Unhealthy, Hungry States

Why do the red states that are run by conservative governments fail their citizens?  

These 10 conservative states have the hungriest in their population:

1.  Mississippi
2.  Arkansas
3.  Texas
4.  Alabama
5.  North Carolina
6.  Georgia
7.  Missouri
8.  Nevada
9.  Tennessee
10. Ohio


The recent vote by Republicans in the House to slash funds to SNAP will affect the poorest in the poorest states--those states run by Republican governors and/or legislatures.  Why would the GOP do that to their own constituents?


The states with the lowest food security, not surprisingly, are among the poorest in the country. In all 10 states, the median household income was less than the national median of $50,502. In Mississippi and Arkansas, the two worst states for food security, median income was less than $40,000. Of the 10 states with the lowest food security, eight had the highest poverty rates in the country. 

 Ross Fraser, spokesperson for hunger-relief charity Feeding America, explained that having low food security does not necessarily mean families are starving. While people may feel full after eating, nutritious food is expensive. “Often, people have to make unfortunate choices about what they put in their stomachs.” Fraser added. 

 Indeed, according to a 2012 Gallup-Healthways survey, people in nine of the 10 states were less likely to eat healthily on a daily basis than the nation as a whole. Missouri and Tennessee were third and second worst in the country by this measure. 

 It may surprise some that, in fact, the majority of the 10 states with food access problems have higher-than-average obesity rates. Mississippi and Arkansas had the second and third highest obesity rates in the country in 2012. 

“The lack of healthy food among families in these states,” explained Fraser, “is one of the reasons you have very poor people who are obese. It is because they’re not able to afford nutritious and high protein food.”

More here.

If conservatives believe conservatism is the better of the two political ideologies, why do the conservative red states come in as the poorest, the hungriest, and the least educated in studies?

Also, while we're looking at stats, the states that promote abstinence only programs to prevent out-of-wedlock pregnancies are failing as well:

Abstinence-only education does not lead to abstinent behavior, UGA researchers find


"...prescribed abstinence-only education in public schools does not lead to abstinent behavior," said David Hall, second author and assistant professor of genetics in the Franklin College. "It may even contribute to the high teen pregnancy rates in the U.S. compared to other industrialized countries." 

Along with teen pregnancy rates and sex education methods, Hall and Stanger-Hall looked at the influence of socioeconomic status, education level, access to Medicaid waivers and ethnicity of each state's teen population.

 Even when accounting for these factors, which could potentially impact teen pregnancy rates, the significant relationship between sex education methods and teen pregnancy remained: the more strongly abstinence education is emphasized in state laws and policies, the higher the average teenage pregnancy and birth rates.

 "Because correlation does not imply causation, our analysis cannot demonstrate that emphasizing abstinence causes increased teen pregnancy. However, if abstinence education reduced teen pregnancy as proponents claim, the correlation would be in the opposite direction," said Stanger-Hall.

 The paper indicates that states with the lowest teen pregnancy rates were those that prescribed comprehensive sex and/or HIV education, covering abstinence alongside proper contraception and condom use.

States whose laws stressed the teaching of abstinence until marriage were significantly less successful in preventing teen pregnancies."

States with ‘abstinence-only’ sex ed programs rank highest in teen pregnancies



 The two states with the highest rates of teen pregnancies are Mississippi and New Mexico. 

 Neither state requires that sex ed be taught in schools. 

 Mississippi law stipulates that when sexual education is taught, that abstinence be the main method of contraception proscribed by educators, whereas New Mexico has no rules about reproductive health criteria at all. 

 The state with the lowest rate of teen pregnancies is New Hampshire, which requires comprehensive sex ed in schools that includes information about condoms and other forms of birth control in addition to abstinence."

***************

Willful ignorance is not a remedy for out-of-wedlock pregnancies; and cutting back on needed funds for feeding needy Americans is not a way to get people out of what the GOOPers call a comfortable hammock to find work. It's difficult to do anything when you and your family are hungry.

One wonders what sort of values the so-called "American Values Party" really promotes when it turns a blind eye to our most vulnerable citizens and when it pretends that abstinence only programs will prevent more hungry babies from being born into more poor families.

There'll be a hot time in Stockholm tonight

Everyone knows there are two sides to every story and so things generate their own opposites if only to fulfill the expectations, and so light creates dark, even if dark is nothing at all. 

It's a trivial notion, of course, but the practice of using the shadow of a thing to discredit or obliterate that thing has consequences that are far from trivial, because the nothing we give a name to can, at least in the emotional logic the public loves and public passion feeds on, cancel out something. Every assertion that must be blunted or countered or denounced can be reversed in sign, so to speak and used to cancel the assertion. At least it can  in a world, in an inner universe of the mind where people don't think too much or too well and can be convinced that one's image in a mirror can cancel itself out if we don't like what we see.  There must be two sides if we're to reduce a question of fact to a matter of opinion and that's just what the game is.

There must be two sides, even if all the data is on one of them. Each side has it's adherents and even if the question "is it raining?" can be answered more reliably by those standing outside, those inside an inner room with no windows have to be given equal credibility if the 'two sides' hypothesis is valid.  So when we look at the question: is the average temperature of the Earth getting higher or the question are human activities contributing substantially, the advantage to the side with the data; the side the atmospheric paleontologists, the geologists, the paleo-climatologists are on, is minimized, if not cancelled out  by the side that has the money and political connections.  We have the side with massive pertinent information and we have the Republicans, the Coal, Oil and Gas cartels who own them and a handful of  people with  dubious scientific credentials  crying hoax.

This is not a scientific problem, there is no scientific controversy, it's  class warfare, and the success will depend on things other than data and there's a battle in Stockholm today.  There's a battle here in America too, where there are always two sides and thus equal credibility independent of evidence and where questions of chemistry and physics are questions of which party you belong to, where motivated reasoning passes for objective analysis. The goal of the argument is to minimize risks to the international cartels and to the party they own.  It's not about science, it's about allegiance.

Opponents don't take these things to the laboratory, to the peer reviewed publications, they look only at selected data and cast stones at the rest.  They take it to Joe the Plumber. They take it to the Republicans. They take it to Congress. They purchase opinions. They take it to the huddled masses yearning to sound knowledgeable by crying hoax  at every bit of truth they can find and in a way there are two sides to the climate question.  The one with the trillions and the side with the data.

Do Not Call Up That Which You Cannot Put Down

-The famous maxim of Howard Lovecraft. 

Here is something I've believed about Lovecraft, which has been largely ignored by his devoted readers (I am one too).  Lovecraft's work was actually very prophetic and politically significant.  From the early 1920's Lovecraft was virtually the only writer to envision a rapidly approaching time when one person or a small cabal would have the power to destroy humanity.  Nuclear science made this a military reality within ten years of his death, but advances in communication and propaganda technology, coupled with the concentration of previously inconceivable wealth in the hands of a few, have now made it possible politically.

Over the last half century, and with ever increasing intensity, the Republican party has set about creating in the United States a cadre of living zombies, people filled with rage and hunger, and immune to any kind of introspection or critical thinking.  Like any Lovecraft villain, the leaders of the Republican party were absolutely sure they could put down this army of the mentally undead whenever it suited their purpose.  And like all Lovecraft villains, they were wrong.

We have seen a long succession of leaders now, who have nothing in the world to offer except their willingness to pander to the mindless, voracious minions they have created, telling themselves at every step that they are in control and that the minions will do whatever suits the interest of their betters.  Palin, Bachmann, Ryan, both Pauls, Gohmert, Alan West, and now perhaps the most vicious of them all, Ted Cruz, who openly states that he believes the entire Senate should consist of 100 people like the unrepentant race hater and corupt corporate tool, Jesse Helms.

Today, we are confronting an ugly reality- similar to, for example, the one faced by Weimar Germany in the 1920's- it is far easier to destroy democracy than it is to create it.  The hordes of ignorant, greedy, hate-filled intellectual zombies the Republicans deliberately called up out of the swamps of American dysfunction are now running things, and those oh, so wise grifters like Gingrich, Boehner and McConnell are now helpless captives on a runaway train, with disaster the only conceivable future.

Now, this disaster may be only days away.  Paul Krugman (as usual):

"...at the moment, it seems highly likely that the Republican Party will refuse to fund the government, forcing a shutdown at the beginning of next month, unless President Obama dismantles the health reform that is the signature achievement of his presidency. Republican leaders realize that this is a bad idea, but, until recently, their notion of preaching moderation was to urge party radicals not to hold America hostage over the federal budget so they could wait a few weeks and hold it hostage over the debt ceiling instead. Now they’ve given up even on that delaying tactic. The latest news is that John Boehner, the speaker of the House, has abandoned his efforts to craft a face-saving climbdown on the budget, which means that we’re all set for shutdown, possibly followed by debt crisis."

And a very real likelihood of a collapse of the world economy.   Here's some more Krugman:

"...this story is all about the G.O.P. First came the southern strategy, in which the Republican elite cynically exploited racial backlash to promote economic goals, mainly low taxes for rich people and deregulation. Over time, this gradually morphed into what we might call the crazy strategy, in which the elite turned to exploiting the paranoia that has always been a factor in American politics — Hillary killed Vince Foster! Obama was born in Kenya! Death panels! — to promote the same goals. 

But now we’re in a third stage, where the elite has lost control of the Frankenstein-like monster it created."

Frankenstein's monster, only because he didn't think of comparing it to its real literary equivalent:  Cthulhu- a single entity with the capacity to destroy all humanity.  Krugman suggests that the momentum behind this apocalyptic fit of destruction is now inevitable- the Republican party we have today is, against all rational self interest, intent on pulling the house down around them.  Well, I guess that is what I believe too.  At this point, as I said recently, they may as well get on with it and do all the damage they can, and then we can either exterminate them like the vermin they are and get on with repairing the damage, or we will succumb to their violence and irrationality, and the United States of America will vanish from the world like Rome, Assyria, Babylon and so many other great civilizations that exist today only as vague dreams of a distant glory.

-Cross posted from my own blog

Sunday Afternoons and Old Dogs

Waiting for someday.

The beam moves across the floor.

Look how the time goes.

No one can nap like an old dog, sprawled in the sunshine, dozing as I sip lemonade, reading poetry by the pool or curled up on the Persian rug in the library; me writing at my desk with a black fountain pen, my sanctuary of sorts. Things about me; old books and photographs. Things of science, things of art; mementos, the treasured baggage of a  life slowly fading in the sun

The dog enjoys his life, his snacks, his meals always on time - his naps. Relieving himself by the curb in the morning, sniffing the summer breeze for hours, sitting in the shade of the porch as I sigh and lament with black ink on lined paper.

Who's the happier? Our futures are uncertain in length, mine more uncertain in content, his certainly shorter. It doesn't bother his sleep. Our knowledge is pain, our mortality cuts like a choke collar, pulled too tightly and oh, that leash! We suffer into truth and sometimes into beauty, sometimes into joy but always it passes and we sigh and lament. He sleeps unworried on the soft rug, woven by women's hands, smoothed by long fingers in distant places,  his lost youth unmourned, mine displayed, formulated on the wall, while I listen to the brass clock tick, the gold nib scribbling on paper.

Do not attempt

I just saw it again in a movie - our protagonists frantically one step ahead of a superhuman pursuer jump on to a motorcycle in desperation, but pause to put on a helmet. I say again because it's certainly not the first time.  Panicked fugitives stop to put on seat belts leaving any of the audience who had been carried along by the plot behind as if all the phone numbers beginning with 555 haven't already.

A car rolls slowly down a beautiful leaf strewn autumn road, while the massage crawls across the bottom, admonishing us not to to do this yourself and that there is a trained professional at the wheel and the road is closed. Of course that's less ridiculous than when the same warning is presented as the car drives out the back of an airplane, or off a bridge.  Who are we warning and would a warning have any effect on the guy who thinks his Toyota can fly?

Watching a show about asset recovery agents - repo men - who specialize in stealing helicopters and jets and even megayachts from people who have stopped making payments. I of course, see the same warning. "Don't do this yourself, trained professionals." Damn, and I had my leather helmet and goggles on already.

Funny thing that we don't see these things with movies about criminals or people who invade foreign countries - Trained professional bank robbers, etc. or people who land on the moon, (Don't try this yourself) but hey.

I've already complained about instruction manuals for everything from q-tips to digital cameras that have 10 pages of warnings for every paragraph explaining how to use it. Don't use a hammer to clean your ears, don't stand on a wet floor and stick your tongue in a light socket while using this camera.

The stuff that's actually dangerous?  Not so much. Yes, I think one of the ceramic knives I bought for my wife said something like "don't cut yourself" but that's mild in today's America and of course it doesn't tell you to hire a chef and leave the cutting to her. No warning that "contents may be fattening" on my fridge or "don't use in the shower" on the toaster but then I didn't read the manuals. My cars' instruction books didn't suggest getting a chauffeur and there's no sign on my lawn relative to not cutting it myself. I'm willing to bet more people are hurt by power mowers than by cameras but none of this is about objective reality, is it?  But I could be wrong.

Maybe  I'm just reckless and irresponsible.  Maybe I should be more cautious about life in general. I'm considering putting up a sign over the front door - facing inwards.  How does "Don't go out  by yourself.  It's a jungle out there, for trained professionals only."

GOP to Veterans: GO HUNGRY!

The party that fetishizes veterans, that worships military duty, that calls every man and woman who serves his or her country a "hero," has voted to demean their heroes and let them go hungry.

You read that right.

We saner folk know, of course, that the GOP's posturing is all show and zero substance, and another manifestation of their fake patriotism, which was demonstrated this past week when the Republicans in the House voted to slash the SNAP program.  Hundreds of thousands of our veterans--you know, the folks who defend our freedoms here and abroad, the ones who lay down their lives so that GOP Congresscreeps can charge their lavish dinners to the government while they travel in the U.S. and abroad on "fact-finding missions"--millions of those men and women depend on the SNAP program.  Yeah, those GOP hypocrites, who never saw a program for the needy in this country that they didn't hate and that they didn't go after, pretending it would save the tax payers millions of dollars and make those lazy, undeserving moochers who want free stuff, our veterans, get off their lazy asses and find a job!

Those are Republican values:  Slash needed programs to feed our veterans and their families (and millions of other struggling Americans), while pretending they support our troops.




From the daily kos:


Thursday's House vote to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by $40 billion over 10 years proved, once again, that when the Republican drive to demonize poor people comes into conflict with the supposed Republican reverence for veterans, demonizing poor people wins. 

The bill would kick 170,000 veterans off of food stamps, out of around 900,000 veterans in the program. Republican rhetoric was that the food stamp-slashing bill would continue food assistance for the virtuous poor—children, seniors, disabled people, employed people—and only cut assistance for able-bodied adults who don't want to work, preferring to live high on the hog off of their average benefit of around $4 a day. 

That's false in ways almost too numerous to count: 

• The bill contains no provisions for people who can't find work in an economy where there are three jobseekers for every available job. 

• Republicans claimed unemployed people could fulfill the bill's work requirements by turning to job training programs, yet many people don't have access to job training programs and the bill did not fund them. 

• The bill would kick 2.1 million mostly working or elderly people out of SNAP by eliminating expanded categorical eligibility. On paper, these people's income or assets are above the SNAP threshold even though, in reality, they face significant expenses like child care in order to keep working, bringing them below the threshold: 

A typical working family that qualifies for SNAP due to categorical eligibility consists of a mother with two young children who has monthly earnings just above the program’s monthly gross income limit ($2,069 for a family of three in 2013). On average, the families above that limit who qualify for SNAP as a result of categorical eligibility have combined child care and rent costs thatexceed half of their wages. The approximately $100 per month in SNAP benefits they receive covers about one-fourth to one-fifth of their monthly food budget.

From the Military and Foreign Affairs Journal "Veterans Today:"


Hardest Hit by Proposed Food Stamp Cuts? Veterans and Active Military 

The prejudices against those who desperately need food stamps and other supportive programs are rampant. However, what the Huffington Post report uncovered is that a surprising group of hardworking Americans rely on food stamps. This group will undoubtedly change the face of what the average American thinks of what a food stamp recipient looks like as well as the trajectory of the food stamp funding battle. 

Veterans and active duty service members are one of the largest growing populations that need assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). SNAP is a financial assistance program provided by the federal government that allows struggling families to purchase food. According to data compiled by the Huffington Post, 1.5 million veteran households are using SNAP. 

The sharp increase of veterans or other military families relying on food stamps is right in line with what is happening across the board: more families are struggling to make ends meet because of the recovering economy and families who may have never needed assistance before are looking for help. 

Compounding the issue further is that many veterans who recently returned from Iraq or Afghanistan may also have returned with medical conditions or disabilities that prevent them from working or continuing their service. As of 2011, more than 46 million Americans received food stamps.


Food stamp use at military commissaries up sharply in four years



My name is Jason. I turned 35 less than a week ago. 

My first job was maintenance work at a public pool when I was 17. I worked 40-hours a week while I was in college. I've never gone longer than six months without employment in my life and I just spent the last three years in the military, one of which consisted of a combat tour of Afghanistan. 

 Oh, and I'm now on food stamps. 

Since June, as a matter of fact. 

Why am I on food stamps? 

 The same reason everyone on food stamps is on food stamps: because I would very much enjoy not starving. I mean, if that's okay with you: 

•  Mr. or Mrs. Republican congressman. 
• Mr. or Mrs. Conservative commentator. 
• Mr. or Mrs. "welfare queen" letter-to-the-editor author. 
• Mr. or Mrs. "fiscal conservative, reason-based" libertarian. 

Remember this outrage the next time you hear a loud-mouthed hypocritical Republican thank one of America's military heroes.  Remember that it's only lip-service that the posturing Republican is giving to the man or woman whose real service defended our freedoms and is now struggling to feed him/herself and family.

My enemy, our friend

When Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis, I wasn't particularly interested, not being a Catholic and seeing myself, at least ethnically, as a survivor of the exterminations and repressions and expulsions the Church he leads has perpetrated; seeing us all as damaged by it's long war on science and technology, on democracy, liberty, freedom of thought and speech  and even personal hygiene, I wasn't about to see any more than a cosmetic change.  Certainly the Church's attitude toward sexual freedom, the right to terminate a pregnancy, the right to read what we want to,  the right to have intimate relations with a partner of one's choice?  That's not going to change.

Maybe I was wrong. No, do as thou wilt isn't going to become doctrine any time soon, but respect for others, reluctance to condemn and perhaps adopting persuasion over fiery threats of damnation and excommunication may become, at least during his tenure, the order of the day.

Is this more like stoning the sinner with marshmallows or is it a new return to the kind of non-judgementalism that is attributed to Jesus?  Is the Church really going to make an effort to back away from being all about sex and the iron handed control of sexuality; about making sex a dirty necessity we have to feel guilty about and keep to a minimum?

The church has the right to express its opinions but not to "interfere spiritually" in the lives of gays and lesbians said Pope Francis in an interview just published. in a Jesuit magazine.  For an institution that has seen itself as a gatekeeper for God, that's a welcome surprise, at least to those who think their God doesn't mind answering his own phone; who think God doesn't have to consult his parish priest before allowing himself to judge people. He feels women must play a key role in church decisions, although the extent of the intent remains to be seen.

None of this, of course, affects me, being a non-believer, and I'm pretty sure the Church isn't going to begin recommending abortions or gay marriages or anything at all like that, but preaching and teaching instead of damning and condemning and blowing sulfur smoke seems like one small step for a pope and one great leap for the Vatican.

Will the Baptists, the Evangelicals and the Pat Robertsons of America join the enlightement?

Cyber English

Language— a divine gift given to the human race. I have a strong admiration for language. There are thousands of languages spoken worldwide. I speak two of the top three languages in the world. I look up and take interest in many others.

Frequently, I scroll through my Facebook and Twitter accounts and find myself thinking: “what is our language coming to?” or “what disrespect to the English language…” I am no grammarian, but the English that is used in the online world is ridiculous. The words and shortcuts used online, is becoming a dialect (if I may call it that) of its own. Some of the more famous ones even get taken to the outside world, like “OMG” (oh em gee). More and more, the online slang is being spoken inside schools and among cirlces of friends.
 

When I attempt to correct or explain English usage to friends and family, I usually get made fun of and called an English geek. I had come to the conclusion that since English was the second language of several of my friends at school, and some of my family, that I was made fun of because they had not mastered the English language. I thought they probably had trouble with it and I was being too harsh. My cousins hated and still hate to read and write. I am the one they call when they have essays to type or letters to write. I always asked myself Why? Why the lack of motivation to look up things? Why not try to read? Like I said, I figured it was because English was not their first language. However, Facebook and Twitter proved me wrong. I have several friends young and old, who write in another language online and still misuse it, even when it is their first language. Not only do they misuse the language, but they over-abbreviate and change the sound/spelling of words—purposely! I have tried asking some of my friends and family members why they do it. The answer is usually “I don’t know” or “because it’s boring.”

 I understand languages have evolved over time. Nevertheless, a huge question remains in my head: “Is the way English is being used today the laziest? And, if so, how much will it truly impact the English language?”

 

A quick history about language:

English derives from a language called proto-Indo-European which was spoken thousands of years ago. This original language, one of a number in the world, is the parent of various language families such as Germanic, Celtic, Hellenic, Italic, and Indo-Iranian. ¹

Each branch developed its own dialects over time and English developed from the Germanic branch. As much as it has changed, we have learned to adapt and learn to keep communicating. The history of the human race lies in writings, stories, and translations that have been passed on through the centuries; it is transported through language. The reason behind the huge changes cannot be pinned. Laziness? Transcription error? Was it the writer or the speaker?

Either I am obsessed with language, or I was born into the wrong family/circle of friends, but I seem to be the only one for miles who respects our language. I find that the further in time I go, the more beautiful the English language was—I mean look at Shakespeare, he appears in theatres, poetry class, and in any English class, in general. Chaucer was also a great, poetic-like master of the English language. I can go on and on, and name several writers who manipulated the English language in such a lyrical way. My list stops some thirty years ago. Who will bear the English of our time into another century?

 I simply can’t find anything romantic or poetic about the online slang; here are some examples: “FML” (f*** my life), “SMH” (shake my head), “Ur” (your), “stankin” (supposed to be stinking?), “da”(the), “dope sesh” (cool session), “rok’d” (rocked), or people using k’s instead of c’s or x’s instead of k's.
 

Sometimes, I have to google abbreviations and sayings in order to understand. Other times, I keep on scrolling because I am uninterested in seeing how much time a person takes to change our language, when they should be taking the time to write things the way they are supposed to be written. Technological advancements have impacted our daily lives in several ways (that's a whole other story...), but is the way it is affecting our langauge dumbing it down?

 

Aurora

1. Treharne, Elaine. Old and Middle English c.890--c.1450. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2010.

Here he is - Mr. America

Racism?  Just like those liberals to think that "American Values" are racist, says Fox jerk Todd Starnes and after all it was only 'politically correct' judges that enabled a dark skinned American woman of East Indian descent to win the Miss America contest over  someone with real American values like blond hair and big tits. American womanhood as traditionally seen by pageant judges always has been typified by tattooed Army Sergeants, hasn't it?  If that isn't true American womanhood, perhaps those judges will choose a man next.

"Americans were backing Miss Kansas -- but the liberal Miss America judges were not interested in a gun-toting, deer-hunting, military veteran." said Tiny Todd on his Facebook page on Sunday.  Americans -- Americans who can't tell the difference between Indians, Arabs and Muslims but are sure that to be an American; to have American values means TBBT: you're tall and blond and have big tits.

"Americans" (that being Todd) were backing Theresa Vail and I'm sure many were, even though most Americans I would venture have as little interest in this cattle call as I do -- even though tattoos make me cringe even on male Army Sergeants, she was a fine candidate and for all I know a fine person. 

If that's what the repulsive troglodyte from the caves of Fox likes, that's his privilege - de gustibus and all that, but for those of us who don't have a problem calling an American citizen, born and raised a 'real' American if they don't have 100% European ancestry; even for those of us who might actually consider an Indian or Chinese or Middle Eastern or, God forbid, African woman attractive and intelligent and talented and worthy to represent 'American Values"  --  for us Nina Davuluri is a fine choice and a real All-American girl.

Smug racist assholes like Starnes and the Network he rode in on don't, needless to say, represent any values, much less American ones I'd respect, or even tolerate -- or even refrain from punishing with extreme prejudice and considerable violence given the chance.  But I've been around long enough to know there isn't anything to be done about convincing these people. No dispassionate analysis, no baseball bat will make these people see non-European people as anything but a threat to their imaginary "values."  As Max Plank once said, the truth does not triumph by making its opponents see the light, but because they eventually die.

So if we're unable to stop hoping for some new America that gives more than lip service to its principles while festering like a cesspool of hate and stupidity and bellicose self-aggrandizement perhaps we should hope and pray that Fox fall into some lake of fire, that the earth opens up and swallows Todd Starnes like the foul and fetid carcass of the loathsome creature he is, so every good and true and righteous person can piss on his grave.

Global Climate Hoax?

Or not.

More than 20% of Einstein’s original papers contain mistakes of some sort, says Mario Livio in Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein.  Indeed, Darwin’s  Origin of Species contains far more of them, owing in no small part to the total ignorance of the mechanisms of heredity at the time or writing.  It was thought that the mysterious elements we now call genes simply mixed in the offspring like different colors of paint rather than like the shuffling of cards.  Yellow and blue paint may give green  until diluted by combining with one or the other color,  but Genes, Jacks and Queens are always one or the other and undiluted and a joker introduced into a deck will always turn up again sooner or later.  Darwin’s blunder was in not noticing that an advantageous mutation would under the blending model of his day eventually disappear, making  the passing on of small traits almost impossible with successive generations. 

Mountains of new data both from fossils, in the laboratory and from the comprehensive understanding of genetics proved that the blunder was only apparent when viewed in a glass darkly.  Inheritance didn’t work the way his detractors insisted  (and some still do.) As to one of Einstein’s apparent blunders, first in adding and then removing Lambda, the Cosmological Constant, the  truth seems when viewed through more modern glasses that  adding it was not a blunder but understanding it is so far an unachieved goal. 

  

Yet when we examine the kind of Denialism modern communications have  facilitated, we will find much commentary using the early pre-Mendelian uncertainties in the theory of Evolution to attack what may now be the most documented and supported theory of anything and further, a theory that gains more supporting data with every new discovery and finds wider and wider application.  We find, at least in my opinion, far less outrage about any of the proposed  explanations  of the apparently accelerating inflation of  empty space in our universe .  Astronomy was not yet advanced enough  for Einstein’s early cosmology to include an expanding cosmos, much less an accelerating expansion and he famously removed the constant, which he called ugly, from his equations as being no longer necessary. 

Still, deniers and opponents  of all sorts  exist and passionately marshal outdated observations, invalid arguments and fallacies against the science.  I don’t think I’m being venturesome by seeing patterns amongst denialists. I think there is a constellation of beliefs that seem to accompany passionate attacks on well documented  scientific and historical consensuses and they differ from the truly valid observations that consensus changes when new data appears.  There certainly is no new data refuting evolution, nor are geneticists and paleontologists moving in all seriousness away from accepting it. The same is true of  the currently accepted ages of the Earth or of the Universe.  There is no new data showing that millions were not rounded up and gassed by the Nazis and I’m convinced that there is no new data and only an assemblage of fragments of old data to argue that not only is the idea that the worldwide climate is changing but that the deforestation and   artificial introduction of  carbon and sulfur compounds  into the air are not a significant factor.  Arguments that examine only fragments of data, chosen for ambiguity are often cited without reference to other firm data that clarifies the matter. Insinuations are made of suppression for political reasons as if everyone from Communist to Libertarian would agree to delude the world for no particular gain.  Assertions are made that radiocarbon dating “is a joke” and  “is no longer trusted.” Assertions that  global warming is part of a natural cycle, contrary to observed data.  Assertions that one data set invalidates all other data with no mention of peer reviews of that set.  It’s almost monotonous.  

People, or at least a large proportion of the people who angrily deny theories and the data that support them also possess, as I mentioned, a constellation of other traits and particularly a personal attachment to belief systems political and religious.  Most people for instance, who argue in the total absence of empirical observation  and contrary to huge and growing masses of data, from physics, mathematics and geology  are certainly  religious.  Likewise, the people who write books and articles about the “hoax” of climate change tend also to have not only an affiliation with ‘Conservative’ politics and religious traditions but a propensity to assemble the same sort of arguments.  Concocted evidence of human footprints next to dinosaur tracks,  fictitious articles about oil forming magically in the deep strata,  dishonest testimony that evolutionary science is giving way to other interpretations,  books asserting  evidence against the existence of Nazi extermination camps almost always written either by heretofore unknown “experts”  often unconnected or only tangentially connected to the science in question or to science in general all grasped at  like floating straws to Denialists:  Books by Engineering professors about the Holocaust Hoax,  Articles and talks about  anthropogenic factors in climate change by aeronautical engineers,  and TV meteorologists.  Paleontologists, Paleoclimatologists, Geologists?  Not so much,  unless they work for the petroleum industry.

Certainly the history of science is the history of how theories are modified as technology allows new data; how theories are replaced by theories that explain observed phenomena, certainly -- but  giant worldwide hoaxes involving  nearly every scientist in a field including  suppression and falsification of data? I can’t think of one, nor can I think of a motivation that would affect such a widely diverse set of individuals and make them act in such unlikely  harmony.

No, as I said, not only Einstein’s work but the work of all the most brilliant pioneers of science and mathematics have contained errors, oversights and blunders.  We don’t have shoe salesmen writing anti-Newtonian diatribes. We don’t hear about Galileo’s Hoax, the mendacity of Kepler, do we and that's because they don't endanger the dearly held fictions of today's religious people or wealthy corporations.

Science progresses haltingly but the ultimate test is the agreement of theory with data even as data emerges and refines theory. Theories have been overthrown, discredited and abandoned but the level of passion involved has nothing to do with the soundness or unsoundness of a theory as history asserts in a loud voice.  If Einstein, Newton Kepler, Kelvin, Darwin, Hoyle and in fact all of them  spent their lives revising and reviewing, blundering and going back to the drawing board, none of them have been perpetrating hoaxes.  Hoaxes involving multitudes only seem apparent to certain kinds of people who share certain characteristics. Not understanding how science works is one of those characteristics. Being Republican is another.

There is no new data arguing against accepted cosmological and paleontological or anthropological theories. There is no emerging data arguing for a climate hoax, Intelligent design, a  worldwide flood  – only cranks seeking attention and the people with personal, financial and psychological reasons to become their disciples.  Yet they go on and on. Fox goes on reporting and deciding for us.