Richard Nixon: Portrait of a Socialist

Ranting that our country is hurtling toward "socialism" is the current bugaboo of the political right--and, indeed, given socialism by definition lies on the left side of the political spectrum, one can understand their opposition to such philosophies by their very nature.  Yet for all the gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair by Tea Party demagogues over our imminent collapse into some quasi-Marxist state, I have to ask: is the agenda of the current administration and Congress actually all that "socialist," or has the political right merely moved itself so far to the extreme end of the scale so that everything else looks to be to the left of Stalin by comparison?

Photo from National Archives via Wikimedia Commons

Without delving into each specific issue in detail, I offer this observation: one Richard M. Nixon, the 37th President of the United States and a stalwart of the Republican party, pursued and implemented policies across his administration which are far more to the left, and steered the country on a path certainly more "socialist," than President Obama, Senator Reid, or Representative Pelosi (the unholy trinity in the eyes of the right) have ever dreamt of.  Even bathing in the blood of the puppies they've sacrificed to achieve their demonic goals, those three latter-day Stalinists pale in comparison to the achievements of Tricky Dick--who last I saw had an (R) in parenthesis after his name, not a (D).  Nor are these policies cherry-picked; they represent some of the biggest and most lasting achievements of President Nixon's time in office and cover broad swathes of policy from the economy to the environment to foreign policy.

Take, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency, which to modern conservatives is an anathema to the free market principles they advocate and an agency that exists solely to obstruct the consumer-minded engines of productivity that are this nation's corporations.  The current GOP senatorial nominee from Nevada has called for the EPA's outright eradication on numerous occasions, and the words of the recently-erstwhile GOP nominee for Vice President sum up the conservative zeitgeist, labeling it the "Economic Prevention Agency."

A quick consultation of the history books (references few seem to keep on hand these days) will reveal exactly who proposed and signed into law the EPA, and it wasn't some liberal, starry-eyed socialist like FDR or Lyndon Johnson.

Let's not stop with the EPA, the Clean Air Act, or the Federal Water Pollution Control Act.  Nixon didn't just steer us toward socialism by becoming a friend to the environment.  No, he embraced such leftist notions as workplace safety and the welfare of the nation's employees with the creation of OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.  And--the horrors!--he pushed his socialist, anti-business agenda to protect babies and small children with the creation of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, with its regulations over swimming pools and cribs and corporate-profit-damning product recalls.

The list of "socialist" agencies and regulations crafted and implemented under Nixon's watch is a healthy one, unless you're one of the demagogues lathering up crowds against "the gubermint" and its efforts to seize your tax dollars and  turn them into handouts.  Taking the US dollar off the gold standard, long a complaint of conservatives?  Check.  Imposing a national speed limit (n.b. something I can't forgive, myself)?  Check.  Increased spending on Medicare, Social Security, and food and welfare programs?  Check.

Since taking office, President Obama has caught much grief over even the suggestion that mega-bank executive salaries might be excessive, and that those banks who received taxpayer bailouts ought not spend our public moneys on throwing yet another party in Vegas or Bermuda.  Yet Nixon exercised authority and implemented national price and wage control boards, freezing pay raises and dictating product prices across the country.  Obama is a socialist, say the neoconservative punditry and body politic, for even hinting that rewarding utter failure with lottery-payout-sized bonuses seems askew.  Yet Nixon exercised control nationwide over salaries and prices, which quite arguably stands as one of the most socialist (and authoritarian) measures ever taken by the US government with regards to the conduct of private business.

And let's not forget "Obamacare," the castrated-by-compromise effort to help ensure every US citizen have access to adequate health care and current favorite invective of the right.  Nearly forty years ago, President Nixon called for national health care, a plan which would have mandated employer-provided insurance as well as a federal plan anyone could pay into and join.  (Ironically, Ted Kennedy was one of the leading opponents of Nixon's health care reform plan.)  Nixon failed to achieve his vision of universal, national health care, indeed, but one wonders what those Republicans shouting "socialist!" and "keep the government out of my health care!" today would have thought of an obviously more ambitious (and yes, socialist) plan coming from one of their own.

Lastly, rhetoric from the right today constantly demonizes President Obama for even entertaining the merest daydream of using diplomacy rather than the sword that is the US military might to deal with our nation's enemies.

Yet who is remembered for being the only President who could go to China, and whose efforts resulted in a real detente with not only with China, but to a thawing of relations with the Soviet Union as well (who feared a potential Sino-American alliance might arise out of such diplomacy)?

Yes, that socialist, Richard Nixon.  And don't forget, Tea Partiers, that Nixon cut defense spending significantly (from over 9% of GDP to under 6%) and got us finally out of that quagmire in Vietnam.

You'd think from the current rhetoric from the right that Nixon was a panty-waisted pinko whose sole goal was to transfer corporate wealth to our commisar enemies.  Yet in his day, he was a Republican opposed vehemently by liberals at every step of the way.  It's simply a sad statement of how far to the right the Tea Party, neoconservatives, and even mainstream Republicans today have moved from where their party once stood.

Utah's Governor: Screw the National Parks and Let's Mine Coal and Oil!

I came across a disturbing bit of news in today's Washington Post: the governor of Utah is claiming eminent domain over areas of fantastic scenic beauty currently owned by the federal government--for the purposes of mining those areas for their natural resources.  That's right, as a measure of our slash-and-burn, rape-the-land need for ever-more resources (and not to mention the "drill baby drill" screed popularized by a certain "expert" in domestic energy policy), Gov. Herbert signed a pair of laws which would take land the federal government had protected and presumably open the lands to mine away the coal, oil, and natural gas contained therein.

In particular, Utah's governor wants to take portions of the Grand Staircase of the Escalante National Monument, protected by Bill Clinton in 1996, as well as parts of national parks and designated wild areas and turn them over to development and mineral exploitation (77 oil and gas leases scrapped last year by the Interior Department).  Given the environment-destroying antics typically involved--like mountaintop removal coal mining in WV--it's a fair bet that these scenic lands would be permanently disfigured for the short-term gain of a bit of coal and oil.

There are, of course, legitimate concerns on Utah's part.  The federal government holds nearly 60% of the state's land by area.  Some of the lands absorbed into the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument had been designated, through their development, to raise money to pay for Utah's public school systems.  But the feds compensated Utah for the latter loss, giving them mineral rights on other lands plus a chunk of cash for the schools, too.

Utah's is claiming the feds "should have sold the land by now," which to me completely misses the point of federal ownership of land for public use and trust.  The US is holding those lands to protect them and preserve them for future generations; selling them to Utah or to private concerns without an irrevocable protective clause in place (e.g. the lands must remain undeveloped and unexploited in perpetuity) would amount to the US government failing to uphold its duty.

My biggest worry is that no one will really care.  It's like the mountaintop removal mining going on in West Virginia and other coal states, which is an absolutely atrocious destruction of the one enduring resource the Mountain State possesses: its natural beauty--not to mention the lasting damage done to the environment by such an abhorrent practice.  In low-population areas, particularly those with struggling economies, it's very difficult to attract national interest, and too often the local populace simply takes for granted what they risk losing, all in the myopic pursuit of yet another strip mall and the gas needed to drive there.

And then, "it's just a desert."  And it's remote.  Through the 20th century, we as a nation lost some of our most scenic natural wonders because they were "useless" lands; for example, many unique rock formations and gorges were flooded beneath the reservoirs of the dambuilding mania of the Bureau of Reclamation (Flaming Gorge in Utah being one well-known case, itself a "sacrifice" in a lengthy battle by the Sierra Club and other environmental groups--and one they later came to regret, alongside the loss of Glen Canyon to Lake Powell).  Not enough people have seen the beauty of the area to care, and, heck, heck, a fair chunk of people probably wouldn't care even if they'd seen first-hand the wonders of the West; so long as they can get cheap gas and electricity and have a convenience store within a few blocks (to which they'd drive, mind you, never walk), who cares about "nature," they say.

And that's the real tragedy here.

(p.s. I'm hoping to go out to the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, as well as Goblin Valley and some of the other fantastic natural wonders of that part of Utah at the end of April, with Beth... if the trip happens, I'll be SURE to post photos so you can see exactly why I'm so concerned by this news.)

The Lies of Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining

As someone who grew up in the heart of coal territory in southern West Virginia as well as a conservationist, the practice of "mountaintop removal" mining is something that both terrifies and enrages me.  Even though I no longer live in the middle of the coal "fields," I feel an almost personal connection to the land, and to me, the images on television are more than just another news story.

A recent Washington Post ran an article on a scientific study of the abhorrent practice of mountaintop removal mining, and not surprisingly, the study found that the environmental toll of something the Bush administration wholeheartedly embraced (with, if I recall correctly, one official going so far as to say was doing a "favor" for the people of WV) is so terrible that, in the words of one of the scientists, the only conclusion that one can reach is that "[it] needs to be stopped" and that contrary to the statements of coal companies and even some within the EPA, there is simply no such thing as "good" mountaintop removal mining.

You see, we've exhausted the easily-accessed coal seams (that alone should give some of the "spend our resources like a trip to the mall using daddy's credit card" crowd some pause), leaving thin layers of coal to be harvested by literally blasting away entire mountain peaks.  Of course, all the rubble that's left over gets bulldozed right into the valleys between the now-disintegrated mountaintops, turning the rolling hills of Appalachia into a vast man-made parking lot.

I'm not going to debate for the moment whether or not the pristine beauty of unblemished mountains and forests--the Mountain State's one truly renewable and enduring gift--is, as a "lifestyle," better than a land of franchise ghettos, strip malls, and cookie-cutter housing subdevelopments in the land of convenience; that's for another post.  What I want to look at is the arguments which proponents of mountaintop removal--a group unfailingly and almost uniformly populated by mine company executives, owners, and neoconservative politicians and pundits--fall back on, all of which are as convincing and credible as a lead balloon:

• "Jobs": The jobs argument is multifaceted and has its roots deep in the history of what today is a rather economically blighted region.  Basically, it goes like this: mess with mining, and you put all those poor people in West Virginia out of work.  And "union jobs?"  That coal companies care about union miners so much as to make a point of so-characterizing the jobs created and/or saved is laughably ironic.  History alone belies this one.  Ever hear of "bloody Mingo?"  See the film Matewan (yes, a polemic, to be sure, but give it a watch sometime...).  The whole "union jobs" bit is a pathetic attempt to get the left-leaning labor organizations--the local chapters of the UMWA, for the most part--to endorse setting fire to the house because it's cold outside.
   
• The Damage Is "Short Term": Chris Hamilton of the WV Coal Association (which sounds to me to be an organization along the lines of the US Chamber of Commerce or the Western Fuels Association--e.g. a "union" for big businesses and certainly not an advocacy group with the public's best interest at heart) claims that the damage done is "usually" "short term."  Right, it's okay to rape the environment and wipe out ecosystems and millions-of-years-old topography because in a few years, some grass might grow back.  This particular statement is so ridiculously false that Hamilton and others like him should blush for even having thought to say it.
  
  I recall seeing a "reclaimed" strip mining site in Wyoming County years ago. A decade later, and it was still basically some sickly grass and a few scrubby bushes, almost monotypic in floral ecology. And that site sat on the banks of the Gyandotte River; I hate to think of what leached through it with every rain and ran straight into the taps of communities like Pineville. This is only an anecdotal statement, yes--but it is an anecdote borne out time and time again by studies and observations. It's not like streams which are filled in and covered up magically come back, and the toxic leachates don't stop simply because there's a bit of dirt poured atop the rubble and grass planted on it.
   
• Mountaintop Removal Creates Useful Land: Because, you know, those scenic hills and valleys are worthless compared to the parking lots, Wal-Marts, and shopping malls that could be built atop the artificial mesas that mountaintop removal mining creates.  It takes some real cojones to suggest with a straight face that the mining companies are actually doing residents a favor by tearing away their mountains and giving them flat stretches of dirt piled atop toxic-leaching rubble.  But then, isn't that what was said of Love Canal before it became the definitive Superfund site?
  
  Don't forget, either, that places like West Virginia have low populations and low population densities for all the dearth of "useful" land. In the eighteen years I spent as a resident of WV, I don't recall ever hearing a person or business complain for lack of land--just how many more cookie-cutter strip malls does a state of well under two million people need?
  
  
• Opponents are "activists": The proponents of mountaintop removal play the good old Republican trick of denigrating and demonizing their opponents with the slur of "activism," much as you hear the neocons lobbing the term "liberal" about as if they're the new Joe McCarthy out to ferret out every imagined communist lurking behind every tree and beneath every rock.  See, if you stand for a cause, you're an "activist," probably someone like a member of the Weathermen and with a trunk full of Molotov cocktails--unless your cause is making so much money you can buy your own WV Supreme Court justice (sadly, this is more than just a plot for a John Grisham book, by the way).  Then you're just a businessman and a capitalist.
  
  The whole notion that scientists publishing a peer-reviewed study are "activists" sounds good from a populist appeal perspective, I suppose, but it reflects a deliberate naivety of the entire scientific process on par with creationism.
  

Yet we continue to see mountaintop removal touted, even from politicians who should really know better.  And what I really fear is that the citizens of the Mountain State are buying it, hook, line, and sinker, this toxic pig in a poke gift-wrapped in paper printed with leaded inks and filled with cheap imported goods from China.  Even with arguments as flimsy and transparent as the ones outlined above, people see what they want to, and if they're buying the used-car salesmen promises from the coal industry barons and their paid shill marketing campaigns, I fear for the future of my once-beautiful home state.

It's just not worth it.  We can find a better way, a way which doesn't destroy the mountains which define West Virginia and which wipe out the ecologies of streams and rivers which filter through the valleys nestled between every ridge of those rolling mountains.  We can find a way which doesn't take away the jobs of the hard-working citizens of that state--jobs which have dwindled mightily over the years, leaching away the peoples of once-booming communities as less and less labor is needed to do the work of giant, hulking machines.  But we cannot hide behind the lies of the practitioners of this environmental rape, the bogeymen spectres of economic ruin now when so surely we face economic and ecological ruin later, running up an overdraft one day inescapably due the piper.

The Terrorists Have Won: Knee-Jerk Kabuki "Security" Measures and Media Madness

The terrorists have won. Sad but true: the United States has been driven to its collective cowering knees by a mental patient who managed to light his pants on fire in an attempt to blow up a Northwest/Delta flight landing at DTW.

I hate to divert my blog away from the holidays for a post or two, but as a frequent traveler who takes 50 or more flights a year, I feel both the need and the authority to speak on the attempted bombing, or, more particularly, on the reaction by government agencies like the TSA.

We're seeing reports of draconian kabuki "security" which will do nothing but make the travel experience far more miserable than it already is. Things like requiring passengers be seated for the final hour of their flight (with taxi times, that means not going to the lavs for up to two hours--good luck finding a flight where people can hold it that long...). Or during that last hour banning all access to carry-ons. Yes, you heard me: you cannot even read a book for the last hour of a flight, according to Air Canada and American Airlines on their Web sites. (Hey, terrorists: guess that means you have to blow the plane up at 61 minutes from landing...)

Ostensibly, this is to make air travel "safer." Even a five year old could see through the illusion of the security emperor's new clothes, though. Honestly, no "air show" in-flight map display so that terrorists can't see when they're over the US? You mean terrorists are too dumb to look out the window and see that they've crossed over from water to land, or that they're approaching a city?

Stay in your seats for the last hour? Well, this dude was seated at the time he tried to blow himself up. So how's that supposed to make us safer? I guess Depends made a campaign contribution somewhere for that particular rule.

Of course, the "Ma and Pa Kettles" of the aviation world--those people who travel at most once a year and for whom the entire airline experience is something like a trip to Disney World--are already nodding their heads in typical "ditto" fashion. For example, consider the lunacy of preventing an 18 month old child from playing with toys during the last hour of a flight. Yet the parents afterward said they "understand where it's coming from and wanted to comply." Really? Keeping your 18-month-old from having a toy during the last hour of a long flight made us safer exactly how? Probably raised the chances of a passenger "going postal," if you ask me, given that meant an hour of a screaming toddler in the cabin...

And don't even start with the idiocy that these measures make us safer, that it would be "more annoying / inconvenient / whatever to be blown up." Simple statistics show stupid this knee-jerk "anything for safety" reasoning is: you are four orders of magnitude (roughly 10,000x) more likely to die of a cardiovascular illness than in an air travel disaster of any sort. You are three orders of magnitude (roughly 1000x) more likely to die in a car accident than an air travel disaster. These are pulled from CDC mortality statistics, and though you can juggle the numbers in different ways--such as factoring in distance traveled, time spent in car vs. plane, etc., the raw numbers are still telling. Given the CDC combines "water, air, and space" transportation deaths into the same category, and given that includes deaths which come about due to normal accident--and thus terrorism is a small subset thereof--clearly, your chances of dying from a terrorist attack in the air are far less than your chances of contracting and dying from TB (0.2 instances/100,000 people), much less cars (15.2 instances / 100,000 people), or cardiovascular illness (277.3 instances/100,000 people).

Yet here we are, acting like we have to force everyone to fly stripped naked, sedated, and bound to their seats all to make us "safer" in an activity which is already far safer than many everyday activities like riding in a car!

The terrorists don't even have to successfully carry out a bombing or hijacking any more; they achieve just as much terror and chaos through the abortive actions like the "shoe bomber" Richard Reid and now this moron and self-styled al-Qaeda member and his "pants bomb." Heck, groups like al-Qaeda don't even have to invest the time or effort in any meaningful training any longer, given even a failure drives government authorities and media blowhards into spasms of conniption. Get a guy onto a plane with a "bomb" that stands very little chance of actually detonating, have him light himself on fire, and sit back in some cave in Pakistan and laugh at how the world runs around like a chicken with its head cut off, led by the United States.

Knee-jerk, thy name is TSA.

(Worst thing is: the TSA doesn't deserve the blame for this moron getting on the flight, nor for his getting a potential bomb onboard; they had nothing to do with either. Yet now they're overreacting to the n^th degree, and for that, they deserve all the scorn that can possibly be heaped upon them.)

One Step Forward--Hopefully NO Steps Back

Washington, D.C., joined the list of states which have legalized same-sex marriage with a council vote (please, no quibbling over the fact D.C. is a district and not a state) and the assured signature of Mayor Fenty. The District, which had previously authorized recognition of gay marriages performed elsewhere, now only has to wait out a 30-day Congressional review period--and fend off court challenges from the bigots who are demanding another shot at tyranny of the masses via a referendum (did they all flunk Civics 101 and the fact we have a representational democracy?).

Fortunately, it does not seem likely that Congress and the President will get involved; beyond the fact that Democrats control both, the matter is one of self-determination for the District. (Before we celebrate too much, do consider that Congress unanimously voted to override the dignity of that poor woman in Florida, a silly, unconstitutional cause which stirred President Bush into taking an emergency flight back to Washington from his Crawford ranch.) Court challenges are likely, but given that this was a legitimate act by an elected, representative government--and an act which has been upheld by the courts at every stage so far--it also seems unlikely the bigots will win via an appeal to the judiciary.

Speaking of bigots, check out "activist" Bob King from the article linked above:

"God's war has just started," Bob King, a community activist who lives in Northeast, said a few minutes after the vote. "Shame on them. We're going to get to the ballot box through either the courts or the Congress. So tell everyone: Don't let the marriage licenses start flowing."

"God's war?" I'm sorry, but like so many of the American Taliban, not only did Mr. King sit out the part of Civics class that taught about representation, he missed the whole First Amendment bit about not mixing church and state.

If there is a god (or goddess, or pantheon of deities), surely he or she has something better to do than keep two loving people apart. And those who would worship under the aegis of religion most assuredly should have higher priorities for a holy war: things like achieving world peace, stemming hunger and poverty, and working to ease suffering and illness. From a Christian perspective, there are far more--I'd wager an order of magnitude, at least!--commandments and guidances to do good and sacrifice one's earthly possessions for the betterment of one's brothers and even sworn enemies than there are condemnations of homosexuality. (The strongest Biblical basis for being anti-gay aren't even strictly scriptural; they're in St. Paul's various epistolary books.)

Yet while it's apparently a primary mission in life for many of these bigots to shout about homosexuality, stomping around and waving signs at protests and bringing wasteful lawsuits and demanding ballot initiatives, they don't seem to be much bothered by wearing clothes of two fabrics, working on Sunday, people playing football (yes, this violates Leviticus 11:7-8--a football is a pigskin, after all) or building up worldly wealth. I suggest a look at the Rev. Mel White's take on what the Bible says about homosexuality, as well as a thorough reading of the Bible itself for those who claim they have God on their side here. What it comes down to is that their religion is used as a crutch to justify their prejudices, not as a real basis for those beliefs.

It still amazes me that there are people who do not see the parallel between the bigotry of the civil rights era--say, opposing interracial marriage, which was in fact illegal at the time!--and what is happening today. Or (and perhaps I'm being a bit unfair) opponents of gay marriage also oppose interracial marriage.

It also amazes me to hear people talk about the "sanctity of marriage" somehow being damaged. Although this is not surprisingly ignorant of most of world history--during which polygamy was the norm, not "one man, one woman"--as well as the Christian Bible itself (explain Solomon, I ask you), what gets me is that no one seems able to really explain how they would be harmed by someone else's marriage. Are their own relationships so weak and flawed that they cower in complete fear of their own marriage collapsing around them? Sad, little minds, I have to say. As a heterosexual, married male, neither someone else's sexuality nor their chance at wedding someone they love bothers me in the least, and certainly doesn't threaten my own marriage.

Fortunately, though, for the moment there is a bit of good news on the fight for equality. With all the setbacks seen over the past couple of years, supporters of gay rights will take what victories they can get.

Should Health Insurers Cover Paying for Prayers?

That's apparently what the Christian Scientists want, and they're pushing to have language added to the health care bills presently being debated in Congress. I hadn't heard about this before today--most of the coverage seems to be on things like "death panels" (de-spun: covering "end of life" counseling services), abortion coverage, and the way the current health care system is really a hunky-dory Candy Land with chocolate waterfalls and fluffy edible cotton candy clouds of goodness where your employer can't yank your choice of plans from you and insurers can't deny you coverage.*

* If you pay attention to any of the flood of rabidly anti-reform US Chamber of Commerce-sponsored ads, you might be fooled into that belief, insisting we'd lose the "guarantees" we already don't have--things like choice of health care plans (which is already limited and can change without notice from your employer and insurer), keeping your current doctors (when your employer changes the plans it offers, or your doctor changes what plans he or she accepts, there's no guarantee you can keep yours as it is--I've had to change before), etc. But this is all fodder for a separate post.

But according to a NY Times blog piece, the same church whose attitudes toward medical care have led to the deaths of children (Google Rita Swan for one infamous example), want the government to lean on private insurers to cover the costs of what boils down to prayer:

The church’s provision says that any insurer offering health insurance on the exchanges that would be created in the health legislation could not discriminate against a health service “on the basis of its religious or spiritual content.” Such content would be defined as medical expenses for which the Internal Revenue Service now allows deductions. The I.R.S. specifically names Christian Science practitioners, who pray for people at a cost of about $20 a day or care for them in nonmedical ways, as deductible expenses.

That's right: apparently, you can currently write off the cost of paying someone to pray for you on your taxes. Now, making a charitable donation to a church is one thing--but writing it off as a medical expense? Why can't I deduct my gym dues, then? After all, a good exercise regimen has proven health benefits, whereas the most thorough study to date found no health benefit to prayer (and was conducted by the religion-oriented Templeton Foundation, which had the guts and honesty to publish the results despite being sorely disappointed in them).

Now, the First Church of Christ, Scientist (aka the Christian Scientists) are pushing to incentivise (read: strong-arm) private insurers into covering the same services. They have tried to dodge the constitutional issue of separation of church and state by excluding any coverage from a potential public insurance option (and that would include any insurance with federal funding, it would seem), as well as offering a broad definition nondiscriminatory "spiritual" care.

Under that definition, perhaps I should be able to write off the cost of admission to national and state parks, my mileage driven to/from nature preserves, and so forth, all as medical expenses (and expect my health insurer to cover them!). Clearly, there are health benefits to getting outside, hiking around, and such--as well as spiritual value; to paraphrase a gentleman Beth encountered in the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge on a Sunday morning several years ago, "THIS is church for me."

I don't think the Christian Science proposal is going to get much traction in Congress (despite its bipartisan support, which included of all people the late Senator Ted Kennedy). But that IRS deduction already exists, which I do find rather shocking. Seems to me the better way to handle this would be to make a donation to your church if so inclined and write that off as a charitable contribution--though then you're stuck with determining the "less the value of goods/services received in return" component of said donation, I suppose. If you value the "medical" benefits of prayer so highly they're your preferred health care treatment, seems that return value might eat into your donation quickly.

What's next? The Catholic church lobbying for the buying of indulgences to be written off on one's 1040 Schedule A?

Sarah Palin's Appeal to Right-Wing Pundits: Sex?

This time of year, I expect Fox News' Bill O'Reilly to be going on about the "War on Christmas," a fiction coined (or at least heavily discussed) by the conservative pundit where the evil "secularists" are out to take away your decorations, holiday music, and ability to have those terrible white elephant gift exchanges and "Secret Santa" at the office.

But now a new cause has found Bill: Sarah Palin.

Yes, if you listen to Bill O'Reilly (and I try not to), he'd have you believe St. Sarah is somehow the victim of an organized campaign and hate mob consisting of the "mainstream media" (for which O'Reilly works, I must point out), "liberals," and God-hating atheists and Christmas-banning secularists.

And let's not even get started on conservative windbags Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck and their opinions of the gubernatorial quitter ("El Drugbo" described her rambling book the most substantive political work he's read, if that tells you anything).

The right-ring punditry of hacks like Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glen Beck seem to have made Sarah Palin their cause celebre, building the short-serving former Alaska Governor into a Christ figure being persecuted by the rest of the terrible, cheese eating, wine sipping, socialist world.

Or maybe a big blow up sex doll.

You'd never get them to admit to that, but much like the most stringently homophobic evangelists and Republican moral police in Congress, you know what's really on their minds. Yes, it's my thought that the blowhards at Fox News and the hypocritical drug-addled windbags of Boca Raton, FL, secretly all all harbor their professed admiration of "Saint Sarah" not for her confusingly-stated populist beliefs or core neoconservative principles but rather out of some almost-Freudian fantasies.

It's not just that she's a pretty face, but that somehow these hacks feel that if she were in power, they as "manly men" would in fact be in charge, for all good ultra-conservatives know that a woman's place is to speak only when spoken to and to be subservient to men in all things. The Bible says so, dontcha know? (I'm serious. Look it up. 1Corinthians 14:34-35, 1 Timothy 2:11-12, among others and along with all the misogyny of the Old Testament, like stoning women who were raped inside the city limits since they "could have called for help" etc.)

It's almost amusing, if in a pitiful sort of way, to see how Fox News' Bill O'Reilly leaps to defend the gubernatorial quitter from imagined slights. Darwin had his bulldog (in T. H. Huxley) and even his rottweiler in modern-day biologist and writer Richard Dawkins; perhaps O'Reilly should be called "Palin's chihuahua" the way he virtually foams at the mouth anytime someone calls Palin on a misstatement, fabrication, exaggeration, demagoguery, and the like.

Not, mind you, that screaming at the top of his lungs about each completely imaginary foes to a straw man "American way of life" is anything new to Bill O'Reilly. As I said in opening this entry, prior to John McCain's great blunder (let's talk strategy vs. tactics, Senator!) in picking Palin as his running mate, Bill's one true bugaboo in life was the "secular war on America," whereby those massive hoards of atheists secretly plotted to take away your right to put up a Christmas tree or hold Easter egg hunts. (If I exaggerate, it is but by the slimmest degree--there's a reason I lost all respect for O'Reilly several years ago.)

I just don't see how the Republican punditry can have such an utter fascination with the woman outside of her sex appeal (and mind you, attendees to otherwise-staid Republican rallies have been sighted wearing pins proclaiming "GILF" about the grandmother and former governor--I'll let you figure out what they mean by that). There are far stronger candidates who have just as strong of conservative principles and who actually stand a chance of winning the moderate vote in the United States. (I'd have put Mike Huckabee on that list previously--as much as I despise what he stands for, he's a likable guy otherwise--but then he went off and pulled a Mike Dukakis with the Seattle copkiller.)

Maybe they just delight in how she gets so under the skin of Democrats (all while fantasizing about how they can get into her... er, I'll leave it at that). But I'm betting on a more carnal attraction being what drives the conservatives to leap to Sarah's every defense, when they should in fact be running as far from her as they can and trying to salvage a party that as an independent I voted for several times. And except as a pin-up, Sarah Palin is not the answer they need.

Preaching Hatred: The Dove Church in Gainesville, FL

This past weekend, Beth and I made a trip to Florida for a wedding. Driving into Beth's mom's neighborhood, we came across the following signs on the grounds of a local church:

Beth's mom gave us the scoop; the local church--which I'd jokingly remarked on previous visits as being a "compound" and likely filled with some radical sect like Branch Davidians--have decided to express their particular brand of fundamentalist hatred by labeling all Muslims as devil-worshipers. This goes back to at least July (the date of this Gainesville Sun article on the original, one-sign display), and subsequently the church supplemented their Burma-Shave-esque trio of signs with an effigy of an Islamic person hanging a Christian. The latter, according to Beth's mom, was burned by outraged vandals (and not by the church itself).

I'm not making excuses for Islamist extremists and their terrorism, nor for the way women are treated in many basically-theocratic Muslim countries (though, to be fair, plenty of fundamentalist Christian sects are pretty misogynistic, too). However, the preaching of hatred by churches of any of the legs of the Abrahamic triangle of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity is equally despicable and indefensible. And for extremist Christians, whatever happened to Matthew 5:44 and Jesus' command to love and do good to one's enemies?

The church had added another sign to the grounds when we visited Gainesville this past weekend: "Fort Hood is only the beginning," it read. I'm not quite sure what to make of that one--what, exactly, do the church's leaders and members seem to think is the appropriate remedy to violence that they equate with an entire religion? Outlawing a religion has never had much success, and I can only imagine that conducting any sort of organized campaign against Muslims is only going to stir up such hatred and violence from extremists so as to leave us playing out all the bad events from bad movie Invasion: USA minus Chuck Norris to save the day--all while punishing countless innocents.

To top things off, according to the Gainesville Sun, the church faces accusations from former members that the pastor used parishioners to make furniture sold by the owners' for-profit business on eBay. If there's any substance to these accusations, it's possible that the owners/pastors could end up facing tax charges--like fellow Florida fundie pastor "Dr. Dino" Kent Hovind, currently in the federal pen. Even if no charges are forthcoming or warranted, taking personal profit from a church for one's worldly comfort seems just a tad bit un-Christian, don't you think?

Perhaps though the days of the Dove in the neighborhood are numbered; from the Gainesville Sun articles linked above, the 20 acre compound is up for sale, including the furniture factory, at the relative bargain price of $4 million.

Incidentally, am I the only one to see the irony in a church named for the bird symbolizing peace slandering an entire religion whose name translates as "peace?" The actions of this fundie church do no justice to doves everywhere; perhaps vulture would have been the better mascot for Gainesville's preachers of hate.

Tyranny of the Masses: Referendums Need to Go

In yet another state, gay marriage was brought to referendum and defeated tonight in Maine; every single state which has held a "direct democracy"-style referendum has dealt a blow to gay rights by outlawing same sex marriage. "The people have spoken; it's the will of the voters," the bigots who defend this abhorrent abridgment of human rights claim--which is, quite frankly, a view completely ignorant of the history of democracy in the United States. I'll be up front: it's time for referendums and other vehicles for voters to directly decide policy issues to go for the incredible threat of tyranny of the masses they enable.

Worse, in Maine, the elected legislature had expressly legalized gay marriage; there was no wiggle room for conservative bigots to shout about "activist" judges. Rather than undertaking the proper representative democratic process, through which unhappy voters would campaign to unseat supporters of the enacted law and replace them with representatives who could then enact legislative change, the mob mentality prevailed yet again.

Our founding fathers--heroes one and all to the conservatives who are so hell-bent on depriving honest couples the legal codification of their relationship--expressly opposed direct democracy and instead favored representative democracy, where voters elect representatives who in turn vote to enact or repeal legislation. This mechanism serves as a powerful check on demagoguery and mob rule and works to help ensure the minority groups (be they by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or even political philosophy) are not trampled upon by the majority.

Once again, too, the churches played a huge role in the political process--a move which should cost them their tax-exempt status and could be seen as a violation of election law. Where the Mormons dumped cash and deceptive activism into enacting California's Proposition 8 last year, in Maine it was the Catholic church who played the primary role. Both from within the state and across the country, the Catholic church itself sent millions of dollars to support this anti-gay-marriage miscarriage of fundamental rights.

(Let me indulge for a moment in a bit of anti-Catholic jeering: just ponder the irony of a church which has a documented and extensive history of enabling sexual perversion and pedophilia and harboring its guilty practitioners spending millions on ad campaigns which made such outrageous claims as gay marriage would mean sexual predators in schools, kids being taught to embrace gay marriage, etc. It's rather sad when you think of it, and it's little wonder to me why there's so much anti-Catholic hatred out there when such a large and supposedly benevolent organization continues to practice such rampant discrimination and hurt.)

And a hint to the opponents of gay marriage who make the (potentially dubious) claim that they stand with the majority: the majority once supported slavery, too. The majority once opposed interracial marriage (and ridiculously, at least one moronic public official in Louisiana still does...) How about you lead and choose to stand on the right side of history for a change? Don't the churches claim they made a big deal in helping end slavery? Wouldn't it be a feather in their caps to be able to say, "In the interests of human rights and justice for all, we as Christian leaders feel it is time for the discrimination to end."

Personally, as a straight, married man, I don't get what the big deal is for all the folks who get their panties in a wad over gay marriage. For those citing religious reasons, hey, think about this for a moment: the Christian Bible also says the cure for leprosy involves sacrificing several birds, and that women should be subservient to men in all things. But mainstream Christianity has rejected those (and many other) ridiculous notions--so how about rejecting the utterly ridiculous notion that gay marriage is evil? No one is going to make you get married to someone of the same sex, and the notion that allowing gay marriage will require your kids be taught to embrace homosexuality (or will allow pedophiles into schools--or even that gays are somehow all pedophiles) is simply ridiculous and an insult to anyone of intelligence.

So, back to my original point: we have representative democracy (a republic, as conservatives are so wont to point out when it's convenient for their purposes); even our President is elected indirectly via the much-loathed Electoral Congress rather than directly by voters. What we saw last year in California and now this evening in Maine are proof of just why we have representative rather than direct government, and why referendums like this need to go.

Is There Always a "Middle Ground?"

I frequently hear statements to the effect that "extremists" or their views are dangerous and harmful regardless of the source. We've come to the point where to sit toward any pole is seen as a fault, that the "middle ground" (however artificial it may be) is the path to take.


But are some extremes actually manufactured? Is there in fact any value in embracing the "middle road" of the "moderate" view when a particular extreme position is in fact not representative of reality? If I'm a savvy PR spinmeister looking to steer an issue, couldn't I just craft a position which is such an extreme that it moves the middle ground toward the side of the issue I want--or in so doing create a "debate" where none really exists?

Suppose, for example, we take the "view" that the sky is blue and construct an opposing view that it is in fact "red," and that everyone who insists otherwise is wrong, and furthermore either is in on or has been duped by a vast conspiracy. There is no real middle ground here; those who dogmatically insist the sky is indeed blue and that anyone thinking otherwise is delusional are correct, no matter how "extreme" their view lies on the spectrum (no pun intended!) of the sky hue "debate."


While my example above is a bit silly and simplistic, it directly parallels the masterfully-successful efforts of those with a vested interest in doing nothing about global warming.

Conservatives have, to a largely successful degree, continued (if not outright manufactured) the "debate" about mankind's role global climate change--at least amongst policymakers and the general public. While one or two dissenting scientists are paraded out by the scions of James Watt (incidentally, has Wyoming ever contributed a good politician to the national scene?) as "proof" of a controversy, the vast majority of professionals who study climate change for a living agree that there is really no debate to be had. Yet those "tree-hugging, granola-eating, America-hating leftist environmentalists" somehow "need to compromise" based on this non-existent, manufactured middle ground. The PR men in the employ of the carbon industry have successfully crafted a "controversy" and "debate" by simply staking out the opposite (and often extreme) position--without a lick of real climate science on their side!

Likewise, creationists (and their monkeys-in-tuxedos cousins the (un)intelligent designers) have tried for years to cast the scientists and "believers" of evolutionary theory as extremists in opposition to their own lunatic fringe position. If you categorically rule out creationism and stick dogmatically to the well-supported (and all-but-proven) "theory" of evolution, you're an "extremist"; as such, they've created a false-moderate position of "teaching the controversy" or "including all the alternatives." Yet this middle ground is anything but; conceding ground from science to accept that there is even a serious debate at all is to play right into the creationists' hands.

Then there's the notion of the "extremes" of science and religion--which although neither science nor religion are "artificial" are not truly endpoints of a linear spectrum, but perhaps rather nearly orthogonal lines in a plane. Based on the incorrect assumption of setting the two on a single line, we're treated to another false middle ground.

I'm generally a fan of Chris Mooney's work, but in his collaborative effort Unscientific America, he makes a case that scientists need to do more to embrace that middle ground (particularly in the area of the science/religion debate), condemning as hurtful to the cause of science the so-called "new atheists" (folks like biologist Richard Dawkins, philosopher and social scientist Daniel Dennett, etc.). In addition to the fact that science and religion are not diametrical, exclusionary extremes on a single linear scale, I think that here Mooney and his coauthor Sheril Kirshenbaum are erring in letting PR and the "spin" of a publicly controversial issue redefine the legitimately moderate position.


The notion that there must be some middle ground between theists and atheists--not so much on the notion of theism itself, mind you, but on how the two frame their debate--is not really compatible with either side of the debate at hand, nor, I would argue, does it significantly play a role in issues of science, like global warming and evolutionary theory. I suppose these issues are "atheistic" in that neither invokes nor requires a notion of the divine--but that's science. that god (or God, if you wish) is left out of the equation is not creating an extreme position at all, nor is there a need for some middle ground which incorporates theism in science simply for the sake of appeasement.

However, the converse is not necessarily true, as the Mooney-lamented Dan Dennett points out very well in Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon: there are indeed aspects of religion which are quite suitable for scientific inquiry--this largely contradicts the "separate magisteria" overture of palms by the late Stephen Jay Gould to theists, where the much-derided-by-creationists biologist claimed science has nothing to say about religion and vice-versa. (I agree with him on the latter, but that's a point for a different blog post and certainly violates the spirit of his gesture.) I suppose this is one case where there is indeed a real middle ground, in that science can certainly make scientific claims about aspects of religion, which Gould held out as untouchable in a failed attempt at (and inspiration for) Mooney's suggestion that scientists come across as not threatening religion.

Revisionist History from the Religious Right, Deep in the Heart of Texas

When I said I'd have to take up the ridiculous notion that America was somehow founded to be a Christian nation in a future blog post, I didn't realize I would be writing on that topic so soon!

A recent article in Britain's Guardian newspaper describes the logical (if deeply disappointing) extension of the fruitcake fringe's attempts to force creationism into our science classrooms: the Texas state school board is "considering" revising the state's history curriculum to include the "role" [the Christian] God played in the history and success of the United States.

From the Guardian article:

One of the panel, David Barton, founder of a Christian heritage group called WallBuilders, argues that the curriculum should reflect the fact that the US Constitution was written with God in mind including that "there is a fixed moral law derived from God and nature", that "there is a creator" and "government exists primarily to protect God-given rights to every individual".

Barton's knowledge of history clearly deserves a bright red "F" and reflects an apparently- growing misconception of the United States' founding amongst religious (and perhaps broader) circles, which erroneously conflates the historical fact of the religious backgrounds of many of our earliest settlers with the demonstrated and deliberate secular principles of government laid down by the founders.

Yes, the Constitution was written with "God in mind": if you accept protecting citizens from the tyranny of religion as having had God in mind. Madison, Jefferson, Paine, et al, expressly excluded the very concept of a state religion in the First Amendment to protect citizens of all faiths (and none) from the very religious persecution so many groups had fled in Europe.

Debate about recognizing Christianity did arise amongst the founders, but examining Jefferson's own words on drafting Virginia's Statute for Religious Freedom, it's clear that the intent, time and time again--from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution--was against establishing Christianity and indeed to reject that it and other religions as having some special place in our government:

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

-- Thomas Jefferson, from his autobiography

Jefferson's writings are filled with similar sentiments, as are those of other of the founding fathers who played a critical role in the shaping of our government and the early history of our country.

Likewise, a common notion offered up by revisionist Christian "historians" is that the Declaration of Independence somehow defines America as a Christian nation, which fruitcake-fringer and TX school board advisory panel member David Barton seems to be talking about with his references to the laws of "God and nature" and a "creator." Disregarding for the moment that the Declaration is hardly of real legal standing in our system of government (unlike, say, the Constitution), or the fact that it was written largely by no friend to religion (Thomas Jefferson), let's look at the language so often cited by these revisionist fruitcakes:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

-- US Declaration of Independence (emphasis mine)

Oh, my--see that "Nature's God" and "Creator" bit? Doesn't that mean the Christian God is explicitly spelled out in one of the most important documents in America's history?

Not quite. Well, not even close.

As any real historian would be able to explain, "Nature's God" and the generic "Creator" do reflect a religious belief... just not a Christian one. They are hallmarks of deism, an Enlightenment philosophy held by several of our founders and which do not bear much resemblance to Christianity (they're also--to the delight of conspiracy theorists--the hallmarks of Freemasonry, to which many of the founders also belonged). If these terms were reflective of the Christian--or even the broader Abrahamic God, to include the Judaic God and Islamic Allah--then why use such a generic term as "Nature's God?"

The acclimation of "a creator" is common to nearly every religious faith, but you do not see Barton demanding a recognition of the creation accounts of classical Greek mythology, the many Native American mythic traditions, or the farcical faiths of the Invisible Pink Unicorn or Flying Spaghetti Monster, do you?

Simply put, Barton and his ilk are poor historians at best, deliberate revisionists at worst, and rather telescopically Christiancentric in their views.

Of course, Barton doesn't limit his ignorance and ethnocentrism to religion; he twists and conflates the very notions of democracy and republican government with none other than the Democratic and Republican political parties; in a bit suitable for a late-night comedy sketch, he says (again, from the Guardian article):

Barton, a former vice-chairman of the state's Republican party, said that Texas children should no longer be taught about democratic values but republican ones. "We don't pledge allegiance to the flag and the democracy for which it stands," he said.

The most frightening aspect of this discussion--aside from the fact it exists at all--is that unlike prior attempts to insert Christian religion into the public school system, it is not occurring in a backwater like Kansas, Louisiana, Arkansas, or rural Pennsylvania (no disrespect to residents of those areas; stick with me for a moment), but in Texas. As described by Diane Ravitch in her fantastic (and non-partisan) lament for the detrimental role of special interest groups in the public education system, The Language Police, school textbook publishers base much of their content on the demands of the public education systems of two states: California, and Texas.

That means should the religious right successfully rewrite history as presented by the Texas public school system, their egregiously incorrect revisionism could show up in textbooks used throughout the United States. While a footnote on "intelligent design" in a Dover, PA, school biology text would make local residents the butt of late-night jokes, such a ridiculous addendum would not find its way into the science texts in Massachusetts, Idaho, or Hawaii.

As a sad footnote, the Guardian article also points out that the religious right succeeded in Texas in introducing religion into science class. Discussion of evolution now includes the widely-discredited notion of irreducible complexity of the eye, a favorite canard of (un)intelligent design advocate Michael Behe, saying that evolution cannot explain eyes. Evolutionary science has demonstrated credible mechanisms for modern eye development for decades, a fact Behe, who continues to make the argument, is blithely (and likely deliberately) ignorant of; adding this ID notion to a science class is akin to teaching that the Earth might actually be the center of the universe; after all, geocentricism was only discredited a few centuries ago.

Bill O'Reilly: But you really ARE a dimwitted conservative at odds with smart Republicans!

For some perverse reason, I'm subscribed to Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly's newsletter. Now, normally, those e-mails go straight to the proverbial /dev/null, but the headline of a recent issue caught my eye and granted his waste of electrons a brief reprieve from the bit bucket. The newsletter's teaser claimed "the left-wing media" were somehow "marginalizing" Sarah Palin, someone who I might add does quite a fine job marginalizing herself with no assistance needed, thank you.

After presenting an unrelated paragraph lauding a prior column and demonstrating a total lack of statistical acumen, Bill gifts us with this gem:

"Now we have another media deceit. In the most recent Newsweek magazine, there is a nasty hatchet job on Sarah Palin by a guy named Rick Perlstein. The piece is presented as hard news, not an opinion column, and basically says that the governor is a moron who is supported by dimwitted conservatives at odds with smart Republicans. Perlstein also submits that the dumb GOP folks are led by me and other Fox News people."

Obviously, since O'Reilly is defending the former Miss Alaska runner-up and quitter of a governor, he must count amongst those accused of being "dimwitted conservatives at odds with smart Republicans"; he goes on to take personal offense to being lumped in as a "leader" of that dimwitted bunch (perhaps he feels it's more a case of the blind leading the blind?) with his Fox (aka Faux) News cohorts.

I hate to demur, but I must submit as evidence to the court that Bill's continued unflinching, unwavering, and unthinking support of Palin is a sign exactly of the sort of dimwitted idiocy he's been labeled with. We're talking a woman who in a single speech meandered the length of the Iditarod and back, including her truffle decrying the "quitter's way out"--when she was, in fact, announcing the moment of her quitting as Governor of Alaska.

This is a woman whose qualifications for national political office are the fodder of Saturday Night Live skits (Tina Fey's frightening-spot on parody earning the SNL alum an Emmy nomination), and which seem best described as being able to tick off Democrats (I must thank Charles P. Pierce for that realization, in his Idiot America) and deliver zingers to rile up a base who would already vote for a decaying log if said timber were running with an (R) next to its name. This is a woman whose behavior has bordered on the bizarre ever since her nomination, mixing a constant whine about media attention on her children (while lugging the tots and teens to every media-covered appearance), about media attention in general (while whoring herself out--pun intended--for every media appearance possible).

In short, smart Republicans are afraid of Sarah Palin and what she represents for their once-proud party, and realize that they must find someone other than the lipsticked-pig as their mascot if they are to regain their lost glory. To them, Palin is at best a distraction to be tolerated while they must, a serious detraction to the party's future at worst. And Bill O'Reilly continues to display his dimwittedness by insisting otherwise.

I was once a Republican in all but the letter after my name; as a Libertarian, I often voted for the GOP's candidates. That was before the party became one of religious extremism, more concerned with keeping gays from marrying and spending trillions in Iraq than with reducing the deficit or fighting for long-held individual rights. Like me, many moderates have been driven away from the party by the brainless pap foisted upon us in the persons of Sarah Palin and her ilk.

What the Republicans and pundits who feel St. Sarah is the Messiah transubstantiated in the flesh don't realize is that she brings no moderates, no independents, to their party. She offers no solutions, only criticism delivered in the form of one-liners and tautological bullet points. She only appeals to the very people who already vote reliably Republican and preaches only a divisive wedge, not an embracing circle.

Bill O'Reilly is not a smart Republican; he's a rat who refuses to flee a sinking ship, a horse who runs back into the flaming barn. Perhaps he feels a special kinship with the meandering "dialogs" of the former Alaska Governor; I raise this last point in a tangential criticism of his "column" quoted above, which digresses from its topic (claiming the big ol' meanie media is out to "marginalize" St. Sarah) to repeat his favorite broken-record canard of the "evil secularists" and their agenda to take the "G" out of "God" and the pie out of America:

"[T]he left sees a major opportunity to knock out Judeo-Christian traditions, replacing them with a secular philosophy."

I hate to break it to Bill, but this country was certainly not founded upon "Judeo-Christian" traditions (which oddly enough always seem to skew decidedly to the Christian and away from the Jewish part in the words and minds of the speakers of that bit of revisionist history). That's not my argument for today, though; I'll take it up in a future post. O'Reilly rants onward with an invocation of Godwin himself, comparing the "left-wing media" to Nazis--a point where in any discussion you know there can be no room for reason or dialog (though, to be fair, that point typically comes with the first word out of O'Reilly's mouth; no need to wait for the accusations of Goebbels-ism).

Le me close with the unintended irony of Bill's own closing line from his column:

"If crazy ideologues have infiltrated the news business, we need to know about it. And now you do."

Yep, Bill, we hear you, and we know about it, indeed--I'm just glad you're finally willing to own up to being a crazy ideologue who has tried to infiltrate the news business--along with your Fox "News" compatriots like Sean Hannity and company.

I've Always Wanted to Hike the Appalachian Trail (But Not That Way!)

How many of us, upon hearing initially of South Carolina Governor Sanford's disappearance over Father's Day weekend thought, "He's got a mistress," particularly as the story became more and more bizarre?

First no one knew where he was, then aides suggested he'd gone hiking on the Appalachian trail, then reports began surfacing that he'd been at the airport. And then it turned out he'd been in Argentina (driving along the coast, yeah, riiiiight-o) on the spur of the moment, shortly before the inevitable revelation by yet another Republican golden child that he'd in fact broken the sanctity of marriage? (A sanctity that according to many of those same conservatives that only heterosexual couples can properly practice--note to the OED: consider the lumbering elephant as an icon accompanying the definition of "irony," will you?)

Is the new euphemism for a extramarital tryst going to become "hiking the Appalachian Trail?"

Mind you, I do enjoy the Appalachian Trail, or at least the small portion of it I've enjoyed near Dragon's Tooth in southwest Virginia. And no, it's not "that kind" of Appalachian Trail hiking, either.

(And my sincere apologies for the quality of this photo; I took it when I first became interested in digital photography. I have a few better prints around, but haven't scanned them in yet.)

Innumeracy, Mixed Metaphors in Anti-Stimulus Ad

There's a new ad out from conservative group "American Issues Project" criticising the recent stimulus package passed by the U.S. Congress:

The ad makes the claim that if "you" spent $1 million every day from 1 BCE until the present, "you" still wouldn't have spent as much in that 2008-year span as Congress and President Obama spent in the single instance of the stimulus bill.  (Let's ignore the dispute over Jesus' existence or the date of his birth for the sake of argument, please, as well as the inflationary effects on the value of currency spread over such a time span.)

On the one hand, the attempt to frame such a tremendous number as $787 billion in terms which may be more comprehensible to the average person is laudable.  Our populace is so innumerate that the difference between thousands, millions, billions, and trillions can be pretty vague to the average American, despite the three orders of magnitude separating each.  This innumeracy contributes to all sorts of problems, from evolution denial to retirement planning which includes winning the lottery (and far less esoteric issues as well, mind you, like fear of flying or terrorism, both of which involve astronomical odds but which terrify the average person far more so than other, much larger risks which are also more easily mitigated), so any attempt to frame a number as large as $787 billion in terms which make sense to the average American is both difficult to accomplish and something to be praised when successful.

On the other hand, though, the ad fails in its approach by mixing metaphors by personalizing the spending when it resorts to the second-person appeal.  "You" clearly refers to the audience--whether or not that was the ad's intent (and I'd argue it was)--and it's really unfathomable for the average American to imagine spending a million dollars a day for thousands of years--due again in part to that innumeracy I mentioned.  The problem is, it's not the individual average American who is performing that spending, but rather a government on behalf of three hundred million-plus Americans.  The sad fact is that our government routinely spends what would be to an individual quite huge sums of money, so the parallel is broken and the metaphor flawed--and by introducing the confusion of individual spending vs. government spending, it exploits, rather than corrects, the innumeracy of the average person, who simply can't fathom spending that much money.

Rather than looking at it in terms of "you" spending $1 million a day, consider what according to the Brookings Institution the government spent per day in Iraq in 2008: $408 million (p. 43 in the linked report, based on the $149.2 billion FY 2008 appropriation--please, let's not quibble over fiscal years vs. calendar years, now!).  Yep, you read that correctly: nearly a half a billion dollars a day.  At that pace, the timeline to spend out the stimulus funds certainly need not stretch to biblical times, or even into the 20th century; no, the stimulus would be gone in just over five years.  Makes Jesus seem something of a miser, doesn't it?  One last thought to keep in mind on the government vs. individual spending point: the Iraq appropriations are merely a part of the yearly federal budget.

There's another good way to turn the problem on its head.  Imagine it this way: suppose Politician X introduces a plan to cut taxes by $180 billion dollars a year, with the tax savings spread (for the sake of argument) evenly across all 300 million American citizens.  Imagine what a great plan that is!  Cut the waste of the federal budget by nearly $200 billion dollars (note the convenient rounding up to the tune of $20 billion, a second-level play on innumeracy there), and give back American taxpayers that massive sum.  Surely everyone supports such a plan, right?

Not so fast; Politician X, the very author of said plan, has already criticized a "stimulus bill" which would refund American citizens at the rate of $600 each for 2009, claiming that $600 just isn't enough to make a difference for most Americans.  That they need real help, that $600 will not even pay a month's rent or mortgage, and so forth.

Mind you, Politician X's "save the taxpayers $180 billion" plan is, at the bottom line, the exact same thing as what he's critical of.  Assuming for the sake of argument that $180 billion is spread out across all 300 million or so Americans evenly, that's only $600 each they'd get back or pay less in taxes.  You see the problem?

Regardless of my position on the stimulus package--and mind you, I'm rather wary of Uncle spending such a large chunk of taxpayer funds, incurring and servicing the debt required to do so, etc.--the "American Issues Project" ad simply isn't honest in presenting its message, and though it presents a novel approach to addressing the problem of the innumeracy in relating the plan's numbers to everyday people, it presents a critical logical failing in its metaphor by comparing spending by one person with spending by entire United States government.

Out With the Old, In With the New: Or, "Adios, W!"

I took a half day off from work today to watch the inauguration (and avoid any traffic snarls headed eastbound from my house, or the what I expect to be awful post-inauguration traffic headed outbound later in the day).  I was about to get back to work and had stepped outside to take advantage of a bit of daylight in cutting a few more standards for the home library when a big jet flew overhead.

I thought for a moment, "Hmm, wonder if that's Bush headed to Texas?  The timeframe seems right..." Indeed, when I glanced up, there was what formerly was Air Force One in its 747 glory.  I only wish I'd had my camera outside with me to remember this moment: seeing W head home, no longer the resident of the White House.  I gave a quick "see ya" wave to the plane and thought of that bit of good southern hospitality: don't let the door hit you on your way out!

Well, I've got to get back to work; plenty to do for the office before the week's up, and I've got a lot of PowerPoint slides to create, software to install and evaluate, and more.

Thanks, Boeing, for a Very Unmerry Christmas

We found out on Christmas Eve that Beth is losing her job.

To make a long story short, Beth works for the Institute for Connecting Science Research to the Classroom, a group currently housed at Virginia Tech which works to connect the work of real research scientists to K-12 school science teachers.  Earlier this year, defense contractor Northrop-Grumman expressed interest in becoming the sole source of funding for the ICSRC's "One Mission" program.  Despite assuring the ICSRC that "nothing had changed" and that they still intended to fund the program as late as this fall, Northrop-Grumman decided at their December meeting not to do so "at this time."  With that sudden loss of funding, the Institute will for all intents and purposes cease to exist, costing Beth her job.

You may recall that Northrop-Grumman won a huge contract with the Air Force earlier this year to deliver the next generation of tanker aircraft... and that Boeing, their primary competitor, was furious.  Boeing played every card they could, claiming that Northrop's win would "send jobs overseas" (since they were subcontracting to Airbus-parent EADS to build the airframe itself) and would "threaten US national security" (because foreign companies were involved in the group--nothing new, mind you; I've worked with Canadian companies on defense work several times).  Boeing, too, is a union shop, and they managed to pull enough strings to get the bidding re-opened (thus costing Northrop the contract).

Worst of all: Boeing wasn't even ready with a new bid of their own!  They whined to the Pentagon and complained that they needed "more time" to put together a bid.  (And the tactic worked: the Air Force decided to delay a decision on the re-opened contract to allow Boeing more time to assemble a workable bid that wouldn't simply be rejected out of hand.)

While Northrop-Grumman didn't single-out the loss of the tanker contract as the reason they declined to find the ICSRC, it's pretty clear the loss of that much money had to have been a major role in the decision.

So now Beth is out looking for a new job, surely at a significant pay cut given the current economic situation we face.  Boeing's argument that Northrop's contract win would cost US jobs has come back to bite them, for at least three US jobs have now been lost by reversing that decision (and I am sure Northrop themselves have had to curtail hiring and potentially even lay off employees involved in the original contract effort).  Thanks again, Boeing (and Northrop-Grumman) for giving us a very un-merry Christmas this year!

The New Jim Crow, Or a Sad Night for Equality

Despite the elation of bringing change to the White House (and keeping Caribou Barbie as far away from it as possible), there was a big vote last night that fell solidly on the sordid side of history: it appears Proposition 8, aka "Proposition Hate," has passed in California.

Several states had ballot initiatives which addressed the rights of those of us who differ from the majority only in their sexual orientation, from three decisions on the legality of same-sex marriage to another which banned adoption by gay couples, but ostensibly California's Proposition 8 was the most important such measure to see the ballot, ever--for not only is California the largest state and thus carries a heavy impact upon the rest of the nation, but also its courts had thrown out a prior ban--making Proposition 8 a measure not only denying a right, but one which would explicitly take away an existing right.

That these issues were even on the ballot at all is a sad enough commentary on the United States electorate and the backwards views and bigotry apparently so prevalent in our country.

I'm a happily-married, heterosexual male, and I just don't get it why anyone feels their own marriage is somehow threatened by allowing a basic right to all.  Or why allowing gays to marry somehow threatens children.

I also don't understand how people can be quite so bigoted--particularly so many people who collectively have historically themselves been the victims of discrimination and persecution.  The Mormon church, for example, has certainly been one of the more persecuted religious groups in the history of the United States--and has even faced its own share of non-traditional marriage issues--yet they pumped tens of millions of dollars into California from out of state to ensure the passage of Proposition Hate.  African Americans by and large voted heavily in favor of 8 as well--reminding me of the gay black character in Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy, who lamented being "a minority of a minority."

One thing is for sure: we're seeing the creation of a new Jim Crow, and it's not a pretty sight.

Now, for the fallout.  I am neither a lawyer nor do I play one on television (and I most certainly did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night), but I wonder if the passage of 8 can see legal challenge in courts in California?  Ballot initiatives do not give anyone the right to violate the Constitution, so perhaps "equal protection" arguments can successfully be made, either at the state or Federal level (though with the latter, said challenges need to wait to for some of the damage done by George Bush's conservative appointees to be remedied--I would hate to see a Supreme Court of Scalia, Alito, Roberts, and Thomas taking up such a crucial issue).

And will existing same-sex marriages be rendered void, ruining the lives of many happy couples?  Surely that will be a sordid spectacle both in the legal courts and that of the public spectacle.  Is it time to push our Congresspeople to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act at the federal level?

I just don't know.  But I nonetheless find this a very sad day to be an American, making the triumph of the election of Obama bittersweet.  I don't even have a dog in this race, so to speak, with my happy, "traditional" marriage.  Yet I find I must shed a tear for this step backwards for equality and the civil rights of all Americans, and the dark blot on the pages of history Proposition 8 and its sister measures across the country represent.

Change Has Come

I'm proud to be a Virginian right now.  Sitting in California, I saw my home state called for Obama--an inevitable result as I'd watched the county-by-county returns and had seen how many votes were outstanding in Fairfax and Arlington Counties (heavily Obama areas)--and then had but minutes to go before the west coast polls closed with their certain results.  At 220 electoral votes with the Virginia call, California alone was going to be enough to put President-elect Obama over the edge, and so it did.

Watching the Election Results Roll In

So here I sit in scenic Monterey, California, where I'm currently on a business trip.  Having voted absentee in-person a couple of weeks ago, I proudly wore my "I Voted!" sticker and picked up my free Starbucks coffee (buying a slice of tasty pumpkin loaf and tipping the barristas well for the freebie).  Now I'm ensconced in my hotel room glued to CNN and the election results--with my Web browser pointed to CNN, the Washington Post, NPR, and my favorite online discussion forum, Flyertalk.

Now, I've been fairly confident for some weeks--since Republican candidate John McCain repeated his "The fundamentals of the economy are strong!" gaffe on the eve of the worst economic crisis the United States has seen in nearly a century--that the Democrats would carry the day.  But it's still an anxious evening of fascinating, edge-of-the-seat politics, and each called state brings a sigh of relief as the big must-haves roll in for Obama (Pennsylvania being denied the McCain camp earlier this evening the biggest so far--even though NPR had already called the race there earlier, I pumped my fist when CNN confirmed the call).

I do wish I could be at home with Beth and the Papillons to watch the results, but being in the Pacific time zone, I at least get to stay up "late" and catch all the returns without having to sit up until well after midnight.

That "Independents for Obama" bumper-sticker on my car is going to feel good in a few hours, I suspect.  (I'm a Libertarian by philosophy, and have voted for both major parties regularly--but I certainly do have my favorite in this race, and it's not Bob Barr.)

More to come!

Careful with that Box, Pandora...

So America's favorite lipsticked pit bull (or is that pig?) has now decided to "take off the gloves" and start mud-slinging in earnest in her party's failing bid for the White House: Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin is questioning Barack Obama's judgment and playing the fear card by accusing Democratic candidate Obama of past associations--"palling around with," to use the Governor's folksy vernacular--with 1960s radical William Ayers.

This is clearly a desperate bid by the Republicans to divert attention from the massive economic problems the United States currently faces, which between the traditional "hands-off" regulatory stance of the Republican party--a contributory factor to the crisis--and the immense unpopularity of the administration whose actions (and inactions) also directly led to the economic meltdown, is a must for the party's presidential hopes.  It's a bid to cast the Senator from Illinois as lacking judgment.  And it's a bit of fearmongering, bringing up "terrorism" in a disingenuous fashion which tries to capitalize upon Senator Obama's middle name (Hussein) and persistent but factually-challenged rumors that the candidate is a Muslim; in other words, Sarah Palin wants you the voter to believe Barack Obama is in fact an Islamic terrorist in disguise.

Here's the problem, though: Obama's association with Ayers had already come up and faced scrutiny during the primaries with little effect; Ayers is certainly not a terrorist today, and due in part to the COINTELPRO scandal--where the FBI illegally spied on US citizens--he was never convicted of any terrorist activities, either.  Nor is his relationship with Senator Obama particularly close.  Apparently Governor Palin slept through her history classes, or at least the Democratic primary.

And the real kicker: should the Obama campaign want to sling some mud of their own and call up skeletons of questionable associations from Senator McCain's political closet, there's one Charles Keating, McCain's political mentor from his early days in the House and Senate.  Yes, the same Charles Keating whose criminal actions in the Savings & Loan collapse of the late 1980s and early 1990s led to a Congressional inquiry--an inquiry John McCain found himself smack in the middle of.  Though McCain escaped with only the official criticism of his judgement, his role in the Keating Five still stands as a blemism on his political record.

Even worse, the Keating Five scandal involved an economic crisis with eerily-similar parallels to the current subprime mortgage meltdown and subsequent fallout.  A crisis which found John McCain right at ground zero.

Should the Obama campaign wish to respond to Governor Palin and the McCain camp's criticism of his past associations (ironic, given Palin's own remonstrations to Senator Joe Biden during their Vice Presidential debate not to "look backwards") by brining up the Keating Five, John McCain will have not only whiffed on changing the subject away from the economy, but he will have brought the spotlight keenly into focus on his own role in a very similar economic collapse.  Not to mention things like former McCain chief economic advisor Phil Gramm, who called Americans "whiners" in a "mental recession," and whose deregulation--championed by McCain, no less--directly contributed to our present global economic mess.  (And need we be reminded of McCain's repeated "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" or his primary claim that he didn't know much about the economy?)

Yep, that's great judgment there, Senator McCain and Governor Palin.  My, what a Pandora's box Palin is opening in what may go down as one of the worst blunders in election history!

Change is coming.  It's just not the "change" McCain and Palin have strangely adopted as their own campaign slogan of late.