Duplicitous Primates

We're Moving!

2009-04-04T07:00:00.000-07:00

We're moving to WordPress. I have reposted Aaron's last post at our new location.

Eventually I'd like to move our best content to the new site, delete the rest, at start fresh - anew.

The Party of Doh!

2009-03-30T04:24:00.000-07:00

Just Friday, I heard David Brooks, conservative New York Times columnist, call the Republican budget a "...well, to be frank, a joke..." Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell says he smells victory. In the next elections, it will the Republicans who march back to power. And what exactly are the Republicans triumphantly offering us?

Here's Sen. Judd Gregg: "We believe you create prosperity by having an affordable government that pursues its responsibilities without excessive costs, taxes or debt..."

For 30 years, and in the last decade especially, Republicans got their way. Did they reduce government? No. They expanded it. Not only that, they poured hundreds of billions of dollars into nation building. Costs? Skyrocketed. Taxes? They went up. By cynically passing off federal taxation to the state and municipal level they forced local taxes to increase nationwide. By defunding the country's infrastructure, we now have a critical mess to clean up.

Our tax money is being poured into Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, AIG, Swiss UBS, England's Barclay's, rentention bonuses, executive bonuses, etc... This is the Republican legacy, and we're paying for and will be paying for it for years to come.

And now, to hear Republicans, like a bunch of chicken littles, running around crying socialism, big-government, socialism, taxes, debt, socialism, big-government, socialism, taxes, debt, socialism, big-government, socialism, taxes, debt...

It's more than the back can bear...

Health Care - Every member of Congress recieves government-run, socialized health-care paid for by our taxes. Good enough for them, but not good enough for us?

Gregg says: "We also believe you improve everyone's health care not by nationalizing the health care system and putting the government between you and your doctor, but by assuring that every American has access to quality health insurance and choices in health care."

Really? And that would be why Gregg is covered by government health care, at tax payer expense? He seems to like it...

Big Government - If the government doesn't assume the role of governing, then somebody else will. Enron, AIG, Bear Stearns, etc... and didn't they do a good job?

Gregg: "It is the individual American who creates prosperity and good jobs, not the government."

Government is of the people, by the people, for the people, but then the Gregg probably isn't familiar with that document.

Taxes - The Republican borrow & spend strategy of governing only passes on debt to the next administration - raising taxes on all of us. It's much cheaper to maintain a bridge, than to rebuild it. It's much cheaper to educate your children than imprison them.

Taxes educate our children. Taxes keep us out of debt. Taxes maintain the health of our infrastructure.

Under Republican governance, our children are undereducated, our country's debt is owned by the Chinese and our infrastructure is collapsing.

Thought of the Day

2009-03-23T12:22:00.002-07:00

"I believe banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all properties until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

-Thomas Jefferson 1842

Frederick Douglass on American Christianity

2009-03-21T20:33:00.000-07:00

I have always been fascinated by the life of Frederick Douglass. I am reading his first biography (I believe he wound up writing 3) written around the age of 27 (he never knew for sure how old he was because slaves were often separated from their mothers early on and never told).

I flipped to the appendix of this book and read a most glorious rant that should have been included in Christopher Hitchens' "The Portable Atheist", though Douglass was not technically an atheist.

Text can be read in full here.

"....between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference--so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of "stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in." I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the blood clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. The man who robs me of my earnings at the end of each week meets me as a class-leader on Sunday morning, to show me the way of life, and the path of salvation. He who sells my sister, for purposes of prostitution, stands forth as the pious advocate of purity. He who proclaims it a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of learning to read the name of the God who made me. He who is the religious advocate of marriage robs whole millions of its sacred influence, and leaves them to the ravages of wholesale pollution. The warm defender of the sacredness of the family relation is the same that scatters whole families,--sundering husbands and wives, parents and children, sisters and brothers,--leaving the hut vacant, and the hearth desolate. We see the thief preaching against theft, and the adulterer against adultery. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the POOR HEATHEN! ALL FOR THE GLORY OF GOD AND THE GOOD OF SOULS! The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies and souls of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his in fernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other --devils dressed in angels' robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.

"...Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly true of the overwhelming mass of professed Christians in America".......

And little has changed. Slavery has ended, and the Christians take credit for it, of course.

The Reader

2009-03-16T20:18:00.000-07:00

A couple of people recommended "The Reader", including my chicken shit friend in New Jersey.

I read the book by Bernard Schlink and watched the movie this evening.

The emotional power of the book was overwhelming and the emotional power of watching the movie the day after finishing the book was debilitating.

The second quickest way to a man's heart is his stomach. But Bernard Schlink realized that the very quickest way to a man's heart is his penis. Thus he wrote a book centered around holocaust issues published in 1995 (which is now required reading in college level courses) implementing the ingenious device of youthful eroticism as a bridge to empathic understanding.

The mixture of eroticism with a philosophical inquiry into the nature of guilt was like getting my metaphorical G-spot hammered by double penetration. Schlink uses the most powerful device imaginable to capture a sense of understanding for those caught in the middle of the holocaust and faced with overwhelming dilemmas. Dilemmas between - being a hero.... being killed for your heroics...... being killed for not being heroic... or worse maybe.... neither.

According to Schlink, criticism of his book comes mostly from the second and third generations after the holocaust who can't allow a moment's hesitation before condemning anyone remotely associated, often including their own parents. But from the generation who actually were there, very little criticism.

If I had to choose a book to make a movie from it would be this. A book of 218 short pages, where the lead character "Hanna" receives extraordinarily few lines and leaves the director open to flesh out the story in ways unobtainable by the author. Unlike most movies from books, I found it to be perfectly complementary and edifying to the story. The director captured the spirit of the writing and Kate Winslet's best actress oscar was well deserved for capturing the spirit of a character with incredibly little to say.

I feel embarrassed by the critics who gave the story bad reviews. Maybe this is a story where the book is really mandatory to capture the meaning of the movie. Maybe without the book it would not have been so good, I'll never know. But I do know that it is a testament to the movie that the book only makes it better, not worse. And also, maybe it is a story where heterosexual males who still remember what it is like to be young are most unevenly affected.

Making Progress

2009-03-09T17:58:00.000-07:00

% of Americans who said they have no religion:

1990- 8.2%
2001- 14.2%
2008- 15%

% Americans who call themselves Christians:

1990- 86%
2001- 77%
2008- 76%

Kind of plateaus in recent years, but huge shift from 1990.

Strange similarities

2009-03-04T17:00:00.000-08:00

The same people who buy into this shit....

Rachel Maddow Gets It

2009-03-01T18:41:00.000-08:00

Having been an evangelical Christian before, I know exactly what it is like to really believe the world is ending soon. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that many non-Christians don't really understand that these people really believe this stuff or have any idea how popular this thinking is. Let us remember that 68% of Republicans do not believe in evolution AT ALL according to the recent Gallup poll. Nothing can be done to persuade these people of things they refuse to acknowledge. It is easy to be a Republican when you think everything happens due to God's will. The same mindset is prevalent in the new age community where any event can be rationalized as a planned lesson from on high, and nobody should get all up in arms over gross inequality because karma irons everything out. When you believe that Father God is watching and controlling everything, and that the world is ending soon, of course global warming doesn't matter. Of course health care isn't a great issue. And a Democrat like Obama speeds up the coming of the one world government which will be ruled by the antichrist, whereas making America an outcast to the rest of the world (and as different as possible from Europe) merely means to these people that we are bucking Satan's grand plan. If you think these thoughts do not go through the heads of tens of millions of Americans before they enter the poll booths, think again. I was once one of them.

Red States Consume More Porn- New Scientist

2009-02-28T20:53:00.000-08:00

Yep, looks like all we need is a little more Jesus in our lives to cure the social degradation spearheaded by the blue state liberals. Lol!

Red states consume more porn?

"According to a new Harvard Business School study, eight of the top ten states in terms of online porn consumption were ones where McCain won in the presidential election. Professor Benjamin Edelman analyzed anonymised credit cards receipts from a large online porn company. Based on their limited data, the largest consumer is Utah. "

Church-goers bought less online porn on Sundays – a 1% increase in a postal code's religious attendance was associated with a 0.1% drop in subscriptions that day. However, expenditures on other days of the week brought them in line with the rest of the country, Edelman finds.

Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don't explicitly restrict gay marriage.

To get a better handle on other associations between social attitudes and pornography consumption, Edelman melded his data with a previous study on public attitudes toward religion.

States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behaviour."

"One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you're told you can't have this, then you want it more," Edelman says."

(a) My immediate thought was echoed in the comments section of the blog I found this article from-

"The study just shows that red staters are too dumb to know how to get their porn for free."

Update on Bach Prelude

2009-02-27T19:26:00.000-08:00

Awhile ago I posted tablature to Bach prelude 1007 by Li Jie. I have now sent it to 10 requesters and it is hitting searches. Someone sent me some comparable internet transcriptions they found but they were mostly horrible. I feel sorry for anyone wasting their time trying to learn from them. I learn time and time again to transcribe it yourself if you want it right, and if you get it wrong you have only yourself to blame. Even the best transcribers have some glaring errors.

Best Evolution Video Ever

2009-02-21T15:11:00.000-08:00

I found this on onegoodmove.org today and I had to add it here because it is simply the best, most concise explanation of evolution I have ever seen.

Robert Gibbs vs. Talk Radio

2009-02-20T17:30:00.000-08:00

If you haven't noticed lately, con talk radio has tried to quietly sneak past the problem of finding a solution for the economic crisis. Their main tactic has been to continue denying that there is a major crisis. You can listen to it for hours on end and hear no serious solution or plan of action, but plenty of frothing at the mouth over spending and bailouts. They are terrified that some irresponsible home"owner"s will receive what they don't deserve.

Press secretary Gibbs offers a great refutation to these arguments. There is no doubt in my mind that *some* irresponsible people will be bailed out no matter how great a plan might be to avoid it. But consider that letting people foreclose not only lowers the average price of the houses on that block 9% ($20,000 on average) but sends us even further away from solving this mess since nothing can recover until housing recovers. The naysayers will be paying for it one way or another. Therefore, I don't see any reason for so much bluster from the right other than to demonize the Democrats. If they had some sort of viable solution it would be another matter, but all they do is complain and bury their heads in the sand. It's as if they don't mind going into a great depression as long as not a single person is unfairly bailed out. I don't buy it at all. I think the Santelli thing was scripted and rigged as a distraction from reality- something the Obama haters are really good at. It would trouble them deeply if the Obama plan were to succeed. And unless we are all walking on air in two months they will consider the plan to have failed.

I guess I missed this. Sure looks like Obama picked the right guy. Love it!

Movie Intro is Complete

2009-02-19T14:16:00.000-08:00

Click title and click watch in HD

A few things happened in D.C. I wanted to share (and no not *that* unfortunately). I watched the entire series by Dawkins called "The Genius of Charles Darwin" on the long flight. Great series.

This put me into the frame of mind that led to the making of this video. As I mentioned in a message, the museums really are just a chronicle of killing, whether it be the ICBMS in the aerospace museum, the natural history museum with its obvious display of nature's violent and random evolutionary bridge to nowhere, or the art museums where every character painted was either involved in a war themselves or directly influenced by one. Maybe we can credit the contemporary art section for having very little killing on display despite scarcely deserving to even be in the museum (which is why it is tucked away in the rafters).

The other thing that happened was I saw an extraordinary HBO special on Ted Haggard and what he is doing after his fall from grace. You all must watch it. The man actually manages to get me feeling sorry for him... to an extent. I see Ted Haggard as an extremely simple mind, almost juvenile, with an amazingly and profoundly naive sincerity. He was banned from Colorado, could not find a job, ran out of money, was shuffling his family around from place to place always somewhere between that dopey euphoric smile and a nervous breakdown. The film was made by the same person who did a documentary on the man in the height of church glory. She gains access to his trust and she pulls no punches.

I am curious to see what my dad will think of this movie. I think that my development from encouraging believer to atheist has troubled him. He knows that I don't believe, but he doesn't grasp that I can't believe. He is a "god used evolution to create all this" person, which makes sense as long as you don't grasp evolution. The trouble with the belief lies mainly in neuroscience. If you can somehow square that the human brain was "designed" for self-deception, and that its one great criterion for selection apart from basic survival were all those qualities that get 17 year olds to spread their legs the fastest, then the belief stands. I've found no way to reconcile an intentional force driving the process.

Back from D.C.

2009-02-16T17:45:00.000-08:00

Just got back from my trip to D.C.

I have about 2 hours of high def video that I will edit into a "pretentious" (thanks Gail) movie. I will share a small part of the highlights here eventually. I am going to get imovie 09 first because it has added effects and image stabilization which effectively adds much value to my little pocket camcorder. I love this thing. Everywhere I went people had no idea what it was. I was yelled at twice by security guards who were convinced I was going to snap a flash picture or something, but there is no flash.

My favorite part of the trip was seeing the National Art Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Natural History Museum. Time just evaporates in places like these. I kept catching myself completely bug eyed, and hoping that my contacts didn't fall out. I was awestruck by seeing the real paintings and sculptures I'd only seen in books. I still don't understand how they let someone stand a breath's distance away from a painting from the 12th century. What is to prevent some tourist from taking a permanent marker and painting a mustache on the christ child or George Washington? I found it funny that the sole Leonardo DaVinci painting in America is set behind glass. A gorgeous painting. I swear I was going to draw a mustache on it until I saw it was behind glass. I guess all the other ones like the Gilbert Stuart presidential portraits are are just not important enough to hide behind glass, and people can freely mark on them if they want to trade a little prison time.

And if you can get through the Natural history museum and you STILL don't believe in evolution... you've got some *serious* problems.

A thank you to Gail for her advice, directions (I saw one tiny little grocery store in Georgetown but not Safeway) and allowing me to spill my guts out about the insanity of the human condition one night after spending several consecutive days visually examining death after death after killing after killing after war after war, otherwise known as "world history".

I tried to update but the wifi wouldn't let my messages go through.

I rest my case

2009-02-09T17:35:00.000-08:00

My man, Drew Westen, on Obama's naivity and mishandling of the stimulus package.

"...a failure to distinguish alternative meanings of bipartisanship, an apparent miscalculation about the political and ideological extremism of the Republicans left in Washington in the wake of the Democratic landslides of the last two electoral cycles, and an unwillingness to fight back when attacked led the Obama administration unwittingly to participate in a setback to both change and bipartisanship, as they urged Democratic lawmakers to cut and paste elements of the conservative ideology that has unhinged our economy into a package designed to resuscitate it and emboldened the Republican leadership in a way that has sown the seeds of renewed partisan polarization."

Click on the Image to read more.

One thing Obama is good at is counter-punching. So... he may pull through this. But the one thing Obama must learn is how to throw the first punch and how to avoid getting bitch-slapped in the first place. And when Republicans bitch-slap him, he can't wait for weeks on end to respond, as though he were above it all. He's not. He's the President of the United States and he needs get his act together. We're all, most of us, rooting for him.

44% Believe in Young Earth Instant Creationism

2009-02-08T19:16:00.001-08:00

This new Pew research report shows that 42% believe everything on earth was created as is. The Gallup poll shows 44%. I am not making fun of those who think God guided evolution, just the astounding mass of Americans who think it all arrived as is.

Most of these people walk through a supermarket and stand amazed at the extraordinary bounty of God's natural harvest. Most don't realize that virtually none of the stuff they see has much resemblance to the way it existed in nature before it was selectively bred to our liking. Apples were tiny and difficult to eat, Almonds were bitter and poisonous, and the precursors of our bananas had nothing in common with Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort's inconceivably idiotic video. Produce of today was grotesquely (and deliciously) warped from the natural state humans found it in.

A recent Gallup poll stated that 2/3 republicans do not believe in evolution. About 1/3 democrats. I don't know how specifically the question was asked. Somewhere around 1:30,000 people with a biology degree do not believe in evolution. There is an information gap here, and it is not closing the way you think it would. The same phenomenon can be found with things like homeopathy, where despite further research showing that it does nothing beyond the placebo effect, its popularity is ever on the rise. The same phenomenon of denialism in the face of overwhelming evidence seems to be a common trait of the far right (talk radio fans) and far left. In fact, the more evidence against their dogma, the more stridently they will defend it.

Have fun for a week. I am going to the Washington D.C. to nerd out for awhile.

There is probably no God

2009-02-08T14:46:00.000-08:00

Can't resist posting a link to this article (click on the image). Dawkins decided to proselytize atheism. The Christians, apparently, are deeply and profoundly offended that anyone should behave like, well, Christians - what with proselytizing and all.

They are in the process of buying add time. The Russian Orthodox Church, for example, will be responding with the devastating riposte: "There is a God, believe. Don't worry and enjoy your life."

Note, by the way, the absence of the qualifier "probably".

P.S. Anyone know if those damned atheists are selling stickers yet?

Obama's Naivety

2009-02-06T16:24:00.000-08:00

My worst fears, concerning Obama, remain a possibility. He just doesn't understand how the Republicans obtained power, held power and how the Democrats' phenomenal incompetence contributed. Once again the Democrats, and Obama especially, were outspun, outmaneuvered and generally made to look like fools (and maybe they are).

Rarely before has this country been in such need for change - a change from the last 8 years especially. And yet, in a not so deft turn-about, the Republicans have managed to make the Democrat's stimulus plan look irresponsible while they themselves spout precisely the same "remedies" that have gotten us in this mess.

Now that takes incompetence. When Obama stated that he screwed up it should have been in reference to his handling of the stimulus plan, not Daschle.

Obama needs to understand that the Republicans' priorities are not his. They never will be.

He also needs to understand that the Democrats in Congress aren't necessarily going to act in his best interest. He isn't a member of the club anymore. He's the President. It's time he start acting like it.

Right now.

We’re happy to see President Obama getting tough with Congressional Republicans who are trying to sabotage the stimulus and recovery bill and bring even greater ruin on the economy...

NY Times Editorial: Getting Tough in Washington

A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts...

Krugman: On the Edge

The irony of President Obama's Blue Tuesday is that the wall-to-wall television interviews he granted were designed not to apologize for Tom Daschle's fall from grace but to fight back against the Republicans' success in tarnishing his stimulus package...

E.J. Dionne: Time to Play Hardball

...At the top of the myth list is the Republican faith in tax cuts, particularly those designed to benefit wealthy investors. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that for every problem, conservatives have a consistent solution that involves reducing corporate or capital-gains taxes, or lowering the top rate, or instituting a regressive flat tax or consumption tax. (They like spending, too, on certain favored contractors, notably in the defense sector, that donate generously to Republican and right-wing causes.)...

Joe Conason: Stimulus Skeptics Wrong (Again)

...President Obama's $825 billion plan is a very good first step to contain the damage. Much of the package would go directly toward maintaining state and local services. The package also would help those hardest hit by the downturn with increased funding for unemployment benefits....

Dean Baker: Pass the stimulus - then help shorten the work week

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dipshit

2009-02-02T18:41:00.000-08:00

These guys floor me with their hypocrisy. They are absolutely terrified that Obama might succeed as president. Terrified. They are outraged that he is popular. Every element of criticism they dole out in their hate radio shows they exemplify themselves 10 fold.

And the following is Limbaugh's description of how talk radio works. I could not have said it better myself, especially the last part where he says, "people call in and say do you really believe the stuff you say? I dunno thats for you to figure out". He truly doesn't know if he believes it, but just enjoys feeding half his audience conservative crack and outraging the other half so they keep listening.

No Comment

2009-02-01T11:53:00.000-08:00

Richard Reeves:

"It is not that the nay-saying Republicans have a plan of their own; they agree on nothing except cutting taxes. Their leader, Rush Limbaugh, the entertainer, has told them that their job is to make sure that Obama fails.

In an American context, Republicans have been called America's stupid party for much of their history, but that title clearly passed to the Democrats in the 1970s and 1980s, and perhaps for most of '90s and on into the 21st century. Now, led by wacko pundits like Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and a bunch of less-prosperous firebugs, the Republicans have lost all sense of what is happening in the country."

The Scalpel and the Soul - Part II

2009-01-26T15:47:00.001-08:00

A while back I wrote a post reviewing The Scalpel and the Soul by Allan Hamilton.

Here's what I wrote"

In the final chapter of the book, he recalls the experience of a woman who underwent hypothermic arrest to remove a basilar tip aneurysm after a nearly lethal intracerebral hemorrhage. "I was not the only one asking to see [the patients records]. Other doctors, researchers, and experts on concsciousness were making similar requests as word of the case spread through the local medical community. Few of us, as doctors, suspected we might encounter something altogether new or unique.... We came with the purpose of explaining it away."

What they were investigating was the woman's memory of the surgury during hypothermic arrest. She could remember conversations as well as the the appearance and jewelry of the attending staff, along with OR procedures.

After this I added.

By the way, this patient wasn't Pam Reynolds. This patient was killed a year later in a traffic accident.

As it turns out, the patient was Pam Reynolds with amalgamations of other patients. This information comes from Gaia. com. While it's not a tremendous disappointment (Hamilton states at the outset that he changed names and identities) there is something more than a little disingenuous about it.

First, Pam Reynolds' case was public knowledge. As far as I know, Reynolds herself made no effort to conceal her identity. On this basis alone, there was no acceptable reason why Hamilton should have concealed the case he was discussing.

The reason he did so is obvious. Reynolds' case was already well-known and controversial. Hamilton wanted a knock-out punch for his final chapter - a real clincher. Reynolds' episode, already under the hot light of scrutiny, was no longer the knock-out punch he needed. So he fabricated another case, like Reynolds'. He called the new patient Sarah Gideon. Just to be certain the case would be differentiated from Reynolds', he claimed the this Sarah Gideon was killed in a car accident sometime after surgery.

Now, to me, this smacks of dishonesty. He cannot, on the one hand, claim that he's neutrally presenting his experiences and on the other fabricate a story with the sole purpose of manipulating readers. Remember, there was no reason for him to conceal Reynolds' identity. There was no one to protect. Hamilton was only protecting himself and the agenda of his book. His manipulation of Reynolds' case was entirely self-serving.

What I find particularly distasteful is that this sort of deception undercuts the very real experiences of real people. It teaches all of us who have had experiences like these (and I am one of them) that we should keep them to ourselves.

Peace.

Elizabeth Alexander's Inaugural Poem

2009-01-25T12:31:00.000-08:00

Don't read this post if you're looking for an explanation of this poem's meaning. Daniel Klotz has written a top-notch and favorable analysis of the poem's meaning. I debated analyzing Alexander's Poem since this isn't normally the kind of poetry that interests me - not that I think free verse isn't capable of great poetry. But being a poet, and having an interest in the art, my own perspective is that of a poet who prefers form and meter to none at all.

Here's Alexander's poem as lineated by the New York Times. I've seen lots of "versions" on the net, but Newsweek and the New York Times both seem to agree on this lineation. The fact that no one (except, presumably, those who have recieved a copy of the poem) can agree on a lineation tells us that there's no difference between this and a paragraph of prose. (There's no formal reason to lineate free verse poetry - it more or less serves as a sign that a given piece of writing should be read and treated like a poem written in a meter or a form.)

Praise Song for the Day

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.

I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

An article in the Guardian wrote about her: "She is smart, deeply educated in the traditions of poetry..." She may be deeply educated in the traditions of poetry, but none of that education is on display in her inaugural poem. Not knowing who wrote the poem, I would have considered it the work of a dilettante. I still do. One can be deeply educated in the traditions of poetry and still write amateurish poetry.

Her reading of the poems sounded affected to my ears - school-marmish. There was no sense of drama, content or development. Each section was read with same enunciated intonation. So many poets, nowadays, read like this. I don't know where they learn it (except each other), but it seems to be a free-verse affectation. If any0ne were to buy a book on tape, with reading like this, I suspect they wouldn't make it past page 2.

The skill of the poem itself was woefully dilettantish. 33 of her lines are end-stopped. The poem consists of 43 lines. That means that 76% of her lines are end-stopped. If she were writing using meter, such a ratio would be immediately considered amateurish - even among amateurs. It shows a lack of imagination even in free verse poetry. 400 years ago, poets like Shakespeare, Johnson and Donne left such inflexible verse far behind.

This perhaps only reflects my philosophy, but a poem is more than its subject matter. A paragraph in any given book can be poetic but that doesn't make it poetry. Likewise, Alexander's poem is little more than a lineated paragraph - poetic but not poetry.

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

The poems begins with quotidian language and imagery. The phrase "catching each other's/eyes" is shopworn - evoking nothing beyond the familiarity of the phrase itself.

All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

The images are clichéd at best - trite at worst. Bramble is mildly more evocative than thorn, but the use of thorn in this context is clichéd - hardly worthy of an inaugural poem. The mirroring syntax (noise<---bramble) (thorn--->din) is meant to be rhetorical but is vacuous. The counterpoised nouns, adding nothing in the way of insight to each other, sound pretentious rather than elegant. The phrase "ancestors on our tongues" might turn out to be the poem's most memorable image.

patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

This is mere rhetorical padding. If the 'things' weren't "in need of repair", then they wouldn't be "repairing the things". The repetition of the phrase sounds satisfying and 'poetic' but it's redundant. We always repair the things in need of repair, otherwise we wouldn't be repairing them. Alexander's rhetorical gloss conceals a vacuity of thought.

make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box...

The fact that one doesn't "make music" with a boom-box has already been mentioned at other blogs. The missing articles are a poetic affectation - a mannerism that has itself become clichéd. Besides that, the lines evoke nothing. There is no sense of sound despite the reference to music. Alexander creates a sort of bland poem of enumeration - a watered down Praise Song. Interestingly, a Praise-Song is an African poetic form. Brittanica states: the form consists of "a series of laudatory epithets applied to gods, men, animals, plants, and towns that capture the essence of the object being praised." This partly explains the feeling that the poem is a poem-of-enumeration, but Alexander's use of the form is unimaginative.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

Again, there is no poetry in these lines. No color. No smell. No touch. No taste. The only sense, arguably, is that of sight. Changing evokes nothing. It's hard to even call this "poetic". The enumeration begun in the stanza before is continued and the tone verges on the pedantic - only reinforced by the unfortunate reference to teachers and the taking out of pencils.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth,

Spiny is one of the only glimmers of poetry in the entirety of the piece.

From this point on, between the lines beginning "Say it plain..." and ending with "pre-empt grievance", there is not a single evocative image. There is no sense of touch, taste, smell, etc... The images are all nominative. The only descriptor that hints at something poetic is in "glittering edifices " - but even this image verges on cliché. This isn't poetry. It's prose and flavorless prose at that. It might be suitable, as others have said, for an essay.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

"Sharp sparkle" is another stab at poetry but barely rises above the mundane. She falls back into cliché with brink, brim and cusp - offering us nothing novel but another asyndetic list. Referencing back to Brittanica, the Encyclopedia offers the following example of an African Praise Song.

He is Shaka the unshakeable,
Thunderer-while-sitting, son of Menzi.
He is the bird that preys on other birds,
The battle-axe that excels over other
battle-axes.
He is the long-strided pursuer, son of Ndaba,
Who pursued the sun and the moon.
He is the great hubbub like the rocks of
Nkandla
Where elephants take shelter
When the heavens frown. . . .
(trans. by Ezekiel Mphahlele)

Even in translation, and as an extract, there is more poetry in this praise song than in Alexander's.

This is what I see

2009-01-14T17:01:00.001-08:00

This is what I see, everyday, up in Vermont.

Pictures never do justice to actually being there. Nonetheless, this is a pseudo panorama scanning from left to right. The first picture faces due north, looking into the north country. It's hard to tell, since blogger has reduced this image to a thumbnail, but one can see about 60 miles to the North.

The next picture is one turn to the right (or Eastward). The thin line of white on the horizon are distant mountains. They're almost a hundred miles to the North and East.

Another small turn to the right and East. The snow capped mountains in the center of the picture are some of the Presidentials and if the resolution were better, you could see Mount Washington - the most dangerous Mountain Top, weather-wise, in the world. The highest wind speeds on the surface of the Earth have been recorded on Mount Washington - well over 200 miles per hour. The top of Mount Washing literally brushes against the Jet Stream. Also, the tops of the mountains are bare. Trees can't grow there, conditions on the top of the White Mountains being equivalent to the arctic tundra. It's possible to ski atop Washington even into July.

The last picture, another turn to the right and facing East, is of Moosilauke. This picture simply doesn't do justice to the mountain. The top spends most of its time in or above the clouds. Moosilauke is a massive mountain by East Coast standards. I'm about 20 miles, as the crow flies, from the Mountain (I think) in this picture. It's a great climb in the summer but the mountain, as with the Presidentials, is deceptively dangerous in the Winter.

This is what I see, everyday, up in Vermont.

My Crawlspace Flooded Again

2009-01-10T14:38:00.000-08:00

It flooded once, shame on the weather. It flooded twice, shame on me. My sump pump failed... kind of. I was totally unprepared. I thought the first flooding was due to the broken pipe alone. The fire department said two years ago that snow melt and rain would not be enought to flood the space, it was all due to the broken pipe. I believed it. But after two days of virtually non-stop Noah's ark downpouring like I don't recall ever seeing before in my life, it flooded due only to the rain and filled yet again after the first pumping.

Someone said it was the worst since 1917 but I don't know how they come up with that number. Something like 40,000 people had to be evacuated from their homes who lived near rivers. I called the fire department and they could not come to my house because all their rigs were out and there was nobody left to come. They said to call back later. I was soaked to the bone and got 2 hours of sleep that night then worked the next day and came home and continued pumping after work. I am exhausted. Got the remaining water out today, but my furnace is not going to be turned on until I have it inspected. So it is in the 40's inside my house right now. I am staying with my parents.

Out and About

2009-01-03T21:22:00.000-08:00

Here is my second home movie made with the Kodak Zi6 and apple imovie '08. Youtube now supports 720p HD, but there are some special tricks to get it to upload correctly that took me awhile to figure out. This is from a pocket camcorder. Yes, pocket camcorder are now in HD. I got mine for $160 and there are comparable ones I saw today for only $120. they work amazingly well in good outdoor light, run on 2 AA batteries and require only a cheap SD memory chip. imovie '08 came with my imac but I didn't expect to ever use it until I realized I could get a cheap camcorder. The downside of the pocket camcorders are pretty serious if you are looking for quality video making. The high def doesn't work well indoors unless you use a ton of lighting. There is no image stabalizer built in so you can't really even walk while filming unless you want it to bounce all over the place. But for what it is, this is amazing.

You can't watch it in HD from this website (there is a way to embed it but I don't know how yet). Double click the image and go to youtube. Click "watch in HD" in the bottom right of the movie.

Atheistmas Pictures

2008-12-26T16:24:00.000-08:00

Somehow these fish make it through the winter intact.

Annie literally ripped her toy out of the paper and swung it around violently, much like she did the nest of baby rabbits a couple of years ago.

Merry Atheistmas!

2008-12-25T05:39:00.000-08:00

My Dog. My house in Vermont. My big, huge snowstorm.

My daughters opening their presents under the Atheistmas Tree.

My bridge. I made it. Crosses the brook 10 Feet behind my back door. You can't see the brook. It's under snow.

May your holidays be godless and filled with good cheer!

Pics of the Day

2008-12-21T12:52:00.000-08:00

Blizzard. I got caught many miles away in a sudden snow storm yesterday. Barely made it back, lost control of my car a couple of times.

Math Trick

2008-12-18T20:05:00.000-08:00

This worked on me. Did it work on you? Any ideas why?

Li Jie is Godlike

2008-12-14T12:18:00.000-08:00

I have never seen such mastery of an instrument of any kind. And at such a young age, it is breathtaking. It is almost embarrassing to watch acclaimed masters of classical guitar who have been playing and studying all their lives get soundly outdone by a 14 year old girl. What is truly staggering is that Li Jie did not even start playing the guitar until she was 11 years old! That gives her about 3 years of practice to become a literally peerless performer. Her guitar looks huge compared to her tiny body. When I was transcribing from her video I kept thinking that the 4th fret was the 5th because of how her tiny hands have to stretch so far to reach it, yet she pulls it off perfectly.

She is currently 27 years old. I have searched and found no information about what she is doing now. The thought came to mind that maybe she decided that after 3 years of practice she had already become the best classical guitarist that has ever lived, and maybe she took up another hobby. Seriously, what else is there to be done? She could compose her own music, but I've seen no evidence that she has. One of the sad things about some of my favorite virtuoso guitar heros is that they don't compose. I don't know if it is because they have no imagination or because they don't feel like they have anything to offer. I guess this separates the greats like Paco de Lucia from the crowd.

Bach prelude in D Cello Suite 1 BWV 1007 Tablature as played by Li Jie

2008-12-13T13:15:00.000-08:00

For years I have been playing this piece on my guitar thinking that I had almost mastered it. Then about a year or so ago I stumbled on some youtube clips of Andres Segovia playing it in a very different arrangement. His version is full of haunting baselines not found in the transcription I was using. Then I witnessed a 14 year old Chinese girl named Li Jie play basically the same arrangement, only better than Segovia.

I felt cheated of the "real" version of this guitar masterpiece. Of course there is no "real" guitar version, as it was originally written for the cello. But from there on I could get no joy playing my gutted out version of this piece. I proceeded to search all over the net for a transcription to no avail. There are hordes of websites with hundreds of guitar transcriptions but only the version I already played was available. So I put it off for the longest time.

Until this week, when I had a very bad cold and had to stay home from work.

Not wanting to have to transcribe it myself, I wandered around from one music store to another searching for the paper. I must have found 5 or 6 more versions in books that were just like the skeletal version I knew.

When I got home, sneezing and miserable, my desire to learn that thing, along with the aid of free time and some Starbucks grande Christmas drip (no room), resulted in the only known internet transcription of this piece available. So Merry Christmas. This is golden (despite my horrible penmanship and inexperience with my new scanner), and was not an easy task from a sketchy youtube recording that can only rewind in 10 second chunks (infuriating!!!).

I purposely typed the name of it in the header so it would hit a search. I know there are countless people looking for that transcription who settle for the popular version, and maybe don't even realize what they are missing (like me). And since there is almost assuredly at least one note transcribed incorrectly or omitted - it is my own *unique* interpretation :-)

Please just leave a message in the comment section if you want me to email you the music. I cannot figure out a way to enlarge it to size on this blog (any suggestions?). I would be curious to find out how many people are searching like mad the way I did. And if there is another place to get it free on the net, I'd like to know. But at least transcribing it myself I know it is quite accurate (let me know where you disagree). The rhythm notation is, admittedly, totally botched. But as it concerns this piece, it is so uniform (except for 1 or 2 syncopations) that it doesn't matter. Most internet guitar transcriptions are so inaccurate as to be worse than useless, so it always pays to put in the sweat yourself, plus you learn it better while you're doing it.

Here is what I transcribed:

Below is the Colonal Sanders version- slightly different. I like the Li Jie arrangement better, it is slightly more complex I think.

Note on the fingering:

Segovia avoids using his ring finger on the top E string and goes from the E to the G string using middle and index. Li Jie uses her ring finger constantly for the top string. I played it like Segovia for years, but now find the Li Jie fingering to be more efficient and easier to control once you get used to it. I have no official training so I don't know which way is "right", if one is right.

Gift Book Ideas

2008-12-07T07:56:00.000-08:00

While browsing for women in a crowded bookstore yesterday, I noticed this book which made me laugh out loud. It is all about the coming financial opportunities we will have after the rapture.

According to the book, up to 1.5 billion people will instantly disappear. That leaves around 5 billion of us left to seize investment opportunities from the ensuing societal breakdown.

Question for the day- With 1.5 billion professed Christians suddenly leaving us, would that leave the earth more or less moral overall? Whatever you believe the answer is, notice how you had to stop and think about it a second? Truth is, a great percentage of Christians are people with all sorts of substance abuse and domestic problems who turn to Christ out of desperation. Would suddenly evacuating all these people really leave the planet in squalor?

The next popular book on everyone's shopping list this year, considered the "feel good read" of the winter and endorsed as a choice on Oprah's book club, by Dr. Phil, Betty Eadie, and Ken Wilber:

"The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God".

Currently, Linden is teaming up on book signings with Dannion Brinkley who is touring his new book entitled:

"I Was Kind of Wrong: Updated Prophecies From My NDE the Beings of Light Didn't Allow Me to Remember Until Now". The duo can be found at Barnes and Noble bookstores offering free book signings together and bundle pack discounts if you buy both.

Dannion has readily admitted that by sheer chance alone, at least one of the prophetic visions he offered in his 1990's book "Saved by the Light" should have at least become partly true, and since none did, that should be considered miraculous.

Peter Schiff-Laughed at for years by conservatives

2008-11-25T17:06:00.000-08:00

This is a treat. I wish people would make more of these sorts of time capsule videos to show how unearthly inaccurate these idiots almost always are. No matter how wrong they are they continue to demonize the people who were spot on. That's why youtube is such a great invention. They can't get away with relying on people's short term memory. They also can't get away with saying "nobody saw it coming" when many have seen it for years. What is particularly funny is how Benjamin Stein dominates the videos, particularly his recommendation of Bear Sterns and Merryl Lynch stocks. HAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!

James Dobson defends the stoning of children

2008-11-16T18:30:00.001-08:00

This is absolutely hysterical. James Dobson is playing a tape of a two year old Obama speech and critiquing his supposed misunderstanding of the bible. The speech amazed me, because Obama sounds word for word like Christopher Hitchens starting at about minute 5 (talking about the absurdity of the laws in Leviticus.) Obama then states that the sermon on the mount is so radical a teaching that the defense department wouldn't withstand its application. James Dobson starts accusing Obama of equating him with Al Sharpton (which he never did, he actually contrasted the two as opposite ends of a religious spectrum as you will hear). Then Dobson and his other commentator go into a stunning defense of the stoning of the children of bad parents!

The great thing about Dobson is that he is one of the few religious leaders who makes it perfectly clear that he *actually* believes this shit. Literally. None of the cowards who have debated Harris or Hitchens had the balls to admit they defend the stoning of children as long as God said it was cool.

Mad props to James Dobson. I'm just glad he wasn't born Muslim, he'd be a suicide bomber for sure.

If you think it's bad now...

2008-11-15T18:09:00.000-08:00

I am utterly flummoxed. Should Congress step in to save the auto industry or should it not? If nothing is done, the damage to the economy will be (digging for an adequate analogy) thermonuclear. The jobless rate will soar on wings of song and people will flee to New Orleans to escape Detroit. The collapse could well send a recession into depression - and the world with it.

So, why is congress (in the equivalent of a Volkswagen Beetle convertible) playing chicken with an 18 wheel logging truck going downhill with the wind at its back and a full load? My personal, though unfounded guess, is that both the Democrats & the Republicans have ideological axes to grind. There are probably left leaning Democrats who would be all too happy to see the auto industry get its just deserts. The industry insisted on subverting, at every turn, any and all efforts to create more fuel efficient cars. At every turn, the auto industry chose short term profit (read greed) over prudent investment in future technologies. I'm sure, to many "green" Democrats, it's payback time. The auto industry, after all, has been one of *THE* major lobbying impediments to greener, less polluting technologies. The industry has single handedly compromised our nation's security by making us keenly dependent on foreign oil.

Then there are the right leaning Republicans. They have an ax to grind too. No lobbying group has been more of a thorn in their side than the UAW and no industry has provided a greater base of support to the unions than the auto worker. The unions are anathema to everything a free market, authoritarian conservative stands for. I have a hunch that many conservatives would *love* to see the auto industry forced into bankruptcy. Bankruptcy, and only bankruptcy, would finally permit the auto industry to sever its ties to the unions, as well as any financial obligations. All and any union contracts would be, effectively, null and void. The steely grip of the unions would be broken. Who would the unionists blame? The auto industry? Maybe Republicans? But who cares, most of them didn't vote Republican anyway.

The President of the United Auto Workers, Ron Gettelfinger, "said Saturday that the problem is not the union's contract with the automakers and that getting the automakers back on their feet means figuring out a way to turn around the slumping economy."

Says he: "The focus has to be on the economy as a whole as opposed to a UAW contract..."

This sounds like the statement of a man in denial. These are the words of a man who smells blood in the wind - his own blood. He knows better than anyone that if the auto industry declares bankruptcy, all bets are off. How does one strike against a company that no longer exists? The safest statement is the one he made. It's the economy, says he.

He could blame the auto industry, but the union's have been just as complicit in fighting fuel efficiency standards. They are just as complicit in a failure of foresight. Yet another reason for *both* Democrats and Republicans to sharpen their knives: Democrats because of the union's obstructionism, Republicans because of the union's obstruction of the free market.

Meanwhile, who loves the US auto industry? They have made stupid decisions, dismal cars and have profited mightily at the expense of *everyone*.

Still, nub of nubs, if we let them fail -- 1929 might start looking *really* good.

Hitchens vs. Rabbi Wolpe

2008-11-14T19:25:00.000-08:00

This never gets old to me. Always funny. The creativity of the religious apologist is endless. I added part 10 of 11 because it is sort of climactic.

Shep Smith's Great Insight

2008-11-13T18:52:00.000-08:00

Although it is impossible to remove all bias from media, give the "mainstream media" credit as being the only form of media left that actually makes an attempt at it. And by those ideals you can know them. Whatever you think about the MSM, what makes it unique is that it struggles daily to avoid the charge of "media bias" as much as possible. This cannot be said about the cable shows and talk radio. As such, they are forced to constantly gauge the attitude of the country and frame information accordingly.

If 97% of experts agree that global warming is manmade and 3% disagree, there will always be hordes of scientifically illiterate Rush Limbaugh listeners whining about media bias. This is never ending. It will never end because a good media outlet is less interested in making specific groups of people who believe in very unlikely things feel represented by falsely portraying ideas without evidence as being equally valid as those with evidence. Because the "mainstream media" holds scientific mainstream opinion as its polestar, it is bound to piss those anti-intellectual konservatives off who reject the scientific process (many millions of people).

The anti-intellectual movement which has taken over the konservative faction of politics has been forced to continuously cry out about bias in science, education and the media in order to get people to feel sorry for them. Konservatives love to play the victim card. They would have us believe that there is a huge conspiracy to manufacture facts that oppose konservatism, a vast left wing conspiracy that somehow churns out support for liberal views while actively suppressing evidence that confirms konservative world views. As if all the world's best biology students are brainwashed into believing in evolution, or almost all top climate scientists somehow believe in global warming just to get get grant money or because they all have this secret desire to be socialists. Or that universities are evil because people who graduate from them are almost invariably more liberal than they were when they entered.

This anti-intellectualism is hopefully going out of style in politics (and make no mistake, it is a completely contrived Rovian tool for political divisiveness. Konservatives absolutely LOVE intellectuals with lofty credentials... as long as they are konservatives. And if spending 4 years binging on information about the world made people more konservative they would love intellectualism).

Paul Begala, the Obama campaign strategist told Bill Maher that 80% of republicans hope that Sarah Palin is the future of the republican party.....

....and 100% of democrats hope that Sarah palin is the future of the republican party.

Child Blogger Proves McCain/Palin Wrong Choice

2008-11-12T19:17:00.000-08:00

A devastating analysis from 7 year old political blogger Stanislaw "Stas" Gunkel caught the attention of Barack Obama. Obama sent him a personal letter of recognition.

In possibly the most irrefutable and masterful critique of Palin/McCain yet written, Stas writes in his blog:

"Here is why I'm asking grown-ups to vote for Barack Obama. I am 7 years old so I can't vote......

My mom told me that I shouldn't base my election analysis on "feelings" (I like him/her) or "beliefs" (I share his/her beliefs) but on logical arguments. She asked me to create my own rational explanations for my support of Obama. Here is one of my arguments:

McCain and Palin are not qualified to be President / Vice President of the U.S. The President's job is to do good for the country and the world. To do good for the country, the President must make smart decisions on important situations.

Governor Palin believes the world is 6000 years old. This is absurd. This is not a rational belief. This is a mistake. Scientists, experiments and evidence have shown this to be completely false. Therefore, she is not rational. If she is not rational, she should not be allowed to be President or Vice President.

Please vote for Barack Obama."

nuff said.

report from planet stas blog

How Bush Lost the War in Iraq

2008-11-09T15:53:00.001-08:00

One of the most dishonest legacies of the Bush Administration is the Iraq War - dishonest in its conception, dishonest in its execution, and dishonest in its results. This is the argument of Peter W. Galbraith's new book, Unintended Consequences.

One of the Bush Administration's most pernicious propaganda triumphs has been the baseless claim that the so-called surge has been a success. Only in Bush's world of spin does one increase troops in order to reduce them. Only in Bush's world of spin is it considered a triumph when more troops are required than when the war started. Only in Bush's echo chamber is a "surge " a continuous operation - the "surge" troops still haven't come home. The "surge" has not resulted in any troop reductions. The surge has not brought peace to rival factions.

Meanwhile, the tribal and sectarian forces within Bagdad are biding their time, fully aware that the United States, depleted by mismanagement, incompetence and a failed economy, cannot afford to continue an occupation indefinitely, even if an Obama administration were to desire it. Bush has knowingly placed the Iraqi War in a holding pattern, knowing that if his "surge" holds just long enough for him to exit the White House, any withdrawal of troops and subsequent collapse of Iraqi "stability" will be placed at the feet of Obama and the Democrats. And this is precisely the illusion that Galbraith is puncturing.

George Bush lost the war.

It is a pity that Obama did not respond more forcefully to Republican claims of success, as it will make the inevitable Republican onslaught all the more difficult to counter, but Galbraith provides the argument, ammunition and the evidence. Even conservative columnist David Brooks considers in the "smartest and most devastating" critic of President George W. Bush's Iraq policies.

"Peter Galbraith was the earliest expert to describe Iraq's breakup into religious and ethnic entities, a reality now commonly accepted.

The Iraq war was intended to make the United States more secure, bring democracy to the Middle East, intimidate Iran and Syria, help win the war on terror, consolidate American world leadership, and entrench the Republican Party for decades. Instead,

Bush handed Iran its greatest strategic triumph in four centuries
U.S. troops now fight to support an Iraqi government led by religious parties intent on creating an Iranian-style Islamic republic
As part of the surge, the United States created a Sunni militia led by the same Baathists the U.S. invaded Iraq to overthrow administration gave Iran and North Korea a free pass to advance their nuclear programs
Obsessed with Iraq's nonexistent WMD, the Bush administration gave Iran and North Korea a free pass to advance their nuclear programs
Turkey, a key NANATO ally long considered a model pro-Western Muslim democracy, became one of the most anti-American countries in the world
U.S. prestige around the world reached an all-time low

Iraq: Galbraith challenges the assertion that the surge will lead to victory. By creating a Sunni army, the surge has, in fact, contributed to Iraq's breakup and set the stage for an intensified civil war between Sunnis and Shiites. If the United States wishes to escape the Iraq quagmire, it must face up to the reality that the country has broken up and cannot be put back together.

Iran: Having helped Iran's allies take control in Baghdad, the Bush administration no longer has a viable military option to stop Iran's nuclear program. Galbraith discusses how a president more pragmatic than Bush might get Iran to freeze its nuclear program as part of a package deal to upgrade relations between two countries equally threatened by Sunni extremism.

Turkey, Syria, and Israel: A war intended to make Israel more secure, undermine Syria's Assad regime, and strengthen ties with Turkey has had the opposite result.

Nationalism: In the coming decades, other countries may follow Iraq's example in fragmenting along ethnic and religious lines. Galbraith draws on his considerable experience in Iraq and the former Yugoslavia to predict where and what the United States might do about it."

The Democrats, Republicans and Obama need to level with the American people before George Bush leaves the White House. Place responsibility for this fiasco, for the lost war, where it belongs.

Slow Learners

2008-11-08T13:14:00.001-08:00

I cannot describe the disgust that I feel when I see Sarah Palin. It is worse than what I feel when watching Bush gesticulate like a banana rewarded primate sign language experiment. Every wink and inflection reeks with a sense of rigged inauthenticity like a bad Shakespearean performance on opening night by high school students pretending to speak old English. Or like a 98 pound Asian porn star with watermelon jugs hanging from thin pendulous stalks. I could go on, and am tempted to because analogies don't describe the emotion.

I relaxed when polls showed the devastating hit the selection of Sarah Palin made for the McCain campaign. Ah ha! I thought, people are seeing what I am seeing. Shwhew. With a group that voted Bush in twice, you never know exactly how to calibrate the zeitgeist.

But now days after the decision, word has it that Sarah Palin is seen as the future of the republican party. "Only if they're stupid" says Bill Maher. Are they really that stupid? Are they even serious?

I stumbled on an article from New Republic which addressed it thusly:

""At a recent meeting of conservative activists," writes an approving Midge Decter, "the very mention of her name set the whole room cheering and the women present all but dancing on the tables."

This week, Republicans are holding a series of confabs to plot their way forward. The most popular themes appear to be Palin in particular and the return to a more traditional conservatism in general. A recent, pre-election Democracy Corps poll found that Republican voters, by a two-to-one margin, think their party "needs to get back to Republican issues," as opposed to devising "better ways to make government work for people, make America secure and address new problems." I have seen the future of the Republican Party, and it is the present of the Republican Party. Only perhaps more so."

There is your official dose of stupid for the day. Instead of learning that their brand of conservatism is precisely what demolished John McCain, these guys want to just increase the deck space on the Titanic. They are oblivious.

Now, I don't think nutty religious right/ talk radio conservatism is dead at all. I also don't think this election proved any major shift to the left for the populace (and the poll numbers show this). But I have to think that running on these tired, meritless, non-evidence based beliefs will likely never win an election again. This is because they are simply outnumbered, and becoming more so every day. The republican party must either jettison a large part of it's "base" (ie... the people who think Palin is the future of the party), or spend the rest of their time as an angry cult of snake handlers and strychnine drinkers prepping for Armageddon.

To my astonishment, they haven't yet seemed to show any awareness of the obvious choice ahead.

"I have seen the future of the Republican Party, and it is the present of the Republican Party. Only perhaps more so."

President Elect Barack Hussein Obama

2008-11-04T20:14:00.000-08:00

I have wanted to write that headline for months. President-elect Barack Obama! Integrity returns to the White House!

Duplicitous Primates Endorses Palin/McCain '08

2008-10-24T11:01:00.001-07:00

After careful deliberation and sleepless nights; amidst two wars, a financial crisis and a war on gun ownership, I have finally decided to sway this election with the official duplicitous primates endorsement for Palin/McCain in 2008.

What tipped me was a 2a.m. epiphany by Misses Palin- "In a McCain-Palin administration, we will also fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act," Palin said in a speech in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

And with that I'm sold. God will surely bless this country with abundance with such good wholesome Christians in the whitehouse.

Thats Not What I Said

2008-10-19T11:08:00.001-07:00

G.K. Chesterton

2008-10-15T17:52:00.001-07:00

From Wikipedia:

As a political thinker, he cast aspersions on both Liberalism and Conservatism, saying, "The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."

McCain is old, but old enough?

2008-10-07T16:12:00.000-07:00

Make sure you aren't eating or drinking when you watch this.

Old, Grizzled Third-Party Candidate May Steal Support From McCain

Great Ad

2008-10-05T17:09:00.000-07:00

What a simple and stunning point.

Post Debate Polls

2008-10-04T13:16:00.000-07:00

Despite the absurd statements by lunatic spinners like Peggy Noonan that Sarah Palin "killed" or "did McCain a favor", today's polls show clear evidence otherwise. 2/3 of the opinion polling included in today's tracking numbers were taken after the debate and Obama has remained steady or possibly improved slightly with about a +7 average nationally. He still needs a double digit lead I think in order for us to be optimistic. The herd effect comes into play as watercooler office talk may provide Obama a slippery slope for societal acceptance as future president. Great news, talk of reverend Wright and William Ayers seems absurd at this point. Nobody cares. We had said that if they were still talking about this in October, Obama is screwed, but it gets no play outside of loony right wing radio land and Faux news.

I recommend these articles highly by Glenn Greenwald at Salon. Some gems of common sense:

"What's happening in this country, and in this election, is rather simple and easy to see: (1) the country is in total shambles -- possibly far worse than what people even realize; (2) we have lived for the last eight years under virtually absolute GOP rule; (3) the public knows this; (4) the Republican President and his party are therefore intensely -- historically -- unpopular; and (5) the voting public doesn't want to continue living under the rule of the same faction and same political party that has driven the country into the ground. Having Sarah Palin drop her gerund endings and desperately trotting out the standard, tired GOP attack ads to depict Obama as a radical, fist-pumping, America-hating, unhinged socialist -- when everyone can see with their own eyes that he isn't -- won't change any of that."

"Ponder how stupid you must think Americans are to believe that you can blame the financial crisis on the 2004 statements of House Democrats about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when that was a time when the GOP controlled all branches of the Government and nothing could have been more inconsequential than what Barney Frank or Maxine Waters, languishing in the minority in Tom DeLay's tyrannical House, said or did about anything."

Religulous Was Great! Naomi Wolf not so much

2008-10-04T08:30:00.000-07:00

Last night for me was a very entertaining night in Seattle (other than the usual rain, traffic and parking issues). I was invited by a friend to attend a town hall lecture by Naomi Wolf about her book "The End of America". You can see the same lecture (at a different town hall) here. It started off well and was captivating. The lesbian couple in front of me was distractingly hot and the lesbians behind me were shoving their feet up my ass. The gay guy at the end of the aisle stroked my back as I walked by and said "I'll make room for yoouuu". The guy in front of me offered to be my dress coach if I paid him by the hour.

Naomi proceeded to give the 10 classic steps that every would-be dictator puts in place on their way to power and compares it to the actions of the Bush administration. The parallels were in fact eerie in many cases. I was completely with her in seeing the very real possibility of a total American meltdown and collapse into tyranny. But not yet. Not immediately. Towards the end I began feeling like I was at a cult meeting. She began talking about how Bush had deployed troops within America and planned on subverting the election somehow.

Then when the audience started asking questions I realized they were mostly far-left wacko conspiracy theorists who literally thought the end was nigh, that somehow Bush would maintain power through force, that 9/11 was an inside job etcetera. I wanted to RUN out of the building. It was really creepy. I looked around at the audience and saw these glazed hypnotized looks. It was like being at an NRA meeting in Montana around of a bunch of guys saying "they're gonna take our guns away!!! We need to stop this immediate threat tonight! With violence if we have to!"

I can see chaos potentially happening if we do hit another great depression and collapse as a superpower. I can see tyranny coming to the fore just like it did in Germany and for precisely the same reasons- anger and nationalistic pride, wrapped up in a flag and carrying a cross, led by right wing talk radio fanatics. Maybe we'll blame the Mexicans for our downfall and start picking them off with sniper rifles, or planting mines along the border.

But not now. Not without total disaster. As bad as Iraq is, it's not Vietnam, it's not WWII (at least not to US, but it is to the millions of people we caused to relocate). Bush has a 26% approval rating. He has no backing. Even the military has funneled more campaign money to Obama. A coup is absurd, but Naomi kept using the word. You have a republican nominee pretending to run *against* his own party and his own party's elected president, yet Naomi tries to hypnotize you into thinking Bush has captured central power. I wasn't hypnotizable. Once again, my views as a mostly liberal person are represented in an insulting way. If she would have simply stopped before going into her conspiracy theories I would have considered the lecture to be great.

Happy to be out of there, we went to see Bill Maher's "Religulous". It was almost like an hour and a half orgasm. At a 10pm showing in liberal Seattle, you are bound to find a group of like minded people watching religulous on Friday night. Our near incessant laughter was exaggerated and increased by the laughter of those around us, just like in a comedy club. It was rapturous to be around people on the same page who actually "got" the joke, who laughed just as often and just as hard. The movie really did surpass my expectations, and has received great reviews. But I am sure it would not have been quite as funny had I merely rented the DVD. Maher says things Dawkins and Harris cannot say, and he does the cause proud.

Were They Watching the Same Debate?

2008-10-02T20:00:00.000-07:00

I just finished watching the vice presidential debate. I was laughing throughout, believing that Palin was destroyed. Utterly. No contest. I was laughing thinking to myself, "there is no way anyone watching this could possibly take her seriously." She clearly looked distressed, and clearly had far less experience. Biden spoke from the heart and effortlessly revealed his knowledge.

Imagine my astonishment post debate, watching NBC where the opinions seem to be that Palin did McCain a favor....

WTF? Were they watching the same debate?!?!?!

They said she "held her own".

This is precisely what many expected would happen. The bar had been lowered so low for Palin that anything short of a total train wreck would be perceived as a victory.

Sexism at it's finest.

If the same exact debate had happened with the same exact words uttered, only with Rudy Giuliani (or any other male) at the podium, it would have been considered a victory for Biden.

Just the act of avoiding total humiliation was apparently a victorious outcome for someone a heartbeat away from the presidency. Wow.

The spinning erupted immediately, with the nutcase Geralidine Ferraro telling Tom Brokaw that Palin's pussy was the source of her desire to root for the opposite team. The press valiantly strove for equality, for story, for an excuse to belch more and more meaningless ink to garner more and more drama to create more and more ratings. Like a baseball stadium owner hoping for the revenue of a drawn out seven game world series, the press anointed Sarah Palin victorious- The winner for not literally hyperventilating on stage. The proud victor for not walking off in humiliation. The clear and obvious black hole of experience crowned the shining glory of down-home American simpletonry.

Of course, this is coming from someone who thought John McCain did pretty well, and Obama looked tired. Only to find out that Obama got a boost from the first debate.

Once again, I have absolutely no idea what the American citizenry is thinking or how they perceive reality. I do know that the press is like a Japanese baseball team- purposely striving for a tie.

Supplemental- Well, looks like more undecided voters had a positive view of the dem ticket after the debate in preliminary polls. Maybe my reaction was skewed by the hysterical people interviewed at NBC who did not represent the typical undecided voter. 46% Biden won 21% Palin won...so far. That's what I would expect based on what I saw. In fact I thought that Biden (except for a few fatigued ramblings towards the end) may have done better against McCain than Obama did. But I cannot imagine any unbiased person not seeing through Palin's sheer bullshit.

"Eighteen percent of previously uncommitted percent say they are now committed to the Obama-Biden ticket. Ten percent say they are now committed to McCain-Palin. Seventy-one percent are still uncommitted. "

Su-wheet!

Brokaw, Peggy Noonan, Ferraro... what in the HELL are you people smoking??!?!?

Beliefs...

2008-09-30T15:54:00.001-07:00

I have recently been reading Calvin and Hobbes to my daughters. Why couldn't Bill Watterson just come out with a book every now and then? Just write one strip a week and in a couple of years...

Sigh...

I want to restate my belief that Hobbes was real. And there is some circumstantial evidence, within the strips, to prove my belief - sort of like NDEs. I am a methodological naturalist - so I have an excuse.

Aaron, I will lose all respect for you if you agree with me.

My Love Hate Relationship with Bill Oreilly

2008-09-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

Occasionally Bill Oreilly lashes out at the right wing. It is always amusing to hear Limbaugh listeners call in to Oreilly's show with their rehearsed talking points only to be called a bunch-o- lunatics by Oreilly. This was extremely entertaining during the height of the gas price escalation when the Limbaugh talking point was that the government was responsible for the price increase, exonerating the actual white collar criminals and greed driven exploiters who were behind it, or even praising them for being great capitalists. I knew this was the Limbaugh talking point because my right wing buddy from school called and rehashed it all over the phone as if from a teleprompter, or as if he had somehow become an instant expert on the issue.

These right wing ideologue shows are literally like a joke following the typical algorithm- you set the joke up with a mundane series of events and then the punch line is something you never expected because it is exactly opposite of the obvious reality of the situation, yet still seems to make sense to the logically impaired. Man walks into a bar, white collar criminals are stealing his money... It's the government's fault. Lol. An italian, a Jew and a Mexican become governor's and decide to use right wing based deregulation of the financial markets to make the wealthy wealthier and it led to a collapse of the entire economic system... It's the democrats fault. Haha, get it? Wasn't that funny?

If you need that unhealthy right wing radio fix like I do you will understand the absolute horseshit these nutcases have been spewing lately. Take Glenn Beck for instance, who railed on about the initial bailing out of Fanny and Freddy only to see the entire system collapse within weeks, completely obliterating his entire belief system before his eyes and leaving him spitting and gesticulating, waving his hand randomly in search of someone else to blame, or perhaps for a bottle of vodka. I thought I would find it funny to see that chipmunk cheeked ass bag humiliated, but instead I found it sad. Then there's Hannity- the living freak show of television whose views are so startlingly false so startlingly often that you wonder how he continues to draw an audience, or take even himself seriously. then Limbaugh- whose opinions are as predictable as the sunrise. In case you haven't listened for awhile, it's all STILL Clinton's fault.

Oreilly finally snapped and called it for what it is. this clip doesn't capture the extent of it. One caller made a great point- why does the overtly biased Oreilly feel free to name names on the left, but not on the right? If Oreilly were fair he would "go after" Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh, Ingraham et al... and take cameras into their bathrooms while they are taking shits to ask them a few questions. Man up Bill'o, that'll be the day you live up to your self-described "independent" label.

Yawn

2008-09-27T08:03:00.001-07:00

This was barely worth watching. The only exciting factor was anticipating disaster if someone made a mistake.

I learned nothing new here. Nothing happened at all as far as I am concerned.

I was only concerned about what the "folks" thought of the debate. What the "folks" think is based on body language and demeanor. McCain was condescending and grumpy, yielding a clear and obvious dislike of Obama.

His obvious strategy was to portray Obama as naive and inexperienced on foreign policy. Fascinating contradiction considering his running mate, who doesn't have the experience and confidence to even be trusted to appear and provide post-debate spin when invited. When asked in an interview whether Palin was ready to take over the presidency, McCain unhesitatingly bellowed, "Absoluuuutely, Absoluuutely!". Yet Barrack Obama somehow is not, despite having clearly demonstrated his understanding of world affairs on the world stage for dozens of months now, having his every word and gesture scrutinized and evaluated by everyone in the world. I wonder how many "folks" caught this absurd contradiction, and thought "wait a minute now". Conveniently, Sarah Palin was MIA. Just the presence of her face on camera somewhere that night would have laughably undermined McCain's debate thesis.

Even the mighty anti-intellectual placebo vitamin PhD Michael Savage Weener announced on his radio show that Palin was unqualified. This must have pissed off thousands of psychotic semi-literate drones who listen to him every day.

I thought McCain won the debate. No, not literally. Not on substance. He won merely by being there and not screwing something up big time. He won by putting Obama on the defensive, making him react all night. It is something he has learned after being in many election processes. When your monologue is done and you are about to pass the hot potato to your opponent, you need to add an accusation every time. This forces your opponent to waste their time addressing your accusation (even if it is totally unfounded) instead of addressing what they want to say. This is how McCain has decided to run his entire campaign so far.

Fortunately, the independents questioned after the debate were twice as likely to say that Obama came across as the victor- Snapshot polls by both CNN and CBS News showed Obama with a clear advantage among voters in how people perceived the debate performance. CBS monitored a roomful of uncommitted voters and when asked who won the debate shortly after it was done, the number of people who raised their hands for Obama was more than double than those for McCain.

Some people speculate that McCain's grumpiness and condescension were negatives. As far as substance, nothing really happened except that two people showed that they have the nerve to stand there and talk coherently for an hour and a half about positions we already knew they had.

Another Honest Conservative Turns on Palin

2008-09-26T13:48:00.001-07:00

After a couple of interviews it has become painfully clear, even to many of those who want to root for Sarah Palin, that she is not fit for high office.

If McCain doesn't do something to turn this thing around, we are looking at a possible landslide. Virginia is now leaning Obama on RealClearPolitics, which would spell certain disaster for McCain. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Colorado are solidly Obama. McCain is barely holding onto Florida and Ohio.

I think that McCain will do okay in the debate tonight, because it will be softball. He can basically give a prepared speech-like oratory and play safe. But nothing can protect Palin from ultimate exposure for what she is once everyone gets to see her go toe to toe with Biden.

Conservative writers are starting to lose their capacity for self deception. Conservative Wick Allison wrote the article I posted about recently supporting Obama.
Then George Will, archconservative, said that one of the candidates was acting like a rookie amidst the financial crisis and it was not Obama. Now conservative Kathleen Parker, originally rooting for Palin, says Aunt Sarah should step down outright.

At some point partisans must consider what is good for the country and vote based on their own instinct. Even listening to Bill Oreilly I get the impression (though he always sticks up for the conservative) that he is not beyond voting for Obama. Hannity? meh, not so much. That bungnut would vote for a hyena if it were on a republican ticket.

The Palin Problem, Kathleen Parker

Hannity on the Economy

2008-09-25T17:48:00.000-07:00

Sean Hannity for me is the most curious character on television. I have never been able to tell whether he actually believes the things he says or whether he is just paid to tongue and cheek his way as a republican talking points spokesperson. I think it's a bit of both.

This clip was from 9/10. The economic disaster had not quite come to fruition as the primary point of debate. Hannity, as he has been doing for years now, insists that the economy is strong thanks to George Bush and that the guest is talking "garbage". Says Hannity, "Democrats are going to have to convince the American people that the economy is failed and that the surge did not work".- an impossible task he implies.

Hmm. Sitting here a couple of weeks later, do you think it's a tall order to convince Americans that the economy is a wreck? Is the "surge" talking point really valid now that we have a report saying that it really had no quantifiable effect [,"Our findings suggest that the surge has had no observable effect, except insofar as it has helped to provide a seal of approval for a process of ethno-sectarian neighborhood homogenization that is now largely achieved," Agnew's team wrote in their report.] and that revolutionary predator surveillance equipment is responsible for routing insurgents?

This clip typifies the fantasy world that Hannity and others like him live in from day to day. It is IMPOSSIBLE for me to believe that Hannity believes what he says. If he does, is he stupid or delusional? He is either acting, stupid, or merely delusional. His comments about the economy on 9/10 are infinitely more absurd now than they were then.

But you can rest assured that Hannity is blaming everything on someone else, as he always does.

A Conservative for Obama

2008-09-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

The new face of Conservatism

A Conservative for Obama

My party has slipped its moorings. It’s time for a true pragmatist to lead the country.

By Wick Allison, Editor In Chief

THE MORE I LISTEN TO AND READ ABOUT “the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate,” the more I like him. Barack Obama strikes a chord with me like no political figure since Ronald Reagan. To explain why, I need to explain why I am a conservative and what it means to me.

In 1964, at the age of 16, I organized the Dallas County Youth for Goldwater. My senior thesis at the University of Texas was on the conservative intellectual revival in America. Twenty years later, I was invited by William F. Buckley Jr. to join the board of National Review. I later became its publisher.

Conservatism to me is less a political philosophy than a stance, a recognition of the fallibility of man and of man’s institutions. Conservatives respect the past not for its antiquity but because it represents, as G.K. Chesterton said, the democracy of the dead; it gives the benefit of the doubt to customs and laws tried and tested in the crucible of time. Conservatives are skeptical of abstract theories and utopian schemes, doubtful that government is wiser than its citizens, and always ready to test any political program against actual results.
Liberalism always seemed to me to be a system of “oughts.” We ought to do this or that because it’s the right thing to do, regardless of whether it works or not. It is a doctrine based on intentions, not results, on feeling good rather than doing good.

But today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.

Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John McCain who says America’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth.
This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.

Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.

“Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.

Sam Harris on Sarah Palin

2008-09-21T06:54:00.000-07:00

I received notice of this article via E-Mail. Sam Harris wrote: Please forward this article as widely as you can. I ask this favor of you because I believe that the sudden proximity of Sarah Palin to the presidency is the most dangerous political development of my lifetime.

Let me confess that I was genuinely unnerved by Sarah Palin's performance at the Republican convention. Given her audience and the needs of the moment, I believe Governor Palin's speech was the most effective political communication I have ever witnessed. Here, finally, was a performer who—being maternal, wounded, righteous and sexy—could stride past the frontal cortex of every American and plant a three-inch heel directly on that limbic circuit that ceaselessly intones "God and country." If anyone could make Christian theocracy smell like apple pie, Sarah Palin could.

Then came Palin's first television interview with Charles Gibson. I was relieved to discover, as many were, that Palin's luster can be much diminished by the absence of a teleprompter. Still, the problem she poses to our political process is now much bigger than she is. Her fans seem inclined to forgive her any indiscretion short of cannibalism. However badly she may stumble during the remaining weeks of this campaign, her supporters will focus their outrage upon the journalist who caused her to break stride, upon the camera operator who happened to capture her fall, upon the television network that broadcast the good lady's misfortune—and, above all, upon the "liberal elites" with their highfalutin assumption that, in the 21st century, only a reasonably well-educated person should be given command of our nuclear arsenal.

The point to be lamented is not that Sarah Palin comes from outside Washington, or that she has glimpsed so little of the earth's surface (she didn't have a passport until last year), or that she's never met a foreign head of state. The point is that she comes to us, seeking the second most important job in the world, without any intellectual training relevant to the challenges and responsibilities that await her. There is nothing to suggest that she even sees a role for careful analysis or a deep understanding of world events when it comes to deciding the fate of a nation. In her interview with Gibson, Palin managed to turn a joke about seeing Russia from her window into a straight-faced claim that Alaska's geographical proximity to Russia gave her some essential foreign-policy experience. Palin may be a perfectly wonderful person, a loving mother and a great American success story—but she is a beauty queen/sports reporter who stumbled into small-town politics, and who is now on the verge of stumbling into, or upon, world history.

The problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin's lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. "They think they're better than you!" is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. "Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!" Yes, all too ordinary.

We have all now witnessed apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter's microphone, saying things like, "I'm voting for Sarah because she's a mom. She knows what it's like to be a mom." Such sentiments suggest an uncanny (and, one fears, especially American) detachment from the real problems of today. The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere), global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security … the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them.

Palin's most conspicuous gaffe in her interview with Gibson has been widely discussed. The truth is, I didn't much care that she did not know the meaning of the phrase "Bush doctrine." And I am quite sure that her supporters didn't care, either. Most people view such an ambush as a journalistic gimmick. What I do care about are all the other things Palin is guaranteed not to know—or will be glossing only under the frenzied tutelage of John McCain's advisers. What doesn't she know about financial markets, Islam, the history of the Middle East, the cold war, modern weapons systems, medical research, environmental science or emerging technology? Her relative ignorance is guaranteed on these fronts and most others, not because she was put on the spot, or got nervous, or just happened to miss the newspaper on any given morning. Sarah Palin's ignorance is guaranteed because of how she has spent the past 44 years on earth.

I care even more about the many things Palin thinks she knows but doesn't: like her conviction that the Biblical God consciously directs world events. Needless to say, she shares this belief with mil-lions of Americans—but we shouldn't be eager to give these people our nuclear codes, either. There is no question that if President McCain chokes on a spare rib and Palin becomes the first woman president, she and her supporters will believe that God, in all his majesty and wisdom, has brought it to pass. Why would God give Sarah Palin a job she isn't ready for? He wouldn't. Everything happens for a reason. Palin seems perfectly willing to stake the welfare of our country—even the welfare of our species—as collateral in her own personal journey of faith. Of course, McCain has made the same unconscionable wager on his personal journey to the White House.

In speaking before her church about her son going to war in Iraq, Palin urged the congregation to pray "that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God; that's what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God's plan." When asked about these remarks in her interview with Gibson, Palin successfully dodged the issue of her religious beliefs by claiming that she had been merely echoing the words of Abraham Lincoln. The New York Times later dubbed her response "absurd." It was worse than absurd; it was a lie calculated to conceal the true character of her religious infatuations. Every detail that has emerged about Palin's life in Alaska suggests that she is as devout and literal-minded in her Christian dogmatism as any man or woman in the land. Given her long affiliation with the Assemblies of God church, Palin very likely believes that Biblical prophecy is an infallible guide to future events and that we are living in the "end times." Which is to say she very likely thinks that human history will soon unravel in a foreordained cataclysm of war and bad weather. Undoubtedly Palin believes that this will be a good thing—as all true Christians will be lifted bodily into the sky to make merry with Jesus, while all nonbelievers, Jews, Methodists and other rabble will be punished for eternity in a lake of fire. Like many Pentecostals, Palin may even imagine that she and her fellow parishioners enjoy the power of prophecy themselves. Otherwise, what could she have meant when declaring to her congregation that "God's going to tell you what is going on, and what is going to go on, and you guys are going to have that within you"?

You can learn something about a person by the company she keeps. In the churches where Palin has worshiped for decades, parishioners enjoy "baptism in the Holy Spirit," "miraculous healings" and "the gift of tongues." Invariably, they offer astonishingly irrational accounts of this behavior and of its significance for the entire cosmos. Palin's spiritual colleagues describe themselves as part of "the final generation," engaged in "spiritual warfare" to purge the earth of "demonic strongholds." Palin has spent her entire adult life immersed in this apocalyptic hysteria. Ask yourself: Is it a good idea to place the most powerful military on earth at her disposal? Do we actually want our leaders thinking about the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy when it comes time to say to the Iranians, or to the North Koreans, or to the Pakistanis, or to the Russians or to the Chinese: "All options remain on the table"?

It is easy to see what many people, women especially, admire about Sarah Palin. Here is a mother of five who can see the bright side of having a child with Down syndrome and still find the time and energy to govern the state of Alaska. But we cannot ignore the fact that Palin's impressive family further testifies to her dogmatic religious beliefs. Many writers have noted the many shades of conservative hypocrisy on view here: when Jamie Lynn Spears gets pregnant, it is considered a symptom of liberal decadence and the breakdown of family values; in the case of one of Palin's daughters, however, teen pregnancy gets reinterpreted as a sign of immaculate, small-town fecundity. And just imagine if, instead of the Palins, the Obama family had a pregnant, underage daughter on display at their convention, flanked by her black boyfriend who "intends" to marry her. Who among conservatives would have resisted the temptation to speak of "the dysfunction in the black community"?

Teen pregnancy is a misfortune, plain and simple. At best, it represents bad luck (both for the mother and for the child); at worst, as in the Palins' case, it is a symptom of religious dogmatism. Governor Palin opposes sex education in schools on religious grounds. She has also fought vigorously for a "parental consent law" in the state of Alaska, seeking full parental dominion over the reproductive decisions of minors. We know, therefore, that Palin believes that she should be the one to decide whether her daughter carries her baby to term. Based on her stated position, we know that she would deny her daughter an abortion even if she had been raped. One can be forgiven for doubting whether Bristol Palin had all the advantages of 21st-century family planning—or, indeed, of the 21st century.

We have endured eight years of an administration that seemed touched by religious ideology. Bush's claim to Bob Woodward that he consulted a "higher Father" before going to war in Iraq got many of us sitting upright, before our attention wandered again to less ethereal signs of his incompetence. For all my concern about Bush's religious beliefs, and about his merely average grasp of terrestrial reality, I have never once thought that he was an over-the-brink, Rapture-ready extremist. Palin seems as though she might be the real McCoy. With the McCain team leading her around like a pet pony between now and Election Day, she can be expected to conceal her religious extremism until it is too late to do anything about it. Her supporters know that while she cannot afford to "talk the talk" between now and Nov. 4, if elected, she can be trusted to "walk the walk" until the Day of Judgment.

What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she represents—and her supporters celebrate—the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance. Watching her deny to Gibson that she had ever harbored the slightest doubt about her readiness to take command of the world's only superpower, one got the feeling that Palin would gladly assume any responsibility on earth:

"Governor Palin, are you ready at this moment to perform surgery on this child's brain?"

"Of course, Charlie. I have several boys of my own, and I'm an avid hunter."

"But governor, this is neurosurgery, and you have no training as a surgeon of any kind."

"That's just the point, Charlie. The American people want change in how we make medical decisions in this country. And when faced with a challenge, you cannot blink."

The prospects of a Palin administration are far more frightening, in fact, than those of a Palin Institute for Pediatric Neurosurgery. Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated.

I believe that with the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, the silliness of our politics has finally put our nation at risk. The world is growing more complex—and dangerous—with each passing hour, and our position within it growing more precarious. Should she become president, Palin seems capable of enacting policies so detached from the common interests of humanity, and from empirical reality, as to unite the entire world against us. When asked why she is qualified to shoulder more responsibility than any person has held in human history, Palin cites her refusal to hesitate. "You can't blink," she told Gibson repeatedly, as though this were a primordial truth of wise governance. Let us hope that a President Palin would blink, again and again, while more thoughtful people decide the fate of civilization.

Harris is a founder of The Reason Project and author of The New York Times best sellers “The End of Faith” and “Letter to a Christian Nation.” His Web site is samharris.org.

Time Capsule

2008-09-15T18:18:00.000-07:00

I am sure you've seen this video by now. Is this not totally eerie? You have to think that Gore, Kerry, and Dukakis Are feeling a bit of vindication at this point. After years of analysing just what went wrong to make them lose the race, Obama is in exactly the same position 2 months from the finish line. "How do the republicans get away with their lies? Their false ads? their failure to do anything they say they will?" Democrats ask. "Why doesn't obama fight back?!" they ask with rage.

But Democrats just don't get it. There's nothing they can do, because the people deciding these elections are not concerned about analysing issues in the first place. The people breaking the tie are those who are motivated by irrational faith based factors. There is very little that can be done. Progressives are way outnumbered.

I repeat, there is nothing to be done. There is nothing the Democrats can do to get ahead. If they attack they look weak, if they do nothing they look weak. If they lie outrageously like the Republicans do they are called on it doubly because the Republicans are the tongue in cheek "morals and values" party, which provides infinite cover for the immorality of their dirty political campaigns. They use dirty politics to support typical religious positions which vindicate them fully in the eyes of their base. Democrats have no such cover. Democrats always lose elections unless the economy is really bad. the average middle class income grows under democratic presidents, yet Republicans have figured out how to use religion, guns, tribal nationalistic pride, gays and abortion to unite the poor and working class to vote for the well being of the wealthy, at the expense of themselves.

Nothing to be done. Even if Obama wins, it does nothing to solve this problem.

Little baby Jesus and the seven dwarves

2008-09-15T16:42:00.000-07:00

Yet another election boils down to religion. "Family Values" is mere code for "Christian fundamentalist". It could very well be that these people spell the ruin of America. The stock exchange falls over 500 points today and McCain says the fundamentals of the economy are strong. You would think people would care that Alan Greenspan stated that McCain's tax plan is a bad idea. Nevermind that, the social conservatives say, we have a nation to save from the clutches of Satan, and she's a mommy just like me, so I like her.

Sarah Palin's Churches and The Third Wave from Bruce Wilson on Vimeo.

Values, Morals, Ethics and Politics

2008-09-13T17:11:00.000-07:00

In the graph below, your scores on each foundation are shown in green. The scores of all liberals who have taken it on our site are shown in blue, and the scores of all conservatives are shown in red.

This was my result on the "Moral Foundations Questionnaire" At Yourmorals.org

As can be seen, a little 2 minute questionnaire on what you believe about authority, purity, fairness and harm is all it takes to determine whether or not you believe global warming is manmade, and whether you believe the earth is 10,000 years old.

The Short Bus Express

2008-09-13T07:11:00.001-07:00

Never underestimate the power of the social conservatives to make obvious elections close. There are so many one issue values voters in this country who feel intimidated, alienated and frankly threatened by intellectual people that no matter how the deck is stacked, someone like Dan Quayle or Sarah Palin can reach the highest step of the throne with fewer auditions than a semi-finalist on American Idol.

Despite this, there are multiple reasons for great optimism for Obama supporters this morning, despite McCain's edge in the national polls.

1.) Obama impressed Bill Oreilly in his "interview". If you can hold your own in a debate where the "interviewer" is not only a contestant but also the moderator and won't let you get a word in edgewise, you have been victorious. I love listening to Bill Oreilly, and despite his core audience being somewhere around 80% McCain supporters, they had no choice but to be impressed with Obama's performance. When they call in with claims that Obama sounds weak, Bill defends Obama. Bill was openly impressed by the Senator. Many of the callers admit they have newfound respect for Obama, and some independents have switched votes after this interview. Taking interviews in the enemy camp is risky, but what it does is instantly dispel all the bullshit the core audience hears day in and day out on right wing radio. They watch and say "Wow, he really isn't the devil incarnate after-all now that I listen to him".

2.) Sarah Palin's interview sucked ass- Judging from internet message board food fights I attend, which seem to be a 50-50 McCain/Obama split, the consensus on the interview looks about 70% negative on her performance. I thought it was a disaster myself. Palin revealed herself, and it will only get worse during the debates. She could not have chosen a worse person to debate than Biden. The territory is unfamiliar to her. Though she is clearly adept at avoiding questions, she was totally over-rehearsed and terrified of actually going into detail.

3.) Obama is now running against Palin- and Palin is revealing herself to be a relative know nothing about world affairs. When the vp nomination is attracting huge crowds that the presidential nominee cannot, something will eventually give. I had no idea until I saw the Gibson interview how she would turn out. But she has proved herself to be just as staggeringly inappropriate for this office at this point in history as I suspected. What with being involved in two wars, tension with Pakistan to drop out of the war on terror (due to our over the border raids), and escalating reminiscences of the cold war stand off with Russia, the desperate irresponsibility of McCain to bring along an inexperienced woman who will attract one issue abortion voters, rapture ready anti-intellectuals, and sexist women who want a vagina in power never mind her politics, is transparent even to his supporters.

4.) McCain is lying- and the press is doing its job to reveal it. It amazes me every election year that the candidate the "biblical values" voters select is by far the most value-less perpetrator of slimy campaign tactics in the race. McCain's outright lies are being called for what they are. It might not phase those who think believing in Jesus is more important than actually having morals, but the independent voters who won't make up their mind until the end are affected. A question was asked on a public forum, can you give me an example where Obama has lied? Nothing. I guess try as they might, they couldn't come up with one. Sure he isn't perfectly clear about everything, but he has never outright lied. And not repeatedly like McCain has.

5.) There is a growing sentiment in the press that Sarah Palin is totally inappropriate for the job. I have seen several major articles this morning addressing this theme. Despite the right wing media's attempts to vouch for her in every way possible and paint her as a poor victim of media assault, the wool can't be pulled that tight for that long. Her next interview is with Sean Hannity- a man who insists that the economy is going strong, and anyone who disagrees is an effete liberal elite that hates America. Hannity- a man who sits around and concocts known lies all day long, stretching the credulity of human imagination. A man whose death I would greet with the same glee I experienced when Falwell died. I can guarantee that Palin has already been given a script of his questions to study. This will be mostly a Jesus values interview, and Sean may help her answer the questions.

6.) Obama is impressive as hell on his toes- He will carry the day in the debates. There won't be any greater challenge than the one he had on Oreilly, and he has a good chance of being like that long distance runner who breaks free and wins easily in the last lap. On the other hand, Palin is a ticking time bomb. I cannot picture her outdoing anyone. The best she can do is tread water. She has clearly been coached to focus on the same small town issues of Jesus and family that the social conservatives want to hear, but everyone else wants to hear more. She won't be able to hide out in this territory forever, and look out when she is forced to swim with the sharks. If Palin is to be the heart of the McCain campaign, it is extremely vulnerable.

WILD CARD- As I began, never underestimate the power of the social conservatives. They put Bush in the white house twice, they know how to rally, they know how to win elections. they turn the other cheek and bury their heads in the sand when their own candidates lie. They will vote with their heart, not with their head. These people truly believe that god will bless America if the president is right with the LORD. All other issues are meaningless in comparison. These sorts of people feel that competence is a form of disrespect to the common man, that knowing what you are talking about means that you are looking down your nose at others. To these people, it is always heads republicans win and tales Democrats lose. If you are quick on your toes, it means you are arrogant. If you trip and stumble it means you are weak. If you love Jesus, then you are always the right one for the job. Thus the Palin phenomenon.

Obama has a better chance to win than Kerry or Gore. And if the Democrats don't win this election, they may never be able to win until Christianity goes away, or until the states shaped like squares secede from the Union.

Sarah Palin Sex Tape

2008-09-12T17:30:00.000-07:00

Small Town Values

2008-09-07T20:09:00.000-07:00

I guess this all just coincides with the Krugman article in a way. My take on small town values- believing that the bible is the word of God, feeling threatened by modernity, and threatened by science.

The Briefest Poems

2008-09-07T16:40:00.000-07:00

I generally don't read translations of poetry.

No matter what language or country the poets come from, the poet's original voice, these days, is always lost to the flavorless soup of the current free verse aesthetic. While most readers, it seems, read poetry for its content and are satisfied with that, the beauty of the language matters to me. Frost's tone and sound must be impossible to translate into another language. Capturing Shakespeare's genius for manipulating Elizabethan English must be devilishly difficult in most languages and impossible in most. How does one translate Shakespeare's coinages?

Haiku surely present their own challenges. The rich cultural associations with which Japanese Haiku are laden must be impossible to translate. The forms very brevity constrains the translator's ability to alter, for example, word order and though progression for the sake of the adopted language. And yet the Haiku's self-same brevity is, to me, what makes it the most translatable. Whereas the translator of Ovid can't dote over the meaning of each and every line, (without quadrupling the size of the book & commensurately diminishing its readability) the translator of Haiku, because of the form's brevity, has much greater latitude for dotage. The Japanese themselves developed a rich tradition of Haiku (and poetic) commentary which deepen the original poems -- sometimes amounting to pages and pages of insight and conversation & all for the sake of a single line of poetry (Haiku, in Japanese, are written as a single line). Read "Basho and his Interpreters", by Makoto Ueda for a taste of this tradition.

That said, there are bad, good and transcendent translations. Reichhold's translations are some of the best I have ever read. I can't read Japanese but here's why I think so. The most famous Haiku by Basho is about the old pond and the frog. As many translations as I have read, I have never understood why this poem was so famous. As it turns out, very few translators understood the poem! To give an idea of just how few, visit the following website, a collection of thirty translations of the same Haiku. By my count, only four of the translators actually understood the poem. Most interestingly, Robert Aitken, whose commentary is featured at the end of this site, also gets it wrong!

Here is the poem is translated by Reichhold.

old pond
a frog jumps into
the sound of water.

Get it?

It's not that the frog is jumping into the pond.

The frog is jumping into "the sound of water". And it is with this understanding that the profundity of this poem finally makes sense. The Zen oneness that is so frequently mentioned (but apparently seldom understood even by those who describe it) becomes comprehensible & profound. The real genius of this Haiku can finally be appreciated.

Reichhold calls this technique "sense switching". She writes: "Here, the frog not only jumps into the water, but also into the sound of water. The mind-puzzle that this haiku creates is how to seperate the frog from the water, the sound of water from the water, the frog from the sound it will make entering water, and the sound from the old pond. It cannot be done because all these factors are one..."

This explanation is found in the breif but informative and useful appendix 1 - a list of Haiku techniques practiced by the various Japanese Hakuists.

This is a beautiful translation of all of Basho's known Haiku. For each Haiku, the original Japanese is provided along with a romanized reading and brief notes explaining what is untranslatable but relevent to an understanding of the poem. If you like Basho's Haiku, get this book. Hopefully, the translator will move on to Buson and, my favorite, Issa.

Another Brilliant Checkmate by Edward Current

2008-09-06T17:31:00.000-07:00

The Resentment Strategy

2008-09-06T10:19:00.000-07:00

This article by Paul Krugman really illustrated the feeling I had after watching the Republican

Convention. It was a cognitive dissonance I just couldn't put my finger on verbally until I saw this article. I am sure you noticed it too as you looked upon an audience that resembled a cross between a rodeo, a prayer convention, a country music concert, and a retirement home. You were looking at a room full of millionaires who were bound and determined to pretend they were common tobacco spittin' shitkickers who are tired of being victimized by elitist liberals.

This little optical illusion is getting really hard to buy into these days. Especially in a convention where economics- the single most important issue to the majority of Americans, was scarcely mentioned.

Paul Krugman writes:

"Can the super-rich former governor of Massachusetts — the son of a Fortune 500 C.E.O. who made a vast fortune in the leveraged-buyout business — really keep a straight face while denouncing “Eastern elites”?

Can the former mayor of New York City, a man who, as USA Today put it, “marched in gay pride parades, dressed up in drag and lived temporarily with a gay couple and their Shih Tzu” — that was between his second and third marriages — really get away with saying that Barack Obama doesn’t think small towns are sufficiently “cosmopolitan”?

Can the vice-presidential candidate of a party that has controlled the White House, Congress or both for 26 of the past 28 years, a party that, Borg-like, assimilated much of the D.C. lobbying industry into itself — until Congress changed hands, high-paying lobbying jobs were reserved for loyal Republicans — really portray herself as running against the “Washington elite”?...............................

Yes, they can.

On Tuesday, He Who Must Not Be Named — Mitt Romney mentioned him just once, Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin not at all — gave a video address to the Republican National Convention. John McCain, promised President Bush, would stand up to the “angry left.” That’s no doubt true. But don’t be fooled either by Mr. McCain’s long-ago reputation as a maverick or by Ms. Palin’s appealing persona: the Republican Party, now more than ever, is firmly in the hands of the angry right, which has always been much bigger, much more influential and much angrier than its counterpart on the other side.

What’s the source of all that anger?

Some of it, of course, is driven by cultural and religious conflict: fundamentalist Christians are sincerely dismayed by Roe v. Wade and evolution in the curriculum. What struck me as I watched the convention speeches, however, is how much of the anger on the right is based not on the claim that Democrats have done bad things, but on the perception — generally based on no evidence whatsoever — that Democrats look down their noses at regular people.

Thus Mr. Giuliani asserted that Wasilla, Alaska, isn’t “flashy enough” for Mr. Obama, who never said any such thing. And Ms. Palin asserted that Democrats “look down” on small-town mayors — again, without any evidence.

What the G.O.P. is selling, in other words, is the pure politics of resentment; you’re supposed to vote Republican to stick it to an elite that thinks it’s better than you. Or to put it another way, the G.O.P. is still the party of Nixon.

Big Dog

2008-09-05T17:18:00.000-07:00

And Your Next Vice President is....

2008-08-31T13:59:00.000-07:00

Scalpel and the Soul

2008-08-30T09:58:00.000-07:00

Just finished reading Scalpel and the Soul. Curiously, I found his book firmly ensconced in the New Age section of Borders, sitting alongside endless books by psychics, channelers, witches, diviners, etc., etc., etc... While a few might think it belongs there, I'm not so sure.

This is an autobiography. The author is an extremely accomplished neurosurgeon who revitalized his post-surgical career by creating a think tank dedicated to the development of new surgical devices. This was after he could no longer be a practicing surgeon (physical ailments). His being relegated to the New Age shelf is probably more of a marketing ploy that anything else.

Here's why I think it's a good book. Without trying to persuade the reader that he or she should believe what he does, he describes what he has seen and experienced, draws his own conclusions and leaves it at that. He doesn't ask the reader to believe him. Unlike the professional purveyors and debunkers, believers and skeptics, Hamilton's voice is refreshing and sincere, speaking without an a priori ideology or belief system. His beliefs have been formed by experience, not in a labratory, press room or ivory tower, but hands on, every day, and directly. As impressive as writers like Dawkins, Harris, Carrier and Hitchens are, these men have never actually opened up the human brain or sat and listened to very real people and their experiences. He listens. He aptly expresses his awe at the human body, the human mind and the human experience.

On the other side of the coin, he is a professional, trained to tinker in one of the most delicate and complex organs known. None of the New Age writers with whom he shares shelf space are remotely comparable or as qualified.

And what are his experiences? Consciousness, as he has observed it, is far more mysterious than the idle reassurances of new age psychics; and consciousness is far more mysterious than the controlled dissiction of the labratory. He confirms the odd experiences that we all have - the strange synchrocities, the inexplicable coincidences that can't be reproduced, the random but powerful experiences that defy logic, rational inquiry and even death itself. These things happen, says Hamilton, and they are observed by countless medical practitioners daily exposed to life and death.

"I've been sharing some of my own "rounds" with you. Not because they're so special. Just the opposite. Many of the spiritual experiences I've written about are not unique. They're common, everyday events you'd find in every medical center. And although I can't vouch for those of other surgeons, the majority of these experiences get overlooked -- dismissed."

In the final chapter of the book, he recalls the experience of a woman who underwent hypothermic arrest to remove a basilar tip aneurysm after a nearly lethal intracerebral hemorrhage. "I was not the only one asking to see [the patients records]. Other doctors, researchers, and experts on concsciousness were making similar requests as word of the case spread through the local medical community. Few of us, as doctors, suspected we might encounter something altogether new or unique.... We came with the purpose of explaining it away."

What they were investigating was the woman's memory of the surgury during hypothermic arrest. She could remember conversations as well as the the appearance and jewelry of the attending staff, along with OR procedures.

"The patient was reproducing practically word for word what had been said. Right down to the jewelry store and the waiter stumbling. No, she clearly recalled what had been said. There was no doubt about that....

From everything we currently know about how the brain works, it would be utterly impossible, from a biochemical, metabolic, and physiologic point of view, for this woman's brain to create a memory. To do so would require neurons to be activated and then be capable of encoding incoming electrical signals. This electrical activity would cause them to convert the voltage signals across the cell's surface membrane into specific changes in the transcription of messenger RNA - or mRNA - in each neuron. These changes in mRNA produce precise molecular changes, altering amino acid and peptide production within thousands of cells to make a lasting memory the brain can recall. In order to create a "Kodak moment of recollection," the brain must be very much alive and bristling with electrical activation, and intracellular metabolism must be "revved up" to hte maximum of each cell's capacity...

Yet we also had here unequivocal, scientific evidence that not only was her brain not working, it specifically demonstrated the absence of all cortical electrical activity when these conversations actually took place. So where could these brand-new memories have been created? Where had these memories gone? And where would such a place exist?"

The anesthesiologist's response? "No. No way! No, it's impossible."

The anesthesiologist's response seems to be the same of many individuals unwittingly constrained by their own belief systems.

And yet it happened.

The woman's memory's were investigated immediately after the surgery, before there was time to "contaminate" her recall.

By the way, this patient wasn't Pam Reynolds. This patient was killed a year later in a traffic accident. When the pathologist removed the brain, she dictated:

"A titanium clip is found in good position, securely around the neck of an old basilar aneurysm."

In the forward to the book, Andrew Weil, M.D., writes:

"Good science begins with uncontrolled observation. If observations do not fit the standard model of reality - especially if they do not fit - scientists should give them attention. They are the raw material from which we form hypotheses to be tested. "Anecdote," by the way, derives from the Greek and means "unpublished." In publishing these "stories from the spiritual side of surgery," Allan Hamilton gives us quite a lot to ponder.

McClone Proves He is a Sham With Palin

2008-08-29T21:46:00.000-07:00

For months I've been impressed by the fact that we will get a president who is serious about global warming no matter who wins the food fight. Once again, I was wrong. Once again my total apathy for politics increases. Once again I prove to myself that feelings of hope and encouragement about the state of affairs in the world aren't really worth having at all.

Sarah Palin is a global warming denialist who desires creationism to be taught in schools.

In response to the question, "What is your take on global warming and how is it affecting our country? " from the far right Newsmax Palin replied,

"A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made. "

I can see no substantial value in selecting Palin other than pure politics- a decent looking over 40 piece of ass, wants to overturn Roe v Wade, pretends to believe in Jesus, denies the greenhouse effect, denies evolution, must realize that her role is to whore for Hillary voters so shallow that the only reason they wanted Hillary to win was because of her gender and who would literally change their entire political ideology just to elect a woman, James Dobson got a woody about her, Rush Limbaugh likes her, she looks like a "Cunt" many republican men would love to have a beer with, and she recently stated that she wasn't terribly interested in becoming the VP because she is just an "average soccer mom", yet is now poised to be a clogged artery away from being the goddamned president.

Eff it. I give up.

My first reaction this morning when I heard was to laugh out loud. The more I learned the more amazed I became, thinking that this was the worst VP choice ever made since Dan Quayle. Then I realized the brilliance of the republican party- they never underestimate the stupidity of the American people like the Dems do. Not only that, they have made stupidity a badge of honor- intellect a sign of weakness, and denial of reality a moniker for extraordinary faith.

I tuned into CSPAN and heard the very first 2 callers confirm my suspicions-

"Next we'll go to Pobunk dipshit cornhole city, you're next on CSPAN, what's your comment?"

-"When I learned that she was just an average soccer mom I knew that this was just what America needs for a Vice President".

Here we go again.

You've been rickrolled beyotch!

2008-08-29T19:23:00.000-07:00

In case you don't know, the "rickroll" is a technique where someone posts a link on a message board you think will go to something pertinent but instead goes to this old 80's song by Rick Astley that is too funny for words- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

It has 8,850,472 hits as I write. Chances are, if you have spent much time on message boards you've been rickrolled and thought to yourself WTF is this?

Racists pity those with epicanthal folds

2008-08-13T09:03:00.000-07:00

First of all, what a stupid ad by the Spanish basketball team. But far from racist. A racist would instantly recognize the powder keg this ad would be and would never think to do it. A non-racist might not.

A racist thinks there's something goofy about the epicanthal fold of the Asian eye and would never openly make fun of it. A non-racist does not, and may consider doing an ad like this.

A racist may get deeply offended by an ad like this, perhaps because somewhere inside they pity Asian people for having epicanthal folds. The non-racist does not see the epicanthal fold as having any particular significance.

Once again, the media absolutely *insists* that race becomes an issue. And the real racially driven people- those journalists who tend to find racism like a Catholic finds images of Mary, always seem to pat themselves on the back for being so astute.

Hmmmmm.......

2008-08-07T21:02:00.000-07:00

Running the Numbers- Amazing art

2008-07-31T20:31:00.000-07:00

Trust me, check this site out. You won't regret taking the time to examine all these works of art.

Running the Numbers
An American Self-Portrait

"Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming. ~chris jordan, Seattle, 2007 "

This is the 11,000 chemtrails American Jets make every 8 hours.

W

2008-07-29T17:50:00.000-07:00

Is this for real?

Oliver Stone is coming out with a movie on Bush. Apparently the recent bar fight involving Bush portrayer Josh Brolin that made the news, may have been over politics.

Obama better than Bill Clinton at Politicking?

2008-07-26T10:40:00.000-07:00

I have to admit, Obama's transparent wooing of the public through a varity of schemes has made my skin crawl lately. It is impossible to win an election competition without employing these schemes, but each election year you will hear each side point fingers and complain about the cheesy strategies of their opponent, as if they thought a person could just stand around and twiddle his thumbs for 5 months and hope to win an election while his opponent is out gluing his lips to every available asscheek of every ethnic group, religion or societal creed in existence.

Obama is doing a *brilliant* job of schmoozing. He has made the key winning display of political understanding- never *ever* underestimate the abject shallowness of the American voter. As they say, (KISSfknobc) "Keep It Simple Stupid... Fucking Know Nothing Obese Bipedal Consumers".

His latest display of pure brilliance was putting a yamikah on his head and writing a prayer for the wailing wall, then setting it up intentionally so someone would pull it out and read it to the public to show how religious he is and how much he loves Jesus-uh in an attempt to get some of the James Dobson lunatics to stay away from the polls in November. Niceeeee. Obama loves his Jayz-us-uh, yippee!

I predicted Obama would be our next president long ago even though I had no idea what he believed at the time. I just knew that everyone would find a reason to like him based on his rock star qualities. I have watched elections in the past and I know it boils down to a look, a pose, a vocal inflection, a posture. He has already passed the toughest challenge he'll face by beating Hillary.

Now Obama will get his hands dirty in politics. Not that he hasn't before, he is no rookie. He has tainted himself by perfecting the study of the skin deep, better known as "the political campaign". And he will win.

Dawkins and Weinberg

2008-07-20T11:50:00.000-07:00

A very interesting conversation about the origin of the universe, and the mysteries of life. I particularly appreciated this statement by Weinberg:

"I think essentially the position of human beings is a tragic one. And the more we understand, the more clearly tragic it is....how do we live with this tragedy... well, Shakespeare showed us that one way of living with tragedy is to mix it in with comedy."
-Stephen Weinberg

I've found it to be true. And it scares me to think that it becomes more tragic with understanding, and how much older and smarter Weinberg is.

For me in recent years, the Ken Burns documentaries have delved a sense of the tragic deep into my understanding of the human experience. The Civil War and his WWII documentaries give us a glimpse of the completely unimaginable horrifying acts that mankind has regularly performed on itself ever since that point in history where the the first shoulder articulation could swing a weighted object quickly. We use concepts of "heroism" to provide some sort of sugar coating to the meaningless.

And now in Iraq you have a situation like that of Vietnam, where nobody can even pinpoint the exact purpose of the sacrifice, so the purpose becomes the exaltation of bravery and patriotism itself. But the troops coming home with PTSD know better than to think that the contrived narratives developed around Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman are more than stories the non-combatants need to justify a war whose purpose nobody can put a finger on with a straight face.

And what of the religionists who continue to deny the stunning realities science has discovered and cemented as fact? It is a case where everyone can plainly see that they have lost the argument but themselves. Why do we still have to fight over an argument we have already won as decisively as can be? The answer surely is tied up with Weinberg's observation- "the more we understand the more clearly tragic it is".

Who wants to understand, when understanding is tragic?

Acculturation, love, animal souls

2008-07-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

This moving (for animal lovers) viral video was brought to my attention by an email from What is enlightenment? magazine. They referenced this video for the purposes of examining the prospect of animal souls. I still think that the people at WIE are oblivious to evolutionary theory. Seems they take animal affection to somehow insinuate a soul. But then here is the crux of the issue. The fact that an animal can clearly be acculturated into the affections of a human family argues for the universality of these emotions from an evolutionary point of view. To the WIE crowd it may argue for some sort of evolving state of realization through reincarnation. I am constantly struck by how much the WIE crowd "doesn't get it". They *are* the ID crowd, only from a non-Christian slant.

The acculturation of the normally wild lion strikes me as being very similar to the acculturation of the wild human born into modern society. Are we all savages that merely mold ourselves to the level of societal advancement we happen to be raised in?

The video linked by WIE was overwhelmingly cheesy. I am linking to a more palatable one.
My dog greets me like this every time I see her (which is far less often than when I raised her).

This is the fascinating fleshed out story of Christian, his life in England and how he was introduced back into the wild by George Adamson (the third man in the video) who was tragically murdered by bandits along with his wife 14 years later.

This is the full grown Christian. He was wild but still in friendly contact with George Adamson. More.

Another Time Capsule

2008-07-17T19:50:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is. If anyone had any particular question about What Barack Obama's plans were, wonder no more.

I thought it was a great. Amazingly clear actually. The way he emphasises the complete worthlessness of the Bush administration's post 9/11 strategy, and what could have potentially been done with the same amount of money if only cool headed people would have occupied the white house instead- is enlightening.

And here it is also, when none of these promises come to fruition.

Held Hostage

2008-07-12T15:01:00.000-07:00

Since nothing has changed before, why would it now?
If people have been talking about the pressing necessity of getting off foreign oil since the Carter administration, why has nothing happened since?

Who is holding us hostage? Did the founding fathers picture a time in this country where we would not be under the tyranny of an oppressive centralized government, but from a handful of financial tycoons who are effectively invisible from the public eye making transactions from computers all day?

Is this the anti-robinhood era, where the motto is to rob from the poor and give to the rich?

Nader on Rush Limbo- Get Off welfare!

2008-07-10T17:07:00.000-07:00

thanks to onegoodmove.org

Cheney Censors Science

2008-07-10T05:10:00.000-07:00

Censor - an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds.

"Might make it tougher to avoid regulating greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere." Can't make Bush & Cheney's motives any clearer than that. The article goes on to say: "The White House, at the urging of Cheney's office, "requested that [Burnett] work with CDC to remove from the testimony any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change... "

"CEQ contacted me to argue that I could best keep options open for the (EPA) administrator (on regulating carbon dioxide) if I would convince CDC to delete particular sections of their testimony," he wrote.

"Burnett also described in greater detail than previously reported the White House's refusal in December to accept a draft EPA finding concluding that carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas, is endangering human health. "

The article concludes: "More than a year ago, the Supreme Court directed the EPA to determine whether carbon dioxide emissions endanger human health and welfare and, if so, begin to regulate it under the Clean Air Act. That process is not likely to continue until the next administration."

The fact that Bush & Cheney could not provide legitimate counter arguments, but had to (and still do) resort to censorship and the covering up of scientific evidence, illustrates the weakness & nonexistence of the denialist's assertions.

Meanwhile, Bush's version of an "ambitious" goal is to reduce gas emissions by 50% by 2050, when there is no agreement and no "agreement on additional specific numerical targets". In other words, there was no agreement and no one committed themselves to do anything. Perhaps that was Bush's ambitious goal? Too bad Bush couldn't have applied the same "ambitious" timetable to his invasion of Iraq.

Hitchens gets waterboarded

2008-07-02T19:42:00.000-07:00

“If waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.”

McCain just another Bush?

2008-07-02T16:12:00.000-07:00

49% of voters polled claim to be worried that McCain is too much like Bush.

More profound Global Warming stupidity

2008-06-29T18:53:00.000-07:00

You really have to see this whole transcript to appreciate just how *fucking* stupid this guy is. And I really mean it- low I.Q. type stupid.

June 27

GLENN: Okay, here's the headline. I don't have it in front of me. Do you happen to have the headline in front of you? It's like, no ice this summer on the North Pole. STU: Yes, something like that.

GLENN: Okay. And it talks about how there's just record ice melts. It's just never, ever been like this ever before. No ice this summer at the North Pole. Okay. Then if you click on through it, you will see a chart. Now, maybe I'm reading this wrong, Stu, and you're our in-house global warming expert. Maybe I'm reading this wrong but doesn't the chart show from 1970 to today the average melting of the ice, right?

STU: Yeah. And, of course, obviously it melts every year at generally the same pace. [Bullshit!]

GLENN: Okay. Then I think it was last year, was the bottom line last year? STU: Yeah, the bottom line, the yellow line would be last year.

GLENN: Okay. Last year it melted at a faster rate but it still paralleled the line but it was slightly below it. STU: Yes.

GLENN: This year it's in between the top line and the bottom line. STU: Yeah. And the top line is the average from 1970 now into 2000.

GLENN: Right. And today for some reason everybody's freaking out that it is melting faster than ever before when their own chart shows that it's not melting faster than ever before. It's melting less than it did last year. And just slightly under the average. It's incredible.

I have no idea what chart Glenn is looking at, but this one here is accurate. The truth is that the arctic ice has been declining by an average of 44,000 square Km per year (twice the size of New Jersey). Glenn can't read a chart any 8th grader should be able to read. . What he calls the "average" line from 1970 to present is a running average or trend line with an obvious almost eerily linear downwards slope. One scientist believes there is about a 50-50 chance for the first ice free north pole in recorded history. Is Glenn Beck this stupid? No. He's lying outright. He knows it. He does it purposely. He knows his audience are a bunch of dimwitted fools. He doesn't care. Then in the next segment he probably discussed his religious faith or something. Addition: Glen Beck's chart. Lol. He thinks that because this year is slightly below the moving average, that's good for his case.

Time capsule

2008-06-28T19:29:00.000-07:00

I am adding this little video as a time capsule to reflect on in the future for entertainment purposes. I have a regular discussion with an off-the-charts- Konservative friend who sounds like a Limbaugh talking point broken record. I have told him many times that the only thing Rush will be remembered as in 50 years is "the guy who lied continuously about global warming". I ask my friend why he doesn't believe that mankind is causing global warming, but he can't give an answer. He doesn't understand the first thing about the issue. He merely assumes that since Rush is so certain that it is a hoax, then there must therefore be a good reason for him to believe so. No need to look at the data. I tell him that 2+2=4 and he says that this is just my opinion. I say, no really it does, I know it does, and he says -well, I just disagree.

If you know anything at all about this issue, you will find this video strikingly dumb. If you aren't absolutely bowled over by the sheer magnitude of stupidity involved with these statements, you can find each of his talking points refuted here by the actual facts- 12 global warming myths.

These 12 myths are repeated again and again and again by talk radio misinformationists and disinformers. They can never be bothered by the facts. They never provide the entire story. Their entire case is half-truths, distortions and outright lies. They simply rest assured that the outright lazy ignorance of their audience will carry the day.

Today I heard Hush Bimbo say something true (no really). He was talking about how James Hansen of Nasa was desiring to bring oil companies to justice who were knowingly misinforming the public. Bimbo took the blame, and said that he was in fact mostly to blame for misleading the public on the issue, not the oil companies. "I hope I get subpoenaed" he said. Scooter Libby crossed my mind.

Tribute to Carlin

2008-06-24T16:42:00.000-07:00

A friend sent me this link that was on a local radio station- said I'd like it. In fact I do. I can't agree more about all of it. Looks like Carlin was pissed off about the same things I am- talk radio, the stupidity of the public, and the absurdity of religion. He made a career by pointing out the obvious.

Carlin clip

holy shit, this one is better

Exxon Cuts Funding to Global Warming Denialists

2008-06-23T20:21:00.001-07:00

I am sensing several turning points in the world today concerning climate change.

NASA global warming bigwig James Hansen is testifying to Congress that chief executives of large fossil fuel companies should be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, for actively spreading doubt about global warming just like tobacco companies did with smoking and cancer.

In news from just last week, "The oil giant ExxonMobil has admitted that its support for lobby groups that question the science of climate change may have hindered action to tackle global warming. In its corporate citizenship report, released last week, ExxonMobil says it intends to cut funds to several groups that "divert attention" from the need to find new sources of clean energy."

"Nine groups have reportedly lost the company's support, including the George C Marshall Institute, the Washington DC-based think tank that asserts there is no scientific consensus on climate change, and that changes in the sun, not greenhouse gases, could be responsible for rising temperatures."

in 2005 ExxonMobil distributed $2.9m to 39 groups that the society said "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence".

Locally, I notice everyone is beginning to realize that they need to alter their lifestyle, look towards the future, and realize that things are not going to be the same again. The local news stated that 2008 could be seen by historians as the year that gas consumption began a permanent decrease.

White House Releases Global Warming Report

2008-06-22T09:56:00.000-07:00

After trying to weasel out of facing the facts, and under a court order, President Bush's top science advisors issued a comprehensive report Thursday that for the first time admits what every sane person already knows: that greenhouse gases from fossil fuel combustion "are very likely the single largest cause" of Earth's warming.

$20 billion in research was used to come up with this 271 page report (summarized here) , and for some odd reason, not a single one of Rush Limbaugh's talking points were discovered to be valid, thus demonstrating the Liberal bias of the Bush administration, which was finally forced to release this report.

Under court order.

Among the conclusions, delivered with perfect timing considering the epic midestern flooding right now, is that there has been (and will be further) overall increase in unusually high precipitation events and an overall increase in annual precipitation.

The 100 year flood now seems to be the 10 year flood.

Here is the ABC news report.

In other news, there was another casualty of the Midwest flooding seen floating down the Mississippi following the latest Newsweek poll which shows the racist, terrorist loving, America Hating- Barack Hussein Obama ahead by 15 points.

"Stoned Slackers" Know the Most

2008-06-22T07:18:00.000-07:00

"You know the research on your show, 87% who watch it are intoxicated"
"Your audience is younger and left leaning....18-25.. the people who are on your intellectual level"- Oreilly to John Stewart

This is really old, but still just as funny as ever. Watchers of the Daily Show and Colbert report are more knowledgable about what is going on than any other news viewers according to research. This must have shocked Bill Oreilly, after he called Stewart and Colbert watchers "stoned slackers".

What makes it more interesting is that the Daily Show and Colbert don't focus on educating their audience about news stories very much like the other shows are supposed to be doing. It is assumed that the audience of the Daily Show already knows what is going on in order to understand all the jokes. Daily show lovers have received their news from elsewhere, and are just plain more informed to begin with.

Fox news channel is second to last, only worsted by morning news. How can this be? My guess is they are not only getting less information about what is actually happening, but inaccurate information. There was another piece of research that showed that Fox news viewers were more likely than any other newsers to have totally false beliefs about the events surrounding 9/11 and Iraq.

Oreilly and Limbaugh score 4th and 6th. Listening to their shows, you get a pretty good exposure to all sorts of different news stories, but you learn less and less about more and more. And if you are listening to Limbaugh, then you probably aren't at a job, and therefore have more time to gather news. Oreilly has the oldest demographic, lots of retired people who don't work and probably have plenty of time to learn the news. To be fair, maybe the stoned slackers don't work either, or are in college. But they are smarter.

Comedy From Comedian Rush Limbaugh

2008-06-20T19:11:00.000-07:00

click to enlarge

May 28th 2008

Rush Limbaugh Show

"The oil price continues to fall today. It's 129, yesterday, 127, 128 in some places today. I've been monitoring it for you. "

Whew, and here I was thinking gas wouldn't be $4.41 across the street today. Thanks for the good news Rush!

Moyers at NCMR

2008-06-14T09:36:00.000-07:00

"We now know that a neoconservative is an arsonist who sets the house on fire and six years later boasts that noone can put it out. You couldn't find a more revealing measure of the state of the dominant media today than the continuing ubiquitous presence on the air and in print of the very pundits and experts, self-selected message multipliers of a disasterous foreign policy, who got it all wrong in the first place. It just goes to show, when the bar is low enough, you can never be too wrong."

Anatomy of a Fox news Smear

2008-06-10T20:49:00.000-07:00

Here's the Oreilly edited version of the Moyers incident completely mutilating the spirit of the exchange and making it look as if Moyers is afraid to go on Billo's show. As is par for the course, Oreilly avoids actually discussing the content of the event and brings on his body language expert who concludes that Porter handled himself well. This is just fucking incredible.

And here is the Olbermann version, which captures the spirit of the occurence the way it actually happened. Fortunately we know for once how things *actually* happened, since Moyers had his own cameramen.

Bill Moyers Schools Fox news Assassin

2008-06-09T20:14:00.000-07:00

This is truly one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. A Fox news hit piece is attempted for the Bill Oreilly show at a Bill Moyers speech for a media reform conference. The fake journalist from the fake news network gets a taste of his own medicine.

Coal

2008-06-07T12:31:00.000-07:00

"The most important thing in the *world*..... is my family's money."

McClellan Schools Oreilly

2008-06-03T17:16:00.000-07:00

This is absolutely nuts. If you watch this you will see that Scott McClellan easily refutes every one of Bill Oreilly's fake outrage laden talking points with simple facts that Oreilly has no comeback for. Oreilly is fully committed to being outraged at McClellan's book, but can't find a valid reason why despite trying his best to manufacture one.

Baghdad Bob gets Pwned by Lockhart

2008-06-01T19:04:00.000-07:00

See Bob talk about everything other than the issues.
See Bob get pwned.

Rush "Baghdad Bob" Limbaugh

2008-06-01T12:40:00.000-07:00

I've gone through and listed some of the BaghdadBobisms belched by comedian Thrush Limblow in his response to the McClellan contraversy. There's just not enough space to cover all of it. You can see the transcript here.
"Well, another day, another Republican turncoat. We have more so-called conservatives and Republicans abandoning the cause, seeking approval from the left. It just seems to be an endless tide."

["The right" is more important than the truth. Everyone has gone insane, but Rush, who singlehandedly holds the truth]

"The oil price continues to fall today." [LMAO]

"[The McClellan book] Sounds like a liberal blogger. It really does. Somebody got hold of him. "

[as if just saying so makes it true]

"The liberals and the Democrats are out trying to destroy this administration"

[and now that limblow calls even the republicans "liberals", he is telling the truth- *everyone* is calling this administration out]

"I've gone and checked out the Democrat blogs today, you know what? They're not particularly worked up about it because this is not new stuff. "We've known this since 2000. We don't care about this. You guys are just figuring this out. We've known this all along,"

[mmmmhhm. And even when Bush's own minister of public propaganda recants, it isn't enough to change your mind. It's only a motivation to develop several possible conspiracy theories to add to your list of ways to combat obvious realities]

"My memory, folks, is that McClellan was a little doughboy standing up there."

[thats not what you said then. But since he is a doughboy, I guess we can ignore what he said and just name call. Seems to be your favorite tactic when reality hits you over the head]

"There's another theory going around about Scott McClellan, and this is by Lee Cary from the American Thinker; "Scott McClellan's book is making big waves in the last election for Texas governor. ..."

[Ahhh, so THAT explains it. He writes a book breaking ties with his party and cohorts of decades condemning himself as a complicit propagandist in order to influence the Texas governor election. Good one Baghdad. Just throw enough shit against the wall and hope something sticks. This is not just a "theory", it is a *conspiracy* theory, and a laughable one at that]

Then Limblow strings several sentences together that are almost entirely true. Not just true, but great observations to boot. Here is Limblow kneeling on his stumped knees as the Black Knight, observing honestly his hacked off appendages, and spinning reality 180 degrees to the one conclusion about the situation which is the most unreasonable one possible:

" What liberals do, they search out people like McClellan so they can trash Republicans and conservatives [true, but they don't have to try very hard]. I mean, look at John Dean. John Dean, now a huge star on what, MSNBC? David Gergen. David Rodham Gergen used to be a fairly conservative Republican, roots back to Reagan. Now look at him. He's up there at the Kennedy School and he's on CNN, and his purpose is to bash Republicans because they, the Republicans, they went too far right, or they went too far south, or they got too extreme or whatever. And all these reasonable wise men decided that they could no longer be part of where the Republican Party was going. Richard Armitage, Colin Powell.....These people, now they're treated like liberal elites because they see the light. "

Now for perspective, back to Limbaughs opening statement as he stands limbless:

"Well, another day, another Republican turncoat. We have more so-called conservatives and Republicans abandoning the cause, seeking approval from the left. It just seems to be an endless tide. "

[When you are forced to define "the left" as virtually everyone in U.S. politics, it's time to drop back and punt or devise a new scheme. Limblow will never do that and this is why he sounds like he's about to have a nervous breakdown. The writing is on the wall. His days are numbered and he sees it. America has outgrown his brand of reactionary pornographic hyperpartisan politics, and nothing is better at showing how "irrelevent" and destructive to the discourse he is than his reaction to McClellan.]

The Baghdad Bob Syndrome

2008-05-31T21:01:00.000-07:00

Does anyone remember this guy??? It's Saddam's press secretary, aka "Baghdad Bob". He was certain that Iraq was defeating the American troops and all was well (after all, it took 3 full days before a tank rolled through the heart of Baghdad, success!). I remember watching McClellan spin himself into an ataxic stupor during his press conferences and finding myself muttering under my breath "there's no way this guy can *possibly* believe what he is saying". I'm reading his book now and even still, despite his claims that he believed what he was saying at that time, I find it very hard to believe.

The Baghdad Bobs of the world are all over the media- Limbaugh, Hannity, Oreilly, Beck, and a few left wing ones most liberals are too embarrassed to listen to... They all have one thing in common. They know that just the act of saying something- no matter how ridiculous, outrageous or obviously warped it is, makes it seem like a potential reality to some people. It plants an idea in the mind. If Baghdad Bob goes 1000 miles into the outfield and he gets you to follow him only halfway into loony land, he's succeeded.

The job of the Baghdad Bob is that of the defense attorney. He is getting paid to defend a client. In this case, the client is a political ideology. Like a defense attorney, he is not so interested in the truth about whether the client is guilty or innocent in this particular instance. He is merely interested in winning the case in whatever way he can, and preserving the reputation of the client. Being wrong repeatedly is only a small price for Baghdad Bob to pay for preserving the reputation of the ideology.

And that, in a nutshell is exactly what is wrong with the one way conversation found in the "new media". It is not designed to inform anyone and it discourages the aperspectival awareness necessary for good critical thinking. In short, it is pure propaganda. It preys on every human weakness and seeks to eliminate every virtue involved in human rationality. It attacks depth and sincerity. It ridicules detail. It punishes brilliance and replaces it with cheap counterfeit soundbites.

Limbaugh, the Black Knight

2008-05-31T16:47:00.000-07:00

I am sitting here listening to Rush Limbaugh go into a tirade over the McClellan book and several other issues. It's hard to imagine what it would be like to be demonstrably wrong so many times in a row on such a wide variety of issues from Iraq to global warming, and yet still have to get on the radio every day and pretend with a straight face that someone should care about what you have to say.

But I admire Limbaugh's creativity. I always look forward to seeing how the maestro weasels out of each development that crushes his beliefs in the eyes of everyone but himself and his uninformed brainwashed dittoheads.

Somehow Limbaugh managed to accuse McClellan of being a "lybrll". I guess anyone who states the obvious must be a "lybrll", especially if the truth denegrates the "Bwoooshhhh" administration. I said that the McClellen story couldn't be spun because he couldn't be blamed for being a "lybrll", but shit, Rush just proved me wrong! Now even McClellan is a "lybrll".

As I listen right now, Limbaugh is trying to sweep all of the republican problems under the rug by blaming them for transforming themselves into"lybrll" republicans. So in Limbaughs world, all the moderates and all the people left of center are "lybrlls", and now even the republicans are "lybrlls"! So because everything is so completely fucked up in U.S. politics, and conservatives can't possibly be responsible for it despite being in power for 8 years, then by definition everyone currently involved in U.S. politics who has any power whatsoever must be a damned "lybrll".

This effectively underscores Arnold Schwarzenegger's statement- "Limbaugh is irrelevent". But only 70% of Americans polled have a negative view of Rush Limbaugh. Who are those other 30%? Might they be the elusive "real" conservatives? I've heard they walk on water and shit roses but one has never actually been photographed in the wild.

A caller calls in and suggests Limbaugh finally abandon the Republican party as the representative of American conservatism. Rush ponders for a moment and says "no, 3rd parties can't win".

So now in Rush's little bubble of self-referential make-believe, the liberals are liberals, the moderates are liberals, and the republicans are liberals. Limbaugh stands on the stumps which were formerly his upper thighs and begs with all the car salesman vocal inflection that he can muster for the evil cowards to stand up and give a fair fight!

Lest you think the black knight only exists in conservative circles, think again.