The high cost of low teacher salaries

Here's a thought-provoking column in The New York Times:

WHEN we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. We don’t say, “It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!” No, if the results aren’t there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition.

And yet in education we do just that. When we don’t like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don’t like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources.

Compare this with our approach to our military: when results on the ground are not what we hoped, we think of ways to better support soldiers. We try to give them better tools, better weapons, better protection, better training. And when recruiting is down, we offer incentives.

We have a rare chance now, with many teachers near retirement, to prove we’re serious about education. The first step is to make the teaching profession more attractive to college graduates. This will take some doing.

At the moment, the average teacher’s pay is on par with that of a toll taker or bartender. Teachers make 14 percent less than professionals in other occupations that require similar levels of education. In real terms, teachers’ salaries have declined for 30 years.

That link is to an Economic Policy Institute study, which concludes:

We found that the average weekly pay of teachers in 2003 was nearly 14% below that of workers with similar education and work experience, a gap only minimally offset by the better nonwage benefits in teaching. Teacher earnings have fallen below that of the average college graduate in recent decades, losing considerable ground during the late 1990s, as earnings of college graduates grew 11% relative to the much lower 0.8% growth in teacher earnings.

Do you think your children are important? Heck, even if you don't have children, do you think having a well-educated citizenry is important? Then why aren't you willing to pay a premium for that?

The right-wing claims that investment bankers and hedge fund managers must make tens, or even hundreds, of millions of dollars a year, because that's the only way we'll get the very best. Fine. But don't they think that works with teachers, too? Or is it just that they don't care about children, not even their own?

Money is not the only motivation for people, but it's a strong one. When teacher pay is low, the best college students will probably not look there for a career. (And note that it does require a college degree, which your average bartender or garbage collector probably doesn't need.) And it's not as though teaching is really prestigious these days! Are you going to go into teaching for the respect of your community? Ha! Good luck with that!

If you're unhappy with the quality of teaching in your community, the last thing you should do is cut pay. In fact, you should increase it. You don't always get what you pay for, but you usually do. Unless you don't really care about education or about children. Maybe you just like to bitch?

Of course, good teachers make a real difference, but they're not omnipotent. There are a lot of other things that matter, too, especially parents and the local economic environment. Teachers in poor districts face an uphill battle every day. And blaming teachers for poor results usually makes about as much sense as blaming low-ranking soldiers.

But we're eager to shower money on the military, aren't we? We make sure their equipment is second to none. We never worry that their benefits are too good. And we honor every soldier, no matter what he's actually accomplished. If things go bad, we blame his leaders. Or we say that we just haven't given him enough support, financial and otherwise.

Why is our thinking so different when it comes to teachers? Are we still mad about those homework assignments? Or are we, when you get right down to it,... just not all that bright?

Longest period with his mouth shut ever

From The Borowitz Report:

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) – With the public’s attention focused on the death of Osama bin Laden, billionaire Donald Trump huddled with advisors for the second straight day to try to decide what stupid shit to say next.

“The bin Laden thing has definitely stolen the headlines from Donald,” said close associate and advisor Tracy Klugian.  “The only way he can grab them back is by doing what he does best: saying something really fucked up.”

Trump’s two-day hiatus from spewing messed up shit is the longest on record, experts say, adding to the pressure on the billionaire to break his silence with something truly craptastic.

To that end, he has closeted himself with a circle of advisors including the Rev. Pat Robertson, former NBA star Charles Barkley, and the former voice of the Aflac duck, Gilbert Gottfried.

Mr. Trump has drawn up a short list of verbal turds that have potential, including attacking President Obama for overdue library books during his grade school years, but so far he has failed to come up with a comment that is both objectionable and ill informed enough to meet his high standards.

“People don’t know how much work goes into saying the stupid shit Donald says,” Mr. Klugian said.  “He just makes it look easy.”

Another campaign promise kept

I remember, during the campaign, both John McCain and Hillary Clinton objecting to Obama's statement. Well, if you're trying to beat another candidate, you need to find points of disagreement. And if you can't find any, you need to manufacture some.

But I always thought that this specific objection was particularly weird, because how could any American really disagree with what Barack Obama said?

And now, it seems prescient, doesn't it? This is exactly what President Obama did, and it was a great success. Heck, the intelligence gathered might be an even bigger victory than finally killing Osama bin Laden. So I wonder if John McCain would still say that it was a mistake (presumably, Hillary Clinton wouldn't).

Don't worry, it's good news

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I particularly wanted to post a clip from The Daily Show today, because I remember Jon Stewart's first show after the 9/11 attacks. You could tell that it was really difficult for him, doing a comedy show so soon afterward.

Well, last night, he was clearly on top of the world. And he took up much of the show with this. It's really fun to watch.

This is just the first part. It continues here ("To Kill a Mockingturd" - heh, heh) and then here. And I've really got to quote from that second segment:

Yes, we shouldn't have killed him... Now the terrorists are going to want to attack us. But you know what? Even when they do, you know who won't see it? Bin Laden. Because we shot out his eyes, and now he lives in a pineapple under the sea!

Should I be happy at the death of another human being? Hell, yes! As Stewart says, this was a good night for human people, not just Americans. And I'm not going to start trembling at the thought of terrorists now wanting to kill us. Yeah, like they haven't wanted to kill us for the past decade or so.

Stephen Colbert was pretty excited, too (here and here).

What's the difference between a jihadist and a conservative?

The right-wing in America has gotten so loony, and so determined to oppose Barack Obama, that they're sounding like the religious nuts we're fighting.

This reminds me of that comment (I'd call it a joke, but... I wonder) by Juan Cole: "On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Sarah Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts. What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick."

For the latest example, check out how both are taking the death of Osama bin Laden:

"I will wait for the Mujahideen to confirm this, and will not believe until I see a picture of his dead body," wrote one jihadi sympathizer on Islamic Awakening (IA)—one of several such forums provided to Mother Jones by Aaron Y. Zelin, a researcher at Brandeis University who tracks online militant activities on the website Jihadology.net.

This sentiment, and many others by Islamists, were echoed by conservative detractors of the president. "Obama can claim what ever he wants but his word is no good," wrote one commenter on the right-wing site Free Republic. "Without proof that Osama is dead and staying dead, I don't have to believe anything he says."

The "Osama is still alive" theory, in fact, gained traction with Islamists and right-wingers alike through the night after the Pakistani Taliban released a statement to that effect and the White House announced Bin Laden would be buried at sea. "Good news brothers," wrote one IA commenter. "Its aired on pakistani news channel ,the word of taliban that Shaykh Osama is alive!" About the same time on Free Republic, a poster calling himself salamander wrote: "The commie muzzie usurper in chief had better release photos and videos toot sweet. WTF with this burial at sea before the body is cold?...Something about this smells."

Of course, their response isn't exactly the same. So what's the "lipstick" in this situation?

Among those who took the president at his word, the jihadis and right-wingers expressed anger...albeit for different reasons. Some Muslims suspected that Bin Laden had been defiled, in life and in death. "Brothers and Sisters," wrote one IA poster, "ive recieved disturbing news that the Sheikh was tortured before being shot, Their are videos reportedly surfacing of...a plunger being stuck in his rectum before being shot... MAY ALLAH destroy these barbarian kuffar."

Conservatives, on the other hand, were concerned that the sea-burial plan, undertaken according to Muslim edicts, was too respectful an epilogue for a terrorist. "This is pathetic and I am sick of kissing up to Muslims, of which our president is one," wrote dayglored on Free Republic. "Muslim and Arab leaders all over the world are threatening the USA, and endorsing the slaughter of Christians and Jews on a daily basis. This is not an ending, this does not satisfy justice."

Funny, huh? Of course, I'd expect no better from our enemies. But Republicans are desperate to downplay the fact that Barack Obama accomplished something they couldn't, despite invading Afghanistan (supposedly for this very reason).

And this minor "lipstick" difference aside, our jihadist enemies and our right-wing loons think surprisingly eye to eye about many things:

Whether or not the White House lied about killing Bin Laden, many jihadis and right wingers seemed to agree that Obama was looking to score political points. Papa Ray, a commenter on the right-wing military blog Blackfive,...

CJ Grisham, a prolific conservative military blogger, tweeted...

Grisham's feelings (about everything but the shirts) were mirrored by the IA Islamists. "The gist of [Obama's] speech unequivocally bares election-driven character," wrote Abu Abdallah al-Bulghari on IA. "That's what all we are to Kuffaar [infidels]: not friends (of course), not honest business partners, not enemies - pawns in their election battles."

Another user, Yahya, argued that the Pakistani army had actually held Bin Laden for some time before Sunday. "they were waiting for the right time to benefit americans to show him to world after killing him," he wrote. "nowadays american economy was so low that americans were near the brink of protests so now americans will forget there situation for while."

Free Republic user imfrmdixie agreed that Obama was playing politics, but added an islamophobic twist. "Who wants to bet Obama didn't know a thing about this when it happened," he wrote. "He claims he all but pulled the trigger in his earlier Me! Me! Me! speech but I suspect we kept it from him out of fear he'd blab to his Muslim Brotherhood/AQ buddies."

Gee, you'd kind of think a politician would hold off on this until just before an election. Heh, heh. Well, loons are loons. Crazy knows no political boundaries or cultural fault lines. And it's remarkable how often we tend to turn into our enemies, anyway. We're fighting autocratic religious nuts, so you wouldn't expect us to turn to autocratic religious nuts ourselves, would you?

But it actually seems to be our democratic, pluralistic, tolerant side that loses out. We, too, start to give up on freedom of religion and the strict separation of church and state. We, too, start to demand that everyone think the same. We, too, start to argue that might makes right, that violence, not compromise, is the answer. It's really weird, don't you think?

Incidentally, if you want to read some interesting speculation about Pakistan's connection to Osama bin Laden, check out this column in The New Yorker. Of course, there's not much we can do about it. Pakistan is an unstable, nuclear-armed Muslim nation, and we're already in an interminable war on their border.

The very best thing we could do about this whole region is to research and invest in alternate energy, so we could wean ourselves from our oil addiction. No, we can't ignore any part of the world, not these days. But then, at least, we could stand back and look at things more objectively.

An addict looking for his fix doesn't usually make good decisions.

Jeez, what's the deal?

(Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

Luckily, we still have our fear

I know you're disappointed that Osama bin Laden is dead. What will happen to our fear now? Will we have to go back to fearing illegal immigrants, or black people, or Canadians? (I know, you never stopped, huh?)

But don't worry, we still have our fear to keep us warm. Al-Qaeda is still out there,... and they might be closer than you think!

From Indecision Forever:

Remember people — in the wake of the U.S. military's successful surprise raid of Osama bin Laden's suburban home in Pakistan — this is no time relax and enjoy a well-earned moment of national success.

We must remain ever-vigilant in our quest for ever-vigilance. We must not relent one tiny bit in our fear of all things and all people. We must remain strong in our belief that we are weak and helpless…

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who chairs the Senate's Homeland Security Committee, warned Americans on Monday to be vigilant against homegrown radicals who may improvise attacks in response to Osama Bin Laden's death…

While the threat level has not been raised as there is no specific evidence of any credible threats, Lieberman said that he was concerned Bin Laden's demise could inspire an attack along the lines of the Ft. Hood massacre, in which a radicalized individual soldier killed 13 people. He urged Americans to be especially vigilant in reporting any leads to authorities in the coming days.

"This is a classic 'If you see something, say something' moment," he said. "If you see suspicious behavior, call the police immediately — and that includes if you see suspicious behavior by someone who is a friend or family member."

You know, the last time I saw my brother, he looked a little bit shifty around the eyes.

You know, he could be right. I thought my own brother looked a little suspicious yesterday. Not shifty around the eyes, exactly, but certainly wild-eyed. All I did was nearly drive us through a red light, and he started acting really peculiar.

Maybe I should turn him into Homeland Security, just in case. You can't be too careful these days, right?

The death of Osama bin Laden

So, after nearly ten years, Osama bin Laden is finally dead. An elite team of Navy Seals, apparently, attacked bin Laden's compound, killing him and grabbing the body.

He hadn't been living in a cave, after all. He was in Abbottabad, only 62 miles from Pakistan's capitol, in a mansion, just a few hundred yards from the Pakistan Military Academy.

So why couldn't we have done this in the first place? Note that Barack Obama didn't declare war on Pakistan. We didn't invade the country, getting mired in another endless war. No, we just took out the man we were after.

Better yet, why didn't we consider 9/11 to be a criminal act, just like the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995? When Timothy McVeigh attacked us, President Clinton didn't declare war on Christianity. He didn't invade Canada. It was a criminal act, so we went after the criminals responsible. And we got them.

But in 2001, we had right-wing Republican loons in the White House. Chickenhawks nearly to a man (and woman), they were eager to wage war - sorry, eager to watch someone else wage war on their behalf. President Bush was eager to play Commander-in-Chief, and he even got to play with real soldiers! What fun!

So instead of treating this as a crime, they decided to wage war. And instead of finding and taking out Osama bin Laden, they invaded Afghanistan. Nearly ten years later, America is still stuck there. Well, we broke it, so we own it, huh?

Afghanistan wasn't our responsibility until we conquered it. But now we've given those people hope. Now, we've got little girls going to school - and continuing to go to school even after getting acid thrown in their faces! What do we tell them, "Oops, my bad"?

Of course, waging war didn't get us any closer to killing or capturing Osama bin Laden, which was, you know, supposedly the whole point, to get the guy responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Still, we had the opportunity to really make a difference. The Taliban was in a shambles, and we had the people of Afghanistan behind us. It was still a bad idea, but we really could have won this thing.

But after the initial excitement, Afghanistan turned out to be boring. We couldn't even use our fancy high-tech weapons, so what good was it? And nation-building is a lot less fun than nation-destroying, at least for right-wing Chickenhawks. So they ignored Afghanistan, turning their attention to something much more fun.

Iraq did have good targets for our high-tech weapons. Plus, even better, it had oil! Ooo, how exciting was that? Of course, Iraq didn't have anything to do with 9/11, even remotely (note that the attacks were actually planned and carried out by Saudi Arabians). Iraq hadn't attacked us, and it was no threat to us at all. In fact, Saddam Hussein was actually the sworn enemy of al Qaeda.

Oh, but all that lovely, lovely oil! This war would "pay for itself." Really, how can you possibly turn down a free war? And this would be lots more fun than that boring Afghanistan! There'd be all these cool explosions. And Bush would be able to prance around in a flight suit under a "Mission Accomplished" banner. Heck, he'd be almost certain to get re-elected (and if not, well, there's always the Supreme Court).

And so Republican chickenhawks took us into another war, this one not even remotely connected to killing or capturing Osama bin Laden. And all this "free war" cost us was the lives of thousands of young American soldiers, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars. And that's just so far.

Meanwhile, ignoring Afghanistan turned around our victory there. Starving Afghanistan, in order to send troops and equipment into Iraq, let the Taliban regroup. And the Afghans have long since wearied of unending war. Well, we let an opportunity drift away, and it's never coming back. We blew it.

And none of this got us any closer to getting Osama bin Laden. Remember? That was supposed to be the whole point. Yeah, we captured and killed Saddam Hussein, but he never attacked us. He was never any threat to us. And he certainly had nothing to do with 9/11. Furthermore, removing Saddam Hussein was probably the biggest gift we could ever have given to Iran. Remember them? The religious nuts in charge of that country don't like us, either.

All this was easily as big a failure of right-wing Republican policies as causing the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. And it was an even bigger failure than cutting taxes on the rich (which was also supposed to "pay for itself") to give us record-breaking budget deficits. The others were big, but this was a huge, huge blunder.

Well, after eight years of complete and utter disaster, with basically every Republican policy demonstrably proven to be an abject failure, George W. Bush finally left office, turning all of their horrible messes over to Barack Obama and the Democrats to clean up.

Oh, but Obama is a scary, scary guy. Just look at him. He doesn't look like any of our other presidents. He's one of "them," not one of "us." He's not a "real American." He probably wasn't even born here, or maybe he was one of those "anchor babies," destined to tear us down from the inside. I mean, just look at him. Does he look like a real American? His birth certificate is probably a forgery. And he's probably a secret Muslim. For God's sake, just look at him!

And those Democrats are all pansies, anyway. They're all socialists, communists, even liberals! They'll just immediately surrender everything in our beloved "war on terror." They'll appease the terrorists. Heck, they'll probably run away screaming like little girls. They'll turn the whole country over to Sharia law - or, worse yet, to "the blacks."

Er, but this socialist, Muslim, illegal alien President has just killed Osama bin Laden. You still remember bin Laden, right? Perhaps 9/11 rings a bell? Admittedly, Obama did it in a really pansy way, without even nuking Pakistan. But still...

No, this won't stop anything. I've already seen the right-wing conspiracy theorists working on it. You see, Osama bin Laden isn't really dead. He's probably sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom right this minute. That's why they got rid of the body, so no one would know the truth.

Heh, heh. I'm not kidding. I've already seen comments suggesting these things (well, not the Lincoln bedroom part, but give it time). The fact is, Obama could put bin Laden's head on a pike and stick it on the White House lawn, and it still wouldn't stop the loons. The only way Barack Obama is going to be accepted by Tea Party types is if he paints himself white, changes his name to "Pat Boone" (or maybe "Reince Priebus"?), joins the GOP, and gets a job at Fox "News."

Still, for the handful of us Americans who still seem to be sane, can we just think about this for a minute? I'm very happy we got Osama bin Laden. And no, he's not burning in hell, he's just dead. But that's good enough. Or if it isn't, it's all we're going to get.

But can we just stop to think about how we blew this in 2001? Can we acknowledge what a huge mistake it was to go to war because of the criminal act of a handful of religious nuts? Can we finally recognize that that didn't even get us what we supposedly wanted, the capture or death of this particular criminal? And can we see what a mess it did give us, a mess we're still struggling to contain?

From the very beginning, we made the completely wrong response to 9/11. Our mistakes have given us nothing but grief. Can we at least acknowledge that now, while we're still patting ourselves on the back? Please?

The 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner

OK, I posted an excerpt earlier today from the President's speech at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner, but here's the whole thing. It's pretty funny.

And here's a link to Seth Meyers' remarks at the dinner, too. Also very, very funny.

But what I think I like best about both of these is the expression on Donald Trump's face as he's ridiculed. Man, he looks furious! Heh, heh. Well, it really couldn't happen to a more deserving person.

What happened to the space program?

(Ed Stein)

Ed Stein's commentary:

When the space shuttle Atlantis makes its final flight at the end of June, the United States’ manned space program will come to an end for the foreseeable future. For those of us who grew up with the space program, first catching up to the Soviets after their launch of Sputnik, then through the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, culminating with landings on the moon, there could be nothing more inspiring than seeing Americans expand our horizons into space. First the moon, then Mars, then–who knows? Jupiter, out past the edge of the solar system, intergalactic exploration, starships flying close to the speed of light. But, no. The moon was as far as we got. The shuttle program, interesting as it was, took us only into near-Earth orbit. Shuttles exploded, burned up in re-entry, the romance faded, the fleet aged with nothing to replace it, and the moon is as far as we got. We somehow became a nation more obsessed with cutting taxes and spending than with exploring the universe. A nation that put men on the moon now can’t even figure out how to pave our highways or pay for our schools, much less send men to Mars.

We've been talking about this in the ClassicScienceFiction Yahoo Group. What happened to the U.S. space program? It was more than 40 years ago that we first landed on the Moon, and we seem to have accomplished almost nothing since then.

At least, we have little to show for it. And now it looks like NASA's manned space program is closing down completely. We don't have a replacement for the shuttle - we don't even have a replacement planned - and our astronauts are looking for other work.

I see it as two separate questions - or, perhaps, two separate answers to the same basic question, one short-term and one long-term. Short-term, we just don't have the money.

When George W. Bush announced his proposal to return to the Moon, in January, 2004, it was a nice speech and a useful photo op in an election year, but he never budgeted sufficient funding for it. That he left for his successor. Apparently, coming up with the money was neither fun nor politically popular. And then, after giving us record breaking deficits, with his tax cuts for the rich and two completely unnecessary wars, he collapsed our economy.

Hey, we haven't been this bad off since the Great Depression. We just can't afford manned spaceflight now, especially when Republicans adamantly refuse to go along with any tax increases, not even ending those tax cuts for the rich which were actually supposed to disappear after ten years. Heck, they're actually clamoring for cuts in spending, especially for such luxuries as education, health care, and jobs. And science is one of the things they particularly hate.

I was surprised by this, but apparently the space program has never been especially popular:

Throughout the 1960s, public opinion polls indicated that 45 to 60 percent of Americans felt that the government was spending too much money on space exploration. Even after Neil Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind,” only a lukewarm 53 percent of the public believed that the historic event had been worth the cost.

“The decision to proceed with Apollo was not made because it was enormously popular with the public, despite general acquiescence, but for hard-edged political reasons,” writes Roger D. Launius, the senior curator at Smithsonian’s divison of space history, in the journal Space Policy. “Most of these were related to the Cold War crises of the early 1960s, in which spaceflight served as a surrogate for face-to-face military confrontation.” However, that acute sense of crisis was fleeting—and with it, enthusiasm for the Apollo program.

And according to that same article, the average American thinks that NASA takes up 24% of the federal budget, instead of the actual amount of one-half of one percent. So they look at NASA as a juicy place to cut, not to increase spending.

Short-term, the money just isn't available. SETI is running out of money, too. Poor societies - or societies that think they're poor, because they don't want to pay taxes - don't do things like this. Only confident, ambitious, wealthy societies are willing to spend money on such things. And right now, that's just not us.

Long-term, IMHO, the reason is a little bit different, although there's an economic component to that, too. I just pointed out that space exploration was never especially popular in America. The fact is, we only went to the Moon because we didn't want the Soviet Union to get there first. It was a "space race," literally. It was a matter of national prestige.

But once we won the race, we realized that there was nothing there. There was no good economic reason to stay on the Moon or to explore elsewhere, either. I'm not saying there's no reason to explore our solar system. It's just that there's no good economic reason.

There doesn't seem to be anything out there that we can't get, far more cheaply, on Earth. And the absolute worst environment on Earth is better suited to human life than the best environment off our planet. Fact is, it would be far easier and far cheaper to colonize Antarctica than anywhere else in our solar system.

So there's nothing pulling us there. There's little or no incentive, except for idle curiosity and scientific research - both useful, but neither popular reasons to spend vast amounts of tax money. And, yeah, there's the romance of it, too, at least for us space enthusiasts. But what we need is a good economic reason.

I really wish we could find one, because I'm a space fan myself. I'm also a strong supporter of scientific research. Being curious about our solar system is a good enough reason for me. And if I needed another one, I worry about us human beings stuck on a single fragile planet. That's really putting all our eggs into one basket.

But I've got to acknowledge reality, too. We haven't been back to the Moon in decades, because there's nothing there. There seems to be nothing on the Moon that will make us rich or improve the lives of people on Earth in any way. Mars is equally inhospitable, and even farther away. And those are the most promising places we can imagine.

The only way we're going to colonize the Moon or Mars is if we become so wealthy that the economics of it really doesn't matter, or if we do discover something in space that gives us the incentive we need. I can't imagine what we might find that would do that.

And as far as wealth goes, well, we're overpopulating the Earth, overfishing our oceans, depleting pretty much all of our resources, and polluting the very atmosphere that keeps us alive. How do you think that's going to turn out?

Obama endorses Donald Trump's campaign

This is the kind of speech Barack Obama needs to give more often. Who'll he endorse next? Michele Bachmann? Newt Gingrich? Mike Huckabee?

Edit: OK, I posted the President's entire speech here. I've got a link to Seth Meyers' remarks there, too. They're both very funny.

Fox News misrepresents marijuana ruling

I majored in Journalism years (many years) ago, so Fox "News" really gets my goat. I just hate to see journalism degraded like this. Fair and balanced? Don't make me puke!

The above video is typical of Fox. When they do bring an opposing point of view on the show - often, their only guest is just someone parroting the Fox line on issues - it's always two against one. That defense attorney here is woefully unprepared for this, but O'Reilly doesn't let him talk, anyway. Whenever he starts to make a point, O'Reilly just speaks over him.

Now I think that Bill O'Reilly's show, in the above video, is supposed to be "commentary," not strictly a news program. But he should still be honest, don't you think? And do I really need to point out that the "news" segments of Fox "News" aren't any more honest than O'Reilly is, on average?

Well, if you have any doubts about that, check out LiberalViewer's channel on YouTube. He seems to specialize in pointing out the propaganda, the errors, and the plain, old-fashioned lying on Fox. (Not just Fox, though. In this clip, for example, he wonders about a question asked on NBC. Take a look. It's one of my favorites.)

Genocide is moral, if God commands it?

This is a strange situation, where a seemingly sane Christian ends up supporting genocide, the killing of men, women, and children, just because it's in the Bible.

Well, you see, he believes God exists, and he believes that the Bible is God's word, and he believes that God is good. In fact, he defines God as being perfectly good. Therefore, if it's in the Bible, it must be good.

You see? It's all perfectly logical and perfectly crazy. That's because his initial premises are wrong. Either God does not exist or the Bible is not accurate or God is not good. (Or all three.) But if you simply won't accept any of those things, then you either have to ignore much of what's in the Bible or explain it away. Or accept it.

Here's an excerpt from PZ Myers' comments at Pharyngula, with a link to the post:

It's always interesting when some god-walloper honestly follows through on the logical implications of his beliefs — he basically is compelled to admit that if you worship a tyrannical monster, you have to end up rationalizing monstrous tyrannies. The latest to enlighten us with excuses for bronze age barbarisms and brutalities is William Lane Craig, who thinks that tales from the Bible of God's Chosen People slaughtering babies is A-OK:

Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God's grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven's incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.

Therefore, if I station myself outside a church door with an AK-47 and murder all the happy saved Christians exiting the service, I am doing the Lord's work. Well, gosh, Willie, not only do I get to be a mass-murderer for fun, I can be self-righteous about it, too! It's too bad I'm one of those atheists who doesn't believe in a Happy Fun Land for the dead, so I can't honestly do that in good conscience.

I will be interested to see if Craig now has a Christian perspective on abortion, that is, that it is a process that releases blameless innocents to heaven's incomparable joy, and is therefore to be encouraged.

Greta Christina has a great post on this, too. There's a lot to it, but here's an excerpt:

I want to make something very clear before I go on: William Lane Craig is not some drooling wingnut. He's not some extremist Fred Phelps type, ranting about how God's hateful vengeance is upon us for tolerating homosexuality. He's not some itinerant street preacher, railing on college campuses about premarital holding hands. He's an extensively educated, widely published, widely read theological scholar and debater. When believers accuse atheists of ignoring sophisticated modern theology, Craig is one of the people they're talking about.

And he said that as long as God gives the thumbs-up, it's okay to kill pretty much anybody. It's okay to kill bad people, because they're bad and they deserve it... and it's okay to kill good people, because they wind up in Heaven. As long as God gives the thumbs-up, it's okay to systematically wipe out entire races. As long as God gives the thumbs-up, it's okay to slaughter babies and children. Craig said -- not essentially, not as a paraphrase, but literally, in quotable words -- "the death of these children was actually their salvation."

She's right. William Lane Craig is one of those supposedly "sophisticated" believers. I've seen him debating Christopher Hitchens, and he comes off as knowledgeable, urbane, even charming.

Greta Christina makes another good point:

See, here's the thing. When faced with horrors in our past -- our personal history, or our human history -- non-believers don't have any need to defend them. When non-believers look at a human history full of genocide, infanticide, slavery, forced marriage, etc. etc. etc., we're entirely free to say, "Damn. That was terrible. That was some seriously screwed-up shit we did. We were wrong to do that. Let's not ever do that again."

But for people who believe in a holy book, it's not that simple. When faced with horrors in their religion's history -- horrors that their holy book defends, and even praises -- believers have to do one of two things. They have to either a) cherry-pick the bits they like and ignore the bits they don't; or b) come up with contorted rationalizations for why the most blatant, grotesque, black-and-white evil really isn't all that bad.

As she points out, if you decide to cherry-pick what you want to believe and what you don't, then how do you decide which parts are right and which parts are just fairy tales, just superstition? And when it comes to that point, what's to keep you from realizing that there's really no reason to believe any of it? After all, that's why most of us are atheists, because the evidence just isn't there.

Here's one more excerpt from Christina's post:

I've made this point before, and I'm sure I'll make it again: Religion, by its very nature as an untestable belief in undetectable beings and an unknowable afterlife, disables our reality checks. It ends the conversation. It cuts off inquiry: not only factual inquiry, but moral inquiry. Because God's law trumps human law, people who think they're obeying God can easily get cut off from their own moral instincts. And these moral contortions don't always lie in the realm of theological game-playing. They can have real-world consequences: from genocide to infanticide, from honor killings to abandoned gay children, from burned witches to battered wives to blown-up buildings.

As just one example among so very many: Look at the Lafferty brothers, Mormon fundamentalists who murdered an innocent woman and her 15-month-old daughter because they thought God had commanded them to do it. At many points in their journey across the continent on their way to the killings, they questioned whether brutally slaughtering their brother's wife and her infant child was really the right thing to do. But they always came to the same answer: Yes. It was right. They thought God had commanded it -- and that settled the question. It ended the conversation. It stopped their moral query dead in its tracks.

But don't just look at sociopathic murderers from a bonkers religious cult. That's too easy. Look at Mr. Theological Scholar himself, William Lane Craig. In this piece, Craig says that the Canaanites were evil, and deserving of genocide, because (among other things) they practiced infanticide. The very crime that God ordered the Israelites to commit. I shit you not. Quote: "By the time of their destruction, Canaanite culture was, in fact, debauched and cruel, embracing such practices as ritual prostitution and even child sacrifice." (Emphasis -- and dumbstruck bafflement -- mine.) And he says the infanticide of the Canaanite children was defensible and necessary because the Israelites needed to keep their tribal identity pure, and keep their God-given morality untainted by the Canaanite wickedness. Again, I shit you not. Again, quote: "By setting such strong, harsh dichotomies God taught Israel that any assimilation to pagan idolatry is intolerable." As if an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good god couldn't come up with a better way to teach a lesson about assimilation to pagan idolatry than murdering children.

Incredible, isn't it? Now Craig wrote that piece to answer a couple of questions, one wondering about Muslims justifying violence as the will of God. What's Craig's answer to that? He says that Muslims are perfectly justified in thinking that way. Their only error is that they've got the wrong god! Heh, heh. Really!

How does he know they've picked the wrong god? Well, because it's not the one William Lane Craig believes in, of course. It's not that one commands murder to be done and the other doesn't, no. Because they both do that. But in one case it's perfectly justified and in the other, it isn't. It's all a matter of being lucky enough to be born in a country and to a family where they worship the right god. Yeah, good luck with that!

Now if you're curious, here's Deuteronomy 20, one of the places where God - the right one, according to Craig - commands this particular bit of nastiness. Now I'm certainly no Biblical scholar, but I thought it was quite interesting.

You see, God doesn't command genocide against everyone. That's reserved for the five tribes he particularly dislikes, where "thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth." For everyone else, he's much kinder. In those situations, when a city resists, God just commands that every single male be killed.

The women and children, though, are to be enjoyed:

¹⁴But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.

It's sure good that this is the right god, isn't it, because otherwise this would be kind of a nasty thing.

Keep this in mind the next time your god wants you to kill, rape, or enslave someone. It's perfectly moral as long as you're sure you've got the right god.

Now me, I don't have a god at all, so I'm going to decide on morality for myself. And I'm not going to pretend that nasty shit like this is moral!

Believe it or believe it

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Believe It or Believe It - Obama Releases Long-Form Birth Certificate
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Again, this was broken up into two video clips. Here's the sequel.

You knew this was coming, right? Stephen Colbert had a segment on it, too. I blogged about this yesterday, and I don't have anything more to say, but it really deserves all the satire it can get, and then some.

I liked that reporter asking Donald Trump if he was just making all this nonsense up. Of course, Trump didn't answer the question. But for Trump, this is just free publicity. And he really can't be any crazier than any other Republican running for president, no matter what comes out of his mouth.

Trump is just showing us how crazy the entire Republican Party has become. The fringe has become the mainstream. The inmates have taken control of the asylum. The craziest people in America are leading one of our two main political parties. It's just incredible, isn't it?

Obama releases 'long form' birth certificate

From the Associated Press:

Responding to critics' relentless claims, President Barack Obama on Wednesday produced a detailed Hawaii birth certificate in an extraordinary attempt to bury the issue of where he was born and confirm his legitimacy to hold office. He declared, "We do not have time for this kind of silliness."

By going on national TV from the White House, Obama portrayed himself as a voice of reason amid a loud, lingering debate on his birth status. Though his personal attention to the issue elevated it as never before, Obama said to Republican detractors and the media, it is time to move on to bigger issues.

Citing huge budget decisions in Washington, Obama said, "I am confident that the American people and America's political leaders can come together in a bipartisan way and solve these problems. We always have. But we're not going to be able to do it if we are distracted."

So what's the Republican response?

In a statement after Obama spoke, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus called the issue a distraction — and yet blamed Obama for playing campaign politics by addressing it.

"The president ought to spend his time getting serious about repairing our economy," Priebus said. "Unfortunately his campaign politics and talk about birth certificates is distracting him from our number one priority — our economy."

Yeah. "Why is President Obama distracting us with this nonsense?" They are blaming Obama for bringing it up! Heh, heh. That really takes gall, doesn't it? Of course, Republicans have nothing but gall.

After two years of relentless attacks on this fake "issue" - since Obama had released his official birth certificate long before now, and Hawaii state officials had confirmed it - polls show that less than a third of registered Republicans believe he was born in America.

So he finally gives in to the lunatics and requests a waiver from the Hawaii health department for the so-called "long form" document. And how will that work out?

First of all, do you really think this will stop the loons on the right, when the previous official birth certificate didn't? Not a chance! For example, here's Joseph Farah of World Nut Daily: "It would be a big mistake for everyone to jump to a conclusion now based on the release of this document, which raises as many questions as it answers."

And Orly Taitz isn't buying it, because the document lists Obama's father's race as "African," rather than "Negro." Surprise, surprise - when lunatics make up their minuscule little minds, no evidence is going to change them.

Second, Republican operatives like Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich are already patting themselves on the back for getting the President to, once again, fold like a cheap suit. At this point, does anyone believe that Obama will ever stand up to them on anything?

Yes, Obama is clearly just a typical Democrat in that respect. The right-wing is chalking up another in a never-ending series of wins. The thing is, you can't just say that you plan to grow a spine... someday. You actually have to demonstrate that you can stand up. Otherwise, your opponents know that it's just talk.

And as I say, the Republican National Committee is already turning this around and blaming Obama for "distracting" the country with nonsense when there are serious issues like Planned Parenthood unions jobs to address. Will it work? Well, at this point, I don't think there's anything too stupid for the American people to swallow.

I'm hugely disappointed in Barack Obama. No, not because of this single issue, but because he continues to bend over backward trying to appease his political enemies when there's literally nothing he could do that would make them happy. They hate him for who he is - a black Democrat in the White House - not what he does.

And meanwhile, while Democrats control the best bully pulpit in the world, we have no one standing up firmly for progressive values, no one fighting for our side. Obama apparently won't fight for anything, and he's not all that progressive, anyway. (But I could live with that if he'd just lead.)

Take a look at this column by Ezra Klein:

America is mired in three wars. The past decade was the hottest on record. Unemployment remains stuck near 9 percent, and there’s a small, albeit real, possibility that the U.S. government will default on its debt. So what’s dominating the news? A reality-television star who can’t persuade anyone that his hair is real is alleging that the president of the United States was born in Kenya.

Perhaps this is just the logical endpoint of two years spent arguing over what Barack Obama is — or isn’t. Muslim. Socialist. Marxist. Anti-colonialist. Racial healer. We’ve obsessed over every answer except the right one: President Obama, if you look closely at his positions, is a moderate Republican from the early 1990s. And the Republican Party he’s facing has abandoned many of its best ideas in its effort to oppose him.

If you put aside the emergency measures required by the financial crisis, three major policy ideas have dominated American politics in recent years: a health-care plan that uses an individual mandate and tax subsidies to achieve near-universal coverage; a cap-and-trade plan that attempts to raise the prices of environmental pollutants to better account for their costs; and bringing tax rates up from their Bush-era lows as part of a bid to reduce the deficit. In each case, the position that Obama and the Democrats have staked out is the very position that moderate Republicans staked out in the early ’90s — and often, well into the 2000s. ...

The normal reason a party abandons its policy ideas is that those ideas fail in practice. But that’s not the case here. These initiatives were wildly successful. Gov. Mitt Romney passed an individual mandate in Massachusetts and drove its number of uninsured below 5 percent. The Clean Air Act of 1990 solved the sulfur-dioxide problem. The 1990 budget deal helped cut the deficit and set the stage for a remarkable run of growth.

Rather, it appears that as Democrats moved to the right to pick up Republican votes, Republicans moved to the right to oppose Democratic proposals. As Gingrich’s quote suggests, cap and trade didn’t just have Republican support in the 1990s. John McCain included a cap-and-trade plan in his 2008 platform. The same goes for an individual mandate, which Grassley endorsed in June 2009 — mere months before he began calling the policy “unconstitutional.”

This White House has shown a strong preference for policies with demonstrated Republican support, but that’s been obscured by the Republican Party adopting a stance of unified, and occasionally hysterical, opposition (remember “death panels”?) — not to mention a flood of paranoia about the president’s “true” agenda and background. But as entertaining as the reality-TV version of politics might be, it can’t be permitted to, ahem, trump reality itself. If you want to obsess over origins in American politics, look at the president’s policies, not his birth certificate.

I don't have to agree with everything a politician believes or that a politician supports (not always the same thing). And I always knew that Barack Obama wasn't as liberal as his enemies made him out to be - or as many of his supporters hoped.

But yes, the Democratic Party has moved strongly to the right. And since I wasn't a moderate Republican in the early 1990s, I can't say that I like this much. It would have been different if they'd been able to "compromise" with the GOP by adopting these GOP positions. It would have been different if moving to the right had resulted in isolating the Republican Party in a tiny fringe position on the extreme-right.

But that's not what happened. Yes, the GOP moved right. The GOP moved incredibly, excessively, fanatically to the far-right, into quite literally the position of conspiracy theory crazies. But - thanks to Fox "News," I suspect - that hasn't seemed to hurt them a bit. They just get crazier and crazier, while I'm still waiting for a backlash among sane Republicans (are there any left?).

I've got to think that it's just racism. After all, do you really think it's just coincidence that half the country lost their minds when we elected the first black man as President of the United States? What else could it be?

Democrats have adopted Republican positions that the Republicans themselves are now calling "socialist" and "unconstitutional." It's just crazy. And meanwhile, what are people like me supposed to do, people who think we've been on the wrong path since Reagan and that, instead of continuing to move right when that's been a complete disaster for us, we need to take the opposite course?

Since Republicans have abandoned not just the political center but the moderate right as well, Democrats should be on top of the world. They've got the left, the center, and even much of the right. But they're apparently so inept at politics that they can't even make that work out for them! Or else America has just become so batshit crazy that nothing sane is going to work anymore.

I don't know. Either way, letting Republicans walk all over us is not going to be a winning strategy. Democrats couldn't even make tax cuts for the wealthy an effective political issue, not even after such tax cuts crashed our economy and gave us record-breaking deficits. And now Republicans want to kill Medicare, which is opposed by 84% of Americans! What do you want to bet that Democrats can't capitalize on that, either?

We need a leader in the White House. And we just don't have one. It's hard to believe, after the masterful campaign he ran in 2008, but Barack Obama has turned into a milquetoast as president. And he - and the rest of the Democrats - are running out of time to turn things around.

Unfortunately, America is also running out of time to turn things around.

Overwhelmed by a sense of our insignificance

(Jesus & Mo)

The artist notes that "This week’s strip was inspired by the Pope, who nearly got it right, before hoisting his cassock and running away in terror."

Yup. To quote the pope: "If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature." And that's just too scary for him.

Since he desperately wants to believe otherwise, he posits a magic man who created human beings for a reason. Yeah, there's absolutely no evidence of that, and the Pope certainly has no problem dismissing all other religions, which also have no good evidence backing them up.

Indeed, there is good evidence that we weren't created deliberately by a benevolent deity. If you look at our anatomy, we've got many features that aren't optimal, features that no "creator" worth his salt would ever deliberately design, features that only make sense in the light of unguided evolution.

But none of that matters to most believers, next to the desperate wish to believe it true. Indeed, it must be particularly intense among the celibate old men who run the Vatican, people who've given up their entire lives to support a lie. How much must those people desperately want it to be true?

Mitt Romney's "peacetime" gaffe

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Well, as I noted yesterday, there are still plenty of loons in the GOP presidential race, even with Haley Barbour dropping out.

But it's hard to consider Mitt Romney as a serious candidate (actually, it's hard to consider any of them as serious candidates, don't you think?), because he's flip-flopped so many times even he can't remember where he stands on the issues these days.

And since the Republicans demonized their own health care reform plan - after the Democrats adopted it - Romney's in a particularly difficult spot. After all, the rest of the Republican Party might have claimed to support that kind of health care reform, but Mitt Romney is the only guy who actually cared enough to pass it.

Of course, at the time, Romney thought it would help him, no doubt. I think it's pretty clear to everyone by now that Mitt Romney cares about nothing but Mitt Romney.

No wonder he's a Republican, huh?

The literal insult to injury amendment

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Friends Without Benefits
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The second part of this is here. (Unfortunately, they broke this segment up into two parts, so they could stick another ad in between.)

Incredible, isn't it? This shows how Republicans can be complete dicks,... and how Democrats eagerly go along with it.

Well, come on! Can't you just hear the attack ads now? Democrats want your tax money to go to terrorists! And thanks to the GOP, corporations can now spend unlimited amounts of your money on political attacks like that.

So of course Democrats run screaming like little girls. You wouldn't expect them to grow a spine, would you? Well, I've got to admit that, given the demonstrated stupidity of the American people, maybe they've got reason.

But it's still pretty disgusting.

And there's another thing that gets me about this: Republicans have been ranting and raving about smaller government, about cutting government spending. So what do they do? They give the Department of Health and Human Services another congressionally mandated job to do - and a completely nonsensical one at that!

As P.J. O'Rourke said, "The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work - and then they get elected and prove it." Likewise, they claim there's wasteful government spending, so when they get a little power, they make sure to add to it as much as they can!

The Night

(Sherman's Lagoon)

This sounds like my kind of game.  :)

This explains the comb-over

(John Cole)

I figured I'd better post this quick, because Donald Trump won't last long. Too bad. Since he's gone all out for crazy, he's picked up a lot of support in the GOP, but it's just a joke, and everyone knows it. He's just using the media as they're using him, with only America harmed by it.

And Boss Hogg - er, Haley Barbour - has already dropped out of the race. That is a shame. He's such a perfect symbol of the GOP these days.

(Jeff Danziger)

Luckily, there's no shortage of loons running for the Republican presidential nomination. Newt Gingrich, the perfect candidate to defend marriage? Sarah Palin, the half-term former governor who can see Russia from her bedroom? Michele Bachmann, the loon's loon? In fact, there seems to be nothing but loons left in the GOP, and especially in the leadership.

Still, Haley Barbour and Donald Trump would both add to the lunacy nicely. Barbour is out, but if we're lucky, maybe Trump will hang in there awhile. Yeah, if we're really lucky, Republicans will come to their senses. But I don't expect that to happen.