Government injections

By Capt. Fogg

There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief

___________________

So Michelle Bachmann claims some young girl suddenly got all retarded like, after her "Government injection" of Guardasil. That's not too surprising. I know someone who got loaded on Private Reserve Brandy and voted for Bush, but one thing always follows another and that's enough proof of causation for a desperate liar speaking to the profoundly ignorant and superstitious primitives who listen to people such as she; people who see the rage of gods in every storm, lightning bolt and tectonic movement, who are terrified of mysterious rays and forces and 'toxins' and couldn't pass a 5th grade science exam.

"Government Injections" eliminated smallpox, you know, and would have done the same for Polio and other diseases if we didn't have that other pandemic in America -- ignorance. Perhaps the absence of Government fluorides in our local Republican drinking water would explain all the brown and missing teeth I see at Tea Party rallies and I don't think it has anything to do with too much Lipton's.

But hey, we're a country (and I use the term loosely) not only infested with idiots and idiocy, but one where there's a good chance someone stupider and with even less integrity than Mark Bachmann's smokescreen wife may slither into high office like one of those young snakes that wriggle under my patio doors.

Speaking of things that creep and crawl, take my Congressworm, Tom 'Looneytunes' Rooney -- please. Tom who keeps showing up on my Facebook page to remind me that Government is not only impotent but incompetent and also tyrannical -- and all without explaining how those things aren't sort of mutually exclusive and more importantly, since he's part of it, why the hell he isn't as much to blame as anyone else who's part of it. Really, I'd be pleased if he'd just follow that other anti-government, moose-eating grifter and simply fly over the cuckoo's nest and drive around the country in a bus and get rich, like some inverted and less lysergic Ken Kesey.

But no, polluted air isn't bad for you, polluted water can't hurt you, unless it has government fluoride in it and besides Florida Governor Rick Scott says we can't afford it because disease and degradation are good for business and bad for 'jobs.' But condoms don't prevent disease or pregnancy, says the gospel of Tea and vaccinations are a genocidal hoax and freedom from disease and unwanted pregnancy will promote teen promiscuity and the gay agenda and we don't need no government health insurance because when we get leukemia or Alzheimers we can go to the emergency room and the taxpayers will pick up the bill and if you can't understand that you're just a libtard elitist and part of the problem.

(Cross posted from Human voices)

Bring it on, Darrell Issa, you dangerous idiot

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Buckle up. The Republicans are back, and gavel-wielding Darrell Issa, dangerous idiot extraordinaire, is about to lead the House down into the valley of the damned:

Rep. Darrell Issa is aiming to launch investigations on everything from WikiLeaks to Fannie Mae to corruption in Afghanistan in the first few months of what promises to be a high-profile chairmanship of the top oversight committee in Congress.

According to an outline of hearing topics obtained by POLITICO, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is also planning to investigate how regulation affects job creation, the roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the foreclosure crisis, recalls at the Food and Drug Administration and the failure of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to agree on the causes of the market meltdown. 

Yes, that's right, Issa is threatening to investigate pretty much everything. Full of partisan hyperbole and what appears to be a complete disregard of history (and reality), he has called Obama "one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times," later clarifying himself by broadening that attack to the Obama Administration generally. (Because, as you know, Obama covered up a third-rate break-in at a D.C. office building, sold arms to Iran and redirected the funds to Latin American fascists, and lied his way into a disaster of a war in the heart of the Middle East.)

In response to that comment, the Post's Ruth Marcus wrote that "[i]f Issa believes this, he is deranged. If he doesn't and is saying it anyway, he is dangerous." (Via Benen.) I would suggest that he is both deranged and dangerous, all wrapped up in right-wing ideology, very much the quintessential House Republican. Benen has more:

To justify his allegations of corruption, Issa told CNN yesterday, "In saying that this is one of the most corrupt administrations, which is what I meant to say there, when you hand out $1 trillion in TARP just before this president came in, most of it unspent, $1 trillion nearly in stimulus that this president asked for, plus this huge expansion in health care and government, it has a corrupting effect."

As is too often the case, Issa is deeply confused. First, the TARP bailout was a Bush administration proposal supported by the Republican leadership in both chambers. The Obama administration made sure American taxpayers were paid back, and lowered TARP's price tag to almost zero. If Issa sees this as evidence of "corruption," someone should have bought him a dictionary for Christmas.

Second, the stimulus wasn't $1 trillion -- I wish it had been -- and there was nothing corrupt about it. Similarly, arguing that health care reform has a "corrupting effect" doesn't make any sense if the effect of the law features no corruption.

Of course, Issa doesn't understand the meaning of corruption. To him, apparently, anything with which he disagrees is "corrupt." And he's not just "deeply confused," he's completely stupid, getting even the simple facts wrong.

But this is what the Republicans are about -- and what they will prove to be about in the House. Instead of governing, or helping to govern, they will be investigating and obstructing, doing everything in their power to prevent the president and Congressional Democrats, who of course still have a majority in the Senate, from governing. I realize that the concept of the "loyal opposition" is more parliamentary than presidential, but this sort of Republican partisanism is disloyalty to the extreme -- disloyalty to the American people.

So why do I say, Bring it on?

Because I'm more than happy to let the Republicans expose themselves for what they are, a party of extreme right-wing politics, extreme partisanism, and absolute obstructionism, a party that is completely out of control, a party that, spurred on by Issa's gavel, wants to drag the country down into the gutter.

And because the American people, and particularly all those much-ballyhooed independents, are supposedly against this sort of thing. Because they want Washington to get to work, and to work for them. Because they don't much care for such partisanism, for such bickering, for such paralysis.

Because the American people need to know what the Republicans are all about.

You've heard that the GOP is the Party of No, or even the Party of Hell No. But it's more than that. It's a party that, having lost in 2006 and 2008, simply cannot accept the will of the American people, the outcomes of American democracy. It's a sore-loser party, a party of bitterness and resentment, a party of anger and vengeance, a party of cynicism and hypocrisy, a party completely divorced from reality, a party out for itself at the expense of all else, including the needs of the American people at this time of ongoing economic difficulty.

So, yes, Darrell Issa, bring it on! Show us just how deranged you and your party really are.

Beck's dangerous idea

By Capt. Fogg

It's marvelous that Charles Darwin still scares the hell out of people. Marvelous that is, if you're not convinced that our species has little survival potential because the peculiar adaptation to a changing world we share with no other species, is beginning to make it impossible to adapt to the changing world brought about by that adaptation. Human intelligence is a very new development and far from making us the pinnacle of evolution, it may yet prove to be another example of overspecialization making us vulnerable to extinction as our existence depends ever more on coping with an ever more complex world.

That we may have risen to the level of our incompetence, beyond the level of the average person's capability to understand invokes the Peter Principle. That there are people like Glenn Beck who thrive on breaking the tools we've used so get us this far, subduing intelligence and reason and critical facilities as well as the body of information we've accumulated, assures the eventual end of civilization and without civilization, we're not exactly the fittest things in the jungle, are we?

It may seem strange to cite Glenn Beck when talking about matters of intelligence, but it's no stranger than listening to him make that old and silly and certainly illegitimate claim that Charles Darwin is the "father of modern racism." It's an argument that can't be seen as such by anyone familiar with the modern, scientific concept of evolution or indeed someone smart enough to realize that Darwin didn't invent that process any more than Newton invented gravity or inertia making him culpable when someone hits you over the head with a rock. It takes, in fact, something more than Beckian stupidity and something more like mens Rea, as the lawyers call it: evil intent. Evil intent is a distinctly human property as Mr. Beck amply demonstrates. Darwin didn't invent humans.

Ask the moron on the street what Darwin was all about and he'll likely say "survival of the fittest" and he'll be wrong. He'll be unlikely to revise his opinion since the natural algorithm that produces speciation and biodiversity is more complex than he's willing or able to assimilate and the body of evidence might as well be buried on Mars for all he knows of it. Survival of the fittest is a flattering concept anyway, since we've survived so far and therefore can call ourselves fit and masters of all we survey.

It's a fairly short non-sequitur from there to "only the fit should survive" which of course is not Darwin and certainly not Dan Dennett but Republican, Conservative, Libertarian, Glenn Beckian. How better to describe the contempt and lack of concern for the helpless and unfortunate than to link it to the Scroogian "let them die and decrease the surplus population?" It's not Liberals after all who decry compassion when it costs us anything, it's Conservatives.

That evolution occurs and is the process through which all existing life forms have differentiated themselves from other life forms, right down to whatever primitive life-like chemistry preceded them, is not conjectural. It's not in doubt and not without an overwhelming preponderance of evidence. It's more solid, I could argue, than Newtonian physics, but the important factor is that it's not about survival of the fittest and doubly not about the idea that one racial or ethnic group needs to enforce the fallacy by persecuting another. Darwin is about an inevitable natural process and inevitable and natural things don't need enforcement.

The Nazis did not seek to eliminate other "races" than their mythical Aryan brotherhood because of Darwin or Huxley or any of the countless archaeologists and geneticists who have cemented evolution as a basic science -- they used a fallacious and mendacious misstatement of it because they were racists seeking scientific basis, just as Glenn Beck does. Make no mistake, I give the comparison in all seriousness. Fake science, bad science and specious arguments lie behind many movements, most of which are highly dangerous. The public hasn't the brains or the knowledge to see through it and many who have have been hypnotized by one Svengali after another.

Using a fake simulacrum of science to bolster animal instinct, putting a stolen lab coat on greed, bigotry and racism does not serve to smear real science. In fact as Glenn Beck uses such tools to burn science in effigy he may be making stupidity an important survival factor.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Palin: dangerous idiot

By Michael J.W. Stickings

WaPo: "Palin invents word 'refudiate,' compares herself to Shakespeare."

Seriously? Seriously. You really can't make this shit up.

**********

The issue, by the way, is that Sarah Palin objects to a mosque being built near Ground Zero in New York -- because, you know, 9/11 was apparently a Muslim attack on America (and not an attack by mostly Saudi extremists, waging mass-murder jihad, who certainly did not represent all of Islam). I suppose Palin herself should be held responsible for every crazy thing every crazy Christian does.

As Jon Chait notes, Palin's black-and-white worldview is in stark contrast even to Bush's:

The Bush administration understood that defining its foreign policy vision as a battle between the West and Islam was a disastrous choice and a victory for the extremists. But conservatives now are falling into the precise trap the extremists have set, which is to define all Islam as radical Islam. If you are capable of distinguishing between moderate Islam and extremist Islam, the notion of a mosque and Muslim cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero ought to be totally uncontroversial. Indeed, it is a celebration of American diversity and a symbol of what makes this country superior to its enemies.

In Palin, the extremists have a willing vessel into which to pour their poison. She is one of them, after all, and the last thing she wants to do, like the rest of her hateful right-wing ilk, is to celebrate what really makes her country great.

...And I was too blind to see

By Distributorcap

Sing Out Barack....

by Distributorcap

The oil "spill" (this ain't no spill, it is a gusher) in the Gulf of Mexico is an ecological debacle unseen in recent times (say the last 2,000 years). The effects of the pollution on wildlife, wetlands, beaches, the fisheries and the natural food chain will be felt for decades.

And the media - are they spending the countless hours they have to fill on discussing and eliciting solutions? No, they are more consumed with chastising:

• the Obama Administration for being slow to react (they weren't - they were slow to fill the media's endless need for talking heads)
• President Obama himself for not "reacting" or getting " mad" enough.

So instead of talking about fixing this disaster, hounding BP into doing more, or what the government is doing - the endless hours of chit chat on cable news has been totally focused on Obama's reaction to this tragedy. Not only do they expect the Commander-in-Chief to be an expert in Petroleum Engineering and Marine Biology, the pundits have gone as far as saying it is a requirement for the President perform for the cable shows show emotion. The President is NOT permitted to analyze and manage (those sort of boring actions just simply do not generate ratings), Obama has to perform, emote and ENTERTAIN.

So in honor of the "journalists" on cable TV who require the President of the United States to also be Marlon Brando, the nominees for the Best Performance by a President in a leading role are:

• George W. Bush for A Streetcar Named Katrina
• William Clinton for Guys and Interns
• Gerald Ford for Last Tango in Saigon
• Richard Nixon* for Teahouse of the August Resignations
  
• Barack Obama for On The Oilfront
• Ronald Reagan for Mutiny on the Challenger

You want to know why the country is full of people ready to vote back the very political party who got us into this mess to begin with - just watch 15 minutes of any cable "news" show and you will quickly see why. There is never a discussion on solutions to the problem, or ways to prevent future disasters - it is always about how awful someone is doing. It is hours and hours of a trashing-fest.

Criticism for ratings criticisms sake. Constructive - no way. Destructive - the conversations from this so called pundits are actually probably more destructive to this country than the oil plumes on the Gulf floor.

Oh and the winner is....






*special write-in nominee from Nonnie

The Chosen People

By Distributorcap

from her blog....

Karen Hanretty is a political and communications strategist who specializes in strategic communications, issue advocacy and political campaigns. Over the past decade, Hanretty has developed a strong reputation for taking complex issues and creating news coverage that explains the underlying political motivations that drive public policy.

On The Ed Show - Monday, June 7, 2010, Karen Hanretty and Laura Flanders were "discussing" (someone like Hanretty does not discuss - she talks over, yells and simply lies) Helen Thomas' remarks about Israel and her resignation. Hanretty, who nastiness just oozes from each pore, only had to say one line to demonstrate her strong reputation for taking complex issues and creating news coverage.

Hanretty (to Flanders): "Only a liberal would defend anti-semitism." 

Let's take a look at some of those "liberal" anti-semites and/or people who have said some incredibly horrendous things about Jews.

Richard Nixon, disgraced President
Prescott Bush, grandfather of a President
Father Coughlin, radio announcer
Charles Lindbergh, hero pilot
Henry Ford, car manker
H L Mencken, writer
Theodore Dreiser, writer
Elizabeth Dilling, writer
Bamberg County, SC GOP Chairman Edwin Merwin
Orangeburg County, SC GOP Chairman James Ulmer
Tennessee Republican Chairman Robin Smith
Former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson
Fred Malek, Richard Nixon's "Jew Counter" (who was just hired by Gov. McDonnell of VA)
Ann "Jews should be perfected" Coulter

(please add some more)

so a little editing...

Karen Hanretty is a political and communications hack who specializes in strategic idiocy, anger advocacy, and political lies. Over the past decade, Hanretty has developed a strong reputation for taking complex issues and creating over-simplified sound bites that explains the underlying psychological motivations that drive Republicans, greed and selfishness.

There are certain words to describe someone like Hanretty... I leave it one's imagination.

Ugly American

By Capt. Fogg

Have we become a nation of skateboard and spray can street brats who live just to piss off the adults and piss on everything we can just for the fun of it; laughing with idiot glee while impressing our idiot friends?

Maybe not all of us, but certainly the Tea Baggers and the third of us who think Sarah Palin would make an outstanding president and most assuredly the idiot CNN reporter who thought she could get noticed by wearing a T-shirt with the president of the U.S. dressed as Mao Zedong in a Red Army uniform -- not at some idiotic Republican rally, not in a high school parking lot, but in the streets of Shanghai and while Barack Obama was making a historic visit to convince the world's largest country we're rational and dependable and trustworthy.

That's right, look at me folks, I'm an American and I'm an offensive and ignorant twit! One wonders at what feelings such a spectacle elicits in the Chinese. Mao, after all and after all the horrors, is still a hero of the "anti-Japanese War" and the man who ended much of the horror of Chinese history, albeit by instituting his own horror. Still, his picture looks down at Tian an men from the gates of the forbidden city.

Is this statement meant to say: "look, our leader is just like your great founding father, which might be an insult? Perhaps it means "look, your leader was a monster and so is ours" which would be a very confusing concept since drawing any parallels or valid comparisons between these two men is the stuff of foil hatted and straight jacketed ravers -- or unscrupulous reactionary propagandists. What must it seem like when a representative of the country that has everything China wants mocks the system that gave it to them by comparing it to the dark days of starvation and violent oppression?

Who knows, but if we hark back only a handful of months to when criticizing the US or it's leaders while abroad was considered treason - at least when non-Republicans did it, it would be confusing to anyone. No Chinese thinks Obama has anything to do with Communism, much less with the dictatorship of the Party or the Gang of Four or the Cultural Revolution.

Emily Chang, a Chinese based CNN reporter was hassled by Shanghai police who had put a ban on such display in order to avoid offending America. That an American news network would make an effort to openly flaunt it rather than some anti-American local must have seemed as strange as it seems to me, but perhaps no stranger than the tokens and tags of the domestic brat culture with its graffiti, self mutilation and 'attitude.'

Nice job Emily. Thanks for reminding the world that we're as sophomoric and scatter-brained as we ever were and the world can feel safe with us, our massive nuclear arsenal, our worshipful militarism, our xenophobia and the joy we feel in our disrespect for everything and everyone.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

No presidents need apply

By Capt. Fogg

It is clear that Notre Dame didn't understand what it means to be Catholic when they issued this invitation.

The invitation in question was From the University of Notre Dame to President Obama to give the commencement address tomorrow, May 17. The opinion of Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, must be understood to be then, that it is not in the interest of maintaining orthodoxy to allow American Students to hear the thoughts of an American President who does not vow to follow the Roman Catholic Church's proclamations regarding abortion. More simply, the graduates are to be considered as Roman Catholic first, and Americans second -- at best. What it means to be Catholic is to obey, to surrender. What it means is not to listen to unapproved opinions or tolerate the holders thereof simply because they represent our country and our laws.

The Cardinal Newman Society has prepared a petition calling for Notre Dame president Father John Jenkins to tell the President of the United States he, as a non-catholic, tainted with the sin of heterodox and heretical ideas, is not welcome -- and Time.com tells us that the streets of South Bend Indiana have been invaded by wild-eyed crusaders like as Alan Keyes and Randall Terry carrying blood covered dolls while Cardinal James Francis Stafford, one of the highest-ranking Americans at the Vatican, asserts that the President of the United States should not soil the sacred ground because of:

an agenda and vision that are aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic.

There is no information about whether the aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic Stafford managed to say that with a straight face.

It's difficult to know just what the official "agenda" of the Vatican might be as concerns the Obama Administration as a whole or in relation to his relaxing of restrictions on stem cell research and his lack of requisite intransigence on the subject of abortion and Time spends more time speculating on it than I will, but is the day over when a candidate for high office in the United States can assure us (and be believed,) that he is an American first and a Catholic second? Indeed, can the University of Notre Dame assure us that it has any commitment to Democracy as opposed to religious authority?

Of course, as Abdon Pallasch at the Chicago Sun-Times points out, such things are nearly standard procedure at the Catholic University. It's happened before, many times. Clearly, however, there is a persistent and durable movement of consequence amongst American Catholic leaders that seems to play well to those neo-Know-Nothings with anti-Catholic sentiments. This is a movement that reminds one far too much of the Church of earlier days and makes the ecumenical, tolerant sentiments of past Popes seem more like an interlude that's now over.

Of course, it's not only the small mindedness or religion in general that divides America. Arizona State University, refused to confer the customary honorary degree on commencement speaker Obama on Wednesday, explaining that his "body of work" was insufficient even though foreign dignitaries whose BOW's were of lesser bulk had been. I suspect the Arizona libertarian/anarchist movement amongst the University administration here, but if The Daily Show's roast of ASU students was close to the mark, a good number of their students lack the brains to get a job sweeping Sesame Street and therefore don't think Obama has the right stuff, even for a fake Arizona degree. Harvard will just have to do.

From all accounts, however, the president was received well by the students and I have a feeling he will be at Notre Dame as well. The American People, particularly the younger ones, aren't the ones trying to tear the country apart for fun and profit, it's the same, cranky, closed-minded, and anti-democratic institutions and leaders who have been with us since the beginning. Soon may they disappear so that we can start to respect ourselves and our country once more.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Ugly is as ugly thinks

By Capt. Fogg

This is still America, the discomfiture of the Republican Party notwithstanding, and so no triviality, no irrelevant, inconsequential or plainly idiotic dispute is going to go away without the final word being had by our ad hoc committee on the meaning of everything. The current committee heads seem to be Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber Wurzelbacher.

As the swells slowly die down on that limitless sea of Who Gives A Shit, we can hear the voice of Mrs. Palin (perhaps all the way to Russia) telling us that:

Our Constitution protects us all, not just those who agree with the far left.

Saving the discussion of just what, to her, constitutes the "far left" for another paragraph, it might be worthwhile to wonder just what protection it offers from the superstition and bigotry of those who listen to psychotic monsters like Pastor "death to witches" Muthee. We won't get an answer from her, I'm afraid, but her feelings are clear. The Constitution protects her religious views against the "liberal" onslaught.

It doesn't, of course -- and I have a hard time seeing the First Amendment as protecting someone's standing in a private, for profit beauty pageant, else we'd be hearing a lot of court cases from ladies with big noses, large bottoms and A cups, but that's the Procrustean bed Palin would like to strap the sad case of Carrie Prejean into, as poor a fit as it may be.

Does Sarah care who wins a contest designed to facilitate the commercial self-objectification of young women? I would guess that she is only interested in portraying her as a noble victim of people so un-American as to assert that the Constitution protects everyones rights, including the right to enter into a contract with another, regardless of race, creed, national origin or gender. That's being a farleftliberal, of course; the catchall term for anything that stands in the way of going back to the days when a real estate broker (we didn't have Realtors back then) could refuse to show you a house in a white neighborhood, a Jew couldn't book a hotel room in Palm Beach, schools, restaurants, public parks, drinking fountains train stations and city buses were segregated, marrying someone of the wrong race could land you in jail and non-missionary position sex was a crime -- and all was well with far right neanderthals like Sarah the moose killer and her Cave Christians. All was right with Sarah's Grizzly God.

No, “the liberal onslaught of malicious attacks” as Sarah growled from her wilderness den -- or in other words, the disgust with people like Prejean, Palin and the Plumber dude who want to have the law interfere with private and personal relationships and strip us of the right to determine just who our families are: the Liberal assault is what what we should be concerned about, or at least the losers who run and watch and participate in beauty pageants should be. It's a "onslaught!" We shouldn't notice that in fact nobody is censoring anyone and Sarah the Idiot is confusing equal protection under the law for all citizens with some kind of an outrageous affront to her primitive religious beliefs.

So it seems like Sarah's "far left" is actually the core of American values, at least the values the constitution was meant to be a means to facilitate. It seems like Sarah's center lies in a culture that died out with the "onslaught" of the Age of Enlightenment, if not with the disappearance of woolly mammoths. Far-left liberals like me feel little more than sad, queasiness at the ugly programmed responses of would be beauty queens, and that's about it. Some may be outraged at her, some might hate her, but they are a subgroup as small as Palin's witch hunters. Most of us care more about how our representatives vote and how well our freedom is protected against its atavistic enemies, but ugly words make people ugly, and this is a beauty contest, isn't it?

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Should a black dog wear a white dress?

By Capt. Fogg

If you allow this, then you will not be able to disallow it and it will lead to that which will inevitably lead to that and then that. Got it?

Therefore, if we allow women to vote, we'll soon have to allow inferior races to vote and then who is to say we won't have to allow dogs to vote and then chickens and down all the phylae to protozoa. Imagine having to design a voting machine for an amoeba? Those stupid liberals!!

In a Slippery Slope Argument, a sequence of increasingly unacceptable consequences is offered as stepping stones to hell. You'll find it listed under Fallacies of Distraction and you'll find it on the tongues of Fox opinionators like Bill O'Reilly and without the slightest embarrassment, it seems.

So of course allowing (as though you had the right to disallow it) people of the same sex to enter into a marriage contract will absolutely and inevitably lead to people demanding to marry earthworms. It's a testament to American stupidity that anyone would fail to see this as an unfounded assertion, but then, the foundation of the American Stupidity Culture and Fox News' prosperity is this very inability.

Of course, just as Zeno can be invoked to prove we can't get there from here, the Slippery Slope can be invoked with similar illogic to prove we will all go to hell without guidance from traditional things like bigotry and Bill O'Reilly.

The fool asks why, if human beings can enter into a contract without prejudice as to their gender, why not animals? The wise man simply tells him he's an idiot because animals are not human beings, cannot enter into any contracts at all, and the constitution guarantees equal protection under the law only to humans in the first place. The fool doesn't understand and turns to Fox and the Churches who make him feel better by telling him God loves fools and all those other people are heretics and liberals.

Bill is there to tell the bottom third that if we allow gay marriage, you'd better buy a white dress for your parakeet, and they would rather believe that than believe they're ignorant idiots a parakeet wouldn't want to marry in the first place.

I'm tempted to think that in some cases, it might actually help the gene pool.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

The destructiveness and historical dishonesty of Newt Gingrich

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Michelle Goldberg, author of the fantastic Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, had a must-read guest post at TNR's The Plank yesterday on Newt Gingrich's latest contribution to the far right's seemingly endless culture war in support of "religious fundamentalism and sacralized nationalism."

It involves "Gingrich hawking a full-length documentary called Rediscovering God in America," an ugly assault on liberalism and secularism that rewrites American history, turning America into a theocracy at its foundation -- as well as Gingrich's association with a rather contemptible propagandist:

"There is no attack on American culture more destructive and more historically dishonest than the relentless effort to drive God out of America's public square," Gingrich says in a trailer for the documentary on his website. Among the program's talking heads is David Barton, a former math teacher and Texas fundamentalist who has fashioned a career as a prominent revisionist historian, reinterpreting the American past along theocratic lines. Barton started out on the fringe -- in the early '90s, he was a speaker at white supremacist Christian Identity conferences -- but in the modern GOP, he's hardly an extremist. Indeed, in 2004, the RNC hired Barton to give get-out-the-vote speeches to groups of clergy nationwide. What's surprising is not that Gingrich would associate with Barton, whose work he's been praising for years. What's surprising is that, at a time of serious collapse on the right, Gingrich is hitching his bid for renewed relevance to the most exhausted culture war tropes.

Yes, Gingrich wants back in, but he's cavorting with extremists and bigots and otherwise positioning himself on the far right of the increasingly right-wing Republican Party. He has a reputation, much of it self-spun, for being "an innovator" and an ideas man, but his ideas are as crazy as he is: What exactly is "gay and secular fascism"? And how exactly is it, whatever it is, trying to "impose its will on the rest of us"? Is he being forced to his knees by jackbooted sodomites?)

Goldberg concludes: "[W]ith the defeat of Republican moderates rendering the rump GOP more right-wing than ever, [Gingrich] apparently sees a path to power in challenging Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee for leadership of the Elmer Gantry wing of his beaten party. Maybe he's clueless about the future of Republicanism, but if he's right about it, it's hard to see what kind of future Republicanism has."

Whatever the case, given the current state of the GOP, he's perfect for it.

We used to pray for them, but it's all over now

By Capt. Fogg

Well, the word is out on Main Street -- Tim Geithner can't be trusted as Treasury Secretary because he is Jewish and Jews have divided loyalty. I was interested to hear that, and not just because Geithner's family assures us he's an Episcopalian raised and married in that Church.

Is the phony honeymoon over? That the Republicans may be abandoning their pretense of being in love with Israel is a possibility. One perennial Troll here at The Reaction called me "an arrogant Kike" for having asserted that, no, Barney Frank bears no discernible responsibility for our global recession, but it's really too soon to tell if the frustrated masses yearning to breathe fire will switch scapegoats and replace witches, liberals, illegal aliens, and the ACLU as hate objects. Maybe they consider all those straw men to be Jewish anyway.

Of course, it's hard to think of any immigrant group that isn't or hasn't been accused of divided loyalty in this nation of immigrants. John Kennedy stared down that bit of bigoted Waspery with grace nearly 50 years ago, but ask a Muslim -- hell, ask someone who isn't a Muslim but has a suggestive name.

Of course, it doesn't often occur except to cynics, that preaching the impending destruction of mankind and the dissolution of secular nationhood might be taken as a dilemma in as much as commitment to preserving the USA and praying for lakes of fire and brimstone aren't compatible, at least to me. I can't think of loyalty more divided than that of the Religious Right, promoting the Christian Bible as the foundation of the United States, rather than its secular Constitution. I can't help but think of divided loyalty when presented with a candidate who looks longingly forward to the destruction of our country and the flight of the elect to the Holy Kingdom of God in Alaska (no witches may apply).

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Idiot of the Day: Dennis Prager

By Michael J.W. Stickings

For saying this: "Equality, which is the primary value of the left, is a European value, not an American value."

Apparently Prager isn't familiar with the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.

I'd call him a dangerous idiot, but does anyone outside his partisan echo chamber really care what Prager thinks about anything?

Waking up in a crazy house

By Capt. Fogg

As an indication of the insanity level now rising past the levies and flood gates and embankments of humanity, Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, wife of Lord Evelyn de Rothschild and more tightly connected to the ultra rich and well connected than can be achieved with epoxy, thinks Barack Obama is an elitist and so will support millionaire McCain. Either words mean nothing any more or the disease of belief has destroyed any remnants of cognitive function in America. It's impossible to have a sense of irony and not be in pain this morning. I'm sure someone in a clapped out 40-year-old trailer in Belle Glade, Florida agrees with her opinion and will join her in supporting John McCain's all-jive express.

I've been awaiting a terrorist attack since the McCain campaign began, the benefits of a hysterical population being pivotal to his pretended image of a tough, militaristic defender. The embassy bombing in Yemen can't, of course, be blamed on McCain, but George W. Bush's attacks and incursions into Pakistan certainly are sufficient provocation and McCain is the heir apparent to the the puppethood of Bush. It's obvious that fear of Islamic evil is being promoted. Is it too much to wonder if actual attacks are being provoked?

Well do you feel more entitled this morning? We all now own 79% of AIG along with Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac and it only cost us -- well, don't ask, it's only borrowed money anyway and debt doesn't matter. Eventually China will bail us out in turn since our continued indebtedness is to their advantage. Maybe they will be satisfied with a 79% share.

I hear from Raw Story that George had a prepared speech about the health of the economy ready to deliver to reporters about his meeting with key economic advisers like Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, and others. He decided to slink home without comment. I wonder why.

Meanwhile, back at the McCain campaign, John says, according to Crooks and Liars, that he can offset the $315 billion price tag for 45 new nuclear power plants by cutting earmarks. Maybe that's why he took on Palin the Earmark Queen, because the only way to do that is not to do that and say you did. Besides, what's another 300-billion-pound monkey on our backs? We can all just go out and marry millionaires like he did.

Anyway, the Dow has now erased yesterday's "rebound" plus another 80 points, and I think I'll go back to bed.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Meanwhile

By Capt. Fogg

Outside the Big Top in Denver, there are all kinds of things to delight us at the sideshow. Take the primary election victory of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who is under indictment for concealing a quarter million in free stuff from an oil services company. Ted is very popular amongst his constituents for bringing Federal money into the state even if he skims a little when nobody's looking. Incumbent Alaska Representative Don Young is also in a very tight contest (currently too close to call) despite being under investigation for taking money from VECO, the former oil services company and for pushing through a questionable earmark for a Florida road project. One has to wonder if Alaska Republicans are very concerned with the imagined ethical failings of Barack Obama, the farleftliberal.

Meanwhile, back here in Florida, people who are intent on restoring the integrity of the Republican Party, as one neighbor of mine says, have selected Tom Rooney to run for the House seat vacated by the lacivious boy-loving Mark Foley and now occupied by Democrat Tim Mahoney. Tom, of course, is the scion of the Rooney Family that owns numerous gambling enterprises in Florida and New York, along with the Pittsburgh Steelers football franchise. We can be sure Tom will never take into account what's good for gambling when determining what's good for Florida. Even if he does, he's not a "farleftliberal."

A more cynical man than I am might be convinced that Republicans not only can be bought, but can be bought cheaply with a few mumblings about abortion, farleftliberals and America's "Greatness." To be a cynic however implies that the critic actualy cares. I don't. I'm happy to let it all fall apart if for no other reason than to spite the McCain idiots who challenge Obama for not attacking with sufficient anger, anyone who questions America's "greatness" and god-given right to world domination. The world would be far better off without people like that and if we indeed are like that, the world would be better off without us.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Ben Stein bombs

By Capt. Fogg

I used to watch the Comedy Central quiz show Win Ben Stein's Money -- not because I liked the guy, but because I liked to be amazed at what he didn't know. Of course, not knowing all kinds of political and historical trivia isn't an indication of being a dumb schmuck, but letting one's name be affiliated with a movie like Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is proof positive. It's slightly gratifying that the public largely has ignored Ben Stein's turd of a film although divine intervention in some really ghastly way would have been more gratifying. The premise that "Intelligent Design," the resurrected, quasi-deist argument that life and perhaps the universe is too complex to have arisen through natural processes, has been so soundly, thoroughly and often humorously debunked over the last two centuries that it shouldn't be necessary to note that existence not only predates our inability to understand it but isn't subject to reducing its complexities to the level where a religious person can understand.

Yes this is a religious argument and that's why it's only applied to Human evolution and not to the equally difficult aspects of quantum physics, general relativity, and advanced mathematics. Imagine my saying that Tensor Calculus is flawed because it's beyond my ability! Comprehensive denunciations of Intelligent Design have been around for centuries. It's a buried fallacy now exhumed like some hollow zombie only because our culture has lost touch with itself and the majority of us are as ignorant if not more so than we were 200 years ago. Percy Bysshe Shelley's refutation of deism and his Necessity of Atheism not only makes Ben Stein's vaunted brain look dull and pedestrian, but illustrates the ironic appeal to victimhood that is this movie's argument.

Shelley was thrown out of school for his brilliant efforts; thrown out by the same militantly dishonest dullards who claim to be unfairly treated by science. The argument from ignorance has it that biological structures like the eye cannot have originated without guidance from a supernatural intelligence because, say the the proponents of God, they don't understand the process. This proposition begins with the absurd and doesn't need to be reduced far for one to notice that according to such arguments, the greater the ignorance, the more true the propositions must be. To the ignorant, all things are equally possible.

Of course, nature can be difficult to understand and even when understood, it can be counterintuitive. Humans took a long time to accept that up and down were relative directions and they roasted scientists alive for showing evidence that myths were incorrect. Battles were fought over such things as atomic theory and of course the heliocentric universe. Being less and less able to do so today, those who cling to and insist that others must cling to myth, have to create an additional saga of their own persecution: hence this movie.

If you buy into it of course, you cannot avoid admitting that you value comfort above honesty; that you see evidence as less valuable than comfort and that you want to punish anyone who disagrees. There is not only no evidence for order in the universe much less order than can only be a design, but the conjecture does not provide for the design of the designer. It's like the classic rebuff to the argument that there is no giant turtle upon whose back the Earth rests: it's turtles all the way down, says the little old lady to Bertrand Russell. It's not an argument, it's a hysterical fugue. Imagine arguing for the existence of a "Firmament" or for a world that floats on water or a heaven one can walk into from a mud brick tower! Although ID may require only the Deus Absconditus of the Deists; a God who created things and moved on, there is no evidence, there is no science, nothing that can be demonstrated, nothing that can be inferred from demonstrable fact. ID is of the same ilk as magic, voodoo, deception, outright stupidity and pathological delusion.

The evidence for the origin of species through natural selection is sufficient that no alternative explanation can compete fairly, hence the unfairness, the dishonesty and the outright sleaziness of Steins movie. Do I need to repeat that there is no evidence whatever for the Divine hand other than the argument ad ignorentiam? If we must give equal opportunities for bogus theories and reject all standards for truth in education, we must abandon the notion of education altogether and return the universities to the churches we took so long to dethrone. Ben Stein has bet his money that we will. I hope he loses every dime.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Same old George

By Capt. Fogg

No, I don't mean George Orwell, although the two will forever be linked with antinomial rhetoric. I know the theme has been beaten to death, but Bush's reflexive promotion of bad news as good news simply won't let the comparison die. When he didn't send enough troops, that was a good thing and then when finally he did, that was a good thing and now that the all too brief and all too small down tick in violence seems to have lost the coat of whitewash -- that's a good thing. "It's a positive moment," he said of the renewed fighting to The Times of London; just as it was positive that British troops had withdrawn previously. In fact every military debacle in recent years has been positive to this administration, including the horrible miscalculation that allowed the collapse of Iraq's infrastructure and the rise of an insurgency and the need for re-enforcements.

Reiterating his commitment to occupying Iraq until they become a willing client state and oil source, Commander Guy said he would not listen to "those who scream the loudest," which of course means those who question his fantasy. It's good to know that foolish consistency remains as unchanging as his mind:

I understand people here want us to leave, regardless of the situation, but that will not happen so long as I'm Commander-In-Chief.

How long has it been since we've had or even wanted leadership that recognized the sovereignty of "the people here" or recognized that the term "commander in Chief" refers only to command of the military and not to the nation?

"[A] very positive moment in the development of a sovereign nation that is willing to take on elements that believe they are beyond the law,"

says Bush, despite the fact that Iraq isn't a sovereign nation and with the smug consciousness that we aren't either. If we were, we would be willing to take on elements we believe are beyond the law instead of gibbering like demented monkeys about Obama's preacher and how we just hat, hate, hate, oh yes hate Hillary. If we were a sovereign nation and not the kingdom of a God-chosen ruler, we would have put the junta behind bars long ago.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Still full of it after all these years

By Capt. Fogg

I tuned into CNN just now to find the haggard face of George W. "commander guy" Bush stripped of its sneering cockiness, but asserting that Iraq is where the US was just after our revolution. I turned it off. He's still full of it after all these years.

Iraq is not a country with a parliamentary history. It does not have a government founded on a concept of certain inherent and inalienable human rights or founded on the concept of the sovereignty of the people rather than obedience to the dictates of a God chosen leader. The infant United States was not a country laid waste, not a country where various religious and political sects were being blown apart by their rivals and most importantly our revolution freed us from an occupying imperial power; it didn't have its government and treaties and laws and business arangements dictated by an army of infidels.

Iraq isn't a self sufficient nation engaged in passionate debate among learned proponents of humanism. Nouri al-Maliki isn't Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin or James Madison or anyone similar. Our nation in its infancy wasn't having it's resources syphoned off by corrupt warlords, it's leaders weren't being assasinated, it's churches weren't being blown to bits. In fact nothing in the present circumstances of Iraq has any similarity to the phantasmagoria we have been and are being given by George W. Bush and his familiars.

The strain of keeping up a the shifting series of phantasms, illusions and deceptive appearances, as created by the imagination of the neo-cons has clearly begun to show. This is not the same man giving us that tired story. One can speculate that he isn't sleeping or that he's drinking again and both guesses may be right, but to me the real horror isn't seeing a crumbling, delusional president, but the idea that he may soon be replaced by one with the same disconnected convictions and freshly charged batteries.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

We don't need no education -- again

By Capt. Fogg

We dont need no education.
We dont need no thought control.
No dark sarcasm in the classroom.
Teachers, leave those kids alone.

-- Pink Floyd

It's not always necessary to apply reductio ad absurdum to a situation. Sometimes things start out at the level of absurdity. You may have read that Michael Sheridan, an eighth-grade honors student in New Haven, Connecticut, was suspended from school, barred from attending an honors dinner and summarily removed as class vice president. Dope? Weapons? Peeking into the girls' locker room? No, he was hungry and bought some skittles from a classmate.

That's right, the school has a no-tolerance "wellness" policy, wellness being a euphemism for health which seems, well, so unhealthy, and "no-tolerance" meaning, for the most part, brainless. Who wants to introduce cogitation into the school system? -- that's just too liberal for America. The comfortable binary form of artificial intelligence that passes for thought in conservative utopias has brought us many examples of kids having had their educational prospects damaged because of aspirin or a nail clipper or items even more trivial. Of course some like to call this sort of thing "politically correct" in their politically correct fashion, or even "liberal" in their self contradictory manner, but I just call it bone headed conservatism. A restriction of rights is not liberal and a judgment as to whether something is allowed under one's political views is ipso facto politically correct. That's why I avoid falling into the tar pit of those terms whenever I can.

Of course the news got out on CNN last night and the sheepish sheep in New Haven had to give the kid a reprieve, the excuse being ignorance of the commandment "thou shalt eat only what, when and where we tell you to." Lets not talk about no tolerance for ignorance please -- my head hurts already.

Michael's "permanent record" will not reflect his sucrose abuse or his illicit candy deals and he will be free to go and not transgress the rules of "wellness" any further. As long as he keeps his boots shiny, pledges to worship god and the flag and avoid high fructose corn syrup, the ridiculous right wing school board of New Haven, Connecticut will allow him some portion of his civil rights and the people who truly love the idea of a country where we all obey the president and think no thoughts against the party and trust in a particular deity will be relieved and will continue to giggle about "liberals."

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)