenage Mind) to discuss those projects. The blog is, currently, empty as I have found no good use for it, and my time has been spent here. I suppose if there was enough interest in it, I'd share my stuff there.

In any case, that's most of the vital stats. Thank you for allowing me to talk about myself, it's not something I'm in the habit of doing. So now, please go on to enjoy the better parts of the blog! I have posted the second part of my education-based blog series below, be sure to stop by if you are interested.


And everything changes
And nothing is truly lost
-Neil Gaiman

Academia: AP vs IB

Thank you for your comments on my last entry, "Candidates and Classrooms", and reading one of them mentioned the value of the AP classes. So here's my spiel:

AP, or Advanced Placement, is indeed a very beneficial path to take during your high school career. I might have considered taking a few of the tests, given that I am in AP Biology and AP Calculus. I was already accepted into my school of choice, and few of the AP credits were applicable, so I opted out. However, this is not to say that the average student should turn down the AP classes and tests. In fact, I would readily encourage it, if you are planning on attending an academic college. There is no denying the benefit of not having to take a college course.

However, I believe that the presence of AP tests has its downsides, too. For one, it only encourages and reinforces the "teach the test" [see Candidates and Classrooms] method of education. For another, some schools are trying to actually award a higher grade point for AP classes; essentially meaning that 4.0 is not the highest potential GPA you could get, but rather you could get higher than that if you attend the right schools. I cannot say if it was actually put into action or merely proposed, but it certainly was, at least, discussed.

It also seems that the AP curriculum and the way our education system functions are at odds with one another. At some schools, the classroom time or facilities are insufficient to provide students with the full scope of the AP coursework. Overall, the AP classes feel very rushed, very hurried, with little emphasis on how anything is useful to you other than saving money - it's all about passing the tests. There is a lot of stress involved, heavy course load, but somehow we make it through.

Basically, AP is a money-saver, but I doubt if we'll remember any of it in a year.

So what about this IB thing? First, does anyone know anything about it?

The International Baccalaureate Organization, or IBO, or just IB, is an internationally standardized diploma program currently in place in approximately 125 countries around the world, in over 2,000 schools. There are 6 areas of study: Foreign Language (Spanish, French, German or Japanese, student choice), Science (Chemistry or Biology), Mathematics, Economics, History, and Literature. There are also two "levels" of study: Higher Level and Standard Level. The primary difference between the two is that HL tests are a measurement of two years of learning, with SL only one. Basically, HL encompasses information from both Junior and Senior year of study, with SL primarily on the Senior year classwork. With the exception of the Foreign Language, each area is comprised of 2 test sessions, ranging from one to three hours in length. This means that we take 11 test sessions total for Full IB Diploma.

A student can, optionally, take Certificate tests. These are just the test sessions in however many areas the student chooses to take. Undergoing the full IB program also throws on 50 hours of community service (on top of 100 hours we have to do anyway).

Get all that? There will be a test at the end of the post, so take notes.

The IB tests are less widely recognized than the AP test. In some classes, say Oregon State University, full IB Diploma "Scholars" are given $2,000 scholarship, and guaranteed admission, as a sophomore. Other schools, such as the Art Institute of Portland (my destination) threw a handful of confetti into the air and said, "Congrats", and that's about as far as the benefits took me. They also cost an arm and a leg to take, each area over $100 a pop. So the benefit of the tests are fewer.

Unless!

If you plan on studying aboard, than the IB tests can be a big boon. See, every student in every school in every country that participates in this program learns the same curriculum and takes the same tests on the same day - possibly even at the same time. So going abroad means that it actually is important. However, not many of us are going to go to Europe for college, as much as we might like to.

Having said that, what I like about the IB program is the actual curriculum. The classes are more in-depth, and are taught in a very unique style. It's fun, interesting, and we find ways to apply what we know to the other areas of our life. I might do a more detailed exploration of IHS (International High School) and the IB program later, so I won't go into it deeply.

Basically, though, the IB tests have less financial/academic value than the AP tests, because they are less likely to be recognized and to allow you to waive classes, however I find that the curriculum has a much better pace. Also, while all the information you learn in IB classes are useful for the test, the test themselves have such a wide range of questions, covering the entire range of possible things you could learn in the classes, that it is slightly less "teach the test" in style. The format of papers, perhaps, is very strictly taught as IB-criteria. However, take History. A teacher might go more in-depth into, say, the Russian Revolution and Nazi Germany during their study on Single Party States, rather than Mao in China. However, the IB test will allow you to select, for instance, three questions to answer, in essay form, from a list of fifteen to twenty questions, that range from Mao, to Castro, to Stalin. So instead of the classes teaching you what will be on the exam, the exams are meant to test you on something you will be taught.

Thus are the choices we make. Neither one is easy - but both are rewarding in their own ways.


And everything changes
And nothing is truly lost
-Neil Gaiman

Carnival Business #4

My darlings, we are almost ready to take the world by storm! Just a few things left to do:

Etha Williams needs Elitist Bastard quotes for a random quote generator she's putting together. If you have a quote that oozes elitist bastardry, be sure to drop it by.

The title bar is still sadly lacking graphic interest. Should anyone feel like playing with Photoshop over the weekend, an actual design would not go amiss.

If you're participating, don't forget to grab yourself a badge and bung it up on your sidebar by Friday. That goes for me as well.

Most importantly, don't forget to get your submissions in to elitistbastardscarnival@gmail.com. Ye olde deadline is end of day Friday, May 31st.

Anything to add? We're into the "What vitally important thing have I forgotten?" stage here.

Eggheads, Unite!

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

News from my home state always gets my attention, especially when it shows Arizona's starting to lean blue:

In 2004, Bush won Arizona by double digits. This year, with Arizonan John McCain leading the Republican ticket, it stands to reason there’d be quite a bit of excitement among the state’s GOP elite.

And yet, the enthusiasm is surprisingly underwhelming. (via Eric Kleefeld)

A Tuesday fundraiser headlined by President Bush for U.S. Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign is being moved out of the Phoenix Convention Center.

Sources familiar with the situation said the Bush-McCain event was not selling enough tickets to fill the Convention Center space, and that there were concerns about more anti-war protesters showing up outside the venue than attending the
fundraiser inside.

Another source said there were concerns about the media covering the event.

Bush’s Arizona fundraising effort for McCain is being moved to private residences in the Phoenix area.

Ah, Arizona! Finally been tipped beyond the point of tolerance, haven't ye? Warms the cockles of my heart, that does. McCain's popular there, and the conservative streak runs deep, but there's only so much the good folks of Arizona are willing to take before they decide that if the state's survived so long with a Democrat at the helm, maybe a Democrat in the Oval Office isn't such a bad idea after all.

My absolute favorite part is that Bush & Co. is being forced to run and hide from that horrible, nasty (conservative) Arizona media and the scary (possibly conservative) war protesters. You know they're in bad shape when they have to go to ground not in a smaller venue, but in private houses.

Serves the fuckers right.

(Psst - Obama's gaining on you. Ooga-booga! HA HA HA HA HA!)

Might be it has something to do with McCain's flopping like a fish on immigration:

This doesn’t make a lick of sense. On Thursday, McCain was talking to a group of business leaders who liked McCain’s original approach to comprehensive legislation, and the senator sought input on how best to rally support for his own bill (which he now says he’d vote against). On Friday, McCain told opponents of his immigration bill that he didn’t mean any of what he’d just said.

This is more than just a shameless flip-flop; it’s quickly becoming a character flaw. He’ll shovel whichever nonsense he has to say to please which ever audience happens to be in front of him at the time.

For those keeping score at home, McCain does not support "comprehensive immigration reform.”

Yes, he does.

No, he doesn’t.

Yes, he does.

No, he doesn’t.

Yes, he does.

No, he doesn’t.

Nearly all of these, by the way, come from the last six months.

Two things. First, immigration is a hot-button issue in Arizona - extremely hot. We have white folk up in arms over brown folk streaming over the border, and we have brown folk marching through the streets of Phoenix demanding some respect and solutions, and, well, it gets tense. But I don't even think that's the most important thing. Arizonans could tolerate a postition on immigration they don't like as long as some reasonable solution's being worked toward, but they absolutely cannot stand a man who can't make up his mind. They'll look at the list of McCain flip-flops over the course of the last six months, and they'll see an indecisive old fart who lies like a rug and can't be trusted with the key to the outhouse, much less the White House, and, well. They'll decide accordingly.

I didn't think the day could get any more delightful, but Sen. Joe Biden's in full cry again, and my darlings, it is music:

Today, Sen. Joe Biden (D-RI) appeared on various morning talk shows and sharply criticized the notion that progressives are weak on national security. On MSNBC he responded to Lieberman, stating, “[C]an you imagine Franklin Roosevelt, can you imagine President Truman, can you imagine President Kennedy conducting the kind of policy this outfit has?” From the exchange:

This administration is the worst administration in American foreign policy in modern history, maybe ever. The idea that they are competent to continue to conduct our foreign policy, to make us more secure and make Israel secure, is preposterous.

Ever since they got in office the only thing on the march in the Middle East has not been freedom, it’s been Iran. Every single thing they’ve touched has been a near disaster.

Ah, the sweet sound of a Democrat taking the Republicons to the woodshed and mercilessly employing the Smack-o-Matic Deluxe 3000 Superpaddler. Gorgeous. Simply, gorgeous.

Almost makes me wish I watched morning talk shows, that.

One Week...

Only one week until the first ever Carnival of the Elitist Bastards. Get chore submissions in! There's still time left.

elitistbastardscarnival@gmail.com

Eggheads, Unite!

Talking Past Each Other: A Few Simple Rules For Christians Among Atheists

So much for getting things done tonight. And here I thought I had bags and bags of time, but all it takes is getting caught up in one Pharyngula thread and time goes spiralling down into a supermassive black hole. Research: nil. Work on this blog: nearly nil. Obsession with current discussion: stratospheric. Has been instructive, though, and a few Pharynguloids (is that what we're calling ourselves these days?) have stopped by, which is always more than welcome.

*Waves madly* Hello, you!

Right, well. In a nutshell for those who haven't the foggiest what I'm talking about: PZ posted a little notice about an actual atheist being interviewed on a local (MN) Christian radio station, Kenny got his ass kicked in the comments thread (just as he always does, the man's a masochist), and Karen Simon stopped by to snivel at us for being uncivilized bastards.

That sort o' thing doesn't play well to this crowd. Karen promptly got her ass handed to her, and things would have gone very badly for her indeed had she not apologized and explained herself. A fruitful discussion ensued. I'd like to think some progress was made, and will be made now she's dropped by here. It's certainly clarified a few things for me, but raised more questions than answers.

To wit: why the fuck do Christians do this to themselves? I understand the ones who come by to proselytize - it's what they do, they're like the Borg. But I do not understand why Christians dump their views into the thread and then get offended when the atheists proceed to pick them apart.

It's an atheist thread, moreover one filled with science-minded atheists who can spot a flaw in logic faster than a shark scents blood. Fuck, we annihilate each other over flaws in logic. What the fuck do Christians think we're going to do? Pat them on the head and coo over how nice their moderate delusion is? Not bleedin' likely, guv.

I think, from engaging in this discussion tonight, I begin to see some of the difficulties. We're talking past each other. For all we're speaking English, we don't speak the same language. We're alien to each other, and alas, very few Christians come into the atheists' territory willing to play by atheists' rules.

Do not even begin the "but the atheists aren't playing by Christian rules!" snivel. We played by those rules for ages, and they got the discussion absolutely nowhere. Our turn.

So. This shall develop as time goes on and I get a chance to observe more atheist-Christian interaction, but here's what I've got for now:

1. Understand that in our house, you will win no converts. Atheists for the most part weren't born or raised that way: a lot of them are ex-believers, and they're not going to be talked back into the fold. There's no argument under the sun you can use that they haven't heard a thousand times before. Time 1001 will make no damned difference. So just give it up. Shh before you even begin to proselytize. And if atheists mistake your attentions, don't get all butt-hurt: we run into so many proselytizers-in-sheep's-clothing that we're a little gunshy and apt to overreact. You may not have been attempting to convert, but if the atheist takes your discussion as such an attempt, apologize, clarify, and move right on.

2. Be clear about your purpose. I've noticed a lot of Christians get mightily offended when they say something, we snark back, and it turns into a shouting match because the Christian can't tell us what the fuck they're doing spouting off views not related to the thread to begin with. Explain. Don't assume we know what you're here for: we've already assumed the worst from the second you mentioned your faith. It's habit born from long experience. Remember, we've probably been dealing with a bunch of incoherent rabid fundies from several threads back, and our patience has probably worn thin long ago.

3. Refrain from demanding proof of God's non-existence. That's not what we're here for. Challenging an atheist to provide proof that God doesn't exist is just as useless as us demanding you to prove his existence by the rules of scientific evidence. If either one of us could accomplish those feats, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

4. Speaking of proof, the Bible isn't. Neither are personal anecdotes, fervent belief, or anything else subjective or self-referential. Neither is "but billions of people believe!" Billions of people once believed in a flat earth. Science PWND them. Too fucking bad. If you're going to get into the proof pissing contest, which you shouldn't, learn what science means by "proof."

5. Don't move the damned goal posts. That's a ridiculous trick and it'll get you spanked. If you can't answer the original challenge, just say so. Don't try moving the goal posts and pretending you just scored. You'll get annihilated, and you'll have deserved it. Evading the challenge is just as bad, by the way. Refusing to answer when you're the one who started the discussion just makes you look like a coward. Same with being happy to scrum until someone says something you don't like, and then falling back on the lofty, "I'm so above that, I refuse to discuss it with you" bullshit. If you don't want to accept the challenge, don't start it. Period.

6. No snivelling. No one's impressed by tears, whining, cries of "You're being so mean!" or "You're so unfair!" or "You just don't understand!" We're not here to sing kumbaya. We're not swayed by "Bu-bu-but it's what I believe, and you're disrespecting that!" arguments. We're atheists: religion gets no special pleading and no special treatment here, and getting choked up over it won't help you in the slightest. If you can't take that kind of heat, you have no business being in an atheist's kitchen. This extends to concern trolling about bad language, blasphemy, and other such things: you knew what you were getting in to. Your lectures won't change a damn thing. They'll just earn you the title of "concern troll," so if that's not what you came to be, refrain from snivelling and silly lectures about civility.

7. No pity. We bloody can't stand it. Some of you religious bastards seem to think that atheism is some horrible, nihilistic disease. "Poor buggers, they don't believe in God, how sad for them" drips from your every word. You yourself can't imagine how one could live a happy life without God, so you think we must be miserable. Newsflash: we're not. I have, in fact, met far more happy, unconflicted atheists than I have happy, unconflicted believers. We're free. We enjoy life. We love our families, friends, pets, and all of the other things you take joy in. What you fill with spirituality, we fill with other things. We notice no lack, and we don't appreciate being treated like poor victims who don't know any better.

8. Don't take it personally. When we're tearing apart your argument, we're not attacking you. We probably like you just fine, especially if you've contributed something useful to the discussion. But your arguments about God, well, they're going to suffer. Be prepared for it, and do try to give as good as you get. We respect someone who engages us openly, honestly, and holds their own to the best of their ability.

9. Absolutely under any circumstances never ever bring up that old "atheism is a religion too" chestnut. That's one of the dumbest things you could possibly say. Absence of belief is not a religion. We don't have "faith" in the non-existence of God. That's just one of those whiny, snivelly things religious people do to try to win arguments, and all it does is make you look like a total fuckwit. If you're here to earn any respect at all, do not shoot yourself in both legs by that snooty "atheism is religion" crap. And if you even begin to start with the "but you're really agnostics" bullshit, I shall give you such a smack.

10. A ready wit, a good sense of humor, and a willingness to give as good as you get are essential. Display those things, and the acrimony will probably go right away. Have fun with this stuff. Especially here.

11. We can agree to disagree. My best friend and I do it. We don't waste our time trying to change each other. He's religious, I'm not. That's the way it is. We agree to disagree on that point and move right along to the points we do agree on, which are legion (see his take on the Worldnutdaily, for starters). The point is not to win, but to play the game. Find points of commonality, achieve some understanding of each other's views even if we heartily disagree with those views, decide how we're going to work together for a better world without crowding each other too badly: these things we don't need to be in full agreement for. We don't need to have the same world view to be in harmony. Hell, we don't even need to be in harmony, when it comes right down to it. But we do need to concede the war as unwinnable, sometimes, and get past that fact.

12 (not 11 again, sorry bout that). Finally, there's the door. I hope you can stay, I truly do. I hope we get somewhere in our dialogue. But not if you're miserable. If you're deeply offended, outraged, upset, shocked, and battered, and you can't stand how mean we are, and you're angry at our outrageous blasphemy and godless ways, there's an exit. You don't have to be here. If we're getting nowhere, you can go somewhere else. Have a nice day. We really do wish you well.

*Karen should keep in mind that while this post was inspired by the Pharyngula thread, it is not aimed exclusively at her, but at all Christians who mix it up with atheists. She's not the only Christian who's gotten off on the wrong foot on an atheist blog, and she shan't be the last. This post will hopefully help them understand why we get so pissed at what they consider inoffensive behavior. And if any of them are offended by the rules, they should consult Rule #11 forthwith.

Should Karen Simon Stop By....

...show her the same respect and consideration she shows you. Should prove interesting, and perhaps instructive.

For a clue as to what I'm talking about, see here. And be sure to read past the initial outrage.

Progressive Conservative needs a friend. I think Karen's just the ticket.

Academia: No Child Left Behind

Hello, readers!

It seems that I have neglected my promise of a weekly update. I recently asked our wonderful host for some ideas of topics that I might be able to comment on. I am only 18 years old, and never had much of a mind for politics, so most of the discussions here go right over my head.

However, there is one that I might be very qualified to reflect on. Education.

Bush has been in office eight long years now, (Eight. Christ. That still scares me.) which puts his first time in office when I was about 10 years old. That's early elementary school, which means that I have no real recollection of what education is like without Bush in office. So it was at first difficult to figure out how to comment on something for which I have no real frame of reference, but I knew that I have always heard of the NCLB, or No Child Left Behind act, one of Bush's little legacies he bestowed upon us lucky adolescents. So I took a few key ideas from that act and thought I'd share my thoughts.

Teacher Quality

One of the first things I came across was the idea of "Teacher Quality". It required basically three things: a teaching license, subject expertise, and a bachelor's degree. While certainly I agree that teacher's should not be ignorant fuckwits who don't actually know what they're talking about, I find these criteria are not particularly useful in accomplishing that. Subject expertise I would say does contribute to a teacher's ability, however with the emphasis on "teaching to the test" [see below] it is difficult to define what is expertise. Still, this doesn't help figure out what makes a teacher a good one.

The inherit problem here is that not everyone agrees what should be taught, and how to teach it. There are paradoxical problems in education about what we "need" to know. For example, in my Junior year literature class, we had this teacher named Stephenson. Poor woman, having to teach my class. Now, she was a perfectly intelligent human being, but here's a quick preview on our education:

The first day of class we read an article that told us that there are more than one "right" answer. Basically that any given situation could be interpreted various ways, that different viewpoints and perspectives will provide different ideas of what is "right", and they are all equally valid. Yet, when we try to analyze events in such novels as Huck Finn or A Scarlet Letter, we were obviously being steered towards the correct interpretation. The problem was that according to Stephenson, there were only three possible correct meanings behind any given metaphor:

Life
Death
God/Jesus

Oh, and phallic symbols.

While it was fun to figure out how every character in Finn fits into these categories, it's also troublesome when you are told that your opinion, your subjective interpretation is wrong.

Poor woman. We tormented her so much in class in so many ways; at one point, a student rode into class on top of a book cart, crashed into a desk and fell over in a heap. The same student would occasionally walk into class without pants. We would pass around a Spark Notes book before a test. I, meanwhile, sat in my corner and read and doodled and BS'ed my way through the tests. She ended up moving to England the last month of the school year, dumping a substitute on us. She hasn't come back yet.

So trying to coerce your students into telling them what you want is not a sign of good teaching. However, it's not always the teachers, its how they are told to teach, which brings me to the next point.

Teaching to a Test

In school, homework is pretty typical in most science, literature, or social studies classes. You are given some sort of comprehension assignment, usually reading, and are given a worksheet, which is usually just fill-in-the-blanks copies of said assignment. It's a basic process of taking in the information, storing it long enough to fill in on the dotted line, and forget it. While obviously certain aspects of class are slightly more useful or engaging, this works not only for the microscope assignments but the macro-scope goal of education: score well.

Education's entire goal is to score well on a test so that you can get into a better college. Really, that is what high school comes down to. It's all about teaching you what is going to be on the test. If it's not on the test, it doesn't get taught.

Another personal example:

I am just finishing up my AP/IB Biology II class. In that, the teacher rushes through a full year college-level course, switching between a bird's eye view of "This General Concept Might Be On The Test" to a very close inspection of "This Specific Section Will Be On The Test." Some sections we pass over entirely if it's not likely to be on the test, and we don't stop long enough in any of the sections to internalize the information in order to be useful for any period of time longer than the end of the testing period. Even then, with all the days off and vacations they ambush us with, we never have enough time to get all the information anyway. One 50 minute class (usually with anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes of actual learning, due to goofing off, homework questions, and the fact we never start on time) is NOT enough time in a day to learn anything.

It's far too often that I hear a teacher say, "We're skipping this section because you don't need it for the AP test".

The most rewarding science class I have ever taken was my Sophomore year Biology I class. The teacher, an amazing man with the name "Shindledecker", taught us how to think about biology. He'd talk with us all period long about what we're learning, showing us different ways to approach it, how it applies to our life, and tips on how to remember them. Not memorize them for a test, but how to actually make the mental connections between what we learn in class and what we learn in life, in order to apply this knowledge in a useful way. I might not be able to give you the scientific definition of the function of the Endoplasmic Reticulum of a cell, but I know that it's basically the "highway of the cell", which conceptually is far more useful than knowing the jargon. One day, we walked into class and on the board was the word "Salmon" circled. A few lines were connected to it, such as "dams", "bears", and "fishermen". Then we spent the entire period making connections between salmon and what it directly influences, and what those impacts would have on other factors, and so on and so forth.

However, the advanced classes, the classes in which you have the most potential to learn the most and apply it to life, are the classes which are forced to do well on tests. Thus, they must teach to the test.


See, because of NCLB, public schools only get their federal funding if they cooperate by conducting some kind of test on all students in the state as a method of measurement of educational progress. Almost all schools take the cheapest route; multiple-choice standardized tests. So they are forced to educate the students according to what these tests are on.

Now, this isn't all bad. Reading comprehension levels have increased, and the test scores themselves have gone up, if that means anything, though the scores are a pretty hollow victory considering what we're giving up.

However, NCLB opens up options for schools to "play" the system, such as giving the students "practice" exams, which are usually just last year's tests, to prepare us for the upcoming exam. The focus is entirely on doing well on the tests. It's quite ridiculous, really.

Restriction of Classes

No, not social classes. Because of the trends in education, non-core subject classes have been cut down ever year. My school used to offer all kinds of woodshop-type classes. We used to offer Russian as a language. While my school is particularly well off and still has many non-core classes, those classes as a whole have been reduced across the board. Focus on tests means that the students and staff are pushed towards math, reading, and the sciences, with a very low emphasis on arts, physical education, and similar courses.

This limits the curriculum. Let's borrow from every high schooler's friend, WikiPedia:

"Schools are required to use "scientifically based research" strategies in the classroom and for professional development of staff. Research meeting this label, which includes only a small portion of the total research conducted in the field of education and related fields, must involve large quantitative studies using control groups as opposed to partially or entirely qualitative or ethnographic studies, research methodologies which may suggest different teaching and professional development strategies but that do not result in evidence demonstrating efficacy"

Oh yeah, and there's one of my personal favorite little quirks of the NCLB:

"NCLB (In section 9528) requires public secondary schools to provide military recruiters the same access to facilities as a school provides to higher education institution recruiters. Schools are also required to provide contact information for every student to the military if requested."

Then of course, NCLB also wants all, and I mean ALL, as in 100% of students, to perform on the same level in the areas of math and reading. It's a lofty goal, but not one that I think we should be striving for. Students are too individual, each with their own ways of learning, to expect everyone to be on the same level as everyone else. It limits those who are advanced, and it pressures and punishes those who are behind.


I've gone on for long enough. There are other issues with education today, but it can be summed up thusly:

Modern American education is too centered on learning specific core subjects for the purpose of high performance on standardized tests in order to prove "educational progress", neglecting the individual needs of many students, and not teaching us the skills and imparting the knowledge that will make an actual difference on our lives.

Bush is leaving office. I don't know what will happen to education. Not everything is bad, of course, but if I could ask for a few changes with our new leader, it would be that education focuses less on test scores, possibly removing standardized testing for the purposes of federal financing and the goals outlined by NCLB completely.

Later, I'll comment more specifically on some of these topics. Including:

-Should teachers be paid according to a "merit pay" system?
-What should we actually teach our children?
-The role of technology in school
-Grade inflation
-Social pressures and influences in school

I am a Senior in high school, graduating on June 14th, this year. I have about three weeks left of school, so I will be reflecting a lot about my time in high school. 4 years, 32 classes. I got a lot to write about, so you'll be hearing from me again.


And everything changes
And nothing is truly lost.
-Neil Gaiman

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

John McCain needs an English lesson. He just jabbed his pudgy finger right into my pet peeve button:

“I believe that I have earned the right to speak out on veterans’ issues,” McCain said. “As a matter of fact I received the highest award from literally every veteran’s organization in America. I don’t know if the American people will judge Senator Obama as to whether he has military experience or not, but I think they may judge him as to whether he has experience and knowledge to make the judgment necessary to care for the veterans.” (emphasis added)

The funny thing about the word “literally,” of course, is that it has a rather specific meaning.

Carpetbagger is right. Let's explore that meaning, shall we?

lit·er·al·ly
adv.

1. In a literal manner; word for word: translated the Greek passage literally.
2. In a literal or strict sense: Don't take my remarks literally.
3. Usage Problem

a. Really; actually: "There are people in the world who literally do not know how to boil water" Craig Claiborne.
b. Used as an intensive before a figurative expression.

It's b that gets people into trouble. McCain may have been speaking in the figurative sense, but the meaning of "literal" hasn't changed despite more than a hundred years of silly bastards using it in highly inappropriate ways. It's a stupid thing to say when it's so ridiculously easy to disprove:

The recognition McCain has received from veterans groups is not “high awards” but failing grades:

— Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave McCain a grade of D for his record of voting against veterans. (By contrast, Obama got a B+.)
– Disabled Veterans of America noted McCain’s dismal 20 percent voting record on veterans’ issues. (Obama had an 80 percent.)
– In a list of “Key Votes,” Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) notes McCain “Voted Against Us” 15 times and “Voted For Us” only 8. (Obama voted for VVA 12 times, and against only
once.)

The lesson: don't say "literally" when what you really mean is, "nearly." Or, in this case, "Not even close to every."

Here endeth the English lesson.

Senator Joe Biden has some lessons of his own to teach, and he takes McCain lackey and assleach Sen. Joe Lieberman out to the woodshed for the short, sharp shock:

On Wednesday, Joe Lieberman wrote on this page that the Democratic Party he and I grew up in has drifted far from the foreign policy espoused by Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy.

In fact, it is the policies that President George W. Bush has pursued, and that John McCain would continue, that are divorced from that great tradition – and from the legacy of Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

[snip]

Last week, John McCain was very clear. He ruled out talking to Iran. He said that Barack Obama was "naïve and inexperienced" for advocating engagement; "What is it he wants to talk about?" he asked.

Well, for a start, Iran's nuclear program, its support for Shiite militias in Iraq, and its patronage of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Beyond bluster, how would Mr. McCain actually deal with these dangers? You either talk, you maintain the status quo, or you go to war. If Mr. McCain has ruled out talking, we're stuck with an ineffectual policy or military strikes that could quickly spiral out of control.

Sen. Obama is right that the U.S. should be willing to engage Iran on its nuclear program without "preconditions" – i.e. without insisting that Iran first freeze the program, which is the very subject of any negotiations. He has been clear that he would not become personally involved until the necessary preparations had been made and unless he was convinced his engagement would advance our interests.

President Nixon didn't demand that China end military support to the Vietnamese killing Americans before meeting with Mao. President Reagan didn't insist that the Soviets freeze their nuclear arsenal before sitting down with Mikhail Gorbachev. Even George W. Bush – whose initial disengagement allowed dangers to proliferate – didn't demand that Libya relinquish its nuclear program, that North Korea give up its plutonium, or even that Iran stop aiding those attacking our soldiers in Iraq before authorizing talks.

The net effect of demanding preconditions that Iran rejects is this: We get no results and Iran gets closer to the bomb.

[snip]

The worst nightmare for a regime that thrives on tension with America is an America ready, willing and able to engage. Since when has talking removed the word "no" from our vocabulary?

It's amazing how little faith George Bush, Joe Lieberman and John McCain have in themselves – and in America.

Lieberman's tender little ass must be stinging. And you know, I have a feeling Joe Biden's arm isn't even tired. He seems like he's just hitting his stride. Ordinarily, I like to watch contests between people who are evenly matched enough to actually compete, but for this general election, I'm going to thoroughly enjoy watching the brilliant beat down the stupid.

I'm also thoroughly liking the sweaty smell of utter desperation (h/t to Sadly, No!):

The group, assembled by something called America’s Survival Inc., gathered in the basement of Ebenezer Coffee House at Second and F streets NE. They shared the stage with a big drum set, and posters documenting items they would seek to tie to Obama: an SDS newsletter from 1969 (when he was 7), and a police killing from 1970 (when he was 8).

[snip]

[T]he star of the show was the ancient Herbert Romerstein, who once plied his trade for the Un-American Activities committee. “We decided to start going back and seeing what things influenced him even before he was born,” Romerstein announced without a trace of irony, before tying Obama to the Communist Party of the 1930s in Hawaii and Soviet spies on the island. “This is the atmosphere that young Barack Obama grew up in.”

You know you have a candidate who's almost beyond reproach, more Teflon that Slick Willy, when you have right-wing groups frantically trying to tie said candidate to events that happened when he was in elementary school - and it's really, really pathetic when they start scraping around for events that took place before the candidate was even born.

I think Barack Obama terrifies these people. And that makes me feel happy inside. Warms me right down to the sub-cockle level. How about you?

It's Two-for-One-Day in the Rejecting Rabid Reverends Department

This amuses me to no end:

For months, John McCain has faced questions about his associations with radical religious televangelists like John Hagee and Rod Parsley. And for months, McCain refused to disassociate himself from the extremists, even going so far as to defend the hate-filled rhetoric. McCain said Hagee had been “taken out of context”) and repeatedly say he was “honored” and “glad” to have their support.

Yesterday, after the latest revelations that Hagee believed Hitler was fulfilling God’s will, McCain gave up.

Senator John McCain on Thursday rejected the endorsements of two prominent evangelical ministers whose backing he had sought to shore up his credentials with religious conservatives.

Mr. McCain repudiated the Rev. John C. Hagee, a televangelist, after a watchdog group released a recording of a sermon in which Mr. Hagee said Hitler and the Holocaust had been part of God’s plan to chase the Jews from Europe and drive them to Palestine.

Later in the day, he also rejected the endorsement of the Rev. Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church of Columbus, Ohio, whose anti-Muslim sermons were broadcast on ABC’s "Good Morning America” on Thursday.

I wonder how this is going to look in frothing fundie circles? Can't look good to them that McCain dropped their pathological pastors like hot rocks just after ABC news started running segments like this:



I especially loved how ABC juxtaposed all of McCain's smarmy praise and inane defense of this shite with Pastor Parsley's ravings. Verily, 'twas a work of art.

Tristero said it best when he said:

But here's the best part:

Hagee also issued a statement saying he was tired of baseless attacks and he was removing himself from any active role in the 2008 campaign.

Good idea. Memo to all christianists:

Go thou and do likewise.

Amen, brother. A-fucking-men.

An Atheist's Long Ramble About Religion

As I'm about to dive into the night's fiction work, I'm reminded of one of the bajillion reasons I left church behind.

The attitude of the church I went to so briefly could be summed up thusly: "I don't know much about God, but I'd say we've built a pretty good cage for him." (Oh, how I wish I'd actually seen that Simpson's episode rather than merely hearing it described!) Not that the people I went to church with would've admitted the first bit. They were absolutely convinced they, and exclusively they, knew everything there was to know about God.

One of the things they knew was that every other religion not only had it wrong, but was pure evil to boot.

I wish I'd had Rowan Atkinson's delightful A Warm Welcome to quote back then: "And finally, Christians. Ah, yes, I'm sorry - I'm afraid the Jews were right."

I never could get the niggling sense that nobody had the exclusive claim to the truth out of my head. The life of a bleating sheep was never the life for me. You see, I had this terrible penchant for reading history and thinking subversive thoughts like, "Wow. The flood myth shows up in Ancient Sumeria - somebody's been plagarizing." And, "Kung Fu Tzu came up with the Golden Rule before the Jews. Interesting, that." And, "What's wrong with Allah? He's God, too - says so right in the Qu'ran. Look - Abraham and Jesus are even in there!"

Point being, I enjoyed other religions immensely, and it irritated the bugshit out of me when some self-righteous little fucker would tell me that all of those other religions were just myths, or worse, lies told by Satan.

"I've read Job," I'd say. "Satan and God seemed pretty tight. Oh, and did you know that in the Old Testament, Satan means 'adversary'? That's all Satan is - not the ultimate evil, just a speedbump."

They never liked that much. Can't fathom why.

Even as a child, I'd think unChristian thoughts, such as, "Why is the Bible supposedly true, but all the Greek and Roman religion's just myth?" No one could ever prove to me the "truth" of one over the other. (Evangelizing Christians in the audience, open your Bibles and find the "shake the dust from your sandals" verse. You're gonna need it if you start trying to prove the truth of God over all the other gods 'round here. I'll sic Woozle on you, see if I don't.)

Religion, as far as I could tell, made smart people stupid. They got so obsessed with proving God literally true and the Bible infallible that they tied themselves into complicated knots trying to explain away the innumerable contradictions in the Bible. It's amusing, to be sure, but pathetic. Their God, it seems, was incapable of using allegory as a teaching tool. I once saw a thirteen-year old annihilate a Bible literalist. Twasn't pretty. Someday, I shall tell you that story.

Christians who see the Bible as allegory fare a lot better, and their God looks a lot smarter. Come to think of it, that's true for just about everybody's gods and holy stories, isn't it?

So. The claims to exclusive truth, the pathological fear of other religions and ideas, and the penchant of calling anything that didn't fit a terribly restricted worldview "evil," all of those things cemented my determination to never ever again make the mistake of joining a congregation. I felt I was missing out on a lot of interesting shit by letting these silly buggers dictate what I could and could not know, and I was right.

I mean, imagine what the next few days' research would look like if I were restricted to the fundamentalist Christian view of things? Actually, come to think of it, there wouldn't be a next few days' research. I wouldn't have the Ahc'ton as heroes, now, would I, because reincarnation ain't part of the bargain.

I wouldn't be slogging my way through Aristotle's De Anima right now, and wouldn't be making a beeline for research on the Tulku next.

I wouldn't have Shiva Nataraja dancing on ignorance on my shelf. I wouldn't be wondering just where the bloody hell Green Tara ran off to... shit. Oh, there she is, right beside Shiva. And there's Ganesha. Hello, you.

Had I stayed with that very restrictive brand of Christianity that I flirted with for a few months way back when, I would still be writing insipid, theologically safe tripe if I was writing at all. Sure as fuck wouldn't be writing a series of books that draw very heavily on Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, and Norse themes. Would've never experienced the pleasure of "Thou art that," and a thousand other truly breathtaking mythological themes. Good and evil would have been in black and white rather than the fascinating shades of gray I get to wrestle with.

Yes, I have a lot of religious symbols and themes for an atheist. Being an atheist allows me to filch from whomever I like, guilt-free. These ideas are powerful. They're interesting. They're frequently fun.

Some religious folks accuse atheists of wanting to do away with all religion, and some atheists certainly lean that way. I'm not one. What I'd like to see vanish from the world is the pig-headedness of religious folks who think their religion is the one-and-only, and want to make sure everybody else thinks exactly the same. That's a tragedy, to me. That's an impoverishment and an offence against God. I'd be pretty pissed if I were the omniscient, omnipotent Divinity that kept getting stuffed into little cages, my power and variety denied. After all, if God is all, God really is all: every single human religion, past, present and future, has a little snippet of the Truth.

That's the conclusion I came to as an agnostic, anyway, before I woke up one day and realized I'd become an atheist somewhere along the way. But I'm an atheist who loves what religious ideas say about life, the Universe and everything, about being human, about the power of ideas. And I'd like to see a world where those ideas have perfect freedom to coexist. Some religious folks seem to feel the same way. They're just as fascinated by other ways of belief as I am. They appreciate them, welcome them, threaten nobody with hell for preferring one path over the other, and those are the religious folks I'd like to see come into power.

Would certainly be a world filled with a lot less fanatics playing silly buggers, now, wouldn't it?

No Ray Comfort and his bananas. No DIsco. No Expelled.

...

.....Come to think of it, I'd lose a major source of my daily entertainment.....

Thankee gods I'd still have politicians to bash.

Click on the Ray Comfort link, my darlings. Seriously. Just swallow any liquids before you do so. Trust me, your computer will thank you for it.

What Does It Mean...

...when you start dreaming about your blog? I had a very long and involved dream this morning that Blake Stacey from Science After Sunclipse came for a visit, and I was ignoring the poor man because I had to comb the internets for appropriate tidbits for you lot. As I remember, he sat nearby making very distracting snarky comments. And ordered me pizza. Thanks for that.

For those who are wondering, his intellect is indeed as formidable in the dreamosphere as it is in the blogosphere.

Do you bloggers ever dream blog-related dreams?

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Karl Rove can run, but he can't hide from John Conyers:

A week ago, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) casually told some associates, when he thought no one else was listening, “We’re closing in on Rove. Someone’s got to kick his ass.”

And what was it, specifically, that warranted this ass-kicking? Conyers said the committee wants Rove to testify about his role in the imprisonment of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, among other things. “We want him for so many things, it’s hard to keep track,” Conyers said.

This afternoon, Conyers made clear he wasn’t kidding.

The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday subpoenaed former White House top political adviser Karl Rove to testify about whether the White House improperly meddled with the Justice Department.

Accusations of politics influencing decisions at the department led to last year’s resignation of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The subpoena issued Thursday orders Rove to testify before the House panel on
July 10. He is expected to face questions about the White House’s role in firing nine U.S. attorneys in 2006 and the prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama, a Democrat.

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers had negotiated with Rove’s attorneys for
more than a year over whether the former top aide to President Bush would
testify voluntarily.

AT LAST! The little fucker's got a choice, now: answer the supoena, or get his ass thrown in jail. I really don't think Rep. Conyers was joking. A banner day indeed!

And to add to the sweetness, McCain's finally taking MSM heat for the odious pastors he so enjoys endorsements from:

MORE CRAZY....Another day, another crazy white pastor. Yesterday it was an anti-Semitic rant from John Hagee (John McCain's view: I'm "glad to have his endorsement"); today it's an anti-Islamic rant from Rod Parsley (John McCain's view: Parsley is "a moral compass"). Neither of these is new: Hagee's rant was from the late 1990s and Parsley's rant has been making the rounds of the internet (thanks to Brave New Films) for a couple of weeks. Today, Parsley's sermon, which has the advantage of being available in nice, high-quality video, is finally being aired for a wider audience by ABC News.

I think we're in for some serious entertainment. There's a rumor McCain's already been forced to reject Hagee's endorsement: I have a feeling Parsley's not going to be garnishing this campaign much longer either. Take that! HA!

Speaking of people who have lost support, Carpetbagger's finally had it with Hillary Clinton's antics and has taken the Mr. Nice Guy gloves off:

Just yesterday, I defended Hillary Clinton and her rationale for prolonging the Democratic nominating fight. Given that her own campaign chairman recently said the race would wrap up in early June, and Clinton seemed to honoring a relative cease-fire, there was no real urgency
about her withdrawing.

As Jay Jacobs, a New York superdelegate and top fundraiser for Clinton, told the NYT, “I think in the end, when South Dakota and Montana go last and have their final result, she will sit back and see whether a win can be achieved or not — and if not, she is a class act and will do the class thing and get on board with the Democratic ticket.”

By last night, Clinton had made my defense of her efforts look rather foolish. In fact, looking back, I’ve defended Clinton, more than once, when people said she was putting her own interests above those of the party and the nation.

But after seeing her tactics yesterday, I’m done defending Hillary Clinton.

A day after Senator Barack Obama gathered a majority of pledged delegates in the Democratic presidential nominating contest, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton defiantly sent out new signals Wednesday that she might take her fight for the nomination all the way to the party’s convention in August.

Mrs. Clinton stumped across South Florida, scene of the 2000 election debacle, pressing her case for including delegates from Florida and Michigan in the final delegate tally. On the trail and in interviews, she raised a new battle cry of determination, likening her struggle for these delegates to the nation’s historic struggles to free the slaves and grant women the right to vote.

I’m 35, and have been following politics for quite a while, and I’ve never been so disappointed with a politician I’ve admired and respected. Yesterday’s tactics weren’t just wrong, they were offensive. For that matter, they seem to be part of a deliberate strategy to tear Democrats apart and ensure a defeat in November.

For several weeks, I’ve appreciated the fact that Clinton considers herself the superior candidate, and has kept her campaign going in the hopes, from her perspective, of saving the party from itself. But after yesterday, it’s become impossible for me to consider Clinton’s intentions honorable. Her conduct is not that of a leader.

What’s so striking is the shamelessness of her reversal(s). When Florida and Michigan broke party rules and were punished by the DNC, Clinton not only supported the decision, she honored it and spoke publicly about those votes not counting. One of her own top strategists was responsible for making the decision in the first place. Now, Clinton is saying, “Never mind what I said and did before.”

Clinton and her campaign insisted that this was a race for delegates, as per party rules. Now, Clinton is saying, “Never mind what I said and did before.” Clinton and her campaign said the finish line was 2,025. Now, Clinton is saying, “Never mind what I said and did before.”

Instead of trying to help bring the party together — Election Day is 24 weeks away — Clinton went to Florida to argue that if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, his nomination will be illegitimate. And if the DNC plays by the rules Clinton used to support, it’s guilty of vote-suppression — comparable to slavery, Jim Crow, and Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe.

Believe it or not, this is the short version. If you feel like seeing Hillary thoroughly reamed in the woodshed, head on over to Carpetbagger's place and watch the paddling.

There's nothing quite like the anger of someone who once respected you getting thoroughly disillusioned by your fuckwittery and taking you to task for it. I should know. I once had respect for the Clinton's myself. No more. I haven't unloaded my guns on the beast because I'm afraid I'll end up having to hold my nose and vote for her, but you know what? The restraints are off.

When you've pissed off a sweet soul like Steve Benen at the Carpetbagger Report, Hillary, you've gone a long way past too fucking far.

I Could Work for the FBI!

This admission is going to slaughter my extreme-left-wing creds, but.... I wanted to become an FBI agent at one point in my life. I didn't pursue it for a variety of reasons: their physical training program is guaranteed to murder an underweight, asthmatic chainsmoker, it's usually a day job, I'd need an expensive degree to make it as a behavioral profiler, long work weeks would kill free time to write, the political bullshit one has to swallow is astounding, etc. But I still have a soft spot, something in me that goes squishy with pride when I read about the FBI catching the bad guys and Doing the Right Thing.

And they do some awesome good things.

But it's a schizophrenic bureaucracy, and whilst one Division is doing awesomely good things, another Division is acting the part of laughable fuckwits with too much power and really stupid ideas. It's too bad that's the Division I could actually work for:

Carroll, who requested that his real name not be used, showed up early and waited anxiously for Swanson’s arrival. Ten minutes later, he says, a casually dressed Swanson showed up, flanked by a woman whom he introduced as FBI Special Agent Maureen E. Mazzola. For the next 20 minutes, Mazzola would do most of the talking.

“She told me that I had the perfect ‘look,’” recalls Carroll. “And that I had the perfect personality—they kept saying I was friendly and personable—for what they were looking for.”

What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant—someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement. The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division’s website, is to “investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines.”

The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force wants to investigate vegan fucking potlucks.

What tells me they've gone right round the bend and straight into George W. Bush land, where the terrorahrists are everywhere, spying on leftist Americans is an essential part of the War on Terrorah, and there's ponies in Iraq?

Carroll got offered the job by virture of his hippie good looks and having gotten busted spray-painting a campus elevator, but he's an amateur compared to me. All I'm missing from my resume is some criminal mischief. Vegan potlucks? Oh, this animal muncher does a killer vegan stirfry. I can talk the talk, walk the walk, and cook the tofu, my darlings, oh, yes. I even owned a copy of the Compassionate Cook.

That's what I get for living with a vegan for three years. All I need to do now is engage in some unauthorized interior decorating, and I could live my dream.

By infiltrating vegan fucking potlucks. Because we all know how dangerous those veggie killers are.

Unfortunately, this isn't even a sign of how pervasive the Bush Administration's police state has become, because the FBI has always had a penchant for doing boneheaded shit like this. What else can you expect from an agency stamped with the personality of a paranoid psychopath who looked pretty in pink? They've always had a problem comprehending the fine line between constitutionally protected political dissent and groups that pose a serious threat to American civilization as we know it. Most of the Bureau knows and loves the Constitution, but there are some divisions that don't seem to have ever read a copy. They seem to dump all the paranoid wingnuts into one section and let them amuse themselves trying to stir hippies into doing something slightly more criminal than dressing badly and chanting peace slogans at government officials.

Pathetic fixation they have, really. And that's why this is making me laugh rather than scream. The FBI is too fucking inept at domestic political intimidation to really pose a serious threat. They always let slip what they're doing, end up spectacularly embarrassed, and get their hands slapped by their Justice Department masters... awshit.

Oh, fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck.

The Justice Department's still in the hands of Bush's assclown brigade, isn't it?

Vegans: be afraid. Be very afraid.

The Washington Post Attempts to Make Up for Kathleen Parker

A few days after letting Kathleen Parker drool homophobic bullshit all over their editorial page, the Washington Post attempts to redeem the place with an exposé of what Academic Freedom Bills are really all about:

What's insidious about these measures is that at first blush they appear so harmless. Isn't everyone in favor of academic freedom? What's so wrong about allowing all sides of an issue to be heard? Why should teachers be punished for speaking their minds? Those arguments might have standing if there were any doubt about the reality of evolution, but, as an official with the National Academy of Sciences told the Wall Street Journal, "There's no controversy." Consider, also, that there really is no such thing as academic freedom in elementary and secondary education. A teacher can't deviate from the accepted curriculum to present alternative lesson plans or to offer his or her own notions. The Florida teachers association opposed the bills, though ostensibly they are meant to benefit educators. Clearly, the strategy is to devise an end run around legal decisions -- going all the way to the Supreme Court -- that restrict the teaching of creationism in public classrooms.

All right. For such clear-eyed reporting on the sneaky neo-Creationist efforts to smuggle their pious non-science back into science class, thee shall have a cookie. And you're allowed to sleep on the couch. But I'm warning you, Washington Post: one more right-wing fucktard editorial, and it's right back to the doghouse without supper for you.

We Were Wrong About Expelled

It's soooo not about the evils of evolution:

Lots of people have reviewed Expelled. To some the movie has served to confirm their persecution complexes; to others the movie has demonstrated the utter dishonesty of the anti-evolution movement. But here comes Thomas Robb, national director of the KKK (and a Baptist minister), with a thoroughly unique take on the movie: it was made to encourage race mixing. No, I'm not making that up. He begins by pointing out that Ben Stein is a Jew and that he has "set a trap":

Is the person who puts out the cheese, carrot etc a friend or are these things being set out to entice and to trap a victim. So Ben Stein has set a trap in the form of a movie to catch Christians and destroy their resistance to race-mixing.

Wow, Mark Mathis et al were really clever buggers. They so had us fooled! Good thing we have Thomas Robb, the original Sharp Tack, to reveal the true aim of Expelled! [/sarcasm]

You've gotta go read the whole post over at Dispatches. It's hysterical.

Not only were we wrong about Expelled being about icky Darwinism and stuff, we've been wrong about ID all this time, too. Wow. Here we thought it was a tarted-up version of creationism, and Expelled was out there to topple Big Science and stuff, but it's really something else entirely:

Now it seems that it may be politics. According to the attorney representing the producers of Expelled in the Yoko Ono suit seeking to remove John Lennon's song "Imagine" from the film:

[Anthony T. Falzone] said an adverse ruling by [U.S. District Judge Sidney] Stein would mean "you have muzzled the speech of my clients" because they would have to replace the song with other images, losing the chance to make the issue important enough that it could even influence the U.S. presidential campaign.

"If you issue that injunction, you trample on these free speech rights and you put a muzzle on them and you do it in a way that stops them from speaking on this political issue leading
up to the election," Falzone said.

It's science! No, wait, it's religion! No, wait, it's about academic freedom! No, wait, it's a political issue! No, wait, it's... what'll it be next? Here's a thought: let's morph it into mime!

I think my favorite part of Falzone's snivelling was the idea that losing 25 seconds of a pilfered song would mean the difference between Expelled dying a quiet death and Expelled becoming the vehicle propelling ID front and center in the presidential campaign. Who'da thunk John Lennon had such power?

In the meantime, the injunction goes on, and PZ's out of luck:

Apparently, a New York judge has upheld the injunction against the movie, so there will be no new showings, and DVD rights are in limbo.

The movie is dead anyway, so it doesn't seem to be a significant decision. It's not as if theater distributors are lined up clamoring for more copies of this stinker. Although, to be honest, I would like the rights cleared up, because the only way I'm ever going to see it is if I can rent the DVD from my local store.

Does anyone else get the sense that this movie's only got life left in it because there's still a few drops of entertainment at its expense left to be squeezed?

Carnival Business #3

Postdated for the world to see.

My darlings, the time has come. The Carnival of the Elitist Bastards is going live on Saturday, May 31st. Spread the word. It's time to do this thing.

Get your submissions in! Email 'em to elitistbastardscarnival@gmail.com by the end of day Friday, May 30th. We're good. We're ready. The unprepared such as myself have almost two weeks. It can, shall and will be done - May 31st.

Also, as promised, we Elitist Bastards have a happy home.

There's no furniture. No curtains, no rugs, no dishes, no plants, and no pictures on the walls. That's why we're throwing a housewarming party.

That's right. Dana's not going to do all the decorating herself, oh, fuck no. Dana's got 64,000 things to do, and doesn't want to be the Elitist Bastard overlord imposing her decorating sense upon the masses of Elitist Bastardry, and moreover knows that those of you who've been participating so far have an abundance of good taste. So get to it. Email me at elitistbastardscarnival@gmail.com for your very own keys, then go have your way with the header, footer, sidebar, etc. Just make sure that if someone came in and decorated before, you check with them before you modify that particular bit o' real estate. There's a post set up for communicating ideas, etc.

Right now, the Header's in serious need of improvement - if it's still just plain Times New Roman with a white background, you know what to do. Those of you with badges, get 'em posted somewhere in the sidebar. Post an entry, add some links, play with HTML, do whatever you like.

Right? Right.

Enjoy.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

From the department of No Fucking Surprises, Dan Froomkin reports:

Top White House officials waved off early warnings from the FBI that interrogation tactics being used on detainees might be illegal, according to a new report from the Justice Department's inspector general.

The report states that FBI personnel started notifying headquarters as early as 2002 that other government employees were using abusive tactics -- including sexual humiliation, prolonged hand-to-foot shackling and exposure to extreme temperatures -- on detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. Justice officials conveyed some of these concerns in
at least one White House meeting in 2003, but the White House apparently ignored them. A year later, the revelation of similar abuses at Abu Ghraib became a source of everlasting shame for American citizens, a serious blow to the United States's moral authority, and a potent rallying cry for the nation's enemies.

That the White House ignored the FBI's red flags is not really surprising, considering that as of Spring 2002, top Bush aides including Vice President Cheney were reportedly micromanaging the torture of terrorist suspects from the White House basement. In other words, those aides -- depending in large part on secret and since-withdrawn memos from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel for cover -- intentionally and specifically approved some of the tactics that alarmed the FBI.

I wish I lived in an age where this would be a shocking revelation rather than Yet Another Way The Bush Administration Proves Its Total Disregard For Law and Decency. But alas, the fact these assclowns would not only ignore FBI warnings about illegalities, but gleefully micromanage torture tactics, surprises me not at all.

This is a nice thought, though:

But knowing that the nation's top law-enforcement officials put senior White House aides on notice that the interrogation tactics they had approved were potentially illegal adds a key element to the portrait of complicity in what could someday be prosecuted as violations of U.S. torture statutes or even war crimes.

To quote one of my favorite comic book characters: "Heh heh heh... bueno."

I hope they reserve space in whatever sad, cold prison they're going to for Pastor John Hagee, who should be locked up with the rest of the obnoxious loons for being an absolute ass:

Last week, John Hagee, a televangelist sought out by John McCain for political support, expressed regret to Catholics for his attacks on the Roman Catholic Church (he’s called the church, among other things, “the great whore” and “a false cult system”). This week, it looks like it’s time for yet another apology.

John Hagee, the controversial evangelical leader and endorser of Sen. John McCain, argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis had operated on God’s behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. According to the Reverend, Adolph Hitler was a “hunter,” sent by God, who was tasked with expediting God’s will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel.

Seriously. He really did make the argument.

And the fact that McCain hasn't kicked this outrageous fucker to the curb doesn't speak well about his moral authority at all. It's one thing for people to hold odious, ridiculous views: our country allows that. But to make this idiot and the dumbshits who swallow his poison into a respected political player, that's just disgusting.

Things like this make me so very glad to be an atheist. I don't have to worry that this loon might be correct about God's purposes. Any God who would send some vicious little shit to kill 6 million of His chosen people to give the survivors a hint to move is not, in my not-so-humble opinion, a figure worthy of worship. Any lunatic who finds such a god worthy of praise and worship needs his head examined. And any politician who wants such a lunatic's endorsement needs to be kicked right off the nation's political stage.

Moving on. You recall how there's been this huge hoo-ha over Barak Obama's "appeasement" issues? He mentions a willingness to sit down and hammer out solutions with states like Iran and Syria, and the entire right wing goes into a frothing fit. You can just imagine what they'd do to someone who not only talked about talking, but is actually going to sit down and talk with one of those nasty "state sponsors of terror," right? They'd have a hairy cow with fangs. They'd be raging. They'd be denouncing the talkers as cowardly little appeasers, wouldn't they?

Well...

After eight years of stalemate and periodic tension, Israel and Syria announced Wednesday that they have launched “serious and continuous” indirect peace talks aimed at ending one of the region’s longest-running disputes.

In identical statements issued from Damascus and Jerusalem, the rival neighbors said that they are taking part in indirect negotiations with Turkish diplomats serving as mediators.

“The two sides stated their intention to conduct these talks in good faith and with an open mind,” according to the statement. “They decided to pursue the dialogue between them in a serious and continuous way, in order to achieve the goal of comprehensive peace.”

If it's Israel doing the appeasing...

A U.S. official in Washington praised the talks. “I think Turkey played a good and useful role in this regard,” senior State Department official David Welch said of the talks, according to the Reuters news agency. “Israel and Turkey have apprised us in the past of these discussions and kept us
informed.”

...that's like totally different. Of course. QED.

How long before we're rid of these two-faced pieces of shit, again?

Self-Righteous Exclusionary Bullshit

Progressive Conservative deserves a more coherent response than I'm capable of just now. I'll leave it up to you lot to go read his comment and respond accordingly: my thoughts will follow after Aunty Flow has stopped creating her usual havoc. I'm just pleased to have a dissenting view round the place, albeit one that contains elements that thoroughly piss me off. I'm sure the feeling's mutual. The point is that he's brought some ideas to the table that bear debating.

In my sorry state, however, all I can do at the moment is riff on a theme he brought to mind: self-righteous exclusionary bullshit.

This is by no means a purely Christian trait. It's a human one. I read quite a lot of history, and many common themes run through it. Self-righteous exclusionary bullshit is a major one. Call it tribalism, nationalism, or religion, it all comes down to one group of fuckers thinking they're better than all the other fuckers to such an extent that they get obnoxiously overprotective of their petrified views. Nobody else could possibly be as perfect as they are, so nobody else's point of view means jack shit. And if that's all it was, it would just be annoying, but the self-righteous exclusionary fuckers then go on to paint everyone else's views as evil.

Every human group and enterprise suffers from variations of the disease. I'm fully aware of that. The very definition of human could be "a jackass who thinks they're right and everyone else is wrong." It's just a matter of degree. Some of us jackasses pause a moment to ask, "Am I right?" before gleefully proclaiming everyone else wrong. Some of us enjoy being proved wrong, or at least handle it gracefully and adjust accordingly. The jackasses I'm talking about not only refuse to admit the possibility they could be wrong, they won't accept proof when they are and instead of adjusting themselves, they try to adjust everyone else by force of dogma or arms rather than evidence and persuasion.

The self-righteous exclusionary fuckers can't budge aside to accomodate differing views. Most of the folks I hang about with these days may hold views diametrically opposed to mine, but we put more emphasis on the points of agreement, allow the apostasy, and would never, ever, dismiss or exclude each other on the basis of a few disagreements. Not so the self-righteous exclusionary fuckers.

For example:

Having been drawn to Senator Obama’s remarkable “love thy neighbor” style of campaigning, his express aim to transcend partisan divide, and specifically, his appreciation for faith ("secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square"), I did not expect to be clobbered by co-religionists.

On the blogs, I have been declared “self-excommunicated,” and recently at a Mass before a dinner speech to Catholic business leaders, a very angry college chaplain excoriated my Obama-heresy from the pulpit at length and then denied my receipt of communion.

You heard that right. Doug Kmiec, devout Catholic, was told he couldn't cannibalize Jesus because he backed the wrong candidate.

Granted, the chaplin's reaction was extreme, and I doubt many Catholic priests would deny some poor bastard communion just because he's voting for Barak Obama, but it's a perfect illustration of what I'm talking about. There's no room for dissent in that particular chaplin's flock. He's a self-righteous exclusionary fucker practicing self-righteous exclusionary bullshit.

So was the fatwa against Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses. Modern fundamentalist Islam has raised the art of self-righteous exclusionary bullshit to a pinnacle not achieved since the Middle Ages. Our very own fundies can only aspire to that kind of bullshit. Nothing would make them happier than a theocracy - or so they think. (Just wait until the wrong denomination gets their hands on the reins, you silly shits. You'll be begging for the good ol' days of separation of church and state.)

I gave up Christianity because of this crap. Other religions, including other branches of the Christian (dysfunctional) family tree, seemed to have some pretty nifty ideas, but God forbid you bring them up. Church X had it right and Churches Y, Z and T had it completely wrong, and as for those other so-called religions, they're all tools of Satan. It got so bad among the youth group that the youth pastor devoted an entire night to slamming M.C. Hammer - that's Christian Minister M.C. Hammer - for having a dude in a red devil costume in one of his videos.

My Christmas cards in the following years were in direct protest of this trend. They had a cutsey little painting of people of multiple colors and faiths gathered round, and a quote that said, "God created so many different kinds of people - why would He allow only one way to worship Him?"

Good question, Rocko.

America's self-righteous exclusionary bullshit gets up my nose just as badly. America goes through these petulant phases where the rest of the world has absolutely nothing to contribute and America is the only way. American fashion, American democracy, American entertainment, American ad nauseum - and ignore the fact that other democracies do a better job taking care of their people, other countries produce entertaining entertainment, other countries are leading the way in fashion. You remember that whole flap over Japan and trade back in the nineties? America was so perfect she couldn't possibly be losing market share because America's no longer top dog in manufacturing. Oh, hell, no. Those evil Japs were up to all kinds of shennanigans. Total conspiracy to keep America down. Or some such crap. The problem with self-righteous exclusionary bullshit is that it can't admit reality. It sure as fuck doesn't allow for course corrections.

Thankfully, we didn't have a self-righteous exclusionary fucker in office at the time, or we might have seen some extremely stupid antics. Like a second invasion of Japan.

The self-righteous exclusionary fuckers in power right now have taken the bullshit to a whole new extreme. America used to admit that, although she was perfect in every way and couldn't possibly be made better by other countries' input, treaties like the Geneva Conventions weren't beneath her. She could abide by them without undue difficulty. Then the fuckwits took over, and decided that since America was perfect in every way, nothing she did could possibly be wrong, so what the Geneva Conventions quaintly called "torture" was just "enhanced interrogation" and absolutely fine as long as it's America or her proxies doing it. The self-righteous exclusionary principle went into overdrive, excluding every opposing view.

You see how that weakens a country, right? Weakens a country, a faith, a person.

Self-righteous exclusionary bullshit serves no one in the end. All of these self-righteous exclusionary fuckers playing holier-than-thou lose an opportunity to adapt, grow stronger, savor a world that's full of variety and incident and damned interesting stuff. And they make it harder for folks like myself, who try to avoid being completely self-righteous exclusionary fuckers, to include them. You see, the problem with a self-righteous exclusionary fucker is that if you give a millimeter, they take ten thousand miles and run you out of the country in the bargain.

That complicates matters.

What I'd like to see is a world of self-righteous inclusionary bullshit. Humans are always going to be self-righteous and full of bullshit, but the world's a banquet, and I'm damned tired of the fuckers who insist that only certain items at the buffet can be enjoyed.

Isn't That Up to the Iranians?

If I didn't care about the future of my country, I'd vote for McCain just for the entertainment value. He's a bottomless well of inanity.

Case in point: his recent statements on Iran.

Time Magazine's Joe Klein, who has been taken to the woodshed more than once by Glenn Greenwald, indulged in some journalism that should earn him a cookie. He's indulged in some political snark that should earn him a trip to Disneyland. Go read the column for the snark: we're dealing only in the business here:

On Friday, I promised to check into whether Obama had ever said that he would negotiate--specifically, by name--with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Indeed, according to the crack Time Magazine research department and the Obama campaign, he never has. He did say that he would negotiate with the Iranian leadership--but, on matters of foreign policy and Iran's nuclear program, the guy in charge is the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. As of today, John McCain was still accusing Obama of wanting to negotiate with Ahmadinejad. Why doesn't the McCain campaign and other assorted Republicans ever accuse Obama of wanting to negotiate with Khamenei? Well, because Khamenei isn't quite the flagrant anti-Semite Ahmadinejad is...and, as we keep hearing, Obama has a Jewish
problem.

Ye gods, Joe, what's wrong with you? Fact-checking? Accurate reporting? Has Faux News taught you nothing? This looks suspiciously like reporting, something many bloggers were convinced you'd given up on.

I checked his facts, my darlings, and he is absolutely correct: Ahmadinejad isn't the totalitarian leader of Iran that he's portrayed to be by the so-wrong Right. (As to Obama never mentioning Ahmadinejad by name, I don't have a crack research department, so I'll have to take that one on trust, along with never having seen Obama quoted as saying he'd negotiate with Ahmadinejad. Don't burn me, Joe.)

John McCain, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have access to Wikipedia, and in another startling episode of actual journalism, Joe Klein - the same Joe Klein who was soundly beaten for dumbassitude by Glenn Greenwald just a week ago - caught him out:




If you're unable to watch this amazing performance by George Bush's trained monkey and wanna-be successor, you can still enjoy the fuckwittery courtesy of Carpetbagger's most excellent summary:

So, Klein, to his credit, asked McCain about this at a press conference, inquiring as to why McCain keeps accusing Obama of reaching out to Ahmadinejad when that hasn’t actually happened. When Klein noted that it’s Khamenei who is “in charge of Iranian foreign policy and also in charge of the nuclear program,” McCain said he respectfully disagreed.

After noting Ahmadinejad having spoken to the United Nations, McCain concluded, “I mean, the fact is he’s the acknowledged leader of that country and you may disagree, but that’s a uh, that’s your right to do so, but I think if you asked any average American who the leader of Iran is, I think they’d know.”

Savor this for a moment. Verily, this is the Republicon understanding of reality. Allow me to enumerate it for you:

1. Objective facts, such as who the chief executive of a country is, can be disagreed with.
2. You have a right to disagree over said facts.
3. The average American determines what reality is.
4. By average American, of course, Republicons mean the average dumbfuck who's stupid enough to parrot what the Republicons want reality to be. Average Americans who know what the actual facts are need not apply.

And this batshit insane bullshit is spouted by McCain with an air of overwhelming arrogance. You can tell he's impatient with Joe Klein and his "facts." The resemblance between McCain and Bush in that video is eerie, if you're not immediately overwhelmed by the resemblance between McCain and an evil-fucker version of Wallace.

I reiterate: if so much wasn't at stake, I'd totally vote for the assclown. At least I'd never run out of material. It's too the American President, unlike the Iranian version, actually has executive power: if it didn't, McCain's disastrous views of foreign policy, health care, the economy, and reality in general wouldn't have any impact on the well-being of the country if he were elected.

Alas, since that's manifestly not the case, I'm going to have to vote for the guy who knows what the fuck he's doing, and give entertainment value a pass.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

The Party of Ridiculous Statements strikes again:

There’s been talk for years that many Bush supporters believe he was literally chosen by God to be president. We don’t hear as much about this lately — God wanted a U.S. president who would screw up everything he touches? — but the notion of divine intervention on behalf of Republicans has been a relatively common sentiment in far-right circles for quite a while.

That said, direct comparisons between Republican candidates and Jesus are still rather unusual. (via mcjoan)

Georgia Republican Party chairwoman Sue Everhart said Saturday that the party’s presumed presidential nominee has a lot in common with Jesus Christ.

“John McCain is kind of like Jesus Christ on the cross,” Everhart said as she began the second day of the state GOP convention. “He never denounced God, either.”

Everhart was praising McCain for never denouncing the United States while he was being tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

“I’m not trying to compare John McCain to Jesus Christ, I’m looking at the pain that was there,” she said.

Right, of course. She’s not “trying to compare” McCain to Jesus, she’s just says he’s “kind of like Jesus.” The distinction is obvious. And sacrilegious.

Let's have an English lesson, shall we? If you say something's "kind of like" something else, you're comparing the two. For instance, if I said, "Oranges are kind of like apples - they're both fruit," I've just compared apples and oranges, now, haven't I? These people not only need a course in Reality 101, apparently they need remedial English lessons as well.

Speaking of the terminally reality challenged, Faux News thinks it can give lessons in journalism:

This might be one of the greatest Fox News items of all time.

Last night, Karl Rove appeared on Fox News’s “The O’Reilly Factor” to discuss President Bush’s interview with NBC and accusations that the network distorted Bush’s comments. Rove and guest host Laura Ingraham quickly attacked NBC’s ethics:

INGRAHAM: Yes, well, Karl, this follows on, you know, on
primary nights, big nights, when you’re with Brit and everybody here. Over at NBC, they have a couple of their, you know, commentator types Matthews and the like, sitting next to Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams. I mean, there is no
line between news and commentary. It’s all blurred.

Rove added that the “journalistic standards of MSNBC, which are really no standards at all,” are now “creep[ing] into NBC.”

Now, on the substance, we’ve already talked about how foolish the charges against NBC are. The report did not distort Bush’s comments, and this manufactured outrage is pretty weak tea.

But more importantly, it’s genuinely comical to hear Fox News personalities accuse anyone of blurring the line “between news and commentary.” That is, after all, the reason Fox News exists.

I mean, really. Consider the context on this one — Laura Ingraham (prominent Republican media personality) was talking to Karl Rove (prominent Republican consultant-turned-media-personality-turned-McCain-advisor) about another network maintaining weak journalistic standards on objectivity and neutrality. Not only were they wrong about the NBC report, but neither Ingraham nor Rove are journalists, neither are objective, neither are neutral, and neither have professional standards.

That's it. I'm now convinced that neocons and their slavering followers don't inhabit the reality we all know and sometimes love. Their brains look into some alternate dimension, where Faux News is journalism, comparing someone to Jesus isn't comparing them to Jesus, and what's really rich, they're going to win in November:

“This is going to be a better year for Republicans than people think,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said on Monday. “We hope to pick up seats — that’s the goal.”

If "better year for Republicans than people think" means "We won't lose everything," then yes, it might turn out well. But considering how they've fared so far this election year, all I can say is, "Good fucking luck."

Robert T. Bakker Just Got Right Up My Nose

That's right. That Robert T. Bakker. The dinosaur guy. The one who gave me all sorts of delicious ideas when I was using dinosaurs as the springboard to building a better dragon.

He got so far up my nose tonight he made my brain recoil.

Brian Switek at Laelaps interviewed Dr. Bakker several weeks ago. I didn't read the interview. I was saving it for later, like an expensive bottle of wine: I was busy with the IDiot schlock at the time, Expelled was getting ready to come out, this blog was just a wee thing that needed constant feeding, and, well, I wanted to read it when I could actually savor it.

And then I dropped by Pharyngula today, and discovered that Robert T. Bakker's been hating on atheists.

Even Dr. Bob.

Dr. Bob said this about us:

We dino-scientists have a great responsibility: our subject matter attracts kids better than any other, except rocket-science. What's the greatest enemy of science education in the U.S.?

Militant Creationism?

No way. It's the loud, strident, elitist anti-creationists. The likes of Richard Dawkins and his colleagues.

Dr. Bob, don't take this the wrong way, because I love and respect you for your palentology and all of those awesome books on dinosaurs without which I couldn't have built a better dragon, but... fuck you, okay?

Fuck you and your Pentecostal bullshit.

Not only have you jumped on the "atheists are anathema" bandwagon, but you've got to throw your lot in with anti-elitism, too? You, a learned man? You want to use "elitist" as an epithet?

You disappoint me, sir.

First off, I'm sick to death of the "atheists are the enemy" schtick. Creationists are the enemy. We atheists are allies, no matter how much you may dislike our views and our expression of said views, and, yes, our "elitism." After all, no atheist is going to come in and shut your museum down because it doesn't pander to our dogma. No atheist would kick your science out of schools, put you out of a job, and ridicule you because your knowledge of science doesn't match a fairy story told by belligerant goatherders three thousand years ago.

You know who's your enemy, Bob? Militant creationists.

Those fuckers were attacking science long before we loud, strident, anti-creationist atheists jumped into the fray. And you'd better be gods-damned glad we're drawing their fire, because you know who'd be taking the bullets if we weren't?

That's right. You.

It's bad enough we have to take rancid bullshit from the IDiot set, but then people like you, religious scientists, turn around and fire away. We take shit from every religious bastard in the universe. Forgive us for getting tetchy. Excuse us for biting at the hands raised against us rather than slinking off with our tails between our legs.

What's wrong, Bob? Because I'm sure at some level, you know it's absolute bullshit to think that if the atheists went away, the creationists would withdraw from the field, too. Do we gleeful unbelievers threaten your faith? Is that what led to this:

Dawkins performs clip-art scholarship with the History of Science and Religion, a field that over the last several decades has matured into a rigorous discipline with fine PhD programs, endowed professorships, well-funded conferences, edited volumes luxuriously printed by Oxford, Harvard, and The Johns Hopkins Press. With footnotes.

PZ already took you apart on this one, so I won't do it. I'm just saying that your whole response to the critics from your original wrong-headed comment came across as the rantings of a terrified theist. And it's pathetic.

You spend nearly the entire response frothing about "The Brights." Are you fucking kidding me? I've been pretty deeply immersed in atheist circles for a while now, and I had no idea what the fuck Brights were until John Pieret put them down in a comment on this blog. Apparently, enough pathetic souls are hanging on to the silly notion to keep you in material, but I have news for you: the vast majority of atheists aren't "Brights." So spending nearly a full article ranting about how Darwin wouldn't have been a Bright is just a joke.

And it's not like anybody gives two tugs on a dead dog's dick what Darwin was, aside from the IDiots who have a huge stake in him being an atheist. He could have been a rabid fundie, for all we care. It's his science that's important, not his religious beliefs. What, we're supposed to be ashamed to be atheists because Darwin wasn't? That kind of shit may be important to Christians, who seem to have a pathological need for arguments from authority, but we atheists don't care, aside from the chortle it gives us when religious buggers' arguments from authority go horribly awry (Einstein, anybody?).

Then there's all of the whining about how we just haven't read the science wuuuvs religion, and look, it's got footnotes! literature. You go on and on about Dawkins not having enough footnotes in The God Delusion. You veritably sneer at the fact. You go on and on with the Harvard, the PhDs, the "luxuriously printed volumes...." Who's being an elitist snob now, Dr. Bob?

I could spend a long time writing up a series of treatises for you, richly footnoted, even, explaining just how and why it is that threatened Christians look like such raving 'fraidy-cats when confronted with an atheist who's not silent about their views. I could, and if necessary will, demonstrate that creationists didn't need strident, loud atheists to try to destroy science. But you already know all of that. You just don't want to admit it. And I'm not going to take precious time away from my writing right now to whip up a scholarly treatise for a man who should know better.

Although if you come here and bitch to me, I'll do it. Don't make me pull out the Super-Deluxe Paddle with Footnotes and march you out to the woodshed, my boy.

Because, you see, in the end, this is just an annoyance and a disappointment. I expected better of you. I expect better of all Christians who have a brain that they employ for tasks other than apologetics. But I've learned that my expectations often won't be met - something about atheists seems to turn you into raving lunatics - and so I can forgive you.

I'll continue reading your books and articles and even interviews, although now I'll be wincing in anticipation, wondering when you're going to get sidetracked by that "atheists are the enemy" bullshit, and that's just sad, because you're a brilliant man and your paleontology is first-class. I mean, for fuck's sake, you were largely responsible for one of the most incredible shifts in understanding ever. I know. I was there. I got raised on the dinosaurs-are-cold-blooded gospel, and then along came a heretic, and what do you know? They weren't so cold after all.

See, Dr. Bob? See what heretics can do? We apostates and unbelievers, we shake things up, we change things, we can drive things in a whole other, entirely wonderful direction.

And I think you'll be surprised when the loud, proud atheists force Christianity to a new level. Between the fundies who want to keep the faith static, and the atheists who don't actually threaten to do away with it entirely but sure as fuck demonstrate that a happy, complete life can be lived God-free, you Christians are going to have to achieve a whole new level of faith. But you're not going to get there knocking over straw men like Brights and snivelling about how Darwin wouldn't have been one, oh, no.

You are a brilliant man. I know you are. That interview you did with Brian, aside from the silly comment about atheists being the real enemy, that was stellar stuff. That was a tour-de-force. So turn some of that savage intellect away from the whining and crying and engage us, for fuck's sake. We're not going to talk you out of God, and you're not going to talk us in, so how do we reach both the faithful and the faithless? How do we defend this wonderful science of ours from the shitheads who want to do away with it no matter how many Christians say science and religion are bosom buddies? (And you do realize that's useless, right, because in the militant creationists' eyes, you're no more a Christian than I am.)

The floor is open, Dr. Bob. Let's get a dialogue going. Let's stop sniping at each other and turn the fire on the fuckers who want to take science down.

Atheists are standing by to take your call.

What, When You Get Right Down to It, Is a Soul?

'Tis the witching hour. And I'm going to think out loud here, as input would be most welcome.

One of the things I'm always cognizant of when I'm world-building is influences. I was, alas, raised in a culture that's heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian ideas, and while I appreciate some of same, I don't want knee-jerk assumptions creeping into my fiction. I read far too much stuff wherein the author just plucked the low-hanging fruit and didn't think outside of the culture they're immersed in. You'll see some poorly-incorporated elements from "exotic" cultures thrown in any-old-how, just for the sake of appearing different. But when you pick at the surface, you realize it's all gilt.

The more I scratch at my writing, the more gilt I find. It would be nice if I could just scrape it off and rebuild from the bottom-up, but we're talking core concepts. I won't be telling the stories I want to tell if I remove all the gilt. So the problem becomes, how do I turn it solid gold?

Take souls, for example.

The major concept in my series, the foundation upon which the rest of the edifice is built, is the Ahc'ton K'san Torveneh: Souls Who Travel. For years, I just took it for granted that these folks were unique souls who get reborn over and over in service to their people.

But that's mere gilt. That's assuming a soul. Even with the little bit of gloss a physicist friend added - the concept of the soul as an other-dimensional entity with a propensity for attaching itself to biological forms in this dimension - it's still just gilt. I never really questioned it before now, but having embraced my atheism and hanging about with science buffs and proud atheists, I'm certainly questioning it now.

And the question is fascinating. What, in fact, do Atheseans mean when they refer to a "soul"?

I can tell you straight up they don't mean anything religious. The soul isn't something as solid as a body, and you can't extract a soul from a body and study it (that I know of - who knows what these buggers will get up to as I explore this question?). But it has a physical reality. It has nothing to do with religion, any more than electricity does. Because it's so hard to grasp, directly perceive, it's easy to put it down to something spiritual, but it's a really real thing with an objective existence.

The Ahc'ton are special because their souls are reborn with identity intact. That's the whole point of being Ahc'ton: to remember who you were, carry all of the accumulated knowledge of lifetimes with you and put it to good use in new lives among alien species. No other souls travel this way. The soul as a distinct identity ceases to exist once a person dies. If we're talking an other-dimensional entity, it basically loses the "I" it became when it was attached to the physical body. There's no eternal life, no consciousness beyond death - except for the Ahc'ton.

So that's the challenge of the week. I have to go beyond my assumptions, peel off the gilt, and really get into the meat of this thing. If the soul is not something religious or spiritual, what is it? Why does it have this propensity for attaching to a brain? How did the Ahc'ton's souls end up being discrete entitities with an identity they've carried for millennia, when everybody else's soul goes back to being an undifferentiated something?

It would be so much easier if I could just take the religious view and be done with it, but it's so much more fun to struggle with the concept of something material, objective, and so far beyond our current science that it just looks like a miracle.

There ye go. Speculate at will, my wise and wonderful darlings.

Savor this Image, and Then Make It So

(Photoshop image courtesy of d. abides via Needlenose)

I got a delight in my inbox today from the American Freedom Campaign:

Tell Congress: Arrest Karl Rove

More than seven years too late, it appears as if a growing number of congresspersons are realizing that they are part of a co-equal branch of government. After allowing their institution to be disrespected and at times ignored by the executive branch, top officials in Congress are finally expressing a willingness to use their full power under the Constitution to rein in an out-of-control administration.

The current target: Karl Rove.

Rove has been asked by the House Judiciary Committee to testify about his involvement in the Justice Department’s prosecution and imprisonment of former Alabama Governor Don Siegleman. As Rove has so far refused to testify voluntarily, members of Congress have started sending signals that they are prepared to go to the mattresses over this.

My darlings, few things would make me happier than to see Karl Rove's pudgy little arse in jail.

Let's make it so.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

My goodness me. Are Hillary's supporters really so desperate they're turning to bribery these days?

One of Sen. Hillary Clinton's top financial supporters offered $1 million to the Young Democrats of America during a phone conversation in which he also pressed for the organization's two uncommitted superdelegates to endorse the New York Democrat, a high-ranking official with YDA told The Huffington Post.

Haim Saban, the billionaire entertainment magnate and longtime Clinton supporter, denied the allegation. But four independent sources said that just before the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, Saban called YDA President David Hardt and offered what was perceived as a lucrative proposal: $1 million would be made available for the group if Hardt and the organization's other uncommitted superdelegate backed Clinton.

Is it just me, or is the Clinton campaign's determination to win the White House by hook or by crook pathological by now? I think we've gone beyond pathetic here.

Speaking of pathological, McCain's desire to bomb Iran into oblivion seems to be growing and growing and....

...John McCain spoke in Chicago this morning, and went after Obama for saying the potential threat posed by Iran is “tiny” compared to the USSR during the Cold War.

McCain said, “Obviously, Iran isn’t a superpower and doesn’t possess the military power the Soviet Union had. But that does not mean that the threat posed by Iran is insignificant.” McCain went on to argue that Iran is playing a destructive role in Iraq and is “intent on acquiring nuclear weapons.” McCain concluded, “They might not be a superpower, but the threat the government of Iran poses is anything but ‘tiny.’”

Does McCain really want to debate this?

First, Obama didn’t say the possible Iranian threat is “tiny.” He said it’s “tiny” when compared to the Soviet Union. As Josh Marshall explained, Russia was, after all, “the world’s greatest land military power, with a massive strategic nuclear capacity that carried on a multi-decade ideological struggle” with the United States. McCain thinks it reflects poor “judgment” to recognize the obvious difference between a nuclear superpower and Iran?

Second, there’s a bit of a contradiction here. Over the weekend, the McCain campaign said Obama was giving Iran too much credit, offering Iran “the status of a super power akin to the Soviets.” Today, the McCain campaign said Obama isn’t giving Iran enough credit. These guys should probably coordinate talking points among themselves before going on the attack.

And finally, on the substance, Obama is so obviously right about Iran it’s hard to believe this discussion is actually happening. As Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria explained a few months
ago: “Iran has an economy the size of Finland’s and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century…. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?”

Some people, like Bill Kristol, think this incoherent idiot is fit to be our next President. I say the Republicon party would be better off throwing their support to a stunted turnip. The turnip would at least have the sense to not contradict itself while making ridiculous claims in support of a "kill 'em all" philosophy of foreign policy.

I mean, let's face facts, here: would we rather have a vegetable or an Underpants Gnome for President?

Yesterday afternoon, I was chatting with my friend Bill Simmon, discussing the week that was. I mentioned John McCain’s speech on Iraq earlier in the week, in which the senator talked about how great Iraq will look in 2013, at the end of what he hopes would be his first term as
president.

Borrowing a page from one of Yglesias’ commenters, I presented McCain’s plan this way:

Step 1: Get elected.
Step 2: (awkward silence)
Step 3: Troops come home, world marvels at the stable democracy in Iraq

McCain, regrettably, has no idea what to do about Step 2. He knows what he wants to accomplish, but he can’t explain how he’d go about getting there. We’re just supposed to take a leap of faith, assuming he’d come up with a policy someday and it’ll all work out in the end.

After I told Bill about this, he immediately said, “Profit!” I hadn’t the foggiest idea what he was talking about.

Apparently, there was a 1998 episode of “South Park” in which Underpants Gnomes invade people’s homes to steal their underwear. They have a three-part business plan:

Step 1: Collect underpants
Step 2: (awkward silence)
Step 3: Profit!

The similarity between the Underpants Gnomes’ business plan and McCain’s Iraq policy is, of course, striking.

It is, indeed, and we have our answer. This country has already had an assclown extraordinaire: we don't need to follow up with four years of Captain Underpants. We sure as fuck don't need Captain Desperation and her sidekick Boy Bribery, either.

It's a damned good thing we have Obama, or I'd have no hope for this country's future at all.

Mitt Romney Gets Something Right - And So Much More Wrong

As I was spelunking the internets tonight during dinner (chicken tikka masala, if you were wondering, purchased from the same Indian restaurant Bill Gates enjoys, mmm), I came across this little gem on the Bad Idea Blog: a little speech by Mitt Romney entitled "Freedom Requires Religion." (.pdf)

No need to reach for the airsick bag. It's not as odious as you might think, given the title.

For one thing, Romney's rethought a few things since his wanna-be Kennedy speech about religion and decided that atheists deserve freedom, too:

Several commentators, for instance, argued that I had failed to sufficiently acknowledge the contributions that had been made by
atheists. At first, I brushed this off – after all this was a speech about
faith in America, not non-faith in America. Besides, I had not enumerated the contributions of believers – why should non-believers get special treatment?

But upon reflection, I realized that while I could defend their absence from my address, I had missed an opportunity…an opportunity to clearly assert the following: non-believers have just as great a stake as believers in defending religious liberty.

If a society takes it upon itself to prescribe and proscribe certain streams of belief – to prohibit certain less-favored strains of conscience – it may be the non-believer who is among the first to be condemned. A coercive monopoly of belief threatens everyone, whether we are talking about those who search the philosophies of men or follow the words of God.

We are all in this together. Religious liberty and liberality of thought flow from the common conviction that it is freedom, not
coercion, that exalts the individual just as it raises up the nation.

I might be more inclined than your typical atheist to feel he really means it for one reason: our Mormon neighbors used to let us drink beer.

Page, Arizona is one of the most religious places I've ever lived, and the bulk of its religious folk are Mormon. I find the religion ridiculous and it's missionaries pathetic, but I can't deny that my Mormon neighbors were decent bloody people. We hadn't had neighbors so kindly since living among the mostly-godless in Flagstaff. We threw block parties, at which my dad drank beer and they drank soda (reformed LDS, the branch of it that can get away with caffeine), and they never cared that my dad and I were heathens. Aside from the occasional missionary bleating at my door, I never heard much about religion out of the Mormons. Probably because they have missionaries for that.

One of my friends did give me the Book of Mormon once because she wanted me to understand her faith better. I tossed it on the couch and didn't give it another thought until my big calico cat came in, looked at it, puffed up and hissed, walked waaaay way around it, and sat down staring me in the eye with a "What are you going to do about that evil thing?" look on her face. I trust my cats. I got rid of the book.

Anyway. Aside from my old calico thinking that the Book of Mormon was evil incarnate, Mormons for all their foibles have, on the whole, been less obnoxious than the more enthusiastic sects of Christianity, such as those energetically attempting to crowbar IDiocy into the nation's schools. And so it doesn't surprise me that Mitt Romney came down on the side of freedom from belief as well. The more churchy Mormons I knew in Page were snooty as hell and much holier-than-thou, and there are some branches of the Mormon tree that are, shall we say, too fucking twisted to make good lumber, but Mitt reminds me of those neighbors who had absolutely no problem with people being different than them, and didn't think it would sully their perfection to be seen in the presence of people who drank beer and said "Fuck" a lot.

Like my old neighbors, Mitt proved he has a rational brain, employs it, and thus we can have a basis for conversation. He said what many of the Christians who work cheek-by-jowl with such apostates as the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the ACLU say: there's a place for everyone at this table, and religious freedom benefits us all.

It's in the next bit of the speech, answering further criticisms of his previous speech, where he fucks up.

The more controversial assertion, however, was that freedom requires religion.

One critic dismissed this idea by pointing out that there are countries in Europe which have become godless but nevertheless remain democratic. But I was not speaking about Europe’s recent experiments in state secularism, I was speaking about America and the larger family of
free nations; and I was not speaking about a moment of time, but rather about a span of history. Would America and the freedom she inaugurated here and across the world survive – over centuries – if we were to abandon our faith in God?

I don’t believe so.

Oh, Mitt. Mitt. Where oh where did that brain go? Rotted out by religion, I see.

If Europe survived their loss of faith, and saw freedom and democracy flourish, America would survive just as well, you silly shit.

He yawps on for a good several paragraphs about all of the buggers who've yawped about the importance of religion and freedom before. I grant you, some views of religion were important to freedom - then. Back when everybody was a God-botherer and kings ruled by Divine Right, of course freedom had to be defended by saying rights were given to humans by God. Only way to trump the king, wasn't it?

We hardly need that kind of justification now. We have a long humanist tradition to draw on. We have reason, law, and when it comes down to defense, an atheist can shoot a gun as accurately as a Christian, and may shoot just that little bit straighter for not having an afterlife as a consolation prize. I can guarantee you that if some fanatical buggers came in guns a-blazin' to take our freedoms away, we'd all be getting armed in a hurry.

Not having God doesn't mean we don't have the conviction and the passion to champion freedom. Quite the contrary. Freedom is all the more precious when the alternative is enforced belief.

And you want to talk about bastards likely to take freedom away, I have news for ye: religion has been the enemy of freedom far more often throughout history than it's been it's bosom companion. Don't you tell me how much religion loves freedom, Mitt. It loves it only so long as it needs it.

So when you say shit like this:

Nor can we overlook the fact that people of faith have a unique appreciation for freedom. Because the practice of religion requires
freedom, liberty is especially precious to people of faith. They are willing to sacrifice much to protect it.

I say, "So the fuck what? So are we. You've proven bugger-all on the 'freedom requires religion' front, matey."

And when you conclude with some inane personal anecdote explaining why freedom requires religion, well, I'm sorry. I know it's your deeply-held conviction, but I just have to laugh my ass off:

There is one more reason why I am convinced that our freedom requires religion.

One day as a boy when a sermon at church was unusually boring, I asked my Dad to give me a dollar bill so I could look at something more interesting. On the back, there is a curious picture of a single eye surrounded by rays suspended over a pyramid—the great seal of the United States.What’s that, I asked? My father explained that it was the eye of God, and that the Founders believed that He watched over the affairs of this nation. And I later learned that the words on the
seal were from Virgil - Annuit Coeptis – “God has favored our undertakings.”

That's it? That's your compelling reason? God's eye is on the dollar bill, previous presidents prayed, and that's evidence God blesses America and freedom can't survive without religion?

Maybe in your world, boyo, but in mine, freedom actually survives a fuck of a lot better without religion. But since you were so kind as to give us a place at the table, I expect we'll return the favor. At least you've got the general idea: it's freedom, not coercion, that'll keep this nation great.

What It's All About, Really, When You Get Right Down to It

Most importantly: a profound muchos gracias to those who have volunteered to become my Wise Readers. You'll forever hold a high place in my personal pantheon. And there's still room, so by all means, volunteer if you haven't already.

Writing is one of the hardest things a person can do. It's easier when we're not going it alone. That's by way of saying, my services are available to those who need the favor returned.

It's now Night Three of my get-back-in-the-saddle attempt, and it's hard getting those feet in the stirrups. I've always been a cyclical writer - I go through months of profuse creativity, followed by many more months of wasteland. Unfortunately, the wasteland encroaches further with every passing year.

That's why I turned to blogging. On the nights when I'm singularly uninspired, when writer's block is more like writer's insurmountable obstacle, it's still simple enough to find a bit of news somewhere and riff on it. It's writing, of a sort. It's useful writing, even: I've met some incredible people, we've got the start of something brilliant in this Carnival of the Elitist Bastards, and I don't doubt I'll be doing this for the rest of my life.

But my passion and focus has always been on the fiction. Even when I'm not actively writing, I'm always thinking about it. It's pervaded every aspect of my life. Every decision I make, every book I read, every interest I have, all of them can be traced back to the series I've been working on for decades.

Bush pushed me to take my politics public, but I was studying politics long before he pissed me off, because worlds will have governments. I'm not the kind of writer who can do it half-way: I've got to understand the basis of things so that my characters live in a world that developed from their perspective, not one that's just a generic template. That's one of the reasons it's taken so long to build the universe I write in, and why the work continues. It takes a lot of effort, and you have to know a lot of things, to write this way.

Take maps. Most fantasy writers I know draw a continent or two, slap on a few mountains, squiggle a few rivers, and call it good. What do I do? I spend years studying physical geography, plate tectonics and other branches of geology, and I buy a $200 Wacom Tablet so I can draw the world in exquisite detail. Not that I've put the whole thing together yet, not by half, but I've got a really nifty island:

My darlings, meet Cariicedraas. Someday, I'll take you on the full tour. I know everything there is to know about its market district.

I think I've mentioned before that I've got Unicorns. I do. Only they're not called Unicorns: they're Drusavs, and they've got their own evolutionary history (of sorts), their own language, culture, philosophy, foibles, and history. One of the stories you Wise Readers will get to read is from their very ancient history, when two poets got into a war with each other, and ended up unifying the world. And it's bloody hard to write, because Drusav poetry is physical. Equines have a rich body language. It's taken a lot of thinking to extrapolate from what we understand of how horses think and speak, and determine what sentient, highly intelligent equines with a bloody great horn growing out of their foreheads would have done with that rudimentary language.

Besides, I'm not what you might call the world's greatest poet. Nahkorah and Disahnahle were. Pressure's on. At least, since their poetry was a physical language, I can put down any weakness in the poetry to something lost in translation. Useful, that.

Right now, the story I'm struggling with revolves around what it means for the immortal to give up immortality, subject themselves to repeated rounds of birth and death in service to their people. I'm aided in this by Buddhist philosophy and the concept of samsara, but it's not enough. I also have to figure out just what they mean by a "soul." I can tell you this: t'ain't what the theologians think.

Times like this do make me think I've bitten off more than I can chew. But the most important words ever spoken to me were these:

Do them justice.

Garrett said that to me many years ago, in the fervent tones of one who believes that it's not only right and necessary to do your characters justice, but with the supreme confidence that I can.

How can I not live up to that? Even if it takes me twenty more years to make it so.

All you Wise Readers have to do is answer one question: did I do them justice? That, in the end, is what it all comes down to. That simple, and that bloody difficult.

Guess I'd best get to masticating.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Senator Obama seems to be enjoying himself immensely:

I can’t help but enjoy the fact that Barack Obama is successfully taking attacks from George W. Bush and John McCain, and turning them into a positive. He’s effectively taking GOP talking points, and throwing them back in their face.

Sen. Barack Obama went one step further today in his pushback against presumptive GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain and President Bush on appeasement, suggesting that both Republicans have a problem with presidents past who have engaged in direct diplomacy.

“If George Bush and John McCain have a problem with direct diplomacy, led by the president of the United States, then they can explain why they have a problem with John F. Kennedy because that’s what he did with [Soviet leader Nikita] Khrushchev, or Ronald Reagan, ’cause that’s what he did with [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev, or Richard Nixon ’cause that’s what they did with [Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung],” Obama said in Roseburg, Ore. “That’s exactly the kind of diplomacy we need to keep us safe.”

I'm noticing a trend, here: now that the political attacks are coming from the Republicons rather than HRC, Obama's thriving. He hits back fast, hard and with dignity and truth - excellent qualities in a Democrat who expects to lead the nation. Whereas McCain is playing the typical Republicon snivelling games:

The McCain campaign responded:

“Offering the current Iranian regime an unconditional summit and the status of a super power akin to the Soviets, as Barack Obama has suggested, shows incredibly weak judgment and a dangerous lack of experience,” McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds said.

My goodness, this sure is dumb. First, if McCain is troubled by the notion of equating Iran with the USSR, why hasn’t he said anything while prominent far-right Republicans have equated Iran with Nazi Germany for the last few years? Doesn’t that show “incredibly weak judgment”?

Second, Obama has not offered Iran an “unconditional summit.” That’s utterly absurd, patently dishonest, and the McCain campaign knows it. Obama has said for months that before any direct engagement with a country like Iran, there would have to be extensive diplomatic legwork completed first. Does any serious person think Obama, shortly after he’s inaugurated, is going to jump on a plane to Tehran or Pyongyang — without any advance work — just to see what happens? Does the McCain campaign really believe we’re foolish enough to buy such nonsense?

Yes. Which is why it's refreshing to see a candidate who's treating the American public like they have an actual brain to think with. Who knows - maybe it'll even prove to be true.

Think we should invite Obama to the Carnival of the Elitist Bastards? Heh. Now that would be cachet.

Meanwhile, McCain's campaign woes mount. You see, when you build a substantial portion of your campaign on anti-lobbyist rhetoric, you might kinda sorta maybe you know not staff your entire fucking campaign with lobbyists:

Following up on an earlier item, the McCain campaign has had to get rid of its convention manager, one of its national finance co-chairs, a regional campaign manager, and a senior aide, all within the last week, and all because they were lobbyists discovered to have worked for controversial clients, most notably Burma’s military junta.

That's quite the list. But wait! There's more:

But if McCain is just now starting to realize the problems associated with lobbyists with scandalous client lists running his campaign, he may have little choice but to get rid of Charles Black, McCain’s senior campaign strategist and chief political advisor. Black, in other words,
is McCain’s Karl Rove.

MoveOn.org's running a wee add punching McLame in the gut over this, which is a joy to see. And then there's the fun facts of who Black's lobbied for:

Black’s client list includes (but by no means limited to) Iraq/Iran’s Ahmad Chalabi, Mobutu Sese Seko, Ferdinand Marcos, Somalia’s Mohamed Siad Barre, Nigeria’s Ibrahim Babangida, and Angola’s would-be dictator Jonas Savimbi.

Why, it's a veritible who's-who of disgusting dictators. Remember, my darlings, McCain's dear Mr. Black likes to say it's all behind him now, but he's the fuckwit who was lobbying from the back of McCain's campaign bus earlier this year. What a maroon.

And finally, speaking of amazing fuckwits, our own dear Leader is set to make history once again:

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” this morning, Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) discussed his 21st Century GI Bill, which would dramatically expand educational benefits for returning veterans. President Bush, however, has vowed to veto the bill. Webb blasted Bush for this unprecedented action:

No president in history has vetoed a benefits bill for those who served. … The Republican party is on the block here, to clearly demonstrate that they value military service or suffer the consequences of losing the support of people who’ve served. … The president has a choice here to show how much he values military service.

Has anyone bothered to tell this assclown that it's better to make history for good reasons? I think he needs a twelve-step program to help him quit the veto pen. His addiction is really starting to affect the quality of our lives.

Incoherent Bullshit by Kathleen Parker

It's worse than I thought.

I'm gonna need a bigger woodshed. And a paddle made of tungsten carbide.

Kathleen Parker, darling of the Washington Post's op-ed page, is competing hard for the "More Inane than Bill Kristol" title. She's written two steaming piles of shit served up hot and stinking in just the past few days. If this keeps up, there won't be enough Airwick in the world to kill the stench.

Let's start with her May 14th column in the Jewish World Review, "Getting Bubba." This chunk of detritus riffs off the twisted theme of a West Virginia voter who said he'd vote for McCain over Obama because he feels more comfortable with "someone who is a full-blooded American as president." Kathleen agrees with him:

Whether Fry was referring to McCain's military service or Obama's Kenyan father isn't clear, but he may have hit upon something essential in this presidential race.

Full-bloodedness is an old coin that's gaining currency in the new American realm. Meaning: Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values, and made-in-America. Just as we once and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide.

No we don't, Kathleen. What we have is assclowns like you who think there's a patriot divide. Somehow, in your twisted, misfiring little minds, you think that there's such a thing as "full-bloodedness." According to you fuckwits, a person somehow is disqualified from being a patriot if their ancestors don't meet some undefined residency requirement. Look at your list - two of three relate to birth, not character. You know what that is? That's fucking aristocratic bullshit. As if a person is more of a patriot for what their ancestors were than what they are. As if "core values" have no meaning if a person is a first-generation American or, gods forbid, an immigrant who believes more in the American ideal than "full-blooded" Americans do. As if a person who displays patriotism is somehow a fake patriot because their ancestors came late to the party.

It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.

Some run deeper than others and therein lies the truth of Josh Fry's political sense. In a country that is rapidly changing demographically — and where new neighbors may have arrived last year, not last century — there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity.

We love to boast that we are a nation of immigrants — and we are. But there's a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice.

People aren't plants, you stupid bitch. My roots run far deeper than Obama's, and you know what? That doesn't make me more of a fucking patriot. He's far more a "full-blooded" American than I am. He's willing to sacrifice his personal safety, his privacy, and his sleep for this country because he believes in it. You know what I'm prepared to sacrifice for America? Bugger-all. I wouldn't die for my country. I'm too ashamed of the little shits like you to even consider it. The most I'm willing to do is vote for the person most likely to pull America's head out of its ass and write ass-reamings aimed at the people who'd prefer this country remain firmly head-up-rectum. Who's the patriot now, eh?

And what the fuck is this "blood equity?" You sound like you've been hanging around a few too many Grand Dragons, there. This nation was founded by immigrants, made great by immigrants and children of immigrants, and it'll stay great just so long as it keeps accepting infusions of fresh blood. Some inbred idea of what America is will kill off its greatness and leave it snivelling on the sidelines.

The "guns, God and gays" trope has haunted Democrats, and Republicans have enjoyed dusting it off when needed to rile the locals. It's an easy play.

But so-called "ordinary Americans" aren't so easily manipulated and they don't need interpreters. They can spot a poser a mile off and they have a hound's nose for snootiness. They've got no truck with people who condescend nor tolerance for that down-the-nose glance from people who don't know the things they know.

What they know is that their forefathers fought and died for an America that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years. What they sense is that their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes the new national narrative. And they fear what else might get lost in the remodeling of America.

Republicans more than Democrats seem to get this, though Hillary Clinton has figured it out. And, the truth is, Clinton's own DNA is cobbled with many of the same values that rural and small-town Americans cling to. She understands viscerally what Obama has to study.

How much more fucking incoherent can you be? You say the "guns, God and gays" trope is an easy play for Republicons, and in the next breath, "'ordinary Americans' aren't so easily manipulated." Ask Marie Antoinette on this one - you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Which is it? Easy play or loser's game?

By the way, learn some evolutionary biology, you fuckwit. Clinton's DNA isn't cobbled with American values. This who "American blood" and "American DNA" argument betrays a breathtaking ignorance of basic biology. It doesn't even work as a metaphor. It sure as fuck doesn't explain that fake drawl Hillary likes to swagger around with when she's trying to out-rural the rubes. And that viscereal understanding - you can explain it just as well by realizing that Hillary decided to imitate the Republicons when she decided to go after the xenophobic white asshole vote instead of sticking to her principles. There's no viscereal understanding there unless it's a viscereal understanding of how to manipulate people who beg to be lied to.

Some Americans do feel antipathy toward "people who aren't like them," but that antipathy isn't about racial or ethnic differences. It is not necessary to repair antipathy appropriately directed toward people who disregard the laws of the land and who dismiss the struggles that resulted in their creation.

Full-blooded Americans get this. Those who hope to lead the nation better get it soon.

What fucking "laws of the land" has Barak Obama, who's certainly the target of this shit-cannon of yours, disregarded? What struggles has he dismissed? You don't mention a fucking one, aside from his "bitter" comments, which were brutally honest and therefore anathema to the "choose your own reality" set. Is it a "law of the land" that you have to be dumber than the village idiot?

Your whole column implies that the only "full-blooded Americans" are small-town, rural Christian whites. That leaves out a fuck of a lot of Americans. There's a fuck of a lot of us in the cities. There's a fuck of a lot of us who aren't white, but whose roots go just as deep as those rural Christian whites you're so enamored of. There's a fuck of a lot of us whose roots are shallow by your standards, but whose American values put your American values to shame. America, despite what you think, is a fuck of a lot more than the xenophobic, God-bothering, anti-intellectual, easily-led, not-racist-but-you're-not-really-an-American-if-you're-not-white small town dimwits you're lionizing here.

Oh, and by the way: small town America ain't limited to your definitions, either. You're taking a tiny subset of rural America and turning it into the American ideal. It's an old chestnut that gets roasted nearly every election, and it's no more true now than it has ever been. Your misty-eyed view of America is just the dream of a fearful, tiny mind with delusions of grandeur.

I'm sure you thought that last line of yours was a brilliant Parthian shot. It wasn't. It was a spoiled, ignorant little brat stamping her foot and screaming, "You better do what I say or else!" No one's impressed except for the mental midgets who think foot-stomping tantrums are the height of learned discourse.

I can't even get to your Washington Post tripe. My arm's too damned tired. Sadly, No! and Glenn Greenwald already took you to their woodsheds over it, and all I'm going to do is administer one final swat: rampant homophobia has no place on the op-ed pages of any national newspaper, much less The Washington Post. I know you have absolutely no shame over it, and probably never will - your brain ceased functioning long ago, as evinced by your babble about bloodlines. But I'm hoping for the kind of outcry over your poisonous bullshit that will ensure the most prestigious news outlet you get published by in the future is the Worldnutdaily.

Now get the fuck out of my woodshed. I can't take another second of you.

Wanted: Wise Readers

My darlings, I'm putting out a call to any and all who love Science Fiction and Fantasy: Dana wants you to keep her honest.

Dana needs Wise Readers.

A Wise Reader is not the author's cheerleader, although there are times when it's appropriate to don a short skirt and shake pom-poms. No, the Wise Reader is the author's kick in the arse. They read the author's first drafts, rip the author a new one (constructively, mind), and force the author to actually improve the damned story. They tell the author exactly what they liked, and why, but more importantly what fell and bloodied the story's nose, and why. The author's task in all of this is to just sit there and take the punishment. Then the author drags her bruised butt back to the story and improves it.

Think of it this way: remember all those books you've read where you've wanted to give the author a piece of your mind in no uncertain terms? Well, this is your chance.

An author needs Wise Readers for another reason: deadline pressure. And I'm in serious need of some deadline pressure here.

I've been a bad, bad fiction writer, and haven't written any fiction in absolute ages. This stops now. As of yesterday, I'm taking one hour per day away from bashing teh stoopid and actually working on the stories that will rebuild my storytelling muscles. Got to build my stamina for that Magnum Opus that's been demanding to be written since 2006, not to mention the Magnum Opi that have been patiently queued up since I was knee-high to a short beaver. And, like any athelete, I shall need coaches, personal trainers, and people forcing me to push through the pain.

If you want to be one of those mentioned on the Acknowledgements page as "Couldn't have done this without...," all you have to do is drop me a quick note at dhunterauthor at yahoo dot com. By August, you will be getting a story in your inbox to Wisely Read.

Muchos gracias in advance.

Sleep, Helen, Sleep

This was the scene 28 years ago today, when Mount St. Helens decided to show Washington State just who's boss.

My initial reaction upon hearing the news that a volcano had exploded within the continental United States was, "No, way!" I was five. For some reason, my five year old brain thought volcanoes happened to other countries.

My second reaction was to draw St. Helens a get well card. Just look at her. Tell me she doesn't look like that hurt like hell.

I've been fascinated by her ever since. I read books, articles, survivors' stories. I discovered that a pyroclastic flow is no picnic. I learned about lateral blasts, which led to a bad moment once at the San Francisco Peaks.

See that big gouge? Yup. The Peaks used to be a peak. Lateral blast, baby, yeah! At one point, Flagstaff, Arizona looked a damned lot like southwestern Washington State circa May 18th, 1980. This could explain why I had a bit of a heart attack when hiking on the Peaks once, and our guide announced "We're standing in the center of a caldera" whilst I was admiring the pretty bowl-shaped valley we'd wandered into.

You never want to hear a guide say "We're standing in the center of a caldera" when you have a volcano phobia.

St. Helens and I got to see each other for the first time last year. If you look closely, you can see she's putting on a tiny little show of steam and ash. Nothing major, just showing off a tad.

It seems she's gone back to sleep, for now. I'm glad she decided to wait until this phobe got to stare into her abyss and overcome fear with fascination.

Happy eruption anniversary, my dear. Sleep tight.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Dems did it! WOOOO!

Hans von Spakovsky, as a top political appointee in Bush’s Justice Department, was a leading player in what McClatchy straightforwardly calls the administration’s “vote-suppression agenda.” When it came to voter disenfranchisement, von Spakovsky was a reliable member of Team Bush.

As a reward, Bush has tried to promote von Spakovsky to a six-year term on the Federal Election Commission, which has touched off a major fight with Senate Democrats, and effectively shut down the FEC altogether in an election year.

Yesterday, von Spakovsky withdrew from consideration, handing Dems a key victory.

For those of you just joining us, Hans von Spakovsky is the genius who gutted the Department of Justice's voting rights section:

The point to remember here is that von Spakovsky has been at the heart of the indefensible, right-wing effort to prevent eligible voters from participating in elections. Tom DeLay’s re-redistricting scheme that violated the Voting Rights Act? Von Spakovsky approved it. Georgia’s re-redistricting scheme to disenfranchise black voters? Von Spakovsky approved that, too. The conservative campaign to fabricate an epidemic of voter fraud? Von Spakovsky helped create the scheme and execute it. When a U.S. Attorney in Minnesota discovered that Native American voters were being disenfranchised? It was Von Spakovsky who shut down the investigation.

This, of course, made him uniquely qualified for a term on the FEC in Bush's eyes. I'm sure Georgie thought Hans was the answer to all of his prayers: "Lord, please give me an FEC appointee who's really good at voter suppression and won't stop at anything to politicize his office. In other words, get me the most dishonest asshole you can find. Heh heh heh."

He forgot to ask God for a more malleable Democratic majority. The Dems took one look at what was on offer and dug their heels in. It's one thing to ask a bunch of Democrats to approve a conservative appointee. It's a whole 'nother to ask them to approve a conservative appointee who so blatantly uses his position to ensure voters who won't vote Republicon get stomped. Put it like this: Bush was asking them to put a prolific rapist in charge of protecting the bodily integrity and sexual choices of women.

Of course, the Republicons won't admit that Hans didn't get the nod because even the doggiest of Blue Dog Democrats couldn't possibly swallow the rancid bit of ejaculate Bush was attempting to force down their throats. Nope. It's because of this:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who had fought for von
Spakovsky's approval as part of a bipartisan bloc of nominees, said Democrats had "set a troubling precedent" by blocking his nomination. He said he hoped a new selection would not be treated in the same "deplorable manner."

"Looking to the November elections, it is imperative that we have a fully functioning, bipartisan FEC. New nominees should be voted on and confirmed without any more political games," McConnell said.

Well, McConnell would know all about that, wouldn't he? Who's known for playing political games and treating appointees in a deplorable manner?

That's right. His very own gang of tantrum-throwers.

Which is why it warms my heart to see them getting spanked by their very own paddle.

Speaking of being spanked with a paddle, it's time to bring out the solid oak with the holes. Washington Post, pull down your pants and assume the position:

Today, The Washington Post has invited the very same Kathleen Parker onto its Op-Ed page to share her views on the Democratic candidates, and specifically to opine on the matter of John Edwards' endorsement this week of Obama. She abandons her White Pride argument today in favor of the important and Serious claim that Obama and Edwards are gay girls.

The Post promotes her Op-Ed on its front page this way: "Kathleen Parker: Two Democratic Pretty Boys."

The spanking continues over at Sadly, No!

It’s tough to list all the things that make this column so mind-crushingly stupid, but let’s give it a shot:

• Parker begins the column by calling Edwards and Obama fags.
• Then, not having the courage to stand by this novel and poignant insight, she claims that it wasn’t her idea to call them fags, but was instead the idea of one of Edwards’ advisers. But hey, they’re still gay homo fruits who like to take it up the homobutt.
• Next, she pulls out the oldest trick in the Wingnut Punditry Bible: she lectures us about what Real Americans think! Never mind that she’s spent her entire working life on the Wingnut Welfare circuit - she’s got her hand on the pulse of The People, baby!
• And what do Real Americans think, you ask? Why, they’re apparently super-duper happy about the state of the country! Even though, like, 85% of them are dissatisfied with the direction of the country. And even though Bush’s approval rating stands at a sterling 28%. And even though the Republicans just lost a goddamn seat in freaking Mississippi.

To sum up: the WaPo just published a fact-free op-ed whose only “substantive” points are that Edwards and Obama are TEH GHEY OMG LOL IT IS TOO FUNNY FOREVER.

I'll be unlimbering my Special Deluxe Ass-Reamer 3000 later this evening. Believe it or not, Glenn Greenwald and Sadly, No! barely reddened the bottoms of these bottomless fuckwits. They've left me plenty to paddle.

Lastly, dday over at Digby's Hullaballoo points out why a Carnival of the Elitist Bastards has never been more necessary:

The worst thing the conservative movement has foisted on the country is a collapse of historical memory. Our civic education here is not so robust, and our civic knowledge of history is worse. This has given wide latitude for conservatives to create their own reality, and jabber away with "facts" that consist of shibboleths and catch phrases, which by now have been ripped of all meaning outside the Manichean "good" and "bad." That's what we saw with that shameful appearance on Hardball. That's what we saw by the President yesterday. That's what we saw from McCain in that interview. And that, sadly, is a part of America.

Read the column. Know that we have a fuck of a lot of work cut out for us in countering this tsunami of willful ignorance. It's not only necessary to restore America's fondness for knowing really real things, we're going to have to work overtime to get that knowledge front and center.

It's time to reclaim reality, my darlings.

Adventures with a Christian Desk Mate

Mellowness has overcome me. I'm thoroughly baked, the breeze is blowing and the frogs are singing, the fountain serenades and - well, I should clean the damned cat box, and this room needs a thorough scrub, but life is still beautiful.

The California Supremes issued a spectacular ruling that put gay marriage ahead by decades and is causing the right-wing radio hosts to blow vessels. FSM has put in an appearance in Tennessee. I've read some damned fine submissions to the Carnival of the Elitist Bastards, and, well, it's hard to work up a good head of steam in these circumstances.

So instead of bashing the stupid, I want to tell you all an amusing story from my callow youth.

I worked at one of the best call centers in the Universe. We offered one of the best paying jobs in Flagstaff, so we had a - dare I say it? - elite workforce. Many of my best friends to this day are the ones I met there: wonderful, wise, witty and wicked folks one could have wide-ranging, intelligent conversations with. The corporate office liked our numbers, so they let us have free reign to do as we willed. That meant that creativity, innovation, and near-autonomy were ours. We used and abused the privilege. Odd people like myself thrived.

One could feel free to stamp their personality upon their desk, and I had done with mine. I'd printed out nice little posters for myself. One was a quote from the Tao Te Ching:

Look, it cannot be seen - it is beyond form.
Listen, it cannot be heard - it is beyond sound.
Grasp, it cannot be held - it is intangible.
From above it is not bright:
From below it is not dark:
An unbroken thread beyond description...

-14

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.
All can known good as good only because there is evil.
Therefore having and not having arise together.
Difficult and easy compliment each other.

-9

I had a quote from the Qu'ran:

When the sun shall be darkened,
When the stars shall be thrown down,
When the mountains shall be set moving,
When the pregnant camels shall be neglected,
When the savage beasts shall be mustered,
When the seas shall be set alight,
When the infant girl buried alive shall be asked
for what crime she has been slain,
When the records of men's deeds shall be laid open,
When the heavens shall be stripped bare,
When Hell shall be set blazing,
When paradise shall be brought near,
Then each soul shall know what it has done.

I had a poem from Neil Gaiman's The Sandman: The Kindly Ones:

All around me darkness gathers,
Fading is the sun that shone;
We must speak of other matters:
You can be me when I'm gone.

And I had this delightful ancient poem Gaiman quoted in The Sandman: The Sound of Her Wings:

Death is before me today
Like the recovery of a sick man,
Like going forth into a garden
after sickness.

Death is before me today:
Like the odor of myrrh,
Like sitting under a sail in a good wind.

Death is before me today:
Like the course of a stream,
Like the return of a man from the
war-galley to his house.

Death is before me today:
Like the home that a man longs to see,
After years spent as a captive.

I didn't yet have George the Gargoyle with his red flashing eyes. He came later, and it's probably a good thing for his sake, considering what my desk mate did to the little 8 1/2 x 11 homemade posters.

The bane of working the night shift in a crowded call center is that you get to desk share with the early morning folk. It wasn't generally a problem, unless you ended up matched with Gail "OMG You Got a Pencil Mark on the Desk!!1!111!" T. I wasn't paired with Gail, and so didn't have to worry about her ever-encroaching collection of kitschy ceramic angels and her penchant for leaving severely obsessive-compulsive notes. But I started to notice a pattern: I'd come in, and my little posters on my half of the cubicle would be crooked. Odd, that. I didn't think much of it until I noticed the growing collection of tack holes where someone hadn't been paying attention staking them back to the wall.

Well, I couldn't well have tattered corners, could I? I left a kindly little note saying to leave the posters alone. The holes continued to accumulate. Dishevelment continued. I left a rather more annoyed and sternly-worded note saying that if I found one more extraneous tack hole, we'd have to have a chat about respecting others' property.

A few days later, I get called in to an Inquisition.

My desk mate, it turns out, was a rabid Christian, and quotes from the Tao Te Ching and the Qu'ran gave her blessed little heart palpitations. And instead of simply saying so, she decided she needed to bring in the heavy artillery: two managers and the HR supervisor.

She was seriously terrified that if she confronted the evil heathen with her discomfort, I'd do something horrible. Seriously.

The supervisors let her speak. They couldn't say anything themselves. They were trying too hard not to laugh. They knew me, you see, and they thought the whole thing ridiculous beyond words.

The quivering Christian launched into a speech you could tell had taken days for her to gather the courage for, about how Christian she was, and how it disturbed her to look at my little posters, and on and on. She was pale, sweating, and shaky, with a distinct quaver in her voice, and there I was, sitting there listening to a whole lotta "I'm terrified to even glance at a world view that's different than mine" schlock with rapidly growing disbelief. I'd never thought anyone could be that fucking terrified of a few poetic words.

As I said, I was young and naive.

She finally wound down. Silence fell. And then I said, "Look, there's a simple solution here. Get a big poster and put it up over mine every day. I'll just set it aside so I can have my own stuff when I get in. And I'll be sure to put the tacks through their original holes when I replace it."

The supervisors nearly clapped. The Christian looked pole-axed. She'd never expected a heathen to come up with a reasonable compromise. I don't know exactly what her church told her about people of other faiths, but it must have been richly detailed and completely bass-ackwards.

The next day, when I come in, there's this ginormous poster up over my wall with the most insipid fucking poem in the universe on it. You know, the kind of touchy-feely plebeian poem that makes real poets want to vomit. The kind of thing that only offends people with taste, because it's meant to be as bland and ecumenical and inspirational as possible. Someday, someone needs to explain to me why it is that devout Christians have no fucking taste.

After that day, peace and goodwill descended upon all, except when I'd catch a glimpse of that crime against poetry upon taking it down for the day. Everyone in the call center agreed: my quotes kicked her poem's ass. And I'd won all the brownie points. My supervisors saw me as the mature one, the peacemaker, while my Christian desk mate had proven herself an immature little git. There's a certain contempt well-adjusted Christians have for their brethren when the brethren's acting like whiny little brats that's worse than any contempt an atheist can show.

That episode was my first introduction to the world of grown-ups who were too God-blind to grow up. It started me on the never-ending quest to answer the "What the fuck are they so afraid of if their God kicks so much ass?" question.

And I pass the story down to you, my darlings, because it's always useful to know that a good copy of the Qu'ran or the Tao Te Ching will make all but the most determined evangelicals flee upon contact.

Submissions to the Rescue!

You lot have saved me today.

My day blew goats. Summer's peeked in on Seattle. It'll run away screaming soon enough, but today it decided to grace us with scorching sun, oven-quality heat, and the kind of humidity that isn't really noticeable until you get overheated and discover your sweat has decided to shirk its cooling duties.

In this heat, I had to roll myself out of bed and venture down for an emissions test.

They ask you to turn off the air conditioner for better results.

I baked.

Whilst there, I discovered that my tags expire tomorrow, not at the end of the month. So I had to scamper down to the licensing branch. In the heat. And humidity. And I took a wrong turn and ended up stuck in a New York-quality clusterfuck on a long, winding road that meanders along Lake Washington. In the midst of this, the gas light comes on. In a residential neighborhood. In bumper-to-bumper traffic that measures its progress in inches per hour.

I started sweating more. The nervous sweat joined the previous sweat's rebellion and refused to evaporate, and I had to turn the AC off in hopes I could preserve a precious bit of gas.

When I finally stumble into the licensing branch, it's bumper-to-bumper people. And it's hot. And I haven't had anything to drink in hours, and there aren't any chairs, and I haven't eaten, and by now I feel pretty pathetic.

I survive that only to get home and remember I promised my mother I'd call today. Calling my mother is a form of torture that would be banned under the Geneva Conventions, but is perfectly legal in the opinion of the Bush Administration. I spent a mind-numbing hour listening to stories of evil credit card companies, evil flu viruses, evil flu viruses killing a dog, evil meth-addicted neighbors poking sticks at the surviving dog and turning it mean, evil landlords raising rent, and then we had a segue into hating God but loving Jesus.

My sum total contribution to this conversation was several "Um-hmm. That's terribles" until at the end of an hour I could finally work in a regretful, "I've gotta go - I've got carnival work."

Thank you, my darlings, from the bottom of my heart, for providing me the excuse.

My headache and I went to bed, where we sweated to death and tried for a recovery nap. It didn't work. My brain felt like those little stained glass beads after they've been sitting in the oven for several minutes: a partially-fused, misshapen mass that looks as if no good could ever come of it.

Until I started reading your submissions. They brought me back to life. They made me laugh, made me think, made me shout out in appreciation. And this is only the beginning.

The delight of being a host is that you get one of the first looks at the incredible range and power of a group of people with different interests and backgrounds coalescing around a common theme. It's been a privilege and a joy, and it's not stating the case too strongly to say that you've rescued me. My brain has been restored, and it's all down to you.

Keep the submissions coming: elitistbastardscarnival@gmail.com. We've got room for plenty more. And I can tell you from what I've seen so far that this Carnival of the Elitist Bastards is going to be among the greatest shows on Earth.

I really do love you, you Elitist Bastards you. Thanks for saving me.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Great news, my darlings! John Hagee knows who the Antichrist is (and it ain't us!):

Hagee’s predictions are very clear. Armageddon, the final battle, could begin, he wrote in his 2007 book “Jerusalem Countdown,” “before this book gets published.”

The Antichrist “will be the head of the European Union,” he writes.

The United Nations is off the hook! So is President Bush (damn the luck), Barak Obama, the ACLU, and the Pope, among far too many others. For an amusing list, don your flame retardant clothing and go poke around here.

And why does this belong in Happy Hour rather than Intolerancia? Oh, because Joe Lieberman, fuckwit extraordinaire, is babbling about how fine it is that John McCain wwwuuuuvvveeesss Pastor John "Batshit Insane" Hagee:

I can appreciate the fact that Joe Lieberman has finished off the McCain Kool Aid. I also realize Lieberman is completely on board with everything McCain says, does, and believes, and will defend the Republican presidential campaign against any charge, regardless of merit.

But I’m a little surprised Lieberman is willing to go so far as to defend radical televangelist John Hagee. We’re obviously well past any and all shark-jumping moments for Lieberman, but given some of Hagee’s thoughts on Judaism, I thought Lieberman might still have a shred of principle in him. I stand corrected.

Lieberman told Faux News, "He represents a lot of people in this country, particularly Christians who care about the state of Israel. He founded a group called Christians United for Israel." Apparently, the poor deluded McKool Aid drinker believes that "Christians United for Israel" would be a good thing. In this case, not so much:

In "Jerusalem Countdown: A Prelude To war" Hagee has stated that Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves by rebelling against God and that the Holocaust was God's way of forcing Jews to move to Israel where, Hagee predicts according to his interpretation of Biblical scripture, they will be mostly killed in the apocalyptic Mideast conflict Hagee's new lobbying group seems to be working to provoke a