Bonfire of the vanities part II

Frank Schaeffer has been right in the center of the Christian Right. His father, Dr. Francis Schaeffer, is considered to be the godfather of the modern religious right movement, says an exclusive article at Raw Story. So when he says he's worried about the extent the insanity has reached and that it's all too likely that some Christian fanatic will blow up another building or make an attempt on the President's life, I worry too. All over America, the loonies are restless.

The insanity, you might ask? What about a North Carolina church planning to make a bonfire of all "Satan's" books which include, to the amazement of anyone informed about the history of Bibles, all non-King James versions. Out with that silly Hebrew and Greek stuff or whatever Moses brought down the mountain - the real one was written in Robert Cecil's dining room in Hertfordshire, like God intended.

Of course the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, N.C., says there are "scriptural bases" for the book burning, so you know it's OK with God who always defers to the Reverend Marc Grizzard particularly on matters of inerrancy and infallibility.

Tightening the belt

When A Texas jury set out to decide what to do with convicted murderer Khristian Oliver, the decision was made easier by a supply of Bibles in the jury room with specific passages highlighted. Whoever highlighted them chose words carefully because the jury decided to kill him -- based on their reading of the Bible.

Although the US Supreme Court decided in 1967 (Loving V. Virginia) that the government has no right to tell people they can't marry someone of another "race" the news may not have made it to parts of Louisiana. Keith Bardwell, (who claims he's not a racist) justice of the peace for Tangipahoa Parish's 8th Ward refused to marry Beth Humphrey and her boyfriend, Terence McKay because Terence is "black" and she's not. Actually Terence is no darker than this sun tanned white Floridian, but it's not about that, it's about the "traditional value of not "mixing the races" one finds in the Bible belt and it's about the result of preaching that this is a Christian nation whose law emanates, like the musty smell of unwashed laundry and pious injustice, from the Bible.

CNN’S ETHICS PROBLEM

Short on sleep, I had intended to take off a few days from blogging … until these caught my attention:

After Castellanos controversy, CNN vows to be ‘vigilant’ in the future about disclosing conflicts of interest

Apparently one of CNN’s contributors, Alex Castellanos, has been in the employ of AHIP and the Republican National Committee for some time. According to reports, the GOP paid Castellanos $434,336 in four installments, and AHIP paid Castellanos for placing advertisements critical of Democratic health reform efforts. In other words, the man was a MOLE as well as a SHILL. Paying a so called news “contributor” on the sneak doesn’t speak well of the GOP either.

There is more ...

CNN: World watches odyssey of 'Balloon Boy' in real time
BBC: 'Balloon boy' found alive at home

I was flipping channels at about 6:00 pm and caught both versions of this story. Wolf Blitzer of CNN was hyping the story as if the balloon was still flying and the drama still ongoing. Meanwhile, the BBC reported that the balloon had landed, that the boy had been found hiding in the attic of his parents’ house. I flipped the channel to Deutsche Welle: Same report as the BBC.

Is this possible? The BBC and Deutsche Welle actually reporting the event in real time and ahead of CNN by an hour? Or is something else happening here? I have reason to believe CNN was deliberately hyping this story for a primetime audience long after the story had concluded. If true, the BBC and Deutsche Welle reported the story while CNN prolonged and embellished it, i.e. more theater than news.

CNN calls itself the “most trusted name" in journalism. Perhaps they should change their slogan from “trusted” to “busted.” Anyone disagree?

Of course, there is still CNN's Lou Dobbs problem.

Octopus is tired and really wants to take a break for a few days.

Hate Crime

Race, religion and gender are "Immutable characteristics" said a spokesman for John Böhner. The House Minority Leader feels that existing Federal protections ore OK for people born with such handicaps as being female or dark skinned, but not for people who against nature and for entertainment purposes choose to be gay or to be in a wheelchair.

"He does not support adding sexual orientation to the list of protected classes,"

said Böhner spokesman Kevin Smith in an email to CBS News. It's important to note that he includes religion as something worthy of special protection. Of course gender is not currently given special protection, and religion is hardly "immutable" or innate or the product of genetics, but we're quoting Republican leaders here, who can't be expected to be rational or consistent, not normal human beings.

Rep. Tom Price, who heads the GOP conservative circus caucus cites the slippery slope fallacy to predict that such legislation would lead to "thought crimes" while felonies of intent which account for a good part of our prison population would not. Sounds dishonest to me and it's apparent that the real opposition comes from the fear that some preacher might be called to task for preaching hatred against infidels or "sinners" or witches even though no violence can be traced directly to him. Don't tell me it doesn't happen, I've endured many a sermon that prompted me to leave in disgust and I don't mean Pastor Muthee. The danger of exposing the inherent anti-Semitism in certain foundational documents must seem very real to people like Price.

"We believe all hate crimes legislation is unconstitutional and places one class of people above others,"

said a spokesman for Buck. Perhaps this is all about principle, despite all appearances, yet it seems like yesterday to me when segregation was the backbone of American Conservatism and the exclusion of ethnic groups from neighborhoods and hotels was de regueur and fiercely defended by people like Barry Goldwater. Of course I think it's not about egalitarian sentiment at all. I think it's that if you took the license to preach hate away from the far right religious faction that owns the GOP, they'd be out of business.

ENERGY, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND THE INDIGNANT DESERT BIRDS OF WILLFUL SELF-DESTRUCTION

The enemy of realism is hubris.

- Reinhold Niebuhr -

It takes a special humility to understand our place in the natural world. Yet our mythology places us on a pedestal and speaks of human beings as having dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, over cattle and every creature that creeps upon the earth, even over earth itself.

In our American history texts, we read of Manifest Destiny and the relentless expansion from sea to shining sea in search of territory, resources, and prosperity ... where our sense of freedom is predicated on abundance.

Notions of freedom and abundance turned the gears of the Industrial Revolution, which relied upon the labor of immigrants who arrived in waves to partake of the American Dream.  For them, dreams of freedom and abundance outweighed all deprivations including discrimination by race, religion, ethnicity, and class.

World War II turned America into an economic superpower. After the war, America possessed almost two-thirds of world's gold reserves, more than half of the world’s manufacturing capacity, and exported two-thirds of the world’s goods. The relationship between freedom and abundance was no longer the privilege of the few but had become the birthright of the many.

It is ironic to note how rapidly fortunes change ... and how the sudden scarcity of a once abundant resource leads to economic decline.  By 1970, as the demand for oil outpaced domestic production, America turned into a net importer and, within a generation, the largest creditor nation in the world turned into the largest debtor nation.  Today, our nation has 5% of the world's population yet consumes 25% of the world's oil and emits 40% of the world's pollutants.  With proven petroleum reserves of 21,317 million barrels, the Unites States has a 3 to 5 year supply beyond which our nation will be totally dependant on imports (source).

Of course, there are critics, pundits, and politicians who rally around the flag with chants of 'drill, baby, drill!'  Drill off the coasts, they say.  Drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. More opinionated than informed, what they do not know is that ANWR contains less than a year's supply of oil at current consumption rates … and production is a decade away.  There are others who want to strip mine the Bekken oil sands of North Dakota and the oil shale slopes of our Rocky Mountain States. At least 30 or more years of oil, they claim, but what they do not know is that less than 3% is recoverable … resulting in colossal environmental damage for negligible gain.

Grow our way out of the energy crisis, still others say. Distill ethanol from corn and switchgrass; but what these advocates have not considered is the enormous spike in food prices as agricultural land is diverted from food to energy production. Furthermore, a 70% increase in food production will be needed just to keep pace with projected worldwide population growth. Ethanol offers no solution beyond a good stiff drink.

Even our friends at Google have joined the ranks of Internet punditry with this expression:


What it means is 'renewable energy for less than the cost of coal.'  It is a statement about energy economics but little else. It tells us that any hypothetical alternative energy source must compete with coal, the cheapest commodity available, to be economically viable.  It says nothing about why non-combustible sources (such as nuclear, solar, wind, and geo-thermal) must be considered within the context of global climate change.


We cannot separate the energy crisis from the climate change crisis. In economic and environmental terms, these are two sides of the same coin. From the Industrial Revolution to the present, energy consumption has lead to a substantial rise in atmospheric greenhouse gases. Levels of carbon dioxide, which account for 62% of all greenhouses gases, have nearly doubled since 1750. Methane, which accounts for 20% all greenhouse gases, has risen 155% during the same period. Most disturbing of all, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts a 52% rise in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 … a mere 20 years away (source).

We approach global climate change as just another problem to be solved with good old American ingenuity. We cite the Manhattan project, the national highway system, and the space race as shining examples of past glory. However, global climate change is more than merely a technical or structural problem. It has deep historical and cultural roots and a system of unspoken values instilled from the beginning of civilization and passed from generation to generation.


“America is addicted to oil,” declared former President George Bush in his State of the Union address on January 31, 2006. Was the President signaling a dramatic shift in American energy policy, or were these merely pious words meant for the history books?  Scarcely a day after the speech, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman issued this disclaimer:  Don’t take the President literally.  In other words, there will be no rehab for America's addiction under this president.

The Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 was the first of several warning shots.  Almost 40 years later, we are still dithering as if our energy policy paralysis is the sum total of our mythology, our culture, our national heritage, and a cowboy lifestyle that refuses to face reality.  More than these, our energy debate mirrors our healthcare debate: There are entrenched interests hell-bent on protecting their hordes of filthy lucre.

ExxonMobil gave $1.6 million to the American Enterprise Institute in an attempt to undercut the findings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a report widely regarded as the most comprehensive review of climate change science. The Bush administration sought to further undermine public awareness by censoring the key findings of climate scientists. Thus, our government, under pressure from the oil lobby, suppressed meaningful data to skew public debate.

Manipulating public opinion is easy when you are the CEO of Big Oil with money and lobbyists and politicians in your pocket. In the weeks and months ahead, Big Oil will be staging Astroturf events to protest new climate change legislation … groups such as Energy Citizens organized by the American Petroleum Institute whose members include Anadarko Petroleum, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips, among others (source).

Let me digress for a moment to tell another Genesis story. It begins 400 million years ago, between the Devonian and Carboniferous Periods, when the earth was still hot and humid ... long before the polar ice regions formed.  As newly evolved forests drew carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and fell where they stood, their carbon buried under layers of sedimentary rock, the climate cooled and glaciers formed.

Hundreds of millions of years later, a peculiar Pleistocene creature walked the earth and learned in short order how to dig up and burn those fossil fuels to cook food, warm homes, build cities, drive Hummers, make microchips and Barbie dolls and a myriad of trinkets to delight the fancy ... but far removed from basic survival needs. In less than 25 generations, these peculiar Pleistocene creatures released into the atmosphere as much carbon as earth had sequestered over hundreds of millions of years. This is what is known as the anthropogenic cause of global climate change.



Meanwhile, the National Defense Institute explored the potential impact of global climate change as a threat to national security.  Its conclusion: Vulnerable regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the island nations of the Pacific will face food and water shortages, catastrophic flooding, unprecedented refugee crises, religious conflict, and the spread of contagious diseases. These will demand massive humanitarian aid efforts and/or a military response (source).

There will always be voices in the crowd who keep hearing messages the dead have stopped sending. There will always be voices arguing, not for the common good, but from pure self-interest. Implementing public policy changes are always difficult at best, and we can understand these quirks and follies of human nature with some sympathy, but the climate bomb is ticking and time is running out.  Our worst nightmares have yet to unfold.

Palin Flakes

Adding: Sarah Palin's speechwriter speaks out on "death panels":



What I'm referring to

Honor our troops - at least some of them

Yes, sir, I'm glad we have real men like Anton Scalia on the Supreme Court instead of some "activist" liberal pansy. Who but a Liberal would come up with the idea that putting a cross on a Jewish ( or Muslim, or Buddhist or atheist) soldier's grave wouldn't be an insult to the troops we're told to honor and support?

The court is hearing a case on the constitutionality of erecting a cross on Government ( our ) land in order to honor the dead of WW I. It's not really a religious symbol, opined Scalia but just a common thing to do in cemeteries. In Christian cemeteries -- certainly but here's where Scalia seems unimaginative enough to recognize that many of us and certainly many of us whose families have been here far longer than his, are not Christians nor is there an established religion in the US; Christian or otherwise.

Crosses never appear in Jewish cemeteries, said the ACLU lawyer, but like the hard-hearted biblical Pharaoh, Scalia could only reply

“I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that’s an outrageous conclusion.”

Well I don't think it is outrageous and I imagine there are more than a few people buried in any military cemetery who would, if they could, disagree with him. As Ann Woolner points out on Bloomberg.com,

"Hundreds of thousands of non-Christians served in World War I. Jews alone accounted for 250,000, or about 5 percent of the troops deployed. To memorialize them, Muslims and other non- Christians who gave their lives for their country with a Christian cross doesn’t honor them. For many of their families, it insults them. "

There is no secular purpose and therefore no legitimate government purpose in putting a cross on government property, says the Amicus brief filed by Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America. Of course that's true and in my opinion, as each grave has it's own appropriate marker, the only reason to Christianize the entire cemetery is to put a Christian stamp on the US military and all it's endeavors and all it's men. One would think that the truly devout might say that it puts a US military stamp on Christianity and indeed some do.

All things considered, I'd rather not have a symbol of a religion ( particularly Scalia's) that's been persecuting and vilifying my ancestors since the Constantine administration on my lawn or my grave or the graves of any of my family who has been in the US military for the last 150 years. The party that so often screams about their "freedom" being taken away is usually quite silent when someone else's freedom of religion is being taken away and the honor and dignity of so many of our troops is being trod upon by their fellow Americans.

By Request, With Explanation

I should explain that this is not mine; the pedigree of this piece goes back into electronic mists. In fact, it's not even the first iteration of its type; the earliest version I have found was an anonymous bulletin posted in 2004. But it is so easily adapted, expanded, and linked that I have posted versions of it before.

"I AM AN AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE"

This morning I was awoken by an alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the television to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the NOAA determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by NASA.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of USDA-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the FDA.

At the appropriate time as regulated by Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I deposited my mail with the US Postal Service, got into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile, and and dropped the kids off at a public school.

I then traveled to work on roads build by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the EPA, using legal tender issued by a Federal Reserve bank.

I spent the day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by OSHA in the Department of Labor.

During the day, I enjoyed another two meals which again did not kill me because of the USDA. I enjoyed the 24-7 protection of the Department of Defense.

After working a full day, I drove my NHTSA-approved car back home on the DOT roads, to my house. It had not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal’s inspection.

Nor had it been plundered of all it’s valuables, thanks to the local police department.

I then logged on to the internet, which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration, and told The Swash Zone that Obama better keep his hands off my health care because government can't do anything right.

A Few Words from Rep. Alan Grayson

A PREOCCUPATION WITH RUBBER DUCKS

My apologies to everyone for my absence. Your ever-curious Octopus attended an alternative energy conference this weekend, which reminds me. Please scroll down and look for this in the lower right panel: “Join the Conversation - Blog Action Day October 15, 2009 | Climate Change.” I will be posting an article (hopefully) on Thursday, the day of this event.

Octopus will be away next weekend too … attending this:


The annual International Sea-Bean Symposium is one of my favorite events. What is a ”sea-bean,” you ask? These are drift seeds carried by ocean currents that wash upon our shores. Drift seeds drop from trees and vines as far away as the Amazon River basin and beyond. After they enter the waterways, they are carried downstream to the Atlantic and moved by ocean currents until they find our beach. Sea-beans are hard, tough, and buoyant, which helps them survive the long-distance voyage. Finding a sea-bean on the beach brings good luck. Some folks turn them into jewelry and pendants.


This year, the keynote speaker is Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer who studies all things that float in our ocean:


Ebbesmeyer grew increasingly fascinated by sea currents and eddies and began to focus on beaches, specifically on debris deposited there. An epiphany came in May 1990 when a Pacific storm knocked five containers filled with thousands of athletic shoes off a cargo ship. Nearly a year later, the shoes began washing up along the West coast of North America. With the help of a surprisingly large and cooperative fraternity of beachcombers, Ebbesmeyer tracked the progress of the shoes up and down the coast and as far away as Hawaii, producing a groundbreaking study of ocean currents.

Even readers with little interest in ocean science are riveted by epic travels of oceanic trash, entertaining accounts of how floating debris guided Christopher Columbus and the Vikings to safe harbors, horrific stories of men adrift at sea, how flotsam may have triggered the origin of life, and dire warnings about the threat of plastic waste in our oceans.

All in all, a busy week for Octopus who will be canvassing the beach for flotsam and escaped rubber ducks. BTW, welcome home, Captain Fogg.