Thowing Some Fodder Out for the Union Debate

There's a minor dust-up going on in the comments section over the Employee Free Choice Act. I'm suitably impressed that Mike at the Big Stick returned to state his position clearly, give reasons for holding it, and furthered a conversation rather than merely spouting talking points and insults and then running away in a snit. Muchos gracias, Mike. That's exactly the way I'd like to see it done.

Not that there's been much of a conversation yet, and I'm too damned busy to hold up my end (not to mention, unions aren't one of my hot buttons), but I figured I'd throw out a few bits here and let folks discuss if they like.

I myself am a happy member of a good union that keeps my company from playing silly buggers with me. Our union has prevented our jobs from being shipped overseas. Alas for another division of the company that decided they were too valuable to have to unionize, they received a choice: relocate to India or find employment elsewhere. Our union doesn't run about pressuring folks about various and sundry, but our management made the wise decision to work with rather than against the union, so there's not much need for campaigns. There is a vague possibility we might strike this year over health care, but the union's working hard with arbitrators to try to avoid that while still ensuring we won't see our healthcare benefits evaporate. Having worked for companies that aren't unionized, I have to say it's delightful knowing that the company can't simply unilaterally decide to slash coverage while jacking up costs to us. And it's been comforting to know that, should management try any funny business, I'll have a union steward handy to help me navigate the byzantine corridors of policy and ensure that if I didn't fuck up, I won't get fucked over. For those reasons, I'm rather fond of unions myself.

I worked for a company that fought an effort to unionize tooth and nail. It was bitter, it was ugly, and it wasn't honest. The Employee Free Choice Act would have kept them from plying their dirty tricks, while still enabling each side to advocate for its position.

Think Progress has been following the EFCA debate, and they've got a rather succinct description of what it does:

Despite conservatives' claims to the contrary, the EFCA preserves the secret ballot election process established by the National Labor Relations Board. The law simply guarantees that workers also have the option to form a union through a "card-check" system in which a union would be recognized if a majority of workers signed a petition testifying to their desire to organize. Under current law, workers can only form a union via the card-check system if their employer agrees to allow it. Otherwise, the employer can insist on a union secret ballot election. Unfortunately, as Madland notes, "Employers legally can force workers to attend anti-union meetings, including 'one-on-one conversations' with supervisors" and "workers often are pressured by employers to reveal their private preferences for the union." "This takes the 'secret' out of the 'secret ballot,'" Madland writes. Even more disturbing is that in "25 percent of organizing campaigns, private-sector employers illegally fire workers because they want to form a union" and "even after workers successfully form a union, in one-third of the instances, employers do not negotiate a contract." The EFCA would strengthen penalties for such labor law violations and prevent employers from delaying first-contract negotiations. While conservatives suggest that the EFCA card-check system is "anti-business," "in a recent survey of employers who had used majority sign-up agreements, a majority reported that the agreements resulted in improved relations with the union, enabling management to achieve other bargaining or business goals."

And they have a good capsule description of why unions can be a very good thing indeed:

The importance of unions to the American worker cannot be understated. Union workers earn 30 percent higher wages than nonunion workers. For women and people of color, union membership improves wages even more. As union membership has declined, so too have real wages. Meanwhile, top business executives earned "344 times the salary of the average American worker in 2007." As Madland explained in the Washington Post, income inequality "is now at the level it was in the 1920s, when unionization rates were also below 10 percent." Furthermore, when health care costs continue to rise, "workers in unions...are 63 percent more likely to have employer-provided health insurance" than nonunion workers. Union workers' health insurance coverage is "far more comprehensive than that of nonunion workers" and "[u]nion workers pay 18 percent less in health care deductibles and a smaller share of costs for family coverage." Finally, when union workers retire, they are more likely to have "a guaranteed, defined benefit pension." 72 percent of union workers have such retirement benefits, "compared to only 15% of nonunion workers." "Throughout our history, when unions are strong, wages go up, health care coverage improves and pensions are strengthened," notes Change to Win.

Finally, it was brought home to me today why unions are so often necessary. The Screen Actor's Guild could strike, and it's because they're not interested in getting raped up the arse by producers yet again (h/t):

Nearly half of our earnings as union performers come from residuals, but management wants us to allow them to make programs for the Internet and other new media non-union and with no residuals. This means that as audiences shift from watching us on their televisions to watching us on their computers and cell phones our ability to earn a living will go away and future generations of actors may never be able to earn a living through their craft. This change will happen faster than you think.

To add insult to injury, management also insists that we eliminate force majeure protections from our contract. These protections have existed since the first SAG contract in 1937 and protect you when production stops as the result of an “act of God” like a natural disaster or a strike by another union, such as the WGA strike earlier this year. This is an enormous rollback that will leave actors without one of the most basic protections of a union contract.

[snip]

Management claims this bad deal is necessary because they need to “experiment” with new media and they claim they will renegotiate these terms with us in the future. We have already agreed to most of management’s new media terms, however, and have proposed, in the areas where we still disagree, extremely flexible terms for new media based on our successful low budget theatrical contracts and our nearly 800 made-for-new media contracts with independent producers. Our terms will allow management the latitude to experiment using union actors.

And how can we believe that management will ever improve these new media terms when they still won’t improve the home video residual formula after 22 years? Right now all the actors on a given cast share 1% of the revenue generated through DVD sales because of a formula we agreed to in 1986 when management needed to “experiment” with home video. In this negotiation, we have asked only that management at least make pension and health contributions on DVD residuals, rather than making us pay them ourselves out of our paltry 1%. They have refused even that!

The basic cable residual formula was also negotiated early in the history of that medium to reflect the then “experimental” status of basic cable programming and pays only a small fraction of network television residuals. It is now over 20 years later, 27% of all television ad dollars are now spent on basic cable, and the basic cable formula still pays only a small fraction of network television residuals. Management simply does not have a history of ever ending their “experiments” and paying us fairly.

Unions allow employees to stop begging, "Please, not in the face!" and assert the right not to be smacked around. I'd love it if we could trust business to keep their employees' interests high on their list of priorities, but the sad truth is, most don't. Making it easier to unionize is a good thing for workers, even if workers like Mike prefer not.

Believe it or not, I do have some sympathy with Mike's position. I can understand the desire not to unionize. But having been on both sides, and having now seen the benefits a union can secure, I have to put myself heartily in the Union Yes! category, a 180-degree turn from a few years ago.

And that's Dana's dos pesos. I am now moving on to other things, and I shall leave all you all to debate to your hearts' content if you like.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

News that's no news to anyone: Robert Novak is a spiteful, whiny, deluded fuckwit:

During a recent interview with the National Ledger, conservative columnist Robert Novak was asked if he would reveal Valerie Plame Wilson’s secret CIA identity if he could go back and do it all over again. Novak noted that he has previously said he “should have ignored” what he had been told about Plame, but he now claims he is “much less ambivalent“:

NOVAK: I’d go full speed ahead because of the hateful and beastly way in which my left-wing critics in the press and Congress tried to make a political affair out of it and tried to ruin me. My response now is this: The hell with you. They didn’t ruin me. I have my faith, my family, and a good life. A lot of people love me — or like me. So they failed. I would do the same thing over again because I don’t think I hurt Valerie Plame whatsoever.

But of course, Plame was “hurt” because of Novak’s column — she no longer has a career as a covert CIA agent. Moreover, Plame has said that she feared for her and her family’s lives after Novak revealed her identity.

But Novak ignores the point that Plame’s outing had broader national security implications. In fact, Plame’s CIA job was to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and as one former senior intelligence officer put it, the leak made “it harder for other CIA officers to recruit sources.”

Way to support the nation, Novak. You've won first prize in the "cutting off your nose to spite your face" category.

A common theme I've noticed on the right is the desire to get back at the left even when playing that ridiculous game means the country suffers.

They also seem to be under some delusion that losing in a landslide means they get to make demands on cabinet staffing:

Congressional Quarterly bemoans Obama's broken promise of a bipartisan cabinet since he's only appointed one Republican to one of the top three positions in government -- State, Defense and Treasury ...

Now that President-elect Barack Obama's Cabinet is, by his count, half picked, the odds are fading that he'll have more than one Republican on his team -- suggesting that his campaign promise to include Republicans may have meant nothing more than the usual token appointment from the other side.

Obama did attract a lot of attention by asking Robert Gates to stay on as Defense secretary, and liberals have debated whether he's the right man to oversee a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. But that debate overshadows the fact that Gates isn't likely to have much, or even any, company. Of the Cabinet jobs that are left at this point, virtually all are domestic policy positions that would be hard to give to a Republican without prompting vicious internal fights, and it's almost impossible to find Republicans who have been mentioned as candidates for any of them.

I guess maybe it's a slow news period and there's not much to write about. But this is about as nonsensical as it gets. In recent decades it hasn't been particularly common for presidents to have any appointees from the opposite party. And when they do it's usually like Bush appointing Norman Minetta to be Transportation Secretary, a secondary cabinet post of no real consequence to the president in question.

Obama's put not only a Republican but his predecessor's choice in charge of the Pentagon. He's also named as his National Security Advisor a retired general who appears also to be a Republican, albeit one who was advising Obama during the campaign and not a particularly ideological sort.

The whiny little fucks are lucky they got this much. It's not like Obama's going to busy himself staffing his cabinet with government-hating Cons when he's trying to get shit done. Not after the last eight years, in which Cons have been famous for not getting shit done aside from destroying this country, which they've done very well at.

Saxby Chambliss, newly re-elected and under the mistaken impression that his victory cancels out the magnificent ass-whuppin' the Cons suffered in November, is champing a the bit to continue the trend of dumbfuckery:

Fresh off his victory in yesterday’s run-off Senate race, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) told Glenn Beck today that he had won a “big victory on basic conservative principles.” He lauded Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-AK) efforts on his behalf, and told Beck that he would push moderate Republicans to move rightward:

BECK: Yeah. Do you think the Republicans are going to get it? … I mean, do you think you are going to be able to hold 40 together on some of the big issues of the day?

CHAMBLISS: […] Having that tighter margin I think is going to give us an opportunity to go to some of our moderates who have not always voted with conservatives and say, look, you know, this is the opportunity we have to define our party, this is the opportunity we have to ultimately move back in the majority. If we don’t stick together, then it’s over. Our movement’s going to be delayed and delayed. But if we do stick together and then what you’re going to find in your state where you’re elected as a moderate, you are going to find folks rallying around you.

I somehow think Chambliss is under the impression that the whole country is just like Georgia. It is not. It will be interesting to see what excuses he comes up with if he manages to arm-twist moderates into voting right and then finds the voters are livid.

With all that in mind, it's good to see Obama making neo-cons cry:

By and large, Barack Obama's cabinet selections have been met with very little resistance from the right. There's been some fuss over Eric Holder, but the conservative reactions have been surprisingly muted.
It appears, however, that one prospective choice might actually generate some heat. Greg Sargent has the story:

[Obama's] rumored choice for U.S. Trade Representative, Congressman Xavier Becerra, is reportedly worrying some pro-big business and free-trade types.

The possibility that Obama might award the post to Becerra -- who professed his regret for voting for NAFTA, opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement, and once pronounced U.S. trade policy as "broken" -- is already being praised by some progressives. David Sirota sees it as a sign that "Obama is serious about reforming our trade policies."

And now Business Week reports on some rumblings of opposition from the pro-business and free-trade camp:
Philip Levy, who's now with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told the mag that the choice is "troubling," arguing that "to oppose Nafta is in many ways to lash out symbolically against trade." A business lobbyist added to the mag that he and his colleagues are "pretty concerned."

Becerra, who has been active in trade policy debates on the Hill for a while now, hasn't always been predictable. He voted for Nafta, for example, but later regretted it. Becerra opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement, but supported China's entry into the World Trade Organization, and supported the free-trade agreement between the U.S. and Peru last year.

Bet you a dollar there'll soon be a run on fainting couches. They're really going to start swooning when Obama rolls out his policies, and they discover he's serious about taking this country in a new direction.

Poor babies.

Psst... Hey, Cons. We're Coming For You

I think America started a little something. First, we have Canada's left flexing its muscles and getting ready to pop Stephen Harper in the face. Even Stéphane Dion, whom I'd heard had all the vim and vigor of a piece of wet paper, is breathing some fire. And they're not the only ones:

In England the political news is equally remarkable. This summer Gordon Brown was watching as safe Labor seats were being taken by opposition parties by huge majorities. He watched as the popular mayor of London was trounced by a loose lipped Tory new comer. His own standing in the polls, if put through in an election, would have left only a few dozen Labor MPs, and he would lose his own seat. Now the Brown Bounce as it is called, has him within the statistical margin of error of the Tories, with Labor voters "coming home" to their party. The unifying thread, in both cases, is the promise of massive Keynesian fiscal stimulus, and active response to the crisis. The Tories both in the Dominion of Canada, and the United Kingdom, have promised cuts and question marks, being dragged to admitting the need for action little and late. Dion, elected as a care taker leader, has managed to pull off one of the most spectacular negotiations in Canadian Parliamentary history, and Brown has come back from the political dead on the back of aggressive response, fiscal stimulus, and promising a direction which is avowedly rooted liberal and social democratic ideas. It's something for American politicians to heed.

Seems right wings the world over are about to get clipped.

Good.

P.S. If you're wondering if Canada's conservative party is full of the same lying sacks of shit that infest the Cons here, the answer is yes.

Housekeeping! You Want Towel (Origami)?

The nice thing about NaNo being over is, I can spend almost an hour chasing after pictures of things I didn't know existed until I searched for pictures of hotels and housekeeping. The only towel origami I'd ever experienced was back when my friend Devin folded up a penis to leave on the pillow of the ultra-religious roommate who'd just moved in to a friend's dorm. It was inspired by the smiling sperm keychain another friend owned.

I don't have to tell you where the keychain was placed, now, do I?

So. Right. Housekeeping news. I'm still cleaning up debris from Hurricane NaNo. There's a few bits to add in before we have a really truly complete book for those of you who wanted to raze it to the foundations. What fun is demolition if you don't get to demolish something complete? Those of you who requested a copy will have it by Saturday. Spend the intervening time getting in touch with your evil Inner Editors for me, por favor.

Those of you who pay attention to such things might notice a comment or two suddenly vanishing. Spammers have gotten clever - they're either using people or someone's created AI that has just as much brain function as the average Expelled fan. Which is to say, just enough to get past the spam filters and pretend to be saying something worthwhile. Comments left by spammers will die a hideous death, so if you're a spammer, don't waste your time.

Finally, don't forget to check out Kaden's find. How many of us here have the atheism? Mwah-ha-ha! I think we should run a betting pool on whether GodTube got Poe'd or not.

Georgia Demonstrates Piss-Poor Judgement

Saxby Chambliss will be returning to lower the Senate's collective IQ by about 20 points and its gravitas and dignity by a factor of 1000. Charming.

I'm not quoting any of the news sources on this one because of one fact: they're all going psychotic. Because the Dems won't reach 60 seats, everybody's suddenly believing they'll never break a filibuster. Well, I've got news: that "filibuster-proof majority" was a total myth to begin with.

Steve Benen provided the voice of reason a few weeks ago:

Whether the caucus has 57 seats, 60, or somewhere in between, matters -- every vote counts, and Republican obstructionist tactics are a given -- but now's probably a good time to reemphasize that 60 is not exactly a Holy Grail here.

Every vote on major initiatives brings it own challenges, and there's never a guarantee that everyone in the Democratic caucus will vote together -- Lieberman is, after all, part of the caucus. For that matter, there's no reason to believe that every Republican is necessarily going to back their party on cloture votes.

In fact, the real fun of the next Congress will be how center-right Republicans from "blue" states -- Snowe, Collins, Voinovich, and Specter, I'm looking in your direction -- respond to popular policy proposals launched by a popular Democratic president.

A 60-seat majority would be a milestone for the party, but it's hardly a green light to problem-free governing. Something to keep in mind.

So stop acting like Chambliss is "a firewall" who's stopped Dems in their tracks. All he's doing is reinforcing my belief that the Deep South is still light on sanity and heavy on buffoons.

Do you have.. The Atheism?

Seriously. Is this a parody? A joke? I can't actually tell... I know that GodTube is real and really quite frightening. But this clip.. I'm not sure if I should laugh, or start walking across the street just to avoid these kinds of people..

via videosift.com

Dana, feel free to respond to this formally. You're better at the ranting and raving than I am; I just thought I'd contribute a little something.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Geez... hyperbole much?

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that a “face-off is brewing between labor and employers” in regards to the Employee Free Choice Act, which would aid American workers in the path toward unionization. Indeed, despite the bill having widespread public support, the debate surrounding it is becoming increasingly vitriolic.

The Wonk Room previously highlighted Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus’ assertion that retailers who are not fighting the Free Choice Act “should be shot.” Now, the United States Chamber of Commerce has upped the ante, saying that the “coming fight in Congress over the issue” is a “firestorm bordering on Armageddon.”

Big bidness really has a pathological hatred for unions, don't they? It's just a wee bit off-balance. Someone needs to feed them some Prozac, methinks.

In other pathological Con news, the tilting at imaginary windmills is getting out of hand:

And speaking of the Fairness Doctrine, paranoia, and self-pity, it appears the Media Research Center has apparently begun an organized campaign to combat a policy initiative that doesn't exist. My friend Alex Koppelman at Salon has the report:

Monday, the MRC announced the formation of the Free Speech Alliance, a group dedicated to fighting against the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, an old FCC regulation that mandated equal time for opposing viewpoints in opinion programming. The move was announced in a post on MRC's blog, Newsbusters, that was titled "The Free Speech Alliance Declares War on the 'Censorship Doctrine.'"

The MRC is also asking people to sign a petition against revival of the regulation. "In 1987, President Ronald Reagan rescinded the Fairness Doctrine and since then, talk radio has flourished. Conservatives dominate it, and liberals can't stand it. By re-instating the Fairness Doctrine, liberals would effectively silence the conservative leaders of the day ... and would essentially take control of all forms of media," the group says in an introduction on the Web page that hosts the petition. On the same page, the MRC warns, "In recent months, the groundswell for reinstatement is intensifying. In fact, a growing number of liberal leaders in Washington, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, have openly stated their intent to do so."

Actually, that's not even close to true. Obama opposes the idea, Pelosi hasn't "openly stated" anything about pursuing this, and Reid's office told Salon that the Senate Majority Leader "is not contemplating anything like that." The "groundswell for reinstatement" exists only in the overactive imaginations of paranoid right-wing activists.

And yet, here we are. The MRC is not only railing against a policy proposal that doesn't exist, it's created an organization committed to fighting a policy proposal that doesn't exist. To help in the endeavor against the imaginary foe, the MRC has roped in Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, Concerned Women for America, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, among others, to help.

How pathetic is that? It's starting to seem as though universal healthcare is a great idea not just to save families from going bankrupt on medical debt, but to ensure that our right wing gets the mental health treatment they so obviously need. We're going to have to start spiking their water with Risperdol to take care of those paranoid delusions and allow them to live healthy, productive, reality-based lives.

While we're medicating folks for their psychosis, we need to bump Rep. Hunter (no relation) up to the front of the line:

Freshman Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-CA), son of former GOP presidential candidate Duncan Hunter, recently was elected to Congress after campaigning on a staunch anti-immigration platform.

During an interview with MSNBC’s Luke Russert today, Hunter defended his campaign pledge to end citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants, arguing immigration increases domestic crime. As his evidence, Hunter made the outlandish and grossly inaccurate claim that Tijuana, Mexico has more crime than “Iraq and Afghanistan”:

HUNTER: In San Diego, we face a lot of crime. … There’s been more murders in Tijuana, Mexico than there have been in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s more dangerous to go to Mexico from San Diego than it is to fly over and stroll around a Baghdad market.

[snip]

Hunter is unfortunately correct that violence in Mexico has ballooned in recent years, in part due to the ongoing drug wars. At least 4,000 have died this year in drug-related violence, according to the AP. Tijuana has also seen a surge in violence.

But to claim that there are more murders in the city of Tijuana than there are in “Iraq and Afghanistan” is absurd. In Tijuana, “at least 200 people have been killed in drug violence this year,” the Washington Post reported in June. But in the month of July 2008 alone, there were approximately 500 civilian fatalities in Iraq. There have been roughly 700 deaths this year in Afghanistan.

Something tells me Rep. Hunter has been watching too many movies, mainlining too many GOP talking points, and forgetting to take his anti-psychotics again. I say we send him on vacation: let him stroll a week in Tijuana, and a week in Baghdad. If he lives through the experience, he can tell us which one's really more dangerous.

When trying to treat the mentally ill, it's vitally important not to help them feed their delusions. The last thing you should do is play along. Someone needs to let the MSM know:

This really isn't complicated. President Bush was not being "blunt" or showing "candor" when he told ABC News in an interview published yesterday that his biggest regret was the failure of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War.

Rather, he was whitewashing away his own role in the fisaco by promoting the demonstrable falsehood that there was no available evidence or information that argued against war and that he was merely fooled into invading Iraq solely by the bad intel.

The big news orgs seem eager to help Bush do this. Not a single one of their reports on the interview that we can find bothered to tell readers that there was plenty of good intel -- ignored by the Bush administration -- saying that Saddam wasn't the threat Bush was claiming he was. Nor did any of them bother mentioning that the weapons inspectors in Iraq were saying the same thing -- something that also went ignored.

These facts are absolutely central to understanding Bush's efforts to falsify history in yesterday's interview.

They apparently will need therapy as well, as they seem to have a ginormous co-dependency problem.

Somehow, someday, we'll have a healthy body politic again. Possibly after we've stuck the entire right wing in nice padded rooms.

Hearty Congratulations to My Canadian Friends

It's good to see your wanna-be Bush is about to get his bottom soundly thrashed:

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The leaders of Canada's three opposition parties on Monday signed a historic deal to bring down the minority Conservative government and then form a coalition government of their own.

The Liberals, New Democrats and separatist Bloc Quebecois say the Conservatives of Prime Minister Stephen Harper -- who won a strengthened minority in an Oct 14 election -- are not doing enough to help Canadians cope with the worsening financial crisis.

[snip]

A confidence vote has been set for next Monday. The proposed coalition government would be the first of its kind in modern Canadian history.

"We're seeing a sad spectacle from Stephen Harper's government. ... (It) has shown it has no plan, no competence and no will to face up to the crisis," Liberal leader Stephane Dion said at a news conference after the signing.

"The opposition parties have decided it is time to take action. ... We're ready to form a new government."

And how, when the man won a "strengthened majority" just over a month ago, did it come to this? The power surge apparently shorted out his political prudence circuits:

While Americans are enjoying their tryptophan comas, up in the Great White North, the Conservative government of Stephen Harper has presented the opposition parties with a choice: castration or being in charge during the worst recession since World War II.

The Conservatives have presented a budget which:

1) has no fiscal stimulus to help the economy;
2) gets rid of public financing for political parties, since Conservatives don't need it and the other parties do; and,
3) which forbids public sector unions to strike for 3 years while they "reform", (read, get rid of) pay equity.

Harper figures this is a no lose bet for him. If the other parties bring him down, well, they get to be in charge during the upcoming recession, which will do nothing for their popularity. If they don't bring him down, he institutionalizes the Conservative fund raising advantage and gets to break the public sector unions. Rich people and corporations love giving money to folks like Harper who keep cutting their taxes, gutting regulations and letting foreigners make them rich by buying out their firms then moving the jobs and headquarters to other countries.

Can we say miscalculation, boys and girls? If the Coalition government can turn the recession around, Stephen's no-lose bet becomes a fool's gamble.

Stephen Harper is a noxious bastard who deserves the worst that can be dished out. If you want to know just what a fucktard he is, I urge you to visit Canadian Cynic and have a trot through the archives. The Cynics have been documenting the never-ending fuckery for quite some time. It's just pathetic that it took Harper's hubris in threatening public funding for political parties to finally rouse the opposition into actually opposing the sorry son of a bitch.

But the important thing is, Harper's about to get his teeth handed to him in a hat. It couldn't have happened to a more deserving con.

Canadians drink free tonight. Salud!

Rick Warren is a Psychotic Freak

What other conclusion can I come to in the face of this?

Mike Allen reported this morning, "Pastor Rick Warren will present President George W. Bush with the first International Medal of PEACE from the Global PEACE Coalition in recognition of his contribution to the fight against HIV/AIDS and other diseases."

I thought, "That can't be right." And in a way, the name of the award is a little misleading. Here's a press release from Rick Warren's office.

"No U.S. president or political leader has done more for global health than this Administration, which has raised the bar on America's role and responsibility for providing critical humanitarian assistance around the world," Warren said. "Over the past eight years, the President and Mrs. Bush have traveled the globe as they and their staffs have worked tirelessly to bring awareness and solutions to pandemics such as HIV/AIDS, and we are privileged to honor their efforts on World AIDS Day."

The "International Medal of PEACE" is given on behalf of the Global PEACE Coalition for outstanding contribution toward alleviating the five global giants recognized by the Coalition, including pandemic diseases, extreme poverty, illiteracy, self-centered leadership and spiritual emptiness. The Coalition is a network of churches, businesses and individuals cooperating together to solve humanitarian issues through the PEACE Plan, an effort to mobilize 1 billion Christians to Promote reconciliation, Equip servant leaders, Assist the poor, Care for the sick and Educate the next generation.

"PEACE" is an acronym. The "P" stands for "promoting reconciliation." Of course, Bush isn't good at this either, but it's at least slightly more plausible than giving him an award for promoting actual peace.

Even so... are you fucking kidding me?

And while Bush undoubtedly deserves credit for aggressively tackling the problem of AIDS, his ideological insistence on refusing to fund contraception and forbidding family planning organizations for using their own funds to provide contraception or abortion services has hampered AIDS workers’ efforts and cost lives.

Of course, this award is coming from the same fuckwit who inspired this total insanity.

It strikes me that awarding Bush recognition for his efforts on AIDS is somewhat akin to congratulating an arsonist for his tireless work in promoting fire safety awareness:

The U.S. has played an important role in bringing life- saving treatment to HIV patients who had been unable to get it, said Adel Mahmoud, a former head of Merck & Co. vaccines and professor in the department of molecular biology at Princeton University.

"But when the data says for every person we put on anti- retroviral therapy in Africa there are six new infections and we are doing nothing about it, it's absolutely mind-boggling,'' he said in a telephone interview. "Prevention is really the solution.''

Take a moment to absorb that one. We're patting this fuckwit on the head for treating more people with AIDS, while his pathological hatred of condoms helps ensure more people get infected with AIDS. Tell me how that's supposed to make sense.

Let's not even talk about what he's done to the CDC. It's too depressing.

And yet Rick Warren thinks Bush deserves awards for his efforts. As one of my dear Christian friends would say, it appears too much prayer has rotted his brain.

People wonder why atheists have such a hard time seeing the good that frothing Christians do. Well, when you have a 1:6 ratio in the good vs. bad department, it tends to make us think that a little less blind faith and a fuck of a lot more rationality would be, on the whole, better for humanity.

Which is why I hope Obama stops encouraging this psychotic freak:

Barack Obama will also be addressing Rick Warren's Saddleback Civil Forum on Global Health in Washington, held to commemorate the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day, via videotaped remarks.

There are people doing far more good in the world, without the religious agenda that makes Rick Warren and his best buddy Bush blind to certain aspects of human suffering, and they're not playing the "look at me, I'm so saintly" game. Let's reward and recognize them for a change.

How I Feel Today

Argh.

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

Somebody needs to hit Bill O'Reilly with a really fucking big clue-by-four:

Today on the Radio Factor, a listener called in to tell Bill O’Reilly that she had “zero confidence” in Obama’s ability to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In the course of her call, the listener expressed mock concern for the detainees that were mistreated there. O’Reilly, apparently missing the caller’s sarcastic tone, interrupted her to falsely claim that “no proof” exists to back-up accusations of mistreatment and that his two tours of the prison facility confirm that:

OREILLY: [T]here are accusations of mistreatment at Guantanamo, but there’s certainly no proof that ever happened. I think they were rough in the beginning after 9/11, that some stuff happened that shouldn’t have, but I went there twice and we have good contacts there. And, I think that they basically got that under control pretty quickly.

[snip]

Despite O’Reilly’s claims, “proof” of mistreatment and torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay does exist. In 2004, the Red Cross documented “cruel, inhumane and degrading” treatment of detainees while inspecting the facility. Perhaps more disturbing, the Guardian reported last year:

Captives at Guantánamo Bay were chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor for 18 hours or more, urinating and defecating on themselves, an FBI report has revealed. … One witness said he saw a barefoot detainee shaking with cold because the air conditioning had bought the temperature close to freezing.

But, y'know, he has good contacts who don't let him see this stuff, so it obviously doesn't happen.

It'll be interesting if the day ever comes when O'Reilly ever admits he's a raving fucktard. Bush is edging closer to that moment, and it's vastly entertaining:

We've heard Bush express some various regrets in recent years, but I think this one is a first.

Looking back on his eight years in the White House, President George W. Bush pinpointed incorrect intelligence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction as "biggest regret of all the presidency."

"I think I was unprepared for war," Bush told ABC News' Charlie Gibson in an interview airing today on "World News."

"In other words, I didn't campaign and say, 'Please vote for me, I'll be able to handle an attack,'" he said. "In other words, I didn't anticipate war. Presidents -- one of the things about the modern presidency is that the unexpected will happen."

Bush, who has been a stalwart defender of the war in Iraq and maintaining U.S. troop presence there, said, in retrospect, the war exceeded his expectations.

The president added, "I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess." Asked if he would have gone to war if he knew Iraq did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, Bush said, "That is a do-over that I can't do."

He "wishes the intelligence had been different." Well, I wish he'd listened to it in the first fucking place. As I recall, there was plenty of good intel pointing to the fact that his own intel was fabricated, made up, and nothing but a pack of neocon lies, but that's not what he wanted to hear, so he discarded it.

But at least this twinge of regret is a start. Now, if we could just get him to admit that he should've been more interested in what bin Laden was doing rather than in his brush-clearing issues, that would be fantastic.

It might also be nice if he'd admit we're in a recession of his own making:

It's common now to hear Bush administration officials, asked about the financial crisis, insist that they had no idea this meltdown was coming. Unfortunately, they were warned, but ignored the concerns.

The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents. [...]

Bowing to aggressive lobbying -- along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK -- regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way. [...]

The administration's blind eye to the impending crisis is emblematic of its governing philosophy, which trusted market forces and discounted the value of government intervention in the economy. Its belief ironically has ushered in the most massive government intervention since the 1930s.

Many of the banks that fought to undermine the proposals by some regulators are now either out of business or accepting billions in federal aid to recover from a mortgage crisis they insisted would never come. Many executives remain in high-paying jobs, even after their assurances were proved false.

More than three years ago, bank regulators "proposed new guidelines for banks writing risky loans," and looking over the proposals -- "banks would have been required to increase efforts to verify that buyers actually had jobs and could afford houses," and "regulators proposed a cap on risky mortgages so a string of defaults wouldn't be crippling" -- it's easy to see how regulations could have prevented the worst.

However, it seems like Bush and his merry band of ravening fuckwits are bound and determined not to use the "r" word:

Earlier today, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) announced that “the U.S. has been in a recession since December 2007, making official what most Americans have already believed about the state of the economy.” The group, which the White House has previously pointed to as the determinative body for declaring a recession, said in a statement that the “decline in economic activity” after Dec. ‘07 “was large enough to qualify as a recession.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto commented on the news “without ever actually using the word ‘recession.’” Instead, Fratto released a statement saying the White House was focused on what they “can do for the economy right now.”

Yup. Denying reality to the bitter end.

After all of that, we could probably use some entertainment, eh? Check out Sarah Palin's stump speeches for Saxby Chambliss. If you suspected the woman hasn't got an original thought in her head, you'd be right:

Today, Gov. Sarah Palin traveled to Georgia to campaign for Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R), who faces a tough runoff election tomorrow against Democratic challenger Jim Martin. In the first of four stops today, in Augusta, Palin told the crowd, “The eyes of the nation are on you,” adding, “The stakes are so high” and that “America is counting on you.”

Yet despite Palin’s insistence on the importance of the Chambliss race, she apparently couldn’t bring herself to write a new stump speech. Instead, she recycled many of her favorite lines from this fall, substituting Chambliss’ name for Sen. John McCain’s...

Enjoy the examples. And enjoy the thought that soon, most of these people are going to be as irrelevant as yesterday's tea bag.

There's Something Wrong With This Picture

Is it just me, or does this diagram resemble a deformed olive?

Carnival of the Elitist Bastards VII: Storming the High Seas

Stormy weather delayed the launch, but the HMS Elitist Bastard has sailed from port at Cafe Philos. Captain Paul returns us to the core of our mission, and has the line that encapsulates it all:

Nothing spells elitist like changing the world for the better.

Precisely.

Go. Read. Get inspired, and change the world.

A "Holy Fuck" on the MRFF Scale

I know PZ's highlighted this, so the vast majority of you are probably already aware of the insanity masquerading as a "mental health program" in our military. But the Smack-o-Matic's begging me for action. Must bash.

I'll let the Military Religious Freedom Foundation start us off:

Here at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), we get countless complaints about religiously based mental health and counseling programs, which, over the past few years, have been systematically replacing proven psychological and medical approaches to a multitude of issues faced by military personnel. I've seen so many truly insane, not to mention blatantly unconstitutional, ways that the military is playing with the mental well being of our troops since I began working for MRFF that I really didn't think it was possible for me to be surprised by anything anymore. Then I was sent a PowerPoint presentation by an airman at RAF Lakenheath, the largest U.S. Air Force base in England. On the MRFF scale of classifying by various expletives the egregiousness level of things that are reported to us -- "holy crap," "holy shit," and "holy f..." -- this one, promoting creationism as a means of preventing suicide among our military personnel, was definitely a "holy f..."

In March 2008, this presentation, titled "A New Approach To Suicide Prevention: Developing Purpose-Driven Airmen," was shown at a commander's call that was mandatory for an estimated 1,000 of Lakenheath's Air Force personnel, and sent out by email to the entire base of over 5,000 the following day. As the use of the phrase "Purpose-Driven" in its title implies, also incorporated into this presentation is the wisdom of presidential candidate inquisitor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, a book that, second only to the Bible itself, is the most heavily promoted religious book in the military.

This is fucking insane. Not only are they substituting religious propaganda for mental health counseling, they're making it mandatory. Jews, Muslims, pagans, agnostics, atheists, and all other religious and non-religious soldiers have no choice but to be subjected to evangelical Christian bullshit and lies that sound like they were lifted right from Expelled: The Never-Ending Fuckwittery. Check this out:

There's that evolution-is-random-chaos chestnut again, this time conflated with the idea that man is the center of the universe. Since the fuck when has science ever claimed that? Evolution knocked us out of the center - that's why these God-blind babblers hate it so much. We're not that fucking special. But we also aren't a bunch of helpless ninnies who have to run whining to a magic sky daddy every time life gets a little tough. Unless, of course, we decide to live a "purpose-driven life," which apparently means our purpose is to remain as infantile as possible.

That's just the thing to be teaching a bunch of people with guns.

This Rick Warren-inspired creationist schlock also fails to mention what any of this creationist bullshit has to do with hope. You don't have to know exactly how things came to be as they are to have hope, but to religious ninnies sucking their thumbs and crying for God to come change their diaper, the answer is apparently clear. I guess that's what happens when you throw over science and self-reliance for fairy tales.

When they were developing this schlock, I swear they had fucking Mark Mathis reading from the Expelled script:

Darwin's totally Marxist ZOMG!!1!!1!1! And note something: these fucking idiots are so insanely stupid that they put forth as exemplars of their great Christian country two presidents who weren't exactly the most devout buggers to ever walk the earth.

Washington wouldn't have passed muster with these fucktards:

After the revolution, Washington frequently accompanied his wife to Christian church services; however, there is no record of his ever taking communion, and he would regularly leave services before communion—with the other non-communicants (as was the custom of the day), until, after being admonished by a rector, he ceased attending at all on communion Sundays.^[65][66] Prior to communion, believers are admonished to take stock of their spiritual lives and not to participate in the ceremony unless he finds himself in the will of God.^[67][68] Historians and biographers continue to debate the degree to which he can be counted as a Christian, and the degree to which he was a deist.

He was an early supporter of religious toleration and freedom of religion. In 1775, he ordered that his troops not show anti-Catholic sentiments by burning the pope in effigy on Guy Fawkes Night. When hiring workmen for Mount Vernon, he wrote to his agent, "If they be good workmen, they may be from Asia, Africa, or Europe; they may be Mohammedans, Jews, or Christians of any sect, or they may be Atheists."^[67][69] In 1790, he wrote a response to a letter from the Touro Synagogue, in which he said that as long as people remain good citizens, their faith does not matter. This was a relief to the Jewish community of the United States, since the Jews had been either expelled or discriminated against in many European countries.

...the Government of the United States ... gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance. ... May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.

Something tells me he would've been a little upset by the naked religious propaganda driving "The Purpose-Driven Airman."

And as for Lincoln... I don't know why they lionize the man when they would've torn him apart for being an IslamofascistDarwinistatheist today:

On one of these occasions Mr. Lincoln took up a book containing a careful canvass of the city of Springfield, in which he lived, showing the candidate for whom each citizen had declared it his intention to vote in the approaching election. Mr. Lincoln's friends had, doubtless at his own request, placed the result of the canvass in his hands. This was toward the close of October, and only a few days before the election. Calling Mr. Bateman to a seat by his side, having previously locked all the doors, he said: 'Let us look over this book. I wish particularly to see how the ministers of Springfield are going to vote.' The leaves were turned, one by one, and as the names were examined Mr. Lincoln frequently asked if this one or that one were not a minister, or an elder, or the member of such and such a Church, and received an affirmative answer. In that manner they went through the book, and then he closed it and sat silently and for some minutes regarding a memorandum in pencil which lay before him. At length he turned to Mr. Bateman with a face full of sadness, and said: 'Here are 23 ministers, of different denominations, and all of them are against me but three; and here are a great many prominent members of the Churches, a very large majority of whom are against me. Mr. Bateman, I am not a Christian -- God knows I would be one but I have carefully read the Bible, and I do not understand this book'; and he drew from his bosom a pocket New Testament. 'These men well know,' he continued, 'that I am for freedom in the territories, freedom everywhere as far as the Constitution and the laws will permit, and that my opponents are for slavery. They know this, and yet, with this book in their hands, in the light of which human bondage cannot live a moment, they are going to vote against me. I do not understand it at all.'

Lincoln's deeply-held sense that God guided all things would've carried no water for these fucktards at all. They venerate him, and yet they would have voted him down. And here I was wondering why the phrase "hypocritical lying sacks of shit" kept running through my mind whilst viewing their slideshow.

Their hypocrisy knows no bounds:

Another segment of Capt. Biscotti's presentation, titled "FAITH is Foremost," contains three stories -- his own personal story, the story of the woman who made the news a few years back by talking her way out of a hostage situation by reading to her captor from The Purpose Driven Life, and, incredibly inappropriately for a presentation promoting religion, the story of Pat Tillman. I'm sure everyone remembers Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich's outrageous remarks that Tillman's parents' dissatisfaction with the investigation of their son's death was caused by their religious beliefs, or lack thereof, saying in an ESPN.com interview, "When you die, I mean, there is supposedly a better life, right? Well, if you are an atheist and you don't believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You are worm dirt. So for their son to die for nothing, and now he is no more -- that is pretty hard to get your head around that. So I don't know how an atheist thinks. I can only imagine that that would be pretty tough." I'm fairly certain that the Tillmans would not be very happy to find out that their son is now being used as an example in a presentation promoting religion to the military.

That little segment left me shaking with rage. They call him "a non-religious saint" and pretend to respect him, when all they're doing is using him as whitewash for their sectarian agenda. They think they can point to Pat's presence and say, "See? We've got someone non-religious in there, so it's totally tolerant and inclusive!" Never mind that the entire slideshow nakedly conveys the idea that if you don't believe in God, you're a self-serving, worthless asshole with no meaning and no purpose who might as well just go ahead and shoot yourself right now. They spent the entire few slides with Pat downplaying the fact he wasn't a believer, pretending that he was the man he was in spite of not believing in God.

If you're in any doubt as to whether Pat's family will be happy, here's a hint.

Our military under Bush has become a festering sore of religious dominionists and fundie evangelicals who believe their religious agenda is the only answer to all the world's ills. That shit is dangerous. It's already threatened the mission in Iraq (never mind it was Bush's crusading that got us there in the first place), it's caused a plethora of problems in the ranks, and now it's threatening the mental health of our soldiers.

This shit needs to come to a swift end. The religious frothers need kicking out. Let's grab a copy of the Constitution. Bush may have shredded it, but there's still enough left to tape together, roll up, and belabor some fundies with.

Freedom of religion extends to our troops, too. It's time they learned that.

O Mighty Isis!

Make sure you've swallowed all drinks and are seated securely before reading this.

I'm still laughing. That post was made of awesome.

Once you've read it, you'll understand why it put me in mind of this. I once spent a very instructive afternoon during a slow time at our bookstore reading it. Funny as it was, though, I don't think it made me laugh as hard as Dr. Isis just did.

(Tip o' the shot glass to Ed Brayton and his merry band of commenters)