Romney Shrugged

One casual observation I suspect of having some merit  is that people who complain a lot about some failing in others are covering up something similar in themselves.  Perhaps those who make such a constant noise about large numbers of our countrymen being freeloaders while covering themselves in self-adulation would give weight to the conjecture. Are they really getting a raw deal?

One certainly does hear more than enough fiction from the Republican Party's candidates about welfare queens driving Cadillacs and the stifling of initiative that comes from subsidized school lunches and perhaps a bit less about subsidies for business interests and of course, now we have that abominable new straw man, the 47%.

It's an American habit, and not just a Conservative habit, to dismiss, and often angrily dismiss any discussion of  factual support for political arguments and particularly examples of how our assertions fail to be born out in other countries, so of course those who support Mr. Romney for reasons known only to their subconscious minds, that 47% of Americans do not make enough money at present to pay Federal Income Tax are happy to frame that in terms of government dependency.  

Of course, as with most things you hear from Romney and Ryan, it's not true at all, finely crafted as the rhetoric might be and as effective in pushing that American middle class self pity hot button. As Ezra Klein pointed out in the Washington Post not long ago, the taxpayer supporting a family on $40,000 a year may not pay Federal Income Tax, but he's paying tax on every dollar he makes while the fortunate one ( excuse me, the selfless job creator) making $4,000,000 is likely paying  less than 35% on the whole chalupa.  As Klein says, it's phrased that way to make it seem only fair to give a break to those heavily burdened 'job creators.'  What it's not supposed to do is to remind you that the $40,000 'freeloader' is paying payroll tax on every dime up to around $100,000.  So when you look at the total family tax bill, it seems quite a different story.  The numbers make liars out of a lot of people and the burden is being shouldered by the rich and poor only it's the poor and the struggling middle who can't pay their bills because of it.  Taxes aren't cutting into the caviar budget, they're making it harder to buy the canned tuna and hamburger helper; harder to pay for college, harder to pay those ridiculous medical bills and harder to buy those new cars and appliances and houses that are the real job creators.

Not 47 percent paying nothing, but everybody paying something, and most Americans paying between 25 percent and 30 percent of their income.  Where are the freeloaders?  Where are all those hordes of freeloaders eating up the hard earned dollars of the job creating Galts?  The taxpayer earning a hundred grand pays more than the one making over a million and the poverty stricken have to pay 20% of their miserable $25K all of which they need to spend to stay alive.  Is it difficult to refrain from bad language and malediction when listening to such damaging lies?  You bet.

So they're lying of course and as usual. The total tax burden is far more equally distributed than the Republicans want you to believe and one might make a case that the people crying loudest about freeloaders are getting a better deal then they would like to admit. Perhaps there's some hidden guilt involved, perhaps not.

There is no more factual support for calling nearly half of us freeloaders dependent  upon government subsidy than there is for Ryan's 3 hour marathon times and in reply to that cynical bumper sticker I saw yesterday sneering "4 more years?  Are you out of your mind?"  Why no sir, I'm not and I'd remind you that neither intelligence nor honesty are more equitably distributed in the world than money. 

Sin and Atonement

Today is Yom Kippur and being an atheist and unobservant Jew, the fact that I remembered is unusual for me.  A collection of ritual and remembrance and appeals for mercy to some doddering old imaginary reprobate in the upper troposphere aren't the sort of things I often occupy my mind with, but for the random musings I sometimes indulge in on gray mornings such as this. 

I don't know all that much about the origins of  this holy day.  Vague memories from childhood religious school attempts at indoctrination, involve the guilt of pretending to be Christian following 1492.  I'm not sure it's quite true, but then even the true myths aren't quite honest, are they? Besides that was a few years before I was born and I never pretended not to be a Jew.

Anyway, Judaism is hardly unique in being soaked to the bone in feelings of guilt and sinfulness and the feeling of remorse for things that need not produce it; things that often never happened. There are sins we get from sexual thoughts not approved by authority ( few are) and sins we get from mythological ancestors who didn't exist and couldn't have committed them. That's more of a Christian thing, of course and even if a childless, non-Christian God might forgive you ad libitum and with regard to your subsequent actions.  We can't avoid it though, even as Jews, and prophets from time immemorial were there to tell you that every misfortune you'd think God would have prevented happened because -- well just because you're steeped in sin. Whatever happens, there's always a prophet there to cash in by blaming it on sin and with his hand out for offerings.

People will tell you that prostitution is the oldest profession, but of course freedom to exchange favors didn't originate until some priest, some prophet, learned to control his tribe by threatening them with some imaginary god; by inventing sin and selling a way to make it go away.  Give part of the hunt to God by letting the priest eat it, support your synagogue and maintain the kind of ethnocentrism needed to support the clergy and government by expiating the guilt, atoning for the "sin."

And sin, almost by necessity, has nothing to do with  harming anyone.  The original sin had to do with disobedience to arbitrary command ( he's jealous by his own admission, remember) and in particular the disobedience involved in learning about morality -- taking moral decisions into one's own hands as one takes a piece of fruit into one's mouth. It involves a forbidden improvement of our human lot for which we will be punished -- unless. . .  Upon that unless is many a church founded.

So if you're a Jew, you may be afraid not to spend today hungry and thirsty and miserable, chastising yourself for committing all those sins we surely must have committed  but not necessarily reporting to the police or the IRS or our spouses so that old whoozis in the clouds will let us live another year and you'll do it in full knowledge that there's no correlation whatsoever between ritual, sin, expiation and living another year.  After all we've made decisions and had thoughts the priests and prophets, rabbis and our relatives didn't decide or think for us and  Yahweh-in-the-sky-with-lightening wouldn't approve of us making all by ourselves.

But of course, this is a Jewish holiday, observed by many Jews simply because they are Jews and feel in need of that sort of identity for one reason or another even if it's only to set them apart from others with their own ways of expiating their innate feelings of unworthiness.

CNN's Belief Blog asks us what we are atoning for, and some of the answers gave rise to this post.  One sad response was about pushing his sister down the stairs and blaming it on the dog. Another pointed out that as a Catholic, she atoned for her laziness and impatience, as though she somehow owed some cosmic entity much hard work without asking for any return. (40 days longer than those flaky Jews as she pointed out) Perhaps that lack was somehow as bad as pushing someone down the stairs, but I'll leave the ranking of sins to the self-appointed experts. All I can do is talk about the harm one does to another. Perhaps therefore, an apology to the sister would do more good than religious ritual or the profession of a credo, but I fear an apology to the dog would be as effective in obtaining forgiveness from the infinite and uncaring cosmos.

Then of course was the writer who tweeted:

"I don't need to atone for anything. Jesus Christ already atoned for every wrong thing I've ever done or will do."

I don't know if he or she was standing on a pedestal while tweeting, but that's how I imagine it.  Forgive me if I find that to be dangerous and arrogant and a rejection of moral scruple and if I cannot imagine any mystic process by which the execution of an ancient political and religious dissenter  would free one of moral responsibility (or any trace of humility) but that's religion for you.  Chum the waters with fear of unavoidable and dire consequences and then offer a hook with a way out wrapped around it that's so entirely meaningless in moral terms it can't be dealt with by appeal to fact or reason and perhaps only with Tertullian's 'Credo quia absurdum' which, being in itself absurd really doesn't deal with it anyway.

So anyway, I'm a Jew and it's Yom Kippur and even though there are countless things I'm sorry for having done or not done, my thoughts are my business and I go where they lead me and I don't expect special favors or indulgences for not eating bacon or sewing a cotton shirt with linen thread or any of the 600 some odd commandments or for not atoning for things that never happened or can't be made better or be undone because I don't matter all that much.  It all comes to the same thing and our Earth will boil away and our Sun die and the universe disperse forever into the cold and dark and all our gods and atonements in vain, time without end.

Meet Sylvia Earle, Oceanographer

Every once in a great while, you meet or hear someone who excites something inside of you that may have been sleeping. You may not realize that your passion has diminished. It happens so slowly. We feel the same as we ever did. There are spirits here among us that keep that child-like sense of wonder all of their lives. They awaken inside of us our own caring and love for our earth, our oceans and all of the myriad living creatures and delicate ecosystems therein. Such a person is famed scientist, aquanaut and conservationist, Dr. Sylvia Earle. Her credentials are unsurpassed, yet she comes across in her mission to reach true believers as a truly humble and grateful person.

Many of you have lived fifty or more years near an ocean or shore. Maybe you lived at the shore as a youth. Much of marine life is concentrated near the shores in shallow waters. Only the great juggernauts of the sea, such as the white shark and the whales traverse the vast distances of open ocean. You have very likely seen a drastic reduction in the abundance and diversity of marine life in your local waters. Whether it's the size and the frequency of catching the great game fish in the Gulf of Mexico or just poking around in the tidepools at low tide. We have all noticed a marked decline in our own lifetimes. Once hunted to near extinction, the beautiful sea otter once ranged the entire California coast. Otters off of the coast of San Diego feasted happily on the abundant abalone. The Cahuilla Indians and lesser known or forgotten local tribes ate the nutritious mountain oak acorns in the summers and enjoyed seafood during the winter months in our local waters. John Steinbeck in his love song to his native Monterey, Cannery Row, forever immortalized the octopi of La Jolla with his great hero and object of affection, Doc. Doc harvested the ocean creatures mercilessly, to create slide series for schools. He had a thousand specimens in formaldehyde. He lived in a time when we believed that the resources of the ocean were unlimited.  Yet even Cannery Row documents the decline and collapse of the Monterey sardine canning industry as early as the 1930s. When I was a teenager, I could walk down to the wharf and see the great fleets of tuna boats.  A tuna takes twenty to twenty-five years to reach full size.  Many of the Orange Roughie that are harvested by the devastating method of trawling the ocean floor have reached an age of one hundred years.  I have been told that my beloved off-shore sandy waters of La Jolla were beds of abalone as late as the 1940s. Even in the 1970s many abs could still be had in the rocks and crevices. And many a diver was unhappily attacked by a moray eel. I myself have seen an octopus, a sea hare, a nucleus of tiny opaleyes, sea urchins, starfish, living wavy-top snails, tiny perfectly shaped shells no bigger than a matchhead, manta rays, blue sharks, rock cod, a moray swimming in open water at the La Jolla Cove and many other species too numerous to list. Today the tidepools are largely dead. A few sea anemones and crabs eek out an existence. Even barnacles and mussels are in decline.

So learn, my friends, of Sylvia and her love for our oceans and her awareness that healthy oceans are vital to all healthy ecosystems on land.  Learn how vulnerable our marine ecosystems really are.  Learn how over-fishing has decimated as much as 90% of large fish populations.  Learn what we can do to save these living systems of mother earth while there still is time.  And enjoy her recollections of a remarkable career in undersea exploration.  Herein the famous TED talk.




Much of the TED talk is taken from this talk given at UC Berkeley about her project Mission Blue.



And to find out who she really is as a person and a dedicated scientist, check out Conversations with History with Harry Kreisler of UC Berkeley. Harry is a sensation in his own right.



The picture at the top of this post? That's Sylvia in 1979 getting into the JIM suit. She walked the ocean floor at a depth of 1,250 feet. Imagine the courage it would take to plunge down to the bottom in a thin shell where the pressure exceeds five hundred pounds per square inch.

VOICES FROM THE 47%

Mitt Romney said that the 47% of Americans who will vote for President Obama are "dependent" on government, think of themselves as "victims," and will never "take personal responsibility for their lives" (Credit: Moveon.org).  He was talking about you, me, and millions of other Americans, including these:

 

If anyone has a story to tell, go to the submission page of Moveon.org.

Time to call Congress. Again.

If you've been paying attention to little things like "reality" (as opposed to the partisan propaganda that seems to have overtaken much on the American thoughtscape), you've probably noticed that Obama is something of a centrist. He prefers to work with both sides to come to a conclusion that both can live with.

Of course, if you listen to Fox "News," he's a dangerous radical and the most far-left socialist of our time. And if you just hang out on the extreme right fringes, he's a (pick any two... or four) dangerous radical leftist Muslim socialist Satanic communist Kenyan fascist extremist arrogant totalitarian dictator terrorist. (Some of them try to avoid saying "black" or any variation of it, although Rush Limbaugh did try to coin the phrase "halfrican" at one point. But let's move on.)

The Right applied a similar fun-house mirror effect to the presidency while Clinton was in office, labeling him a hippie and a "radical leftist," despite the fact that Clinton implemented a dramatic deficit reduction plan while lowering the taxes of working family; he developed a crime bill which hired 100,000 police officers and drastically expanded the use of the death penalty; he instituted the Defense of Marriage Act and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (despite their recent love of it, right wingers thought DADT would destroy the military at the time); and despite the myth of "liberals loving Big Government", Clinton reduced the size of government more than any president in three decades.

A lot of this anti-Clinton propaganda, of course, can be laid at the feet of Newt Gingrich, the nascent Fox "News" Channel, and their efforts to radicalize the right. In their ongoing efforts to rewrite history, the Right really, really wants to ignore what they were doing at the time. Some of us lived through it, though.

But I digress.

Despite the propaganda, Obama tries to work with Republicans. They're just too polarized to respond. And the fear is, he might be willing to consider cutting Social Security in his upcoming budgets. (After all, it wouldn't be the first time he's offered it.)

Which is why Senate Democrats have been forced to make a stand.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and 28 other members of the 53-member Senate Democratic caucus have signed a letter opposing any cuts to Social Security as part of a deficit reduction package.

The letter forms a significant marker as Congress looks toward a possible deficit bargain in the lame-duck session after the election. It says Social Security has problems down the road, but that they should be dealt with separately from any budget deal.

And this seemed like an appropriate approach to me. So, looking down the list, I noted that one of my two Senators, Tom Udall, had already signed on. I sent him a little note

Senator Udall,

I appreciate your efforts to help the most vulnerable American citizens. Specifically, in this case, I'd like to thank you for signing onto the letter that Senators Sanders, Franken and others put together, opposing any cuts to Social Security.

Full disclosure: I do not use Social Security, nor does any member of my immediate family, as far as I know. (My father, who retired from the Army as a full Colonel, does collect Social Security, but his retirement check could still support him even without it.)

However, I understand, unlike our Republican friends, that Social Security is an earned benefit, that far too often helps those who would otherwise be unable to support themselves. Even Paul Ryan, who only managed to go to college after his father died because of the Survivor's Benefits, wants to destroy any trace of a safety net in America (mostly because he's a hypocritical gasbag who follows Ayn Rand - not that he's willing to admit that while he's running for Vice President, but he has in the past).

Again, thank you, Senator. As long as you keep doing the right thing for the American people, you can always count on my my support.

But that's only one Senator. Like most states, New Mexico has two.

I was, perhaps, somewhat less supportive in my email to the other one.

Senator Bingaman,

I realize that you aren’t running for reelection, but I would appreciate it, as your constituent, if you could walk your butt down to Senator Reid’s office and sign on to the letter put together by Senators Sanders, Franken and company, saying that you oppose any cuts to Social Security as part of a deficit reduction package.

It would be nice if you could show that you cared about the most vulnerable citizens and in some small way, were opposed to allowing Americans to starve.

I realize that Social Security will need to be fixed sometime in the next twenty years or so, but eliminating the cap on any income over $107 thousand dollars might be enough to do that all by itself.

Please do the right thing as long as you’re still in office.

Thank you,

I realize that it's only a drop in the proverbial bucket; on the other hand, they say that one letter is counted as the opinion of a hundred people. I'm not sure how they count emails, but there it is.

I demand my own insult from Mitt Romney!

Not to crowd out Octo's more important post, but I really have to say this: I watched that outed Mitt-Vid yesterday in full, and while the Mittster was admirably bold in insulting 47% of the nation in a manner that left no doubt about his utter contempt for them, still, I'm not quite certain that he has insulted me personally.  I'm pretty sure he has since I'm voting for that Kenyan Moozlum atheist communist fascist fellow Barack Obama, but I assert my right to have the matter clarified.  I want my own personal insult from Mitt Romney, just so there's no possible misunderstanding.  After all, a man who aspires to be president must be willing to insult ALL of the people, not just a lucky 47% here and there.  What about the other 53% who haven't yet been properly insulted?  What are they (or we) -- chopped liver?  It's called inclusiveness, and a president can't aspire to greatness without it.

FOR MEN ONLY

Historically, more men tend to vote the so-called Daddy Party (i.e. Republicans); and more women tend to favor the Mommy Party (i.e. Democrats). Understandably, women will vote for the party that best supports their aspirations – equality in the workplace, access to healthcare, and freedom to choose. What I can’t fathom is why men ignore issues of vital concern to the women in their lives. So here is my message:  Hey dude!  Where is your conscience?

Do you want your mother, wife, girlfriend,

sisters, or daughters treated like this:

Please note: Congress renewed the Violence Against Women Act but the GOP

refused to include protections for immigrants and the LGBT community.

As a father who raised three daughters, I feel a solemn obligation to support their rights as free and equal citizens – without Inquisitors violating their privacy, without states restricting their healthcare choices, without legislators asserting control over their bodies, without employers prying into their medical records, without derision, discrimination, sexism, or harassment.  It is time for men to take a stand and support the women in their lives.  Wake up, dickheads!

News Flash:

Rush Limbaugh blames shrinking penis size on “feminazis”

Earlier today, Rush Limbaugh cited an Italian study that claimed male penis size is now 10% smaller than 50 years ago.  According to the study, the incredible shrinking schwantz is caused by environmental factors such as air pollution and global warming.  But not according to Rushbo (Credit: Media Matters):

“I don’t buy this. I think it’s feminism. I think if its tied to the last 50 years — if the average size of a member is 10 percent smaller — it has to be the feminazis, chickification and everything else.”

Exploiting a male castration complex to whip up hysteria against women … this is Rushbo’s vital bodily essence. You can’t make up stupidity like this.   It is an example of blatant misogyny! And extreme cowardice!

Your intrepid (O)CT(O)PUS has the inside track on yet another research finding: The most foolproof form of contraception yet devised, better than condoms, safer than IUDs, and more foolproof than the pill:

Rushbo in the nude!

Smoke a little Tea with Brucie

Life provides some tasty moments, even in lean  and hopeless times: delicious little bonbons like the news that the Romney campaign had to borrow $20 million last month and is still $11 million in the hole. Of course that wouldn't have happened if it weren't for that socialist Obama.  Say, maybe he can pay off that debt by cutting costs and quitting now!  Nah, he'll have to raise some revenue by going after the very, very, very rich.  Irony is sweeter than Tupelo honey.

But it's the disconnect, the discontinuity at the interface between reality and the wild and hyperbolic hurricane of principle and theory and doctrine and ad hoc explanations that makes these things so sticky, gooey sweet.

I had to laugh today at a newspaper comic strip called Mallard Fillmore that illustrates that discontinuity; bashing Obama and Liberals and free thinkers so desperately, it's obvious that Bruce Tinsley the perpetrator, has long since run out past the boundaries of the real into a world of his own where Obama is falling in the polls and Tinsley has some far better alternative to offer, but don't ask. 

Humor from the alternate reality where Bush's failures were Clinton's fault, where the Bush economic fundamentals were 'robust' and where paying off Bush's unprecedented spending spree means the debt is Obama's fault.A reality where the government cannot create jobs but that Damn Obama isn't creating the jobs we demand.

Hey, I'm four years older than I was four years ago.  Damn those Liberals!

No, sorry Tinsley, you never were funny. Bitter, angry and a bit delusional and really a bit pathetic certainly.  You've been very wrong for a very long time and you need to recognize it.  You get printed so that the papers can pretend to be balanced, so that their corporate owners can be told that their viewpoints are being served and so that the barrel scrapings, the scab picking, booger eating, shack dwelling, debt ridden 98 IQ dregs of hung over humanity might buy an occasional paper and find something they have the vocabulary to read and feel good about themselves that they too can hate that Damned Obama just like you -- find an anger bigger than their own to unite behind.

Inside Romney's Head: The Dead Zone

According to Mitt Romney, I'm a freeloader with a victim mentality. I'm not alone; forty-seven percent of Americans, Obama supporters every one, are as trifling as I am.

Addressing guests at a private fundraiser earlier this year, Romney declared:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax. (Secret Video--Mother Jones)

As an Obama supporter, I think that Romney may be talking about me. I need to stop paying income tax and demand that the government hand over my entitlement. You should too, if you're an Obama supporter. According to Romney, Obama supporters in addition to being trifling, lazy folks with a victim mentality, have developed a notion that "...the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it."

Now, where would any of us get such a notion? Well, I'll be darned! Maybe it's from those socialist Founding Fathers.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,"--The Declaration of Independence (emphasis added)

Interesting concept that the purpose of government--the reason that "governments are instituted"-- is to ensure access to those unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that health care, food and housing are encompassed in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and that it is an appropriate goal for governments to implement laws and policies to further the goal of securing these basic rights for all of its citizens. 

A good friend offered the following observation that further illuminates the purpose of government under those founding documents that Romney and the conservative right purport to follow:  Look also at the words that appear in the Preamble to the Constitution. We, United, union, common, general, ourselves, our. "Us" is our thesis. Not an "I me mine" to be found.--S. Gordon 

Romney has refused to retreat from his disavowal of governmental responsibility to promote any efforts to mitigate financial inequity and economic injustice. Instead, as expected, Romney supporters have dragged out a 1998 video of President Obama in which Obama states:

The trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some [wealth] redistribution -- because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody’s got a shot.--Barack Obama (Obama 1998 Loyola Speech)

Apparently, we are to be shocked by this statement and declare Obama a socialist. Oh the horror! President Obama thinks that it is important to ensure that every American has a shot at fulfilling the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness noted in that most American of documents, The Declaration of Independence. Don't you? Or do you prefer the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few with little or no chance for the advancement of most?

It's about redistribution of opportunities. No one, least of all President Obama ever said that the plan is to take money from some to give it to others; the oft expressed paranoia of those who buy into Romney's vision of freeloading, do-nothing, Americans sitting around waiting for government handouts.

Redistribution of wealth is about providing grants for students to attend college, or low interest loans for small businesses. It is about providing food stamps to mothers and children who have insufficient funds to buy food.

A single parent of two who earns $10 per hour for 40 hours per week nets $1600 per month before taxes. Ten dollars per hour is more than minimum wage (federal minimum wage is $7.25) but it still isn't sufficient money for rent, childcare (if you are a working parent, you need childcare), food, health insurance, clothing, transportation, and food.

As a country are we really so heartless and stupid that we can't understand that trickle down economics is a grand pie in the sky lie perpetuated by the haves to insure that the have-nots waste their time worrying about nonexistent threats of impending socialism and don't notice class inequities?

Mitt Romney has made it clear as to what he thinks of nearly half of all Americans. In his own words: "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." (Secret Video...)

In November, we have a chance to tell Mitt Romney what we think of him. What will that message be? Will we support his view that nearly half of Americans are shiftless, unwilling to work freeloaders, waiting on a government handout? Or will we take a look at ourselves, our family members, and our neighbors and recognize that demanding that all of us have fair and meaningful access to the opportunities that this nation provides is the rightful purpose of government? The answer is up to us, the governed.

Note: Romney stated that he wished that the entire video had been released to place his remarks in context. Mother Jones has obliged. Someone should have reminded Romney of the adage, "careful what you wish for." Link to the entire video.

Mormons Necro-Dunk Obama’s Mama

Old news, no matter how old, sometimes carries new meaning - especially in an election year. Here is an old Huffington post originally reported on June 6, 2009 and updated May 25, 2011:

Mormons Baptized Obama's Mother: CONFIRMED 

ABC News has confirmed reports that Mormons posthumously baptized President Obama's mother five months before the election. 

(…) 

Last June 4 -- the day after then-Sen. Obama secured enough delegates to win the Democratic presidential nominee -- someone had the president's mother Stanley Ann Dunham, who died in 1995 of cancer, baptized. 

The baptism was first reported by AMERICAblog's John Aravosis, who found an ordinance record on the Mormon genealogical Web site, FamilySearch.org.

To an atheist, a posthumous baptism may seem silly, inconsequential and harmless. However, the concept is downright disrespectful and offensive to practitioners of another faith – especially to the families of Jewish Holocaust victims. You don’t necessarily need to be a religious Jew to understand the seriousness of the offense. If your ancestors lived as Jews, were persecuted as Jews, and died as Jews, you want your ancestors to be remembered as Jews – not as posthumous Mormons. It defiles the meaning of the Holocaust.

Regardless, this post is not about Jews or Mormons or posthumous baptisms but about annoying and cloying manifestations of exceptionalism. What gives anyone the right to assert the superiority of his or her religion, political affiliation, ethnicity, custom, or nationality over mine, or over anyone else for that matter.

No, America is NOT the greatest nation in the world. It depends on what you call "great." For food, I prefer France. For food and clothing, I prefer Italy. For beer and bratwurst, I prefer Germany. For a stiff upper lip, go to England.  Want to save my immortal Seoul?  Go to Korea.