Christmas is fine. Xmas, however, is a blight. The season of Xmas brings an overabundance of crass commercialism and traffic. It removes my classic rock station and replaces it with jingle goddamn bells. Of late, the Xmas season has gotten worse; a yearly drumbeat of cultural warfare has gotten louder, and the Christmas season more politicized.
But this year has brought me a gift in the low ticket sales enjoyed by Glenn Beck. In case you haven't heard, his Christmas-sweater show has bombed. I celebrated tonight by attending an underground punk show at the Black Owl.
Have I mentioned that the musical culture of Muscle Shoals, Alabama is incredibly diverse?
President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace prizeyesterday even as he prepares to deploy/redeploy 30,000 troops into Afghanistan.
We, as a nation, have asked much of our service men and women – perhaps too much as the continued lag between new recruits and the number of military personnel required on multiple fronts continues to drain and strain all arms of the military complex.
There is overwhelming evidence, coming from multiple sources, including the usually tightlipped, conservative military hierarchy as reported in Stars & Stripes, that there has been a huge spike of PTSD cases since the war in Iraq began. These wars not only take a toll physically and mentally on our soldiers but also on their families and friends.
Marriages have broken up, children have been placed in foster care, homes have been lost and spouses have suffered emotional and physical abuse and sometimes even death. While the pros and cons of these wars are endlessly debated, the burgeoning collection of studies highlighting the devastating effects of these continued conflicts cannot be ignored or trivialized.
This excerpt is from a document prepared by a joint study done by Walter Reed researchers and those at Texas A&M:
“If the present rate of deploying U.S. forces continues as it has since the end of the cold war, then soldiers entering the military today will deploy an average of 14 times by the time they serve 21 years in the military (Castro & Adler, 1999). The projected deployment rate stands in stark contrast to the 4 deployments reported by soldiers who entered the service more than 20 years ago.”
The length and frequency of deployments is an issue that has been under intense scrutiny since the Vietnam War. Due to findings from that era and bolstered by more recent studies such as the one linked above, the military determined that the maximum time spent in a combat zone should not exceed 6 months which is why we have seen this time frame used since the first Gulf War. What no one anticipated was the depletion of troops that would occur over the last 20 years and the extreme difficulty replenishing those troops if we had to go to war on multiple fronts.
So, here we are in a “perfect storm” of sorts. The number of troops remains in decline while we remain obligated to manning numerous non-combat bases around the world while maintaining a combat force in Iraq and now committed to a troop surge in Afghanistan. All in the name of PEACE, of course. The vast body of evidence points to a terrible toll that will befall many our service men and women even if they manage to make it home unscathed physically. One cannot make light of the debilitating effects that stress, not only from being in active combat but also in the cycle of seemingly endless deployments will have on a significant number of military members.
While I am not willing to second guess the president and his military advisors on the necessity of continuing one war while escalating another, I believe our government owes all our soldiers, their families, their friends and especially their children an exit strategy and a clear definition of what would be a successful conclusion. Those fighting and dying and those waiting at home deserve at least that.
A little more than a year ago we voted for change, we voted for an end to our involvement in war, we voted for increased tolerance, acceptance and cooperation.
Christmas in these new dark ages is like a full moon to werewolves and lunatics and the USA is the new Transylvania. You can almost hear them howling at night. In the dark, ruined castle of the House of Representatives, the latest time wasting assault on truth, the Constitution, freedom of religion and the Founding Fathers is H. RES. 951, a resolution drafted by 19 house Republicans stating:
Whereas Christmas is a national holiday celebrated on December 25; and
Whereas the Framers intended that the First Amendment of the Constitution, in prohibiting the establishment of religion, would not prohibit any mention of religion or reference to God in civic dialog: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) recognizes the importance of the symbols and traditions of Christmas;
(2) strongly disapproves of attempts to ban references to Christmas; and
(3) expresses support for the use of these symbols and traditions by those who celebrate Christmas.
The framers have been framed once again, it seems. Of course there is no prohibition against "mentioning" religion, but there sure as Madison is one against promoting one religion over another and establishing support for any belief or ceremony or symbol is as prohibited as Jefferson could make it -- the ignorant passion of the lawless Republican denialists notwithstanding.
No I'm not going into the open hostility the Constitution writers had toward organized religion and it's influence on Government, or the largely fraudulent claims that "liberals" hate Christmas and Christians and want to take away your Christmas tree. You either already know or you're one of the hairy palmed lycanthropoids, too demented to listen. For my part however, any party that harbors such Visigoths (yes they were Christian) is illegitimate to the core, an enemy of religious freedom and unworthy to participate in government on any level.
Is it humorous that the only real effort to stamp out Christmas and its various and ever changing "traditions" was by the "pilgrim fathers" we just finished pretending were the founders of American democracy. It would almost be laughable if these worms weren't eating the heart out of liberty by trying to restore exactly the sort of government we fought a revolution to rid ourselves of.
We've got 15 more days of raging Republicans who are going to make up stories about stores not having Christmas trees, towns banning lights or private business owners not having the right to call Christmas a holiday -- or private citizens not having the right to celebrate it or not celebrate it when and how they please. We have at least two more weeks of support for tyranny and attacks on our freedom of speech, press and religion. It's more than just some Scrooge, more than just some Grinch stealing everyone's good time, it's the ancient evil of religious authority stealing our birthright and for me, the holiday I used to love is hardly worth it any more.
Whatever you call it, a silly anecdote or imperfect metaphor, the boiling frog story serves a useful purpose, and it goes like this. If you place a frog in boiling water, it will immediately jump out; but if you place the same frog in cold water that is heated slowly, it will not notice the gradual rise in temperature but will stay in the water until it boils to death. No frogs were harmed in the writing of this post, but the boiling frog story is a useful metaphor to describe how people refuse to recognize a threat that occurs gradually.
Climate change deniers are akin to slow boiling frogs. For most folks, the climate change crisis is vague and impalpable. You cannot see it, touch it, or watch it happen on cable news. It lacks the immediate drama of a hurricane or tsunami. Climate change may not be noticed for a decade or even within a lifetime. Yet, it exists today as a set of observations and data points that are too arcane and abstract for many people to grasp. But make no mistake: Global climate change is here … a dark cloud hanging over the lives of our grandchildren and future generations. Despite the preponderance of data, there are skeptics, doubters, and boiled frogs. A case in point (source):
Double click on image to enlarge.
When a climate scientist looks at the above graph, the most obvious feature is the red [my addition] trend line. The above graph plots rising temperatures from different data sources. The skeptical boiled frog might look at these data and say: “So what! It proves nothing.”
There are two statistical concepts to bear in mind. Some data points conform to a pattern while others seem randomly spread. When data points fall outside a trend line, we call these “outliers,” a fancy word for random distribution. The skeptical boiled frog focuses on the random jitters and ignores the trend line. “So what,” croaks the frog, “Mother Earth has mood swings.” My point: Statistical outliers turn boiled frogs into outrageous liars.
What this graph shows are the various types of greenhouse emissions, such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorocarbons from various sources. Most importantly, the graph shows the source of each greenhouse gas: From forest fires, from natural decay, from agriculture, from waste, and from fossil fuel combustion. Notice the large red area dominating the bottom half of the graph. This represents carbon dioxide as a product of fossil fuel consumption. What does this mean?
It means climate change is a man-made phenomenon. People burn fossil fuels in their cars, homes, and factories. Skeptical boiled frogs have claimed that greenhouse gases come from natural sources ranging from forest fires to flatulence, or from the rise and fall of some geologically unknown Dow Jones. These data tell a different story. It means that more than half of all greenhouse gases (56% of total emissions) have a human origin. Hence, the term “anthropogenic,” meaning “caused by human beings.”
This color-coded map shows the distribution of carbon dioxide around the world. Notice how concentrations of CO2 emissions correspond with areas of human population density and, most especially, with areas having the highest levels of industrial output. These data confirm the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and human activity.
Overall, the latest observations show that globally averaged levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) have reached new highs in 2008: Higher than those of pre-industrial times (before 1750) by 38%, 157% and 19%, respectively. Within the past 10 years alone, levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have increased 26.2%.
Admittedly, the boiling frog story employs a flawed metaphor. Experience has shown that most frogs are too restless to sit still long enough for any pot of water to reach the boiling point. However, the definitive experiment was performed in 1869 by the German physiologist, Friedrich Goltz, who was searching for the location of the soul and demonstrated a fundamental truth. Frogs that had their brains removed will remain in slowly heated water; whereas frogs with intact brains will promptly escape. Thus, I end my post with this observation: Climate change deniers, unlike their intact amphibian counterparts, have neither brains nor souls.
UPDATE: Readers may also be interested in this slide show prepared by the Philosophy Department at UCSD. There is a brief history of the climate change debate starting with John Tyndall, the first to discover the greenhouse properties of CO2, and James Fleming Callendar, who argued as early as the 1930s that increases in CO2 levels would raise global temperatures. My thanks and a hat tip to Flying Junior for the link.
Years ago, I served on the board of directors of a conservation group whose mission and purpose was to preserve an endangered species. We spent considerable time debating, discussing, and revising our bylaws and even more time reporting, debating, and balancing our balance sheets, plus the obligatory inventory of office supplies and cute plush toy souvenirs. “Merchandising with a message,” they called it. There were monthly board meetings and monthly membership meetings followed by refreshments, but how much time was actually spent preserving and protecting our charges? Ahem, not that much.
Years pass, and my transformation from human being to cephalopod is now complete. I no longer converse with human protectors but with the protected, and here is what the protected think of their benefactors: “We are doomed, DOOMED!” From the viewpoint of an endangered species, human beings are all talk and cute plush toys but no action. In the human Universe, the shortest distance between two points is through every conceivable viewpoint.
My experience in the endangered species preservation biz reminds me of the latest argument between economist Paul Krugman and climate change scientist James Hansen, who fired the first volley in this New York Times Op-Ed:
Because cap and trade is enforced through the selling and trading of permits, it actually perpetuates the pollution it is supposed to eliminate.
(…)
Coal emissions are still significant contributing factors in four of the five leading causes of mortality in the United States — and mercury, arsenic and various coal pollutants also cause birth defects, asthma and other ailments.
(…)
The House and Senate energy bills would only assure continued coal use, making it implausible that carbon dioxide emissions would decline sharply.
(…)
If that isn’t bad enough, Wall Street is poised to make billions of dollars in the “trade” part of cap-and-trade.
Not to be outdone on matters of energy economics by a lowly climate change scientist, Paul Krugman, our infamous defender of faith and turf, returned fire with this:
Things like this often happen when economists deal with physical scientists; the hard-science guys tend to assume that we’re witch doctors with nothing to tell them, so they can’t be bothered to listen at all to what the economists have to say, and the result is that they end up reinventing old errors in the belief that they’re deep insights.
What a condescending and prickly reply, I thought. Clearly, Paul Krugman represents the Cute Plush Toy School of environmental protection that amuses protectors but accomplishes little on behalf of the protected. Worse still, here is what Krugman says of Hansen’s carbon tax proposal:
If you use a tax, you know what the price of emissions will be, but you don’t know the quantity of emissions; if you use a cap, you know the quantity but not the price. Yes, this means that if some people do more than expected to reduce emissions, they’ll just free up permits for others — which worries Hansen.
What worries Hansen should also worry us. A system of cap and trade will invite chicanery from players on both sides of the equation. Polluting industries will abuse the “cap” on emissions by continually lobbying Congress for exemptions, offsets, and opt-outs. Speculators will abuse the “trade” by gaming the system in much the same way Enron manipulated energy markets and defrauded consumers. Thus, cap and trade will become the ultimate plush toy for powerful interests but accomplish little or nothing in actual emissions reduction. Furthermore, Krugman ignores Hansen’s proposal of a fee-and-dividend system which clearly states:
The fee would be uniform, a certain number of dollars per ton of carbon dioxide in the fuel. The public would not directly pay any fee, but the price of goods would rise in proportion to how much carbon-emitting fuel is used in their production. All of the collected fees would then be distributed to the public. Prudent people would use their dividend wisely, adjusting their lifestyle, choice of vehicle and so on. Those who do better than average in choosing less-polluting goods would receive more in the dividend than they pay in added costs.
(…)
Given the amount of oil, gas and coal used in the United States in 2007, that carbon fee would yield about $600 billion per year. The resulting dividend for each adult American would be as much as $3,000 per year. As the fee rose, tipping points would be reached at which various carbon-free energies and carbon-saving technologies would become cheaper than fossil fuels plus their fees. As time goes on, fossil fuel use would collapse.
While I favor Hansen’s fee-and-dividend system, we should also consider a proposal put forth by arch-conservationist extraordinaire, Sarah Palin. In her recently released bestseller, the Sarahdon said: "If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?" We should take her at her word. If God made meat to be eaten, and if human beings are also made of meat, then it stands to reason that human beings should join her list of fair game. Her modest proposal would require only a slight modification of God’s Word. If you change “Love thy neighbor” to “Eat thy neighbor,” famine would disappear and all human impacts on the environment would diminish over time. As everyone knows, once you remove human impacts from the environment, Nature has an uncanny way of recovering and bouncing back ... quicker than a wink!
"Comprehensible to the intelligent, to the world at large, needing interpretation"
-Pindar- ___________________________
Ah, Pastor Rick Warren -- not quite smart enough to realize that his arguments have long since been steamrollered by better minds or just smart enough to realize that enough people are ignorant of it for him to make a living by peddling delusion? That is the question.
Put Rick on the list of people deeply disturbed by a sign on a bus saying belief in invisible magic spirits isn't necessary if you want to be good to your fellow humans. In fact he's been in terror of disbelief for a long time, resorting often to such idiocies as the idea that Atheists must be wrong because they're angry, that Atheists are responsible for most of the worlds wars and atrocities including being responsible for the Spanish Inquisition. I have to admit, even I didn't expect that.
No, it's ridiculous not to believe in magic and the supernatural and forces and places for which there is no evidence other than the failure to understand nature. You see, if Pastor Warren is walking down a mountain and finds a rock - that could be accidental, but if he finds a Rolex, it's "design."
Again, it's easily comprehensible to the rare intelligent American that Rolex's do not occur in nature,nor are they alive and self reproducing, but things, like living cells and viruses can indeed result from natural processes which is liberally illustrated by evidence and that Warren is trotting out this mawkish and moronic argument only because, as I said, there are enough congenitally and willfully stupid people out there to be blind to his festival of fatuous fallacies. It's not an argument at all really, it's just a bad analogy and an attempt to shift the burden of proof as Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker illustrates with greater patience and a good deal more skill than I have.
Warren doesn't have enough faith to be an atheist, he says in an attempt to make science and evidence and logic and knowledge a false equivalent of ignorance and the will to believe. Again, if you're intelligent, nobody has to explain it to you any more than I would have to explain why, contrary to his lies belief, same sex marriage is not just like pedophilia and neither Tomas de Torquemada nor the Holy Office at the Vatican were atheists.
But almost everybody believes in the supernatural he says, bringing the ad populum fallacy up to bat. "The actual number of secularists in the world is actually quite small outside of Europe and Manhattan," he continues, adding an appeal to people who find an educated populace threatening. The place for Secular Humanists is North Korea, whines Warren. It's called "poisoning the well" for anyone interested and yes, it's in any book of popular fallacies. That he doesn't tell us that the place for blind faith in religious authority is in the Taliban, isn't surprising, but it is telling.
Of course if the future of the world is not secularism but as he reminds us: pluralism, a certainty that certainly lacks support as we see beliefs declining as education ( and intelligence) increases, it's hard to understand that we should accept a multiplicity of religions but not Secular Humanism. What then does Humanism lack that theistic religion has? Authority. It's rather hard to base a tyranny or any system of arbitrary authority on it and that, dear reader, is what Rick Warren is all about and that's why he's afraid and that's why he has to make fun of your freedom.
I guess Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is trying to cornhole us again. I imagine that he woke up early one morning and realized there was another absurd, extreme, preposterous, shameful, ridiculous and grotesque simile he hadn't used yet to vilify any health care reform that doesn't appeal to the corporate overlords he serves. We've already heard about 'death panels' and how extending the program that Cornyn benefits from to the rest of us, is just like Pol Pot's Killing fields and Hitler's death camps. Somehow he'd overlooked Stalin's Gulag Archipelago and it's important we hear about it right away.
You see, the problem is that the Democrats aren't accepting "input" from the Republicans although it's pretty clear that the only "input" he or they have offered is to drop the damn subject. Still it's hard to understand why Tex himself isn't trying to escape from that death camp of Federal Employee insurance that just might kill him at any time now.
Sarah Palin famously went through five universities before getting her degree. The diva was on the MRS program, but her sojourn in Hawaii was brief because, her father says, the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her...uncomfortable: "They were a minority type thing and it wasn't glamorous, so she came home."
Minority type thing, not glamorous? She's allowed her taste in men, but how did she expect to find a First Dude type amongst all those Hawaiians? Had popular culture convinced her the place was full of good, clean white folks?
I mean, sure, there are minorities in the TV Hawaii of her youth; but they're all second bananas. I think Sarah was dreaming of Magnum's Ferrari.
Why is Fox News so damned afraid of secular Humanism? They're not of course; they're afraid of failing ratings and growing irrelevance, so they tell me once again and right on schedule that I'm at war with my favorite holiday because I'm not at war with my freedom -- and yours. If you think that virtue is its own reward or that doing the right thing by others whether or not you're rewarded for it is by definition the right thing: in fact, if you believe in freedom of thought, perhaps you're at war with Christmas too.
Last year, the American Humanist Association ran an ad asking "Why believe in a God?" They did it again this year with No God ...No Problem signs on city buses and the point of the slogan Be Good for Goodness Sake although certainly not out of line with most religious teachings, can according to the slimy logic of Bill O'Reilly, not only be a direct slander against God, but worse; an attack on the poor, helpless, little baby Jesus.
"How do you sell Atheism by running down a baby"
asks lyin' Bill so glibly that he can hope that the right people won't notice that being a good person, having compassionate and kindly humanist values, isn't likely to run down anyone's baby.
Blindingly blond and botoxed Margaret Hoover and Gretchen Carlson grinned in frightening fashion during last Thursday's "Culture Warriors" episode although the 85 year old O'Reilly couldn't seem to remember which was who. Perhaps the beauty pageant grins were as sewn on as they looked or perhaps the grotesque lengths Fox has gone to demonstrate the dangers of freedom simply amused them, but Grinning Gretchen opined that
"This is a direct and deliberate smear against Christianity. Do you think they would do this ad in July?"
Well, St. Swithyn's day seems hardly worth the effort and after all, December is in some vague and fact-free fashion "the most sacred month" Easter notwithstanding. There's little of ritually sacred nature in July that needs to be forced down the throats of heretics, while December contains other holidays of other religions and the birthdays, of Horus, Mithra, Constantine's favorite Sol Invictus and other Jesus predecessors -- but never mind. She managed to sneak in the proposition that not being Christian, not loudly professing faith that Jesus was born coincidentally on the same day as the Roman and Persian gods he replaced and not in April as their Gospels state, is an attack on our established State Religion.
"Do you think they would do it against Allah on Ramadan? I don't think so! No."
said Lyin' Bill in turn and nicely adding the subliminal hint that the growing secularism of the Western world is actually to be laid at the feet of our Islamic President.
"Why does the American Humanist Society want us to be 'good for goodness sake'? Why do they loathe the baby Jesus? He's just a baby."
What a marvelous way to heap fallacy upon fiction upon fraud and turn it into a call to battle. Is it really offensive to anyone's religion to recommend that in doing good unto others, one should not do it for reasons of prestige or self elevation - or that being a good person without doing it from fear of a vengeful son of a god is not really good?
Allowing people to believe or doubt or disbelieve anything they like can only be offensive to a religion that seeks only to convert and control and not to improve mankind. That's just the kind of religion and perhaps the kind of politics O'Reilly and his attendant familiars would be advocating if they really were advocating anything rather than fabricating reasons for rage in those whose mental capabilities don't extend to debunking a train of logic leading from "wedon't have to believe in your god to be good"to "Why do they loathe the baby Jesus? He's just a baby."
The real questions of course are about why the two-bit Torquemada clones at Fox News loathe people who aren't fundamentalist Christian Conservatives, why lying and bearing false witness in the service of a myth is not loathsome while freedom of thought is an offense to the "baby Jesus."
Middle America needs to get a grasp on corporate greed, and recognize it as the modern day King George.Two of President Obama’s major initiatives, Health Care Reform and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will fare much better if the working class skeptics see the role corporate greed plays in both issues.
Right wing media fear mongers have convinced Joe Sixpack and his buddies that their enemy in health care is the public option. They believe it will raise costs and lead to socialism, which will take away all of their money and freedom. They fail to look at the fact that their health care benefits have cost more and provided less at the hands of greedy private monopolistic insurance companies for years. Even with the threat of a public option on the table, the insurers are still unsympathetic to small businesses that would like to but cannot afford to supply their employees with decent health insurance. Greed has prompted insurance companies to favor their own profits over the services they provide to small businesses and consumers.
Similarly, polls indicate that Middle America feels the Recovery Act is failing to produce jobs, that it is costing money for no gain. Yet, there is gain; businesses are doing better. But the businesses are keeping the better for themselves. Despite the recent paths to economic recovery, employers are not willing to hire new employees. Current employees are often working longer for less in order to keep the jobs they have. The gloomy outlook in the job market is a result of reluctant employers rather than a failed stimulus package.Greed once again prompts businesses to favor their own corporate security over the well being of their employees and the people of America.
It is naïve to think we can rely on business to rescue us out of the mess they put us in to begin with. We need tea parties that put blame where blame is due: tea parties aimed at right wing legislators and their business cronies who exert their tyranny against the American public. Tell them we want a public option now, one that will reign in corporate greed in the health insurance industry. Tell them we want sanctions now against businesses and banks that have failed to use Recovery Act money to provide jobs and loans to small businesses. This is our time, our chance to legislate against corporate greed and for some financial fairness in our society. Let’s not lose it.
