Happy Birthday, Robert G. Ingersoll

(from Wikipedia Commons)

On today's date, in 1833, Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Great Agnostic," was born. He seems to have been quite a guy.

From Wikipedia:

With the outbreak of the American Civil War, he raised the 11th Regiment Illinois Volunteer Cavalry and took command. The regiment fought in the Battle of Shiloh. Ingersoll was later captured, then released on his promise that he would not fight again, which was common practice early in the war.

After the war, he served as Illinois Attorney General. He was a prominent member of the Republican Party and, though he never held an elected position, he was nonetheless an active participant in politics. His speech nominating James G. Blaine for the 1876 presidential election was unsuccessful, as Rutherford B. Hayes received the Republican nomination, but the speech itself, known as the "Plumed Knight" speech, was considered a model of political oratory. (Franklin Roosevelt probably used it as a model for his "Happy Warrior" speech when nominating Alfred E. Smith for president in 1928). His radical views on religion, slavery, woman's suffrage, and other issues of the day effectively prevented him from ever pursuing or holding political offices higher than that of state attorney general. Illinois Republicans tried to pressure him into running for governor on the condition that Ingersoll conceal his agnosticism during the campaign, which he refused to do on the basis that concealing information from the public was immoral. ...

Robert Ingersoll made many observations on religion during his life. Robert Ingersoll stated, the myth of hell represents "all the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable."

Ingersoll was most noted as an orator, the most popular of the age, when oratory was public entertainment. He spoke on every subject, from Shakespeare to Reconstruction, but his most popular subjects were agnosticism and the sanctity and refuge of the family. He committed his speeches to memory although they were sometimes more than three hours long. His audiences were said never to be restless.

Many of Ingersoll's speeches advocated freethought and humanism, and often poked fun at religious belief. For this the press often attacked him, but neither his views nor the negative press could stop his rising popularity. At the height of Ingersoll's fame, audiences would pay $1 or more to hear him speak, a giant sum for his day.

I've never read any of Ingersoll's speeches, but I've got a number of his quotes in my email "fortune cookie" file:

"Our fathers founded the first secular government that was ever founded in this world. Recollect that. The first secular government; the first government that said every church has exactly the same rights and no more; every religion has the same rights and no more. In other words, our fathers were the first men who had the sense, had the genius, to know that no church should be allowed to have a sword..."

"Whenever a man believes that he has the exact truth from God, there is in that man no spirit of compromise. He has not the modesty born of the imperfections of human nature; he has the arrogance of theological certainty and the tyranny born of ignorant assurance."

"There is no difference. The Agnostic is an Atheist. The Atheist is an Agnostic. The Agnostic says: "I do not know, but I do not believe that there is any god." The Atheist says the same. The orthodox Christian says he knows there is a god. But we know that he does not know. He simply believes. He cannot know."

"Each nation has created a god, and the god has always resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved, and he was invariably found on the side of those in power."

"I do not believe in putting out the sun to keep weeds from growing."

"As long as every question is answered by the word "God," scientific inquiry is simply impossible."

"Honest investigation is utterly impossible within the pale of any church, for the reason, that if you think the church is right you will not investigate, and if you think it wrong, the church will investigate you."

"Man must learn to rely upon himself. Reading bibles will not protect him from the blasts of winter, but houses, fires. and clothing will. To prevent famine, one plow is worth a million sermons, and even patent medicines will cure more diseases than all the prayers uttered since the beginning of the world."

"With soap, baptism is a good thing."

"Give me the storm and stress of thought and action rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith. Banish me from Eden when you will but first let me eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge."

"Theology is not what we know about God, but what we do not know about Nature."

"It is not true that intoxicating beverages are served at my table. It is not true that my son ever was drunk. It is not true that he had to be carried away from the table. Besides, I have no son!"

"I do not borrow ideas. I have a factory of my own."

"I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the star-less night - blown and flared by passion's storm - and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains."

"The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance called 'faith'."

"Fear believes - courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth and prays - courage stands erect and thinks. Fear is barbarism - courage is civilization. Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils and in ghosts. Fear is religion, courage is science."

"It may be that ministers really think that their prayers do good and it may be that frogs imagine that their croaking brings spring."

"We have no master on the land -
No king in air -
Without a manacle we stand,
Without a prayer,
Without a fear of coming night,
We seek the truth, we love the light."


As I said, he was quite a guy.

What happened to Barack Obama?

Here's a fascinating commentary in The New York Times by Drew Weston, professor of psychology at Emory University:

It was a blustery day in Washington on Jan. 20, 2009, as it often seems to be on the day of a presidential inauguration. As I stood with my 8-year-old daughter, watching the president deliver his inaugural address, I had a feeling of unease. It wasn’t just that the man who could be so eloquent had seemingly chosen not to be on this auspicious occasion, although that turned out to be a troubling harbinger of things to come. It was that there was a story the American people were waiting to hear — and needed to hear — but he didn’t tell it. And in the ensuing months he continued not to tell it, no matter how outrageous the slings and arrows his opponents threw at him. ...

Stories were the primary way our ancestors transmitted knowledge and values. Today we seek movies, novels and “news stories” that put the events of the day in a form that our brains evolved to find compelling and memorable. Children crave bedtime stories; the holy books of the three great monotheistic religions are written in parables; and as research in cognitive science has shown, lawyers whose closing arguments tell a story win jury trials against their legal adversaries who just lay out “the facts of the case.”

When Barack Obama rose to the lectern on Inauguration Day, the nation was in tatters. Americans were scared and angry. The economy was spinning in reverse. Three-quarters of a million people lost their jobs that month. Many had lost their homes, and with them the only nest eggs they had. Even the usually impervious upper middle class had seen a decade of stagnant or declining investment, with the stock market dropping in value with no end in sight. Hope was as scarce as credit.

In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it, and how it was going to end. They needed to hear that he understood what they were feeling, that he would track down those responsible for their pain and suffering, and that he would restore order and safety. What they were waiting for, in broad strokes, was a story something like this:

“I know you’re scared and angry. Many of you have lost your jobs, your homes, your hope. This was a disaster, but it was not a natural disaster. It was made by Wall Street gamblers who speculated with your lives and futures. It was made by conservative extremists who told us that if we just eliminated regulations and rewarded greed and recklessness, it would all work out. But it didn’t work out. And it didn’t work out 80 years ago, when the same people sold our grandparents the same bill of goods, with the same results. But we learned something from our grandparents about how to fix it, and we will draw on their wisdom. We will restore business confidence the old-fashioned way: by putting money back in the pockets of working Americans by putting them back to work, and by restoring integrity to our financial markets and demanding it of those who want to run them. I can’t promise that we won’t make mistakes along the way. But I can promise you that they will be honest mistakes, and that your government has your back again.” A story isn’t a policy. But that simple narrative — and the policies that would naturally have flowed from it — would have inoculated against much of what was to come in the intervening two and a half years of failed government, idled factories and idled hands. That story would have made clear that the president understood that the American people had given Democrats the presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress to fix the mess the Republicans and Wall Street had made of the country, and that this would not be a power-sharing arrangement. It would have made clear that the problem wasn’t tax-and-spend liberalism or the deficit — a deficit that didn’t exist until George W. Bush gave nearly $2 trillion in tax breaks largely to the wealthiest Americans and squandered $1 trillion in two wars.

And perhaps most important, it would have offered a clear, compelling alternative to the dominant narrative of the right, that our problem is not due to spending on things like the pensions of firefighters, but to the fact that those who can afford to buy influence are rewriting the rules so they can cut themselves progressively larger slices of the American pie while paying less of their fair share for it.

But there was no story — and there has been none since.

This has also been my problem with Barack Obama. It's not that he's more conservative than I'd hoped. That's true, but I don't expect our elected officials to agree with me about everything. It's that this eloquent candidate has become hopelessly inept at communicating our side of things.

I say "our" side because, although I'm often disgusted by the Democratic Party, that in no way compares to my complete revulsion at the GOP. I may usually vote against the Republican more than for the Democrat, but I know which side I'm on!

For at least thirty years now, the right-wing has kept the narrative squarely in their corner. I never understood why Ronald Reagan was supposed to be the "Great Communicator," since I found him simplistic and jingoistic. And it has amazed me ever since that right-wing thought has dominated our nation's discourse.

But surely after eight disastrous years of George W. Bush, when the right-wing was demonstrably wrong about everything - and which finally ended in the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression - surely then we'd see how wrong they'd been. Surely then we'd change course.

And with an articulate, eloquent, charismatic president - a president who campaigned on the promise of change, no less - I expected a "Great Communicator" for our side. What happened to that Barack Obama? What happened to that spellbinding speaker? What happened to that skilled politician? President Obama has the biggest bully pulpit in the world, so why hasn't he used it?

When Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office, he stepped into a cycle of American history, best exemplified by F.D.R. and his distant cousin, Teddy. After a great technological revolution or a major economic transition, as when America changed from a nation of farmers to an urban industrial one, there is often a period of great concentration of wealth, and with it, a concentration of power in the wealthy. That’s what we saw in 1928, and that’s what we see today. At some point that power is exercised so injudiciously, and the lives of so many become so unbearable, that a period of reform ensues — and a charismatic reformer emerges to lead that renewal. In that sense, Teddy Roosevelt started the cycle of reform his cousin picked up 30 years later, as he began efforts to bust the trusts and regulate the railroads, exercise federal power over the banks and the nation’s food supply, and protect America’s land and wildlife, creating the modern environmental movement.

Those were the shoes — that was the historic role — that Americans elected Barack Obama to fill. The president is fond of referring to “the arc of history,” paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics — in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time — he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.

When Dr. King spoke of the great arc bending toward justice, he did not mean that we should wait for it to bend. He exhorted others to put their full weight behind it, and he gave his life speaking with a voice that cut through the blistering force of water cannons and the gnashing teeth of police dogs. He preached the gospel of nonviolence, but he knew that whether a bully hid behind a club or a poll tax, the only effective response was to face the bully down, and to make the bully show his true and repugnant face in public.

In contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public — a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn’t bend that far.

Barack Obama campaigned on bringing the country together. He campaigned on working with Republicans. And he bent over backward trying to appease them.

His intent was good. But you can't appease people who won't be appeased by anything you do, no matter what. You can't appease bullies. Obama trying to appease the Republicans was like Nevil Chamberlain trying to appease Hitler. At some point, you have to recognize that you must stand up for what's right.

All Obama did was let the Republicans write the narrative. Led by Fox "News," all Republican leaders got behind their narrative, wacky though it was. And on the other side? Nothing. Barack Obama was so busy trying to compromise with the GOP that he even adopted their talking points. He seemed to agree with their basic stance, either from conviction or just in an attempt to be agreeable - to this day, I don't know which.

The truly decisive move that broke the arc of history was his handling of the stimulus. The public was desperate for a leader who would speak with confidence, and they were ready to follow wherever the president led. Yet instead of indicting the economic policies and principles that had just eliminated eight million jobs, in the most damaging of the tic-like gestures of compromise that have become the hallmark of his presidency — and against the advice of multiple Nobel-Prize-winning economists — he backed away from his advisers who proposed a big stimulus, and then diluted it with tax cuts that had already been shown to be inert. The result, as predicted in advance, was a half-stimulus that half-stimulated the economy. That, in turn, led the White House to feel rightly unappreciated for having saved the country from another Great Depression but in the unenviable position of having to argue a counterfactual — that something terrible might have happened had it not half-acted.

To the average American, who was still staring into the abyss, the half-stimulus did nothing but prove that Ronald Reagan was right, that government is the problem. In fact, the average American had no idea what Democrats were trying to accomplish by deficit spending because no one bothered to explain it to them with the repetition and evocative imagery that our brains require to make an idea, particularly a paradoxical one, “stick.” Nor did anyone explain what health care reform was supposed to accomplish (other than the unbelievable and even more uninspiring claim that it would “bend the cost curve”), or why “credit card reform” had led to an increase in the interest rates they were already struggling to pay. Nor did anyone explain why saving the banks was such a priority, when saving the homes the banks were foreclosing didn’t seem to be. All Americans knew, and all they know today, is that they’re still unemployed, they’re still worried about how they’re going to pay their bills at the end of the month and their kids still can’t get a job. And now the Republicans are chipping away at unemployment insurance, and the president is making his usual impotent verbal exhortations after bargaining it away. ...

The conventional wisdom is that Americans hate government, and if you ask the question in the abstract, people will certainly give you an earful about what government does wrong. But if you give them the choice between cutting the deficit and putting Americans back to work, it isn’t even close. But it’s not just jobs. Americans don’t share the priorities of either party on taxes, budgets or any of the things Congress and the president have just agreed to slash — or failed to slash, like subsidies to oil companies. When it comes to tax cuts for the wealthy, Americans are united across the political spectrum, supporting a message that says, “In times like these, millionaires ought to be giving to charity, not getting it.”

When pitted against a tough budget-cutting message straight from the mouth of its strongest advocates, swing voters vastly preferred a message that began, “The best way to reduce the deficit is to put Americans back to work.” This statement is far more consistent with what many economists are saying publicly — and what investors apparently believe, as evident in the nosedive the stock market took after the president and Congress “saved” the economy.

I was never more disgusted with the Democratic Party than last fall, when Congressional Democrats refused to set up separate votes on tax cuts for the middle class vs. tax cuts for the wealthy. How could you ask for a better political stand than that? Republicans were handing the issue to them on a silver platter.

Hold a vote on cutting taxes just for the middle class. Republicans could vote against it if they wanted, but what would the American people think of that? And then campaign on holding the line on the budget deficit by refusing to continue tax cuts for the wealthiest of the wealthy. It was made to order for the Democratic Party.

...But the Democrats refused to take that opportunity. Too timid? Too disorganized? Too dumb? Who knows? But I do know that our leader, Barack Obama, stayed on the sidelines. Just like his terrible passivity during the health care reform debate, when he refused to give Congress any  guidance at all, he just let things happen. And Republicans crushed the Democrats in the November elections.

Like most Americans, at this point, I have no idea what Barack Obama — and by extension the party he leads — believes on virtually any issue. The president tells us he prefers a “balanced” approach to deficit reduction, one that weds “revenue enhancements” (a weak way of describing popular taxes on the rich and big corporations that are evading them) with “entitlement cuts” (an equally poor choice of words that implies that people who’ve worked their whole lives are looking for handouts). But the law he just signed includes only the cuts. This pattern of presenting inconsistent positions with no apparent recognition of their incoherence is another hallmark of this president’s storytelling. He announces in a speech on energy and climate change that we need to expand offshore oil drilling and coal production — two methods of obtaining fuels that contribute to the extreme weather Americans are now seeing. He supports a health care law that will use Medicaid to insure about 15 million more Americans and then endorses a budget plan that, through cuts to state budgets, will most likely decimate Medicaid and other essential programs for children, senior citizens and people who are vulnerable by virtue of disabilities or an economy that is getting weaker by the day. He gives a major speech on immigration reform after deporting around 800,000 immigrants in two years, a pace faster than nearly any other period in American history.

The real conundrum is why the president seems so compelled to take both sides of every issue, encouraging voters to project whatever they want on him, and hoping they won’t realize which hand is holding the rabbit. That a large section of the country views him as a socialist while many in his own party are concluding that he does not share their values speaks volumes — but not the volumes his advisers are selling: that if you make both the right and left mad, you must be doing something right. ...

The most charitable explanation is that he and his advisers have succumbed to a view of electoral success to which many Democrats succumb — that “centrist” voters like “centrist” politicians. Unfortunately, reality is more complicated. Centrist voters prefer honest politicians who help them solve their problems. ...

But the arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise. It does not bend when 400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans. It does not bend when the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically. It does not bend when we cut the fixed incomes of our parents and grandparents so hedge fund managers can keep their 15 percent tax rates. It does not bend when only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation. And it does not bend when, as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate. The arc of history can bend only so far before it breaks.

I don't know. I was optimistic in 2009. For the first time ever, my preferred candidate won both the nomination and the presidential election. The American people had thoroughly repudiated those right-wing Republican policies that had brought our country to its knees. And Barack Obama was going to bring desperately-needed change to Washington.

But even more than that, we were finally going to have a president who could use that great bully pulpit, a president who could communicate what needed to be communicated, a president who could lead us on to great things.

In early 2009, after the GOP was crushed in the elections, pundits were actually asking if it could even survive. We'd had eight years of non-stop disaster, where every single Republican policy proved to be a complete failure.

No, tax cuts for the rich did not "pay for themselves." No, the Iraq War did not "pay for itself." And no, Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, had nothing to do with 9/11, and was no threat to America at all. We'd invaded a completely innocent country for no reason whatsoever. And by doing so, we ignored the other war, the war in Afghanistan, the war we maybe could have won, if we hadn't taken our eye off the ball.

And then tax cuts for the rich combined with the deregulation of banks caused a bubble in arcane financial instruments, a bubble which popped to give us the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression! Surely the Republicans were finished after that performance. After that, who would ever vote for a Republican again?

But in only two years, they were back on top of the world again. Heck, they haven't even changed their policies! It seems to make no difference at all that those policies have already failed horribly. The right-wing narrative is the same as it's always been, and the fact that the whole thing failed once - and failed spectacularly - seems to make no difference whatsoever.

I have to blame Barack Obama for this. Oh, sure, I blame the American people, too. All too many of us are complete idiots, apparently. But Barack Obama has been so inept politically that he's let the same people who wrecked our economy and destroyed America's reputation back into power again.

Whatever good he's done - and he has done some good - is completely overshadowed by that. And if the Republicans win again in 2012, even if it's just Congress, we're all going to be in serious, serious trouble.

In the fall of 2008, when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and there was panic on Wall Street, I was buying stocks. In March, 2009, when the collapse appeared to have no bottom, I scraped up every bit of cash I could and again bought stocks. But this week, with the market again crashing, I'm not buying. I'm just too pessimistic about America's future.

New GOP strategy

From The Onion:

Calling a GOP victory in the 2012 presidential election antithetical to the party platform, top Republicans revealed a new long-term political strategy Tuesday: reelecting Barack Obama and making his life even more of a living hell than it already is.

"For three years, the Republican Party has coalesced around the single goal of making President Obama's every waking moment sheer and utter torture," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters. "But we can't continue to do that if he's not in office."

"If we are going to make the president a haggard shell of a human being by the time he leaves the White House, we need four more years of never compromising, four more years of miring every piece of legislation in unnecessary procedural muck, four more years of pretending we want to work with the president and then walking away from the table at the last second," McConnell added. "Four more years! Four more years! Obama 2012!"

According to GOP sources, the decision to cede the 2012 election to Obama came after rank-and-file Republicans agreed that grinding the president down to nothing and pushing him to the brink of insanity was far more in line with the Republican Party's core principles than actually controlling the White House, making laws, or governing the country.

As usual with The Onion, it's funny because it's true.

Hope for civilization?

(Savage Chickens)

Cancer patient "cured by God's voice"

This is just about the most disgusting thing I've ever seen, and of course it was on Fox "News."

First of all, it's pretty disgusting to encourage cancer patients to give up their medical treatments. Yes, some few people do go into spontaneous remission (and they're not all Christians, either). But you don't see all the people who quit their medical care and then die, only the rare few who survive.

This is horribly irresponsible of Fox "News." But it gets worse. This guy claims he was confident that he was going to be healed, because "God's a good god. He's still a healer. He's still moving in people's lives that'll let him and that want him to."

So if you're dying of cancer, you see, it's your own fault for not praying hard enough, for not really letting God into your life and letting him heal you. Right. Apparently, you're not suffering enough. Now you have to believe that dying of cancer is your own fault! See what I mean by disgusting?

And, of course, there's a lot here that doesn't make sense. This guy is "very thankful" that God cured him, very thankful for his life. But why? Wasn't he going to heaven? Isn't that supposed to be a good thing?

And it's kind of funny that he'd "gotten in a church two years prior" to being diagnosed with cancer. Hmm,... maybe God was trying to tell him something. Wasn't that a sign from God that he shouldn't be going to church? Yes, he angered the magic man in the sky, who gave him cancer for a punishment! After all, I'm an atheist and God hasn't given me cancer.

But believers never look at it that way, do they? Not when it comes to their own problems. God is always punishing other people for their wicked ways, but no one ever believes that's why they've suffered. No, in their case, it's always God miraculously helping them out. (Or when he doesn't, which is most of the time, well, God works in mysterious ways.)

This man got sick after he started attending church. So he went to skilled human beings for medical care, where doctors gave him a one in ten chance of living. Those aren't good odds, but it hardly seems necessary to reach for a supernatural explanation, does it? And he did take chemo for several months.

Well, he can believe whatever he wants. I'm sure it's very comforting to think that God is watching out for you, huh? But it's certainly disgusting of Fox "News" to encourage their viewers to quit getting medical care. And it's even more disgusting to imply that it's their own fault that they're sick.

Heatsteria

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Rush Limbaugh can't really believe the idiotic things he says, can he? Isn't he just being stupid for entertainment value? Or has he simply lost his mind?

Well, I guess I could say the same about Fox and Friends, huh? But I guess I tend to think they really are that dumb. They certainly don't give the impression of being particularly bright.

The Kalam Cosmological Argument

Fascinating, isn't it? And the ending brings up a point I think needs to be repeated. If you claim that cosmology proves there's a god, how do you explain the fact that cosmologists - those who know the most about what you're talking about - are overwhelmingly nonbelievers?

I see this same thing all the time, whenever theists claim that science backs up their beliefs. Creationists claim that some things in biology are "irreducibly complex," therefore proving that there must have been an intelligent designer. But biologists - those people who know the most about this - overwhelmingly disagree with that conclusion.

What does it tell you about an argument when those people who know the least about it can be convinced by it, but not those who know the most, not those who really know the subject?

Religion is based on faith, not evidence. And the reason for that is because the evidence just doesn't support religious beliefs. Sure, religion will try to use evidence, if the evidence seems to back them up (and will ignore or deny any evidence that does not).

But "seems" is the operative word here. Theists often try to use science to give their claims a rational basis for belief. Well, we Americans tend to respect science while being hopelessly ignorant about it, so we're easy prey for "sciency" explanations. This is also why pretty much every pseudoscience uses "quantum mechanics" as an explanation these days, since it sounds impressive while being Greek to most people.

But even if you don't know enough about science yourself to identify the fallacies in these arguments, shouldn't you wonder why the people who do know the science disagree?

Cosmologists tend to be atheists, so doesn't that imply that cosmology does not prove the existence of God? Biologists accept evolution, not "intelligent design," so doesn't that imply that creationist critiques of "Darwinism" don't hold water? Climatologists overwhelmingly back global warming arguments, so doesn't that imply that the objections of politicians and pundits aren't as reasonable as they might appear to those of us with less knowledge?

This may only work with science, since science is evidence-based and comes to a world-wide consensus. Science doesn't differ depending on your nationality or your cultural background; it only depends on your knowledge. But it's precisely science - because it works - that is claimed by theists to support their beliefs. However, the overwhelming majority of scientists disagree with the claims that involve their own area of expertise.

What does it tell you about an argument when those who know the most about it agree the least - and those who know the least are the most likely to accept it?

Mr. Deity and the believing brain

That's Michael Shermer with Mr. Deity. "Beliefs have consequences." Nice!

Both Democrats and Democrats sacrificing for the greater good

Obama: Debt Ceiling Deal A Prime Example Of Democrats And Democrats Sacrificing For The Greater Good

"I'm truly grateful that both Democrats and their Democrat counterparts were able to reach within the aisle and show the nation that compromise demands sacrifices from every Democrat, whether liberal, far left, or progressive."

Hmm,... that would be funnier if it weren't so true.

Republicans just keep digging

(Ed Stein)

Gov. Christie smacks down the bigots

I am not a fan of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, but I've got to give credit where credit is due. And it's a joy to see him smack down the bigots in his own party like this.

We need more straight-talking politicians - in both parties.

Matt Damon defends teachers

OK, I have no interest in celebrities, but maybe I'll have to start making an exception for Matt Damon.

Note that Reason.tv is a libertarian website, if you're wondering why the cameraman is injecting himself into this interview. Yeah, it seems to be rather amateurish, doesn't it?

But this isn't the only time Matt Damon has made sense. In 2008, he made some very intelligent comments about Sarah Palin. Here's the video clip on YouTube. I won't embed it here, but I urge you to check it out.

Galahad by Josh Ritter

Women's health-nazi plan

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"A woman's health decisions are a private matter between her priest and her husband." Heh, heh.

Honestly, in what world do Republicans live? It sure doesn't seem to be the real one!

And these people are supposed to be anti-abortion. What would limit the number of abortions better than the easy availability of birth control?

The thing is, Republicans think of children as punishment for sex. Sex is dirty, nasty stuff that shouldn't be enjoyed. And if you're foolish enough to have sex, you should be required to pay for that by raising a child for the next 18 years or so.

Furthermore, the government shouldn't make it easy for you in any way. If you struggle to raise a kid in poverty, that's what you deserve - and your kid, too (once a child is out of the womb, it's no longer an interest of the GOP).

And yeah, I suppose all preventative care is terrible, because who's going to pay those lavish salaries for doctors if no one gets sick. (And if doctors stop making so much money, maybe they'll stop voting Republican. Horrors!)

Colon cleansing

From New Scientist:

Colon cleansing can supposedly help you lose weight, eliminate toxins and enhance well-being. But a review of scientific research shows that claims of health benefits from such procedures may be a steaming pile of nonsense.

Ranit Mishori at Georgetown University in Washington DC and colleagues reviewed 20 studies on colon cleansing published in medical literature over the past decade. The reports showed little evidence of benefit but plenty of negative side effects, including vomiting, electrolyte imbalance and kidney failure.

Surprise, surprise, huh? Were people really gullible enough to think otherwise? But this is the part that gets me:

David Greenwald, a gastroenterologist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, agrees with the findings. Although colonic cleansing may sound appealing, "there is no scientific evidence that really validates that", he says.

Um,... what? Having someone shove a tube up your butt to give you an enema "may sound appealing"? To whom? Who in the heck would think that sounded appealing?

Sometimes I wonder about my species...

Supporters of Rick Perry's prayer rally

Want to know more about who is working with Texas Gov. Rick Perry, sponsoring that prayer rally this week? Check out this fact sheet at RightWingWatch.org, part of the People for the American Way. It's really a Who's Who of religious loons.

Yeah, if you're not a right-wing evangelical Protestant, you're not a real American, huh? Of course, this is meant to kick-start Perry's presidential bid. Yeah, just what we need, another right-wing evangelical Texan as president! We barely survived the last one!

The bond that unites social and fiscal conservatives

(Calamities of Nature)

Click for the rest of the comic.

If the U.S. government were run like a business

Here's an interesting column by David Weidner on Yahoo Finance with the title, "How Apple Would Solve the Debt Crisis."

I've been covering Wall Street and corporate America for going on two decades, and if there's anything I've learned it's that there are really only two kinds of companies: those growing and those shrinking.

The U.S. government today has officially become the latter.

The difference between a growing business like Apple Inc. and a shrinking one such as Eastman Kodak has less to do with spending and revenue than with psychology. Growing companies go through tough times. They adapt, and they're poised to strike when conditions are right. They don't stop innovating.

Defeated companies may be producing steady profits. But they lose their entrepreneurial spirit. They stop looking at the future. They get intimidated. They quit fighting. They look for a sale. They try to buy growth. They play not to lose — and end up losing anyway.

Which of those does Washington sound like?

This has been my fear for a long time. We used to be a bold, "can do" sort of country. We were optimists. We certainly weren't timid. We weren't scared of our own shadows. We weren't already convinced we were defeated, before we'd even tried. We were a nation of immigrants and the descendents of immigrants, people who bravely took a bold step for a better life.

We may have done a great deal that was wrong - we did indeed do a great deal that was wrong, and we don't want to forget that - but we acted. Heck, we even put a man on the Moon - several times! We welcomed immigrants - maybe not always in practice, but at least we believed in the theory: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." If you were willing to work for a better life, we would give you that opportunity. We would build a better nation together. How old fashioned does that sound these days?

There was always an isolationist streak in America, but mostly, I think, we just wanted to build our own country, our "shining light on a hill," without being dragged into old fights - religious wars, often enough - overseas. But we also created the Peace Corps. We built the best system of public education in the world, bar none. We established Social Security and Medicare. We were not a timid people,...

...Not until now. Now, we just want to retreat. We just want to huddle - apathetic, miserly, and defeated - on the couch. We're not confident enough in the world's first democracy to actually do anything. We consider all government to be bad, pretty much by definition. And we think that's especially the case with our own government. Instead, we want a wealthy aristocracy to watch over us, throwing us pennies here and there, as they see fit - and as we admire them from afar. (I'll never understand America's bizarre fascination with celebrities.)

We consider education to be "elitist," not a worthwhile investment. And we consider the scientific consensus to be just another opinion, no better than anyone else's. We want to believe what we want to believe. But while we used to believe in American exceptionalism, we don't now, not really. We mindlessly parrot that phrase, as if it will magically keep the fear away, but nonetheless, we're certain we can't compete in today's world, so we don't even want to try.

We've become cowards - dispirited, apathetic, superstitious cowards, defeated without ever really trying.

And note that this isn't just on the right, though it's certainly more common there. On the left, too, there's plenty of superstition. There are many on the left who are just as disdainful of science, preferring to just believe whatever they want to believe. And plenty of people on the left don't think we can compete with other nations. These are people who are so certain we'll lose that they don't even want to try.

But they're a minority on the left, whereas the fearful far-right controls the entire Republican Party, lock, stock, and barrel. It's on the right where our cowardice and timidity is most pronounced. It's on the right where we want an aristocracy of wealth, while the rest of us timidly hoard our pennies. It's certainly on the right where superstition trumps science, history, and public policy alike.

But the right also claims that it wants the U.S. government to be run more like a business.

So, what would happen if Apple had to tackle the debt crisis? First, it would eliminate spending that's not working. Then it would make a commitment to spend if necessary. Third, it would look for ideas to spend on. Finally, it would call customers' bluff. How much are you willing to pay for what the government gives you?

Ultimately, what's happened to our government, lawmakers, elected officials and ourselves is that we've have taken on a mind-set of defeat. It doesn't seem to matter that the business model — taxing for revenue, spending for growth — isn't broken. After all, it's working in Germany, Canada, India and China.

We've given up on the model because of our debt situation. It's a problem, and a pressing one. A default or lower credit rating would cause further damage to our credit picture.

But there are really two ways to handle it. We could take a balanced approach of reining in spending and increasing revenue (cutting costs, raising taxes), or we could simply cut, slashing incomes (Medicare, Social Security, the military). These drastic cuts, which will balance annual budgets, are in effect a surrender.

They are based on the belief that revenues (taxes) won't rise through increased business activity, and that taxes can't be raised without scaring the private enterprise. In business terms, management is convinced sales won't be enough to pay the bills and that raising prices will drive away customers.

 So what would a bold, optimistic, "can do" sort of America look like? First, it would recognize that government itself is necessary. Private business is also necessary, of course, but that doesn't make government "bad." Just the reverse, in fact. Private business cannot flourish without the civilization government brings. And taxes buy us that civilization.

This is not the same world it was fifty or a hundred years ago, and we can't expect to have the same government we had back then. Like it or not, things change. But as Weidner points out, our "business model" isn't broken. If we've lost confidence in it, lost confidence in ourselves, that's our failing (although, admittedly, after eight years of George W. Bush, it was probably easy to lose confidence in America).

When it comes to debt, there are two sides to every balance sheet. It's not just spending, but revenue, too, that must be taken into account. A bold, growing country expects growing revenue. And a confident people expect everyone to pay their fair share. That means that people who are doing the best, people who should be the most grateful for their opportunities in America, should pay the most.

First, they can afford it. They don't have to worry about paying the utility bill or feeding their children. They can afford to pay more than less affluent individuals. That's just a plain fact. Second, if they've got the most out of living in America, they should be grateful for that, more grateful than people who are doing relatively poorly. They should want to pay their fair share, or even a little extra.

And third, we don't want to create a hereditary aristocracy in America. After all, that's what we escaped in the Old Country, isn't it? And if living on the dole is bad for the poor, why isn't it bad for the rich? If it's a terrible thing for the poor to get a guaranteed income, never really having to work a day in their life (and yes, it probably is), then why isn't it also a terrible thing for rich kids? Why aren't high estate taxes good for everyone?

And then there's the spending side. Yes, politicians will eagerly spend other people's money on their own pet projects. Of course, those pet projects are also ours. For every American aghast at how much money we spend on our military - seven times as much as our next biggest rival, or more than the rest of the world combined - there's probably an American who wants to spend even more. Waste is in the eye of the beholder.

But that's why we have politics, and that's why we must compromise in a democracy. You don't always get your own way, because other people disagree with you. Well,... duh!  Unless you're in the Tea Party, how could you ever think it would be different?

But there are things we can do. For example, we can set up automatic reviews of every federal program - reviews which are insulated from politics as much as possible - which would look at whether the program has actually done what it was supposed to do. After all, we keep shoving money at "abstinence only" sex education, despite study after study that shows it doesn't work.

But we should also understand the difference between consumption and investment. Debt isn't always bad. Borrowing money to finance a vacation in Hawaii is probably foolish, but debt isn't so bad when you're getting a mortgage to buy a reasonably-sized home. Mortgage debt isn't always good, certainly, but it's often a good thing, a prudent thing, to do.

And so is investing in a good education. You might borrow money to get a college education, confident that it will be a good investment. Well, likewise, America as a nation should invest in education. We used to have the best system of public education in the world. That was an investment that payed off for our country in spades. But we've fallen woefully behind other countries today, because we just don't want to spend the money. We're just not willing to invest in America anymore.

Well, if we're too stingy, too cowardly, too... defeated to invest in America, we have already lost. That's not the America we used to be. If we're not growing, we're shrinking. If we're not advancing, we're retreating. If we don't recover that old "can do" spirit, we'll continue to diminish, convinced we can't do anything. And that will be the end of America.

This is a compromise?

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Dealageddon! - A Compromise Without Revenues
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"Government is not perfect, but some people wish it were better, not gone." Amen.

And here's Stephen Colbert's take on this.

I've been meaning to comment about this "compromise," but Stewart and Colbert get to my biggest problem with it. This was likely necessary, because the Republicans held a gun to America's head. But,... why did they have that opportunity?

For two and a half years now, Barack Obama has persisted in misunderstanding his Republican opponents. He's not only bent over backward to appease them, he's unilaterally abandoned his - and the entire Democratic Party's - best political positions.

Last fall, he refused to tie the extension of the Bush tax cuts to raising the debt ceiling. You know, that's why we need to raise the debt ceiling. To a great extent, the Bush tax cuts are responsible for our enormous debt, and extending them sure didn't help matters any!

And before last November's election (in which the Democrats got stomped), Congress refused to separate tax cuts for the rich from tax cuts for the middle class. That was so stupid I just couldn't believe it. And where was Barack Obama, who's supposed to be leading us?

I know that the Republicans were sure Barack Obama would fold in this negotiation, because that's what he's done in every negotiation. Typically, he starts out giving the Republicans half of what they want - as a good-will gesture, I suppose - as well as adopting Republican talking points. (Hey, even if you sound like them, they're never going to accept you.)

And then, once the negotiations start, he "compromises" by giving the Republicans everything else they wanted. As I say, this has become a pattern. So who really expects Barack Obama to stand firm on anything? Now we hear that he'll stand firm in 2012. Yeah, right.

The fact is, despite the ridiculous "socialist" label Republicans keep slinging around, Barack Obama is far more conservative than I'd like. So I'm not really sure if he believes in Democratic values at all. I wonder if he'd be more comfortable as a moderate Republican - if the Republicans still had moderates, I mean.

My war with the squirrels

(image from NewsBiscuit)

My war with the squirrels has been going on for a few years now, ever since I started growing fruit in the backyard. (The birds are bad, too, but I can net most trees to keep them away. It's very hard work, and I can't leave the netting up for long, but it's effective.)

Oh, there were a few skirmishes with the squirrels before that, mostly over bird-feeders. And chewing holes in my house. But we'd settled into a guarded peace, mostly because I abandoned sunflower seed in my feeders entirely. But fruit proved to be the flashpoint to a new, hot war.

At first, I figured I'd just keep the squirrels full, so they wouldn't need to eat my fruit. I started carrying a pocketful of roasted peanuts, and my squirrels got remarkably tame. But no matter how many peanuts they ate, there was still room for dessert, I guess. Because it didn't keep them from going after the fruit.

Well, I know it was foolish to feed them in my backyard at all. So I started chasing them out of the backyard and only feeding them in the front. That was pretty funny, at first. My squirrels were so tame that they wouldn't even run away from me! I'd stomp my feet and yell as I rushed at them, and they'd just stand there wondering why I was acting so ridiculous (as my neighbors wondered, too, I suppose).

If I looked like I was going to step on them, they'd move a few feet, but no more than that. It took awhile until they got the idea. Then, they'd run until they got into the front yard, at which point they'd stop and wait until I caught up with them,... so they could get a peanut. I'm not sure who was training whom.

Meanwhile, I embarked on a major project to turn my backyard into Ft. Knox. I put chickenwire on the chainlink fence, so the squirrels (and rabbits) couldn't get through it (and hardware cloth at the bottom, so squirrels or baby rabbits couldn't dig under it). Then I ran a couple of strands of electric wire - high voltage, but low current, like a low-powered cattle fence - on insulators around the top.

I never saw the squirrels get stung by it (although I got zapped almost every time I worked in the yard - sweaty bare skin conducts electricity very well). Squirrel fur seems to be very good insulation. Plus, the wires weren't hot all the time, since the charger pulses. And the squirrels were just too quick at getting through them.

Still, they must have gotten bit by it occasionally, because they really learned to avoid the wires. They'd do almost anything to keep from climbing the fence, so I thought I'd won the war. Last year, I don't think they ate a single peach, and maybe only an apple here and there. And after I smeared strawberry juice on the electric wires, they wouldn't touch a strawberry even if you gave it to them. (Oddly enough, that only seems to work with strawberry juice, nothing else.)

But the squirrels were apparently just regrouping for a new offensive. Unfortunately, I've got some fruit trees outside the chainlink fence, including two apricot trees very close to the front yard. I put a low fence - just one foot high - around them, with a couple of electric wires on top of that, but it's really not much of a barrier. And last year, when my apricots got ripe, the squirrels just wiped them out.

The thing is, squirrels don't even like apricots. What they like is the apricot seed. They'll just spit out the fruit. But they'll very quickly destroy a whole tree full of apricots, just to get at the pits.

Now last year was the first year I'd ever had apricots. The trees grow well here, but they bloom too early and the blossoms almost always freeze in the variable weather of Nebraska's springs. So my squirrels had never even seen an apricot before then. Unfortunately, they learn quickly.  This year, I had apricots on both trees for only the second time ever, but they were all gone a whole month before they would have gotten ripe.

You see, my squirrels had learned that apricot pits taste good. And they'd also learned exactly where those electric wires were. They wouldn't climb or even jump that short little fence, but they still found a way around it. (Unfortunately, my yard is pretty crowded with fruit trees and bushes, and it's really hard to keep them from finding a way inside. If necessary, they'll just climb a nearby tree and jump from it, over the fence.)

After they wiped out my apricots, they came into the backyard and started working on the apples, plums, peaches, pluots, and Asian pears. They've completely wiped out my Gala apples, my delicious summer variety. I hadn't realized that squirrels liked little green apples so well, but they'll strip an apple tree in short order. With my peaches, they waited until they started to turn color. But I don't think I'm likely to get any ripe ones this year.

Still, I haven't given up the fight. I've spent the last few days trying to rebuild my electric fence. I should have made it more squirrel proof right from the beginning, because I'm sure they'd be easier to keep out if they didn't know that there were peaches inside.  Well, I don't think that "squirrel proof" is even possible. But there's enough open space on the east and north to put down a pretty effective barrier, I think. (I'd foolishly left some gaps in my original construction.)

On the west, well, I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep them out that way. My grapevines are so thick that they can jump up into them and be completely hidden from sight. Luckily, they don't seem to eat grapes. (I wish I could say the same thing about the birds!) But they can easily get from the grapevines to everything else.

And I don't think I'll ever be able to keep them out of my apricots, unless maybe I cut down all the nearby bushes. And even then, I have my doubts. But we'll see. The war goes on. The squirrels have won the battle this year, destroying almost everything I've got. But I haven't given up the fight.

And they have learned that they're not supposed to be in my backyard. When I open the backdoor, they run. When I open my front door, they run, too - right up to me to get a peanut. Yeah, they're shameless.

PS. I wish I could tell the squirrels apart, because I think that most of my problems come from my neighbors' squirrels, to my east and north, and not so much from the squirrels in my front yard to the south. (OK, the apricots were destroyed by my squirrels, I know that. But maybe not the peaches.)

I used to have a squirrel who'd lost her tail (her first encounter with an automobile, I suspect), so I could tell which one she was. She was the tamest squirrel ever. If I wasn't careful, she'd run right up and grab my hand with her sharp little claws (so I couldn't pull it away) and daintily take a peanut right out of my fingers. (No, I didn't encourage that!)

But she didn't come off so well in her second auto encounter, and I can't tell any of the others apart (except for male and female, of course, at least when the females are nursing young). I don't know what difference it makes, I suppose. But you can't win a war without military intelligence, right?

___
PS. Curious about how my war turned out? Here's Part 2.