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True religion from the center of the universe

Sunday, May 18, 2008

This being Sunday, our thoughts naturally turn to true Religion. Happily, yesterday, the mailman delivered food for thought, addressed to a fellow named Resident who gets a lot of mail here, though I’ve never actually met him.

We all know that Religion and Science are now locked in a deadly battle. At the moment, the battle is over evolution. On one side we have science armed with mountains of evidence. On the other hand we have a book authored by some fools in the desert in which we have a fable about two people in a garden. Obviously that one’s too close to call, but we all thought that in at least some respects religion had conceded some scientific claims.

Not so. It turns out that opposing evolution is for wusses. If you’re going to deny masses of evidence, why not go whole hog? Real men, according to the Geocentric Bible Foundation, are into geocentrism. That’s right. Lo, though even the Catholic Church saw fit to admit it may have erred a teeny bit on the Galileo thing, true Christians soldier on.

If you’re truly interested, you can see larger views by clicking on the images.

Interestingly these folks seem to be geocentric-centric, in that among other things, they claim:

That the mobility of the earth is the only place where science and the Bible have come into real conflict, and is the starting point for all churches that have compromised the authority of Scripture.

Which might make for an interesting debate between the lunatics at the geocentric asylum and those at the Discovery Institute.

The pamphlet offers a free book for anyone who returns the postage paid postcard. A cynic might say that in the guise of a tax free religious organization, the geocentric folks have hit on a way to acquire one of the most valuable databases in the entire US. Can you imagine any list more precious than one of people who refuse to believe that the earth goes around the sun? If you can sell people on that one, you can sell them on anything.

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Friday Night Music-Little Richard

Friday, May 16, 2008

One of the originals. Good Golly Miss Molly:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhybWFjuN2g[/youtube]

Next, as a free bonus, something almost completely different. Who would think you could make this song rock?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtgFVk70yMc[/youtube]

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Obama responds

Friday, May 16, 2008

This guy is good.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sOlaso_7Z8[/youtube]

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One more cheer for Chris Matthews

Friday, May 16, 2008

For reasons difficult to fathom we on the left have a monopoly on political humour-the funny kind that is. The Fox Network’s short lived attempt to compete with the Daily Show proved that, if ever it really needed proving. But we also have an earnest, too serious, streak that can sometimes blind us to political realities.

Yesterday I posted a video that is sweeping the net, in which Chris Matthews eviscerates a right-wing talk show host (Kevin James) who accused Obama of being a Neville Chamberlain clone (“an appeaser”) without having the slightest idea of what Chamberlain had actually done to earn that sobriquet, or, for that matter, what the word “appeasement” means. Today at the Salon War Room Alex Koppelman admits to enjoying the video immensely, but goes on to wonder why, given James’ obvious ignorance, Matthews had him on the show at all.

Seriously. Even if you disagree with the argument James was making, and think there’s no way anyone could ever prove the case, there still has to be someone who could at least make a knowledgeable defense for it. (I don’t know — a historian, maybe?) James, on the other hand, quite literally tried to scream his way out of admitting his ignorance. And with all due respect to Mark Green, New York City’s former public advocate and the other guest on at the time, what reason was there to have Green on discussing this, either? Green’s at least a step up from James, obviously, and certainly he has plenty of qualifications of his own — he’s currently the president of Air America Radio — but those qualifications are not really related to knowledge of the Munich agreement.

We have this frustrating tendency to try to engage on a rational level, and despite the massive evidence of the past 30 or so years, keep falling into the trap of believing that the absurd propositions advanced by these folks should be the subject of reasoned debate. If Matthews had looked hard enough he might have found a right wing professor somewhere that would have accepted the challenge and tried to prove that Obama was, indeed, another Chamberlain. But it was not right wing professors who started this meme, it was right wing propagandists. The story is about a political tactic. No, that elevates it too much. The story is about a political smear. Matthews covered the story just right, by exposing the smear for what it was. James was exposed as an ignoramus who was merely parroting a White House talking point. He is representative of all the other people who spread these smears. Who knows, some of them might know what Neville Chamberlain did, but not a one of them cares if the situations are remotely similar. The Republicans learned long ago, and continue to believe, that if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth. Time and again we on the left fall into the trap of believing these arguments are about ideas, or about facts. Matthews would have been legitimizing the smear by engaging with it on the level Koppelman suggests.

Chris done good this time.

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History Lesson

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Sometimes Chris Matthews gets it right. (Caution: very slow loading video at the link, but worth watching)

Update: Here’s a youtube, a bit longer, but it should load faster:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1wSZBTAXRs[/youtube]

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Shame on the Connecticut Bar Association

Thursday, May 15, 2008

I am absolutely in agreement with Groucho Marx. As a general principle ” I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member”.

Case in point: the Connecticut Bar Association. I joined under semi-duress, and they allowed me in, no questions asked. (Well, one question asked: “Where’s the money?”) But they didn’t stop there. That decision looks good next to this one, that found it’s way into my in-box this morning:

Kenneth W. Starr, Duane and Kelly Roberts Dean and Professor of Law, Pepperdine University School of Law, will be the featured speaker at the Third Annual CBA/YLS Distinguished Speaker Luncheon at 12:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 22, at The Hartford Club in Hartford.

It’s bad enough that they’ll let me be a member, but they’re going to either pay Ken Starr to give a speech or allow him to inflict himself on members gratis. Further proof, if any were needed, that this is an organization with a serious lack of judgment. I would henceforth resign from my committee memberships, were I a member of any committees. I would refuse to attend CBA functions, but alas, that is an empty threat, as I have never done so in the past. Little remains but to tender my resignation, which I intend to do as soon as I work up the energy to do so.

We live in strange times. In Missouri, Washington University, an institution that presumably sets some store in the life of the mind, is about to award an honorary degree to Phyllis Schlafly, a woman who has dedicated her life to the proposition that women are the intellectual inferiors of men, and that in any case the intellectual life is not worth living. Here in Connecticut our Bar Association chooses to honor a man who has shown a contempt for law- a man who led a vindictive partisan witch hunt. Is it so impossible to find someone who has really brought honor to the legal profession? How about this man? Or does partisan warfare bring more honor to our profession than opposing torture?

Filed in Lawyer stuff, Politics | | Comments (1)

More bad news for Republicans

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Just when the Republicans thought things couldn’t get any worse, science goes and invents a drug that might just doom them to political extinction. It’s called Provigil. Now it’s fairly obvious that any drug that makes you happy should be banned, as should any drug that expands your mind. But drugs like that aren’t half the threat that Provigil poses. Apparently, Provigil makes you smarter.

This is a major crisis for the GOP. It’s bad enough that Southern voters-that’s right, Southerners, perhaps the most ignorant group of people on the face of the planet, can no longer be manipulated by racism and appeals to shared ignorance. Now, the GOP faces a world in which the stupid and illogical can experience an IQ boost just by popping a pill. What will the GOP do without its base?

The solution is obvious, of course. This drug should be made illegal. It may be called Viagra for the brain, but the comparisons stop there. Viagra is a benign drug. One could argue, indeed, that it is right up there with religion in bringing opiates to the masses. Provigil, contrariwise, presents a clear and present danger to the Republic, and should be banned immediately. We already face a situation in which ignorance and stupidity are only truly safe in the mountains of West Virginia and within the Beltway in Washington. What will we do if even those bulwarks against rationality are breached?

Filed in Politics, Science | | Comments (0)

New Sullivan team gets off to great start

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

More incompetence in the Sullivan campaign.

Sullivan’s new team issued a press release accusing Joe Courtney of having failing to take the lead on a recently passed amendment that speeds up funding for submarine construction. The full story is at the link, but Gabe at Connecticut Local Politics sums the release up this way:

The problem (aside from getting the date wrong, really, how hard is that)? None of the Sullivan release is accurate! And I actually mean none of it (date included, sorry, I couldn’t resist). The amendment is called the Hunter-Courtney amendment. And Courtney’s amendment bailed out a previous version that was sure to fail. Rep. Courtney is the best kind of politician – the kind that gets things done. Oh, and he can send out a press release that has a passing relation to reality

All the gory details at the link above. Sullivan’s only real hope for victory was that Joe would fail to deliver on new submarines. He could then have trumpeted his submarine credentials. Joe has cut off that line of attack, but maybe it’s still all they’ve got, so they are going to use it anyway. The problem with that kind of issue is that the people who care about it actually know the facts, independently of what candidates have to say. You can’t snooker them. And, as to the people who don’t know the facts: they don’t really care about the issue.

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Replay?

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

The Republicans have a playbook that has become all too familiar. For many of their tricks to work, they need a compliant, and sometimes, a cooperative press. Eight years ago they claimed that Al Gore said he had invented the internet. Gore never said that, but the press repeated the charge, accepted it as true, and to this day most people in this country probably believe he said it.

Given the success of that smear job, it’s no wonder the Republicans keep trying the same tactic. Recently, they totally misrepresented a remark that Obama made about the Middle East:

In an interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., talked a great deal about Israel. He was rather effusive in his support for the Jewish state.

Apparently given nothing of substance to criticize, House Republican leaders then took a statement Obama made and twisted it to act as if the Democrat had insulted the Jewish state. Which he had not.

…

Then he said: “But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable. I am absolutely convinced of that … I want to solve the problem…”

It seemed pretty clear to me that by “constant sore” Obama was referring to the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As he says in the next sentence: the “lack of a resolution to this problem.”

Nonetheless, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, who knows better, accused Obama of calling Israel a “constant sore.”

“Israel is a critical American ally and a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, not a ‘constant sore’ as Barack Obama claims,” Boehner said. “Obama’s latest remark, and his commitment to ‘opening a dialogue’ with sponsors of terrorism, echoes past statements by Jimmy Carter who once called Israel an ‘apartheid state.’”

Jeffrey Goldberg, the reporter that conducted the interview, has condemned Boehner’s remarks as “mendacious, duplicitous, gross, and comically refutable.” (That’s a long winded way of calling Boehner a liar).

None of this pushback, however, means that this line of attack won’t have legs. It fits too neatly into the unfolding “Obama is a secret Muslim Hamas loving scary black man” narrative that McCain has been pushing. The fact that the guy who did the interview has rejected the charge means nothing; so far as I know, the reporter who did the interview of Gore never endorsed the charge. There is no reason to think that Fox won’t push this story, on one just like it. If we learned anything from 2000 and 2004 it is that attacks like this need a full scale counter-attack. I very much hope Obama knows that, or else we may find ourselves with a President McCain next year.

Filed in Presidential Politics | | Comments (0)

The cross we must bear: the Blue Dog “Democrats”

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

If consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, then we have some extremely big minds in the Democratic party, all residing in the heads of the “Blue Dog Democrats”, who make a habit of stabbing their party in the back.

Senator Jim Webb has been trying to pass a bill guaranteeing reasonable benefits, including updated GI-Bill type benefits, to allow vets returning from the Iraq War to go to college. But the Blue Dogs have a problem, one that Senator Byron Dorgan:

Webb has steadily picked up support for his proposal and this week moved within two votes of the 60 needed to overcome procedural obstacles in the Senate. But the high costs — $52 billion over 10 years — remain an obstacle not only with the Blue Dogs but also with Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.).

“I believe it should be paid for,” Conrad said. “I’ve said that to Sen. Webb. I’ve said that to the leadership. I completely agree with the Blue Dogs; I think it should be paid for.”

That works out to 5.2 billion dollars a year. Chump change so far as the overall budget is concerned. The highly principled Blue Dogs don’t believe in new government spending unless it is paid for by increased taxes or decreased spending elsewhere. How laudable. Of course, there are exceptions required. For instance, none of the Blue Dogs would consider requiring Bush to pay for his war the same way, nor would they consider ever casting a vote against using borrowed money to fund that war. Cost: $9 Billion a Month.

If my math is right that means Webb’s bill is equal to about 6 months of endless war funding. For that money we will get a more educated work force and the right to say we have treated our soldiers right. We will actually get a return on our investment, instead of just flushing great gobs of money down the toilet.

There is an additional back story here, by the way. John McCain is desperate to work a deal with Webb, because he’s put himself on the wrong side of this issue (along with the Blue Dogs, but not for the same reasons). He’s afraid we Yellow Dogs will hang his disregard for the people fighting his war around his neck, and he’s looking for an exit strategy.

Filed in Democrats, Iraq, Politics | | Comments (1)