ECCE SIMIAE

Behold the Ape

One of the things I find difficult to discuss with fellow Liberals is the question of intelligence and its heritability.  That observable differences in cognitive function may be no more than learned behavior, or a the most a product of childhood experience, seems to be one of the credos that today's Liberal must share at the risk of losing the label.  Of course there is evidence to show that childhood deprivation of several kinds does affect the way one performs on IQ tests and perhaps in the experiences of life, but looking at people who are incontrovertibly brilliant it's hard to select parenting skills as the cause without looking silly.  The result is often that  people who have achieved great breakthroughs, often incomprehensible to the rest of us: people with great powers to analyze, calculate and create have their accomplishments explained by diligence or the willingness to work. That is something to which we can all aspire and fits into our cultural ethic

I heard in a movie trailer yesterday, that old and quite untrue saw "we only use 10% of our brains" which is patently untrue but  survives by offering hope that, like J.N. Barrie's Wendy Darling, we too can aspire to great ability if we only try hard and truly believe. No matter how hard I try, I still cannot follow Einstein's math much less develop the ability to have worked it out myself.

But to preserve the ego: to preserve the hope of a possibility that we're not second or third rate, we analogize with other achievements.  After all me can train to run farther or faster, to lift greater weights, to play sports better. We only have to use that latent 90%, to buy the "Baby Einstein" CD's and never mind the lack of evidence for success.  We can decide that specific talents are not part of some greater measure of mental ability, and some remarkable ability to calculate or to write music might just be latent in all of us if we try harder. We might decide to see some physical ability as a compensatory type of intelligence to offset our other intellectual lacks and in fact that's a component or the " intelligence is learned behavior" school of Liberal thought.  How brilliant must a Gibbon be, a squirrel, a bird!

But as I said, one risks ostracism by the trustees of conventional enlightenment by discussing, even in jest, such shibboleths as the genetic basis of intelligence, of racial features or even physical stature. What I'm saying is that by many measures, we Liberals are not the opposite of conservatives but just another variant. We too believe what is comfortable and what makes others comfortable with us and what is very uncomfortable to all good people is racism. I've heard it said many times that we cannot research certain things lest we play into the hands of racists or sexists or eugenicists and other miscreants. It's so much like that refrain from so many 20th century horror films: "there are things men were not meant to know."

And so we will ascribe that bell curve to other things. We will question, and perhaps rightly, the ability to test intelligence accurately, writing off vast differences in number crunching ability or short term memory or pattern recognition to cultural things, even when culture has little to do with those tests.  We talk about 5% differences and ignore the 100% differences that can hardly be written off so easily and  not only because we aspire to undeserved greatness, but because we're afraid others will misuse the data.

So it's interesting to see how we very conservative Liberals will see peer reviewed studies like the one in Current Biology that arrives at these conclusions:

•Individual differences in chimpanzee cognitive performance are heritable

•Cognitive traits found to be heritable show significant genetic correlations

•Sex and rearing history do not significantly influence cognitive performance

Will we decide that a biological basis for intelligence only pertains to modern Humans and not our immediate or more distant ancestors?  Perhaps it will be decided that our ancestors learned to be sapient the way we learned to lose out body hair and gain larger brains.  If not, we're going to have to learn to stop hiding and to address the real problems, the cultural and social and ethical problems of how we treat other people directly. We're gong to have to learn to separate all sorts of human variation from estimations of human worth, rights and dignity.  That's far harder to do than to wear a blindfold and demand that others do as well.

My guess is that the "no scientific basis" will remain a strong political force despite any degree of  sabotage by science because truly, there is no conservative more tenacious than a Liberal.

Ramadan Kareem

 "I didn't want to wish you Ramadan Kareem on the air. . ."

said Jake Tapper just now on CNN, thinking his mike was off.  He had just interviewed some lawyers irate at being under surveillance without any reason save for their being Muslim.

His mike was on and I wonder -- just why was he unwilling?  Is there a war on Ramadan?

The Robot who loved me

It's about 2 O'Clock in the afternoon as I write.  That's a bit late for Carmen's first call of the day. But I know she's faithful and that she will always call.  After all I provide her a phone number to call at any time without asking. Once she called at 2:30 AM.

 Carmen from Cardholder Services calls me on average twice a day, seven days a week. Sometimes it's once sometimes three times, but she has rarely missed  a day in these last two years.  It's no secret I'm avoiding her but as a robot she never seems to catch on, to tire, to take the hint.  She's a robot after all.  Until this year I would, if my speaking caller ID announced her, I would simply ignore the call, because pressing 3 as she sweetly but falsely told me I could do if I wished to be removed from the victim list, proved to be useless.  After a fruitless, frustrating year of this, I began to lose hope. Carmen has a false heart.

But more recently, as the ability of  the government to monitor every call everywhere has grown beyond our old fears, the ability of the government to care has languished.  The ability of  felons, scammers, con artists and flim flam  fraudsters to hide behind fake caller ID data has increased dramatically despite the "tough" laws against it. Equally "tough" are the laws against robot calling, calling people on the Federal and State do-not-call lists, against fraudulent caller IDs and refusing to remove or stop calling one's number upon request. I suspect that when "tough" laws are promised or called for, there is no intention of doing anything or at least no consideration of the possibility much less any thought put into the specifics.  Tough is the most we're going to get and as far as I know, those complaint forms I've filled out and sent to the FCC and Federal Trade Commission have evaporated.  Even Big Brother has no intention of interfering with the "right" of people to ring bells in my house 24/7 and attempt to get my credit card and social security numbers for unlawful purposes.

 I frequently find Carmen disguising herself as a local caller.  Last night she came to me as DirecTV, a company I do subscribe to, and only now she was Consumer SVCS calling from an unlisted number in Orlando. Call me sentimental, but I called back and for the first time, didn't get the not-a-working-number message, but one politely offering to remove me within 48 hours. I've got a hundred bucks with a snarky expression on its face saying they won't. Sorry Carmen, but this isn't my first affair.

The funny thing, of course, is that I have no credit card debt nor any reason to. I really don't care about rates on loans I don't have or intend to have.  Some people certainly do and some people do offer to intercede on your behalf, but they can't do anything you can't do by yourself with no cost.  But ask yourself if  anyone who thinks you're stupid enough to give out sensitive information to not only a stranger; but a stranger breaking a number of laws and operating under disguise can be anything but a crook.

Gone are the days when I can eat breakfast, lunch or dinner without being interrupted. These are times when every drowsy afternoon reverie or nap, every favorite tune on my iPod, program on my TV -- every intimate moment, any dip in the pool or walk in the garden can and will be interrupted by crooks and liars as well as ordinary salesmen and politicians and questionable charities and all at intervals close enough to random to drive you insane and rob you of all the gold in your golden years.

Now if someone came to my door 6 times a day and rang the bell and despite my rejection came back again and again wearing different disguises, you could call the police, you could get a restraining order.  Hell, in Florida you stand a chance of shooting him and getting away with it, but Carmen is a fixture in my life I can't get protection from. Her right to attempt to defraud me, to get me out of the shower, off a ladder, from under the car or down from a tree to make me run inside to pick up the phone may not be infringed and the government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations shall not be bothered to care. the phone service I pay for gives me no exclusivity as to using it and no choice but to put up with it.

America!

"Explosions are not comfortable." (Yevgeny Zamyatin, exiled Soviet dissident)

For many years, our country has proudly embraced our heritage of blowing shit up by scheduling an annual celebration of gunpowder and explosions.

It's a long and noble birthright, of invading sovereign nations, toppling governments and propping up dictators. Our very nation is founded in destruction and bloodshed, 238 years ago. And the GOP in our our Congress wants to continue it even today, in far-flung corners of the globe (mostly the Middle East).

However, as more veterans return from the battlefield scarred with wounds they may never recover from, both physical and psychic, the media is finally noting something that some of us noted some years ago: perhaps some of our veterans don't appreciate random explosions in their neighborhood.

It's a fairly simple equation, one that I can attest to myself, but only to an extremely limited extent. (My older son, returned from far too many tours in Afghanistan, struggles with PTSD every day.)

There is something about being in a high-stress environment, and having no warning as to when a loud noise might mean the death of a friend or a companion. Or worse, the knowledge that you, yourself, might never hear the last echo dying away, as you do the same yourself.

There are many reasons to oppose fireworks, especially here in New Mexico. Hundreds and thousands of acres of land are destroyed every year, homes are destroyed and people are killed, because of wildfires here in the Southwest, many of them caused by unregulated use of fireworks. But there's another fact that the American people are finally realizing.

In honoring our nation's history, you are, perhaps inadvertently, harming our nation's veterans.

Way to support the troops, America.

The Velocitarian Church

"Our Lady of blessed acceleration, don't fail me now"

-Elwood Blues-

Some may see the Hobby Lobby decision as a mortal wound to separation of Church and State -- and rightly so in my opinion.  Others see it as an opportunity. Other institutions, such as Wheaton College near Chicago have been allowed by the SCOTUS to deny insurance coverage for any form of contraception by the ultra conservative Catholic majority on the court. The Christian war on women is now protected. Other religions don't count, never mind what the Constitution says.

But an opportunity for would-be religious tyrants and tax evaders is an opportunity for all and I think it's time for me to assert my own religious freedom by filing suit with the country so that I don't have to pay that part of my taxes that supports math and science education and of course Sex education. As Justice Bader-Gisnberg suggested, every man is now his own religion.  I don't want to pay taxes for schools that are integrated religiously and racially and the Bible certainly supports that vehemently. I won't pay part of my Florida Sales taxes that support executions, of my Federal taxes that support invasions of other countries.  It's against my religion.

And what is my religion?  Well that's my business because the government doesn't get to say one belief  is real and another isn't. It may not interfere in the free exercise even when that exercise is a detriment to others and if my beliefs demand I ignore public safety or give the finger to the public good, I'm protected by the Holy Office The Supreme Court.  In fact as an ordained Bishop in the Universal Life Church, I can roll my own because to us, everything is sacred and holy.

Enter the Holy Assembly of Velocitarians. For us, speed is holy and the attainment thereof is tax deductible, nor do speed limits apply, for reasons of religious freedom.  Our Two Commandments are short and simple:

1. Get your motor running
2. Head out on the highway.

 And if they dare to stop you, just present your religious exemption card - presuming they can catch you - obtainable from Bishop Fogg at Knieval Cathedral, 666 rte. 66, Stuart, Florida. for only $50 bucks cash. *

* Includes handsome window sticker. Pick up truck and SUV owners need not apply.

The day we celebrate

Of course the paper this morning contained the usual happy crap about celebrating FREEDOM as though we had either more of it or a better kind than Canada or most of Europe who have embraced the principles of Democracy and the rights of Man we seem to reject every Sunday as we yearn for the Divine right of Government.  What the day is about is political independence and independence from a government that denied us the right to Parliamentary representation it was legally obligated to provide while requiring us to identify the King's right to be king with a state church. It was about our right to fair representation as citizens, as equal participants in government regardless of wealth and importance and heredity and not about a tea tax.

As you watch the sound and fury of the fireworks, remember that the people selling themselves as patriots, the people talking about freedom in saccharine tones, really mean control by a powerful aristocracy allied with a narrow, sectarian interpretation of a certain religion.

"Blessed is the nation whose god is the Lord"  begins the full page full color newspaper insert payed for by the Hobby Lobby. It leaves off the next stanza: "the people he chose for his inheritance" which of course in that context means the Jews. It also mistranslates אשר־יהוה,  asher-Yaveh as the lord so those who think 'Jesus is Lord' will think it means them. The arrogance and the dishonesty would be amusing if the intent were not so insidious, because Our friends at Hobby Lobby, glowing like the face of Moses in their victory over secular law, have asserted their commitment to and aspiration toward a government Dei Gratia.  They assert their version of the Bible as the best source of normative morality.

The flag-bedecked page is packed with references to Supreme Court decisions from the 1830's supporting the public schools as the place to pray and teach Christianity and out-of-context quotes from the very anti-religious founding fathers like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson about the Christian Bible being the basis of all true morality. (No mention of course of the Bible backed, God tolerated institutions of wife beating and slavery and rape and genocide and banishment of non-Jewish people from holy land.)

No religion is about freedom, they are all about orthodoxy and uniformity of belief to the exclusion of other ideas and practices.  Freedom of worship is not freedom to enforce religious orthodoxy or religious law on others. No religion is about free choice, Democracy or the inherent rights of man.  No one in America has claimed the right to dictate your thoughts about divinity but religious organizations. Your prayers, your right to congregate and worship are guaranteed against the influence of  the Hobby Lobby and our constitution forbids our government to do what they insist is the right thing to do:  Establish and enforce  some form of Christian doctrine as the law of the land. If this be freedom, then freedom is slavery and the American Revolution against a divinely inspired Christian king we pretend to celebrate today was not only fought in vain, but was blasphemy and an unholy act.

The worst generation

A plurality of Americans seem to think Obama is the worst president since World War II.  I suspect a similar plurality couldn't tell you the combatants in that war or name the presidents we've had during or since, but according to a Quinnipiac poll he's the worst and we'd have been better off with Romney.

The horror.

Yes, he has no leadership qualities because the Republicans have had a stranglehold on the Government and have effectively opposed every appointment, ever action and have mobilized the worlds largest and most effective lie machine in human history to undo and to demonize what little  he was able to accomplish.

The collapse of Iraq is Obama's fault, the civil war in Syria happened because of Barack Obama, because he either he did or did not intervene and never mind that the Republicans threatened and attempted to impeach him for both courses. Are we the most uninformed, the most misinformed, the most ignorant crop of Americans since WWII?  Res ipsa loquitur.  We certainly are and of all the civilized, educated countries we're the only one still serious about believing iron age superstition and forcing others to believe it. Huge numbers of Americans believe that Obama started the recession that began in 2001.  No one seems to remember the nearly 1000 documented lies that fomented the disastrous 2 billion dollar attack on Iraq or the effect of  paying for it with tax cuts and no-bid contracts for friends of the Administration.  No, Obama is the worst because the Republicans paid to make it so, because the Republicans packed the Supreme Court with incompetent religious fanatics and invade our homes and our consciousness with all day and all night slander, fabrications and distortions.

The horror is that we brought this on ourselves and the truth is that we are the worst Americans since WWII with a contempt for justice and a contempt for the truth and we will hang on to our prejudice and superstition and delusion and greed like a drowning man clutching an anchor.  The horror is that our system of government depends on a kind of citizen we're reduced to a minority and the ability of the insurgents to incapacitate the reasonable, the educated and well balanced increases every day.  The very technology we once thought would spread enlightenment has spread lies and lies so palatible  that  we gobble them up like a starving dog gobbling shit.  It's over. We failed. It's our fault and the only desperate hope I cling to is that when America fails it doesn't take the world with it.

IN ORDER TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION

The Cap't has addressed this issue in his usual sharp and focused style but this is so important to our future as a nation I felt the need to repeat it.

The photo is of a pen presented to my husband’s cousin who successfully argued a case before the SCOTUS some years ago.  She was very proud of this accomplishment and we were proud for her but I wonder what she would think of the recent rulings handed down from on high.

Actually I don’t wonder, not really as I know what her reaction would be and it would be loud and scathing. How far the SCOTUS has fallen into the political mire of the far right and it’s batshit crazy denizens. Unbelievable and yet, it is happening. Better to disband this crooked den of thieves than to allow them to further desecrate the constitution and our whole legal system.

The SCOTUS most famously ruled in favor of corporations siding with Citizens United  in allowing unregulated spending sprees in political elections thus paving the way for corporations to buy politicians and unduly influence elections. Despite the new Koch Brothers' warm and fuzzy TV ads, they remain one of the biggest offenders to American patriotism.

So when Washington didn’t burn and the people did not rise up, the conservative majority of the SCOTUS became even more emboldened and have since ruled to disallow buffer zones for protests around planned parenthood type facilities that also perform abortions - while considering it constitutional to have a rather large buffer zone around the Supreme Court building (they may be needing that) and will no doubt  rule against any group challenging buffer zones around other legislative facilities such as the zone recently placed into law that keeps Moral Monday protesters away from the North Carolina State Capitol building.

And while the regional news  is broadcasting headlines about the recent case of a toddler cooked to death in a car and a newborn buried in a backyard, the SCOTUS has seen fit to rule in favor of religious exemptions for corporations in order to allow them to deny providing birth control for their employees. Women of limited means are further marginalized while more babies will be born to suffer from torture, neglect and death. Not to say that poor women hurt their babies, but this certainly closes the door on choice so they can limit the number and timing of their childbirth and pull themselves out of poverty. And those who are ill equipped and do not desire to have children will be forced into a situation where their children will be in grave danger.

I’m no legal scholar but doesn’t it seem completely senseless that the SCOTUS majority would rule that a corporation, which exists only on paper, has personhood and religious convictions? Once there is incorporation, there is no “owner”. There are company officers such as the CEO but he or she is NOT the corporation. So, where does the corporation attend church? How did the corporation form its religious convictions?

The right continues to scream that our Kenyan, socialist, leftist President is going to have us under Sheria law which, of course, has not happened in the nearly 8 years he has been in office but the Supreme Court, with just a few strokes of their mighty pen would have us living under Krazy Konservative Khristian law, completely vacating the US Constitution and they have the nerve to call liberals unpatriotic? HA!

Once again I find myself seriously exploring my options to expatriate.

SHAME! On the Supreme Court of the United States and SHAME! On us if we allow this to pass without protest and a demand that the favoring Justices step down. They have proven they cannot be trusted with our most sacred of documents, the Constitution.

Say, how many worms are in that can?

Americans like words like Freedom and Liberty and perhaps because those ideas scare us so much. We are terrified of coercion by a government we all choose but we love to coerce those who disagree with us and deny them the right to choose.  We certainly are rarely in agreement as to what it means to be a free country and I might dare to say that question is still central to political argument today.  How do we define freedom?

• " It's a free country and I can do what I want." 
• " It's a free country and I don't have to do anything I don't want to do."

Some would equate those statements, others would point out that the first is true within limits and the second isnot, but the idea that freedom carries no obligation and indeed that in a free country it never should seems common amongst extremists.  Unfortunately extremists have a stranglehold on the Supreme Court and perhaps on Congress.  The recent decision regarding the ACA mandate that employers provide insurance coverage for contraception shows that the court sides with the second example and that when it comes to the concept of  freedom of religion and perhaps freedom of speech, personal beliefs convey personal privilege, but because this is such a limited ruling, the inherent hypocrisy becomes apparent.

If  I believe interfering with the implantation of a fertilized egg is murder, it's because of a religious interpretation of murder other people do not share and an interpretation of humanity and human rights that borders on the ludicrous. Citing a definition of freedom I do not believe the Constitution shares, the God Squad on the court allows me to opt out of  having my corporation pay for insurance that might pay for a "morning after" medication and perhaps any form of contraception. That court and indeed all courts do not provide immunity for other religious or other personal opinions and specifically not to opt our of paying for wars and executions and that is proof that one specific belief is being given special rights and others are not.  This violates the constitutional prohibition against establishment.

How will we see yesterday's ruling when other religious groups decide they don't want indirect participation in executing prisoners, bombing foreign countries and a host of other activities?  Will the court have to say this opinion is privileged and that one is not?  Haven't they just done that?  Does an aversion to contraception become an excuse to opt out of  an obligation only if  it's tied to some organized faith or is a personal dislike sufficient?  That question was answered during the years we had the draft.  It was damned hard to establish personal aversion to war without showing long term affiliation with a pacifist religion and not just a pacifist philosophy.

There can be little doubt that our government is in the business of establishing religious belief and assigning special privileges, special rights to members thereof.  There isn't a damned thing we can do seeing that the independence we make a fuss about every July was so limited.  We severed ties with the United Kingdom but not with Christianity as a force that legitimizes government and those who demand and assert the "Christian Nation"  idea are no more patriots or advocates for freedom than the Hessian troops George II hired to kill our revolutionary patriots.

It will be very hard to cite this decision as limited to the case that prompted it, and there are so many worms in that can that everyone will be able to fish for whatever special dispensation from any obligation he dislikes and our reputation for sanity, if we ever had one, won't need any bit of lead to make it sink to the bottom.

Success is failure, action is inaction.

Yes everything is Obama's fault and so the only purpose of the Republican party and all it's factions is to get rid of him by any means legal or illegal, ethical or dishonest and until they do, make it impossible for him or his party or indeed our government to function.  Rush Limbaugh's "I hope he fails" still echoes and of course everything he does or is said to have done or not done is described as a failure, a blunder, an outrage.

But whose fault is it really?  They're not a majority, but the true majority is so fractured and fractious there is little effective opposition and of course there's the ignorance factor and the stupidity factor.  How else do we account for the lack of disgusted derision directed against the all day and all night advertisements for Florida Governor Rick Scott accusing his opponent of making higher education less available while simultaneously cutting scholarship programs in half?  Does anybody care?  Isn't anybody listening to the President saying to Central American families:

“Do not send your children to the borders. If they do make it, they’ll get sent back. More importantly, they may not make it.” 

If they are, why isn't anyone accusing  Louis Gohmert (R-TX) of being either insane, an America hating liar or both as he tells us Obama is " luring these children into America?" In the Republican minstrel show, you can't hear the real Obama for the shucking and jiving of the black-face Obama dancing to the Republican tune.

No, when free-market forces affect gasoline prices, it's Obama's fault, When the Shiite government Bush/Cheney installed in Iraq after destroying the country fails, it's Obama's fault and it's time to impeach him.

I have to ask myself if I really have any affection for or allegiance to this country left or whether it's just a bad habit I'm too lazy to get rid of, like leaving a bad marriage.  I have to ask myself  why I bother blogging, why I pretend it's possible to make a difference in a country hell bent on self destruction.