(O)CT(O)PUS Caught on Video

Yes, our own dear eight-legged denizen of the Swash Zone was recently caught on camera by Australian scientists using a human-discarded pair of coconut half-shells as temporary shelter. This is the first recorded use of tools by an invertebrate species (our companion's able keyboard-handling skills notwithstanding).

Watch:


Click here to learn more.

Let only one flower bloom

According to the Foxspeak dictionary, a school of thought is defined as a scheme, usually by Roger Ailes or Rupert Murdoch that they wish to attribute to a broad segment of the public. People say, or Some people are saying are alternate disguises for propaganda. If there really is a school of thought that believes cutting the minimum wage will be good for workers, I would like to see its accreditation and I suspect it's a school where employers such as McDonalds and Wal-Mart are heavily represented.

"One school of thought says lowering the minimum wage will actually create more jobs,"

pronounced anchortwit Juliet Huddy from the Fox News Podium in an attempt to give credit to the idea if not to the school of one promoting it.

As Raw Story describes in detail, Fox reduces the entire concept of a minimum wage to "social justice" which sounds sufficiently close to Socialism that they deemed it unnecessary to point out any contrary ideas, no matter how credible. Blind slogans and doctrines being so much easier to sell than truth in all its complexity -- or justice for that matter.

At one point I was foolish enough to think that the failure of doctrine driven economic, social and military policies would be an embarrassment to Fox and its friends, but it seems now that with America down and out, the opportunity to kick us while we're down is irresistible. It seems that their dream of building a new, invincible corporate oligarchy from the ruins of our country, is the only school of thought that isn't a strategic fraud.

(O)CT(O)PUS IN THE NEWS

This video of an octopus commandeering a coconut appeared tonight on all major news networks, including ABC, BBC, CNN, MSNBC, and WTFNN. What's the big deal? Shall I consider this an affront? An insult to my intelligence? Have you never seen an octopus commandeer a coconut before?

How ridiculous! But not as ridiculous as this:

Q: Why did the octopus cross the road?

A: To enslave humanity and save it from itself!

Considering the Source

As you may have noticed, I'm ambivalent about global warming and reluctant to argue for or against it. Whether or not it's an ongoing process subject to random variations lasting a decade or a century or many, many centuries; whether burning fossil fuels and deforestation are a major factor in any trend or whether or not much can be done about it are moot questions once one realizes that the human race won't do any more about its behavior and its environment than yeast fermenting in a vat will do to prevent the alcohol it excretes from poisoning it. We won't do a damned thing until we have massive famine and drought and huge uncontrollable migrations and bloody wars to stop it. Even then we will not spend any money on change because there will be " a war on" and we won't allow ourselves to afford it.

If, in 200 years, we're all baking and the tundra is a rain forest and Kansas covered with sand dunes, the "conservatives" will find or invent some scapegoat, invoke some hoax or alternative explanation. On the other hand, if things haven't changed much, change, like Armageddon will still be a dire threat, just around the corner, lurking in new technology and demanding that we go back to riding horses, living in the dark and taking cold showers once a week.

Face it, not only are we thoroughly irrational, self centered and dishonest apes who love our opinions above all else; not only are we not very smart, but we simply can't deal with the immensity of time and the transience of our species. We've all got to go sometime and we all will -- and if you're one of those people who likes to talk about our planet as a living entity that needs to be saved, perhaps the sooner, the better.

I have too much respect for science to indulge in the certainties and partisan bravado both sides have barricaded themselves behind. Nobody is completely right and all projections become blurry as they are extrapolated or trimmed to fit the opinion and it's all very obvious that the certainties seem to swarm most heavily around those with no background whatever in atmospheric or Earth sciences. Why this should be such a political dispute, I do not know. I remember well the Geological dispute between Static isostasy and plate tectonics but I doubt it ever came up on the Senate floor or that Joe the anything had any awareness much less a militantly expressed opinion -- even though it was heavily disputed and careers began and ended over it. It was settled, in the end, by irrefutable data, not by politics or by gyrating TV pundits bellowing like blue-assed baboons about conspiracies.

My inner suspicion is that the apparent lack of facts, the apparent contradictions and the apparent conspiracies appear sharpest through the glass called "I don't want it to be true" but I know full well that cataclysmic predictions have had a very, very poor record of accuracy.

While other popular disputes can be better understood by looking at the demographics; the viral etiology of AIDS, for instance. The origin of species through natural selection, the great age of the Earth: these things after all are threatening to some religious certainties. Climate change may be more independent and may even fit into apocalyptic molds. I'd venture to speculate however, that those who become most irate at the suggestion that the post industrial revolution climate has been altered by that human factor are those who fear government itself -- and that those who feel an imminent threat and want something done right now are those whose fear of industry and the political power of industry feeds an opposite attraction to government action.

None of us can really handle the truth, nor do we want to. What we do instead is to vilify, to deny, to attack. Is Christopher Monckton, one of the loudest UK naysayers indulging in neurotic denialism or are his opinions driven by rigorous scientific investigation? Does the fact that he also thinks we should round up all HIV positive people and imprison them for life argue for his intellligence? Does his comparison of those who find evidence of man-made climate change to Nazis really inspire confidence in his objectivity? Then again do the kids carrying signs and painting themselves green really have any background making their opinions worth listening to -- or do they just believe what is fun to believe, what people of their social class believe and is useful for picking up girls of like opinions?

One thing that I'm pretty certain of and the evidence supports, is that environmental change drives biological evolution. It also drives cultural evolution and technological evolution. If anything now alive has massive potential for opportunism, for adaptability, for evolution, it's us -- some of us.

The climate is going to change over time -- a very big change. Something will fall on us from space, vulcanism will come and go, the Earth's magnetic field absolutely will fail and then slowly reverse with potentially dire but unknown consequences, a gamma ray pulse may blow away the ionosphere, the continental ice sheets will eat up most of North America and Europe once again. None of these things depend on our politics and prejudices or prayers. Our adaptability and survival however does depend on abandoning the ape-like tribalism, the ape-like confidence in things we have no business being confident in and the ape-like resort to chest thumping, shit flinging and hooting that are more likely to accompany the end of the world than any whimper.

Mixed Nuts

I just sent this letter to my local fish wrapper. I've included a link at the end to my most recent Huffington Post essay:

I just read the AP story about Conservapedia.com, the Bible rewriting project proposing to erase the effects of "liberal academics" who have "watered down" Jesus by studying the ancient languages of the Bible. The linguists, one supposes, are all secret Satanists and cannot be trusted.

The group's founder, Andy Schlafly, is the son of Phyllis Schlafly. The apple has not fallen far from the tree; these are the same John Birchers and reactionary right-wingers of yore. Conservapedia is just a new offshoot of that poisonous tree, and Schlafly is the fruit of fringe insanity. The poor kid was raised to believe this gorp.

Over the decades, a nebulous root-system of direct-mail lists fed the paranoia of the stupid and "informed" the world of AM talk radio. Toxic to democracy, this monster has flourished in the age of the internet and media consolidation. Its tentacles pull the mixing-board levers of Fox News Channel, where Glenn Beck spews that same pollution into the mainstream of public opinion.

Birthers, death panels, black helicopters, lizard people, secret UN armies in Nebraska...where do you think these idiots come from? A majority of Republicans today actually believes the president was born in Kenya. How do you think that happened?

Now they want to turn the Bible itself into a weapon of culture war. This was exactly what Jesus meant when he said there would be many who cry "Lord, Lord!" that are too wicked for him to recognize.

But what I want to know is: given their long record of tinfoil-hat bizzarro fearmongering, how do these wackaloons and hoopleheads still merit the fair-handed attention of "liberal" media?

I would like to see journalists call them by their proper names: shills, hacks, and mixed nuts.

AND THE WINNING BID IS…ITALY?

There is a small article in today’s local paper that will probably go largely unnoticed but not by the forty families who will suffer because of it.

Seems that a North Carolina company may have been outbid by an Italian company to supply the granite benches, fountains and flooring for the 9/11 memorial in New York.

Aside from the fact that an Italian company being able to outbid an American company is kind of suspicious to begin with given the Port Authority’s track record for corruption, could not a small portion of that stimulus money be put to good use in helping to keep these jobs intact?

Granted, this particular event hits close to home for me so perhaps I’m more upset by it than others. But it makes me wonder how many other companies might be losing bids like these that perhaps could be subsidized by stimulus money in order to keep Americans at work.

So, what say you?

I Hate Xmas

Christmas is fine. Xmas, however, is a blight. The season of Xmas brings an overabundance of crass commercialism and traffic. It removes my classic rock station and replaces it with jingle goddamn bells. Of late, the Xmas season has gotten worse; a yearly drumbeat of cultural warfare has gotten louder, and the Christmas season more politicized.

But this year has brought me a gift in the low ticket sales enjoyed by Glenn Beck. In case you haven't heard, his Christmas-sweater show has bombed. I celebrated tonight by attending an underground punk show at the Black Owl.


Have I mentioned that the musical culture of Muscle Shoals, Alabama is incredibly diverse?

WAR AND PEACE

President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace prize yesterday even as he prepares to deploy/redeploy 30,000 troops into Afghanistan.

We, as a nation, have asked much of our service men and women – perhaps too much as the continued lag between new recruits and the number of military personnel required on multiple fronts continues to drain and strain all arms of the military complex.

There is overwhelming evidence, coming from multiple sources, including the usually tightlipped, conservative military hierarchy as reported in Stars & Stripes, that there has been a huge spike of PTSD cases since the war in Iraq began. These wars not only take a toll physically and mentally on our soldiers but also on their families and friends.

Marriages have broken up, children have been placed in foster care, homes have been lost and spouses have suffered emotional and physical abuse and sometimes even death. While the pros and cons of these wars are endlessly debated, the burgeoning collection of studies highlighting the devastating effects of these continued conflicts cannot be ignored or trivialized.

This excerpt is from a document prepared by a joint study done by Walter Reed researchers and those at Texas A&M:

“If the present rate of deploying U.S. forces continues
as it has since the end of the cold war, then
soldiers entering the military today will deploy an
average of 14 times by the time they serve 21 years
in the military (Castro & Adler, 1999). The projected
deployment rate stands in stark contrast to the 4
deployments reported by soldiers who entered the
service more than 20 years ago.”

The length and frequency of deployments is an issue that has been under intense scrutiny since the Vietnam War. Due to findings from that era and bolstered by more recent studies such as the one linked above, the military determined that the maximum time spent in a combat zone should not exceed 6 months which is why we have seen this time frame used since the first Gulf War. What no one anticipated was the depletion of troops that would occur over the last 20 years and the extreme difficulty replenishing those troops if we had to go to war on multiple fronts.

So, here we are in a “perfect storm” of sorts. The number of troops remains in decline while we remain obligated to manning numerous non-combat bases around the world while maintaining a combat force in Iraq and now committed to a troop surge in Afghanistan. All in the name of PEACE, of course.

The vast body of evidence points to a terrible toll that will befall many our service men and women even if they manage to make it home unscathed physically. One cannot make light of the debilitating effects that stress, not only from being in active combat but also in the cycle of seemingly endless deployments will have on a significant number of military members.

While I am not willing to second guess the president and his military advisors on the necessity of continuing one war while escalating another, I believe our government owes all our soldiers, their families, their friends and especially their children an exit strategy and a clear definition of what would be a successful conclusion. Those fighting and dying and those waiting at home deserve at least that.

A little more than a year ago we voted for change, we voted for an end to our involvement in war, we voted for increased tolerance, acceptance and cooperation.

We're still waiting...

All I want for Christmas is a silver bullet

Christmas in these new dark ages is like a full moon to werewolves and lunatics and the USA is the new Transylvania. You can almost hear them howling at night. In the dark, ruined castle of the House of Representatives, the latest time wasting assault on truth, the Constitution, freedom of religion and the Founding Fathers is H. RES. 951, a resolution drafted by 19 house Republicans stating:

Whereas Christmas is a national holiday celebrated on December 25; and

Whereas the Framers intended that the First Amendment of the Constitution, in prohibiting the establishment of religion, would not prohibit any mention of religion or reference to God in civic dialog: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

(1) recognizes the importance of the symbols and traditions of Christmas;

(2) strongly disapproves of attempts to ban references to Christmas; and

(3) expresses support for the use of these symbols and traditions by those who celebrate Christmas.

The framers have been framed once again, it seems. Of course there is no prohibition against "mentioning" religion, but there sure as Madison is one against promoting one religion over another and establishing support for any belief or ceremony or symbol is as prohibited as Jefferson could make it -- the ignorant passion of the lawless Republican denialists notwithstanding.

No I'm not going into the open hostility the Constitution writers had toward organized religion and it's influence on Government, or the largely fraudulent claims that "liberals" hate Christmas and Christians and want to take away your Christmas tree. You either already know or you're one of the hairy palmed lycanthropoids, too demented to listen. For my part however, any party that harbors such Visigoths (yes they were Christian) is illegitimate to the core, an enemy of religious freedom and unworthy to participate in government on any level.

Is it humorous that the only real effort to stamp out Christmas and its various and ever changing "traditions" was by the "pilgrim fathers" we just finished pretending were the founders of American democracy. It would almost be laughable if these worms weren't eating the heart out of liberty by trying to restore exactly the sort of government we fought a revolution to rid ourselves of.

We've got 15 more days of raging Republicans who are going to make up stories about stores not having Christmas trees, towns banning lights or private business owners not having the right to call Christmas a holiday -- or private citizens not having the right to celebrate it or not celebrate it when and how they please. We have at least two more weeks of support for tyranny and attacks on our freedom of speech, press and religion. It's more than just some Scrooge, more than just some Grinch stealing everyone's good time, it's the ancient evil of religious authority stealing our birthright and for me, the holiday I used to love is hardly worth it any more.

CLIMATE CHANGE DENIERS AND BOILED FROGS - UPDATED

By (O)CT(O)PUS

Credit: AZRAINMAN

Whatever you call it, a silly anecdote or imperfect metaphor, the boiling frog story serves a useful purpose, and it goes like this. If you place a frog in boiling water, it will immediately jump out; but if you place the same frog in cold water that is heated slowly, it will not notice the gradual rise in temperature but will stay in the water until it boils to death. No frogs were harmed in the writing of this post, but the boiling frog story is a useful metaphor to describe how people refuse to recognize a threat that occurs gradually.

Climate change deniers are akin to slow boiling frogs. For most folks, the climate change crisis is vague and impalpable. You cannot see it, touch it, or watch it happen on cable news. It lacks the immediate drama of a hurricane or tsunami. Climate change may not be noticed for a decade or even within a lifetime. Yet, it exists today as a set of observations and data points that are too arcane and abstract for many people to grasp. But make no mistake: Global climate change is here … a dark cloud hanging over the lives of our grandchildren and future generations. Despite the preponderance of data, there are skeptics, doubters, and boiled frogs. A case in point (source):

Double click on image to enlarge.

When a climate scientist looks at the above graph, the most obvious feature is the red [my addition] trend line. The above graph plots rising temperatures from different data sources. The skeptical boiled frog might look at these data and say: “So what! It proves nothing.”

There are two statistical concepts to bear in mind. Some data points conform to a pattern while others seem randomly spread. When data points fall outside a trend line, we call these “outliers,” a fancy word for random distribution. The skeptical boiled frog focuses on the random jitters and ignores the trend line. “So what,” croaks the frog, “Mother Earth has mood swings.” My point: Statistical outliers turn boiled frogs into outrageous liars.

Still skeptical? Next slide (Fossil fuel combustion as a component of total greenhouse gas emissions):

Double click on image to enlarge.

What this graph shows are the various types of greenhouse emissions, such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorocarbons from various sources. Most importantly, the graph shows the source of each greenhouse gas: From forest fires, from natural decay, from agriculture, from waste, and from fossil fuel combustion. Notice the large red area dominating the bottom half of the graph. This represents carbon dioxide as a product of fossil fuel consumption. What does this mean?

It means climate change is a man-made phenomenon. People burn fossil fuels in their cars, homes, and factories. Skeptical boiled frogs have claimed that greenhouse gases come from natural sources ranging from forest fires to flatulence, or from the rise and fall of some geologically unknown Dow Jones. These data tell a different story. It means that more than half of all greenhouse gases (56% of total emissions) have a human origin. Hence, the term “anthropogenic,” meaning “caused by human beings.”

One more slide for a skeptical boiled frog (Spatial distribution of greenhouse gas emissions):

Double click on image to enlarge.

This color-coded map shows the distribution of carbon dioxide around the world. Notice how concentrations of CO2 emissions correspond with areas of human population density and, most especially, with areas having the highest levels of industrial output. These data confirm the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and human activity.

Overall, the latest observations show that globally averaged levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) have reached new highs in 2008: Higher than those of pre-industrial times (before 1750) by 38%, 157% and 19%, respectively. Within the past 10 years alone, levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have increased 26.2%.

Admittedly, the boiling frog story employs a flawed metaphor. Experience has shown that most frogs are too restless to sit still long enough for any pot of water to reach the boiling point. However, the definitive experiment was performed in 1869 by the German physiologist, Friedrich Goltz, who was searching for the location of the soul and demonstrated a fundamental truth. Frogs that had their brains removed will remain in slowly heated water; whereas frogs with intact brains will promptly escape. Thus, I end my post with this observation:  Climate change deniers, unlike their intact amphibian counterparts, have neither brains nor souls.

UPDATE: Readers may also be interested in this slide show prepared by the Philosophy Department at UCSD. There is a brief history of the climate change debate starting with John Tyndall, the first to discover the greenhouse properties of CO2, and James Fleming Callendar, who argued as early as the 1930s that increases in CO2 levels would raise global temperatures. My thanks and a hat tip to Flying Junior for the link.

THE CLIMATE CHANGE DEBATE ACCORDING TO KRUGMAN, HANSEN, AND PALIN

Credit: AZRAINMAN

Years ago, I served on the board of directors of a conservation group whose mission and purpose was to preserve an endangered species. We spent considerable time debating, discussing, and revising our bylaws and even more time reporting, debating, and balancing our balance sheets, plus the obligatory inventory of office supplies and cute plush toy souvenirs. “Merchandising with a message,” they called it. There were monthly board meetings and monthly membership meetings followed by refreshments, but how much time was actually spent preserving and protecting our charges? Ahem, not that much.

Years pass, and my transformation from human being to cephalopod is now complete. I no longer converse with human protectors but with the protected, and here is what the protected think of their benefactors: “We are doomed, DOOMED!” From the viewpoint of an endangered species, human beings are all talk and cute plush toys but no action. In the human Universe, the shortest distance between two points is through every conceivable viewpoint.

My experience in the endangered species preservation biz reminds me of the latest argument between economist Paul Krugman and climate change scientist James Hansen, who fired the first volley in this New York Times Op-Ed:

Because cap and trade is enforced through the selling and trading of permits, it actually perpetuates the pollution it is supposed to eliminate.

(…)

Coal emissions are still significant contributing factors in four of the five leading causes of mortality in the United States — and mercury, arsenic and various coal pollutants also cause birth defects, asthma and other ailments.

(…)

The House and Senate energy bills would only assure continued coal use, making it implausible that carbon dioxide emissions would decline sharply.

(…)

If that isn’t bad enough, Wall Street is poised to make billions of dollars in the “trade” part of cap-and-trade.

Not to be outdone on matters of energy economics by a lowly climate change scientist, Paul Krugman, our infamous defender of faith and turf, returned fire with this:

Things like this often happen when economists deal with physical scientists; the hard-science guys tend to assume that we’re witch doctors with nothing to tell them, so they can’t be bothered to listen at all to what the economists have to say, and the result is that they end up reinventing old errors in the belief that they’re deep insights.

What a condescending and prickly reply, I thought. Clearly, Paul Krugman represents the Cute Plush Toy School of environmental protection that amuses protectors but accomplishes little on behalf of the protected. Worse still, here is what Krugman says of Hansen’s carbon tax proposal:

If you use a tax, you know what the price of emissions will be, but you don’t know the quantity of emissions; if you use a cap, you know the quantity but not the price. Yes, this means that if some people do more than expected to reduce emissions, they’ll just free up permits for others — which worries Hansen.

What worries Hansen should also worry us. A system of cap and trade will invite chicanery from players on both sides of the equation. Polluting industries will abuse the “cap” on emissions by continually lobbying Congress for exemptions, offsets, and opt-outs. Speculators will abuse the “trade” by gaming the system in much the same way Enron manipulated energy markets and defrauded consumers. Thus, cap and trade will become the ultimate plush toy for powerful interests but accomplish little or nothing in actual emissions reduction. Furthermore, Krugman ignores Hansen’s proposal of a fee-and-dividend system which clearly states:

The fee would be uniform, a certain number of dollars per ton of carbon dioxide in the fuel. The public would not directly pay any fee, but the price of goods would rise in proportion to how much carbon-emitting fuel is used in their production. All of the collected fees would then be distributed to the public. Prudent people would use their dividend wisely, adjusting their lifestyle, choice of vehicle and so on. Those who do better than average in choosing less-polluting goods would receive more in the dividend than they pay in added costs.

(…)

Given the amount of oil, gas and coal used in the United States in 2007, that carbon fee would yield about $600 billion per year. The resulting dividend for each adult American would be as much as $3,000 per year. As the fee rose, tipping points would be reached at which various carbon-free energies and carbon-saving technologies would become cheaper than fossil fuels plus their fees. As time goes on, fossil fuel use would collapse.

While I favor Hansen’s fee-and-dividend system, we should also consider a proposal put forth by arch-conservationist extraordinaire, Sarah Palin. In her recently released bestseller, the Sarahdon said: "If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?" We should take her at her word. If God made meat to be eaten, and if human beings are also made of meat, then it stands to reason that human beings should join her list of fair game. Her modest proposal would require only a slight modification of God’s Word. If you change “Love thy neighbor” to “Eat thy neighbor,” famine would disappear and all human impacts on the environment would diminish over time. As everyone knows, once you remove human impacts from the environment, Nature has an uncanny way of recovering and bouncing back ... quicker than a wink!

Life is not a Rolex - a Rolex is not alive

"Comprehensible to the intelligent, to the world at large, needing interpretation"

-Pindar-
___________________________

Ah, Pastor Rick Warren -- not quite smart enough to realize that his arguments have long since been steamrollered by better minds or just smart enough to realize that enough people are ignorant of it for him to make a living by peddling delusion? That is the question.

Put Rick on the list of people deeply disturbed by a sign on a bus saying belief in invisible magic spirits isn't necessary if you want to be good to your fellow humans. In fact he's been in terror of disbelief for a long time, resorting often to such idiocies as the idea that Atheists must be wrong because they're angry, that Atheists are responsible for most of the worlds wars and atrocities including being responsible for the Spanish Inquisition. I have to admit, even I didn't expect that.

No, it's ridiculous not to believe in magic and the supernatural and forces and places for which there is no evidence other than the failure to understand nature. You see, if Pastor Warren is walking down a mountain and finds a rock - that could be accidental, but if he finds a Rolex, it's "design."

Again, it's easily comprehensible to the rare intelligent American that Rolex's do not occur in nature,nor are they alive and self reproducing, but things, like living cells and viruses can indeed result from natural processes which is liberally illustrated by evidence and that Warren is trotting out this mawkish and moronic argument only because, as I said, there are enough congenitally and willfully stupid people out there to be blind to his festival of fatuous fallacies. It's not an argument at all really, it's just a bad analogy and an attempt to shift the burden of proof as Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker illustrates with greater patience and a good deal more skill than I have.

Warren doesn't have enough faith to be an atheist, he says in an attempt to make science and evidence and logic and knowledge a false equivalent of ignorance and the will to believe. Again, if you're intelligent, nobody has to explain it to you any more than I would have to explain why, contrary to his lies belief, same sex marriage is not just like pedophilia and neither Tomas de Torquemada nor the Holy Office at the Vatican were atheists.

But almost everybody believes in the supernatural he says, bringing the ad populum fallacy up to bat. "The actual number of secularists in the world is actually quite small outside of Europe and Manhattan," he continues, adding an appeal to people who find an educated populace threatening. The place for Secular Humanists is North Korea, whines Warren. It's called "poisoning the well" for anyone interested and yes, it's in any book of popular fallacies. That he doesn't tell us that the place for blind faith in religious authority is in the Taliban, isn't surprising, but it is telling.

Of course if the future of the world is not secularism but as he reminds us: pluralism, a certainty that certainly lacks support as we see beliefs declining as education ( and intelligence) increases, it's hard to understand that we should accept a multiplicity of religions but not Secular Humanism. What then does Humanism lack that theistic religion has? Authority. It's rather hard to base a tyranny or any system of arbitrary authority on it and that, dear reader, is what Rick Warren is all about and that's why he's afraid and that's why he has to make fun of your freedom.

A day in the life of Ivan Cornysovitch

I guess Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is trying to cornhole us again. I imagine that he woke up early one morning and realized there was another absurd, extreme, preposterous, shameful, ridiculous and grotesque simile he hadn't used yet to vilify any health care reform that doesn't appeal to the corporate overlords he serves. We've already heard about 'death panels' and how extending the program that Cornyn benefits from to the rest of us, is just like Pol Pot's Killing fields and Hitler's death camps. Somehow he'd overlooked Stalin's Gulag Archipelago and it's important we hear about it right away.

You see, the problem is that the Democrats aren't accepting "input" from the Republicans although it's pretty clear that the only "input" he or they have offered is to drop the damn subject. Still it's hard to understand why Tex himself isn't trying to escape from that death camp of Federal Employee insurance that just might kill him at any time now.

Dreams of Magnum's Ferrari

Sarah Palin famously went through five universities before getting her degree. The diva was on the MRS program, but her sojourn in Hawaii was brief because, her father says, the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her...uncomfortable: "They were a minority type thing and it wasn't glamorous, so she came home."

Minority type thing, not glamorous? She's allowed her taste in men, but how did she expect to find a First Dude type amongst all those Hawaiians? Had popular culture convinced her the place was full of good, clean white folks?

I mean, sure, there are minorities in the TV Hawaii of her youth; but they're all second bananas. I think Sarah was dreaming of Magnum's Ferrari.

Just a baby

Why is Fox News so damned afraid of secular Humanism? They're not of course; they're afraid of failing ratings and growing irrelevance, so they tell me once again and right on schedule that I'm at war with my favorite holiday because I'm not at war with my freedom -- and yours. If you think that virtue is its own reward or that doing the right thing by others whether or not you're rewarded for it is by definition the right thing: in fact, if you believe in freedom of thought, perhaps you're at war with Christmas too.

Last year, the American Humanist Association ran an ad asking "Why believe in a God?" They did it again this year with No God ...No Problem signs on city buses and the point of the slogan Be Good for Goodness Sake although certainly not out of line with most religious teachings, can according to the slimy logic of Bill O'Reilly, not only be a direct slander against God, but worse; an attack on the poor, helpless, little baby Jesus.

"How do you sell Atheism by running down a baby"

asks lyin' Bill so glibly that he can hope that the right people won't notice that being a good person, having compassionate and kindly humanist values, isn't likely to run down anyone's baby.

Blindingly blond and botoxed Margaret Hoover and Gretchen Carlson grinned in frightening fashion during last Thursday's "Culture Warriors" episode although the 85 year old O'Reilly couldn't seem to remember which was who. Perhaps the beauty pageant grins were as sewn on as they looked or perhaps the grotesque lengths Fox has gone to demonstrate the dangers of freedom simply amused them, but Grinning Gretchen opined that

"This is a direct and deliberate smear against Christianity. Do you think they would do this ad in July?"

Well, St. Swithyn's day seems hardly worth the effort and after all, December is in some vague and fact-free fashion "the most sacred month" Easter notwithstanding. There's little of ritually sacred nature in July that needs to be forced down the throats of heretics, while December contains other holidays of other religions and the birthdays, of Horus, Mithra, Constantine's favorite Sol Invictus and other Jesus predecessors -- but never mind. She managed to sneak in the proposition that not being Christian, not loudly professing faith that Jesus was born coincidentally on the same day as the Roman and Persian gods he replaced and not in April as their Gospels state, is an attack on our established State Religion.

"Do you think they would do it against Allah on Ramadan? I don't think so! No."

said Lyin' Bill in turn and nicely adding the subliminal hint that the growing secularism of the Western world is actually to be laid at the feet of our Islamic President.

"Why does the American Humanist Society want us to be 'good for goodness sake'? Why do they loathe the baby Jesus? He's just a baby."

What a marvelous way to heap fallacy upon fiction upon fraud and turn it into a call to battle. Is it really offensive to anyone's religion to recommend that in doing good unto others, one should not do it for reasons of prestige or self elevation - or that being a good person without doing it from fear of a vengeful son of a god is not really good?

Allowing people to believe or doubt or disbelieve anything they like can only be offensive to a religion that seeks only to convert and control and not to improve mankind. That's just the kind of religion and perhaps the kind of politics O'Reilly and his attendant familiars would be advocating if they really were advocating anything rather than fabricating reasons for rage in those whose mental capabilities don't extend to debunking a train of logic leading from "we don't have to believe in your god to be good" to "Why do they loathe the baby Jesus? He's just a baby."

The real questions of course are about why the two-bit Torquemada clones at Fox News loathe people who aren't fundamentalist Christian Conservatives, why lying and bearing false witness in the service of a myth is not loathsome while freedom of thought is an offense to the "baby Jesus."

Greed, Health Care Reform and the American Recovery Act

Middle America needs to get a grasp on corporate greed, and recognize it as the modern day King George. Two of President Obama’s major initiatives, Health Care Reform and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will fare much better if the working class skeptics see the role corporate greed plays in both issues.

Right wing media fear mongers have convinced Joe Sixpack and his buddies that their enemy in health care is the public option. They believe it will raise costs and lead to socialism, which will take away all of their money and freedom. They fail to look at the fact that their health care benefits have cost more and provided less at the hands of greedy private monopolistic insurance companies for years. Even with the threat of a public option on the table, the insurers are still unsympathetic to small businesses that would like to but cannot afford to supply their employees with decent health insurance. Greed has prompted insurance companies to favor their own profits over the services they provide to small businesses and consumers.

Similarly, polls indicate that Middle America feels the Recovery Act is failing to produce jobs, that it is costing money for no gain. Yet, there is gain; businesses are doing better. But the businesses are keeping the better for themselves. Despite the recent paths to economic recovery, employers are not willing to hire new employees. Current employees are often working longer for less in order to keep the jobs they have. The gloomy outlook in the job market is a result of reluctant employers rather than a failed stimulus package. Greed once again prompts businesses to favor their own corporate security over the well being of their employees and the people of America.

It is naïve to think we can rely on business to rescue us out of the mess they put us in to begin with. We need tea parties that put blame where blame is due: tea parties aimed at right wing legislators and their business cronies who exert their tyranny against the American public. Tell them we want a public option now, one that will reign in corporate greed in the health insurance industry. Tell them we want sanctions now against businesses and banks that have failed to use Recovery Act money to provide jobs and loans to small businesses. This is our time, our chance to legislate against corporate greed and for some financial fairness in our society. Let’s not lose it.

WHERE ARE THE JOBS?

In recent weeks (months,eons) there has been a lot of criticism of the Obama administration on job creation and job retention. As usual, many Americans are so addicted to instant gratification that they are quick to find fault and point fingers.

But the AP just released an article citing some surprising trends. The complete article can be viewed HERE. And while it is true that we are a long way from economic recovery, this certainly is cause for renewed hope in future economic stability.

“As record numbers of orders flow through Legacy Furniture Group's manufacturing plant, workers toil between towers of piled foam and incomplete end tables precariously stacked five pieces high. With a 10 percent sales growth this year, Legacy has quickly forgotten the recession's low point in March, when weak order volumes forced the company to implement four-day work weeks.”

“Legacy's recent success highlights a trend: Counties with the heaviest reliance on manufacturing income are posting some of the biggest employment gains of the nation's early economic recovery. This is a big change from just half a year ago, when some economists worried that widespread layoffs by U.S. manufacturers might be part of an irreversible trend in that sector.”

“Elkhart County, Ind., meanwhile, saw such a startling surge in layoffs one year ago that President Barack Obama made a stop there in the opening weeks of his presidency. The unemployment rate there, driven by job cuts at RV manufacturers, spiked in March at 18.9 percent, but has fallen steadily ever since — to 15 percent in September.”

"Manufacturing jobs are here to stay, and they're coming back," said Derald Bontrager, president and chief operating officer of Middlebury, Ind.-based RV maker Jayco Inc., which recalled or hired 200 laid-off workers over the summer to help ramp up production after an unexpected sales boom overwhelmed all-time-low inventories and left the producer unable to meet demand. They're still trying to catch up.”

Even though there has been a steady exodus of jobs out of the country which predates the recent economic collapse by manufacturers looking for cheap labor and little oversight, there are new employers opening facilities and hiring workers.

While this will be unhappy news for the “I want Obama to fail” advocates, this will be a shining light at the end of a long tunnel for many beleaguered families out of work and in need of some good news.

(Cross posted at Progressive Eruptions)

'Tis the season

Yes, they're still pushing the "Obama is a Muslim" thing and one of the reasons must be that a central theme of the last presidential contest was that he was not only "the most liberal senator in American History," but a Marxist, a concept that is getting harder and harder to pin on our rather deliberate, frustratingly centrist and sometimes rather too conservative president. After all, an absurd claim is harder to counter and outrageous fabrications draw followings in inverse proportion to evidentiary support.

Legalizing 'Drugs' or prostitution are out of the question as a spur to the economy said President Obama to a student in Allentown Pennsylvania yesterday. Regardless of his reasons for the statement, it's not the opinion of a "far left socialist radical" trying to make us just like European Socialists. Better to rave about conspiracies to pass a Kenyan off as a native born American because the evidence is, that Obama is at best a centrist on social issues like allowing gays to serve in the military and no more of a Marxist than anyone at Goldman Sachs.

If only the knuckle draggers behind the Muslim libel wouldn't try to give evidence for it! The idiot mayor of some two-bit suburb of Memphis is blogging that the President's speech on Tuesday announcing 30,000 extra troops to fight Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan deliberately was scheduled to preempt that night's broadcast of A Charlie Brown Christmas , with its "Christian message" because as a Muslim, he hates our holiday "traditions." After all, Jesus himself watched the program as a child, didn't he? That's not of course, even contorted logic, it's bullshit. I would love to ask Mayor Russell Wiseman if Franklin Roosevelt was a closet Shinto supporter for choosing the Christmas season to ask Congress to declare war on Japan.

"Ok, so, this is total crap, we sit the kids down to watch 'The Charlie Brown Christmas Special' and our muslim president is there, what a load.....try to convince me that wasn't done on purpose. Ask the man if he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and he will give you a 10 minute disertation [sic] about it....w...hen the answer should simply be 'yes'...."

said the ironically named Wiseman. Sorry, Russ, the answer is none of your damned business and none of the Government's business as concerns what any of us think about God, Christmas, Charlie Brown, the Son of God or the Son of Sam. The question is whether we consider you as a traitor for giving aid and comfort to the Taliban by calling Obama one of them, or for misrepresenting the Constitution and advocating that we replace it with your infantile and ignorant beliefs.

If this is Conservative thought in America then all our asylums are filled with Republicans.

Social tolerance and immigration

It's an ethical dilemma that I don't find easy to solve. Are the Swiss wrong to forbid the building of mosques? Are Londoners only being racist or xenophobic in opposing the Abby Mills Mosque or are they legitimately protecting themselves from the strife, turmoil, noise and sometimes the violence said to be growing in formerly calm, ecumenical and liberal countries? Is the curtailment of religious freedom justified in some cases? Yes, in the US, we have to fight for the idea that the free exercise of Christianity does not convey the right to push non-Christians around, but just how far do our own laws concerning religious freedom extend and how far should we let them extend?

Like many people, I'm uneasy when a Swiss party leader calls for the banning of Muslim and Jewish cemeteries and we all know the horrible history of sectarian strife in Europe such measures evoke. Yet I see how the Liberal Netherlands has to deal with what appears to many of them as a growing population opposed to the secular, liberal and highly permissive culture they are so proud of and I can sympathize. By sympathising however, with people whose hard won freedom is put in jeopardy by a growing sub-culture, am I able to disassociate myself from groups who want to close the American borders to anyone who might not look Anglo Saxon or be Protestant? How much of the Dutch, Swiss and American fear of a large Muslim presence is real and how much is misguided? When is ethnic cleansing not ethnic cleansing? Most importantly, can we even discuss these things over the snarling of the trolls?

CYBER-HACKERS AND THE CLIMATE CHANGE DEBATE

From Gordon Crovitz of the Wall Street Journal:

For anyone who doubts the power of the Internet to shine light on darkness, the news of the month is how digital technology helped uncover a secretive group of scientists who suppressed data, froze others out of the debate, and flouted freedom-of-information laws. Their behavior was brought to light when more than 1,000 emails, and some 3,500 additional files were published online, many of which boasted about how they suppressed hard questions about their data.

I have been writing about the impacts of energy on the economy, the environment, and public health since 1974. My career began as an educational and documentary filmmaker starting with this project: A Consumer Guide to the Energy Crisis (1974), a co-production of Prentice-Hall and the New York Daily News. Since the 1970s, I have written, directed, and produced numerous documentary films for Burns & Roe (engineers of utility-scale conventional and nuclear electric generating plants), the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Rural Electrification Administration (a division of the USDA). Although not an engineer or scientist by training, I am no stranger to the subject.

With respect to energy consumption and global climate change, it is hard to know where to begin. Shall we begin by talking about the hazards of coal starting with mining accidents … but by no means ending with slow agonizing deaths by black lung disease? Shall we talk about acid rain and the damage to North American forests, lakes, and streams? Or the Love Canal incident that drove hundreds of families from their homes after 21,000 tons of chemicals leached into their basements and groundwater? Or the oil slick that caused the Cuyahoga River to burst into flames? Or the incidence rate of cancer in the general population attributable to industrial pollutants? Or the 123 oil and gas platforms in the Gulf destroyed by Hurricane Katrina? Or the geopolitics of oil?

The history of corporate piggish and pigheadedness does not even begin to cover the global climate change debate.

I am tired … tired of corporate interests that put profits over public welfare, tired of privateers who pollute and pillage, and tired of climate change deniers and the want-it-now crowd lacking forethought as to the consequences of profligate consumption on future generations. I am tired of mendacities, false conspiracies, and every contrivance to confuse and confound the climate change debate.

These days, everyone is an expert with an opinion; but there is no prerequisite obligation to read a book or research a subject before blathering. Talk is cheap, and the Internet is cheapest where free confers a presumptive right to engage in free-for-alls. The Internet has not fulfilled its grand utopian vision as a repository of knowledge and scholarship; it has merely accelerated the spread of ignorance through viral messages and cyber-terrorism. If “the best lack all conviction,” there will always be " open-minded" neophytes and dilatants willing to be suckered by swift boaters and hackers engaged in criminal acts parading as heroism. When cyber-crooks poke holes in the dike to trap fingers and hands, that is when they steal your wallet. Its called distraction, distraction, distraction.

My career rewarded me with a decent income, but there is no money, no glory, and all too often little sense of accomplishment in blogging. Why do we bother? Are we motivated by some overwhelming sense of mission and purpose? Or do we blog just to amuse and entertain ourselves? Why bother when you have to watch your back at every turn.