Dr Kendall's Homeopathic Contraception

Check out Dr. Kendall's Homeopathic Contraception, made from 100% pure organic Brazilian rainforest babies:

For the uninitiated, homeopathy works on the principal of like curing like or of like preventing like, as eminent homeologist Crispian Jago explains. A remedy containing babies therefore prevents pregnancy.

Conventional contraceptive pills are full of harmful, unnatural chemicals with side-effects and have a failure rate of up to 8%, which means that for every 100 times you have sex, you will get pregnant eight times. The numbers do not lie. Do you want to take that risk? Dr Kendall's Homeopathic Contraceptive pills are for every woman who cares about her body.

After harvesting, the babies are washed inside and out in spring water to guarantee the purity of the remedy. They are then processed at Kendall Laboratories in our Kendall's Baby Masher (patent pending). The concentrated extracted essence is prepared for you in pills of the finest Saccharum officinarum for your health and well-being.

Note that these contain only the essence of babies. This contraceptive has been diluted enough times that there are no real baby molecules left, only the memory of babies. This, of course, saves on the number of babies needed for processing. Waste not, want not.

Stephen Hawking and the existence of God

This is a followup to yesterday's post. It's a three-minute video by Sean Carroll from the California Institute of Technology that explains, very clearly to a layman audience, what the latest news about Stephen Hawking and the existence of God is all about. It's definitely worth watching.

Has Stephen Hawking ended the God debate?

Articles like this one by Graham Farmello in the Telegraph (UK) tend to irritate me. (Yeah, I know. What doesn't?) It's not that it's completely wrong, I suppose, but it's just... irritating.

First of all, it's deliberately sensationalist - for good business reasons, no doubt - while also frowning on others doing the exact same thing:

The science-religion relationship, in so far as there is one, continues to be a crowd-pleaser. It seems to be a fundamental law of PR that the God-science debate is a sure-fire source of publicity. Always welcome when one has a book to sell.

Yeah, do tell. And this just happens to be in an article with the title, "Has Stephen Hawking ended the God debate?" Heh, heh.

Here are some other excerpts that really irritated me:

The point is, he says, that our universe followed inevitably from the laws of nature. But, we might ask, where did they come from?

And if we were smart, we might answer, "I don't know." The fact is no one knows. Inventing a god or gods to explain that, without any evidence whatsoever, is just as wrong as making up any other kind of lie. "I don't know" is a perfectly valid answer. Indeed, it's the only valid answer when it's true, as it is in this case.

That's the thing with scientific research. There are always more questions to answer. But when we didn't know what the sun was, it was an error to assume that it must be a god flying a golden chariot across the sky. (But what else could it be, right?) In reality, back then, "I don't know" was the only valid answer. Inventing a supernatural explanation, just because you couldn't prove it false, was not valid then and it's not valid now.

Of course, Farmello just coyly asks the question, right? He doesn't actually say that "God done it." Yeah, that's kind of irritating, too. If he has a point, let's hear what it is.

He now suggests that the search for this particular Holy Grail is over, now that scientists have come up with a type of theory, known as M-theory, that may describe the behaviour of all the fundamental particles and force, and even account for the very birth of the universe. If this theory is backed up by experiment, it might perhaps replace all religious accounts of creation – in Hawking's capacious mind, it already has.

I did mention that this was sensationalist, didn't I? I haven't read Hawking's new book, and I wouldn't be able to judge the validity of his new theory if I had. This is an idea from a theoretical physicist, that's all. If, eventually, it's backed by experimental evidence, it might become mainstream science. But it's far, far from that right now.

And it's clear that Hawking is also being deliberately sensationalist, too. Well, he's trying to sell a book, isn't he? All of this is from "the flurry of publicity preceding his new book, The Grand Design, to be published next week." Gee, I wonder why anyone would want to be provocative at such a time?

But do the rest of us really have to take this seriously? No, not if we're smart.

The science-religion debate has been going on since science was born, centuries ago. Until relatively recently, it seemed to have quietened down, but now Hawking and others have brought it back into the limelight.

Maybe it "quietened down" in Great Britain, but certainly not here in America, not since I was a kid, at least. (This isn't an irritating excerpt, just a bit surprising.)

Science and religion are about fundamentally different things. No religion has ever been rendered obsolete by facts or observations, but this happens to most scientific theories, at least in the long run.

No religion has ever been rendered obsolete by facts or observations? Well, there are plenty of obsolete religions, though I suspect that most of them were "rendered obsolete" by true believers of some other religion killing off their rivals. But it's true that religious believers often seem immune to facts or observations.

However, there are plenty of religious beliefs which have been rendered obsolete by science. Remember Galileo, anyone? In fact, the history of science is one long parade of supernatural explanations being rendered obsolete by science. And you know, not one natural explanation has ever been found to be supernatural, instead. Funny how that's worked out, isn't it?

Furthermore, the fact that scientific theories change as new evidence is discovered is a great strength of science. Yes, Newton's ideas were superseded in some circumstances. That doesn't mean that Newton was wrong, but only that he wasn't completely right in every detail in every circumstance. At the very least, he was far more correct than the thinking - religious or otherwise - before him.

Admittedly, the article makes up for the above sentence by continuing the paragraph in this way:

Science advances over the wreckage of its theories by continually putting theoretical ideas to experimental test; no matter how beautiful a theoretical idea might be, it must be discarded if it is at odds with experiment. Like any other human activity, science has flaws and does not always flow smoothly, but no one can seriously doubt the progress it has made in helping us understand the world and in helping to underpin technology.

Yes, science is a process, a process that gets us closer and closer to the complete truth. Unlike dogma, it changes when it's been shown to be wrong (or, more commonly, just incomplete). That's a strength, not a liability. In science, nothing is ever an absolute truth, such that it can't, potentially, be overturned by subsequent evidence. Maybe the Earth really is flat. I truly doubt it, but I can think of explanations where that would be true. Right now, I disregard them, because there's no evidence backing them up, but it's always possible - if not at all probable - that that could change.

No religion has ever been set out in terms of scientific statements. This is why scientists are able to mock the claims of religions but have never been able to deal a knock-out blow: in the end, a religious believer can always fall back on a faith that does not depend on verification.

But why is this? If religion really was true, why fear verification? The whole point of the scientific method is to determine the truth, no matter what the current consensus might be. No matter who believes what, no matter what scientific authority backs an earlier theory, no matter how long it's been believed, it is always subject to verification. That never ends. Furthermore, science reserves its highest honors and accolades to those "heretics" who successfully overthrow established thought.

Religion is just the reverse. Religion fears verification. Religion depends on dogma that can't be questioned by the faithful. Even when religion tries to adopt science, it's always just pseudoscience. There are certain things that no believer can question, not and remain in the good graces of his church. You see, religion always thinks that it already knows the truth. Therefore, the only "research" allowed is that which will explicitly back up their claims.

Religion isn't "set out in terms of scientific statements" because it doesn't dare to do so. It fears finding out the truth. It's ironic that people who so fervently believe they already know the truth are so terrified of really looking into the subject, isn't it? Shouldn't they be supremely confident that verification would uphold their claims? But in fact, it's just the reverse. They don't dare open their eyes.

Powerful and eloquent though it [The God Delusion] was, religion continues to flourish, and scientists (albeit a minority) continue to go to church, just as Galileo, Newton, Faraday and others have done in the past. I suspect that none of them would have abandoned their respective faiths after reading Dawkins (admittedly, not a scientific statement).

Yes, some scientists are religious believers. Well, scientists are human, too, and they were raised in the same religion-saturated environments as the rest of us. But in fact, far fewer scientists are religious believers than in the population as a whole. In fact, education itself is associated with the loss of religious belief. The more you know, the less you believe in the fairy tales of your youth. And the top levels of science, the Nobel Prize winners, those scientists at the cutting edge of scientific discovery, are even less religious in general than those "scientists" further down the ladder.

And who knows what Galileo, Newton, and Faraday would think today, with modern knowledge. As a matter of fact, many religious believers have abandoned their faith after reading Dawkins and other authors. People willing to look at the evidence, willing to consider logic and reason, do lose their religious faith sometimes. In fact, sometimes priests do the same. It does happen. So I'm not quite willing to just assume that those famous scientists would cling to dogma in today's world.

Religions will survive so long as they steer clear of making statements that can be shown to be factually wrong.

Heh, heh. Now isn't that the truth! In order to survive, religions need to avoid saying anything that can be, you know, checked out. If you're a believer, how does that make you feel? Still think you know the absolute truth? Of course, you don't dare actually research the question. You can believe anything you want, but you don't dare look at it skeptically. You don't dare make any claims at all that can be investigated impartially. Yeah, that really sounds like you know the "truth," alright.

The kind of science done by Stephen Hawking, one of the leading theoretical physicists of modern times, has an almost religious ring to it. He and his colleagues are trying to find the patterns in the basic fabric of reality – the mathematical laws that govern the workings of nature at its finest level. There is plenty of evidence that these laws hold good all the way back to the beginning of time, which is how scientists have put together an extremely detailed and well-tested theory of the Big Bang, the first few minutes of the universe.

This is nothing like religion. It's like Farmello didn't even read what he wrote previously. (You see now why I get irritated by this?) Scientists have used evidence to put together a well-tested theory. How does that have any kind of "religious ring" to it? Religion shies away from evidence and tests as if they were the devil himself.

This has led writers to invest these experiments with a theological significance. The distinguished experimenter Leon Lederman labelled the Higgs particle, being sought at the Collider, as the God Particle, with no good reason except as a hook to promote his book, which he named after it. Yet these experiments will tell us nothing about God.

This whole article uses "God" as a hook to get readers. And it's ostensibly about a book that's also using the same hook. So how is the so-called God Particle, "with no good reason except as a hook to promote his book," surprising in any way?

And no, these experiments will tell us nothing about God, because God doesn't actually exist outside our own imaginations. These experiments will also tell us nothing about Narnia or Hogwarts. Is that at all notable? Despite Lederman's book-selling hook, has any scientist working at the Large Hadron Collider stated - or implied in any way - that their experiments would tell us something about God? I really doubt it.

Einstein, to the frustration of many of his colleagues, was fond of referring to God when he was talking about the laws expressing the fundamental harmonies of the universe. As Dawkins rightly stresses, it is quite clear that Einstein did not think of God as a white-bearded benefactor capable of interfering with the functioning of the universe. Rather, Einstein followed closely the views of the philosopher Spinoza, for whom the concept of God is an expression of the underlying unity of the universe, something so wondrous that it can command a spiritual awe.

OK, you can define "God" as meaning "the underlying unity of the universe," but how many believers will go along with that definition? I can define a cat as a "dog" if I want, but it's not going to be very useful in real life if no one agrees with me.

What the author is describing is atheists, or at best deists, who are trying to avoid offending the overwhelming number of religious believers. So Dirac said that mathematical beauty is "is almost a religion to me." Well, I know people who say that golfing is their religion. Do you think they really mean that? Honestly, this is just ridiculous!

Even religious scientists – and there are still a few – never use the God concept in their scientific work. Perhaps it is time for a moratorium on the use of the concept in popularisations, too? This would avoid mixing up scientific and non-scientific statements and put an end to the consequent confusions.

Confusions? Who's actually confused by this (except for the author of this article)? If you're confused by this sort of thing, you want to be confused. In fact, you're probably desperate to be confused. There's really no other way.

I think it wise for scientists and religious believers to keep out of each other's territory – no good has come out of their engagement and I suspect it never will.

OK, that sounds good to me. Scientists will say nothing about the supernatural realm if religious believers say nothing about this universe, nothing that applies to the real world at all. How do you think that will work?

Because I'll tell you this: if religions make any claims about the real world - any claims about biology, physics, geology, history, sociology, ethics, morality, government or anything else affecting this universe we live in - then those claims can and should be investigated using logic, reason, and, above all, evidence.

You can see why this whole article was irritating, I hope. But I suppose it did what it was supposed to do, get attention (mine, at least).

Evolution in action

(photo by Rebecca A. Pyles)

Of course, evolution is always "in action." But to borrow a phrase, it's normally like a snapshot in time. Still, there are snapshots and there are snapshots. So I thought it was interesting to read two separate articles this morning where evolution is not just ongoing, but obvious.

The first is this fascinating story in the National Geographic about a species of Australian lizard where the evolution of live births, from egg-laying, has been "caught in the act." (Incidentally, the photo above shows pretty clearly the family relationship between lizards and snakes, wouldn't you say?)

Evolution has been caught in the act, according to scientists who are decoding how a species of Australian lizard is abandoning egg-laying in favor of live birth.

Along the warm coastal lowlands of New South Wales, the yellow-bellied three-toed skink lays eggs to reproduce. But individuals of the same species living in the state's higher, colder mountains are almost all giving birth to live young.

This would seem to be a pretty major difference, wouldn't you think?

One of the mysteries of how reptiles switch from eggs to live babies is how the young get their nourishment before birth.

In mammals a highly specialized placenta connects the fetus to the ovary wall, allowing the baby to take up oxygen and nutrients from the mother's blood and pass back waste. (See related pictures of "extreme" animals in the womb.)

In egg-laying species, the embryo gets nourishment from the yolk, but calcium absorbed from the porous shell is also an important nutrient source.

I'll let you read the article if you want to know how this problem is resolved. (Incidentally, you might want to click on that link to see four "extreme" animals in the womb. Neat stuff!)

But the other obvious question is... why?

Both birthing styles come with evolutionary tradeoffs: Eggs are more vulnerable to external threats, such as extreme weather and predators, but internal fetuses can be more taxing for the mother.

For the skinks, moms in balmier climates may opt to conserve their own bodies' resources by depositing eggs on the ground for the final week or so of development. Moms in harsh mountain climates, by contrast, might find that it's more efficient to protect their young by keeping them longer inside their bodies.

Keep in mind that these reptiles aren't making a conscious - or even an unconscious - decision about any of this. There's no planning involved. It's just that skinks in the warm coastal lowlands do better - leave more descendants - when they lay eggs, while those in harsher climates do better giving birth to live young.

This sort of change requires a mutation first, perhaps more than one. (But this change, in reptiles at least, is not as drastic as it might seem at first. Although most reptiles lay eggs, live birth is also pretty common. According to this article, about 20% of reptile species give birth to live young only. And if more than one mutation is required, they don't have to occur at the same time. A prior mutation can already be present in the population, for some other benefit, or perhaps at low level from mere chance.)

But if there's an advantage in live birth, those individuals with the mutation will tend to leave more offspring. In effect, they will out-compete egg-laying skinks, at least in particular environments. These two populations of yellow-bellied three-toed skinks might well be in the process of splitting into separate species.

Another article, at the BBC, describes how orcas - killer whales - are also evolving into two separate populations.

Researchers have discovered that two distinct types of orca, a large and a pygmy form, are rapidly diverging, evolving away from each other.

The scientists' study reveals each type of orca carries a unique gene mutation that benefits its particular lifestyle.

There's a size difference between these two populations, and there's also a difference in food preferences, with the larger orcas feeding mostly on seals and the dwarf orcas feeding mostly on fish. But most notably, each has a specific genetic mutation that appears to govern energy production and metabolism.

Each population has the gene complex that's most suited for its lifestyle. I don't know if there's still interbreeding between them, but given this difference, crosses between the two types would have a poorer success rate (at survival or leaving descendants), which would encourage further separation. Eventually, assuming no other changes, we'd expect to see two entirely separate species (which would continue to follow their own evolutionary paths and might well become quite different indeed).

Neat stuff, isn't it? Of course, if you're a birder, you'll know that spotting evolution in action isn't at all uncommon. Every time a new field guide to the birds is published, it seems like there are a different number of species - sometimes more, sometimes fewer. No, biologists aren't discovering new species this quickly, nor are that many going extinct (not quite this quickly, at least).

What's happening is that it's not always easy to tell when birds are a single species or two. It's not a clear dividing line, and there are many populations which are right on the edge. Well, "species" is a human concept. We like to categorize things. But it's not always so clear in nature.

Many species - of birds, at least (I'm no biologist) - seem to be right on the verge of splitting into two species. Some taxonomists might consider a population one species, maybe just different subspecies, while others argue that they are two separate species. And the consensus tends to change, depending on the current evidence.

Sometimes, birds that are nearly impossible to distinguish in the field (by sight, at least) are fully accepted as being of two separate species. Others, which are quite different in appearance, may be considered just different forms of the same species. It's very, very clear that species do split and evolve separately. Any birdwatcher should be fully aware of that.

Actually, any educated adult should be aware of that. Even if you didn't graduate from high school, this is just very, very basic stuff. Evolution is the foundation of modern biology. You should have learned that in elementary school, in fact, because it really is... elementary. Yet only a minority of Americans apparently "believe in" evolution. Heh, heh. Insane, isn't it? In biology, at least we are easily the most ignorant of all developed countries.

Here's a chart that should make you embarrassed to be an American. The question was whether "human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals."

Incredible, isn't it? Especially in the 21st Century, more than 150 years since Darwin first published On the Origin of Species? We rank down with Turkey on this issue. Look at the countries at the top of the list. What does that tell you?

This degree of ignorance is just astonishing. Frankly, it would be astonishing in any nation on Earth, let alone in the world's last remaining superpower. What has happened to America? What has happened to us?

Dwarf Fortress: Toraliden

I've been playing Dwarf Fortress lately. No, I don't really have time to be playing computer games right now, but I just couldn't resist any longer. I've been wanting to try the new version since it was first released, just waiting until the major bugs had been worked out. (This is a free game, still in alpha, so the developer relies on his players to find the bugs - and on contributions from his fans to keep the project going.)

I started the game a couple of months ago, but it kept crashing (a problem I'd never had with DF before). So I put it aside for awhile. With the latest version, 0.31.12, that's been fixed. And a couple of rainy days gave me all the excuse I needed to pick it up again. It's been great fun!

If you're not familiar with Dwarf Fortress, it's really kind of hard to describe the appeal of the game. Frankly, the interface stinks, the learning curve is a killer, and the unmodded game uses ASCII graphics! Even with the May Green graphics bundle I'm using, it's an understatement to describe them as "minimal." (I've posted some screenshots below the fold.)

But the gameplay is wonderful! My description won't do it justice, but basically you take a party of dwarves into the wilderness to carve out a home. It's a fortress, because it's a dangerous world. But it's also a trading post, a farmstead, and a center for all sorts of crafts. If you're successful, you'll attract immigrants until you have a thriving community.

And every one of your dwarves is an individual, with an individual appearance, personality, likes and dislikes, mannerisms, and skills (which improve with use). You can give them a task list and assign them responsibilities, but they themselves choose when to do what. They eat when hungry, drink when thirsty, rest when tired, sleep when sleepy, and even socialize when they need a party. They make friends (and grieve when those friends are killed), adopt pets, get married, and raise children.

For the most part, the game is perfectly logical. If you can think of a logical way to do something, you can probably do it. It's wide open. This game doesn't tell you what to do, it lets you make the decisions. And although there are many, many ways to lose, there's no way to win. "Winning" just means that your fortress is still going strong. Dwarves die, they're buried in plain coffins or elaborate tombs, and life goes on. Until it doesn't.

My latest fortress, Toraliden ("Lawpaddles"), has been under construction for just over two game-years now, which isn't long at all. Still, we're up to 60 dwarves (including three babies and two children), having lost two in violent incidents. I didn't originally intend to document our experiences, so I don't have any screenshots of the beginning. But if you're interested, I'll describe what's happened so far below the fold.

Scary news

See the whole cartoon here.

The enchanted financial forest

(Mark Fiore)

It's incredible that we've become so gullible as to believe in fairy tales, isn't it? But that certainly seems to be the case. All too many of us ignore the abundant evidence from recent years and still buy in to right-wing fantasies.

Somehow, it's supposed to be "conservative" to benefit the wealthy, even at the expense of horrendous government debt. Explain that to me, if you can. I really don't get it.

And why, in a democracy, do so many ordinary, non-wealthy people go along with something this insane? (It's easy to see why the wealthy go for it. After all it's always easy to believe what you want to believe.)

I think it might be a yearning for an aristocracy. We Americans love our celebrities, and we seem to yearn for our own royalty. Maybe it's comforting to be the loyal servant of the high and mighty. I've never understood that feeling, but I know it exists, especially in times of stress.

I mean, you can't really believe that cutting taxes on the rich will cause all that wealth to trickle down to the rest of us, can you? Not after the last decade, surely. And it's not as though the super-rich were hurting during the Clinton years - or during the Reagan years, for that matter. Our economy did far better when there was less of an extreme between top and bottom.

I just don't understand it. It all seems so... dumb. I suppose it could be ignorance, rather than stupidity, though. And extreme gullibility. Well, that's why I'm a skeptic. I want evidence for my beliefs. You'd be surprised at how many people don't (or, perhaps, just don't understand what "evidence" really means).

Sufi

(Jesus and Mo)

Penn and Teller on vaccinations

Juggling

(Savage Chickens)

The end of combat operations in Iraq

No, the Iraq War isn't completely over. We still have 50,000 troops in the country, for training and support purposes. And they'll still be fighting (and dying). But this is a milestone, nonetheless. And it's a good time to look back, don't you think?

Seven years, billions of dollars (trillions in indirect and delayed costs), and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of lives,... all because of right-wing fantasies. Remember, the Iraq War had nothing to do with 9/1l.

Does it make you feel good as an American to know that we invaded a completely innocent country, a nation that had not attacked us and was no threat to us at all? Indeed, Saddam Hussein was the sworn enemy of the religious fanatics who did attack us (and the enemy of Iran, too, I might add).

But I guess if you can't catch the person responsible, you just attack whomever you can catch, huh? Even when it actually benefits our foes?

There were no "weapons of mass destruction." None. And there was no risk of them, because the United Nations was continuing to carry out weapons inspections in Iraq. We could have finished the war in Afghanistan, instead of starting a new war for no reason. Maybe we could have even won it, if we hadn't taken our eye off the ball and given the Taliban time to regroup. But Afghanistan was boring, right? And Iraq had all that lovely, lovely oil...

Of course, you weren't at risk, not at all. It would be someone else dying, not you, someone else's kid, not yours. After all, there's no draft these days, so why worry? Why even care? It would be like... reality TV, entertainment staged for your enjoyment.

And Iraq had lots and lots of oil, so the war was going to pay for itself. (A free war! How could it get better than that?) Yeah, right. Sort of like the promise that cutting taxes for the rich would pay for itself,... in right-wing fantasy land.

The right-wing turned us into our enemies. It was now America that invaded innocent countries. It was now America that tortured prisoners. It was now America that became the world bully, instead of the shining light on the hill. You must be so proud.

Yeah, we were attacked on 9/11, and then we used that tragic incident by a handful of religious extremists as an excuse to do anything the right-wing wanted. Instead of considering it a criminal act - as it was - and getting the world police forces behind us to catch the criminals responsible, we used it as an excuse to start two wars, to give tax cuts to the rich, and to destroy our own economy.

Oops! Destroying our own economy (and nearly destroying our own military) probably wasn't intended, was it? No, it's just that right-wing ideologues tend to be incompetent at real-world decisions. You see, they live in their own fantasy land, where what they really want to be true must be true. They live by faith, not evidence. The war was going to pay for itself. We'd be greeted as liberators. And tax cuts to the rich would trickle down to everyone else.

Seven years later, how does that decision look to you now? And you're going to put the Republicans back in power? Ha! What has happened to us? Have we Americans completely lost our minds?

Puppeteer

Ed Stein's commentary:

It’s not even a question that the national economic policies of the last few decades have favored the wealthy at the expense of the middle class. We’ve seen an astonishing increase in income inequality as taxes have become more regressive and the marketplace has been increasingly deregulated. The percentage of the nation’s wealth controlled by a tiny minority has grown exponentially while the income of lower- and middle -class Americans has stagnated.

I’ve wondered for years how so many people have been persuaded to vote again and again against their own economic self-interest. A revealing article by Jane Mayer  in the August 30 issue of The New Yorker magazine helps explain it. Over the years billionaires like Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers have steadily funded operations designed to stoke populist anger against the government and progressive ideas. The Tea Party, far from being a spontaneous populist movement, has been underwritten with tens of millions of dollars and coordinated through a network of organizations with names like Americans for Prosperity, with the singular goal of creating an angry block of disaffected voters who will unwittingly vote for policies that benefit the very wealthy.

Lurking behind the trumped-up fear of a government takeover of our lives is a desire on the part of these rich funders to force government out of the job of regulating how they do business, protecting workplace safety, defending the environment, overseeing the safety of the food supply, and raising their taxes–in other words, doing anything that might reduce their profits. That would also include, by the way, paying for the safety net. How this will be good for the army of middle class Americans they’ve enlisted to fight their battles for them is something I can’t answer, and I suspect the zealous Tea Party devotees can’t either. But letting out the anger, I guess, feels really good, even if the eventual consequences most certainly won’t. But, by then, we might have another Democrat in the White House we can blame for our troubles.

I guess people are persuaded to go against their own interests by constant repetition. After all, the super-wealthy have been making out like bandits, so they've plenty of money to spare for propaganda. And Fox "News" not only gives a million dollars to the Republicans, it also broadcasts their ideology constantly.

In both cases, it's an investment. The more Republicans Fox can make, the more viewers they will have and the more money the station will make. And when the super-wealthy can influence politics, they can make sure their donations more than pay for themselves.

Well, thanks to the Supreme Court, we've got corporations making the same calculation these days. When Best Buy and Target give $100,000-$150,000 to a right-wing candidate, they expect a return favor that will make that amount seem negligible. It's legalized corruption on a grand scale.

Sadly, it's just human nature that a lie told over and over again will be believed. If you have enough money to push pretty much any point of view, you can develop a following. And if you have a "news network" dedicated to pushing that philosophy day in and day out, logic and evidence have little chance to compete.

At the same time, demagogues are most successful when times are bad. Apparently, it doesn't even matter that they were the ones who created the bad times in the first place. Fear, stress, uncertainty - all of these lead people into a mob mentality, easy prey for fanatics. And what has happened to the moderate Republicans, who might well put America first? For the most part, there are no moderate Republicans left. Or if there are, they're frightened of admitting it.

We've been on the wrong path in this country for decades, and that path itself has made it more difficult to change course. I fear for my country. What happens when the Republicans retake Congress in November - or even just the House of Representatives - and completely shut down our government?

We could survive that in the 1990's, when our economy was booming. But now that we're in the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression? After eight years of George W. Bush, we are in no shape to suffer yet another era of disastrous right-wing incompetence. We haven't had nearly enough time to recover from the last time Republicans were in charge (mainly, because they've been so determinedly dragging their feet for the past year and a half).

Paul Krugman makes this point in his New York Times column:

So what will happen if, as expected, Republicans win control of the House? We already know part of the answer: Politico reports that they’re gearing up for a repeat performance of the 1990s, with a “wave of committee investigations” — several of them over supposed scandals that we already know are completely phony. We can expect the G.O.P. to play chicken over the federal budget, too; I’d put even odds on a 1995-type government shutdown sometime over the next couple of years.

It will be an ugly scene, and it will be dangerous, too. The 1990s were a time of peace and prosperity; this is a time of neither. In particular, we’re still suffering the after-effects of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, and we can’t afford to have a federal government paralyzed by an opposition with no interest in helping the president govern. But that’s what we’re likely to get.

If I were President Obama, I’d be doing all I could to head off this prospect, offering some major new initiatives on the economic front in particular, if only to shake up the political dynamic. But my guess is that the president will continue to play it safe, all the way into catastrophe.

I don't understand what Barack Obama is thinking. True, he campaigned on bringing back bipartisanship, but he's bent over backward trying to be reasonable and look where it's gotten him. He's been compromising with people who won't compromise an inch in return. And he's been using calm reason to combat demagogues. I wish that worked, but it doesn't.

I suspect that he wants to get along with everyone. I suspect that he's afraid of being pegged as "an angry black man." That's understandable, I guess, especially considering how racial bigotry has made such a strong resurgence lately. But we need a bold leader in the White House. He's got to see that, doesn't he? We can't expect leadership in Congress, especially when a minority can so completely shut it down.

Maybe Obama is as astonished as I am at how dumb the American people really are. They want the Republicans back in power? Really? What would the right-wing have to do to lose their credibility? Whatever it is, they've certainly done it in the past ten years, don't you think? But not all of us deserve what's going to happen when they gain power again. Heck, I didn't deserve it the first time.

It's almost too late. The polls for the November election are looking worse and worse. I don't know if bold action by President Obama can change that, but we're on a guaranteed course for defeat right now. And after that, it will be too late, too late for us all.

Russia, a century ago - in color!

I thought these photos were really interesting. They're color photographs which were taken in Russia one hundred years ago. Take a look. They've very large, detailed, colorful photos. The example I've posted above, shrunk down to fit my column width, hardly does them justice.

No, the past wasn't black and white, though that's normally how it appears in old photos. Color makes it easier to see these as real people, just like us, don't you think?

Notice a pattern here?

Bret Schundler is a right-wing Republican politician from New Jersey who campaigned on tax and spending cuts. The government can't do anything right. Social spending is just wasting your tax dollars. Read my lips! You get the idea.

But now he's been fired as state Education Commissioner at his own request. You see, the governor had asked him to resign because he'd lied* about a screw-up that cost New Jersey $400 million in federal "Race to the Top" education funds. But Schundler asked that he be fired instead,... so he could collect unemployment benefits.

Here's the quote in the Star-Ledger:

“I asked if they would mind writing a termination letter, instead of a resignation letter, because I do have a mortgage to pay, and I do have a daughter who’s just started college,” he said in an interview this morning. “And I, frankly, will need the unemployment insurance benefits until I find another job. ... And they said fine. They said sure.”

Yes, people have mortgages to pay. People have families to support. Even when they've screwed-up, they still need to survive until they can find another job - and in this job market, that's not easy. This does make sense.

But Republicans like Schundler only value such things when it affects them personally. When it's other people facing joblessness, Republicans see no value in these programs at all. They're always eager to slash social spending. They rant about tax-cuts, tax-cuts, tax-cuts. They make government programs sound like it's all about black people (got to get the racial angle in there, don't they?) picking up welfare checks in their Cadillacs.

When it's about them personally, though, they're quite eager to take advantage of these things. After all, it only makes sense, doesn't it? They've got mortgages to pay and families to support. It matters, then. It just doesn't matter when it's someone else who needs this kind of help.

You see this with elderly Tea Partiers, too. They are adamant that government spending be slashed to the bone. However, you'd better not touch their beloved Social Security and Medicare (which just happen to be the biggest government spending programs of all). No, cut spending that benefits other people, not them. Because, obviously, spending that benefits other people is just... wrong.

In fact, polls show that two-thirds of people over 65 - people who are on Medicare, so they won't be affected by the bill at all - oppose the health care reform bill. A majority of people in every other age group - those who will be affected by it - support the bill. You see, the elderly have their own government health insurance, and they love it. But they fiercely oppose providing similar benefits to anyone else. After all, if it doesn't benefit you, personally, it's just a waste, right?

And most of these people reliably vote Republican (ironically, since the Republican Party fought tooth and nail against Social Security and Medicare and is still fighting against both programs).

Here's another example. Ken Mehlman, George W. Bush's campaign manager in 2004 and formerly chairman of the Republican National Committee, has just announced that he's gay. Apparently, it took a long time for him to come to grips with that. "It's taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life." Meanwhile, he was actively pushing a political party and a political philosophy that sought to deny civil rights to homosexuals.

Mehlman's leadership positions in the GOP came at a time when the party was stepping up its anti-gay activities -- such as the distribution in West Virginia in 2006 of literature linking homosexuality to atheism, or the less-than-subtle, coded language in the party's platform ("Attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country..."). Mehlman said at the time that he could not, as an individual Republican, go against the party consensus. He was aware that Karl Rove, President Bush's chief strategic adviser, had been working with Republicans to make sure that anti-gay initiatives and referenda would appear on November ballots in 2004 and 2006 to help Republicans.

Mehlman acknowledges that if he had publicly declared his sexuality sooner, he might have played a role in keeping the party from pushing an anti-gay agenda.

"It's a legitimate question and one I understand," Mehlman said. "I can't change the fact that I wasn't in this place personally when I was in politics, and I genuinely regret that. It was very hard, personally."

And, of course, why would you work to support civil rights for gay people if you hadn't realized you were gay yourself? Why would you support civil rights for other people? Republicans just don't seem to get that. If something doesn't affect them personally, why should they favor it?

Now, of course, Mehlman is all for gay marriage and other civil rights. Now it affects him personally, so now he sees it as important. The article mentions Republicans like Dick Cheney who also support gay rights (though Cheney never seemed to think it a particularly important matter, did he?). But Dick Cheney has a daughter who's a lesbian. Is that what Republicans need? Do each and every one of them need to be gay, or at least have a gay family member, before they'll support civil rights for homosexuals?

I just don't get that. I'm not gay, but I support civil rights for everyone. I'm not religious, but I support freedom of religion. I'm white, but I've always opposed segregation and discrimination of racial minorities. And I've never, ever, received unemployment benefits, food stamps, or welfare payments of any kind, but I still understand the need for a strong social safety net.

I'm not a Republican, so me, me, me isn't the entire focus of my political and economic thinking. I support some policies that would probably hurt me personally, in the short-term, but would be beneficial to the nation as a whole. I want a fair, progressive tax rate, even if it means that I pay more taxes myself. Of course, what benefits my country as a whole is going to benefit me personally as well, at least in the long run. I understand that, too.

More importantly, I see civil rights as important in themselves, whether or not I'm a member of a minority that really needs such protections. (The majority doesn't really need such things, not in a democracy. But this is the other side, the complementary side, of any modern democracy - one side: majority rules; the other side: minority rights.)

I've always liked this quote by Martin Niemoeller:

First they came for the Communists but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists but I was not one of them, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews but I was not Jewish so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.

Isn't that, basically, why we support civil rights for everyone in this country? If you allow discrimination and oppression of any group - because, after all, you're not a member of that group yourself - why should you expect help when you're the target? Likewise, you may not need a social safety net yourself, but you might someday. What then, when you've spent a lifetime trying to gut such programs?

There's a lot I don't understand about Republicans (including why most of their policies are considered to be "conservative" at all), but this might be the biggest. Why do they support only those policies which will directly help them, personally (and even then, only in the short-term)? We are social animals. We have to live together. So why aren't they even a little concerned with the welfare of everyone else? This is our community, after all.

#

*PS. It's a bit off-topic, but regarding the Schundler affair in New Jersey, I thought this was kind of funny, too. From TPM:

On Wednesday, Christie held a press conference in which he strongly blamed the Obama administration for the loss of federal funding, saying that Schundler had tried to fix an error in the state's application during his presentation to federal education officials, but they would not let him. Then on Thursday, the federal Education Department released a video of the presentation itself, showing the officials pointing out the error to Schundler, who was unable to correct it.

Of course, the first thing Republican politicians will do, in every situation, is to blame Barack Obama. But in this case, federal officials had a video to set the record straight. Oops! It turns out that Schundler had lied. Heh, heh. Well, lies have worked very well for Republicans over the years. Just look at Fox "News." These days, I'm sure that's the first thing any Republican politician will consider as a solution to a problem: can he lie his way out of it?

Togetherness

Ed Stein's commentary:

Now that the stimulus spending is winding down (note to critics of stimulus spending, who said it didn’t do anything: if it didn’t do any good, why is the loss of it endangering the recovery?), the job market is looking grim again. For reasons I can’t quite fathom in this oddest of election years, neither party seems to have much to say about the number one issue in the polls: jobs. The Dems know that they can’t pass anything right now, but instead of trying to get a big jobs bill through, and forcing the GOP to defend the indefensible, they seem to have given up. The Republicans are all about one issue only–extending the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, because it’s not a good idea to raise taxes in a recession, although it’s hard to know who will be hurt by taking a bit more from really rich people, and on the discredited theory that keeping the tax cuts will create jobs, (note to GOP: where are all the jobs that the tax cut was supposed to produce in the first place?).

In the meantime, the millions without work can spend their days waiting for the economy to tank again and looking for jobs that don’t exist, or worrying about a mosque in New York or immigrants taking the jobs that don’t exist in Arizona.

On that Islamic Center issue, I just returned from a few days in New York, where nobody I met was talking about the Ground Zero mosque (note to readers: it’s a community center, not a mosque, and it’s not at Ground Zero) even though Rupert Murdoch’s Post was doing its lurid best to keep up with his Fox News and make an election issue of it. I’m convinced the only politician in America with any courage at all is Mayor Bloomberg (a Republican), who is still standing firm on the principle of freedom of religion.

As usual, Ed Stein makes some good points. If the stimulus package didn't do any good, why is the loss of it now threatening to put us back into recession? And why did it stop the downturn in its tracks, and cause the stock market to immediately change course, when it was first implemented?

And if tax cuts for the rich creates jobs, why didn't it during the Bush administration? Why was our economy so much better under Bill Clinton, who actually raised taxes - a bit - and began to pay off the debt we'd accumulated from previous Republican administrations? Yes, he raised taxes and the economy boomed!

Yes, Republicans claimed that trickle-down economics wasn't voodoo, that it would actually pay off for our nation. But the evidence - poor job growth, record-breaking deficits, and bubbles that gave us the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression - clearly shows otherwise. By any measure at all, we were far better off under Clinton than under Bush.

Yes, the stimulus was absolutely the right move, but it was too small, and too much of it went to tax cuts (which Obama and the Democrats got no credit for, anyway). We needed to be bolder about such things. The economy has to be humming again before we start cutting back on government stimulus. Heck, we learned that in 1937. None of this is rocket science. We've been through all this before.

Unfortunately, the Democrats don't do "bold." If there's a timider bunch of politicians in the world, I'd be surprised. Not all of them, of course, but most. Now they're mostly trying to hide under the bed, hoping that voters will just overlook them in November.

Where's the sense in that? They should be screaming to high heavens about Republican obstructionism. They should be proposing bold new jobs packages. If the Republicans want to filibuster, they should let them filibuster a jobs bill. They should let them filibuster a military appropriations bill that ends "don't ask, don't tell." They should be standing up for what they believe.

And yes, they should be standing up for freedom of religion, without wishy-washy qualifiers that attempt to keep everyone happy. Sometimes compromise is valid. But there are other situations, like this one, where right is right and wrong is wrong. Freedom of religion doesn't need qualifiers. You either stand up for the Constitution of the United States or you don't. (Admittedly, some Democrats seem to recognize this.)

I fault Barack Obama for this. Congress can't provide leadership. That's the President's job. He's got the bully pulpit, and he needs to be using it. He needs to - publicly -  push Congress into doing the right thing. If Democrats in Congress are too timid, he needs to kick some ass. He needs to lead.

Given Republican filibusters, the Democrats probably can't pass anything worthwhile. But they should still try. They should fight the good fight, even if it's a losing proposition. They should make the Republicans "defend the indefensible." And if some of their own members drag their feet (Ben Nelson, I'm referring to you), the majority should stick to their guns. There's no sense in compromising with the very worst elements in your own party when the Republicans are going to filibuster everything anyway.

Like most Democratic politicians, Barack Obama wants to get along with everyone. He needs to forget that. He's been as moderate, as compromising, as... nonthreatening as he can possibly be, and the Republicans still call him a Marxist, a fascist, a terrorist, a socialist, a Muslim, a Communist, and a Nazi. According to them, he's still the embodiment of the scary black man who plans to steal their wallets and their daughters.

Meanwhile, he's getting kicked around by lunatics on Fox "News" and burned in effigy at Tea Party rallies. He's got supporters, plenty of them. But after showing real leadership during the campaign, he's abandoned all that as president. He wants to be president of all the people. He wants to rise above petty partisan bickering. He wants to bring the nation together.

Well, nice thought, but it's not going to happen. What we need now is leadership. Otherwise, we're going to be back under the control of Republicans who've become complete lunatics. You think the Bush administration was bad? Just wait. I don't think the nation could survive another George W. Bush, and the next one is likely to be even worse.

Community center of death

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Tennessee No Evil
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Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

You know, I wonder if those right-wing lunatics have ever read the Bible. There's some disgusting stuff in that, too. But most Christians have learned to ignore it.

We also used to worry that American Catholics would do whatever the Pope told them to do (because, you know, they're supposed to). But they don't. For the most part, they do what they think is right.

So why should American Muslims be any different? Well, bigotry doesn't have to make sense, does it?

Meanwhile, according to Fox "News," we have to give up our rights in America so the terrorists don't celebrate a victory. You know, I don't care what the terrorists think, I want to keep our civil rights. If they want to celebrate that, they're welcome to do so.

A new TIME magazine

Funny, huh? From The Onion, of course.

Life sure is frustrating

(Blunt Card)

The hurt talker

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The Hurt Talker
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That rant by radio personality Laura Schlessinger has been both disgusting and - for me, as a white man and an American - embarrassing. How can anyone in America be this clueless?

Obviously, it's not about saying "nigger" on the air. I hate even posting the word, considering the tragic history of race relations in our country, but as Jon Stewart says, it is a matter of context. But when she gets a call from a young black woman, concerned about the racial slurs she hears from her white husband's family and friends, what does "Dr. Laura" advise?

First, she starts ranting about Barack Obama. Yeah, of course. Because that's so pertinent to the problem, right? "Without giving much thought, a lot of blacks voted for Obama simply 'cause he was half-black. Didn't matter what he was gonna do in office, it was a black thing. You gotta know that."

Sure, just like a lot of whites voted for McCain just because he was white. And we all know how welcoming the Republican Party has been to minorities, don't we? Gee, I wonder if the GOP's "Southern Strategy" of appealing to white racists has been noticed by black voters at all? Or did they really think that Bill Clinton was black, too?

But really, what does this have to do with her caller's problem? Well, apparently, now that we've elected a black man to the presidency, African Americans should stop complaining about being called "nigger." Jebus, what do they want, anyway??? We elected one of "them," so isn't that enough? They actually want fair treatment, too?

So what's Dr. Laura's advice to the young woman whose in-laws call her "nigger"? It's that the black woman should get a sense of humor! Or else she shouldn't have married a white man in the first place. (Apparently, in Dr. Laura's mind, that's just what white people do. So blacks should get used to it, or stick to themselves. Yeah, segregation... *sigh*  Don't you miss it?)

A lot of people - myself included - thought that this was disgusting and wrong. In fact, there was so much criticism that two of Dr. Laura's sponsors got cold feet (not at all an unusual response to controversy, is it?). So Dr. Laura has announced that she is leaving radio, claiming that her First Amendment right to free speech is being violated.

Of course, where there's right-wing lunacy, Sarah Palin is bound to show up, in this case supporting Dr. Laura with one of her goofy tweets: "Dr.Laura:don't retreat...reload! (Steps aside bc her 1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence"isn't American,not fair")."  Heh, heh. Does she do that on purpose, I wonder? Or is she just not that bright?

Anyway, as all rational people understand, free speech also includes the right to criticize someone else's speech. All Americans are free to criticize Dr. Laura and Sarah Palin alike. Since the government didn't get involved with this at all, there is no First Amendment issue here.

Or are they suggesting that the government should get involved, that their idiotic comments should be immune from criticism? Hey, why should right-wing lunacy get a free ride? If you don't want to be ridiculed, don't be ridiculous.

And I've got to laugh when the right-wing, which seems to worship private businesses and corporate interests, complains that it's not fair when corporate sponsors drop them like a hot potato. How is that not fair? What, do you want the government to prevent your sponsors from leaving? Honestly, is there anything about this that makes sense?

To recap, Laura Schlessinger never "lost her First Amendment rights." She can say whatever loony thing she wants. But I can criticize her for it, because I've got First Amendment rights, too. And depending on the details in their contract, her sponsors can stop paying her vast sums of money when she gets too loony even for them. That's not a First Amendment issue at all, but contract law. She can take them to court if it violates some prior agreement. (This is what conservatives say they want. Or does she expect special treatment here, too.)

Neither Laura Schlessinger nor Sarah Palin, celebrities both, have any right to be immune from criticism. The criticism doesn't even have to be just, though it certainly seems to be in this case. But then, if you disagree with this post, you can criticize me, too. Should I then claim that my First Amendment rights are being violated, because someone dares to disagree with me? Or is it only right-wing extremists who are supposed to be immune from criticism?

Fox News: fair and balanced?

(The Far Left Side)