O'Reilly is evil

There's a lot about the way I used to think that is embarrassing, and among the worst is that I used to think highly of Bill O'Reilly. One way I was taken in is because the man comes across as sincere and intelligent. (He also comes across as pompous, but I can ignore that because my own pompousness gives me natural immunity.) There's a quote from Michael Shermer that helped me to shatter the illusion. "Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for nonsmart reasons." O'Reilly is committed to his political ideology for nonsmart reasons and he applies his intelligence to supporting it. Either that or O'Reilly is pure evil. After this, I'm leaning towards pure evil.

In reaction to a study showing that Fox News devotes far less coverage to the Iraq War than CNN or MSNBC, O'Reilly says:

Now the reason that CNN and MSNBC do so much Iraq reporting is because they want to embarrass the Bush administration. Both do. And all their reporting consists of is here’s another explosion. Bang. Here’s more people dead. Bang. […]

They’re not doing it to inform anybody about anything. The terrorists are going to set off a bomb every day because they know CNN and MSNBC are going to put it on the air. That’s a strategy for the other side. The terrorist side. So I’m taking an argument that CNN and MSNBC are actually helping the terrorists by reporting useless explosions.

Do you care if another bomb went off in Tikrit? Does it mean anything? No! It doesn’t mean anything.

People being killed in explosions doesn't mean anything, and by reporting it, CNN and MSNBC are helping the terrorists. They do this because they want to embarrass Bush. That is O'Reilly's position.

First of all, the obvious extension of his position is that Fox News doesn't devote much coverage to the Iraq War because doing so would be embarrassing to Bush. So O'Reilly's clear position is that accurately reporting facts about the world would damage someone politically. In the immortal words of Colbert, "reality has a well-known liberal bias." O'Reilly doesn't even realize he's agreed with this.

Next, note that O'Reilly and Fox News claim to be "fair and balanced" news. Anyone who isn't brainwashed knows that they're a far-right propaganda outlet, but O'Reilly is admitting here that Fox News chooses not to report on the war to avoid embarrassing their far-right Supreme Leader. No wonder Dick Cheney insists on having TVs pre-set to Fox News before he enters a room.

O'Reilly's lame excuse for why avoiding war coverage is acceptable from a news outlet is that war coverage isn't news. This man and everyone like him rants endlessly about how their political opponents fail to support the troops, but then argues that the violent death of an American soldier is meaningless and shouldn't be covered. Very supportive, Bill.

O'Reilly completely fails to realize that the reason explosions and dismemberment and human suffering are so common as to be meaningless is because Bush's military strategy is a miserable failure and has been for a long time. That certainly is embarrassing. If Bush didn't stubbornly insist on maintaining this immoral and insane war against the wishes of the American people, the routine chaos and death that resulted from his immoral and insane and unpopular war wouldn't be the news. The news would be that our troops are withdrawing and that while sectarian violence in Iraq is still unacceptably high (as a direct result of our immoral and insane invasion), it has been decreasing since we left and American casualties are significantly decreasing. Until Bush's stupid war ends, the story remains the same and the media has an obligation to cover it and make Bush look stupid.

Going back to an earlier point, to be fair O'Reilly isn't saying that people dying is meaningless, but that it is so standard as not to be newsworthy. He's not saying that a young man's death is without meaning, just that it lacks meaning as news.

I say I'm mentioning this to be fair, but I actually think O'Reilly comes off worse when the point is clarified, because he goes from trivializing the death of an individual to trivializing and thereby enabling violence on a massive scale. As soon as violence ceases to be worthy of mention, war becomes a more acceptable option.

This reminds me of Arthur Silber's suggestion:

A single major newspaper could provide a noble and invaluable service: if they gave a damn at all about unnecessary death and suffering, they would select the most awful and horrifying picture they could find -- a body with its guts falling out, a bloody corpse shorn of arms and legs, a mutilated face made unrecognizable -- and fill up their entire front page with it, a new one every day. Perhaps after a month or two, enough Americans would demand that their government stop butchering people who never harmed us.

O'Reilly and Silber both acknowledge the same thing, that the American public's attitude towards the war is influenced by the way it is covered. One of those men argues the nation is better served by telling the full truth. One of those men says the truth should be hidden. (If you want to quibble here I'll concede the Fox position isn't that Iraq coverage should actively be hidden, just that if they have to make a decision how to use their valuable air time, reporting the inanity of Anna Nichole Smith and Paris Hilton is much more important. I'd go on to argue that this is effectively the same thing.)

In most situations, I'd say that arguing to conceal reality is a despicable position, even more so for a news man. Reporters are supposed to deliver facts, no matter how horrible, even if they make things uncomfortable for politicians (more like especially if the facts make things uncomfortable for politicians). But when the expressed purpose of distorting coverage is to enable the unpopular policies of an insane and unpopular political leader by making horrific bloody death of American military and innocent Iraqi civilians seem like a more palatable political option, despicable isn't a strong enough word.

Mr. Jones and Me

Believe in me
Cause I don't believe in anything
and I wanna be someone to believe

I share Jim's distaste for the use of "belief" in the context of science.

Do I "believe in" evolution? I don't really know how to answer that. The scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports evolution as the best explanation for diversity of life on earth, but I don't think belief has anything to do with it, because belief is typically associated with a lack of evidence. I don't really think I believe in anything. I just have ideas with varying degrees of support.

That's probably what those 3 Republicans meant when they raised their hands saying that they don't believe in evolution, right?

nothing new but

The President of the United States of America is a huge fucking idiot:

At a press conference yesterday, he seems to fundamentally misunderstand what’s going on in Washington.

Q: Mr. President, I want to take you back to domestic issues again. You say the no-confidence vote has no bearing as to whether Alberto Gonzales remains as Attorney General. How can he continue to be effective? And it seems like you’re not listening to Congress when it comes to Gonzales, but you are listening to Congress when it comes to Peter Pace.

BUSH: Yes, it’s an interesting comment about Congress, isn’t it, that, on the one hand, they say that a good general shouldn’t be reconfirmed, and on the other hand, they say that my Attorney General shouldn’t stay. And I find it interesting.

This makes absolutely no sense at all. The “good general” Bush referred to is outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace. The administration decided not to keep Pace on in his current position because, officials have told reporters, the Senate might be mean to him on Iraq policy during upcoming hearings.

It led to a reasonable question: why would Bush stand by Gonzales when the Senate has turned on him, but throw Pace under the bus before the Senate even has a chance to consider his re-nomination?

Yesterday, Bush seemed to think he’d stumbled onto something clever — he told reporters it’s “interesting” that the Senate was skeptical about Pace’s leadership and opposed to Gonzales’ leadership of the Justice Department. Bush was so fond of this observation that he mentioned how “interesting” it is twice.

But what on earth is so fascinating?

What’s so unusual about lawmakers questioning a general whose leadership has been ineffective, and then also questioning an attorney general who has repeatedly lied about a scandal? What connection does Bush see here that’s so “interesting”? The whole argument sounded child-like, which regrettably, is fairly common with this president.

Bush elaborated on his AG.

“And as to how Gonzales — first of all, this process has been drug out a long time, which says to me it’s political. There’s no wrongdoing. You know, he — they haven’t said, here’s — you’ve done something wrong, Attorney General Gonzales. And therefore, I ascribe this lengthy series of news stories and hearings as political.”

First, I particularly liked the phrase “drug out,” instead of the correct “dragged out,” in part because of the irony — the president sounded medicated when he said it.

Second, there’s plenty of evidence of “wrongdoing,” and the Senate has repeatedly told the AG that he’s done “something wrong.” Bush does know what subject we’re talking about, right?

And third, this process has been “lengthy” because officials at the White House and the Justice Department have decided not to cooperate with the investigation. This process could go very quickly with basic answers to basic questions, which the Bush gang refuses to provide.

The president is either pretending to be clueless or he is clueless. It’s that simple.

I should also mention that in between the two Bush quotes mentioned, he also said "they can try to have their votes of no confidence, but it's not going to determine -- make the determination who serves in my government" [emphasis mine]. This man is a stupid little child. What a fucking idiot.

"It's my government!! MINE!! I'M THE PRESIDENT!!!" You can't tell me what to do!!"

beyond wow

I don't even know what to say.

update:

Seriously, if this isn't a disturbing insight into the American psyche, I don't know what is. Bombs to make enemy soldiers become super-gay and super-horny so that they would be too distracted by each other's cute asses to fight? Bombs to make people fart and have bad breath? Is our military being run by children?

You know what I hate? Faggots and stinky people! Hey let's build an awesome bomb that would turn bad guys into smelly queers!! AwEsOme LOLOLOLOL!!!1!!!1

Naturally, we called our drink Gator-ade

When I see those Gatorade commercials where they talk about how super-scientifically formulated it is and they show scientists in lab coats monitoring athletes, I always think how bullshit it is, because I pretty much think that every commercial is bullshit. But you know what? Gatorade tastes really fucking good when you've been exercising, and it kind of tastes like ass the rest of the time. Maybe that's just a coincidence. I suppose it could be. But I bet those scientists in the lab coat had something to do with it after all.

As Nancy Pelosi would say (like a fucking idiot), "thank Sweet Lord God Jesus for the miracle of science that You gave us in Your sweet Lord Goodness." And by "sweet Lord Goodness" she meant Gatorade.

NBA woes

It is currently halftime of game 2 of the NBA finals. The Spurs are blowing the Cavs away, up 25 points, and we've got a feature on Tony and Eva's wedding coming up. Somebody please put my out of my misery.

The liberal media showing their love for Al Gore

If you hate the liberal media as much as I do and can choke down yet another example of how biased and liberal they are, just check out this blog post by the Anonymous Liberal. Being a liberal himself, he loves the way the uber-liberals at the Washington Post spin everything in a pro-liberal way, especially towards their liberal hero Al Gore. They can't stop praising Al Gore for everything he does, and they always give him the benefit of the doubt and overlook his gigantic personal flaws. That's what you get when you have such a pathetic liberal media dominating the news. Thank the good sweet conservative Lord that we at least have Fox News to be fair and balanced!!!

Increasingly Difficult

This man is relentless, and I have a hard time ever disagreeing with him, no matter how radical he sounds:

It is becoming increasingly difficult to take us seriously as a country in any way at all, or to grant the United States any measurable degree of respect. The United States government is certainly a very significant and serious threat -- both to its own citizens, and to the rest of the world. But that is about the only way in which it is serious.

With regard to almost every other issue, the United States is variously contemptible, vicious, brutal, hypocritical, and laughable. And we become stupider as a people with each day that passes, as this last episode proved still one more time.

Check out the link for the full explanation of the "last episode" to which he refers.

blah blah blahg blag blog

As I've made this blog a repository for my socially unacceptable ideas, those ideas are less likely to reach the people who most need them. People who used to read my blog when I wrote about poker and sports and movies have stopped reading now that I write about religion and politics.

At first they used to post comments, or talk to me directly. Their tones became less friendly, and then they stopped entirely. Now I'm left with a few regular readers who are generally supportive of my ideas, and a bunch of random traffic that google throws my way.

I suppose that some of my regulars have been exposed to some new ideas and made modest changes to their mindset because of this blog. So I've traded the opportunity to expose lots of people to radical (relative to their current frame) ideas, for the ability to have a dialog with like-minded people. I suppose it is possible that some of those who have left will remember what they saw here and it might influence them at some point. And it has been cool to make some new friends and get to know a few people better.

Also, I have cats and I'm selling my house and the NBA finals start tonight. Woohoo I've exposed you to new ideas. That's what this is all about.

RUDY RUDY RUDY

Giuliani: Worse than Bush

...

Yes, Rudy is smarter than Bush. But his political strength -- and he knows it -- comes from America's unrelenting passion for never bothering to take that extra step to figure shit out. If you think you know it all already, Rudy agrees with you. And if anyone tries to tell you differently, they're probably traitors, and Rudy, well, he'll keep an eye on 'em for you. Just like Bush, Rudy appeals to the couch-bound bully in all of us, and part of the allure of his campaign is the promise to put the Pentagon and the power of the White House at that bully's disposal.

...

The Paul incident went to the very heart of who Giuliani is as a politician. To the extent that conservatism in the Bush years has morphed into a celebration of mindless patriotism and the paranoid witch-hunting of liberals and other dissenters, Rudy seems the most anxious of any Republican candidate to take up that mantle. Like Bush, Rudy has repeatedly shown that he has no problem lumping his enemies in with "the terrorists" if that's what it takes to get over. When the 9/11 Commission raised criticisms of his fire department, for instance, Giuliani put the bipartisan panel in its place for daring to question his leadership. "Our anger," he declared, "should clearly be directed at one source and one source alone -- the terrorists who killed our loved ones."

...

"The likelihood is that more people will eventually die from the cleanup than from the original accident," says David Worby, an attorney representing thousands of cleanup workers in a class-action lawsuit against the city. "Giuliani wears 9/11 like a badge of honor, but he screwed up so badly."

When I first spoke to Worby, he was on his way home from the funeral of a cop. "One thing about Giuliani," he told me. "He's never been to a funeral of a cleanup worker."

Indeed, Rudy has had little at all to say about the issue. About the only move he's made to address the problem was to write a letter urging Congress to pass a law capping the city's liability at $350 million.

News from the "Are You Fucking Kidding Me" Department

MORE MAD COW PLEASE! THANKS!


update: better maybe?

escape?

BOB HERBERT: The Passion of Al Gore

Al Gore is earnestly talking about the long-term implications of the energy and climate crises, and how the Arctic ice cap is receding much faster than computer models had predicted, and how difficult and delicate a task it will be to try and set things straight in Iraq.

You look at him and you can’t help thinking how bizarre it is that this particular political figure, perhaps the most qualified person in the country to be president, is sitting in a wing chair in a hotel room in Manhattan rather than in the White House.

He’s pushing his book “The Assault on Reason.” I find myself speculating on what might have been if the man who got the most votes in 2000 had actually become president. It’s like imagining an alternate universe.

The war in Iraq would never have occurred. Support and respect for the U.S. around the globe would not have plummeted to levels that are both embarrassing and dangerous. The surpluses of the Clinton years would not have been squandered like casino chips in the hands of a compulsive gambler on a monumental losing streak.

Mr. Gore takes a blowtorch to the Bush administration in his book. He argues that the free and open democratic processes that have made the United States such a special place have been undermined by the administration’s cynicism and excessive secrecy, and by its shameless and relentless exploitation of the public’s fear of terror.

The Bush crowd, he said, has jettisoned logic, reason and reflective thought in favor of wishful thinking in the service of an extreme political ideology. It has turned its back on reality, with tragic results.

So where does that leave Mr. Gore? If the republic is in such deep trouble and the former vice president knows what to do about it, why doesn’t he have an obligation to run for president? I asked him if he didn’t owe that to his fellow citizens.

If the country needs you, how can you not answer the call?

He seemed taken aback. “Well, I respect the logic behind that question,” he said. “I also am under no illusion that there is any position that even approaches that of president in terms of an inherent ability to affect the course of events.”

But while leaving the door to a possible run carefully ajar, he candidly mentioned a couple of personal reasons why he is disinclined to seek the presidency again.

“You know,” he said, “I don’t really think I’m that good at politics, to tell you the truth.” He smiled. “Some people find out important things about themselves early in life. Others take a long time.”

He burst into a loud laugh as he added, “I think I’m breaking through my denial.”

I noted that he had at least been good enough to attract more votes than George W. Bush.

“Well, there was that,” he said, laughing again. “But what politics has become requires a level of tolerance for triviality and artifice and nonsense that I find I have in short supply.”

Mr. Gore is passionate about the issues he is focused on — global warming, the decline of rational discourse in American public life, the damage done to the nation over the past several years. And he has contempt for the notion that such important and complex matters can be seriously addressed in sound-bite sentences or 30-second television ads, which is how presidential campaigns are conducted.

He pressed this point when he talked about Iraq.

“One of the hallmarks of a strategic catastrophe,” he said, “is that it creates a cul-de-sac from which there are no good avenues of easy departure. Taking charge of the war policy and extricating our troops as quickly as possible without making a horrible situation even worse is a little like grabbing a steering wheel in the middle of a skid.”

There is no quick and easy formula, he said. A new leader implementing a new policy on Iraq would have to get a feel for the overall situation. The objective, however, should be clear: “To get our troops out of there as soon as possible while simultaneously observing the moral duty that all of us share — including those of us who opposed this war in the first instance — to remove our troops in a way that doesn’t do further avoidable damage to the people who live there.”

I asked if he meant that all U.S. troops should ultimately be removed from Iraq.

“Yes,” he said.

Then he was off to talk more about his book.

[my emphasis]

update: Daily Howler blasts Herbert for wondering how things could be so bizarre

I miss these guys

We decided it would be best if the cats were not in the house while it was on the market, so they're staying with my sister until we sell it. Getting them up there was an adventure. Here are some pictures of their last weekend here.


Hattori Hanzo:








Katsumoto:

Retroactive blogging

I found the journal I brought with me to the Philippines. Here's an entry:

11/10/06 - Calamba

The pollution is overwhelmingly bad. The river is full of garbage, and Sonny tells me it is actually better than it was before the typhoon. The street where Lola lives, Bantayan, is full of exhaust from the jeepnies and tricycles that are constantly filling the roads. These are poor people but they pay for these rides? I wonder if a system where people use bicycles a lot (like in China?) would work here? Nobody has said anything directly about this pollution, although Sonny's comments hinted at it. I wasn't sure if he was proud of the river or shared my sadness about its condition. Kira says the pollution upsets her mom, and Kira remembers playing by the river when she was little, which couldn't happen now. Today we're touring a volcano, which should be fun and exhausting.

Here are pictures we took of a tricycle and a jeepny, in a less polluted area.





They're like cabs and buses, respectively.

Here's a picture we took from the bridge over the polluted river I mentioned. People live right there.

These are great people

Hopkins Aid Officer Was Paid More by Lenders Than Disclosed

Ellen Frishberg, who resigned earlier this month as "financial aid director at Johns Hopkins University" had "accepted more than $130,000 from eight lending industry companies during her tenure, twice as much money as previously disclosed." ... she also "advised the federal government on rules for officials dealing with the student loan industry and lectured peers on the need to avoid perceived conflicts of interest." ...Frishberg said that she "had worked for lending companies but that she never viewed the arrangements as conflicts of interest."

Reaction to this article:

1) How can someone whose job duties include recommending lenders to students who trust them to be impartial not view accepting large sums of money from a student loan company as a conflict of interest?

2) Why was half of the sum not disclosed? Given that she claims not to have seen this as a conflict of interest, why not disclose it?

3) What would someone who lectures about avoiding perceived conflicts of interest actually consider a perceived conflict of interest, given that she didn't consider this to be a conflict of interest?

4) What happens when you have people in positions of influence and power in a multi-billion dollar industry being paid by the federal government to create the rules and regulations of their own industry? Do they always rig the system so they make lots of money at the expense of the common people at the bottom, and then pretend like they did nothing wrong when the truth is uncovered? [In an unrelated story, oil chiefs met with Cheney's energy task force in 2001 to help create Bush's energy policy and laws. Ken Lay, of Enron felony fame, was almost certainly involved.]

[clarification/correction: It isn't clear from the article if Frishberg was paid by the Department of Education for her advise about rules for student aid officials, though it is clear that she was paid by them for something. It also isn't clear whether the advisors to Cheney's task force were paid. Clearly though, whether or not they were paid isn't really the issue. Their huge influence in writing their own regulations is the issue.]

holy shit

Is this for real?:

But by all reports, President Bush is more convinced than ever of his righteousness.

Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated “I am the president!” He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of “our country’s destiny.”

[S]ome big money players up from Texas recently paid a visit to their friend in the White House. The story goes that they got out exactly one question, and the rest of the meeting consisted of The President in an extended whine, a rant, actually, about no one understands him, the critics are all messed up, if only people would see what he’s doing things would be OK…etc., etc. This is called a “bunker mentality” and it’s not attractive when a friend does it. When the friend is the President of the United States, it can be downright dangerous. Apparently the Texas friends were suitably appalled, hence the story now in circulation.

Bush is just this simple guy, with very limited intellectual ability and a massive ego, who ended up somehow in the most powerful position in the world. He picked a staff made up of his idiot friends or creepy villains with their own sinister agendas, and the results have been predictably devastating. He's in so far over his head that aside from fucking everything up, it sounds like he might be going insane under the pressure.

yup

And until belligerent, uninformed posturing starts being treated with the contempt it deserves, men who know nothing of the cost of war will keep sending other people’s children to graves at Arlington.
- Total Kaos Inc

nonstop

We've been busting our ass this whole 3-day weekend trying to get our house ready to sell. We're almost there, with a lot of help from our parents. The biggest problem now is that one of the toilets is leaking, but I think I know how to fix it. I was pretty proud of myself for pulling it up and replacing the floor underneath it, until the floor started to warp because there was water oozing from somewhere. I've got the floor situation stable now, and hopefully a trip to Lowe's and an hour of work will fix it. So I think the house can go on the market soon, and now I just have to hope someone wants to pay a lot of money for it.

Projection

Walt says:

I love [Cheney's] last paragraph. I'm not sure which side he's talking about.

"The terrorists know what they want and they will stop at nothing to get it. By force and intimidation, they seek to impose a dictatorship of fear, under which every man, woman, and child lives in total obedience to their ideology. Their ultimate goal is to establish a totalitarian empire, a caliphate, with Baghdad as its capital. They view the world as a battlefield and they yearn to hit us again. And now they have chosen to make Iraq the central front in their war against civilization.

Cheney also criticized the Geneva Convention.

Another reason to hate the Spur

Has any professional athlete in the history of sports received more attention for his love life than Tony Parker? I think they mention Eva Longoria at least 8 times per Spurs game, and have been doing so for like 6 years. I don't feel like doing the math, but I'm betting that is way more than Wilt's 10,000. Rick Fox, Sampras, Roddick, Jeter... those guys are no where close to Tony Parker.

I'm so sick of the camera cutting to Eva Longoria in the stands after every fucking jumper he hits. I don't care about their wedding plans. I don't care how Eva gets along with the rest of the squad. I don't care how Tony likes Mexico or how Eva likes France. I don't give a shit about Desperate Housewives. I don't want to hear about their sex life. I just want to watch a fucking basketball game without the coverage turning into gossip from the E! Channel all the time.

Who turns on an NBA playoff game and thinks gee I really wish I knew more about the point guard's love life? Don't worry, Craig Sager is on it with a live interview with Eva! "Hey, how does Tony get along with your mother??!!??! Does she speak any French?!!?!??!!!!?!?!!!"

We really need Greg Popovich or Tim Duncan to start slipping hot NBA groupies into Tony Parker's hotel rooms to try to break these two up. Or maybe cast Eva in some romantic role opposite Brad Pitt or Colin Farrell. Those guys always end up banging their costars right? Let's get her in a movie with Pitt and Farrell. And get Parker to hang out with Michael Jordon in Vegas during the All Star game. That has to work, right? Is there any other solution?

Fuck me. I'm sitting here blogging about Tony fucking Parker's girlfriend rather than watching the Western Conference finals. Kill me now.

atheist type

You scored as Scientific Atheist, These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future. Scientific Atheist 92% Militant Atheist 58% Angry Atheist 58% Spiritual Atheist 42% Apathetic Atheist 33% Agnostic 33% Theist 8% What kind of atheist are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Congrats to my cousin Jordin Sparks

She won American Idol last night. I watched a lot early in the season but I got bored with the show and stopped watching. I heard she performed very well, and obviously the whole family is happy that she won. She's always been quite the performer, so this is very nice for her.

Congrats cousin Jordin!

And congrats to that other guy for finishing second. (He makes cool mouth noises sometimes.)

I hope she introduces me to that rascal Simon. I'd like to pick his brain...

{picture: adspar and cousin Jordin at a recent family party}

Support the troops by giving them more of this

More war all the time! Support the troops! Endless war! Hooray!!

This is how our government leaders support the troops:

Maj. Johns and I had been at the patrol base to the west for several days. We took up residence on two adjacent cots in the far corner of a plywood structure which, by size comparisons, was much like the other Army tents it was built among. There were no walls to divide the space within the structure. Cots lined the long side walls with space for a walkway in the middle. There were about 20 cots in all and transient soldiers came and went, mostly as they left for, or returned from, their leaves home. During the daytime, the structure would shake and breathe in the hot winds and the thin lines of light where plywood panels met on the walls, and at the meeting of the walls and the ceiling, would swell and widen broadening bright luminous fissures in the dark space. Small gray lizards would crawl though these cracks and take refuge from the heat on the plywood ceiling between the beams.

Soldiers getting ready to go on leave would talk about things they planned to do at home with tones of relief and elation. Soldiers returning to their units would move about anxiously and hope for delays in their returns back to the line. When details of their returns were received, and when all hope of delay had been exhausted, their muscles visibly tightened and their movements became jolted, almost angry, and they began to speak of their hopelessness, the friends they had seen killed. They began to question and criticize the war, late into the night on their cots in the darkness. In the morning, they would be gone, their empty cots a reminder of them, and of where they would be by now. Often when we spoke to them, we wondered secretly if they would become one more of those we had talked with who might later appear on a memorial flier before us, an inverted rifle and bayonet, a Kevlar, a pair of boots, and dog tags, a typed message naming who they left behind back home.

The major and I took up shop in a metal storage trailer during the daytime. It had no windows but had been fitted with lights and an air conditioner. Command, knowing he and I were coming, had detained or sent in several soldiers they wanted us to see. The recent decision to extend all of the soldiers had made our job harder and those who lived day to day had begun to digest and absorb the mental impact of 90 more days they would need to survive.

"No, sir, I don't really sleep. Well, maybe an hour or two, then I get up. I don't want to dream," the soldier said to us. His name was Staff Sgt. Johnson. He was a good soldier, and you could tell when you spoke to him. He was a man of honor. He was ashamed to be speaking with us, but his leaders had insisted. He had served three combat tours as a squad leader in a line unit. His body and his hands shook during pauses in his speaking and he stared at us, and sometimes past us, with a wide-eyed look of hyper alertness. He had just returned from leave and two guys in his squad were killed days before his return.

"You know, I think I thought, or...you would think, that each time you lose someone in combat it would be easier, but it's not. It's not." He shook his head and looked away from Maj. Johns and down at the floor. "It's not," he repeated as he stared at the floor. He looked back up at me nervously, still shaking his head. When he finally stopped shaking his head, his body erupted into a tiny tremor as he tried to keep still. He pressed and rubbed his palms against his knees as he sat, presumably to try and stop his hands from shaking. "Every time someone dies, I relive all of the other deaths. Over and over." He shook his head and looked back down at the floor and the tremor began again.

"That's a very normal response," Maj. Johns said. I nodded and Staff Sgt. Johnson nodded back at us sadly, and then looked away.

"You know, I think going home on leave really told me how bad I was."

"What happened on your leave?" Maj. Johns asked.

"Well, not too much really. Well, the first few days were good."

"What did you do the first few days?"

"I checked into a nice hotel and got a bottle of scotch and I didn't come out for about four or five days. It was great. I didn't get drunk. I just sipped, you know?"

"What were you doing in there all that time?" Maj. Johns asked.

"Just staring at the wall really," he answered, and then drifted his gaze past us as if remembering. "I didn't turn on the TV or anything. I just stared at the wall. Well, for the first three days anyway. I know it sounds weird but it was really great."

"Then what happened?"

"Well, then my girlfriend came. And don't get me wrong. I love her and she's a great girl and all but it just wasn't the same after she came. She's great though. She's so understanding."

"How did things go with your girlfriend? Did you get along okay?"

"Oh yah, we didn't fight at all. No, we got along. But..." he looked from Maj. Johns toward me and hesitated.

"But what, man?" I asked.

"Well, I couldn't do it, you know? I mean sex. We didn't have sex at all. Her skin just felt really weird. You know what I mean?" He sort of squinted and cocked his head to the side slightly when he asked if we knew what he meant.

"No, not exactly. What did her skin feel like to you? Describe it to us," Maj. Johns replied.

"Like rubber, like an animal," he crinkled his cheeks as he remembered, as if it were repulsive to him. "Like she wasn't real."

We talked with Staff Sgt. Johnson for a while longer. He was one of the worst we had ever seen. When we mentioned the thought of him taking his squad out again he simply said, "I can't. I won't. I won't load another body onto that chopper. I can't. I won't."

YAY America!!!!

This is one of the defining moments of "YAY America" and "everything is totally fucked" that I've ever seen. GG (bold mine, italics his):

But there is something rather extraordinary taking place. Presidential candidates of the political party that has dominated our country for the last two decades are competing with each other to prove who will most aggressively embrace policies such as torture and indefinite detention well beyond even what the Bush administration has ushered in. And this is occurring in the midst of still new extraordinary emergency presidential powers, along with allowing the Bush administration's radical framework of presidential omnipotence, constructed over the last six years, to remain largely undisturbed. The tenor of our political discourse becomes increasingly unrecognizable -- mainstream presidential candidates openly and happily advocate torture and life imprisonment with no charges while the audience wildly cheers.

Seriously, what the fuck is going on? Every decent person needs to wake the fuck up and do something about this.

end the fucking war

Petition calling on the U.S. Senate to filibuster and end the war in Iraq

We the undersigned call on each and every United States Senator to participate in a filibuster to end the war in Iraq. It only takes 41 votes to sustain a filibuster and prevent funding requests from the Bush administration from coming to debate or a vote. The Bush administration would then have to return with a funding request that is satisfactory to the 41. That bill should include funds to bring all U.S. forces home quickly and safely but no money to prosecute the war in Iraq. Pro-war Senators used this tactic twice in February to stop non-binding resolutions condemning the so-called "surge." If pro-war Senators can use this tactic, then anti-war Senators should use it also. Right now the filibuster is the only way to end the war in a veto-proof fashion. We call upon each and every Senator to join a filibuster effort to end the loss of life and save our country.

Baseball isn't really a sport

This is an interesting read for anyone who is interested in baseball and the history of that game. I'm not, so I don't have much more to say about it.

I'm blogging it because I wanted to share this quote:

The philosopher/commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti wrote that baseball was "not a territorial game; it is not about conquering; I do not send a team out to capture the other team's goal or ground. Baseball may not even be truly a team sport; it may really be a game an individual plays with a group."

For over a decade now I've been saying that baseball isn't really a sport, at least in the purest sense of the word. I define (pure) sport as an athletic contest in which a team or individual tries to advance a ball towards a goal while preventing opponent(s) from doing the same. You have to really stretch to fit baseball into that. This isn't to demean baseball in any way; at the time I first made this argument I was a huge baseball fan. It just isn't like the other athletic games that we call sports. I had always considered my position somewhat unique, but I'm glad to see that Giamatti said it long before I did.

simpler life

We're down to one car between the two of us, with no plans to replace the deceased. My old commute was driving 15 minutes to park at the DC Metro station and taking the train to work. Kira's office isn't conveniently Metro accessible, so now she takes my car and I ride the bus to the train station. It takes maybe 5 minutes longer with all the stops, and it only comes every 25 minutes, but in spite of those minor inconveniences, so far I'm actually preferring things this way. All that driving time is now replaced by reading, and we're saving on gas and parking (it costs $1.60 round trip to ride the bus, compared to a $4 parking fee plus gas), and insurance ($130 every 6 months).

Not having to drive also reduces stress. I used to love driving. I imagine it is just the sudden freedom that comes from getting your license and having semi-regular access to a car. My high school was a 45 minute drive from my house, so I did a LOT of driving back then, and greatly enjoyed it. But now I avoid driving as much as possible. I dislike almost everything about the experience of going somewhere in a car, and I find I'm more relaxed when I'm not driving. I've even let go of the imaginary gender role nonsense where driving was equated with masculinity. Kira can drive me anywhere she wants.

I would love for us to not need a car at all, but I also don't really want to live in a big city, so I'm not sure how that would work out. Maybe we'll end up some place where some combination of public transportation and bicycles are all we need to get around, but where I still have some open space and trees near by. The biggest challenge I envision with that would be grocery shopping. But there are grocery delivery services that might work.

Aside from all that, I feel guilty about driving, in terms of the environmental effects. If we do ever buy another car, it will be the most environmentally-friendly vehicle we can afford.

Al Gore

Al Gore is one of the few political figures that I find the least bit interesting, probably because lately he's been saying things that politicians just don't say. He's also dealt with crushing injustice in a very dignified way. Sometimes I find myself hoping he'll run in 2008, but I think there's a good case that he might be able to do more good from outside the system.

I just ordered his new book. I'll report back when I finish it.



While I'm talking about books and politics, I've been meaning to write up something about a pair of books I finished recently on the subject of impeachment. Although I lent one of them to a coworker, so I might have to wait until I get it back.

complete failure

Congress = Idiots

We're going to have troops in Iraq forever.

POOR FORM

Another follow-up to this post would be noting another example of the "poor form" diversion.

cutting through the standard torture obfuscations

Continuing this discussion with some friends, the following scenario was posed, essentially as a response to this argument against torture by former Marine Corp commandant Charles Krulak and former commander in chief of U.S. Central Command Joseph Hoar. (This was part of a longer message, and I'm quoting it directly with light editing).

So you're on patrol in Iraq. Three of your service
members are kidnapped and two more killed in an ambush. You survive with
a few of your men, and are joined b[y] another platoon to search. You soon
find the body of one of the kidnapped, burned alive and almost
unrecognizable. You are able to capture an insurgent who was involved in
the attack and who is your only chance to find the other two before they
meet the same fate. He won't talk though. He spits in your face when you
interview him. Time is ticking. His family was never murdered by
the .001% of US soldiers who are criminals, so there is no sympathy for
him. What do you do? Grant him a lawyer? Call the President and say we
need to leave Iraq so these people won't do this?

You're so quick to grant these people the civil liberties we have here
in the US, but I'd like to have you consider this.

There are so many things wrong with the scenario itself, but more importantly this scenario is in no way an appropriate response to the issue at hand. As the Anonymous Liberal put it recently:

The political debate over the acceptability of torture and extreme interrogation techniques almost always devolves into a completely irrelevant discussion of hypothetical scenarios and the moral and ethical questions raised by them.

He goes on to explain the irrelevance of these scenarios:

Are there certain hypothetical scenarios under which the use of torture can be morally justified? If you construct the right scenario (nuclear bomb about to go off, suspect knows the target, etc.) just about anyone will answer yes to this question. But that's not at all surprising or informative. After all, it's possible to construct a hypothetical scenario where you'd be morally justified in shooting a little girl in the head (you're in a cave running out of air, there are four other younger children, they'll all die unless you off yourself and the oldest kid, etc.). The bottomline is that all of us are capable of simple utilitarian moral reasoning. If you are presented with a choice between something very bad and something even worse, the moral logic is pretty clear.

But this is all an exercise in irrelevance because that's not how rational people make policy decisions. Just because you can construct a hypothetical scenario were shooting a girl in the head is the "right" thing to do, that doesn't mean that we should do away with the legal prohibition against murder. When it comes to acts that are sufficiently bad--such as murder and torture--you need categorical rules.

The so-called "ticking bomb scenario" is simple-minded nonsense. It assumes two things that never happen in real life: 1) that you know for certain that a bomb is about to be detonated, and 2) that you're positive the person you have in custody has information that will allow you to stop that bomb from going off. I'm fairly certain that in the entire history of mankind, that scenario has never yet presented itself. Moreover, even if it did, the odds are slim, at best, that the suspect would divulge the necessary information under duress (as opposed to simply giving you disinformation).

As McCain and others have pointed out, if a sufficiently dire situation presents itself, those officials who would contemplate the use of torture need to do so with the knowledge that it is a practice so disgusting and heinous that we have seen fit as a society to ban it categorically. If they are to engage in torture, they need to know it is illegal and that they are likely to be punished if they are wrong. Then and only then can we have any hope that our soldiers and intelligence officials will be sufficiently judicious in their use of this horrible practice.

In a true ticking bomb scenario (which I'm convinced is like saying "when you meet a real unicorn"), people will do what they think they have to do, regardless of what the law says. And in that kind of extraordinary situation, no one would be prosecuted for resorting to extreme, even illegal tactics.

But you can't let highly unlikely hypothetical scenarios dictate policy. Regardless of whether there are conceivable situations where torture could be justified, it has to remain illegal.

So what about the hypothetical patrolman in Iraq? It should be pretty clear that it is just a reformulation of the time bomb, except substituting two American Soldiers for a large civilian population, and with an element of personal connection thrown in. The emotional element introduced by the relationship with the likely victim in no way changes the logic of the right policy, and the response to generic time bomb scenario is fully applicable here.

What do I think of the patrolman in the hypothetical scenario? I think that we as a nation have failed him profoundly. How someone responds to a situation is the heat of a moment is based on a number of factors. Some of those factors are his training, his experience, his commander, the culture of his unit and the military as a whole, the reward or punishment structure he knows to be in place, and characteristics of his individual mental state.

We all know that we're constantly lowering our military recruiting standards, extending deployments, deploying tired and injured troops, and sending them with inferior equipment. In contrast to previous wars where troops typically faced shorter times on the front lines and then rotated to a more stable position, everywhere in Iraq is a front line, because there's no unified enemy. These guys are under constant stress at all times in Iraq, and that takes a huge toll.

We just aren't sending highly-trained, well-prepared people to face these difficult situations and make good ethical decisions. As Krulak and Hoar said, "Complex situational ethics cannot be applied during the stress of combat." That is why you need clear, unambiguous rules.

As to the idea that only .001% of American troops are criminals, the troops themselves say criminals are 4,000 to 7,000 times more prevalent than that:

Of surveyed soldiers, 4 percent reported hitting or kicking noncombatants when it was not necessary; among Marines, 7 percent reported doing so.

And those are only the people who were willing to admit it, albeit anonymously. At least 1 in 25 of them have knowingly abused civilians, in violation of international law. And about half of the people working with them wouldn't report such an abuse. This is a culture where abuse is rampant, and that is known and condoned from the highest levels.

We have failed our troops profoundly. We've put them in an unnecessary war with no imaginable definition of achievable victory. We haven't trained them adequately; we haven't given them good equipment; and they're carrying the burden (and bullseye) of a century of vicious and destructive American foreign policy without even knowing it because all they're ever taught is how wonderful America is. Everyone around them has ample reason to hate them, and many have nothing to lose, making it all but inevitable that they'll resort to desperate violence. And we ship our kids in there to absorb the blows.

The idea that this wild scenario somehow addresses the issue of torture policy is insane. It is sociopathic. The only thing this scenario does is create sympathy for the soldier who might be tempted to shame himself by abusing a prisoner. Such sympathy might influence our decision about how to punish his criminal behavior, but it should in no way stop us from trying to prevent abuse with clear guidelines.

hard work

I have a lot of political ideas that many people regard as extreme. I of course don't seem them as extreme; I seem them as logical and fair. The only way I see to ever improve things is by convincing people of the need for change, which is really fucking hard.

Recently, I sent a group of friends this article, by two retired military leaders (generals or admirals or something way at the top), about how using torture as a tool in the "war on terror" is a terrible mistake. One of my authoritarian friends replied to all of us essentially with 3 points (I'm respecting his wishes not to use his name or exact words). Here are those 3 points and my responses.

1.) That's crap. It makes sense in theory but isn't practicable.

Yeah those retired generals are crap! But what do you expect from elite military leaders? They're known for thinking in the clouds; certainly after decades of distinguished military service at the highest levels they have no idea what is practicable.

2.) Their ideas hinge on the notion that changing the way we deal with people will change how those people think of America. But those people won't change how they think because their religion dictates their opinion of America.

Yeah some people have this rigidly dogmatic view of America that is instilled in them from a young age. And no matter how much evidence you present those people about the role that America really plays in the world, no evidence could ever change their true-believing religiously-warped minds!

What facts might possibly convince these people to change their minds about America? How about these:

1953 -- Allen and John Foster Dulles, using the spectre of Communism, had convinced President Dwight Eisenhower to authorize the CIA and its operatives to overthrow the immensely popular and democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh of Iran (the US, of course, was after Iran's oil, and Mossadegh had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in an attempt to get fair payment for his country's resource). The CIA installed the dictator Reza Shah. This action did provide the US with oil, but it turned Iranians against the US: it radicalized whole sections of the population. The authoritarian government allowed radical (and anti-American) segments of Islam to flourish. During the coup, some estimates are as high as 10,000 of number of civilians killed; more were killed during the Shah's regime. Read Stephen Kinzer's book All the Shah's Men for more information.

1954 -- Jacobo Arbenz, the democratically elected reformist leader of Guatemala is overthrown by the US. Arbenz had incurred the wrath of the US owned United Fruit Company when he overthrew the corrupt Ubico government (the UFC made a lot of money while Ubico was in power because it was allowed to fix prices, avoid taxation, and exploit its workers). The CIA, in collaboration with the UFC, installed the military dictator Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in his place. During the overthrow and the subsequent bloody regime of Guzmán, 200,000 civilians were killed.

1963 -- US first assists in installing Ngo Dinh Diem as president of South Vietnam. When he made decisions that were "too independent" and strayed from the US vision of the region, the US backed his assassination. The war that resulted in part from this meddling killed 4 million people in southeast Asia.

1977 -- US backs military rulers of El Salvador. 70,000 Salvadorans killed.

1981 -- The Reagan administration trains and funds contras in Nicaragua, who target civilians in their attacks. 30,000 civilians die.

There are *many* more examples listed here:
www.wordiq.com/definition/List_of_U.S._foreign_interventions_since_1945

Wait those don't sound like the actions of the land of the free do they? The people with a warped view about America are Americans.

For over a hundred years now, starting with the Philippines in 1898, through all those listed above and more, and into Iraq, America has routinely invaded countries for any reason we see fit, which are usually reasons that tend to make our rich people more rich, killing many thousands of non-white poor people in those countries, ruining millions of lives, destroying their homes and resources and farms, and telling them that it is for their own good!

Why don't they love us? Why do they hate us with a religious passion? I can't fucking imagine.

3.) All the hype about torture is going to make the public think that thousands of people are being tortured every day, which isn't the case.

How would we know what is the case when our government won't tell us? They say such information is secret because of national security interests! They refuse to allow any oversight of their behavior, stonewall investigations, ignore Congressional requests, and issue signing statements to reserve their right to ignore laws they don't like.

So what do we know? Quick hits:

• In Iraq as of March 2005:
• As of this week, the military is holding at least 8,900 detainees in the three major prisons, 1,000 more than in late January. Here in Abu Ghraib, where eight American soldiers were charged last year with abusing detainees, 3,160 people are being kept, well above the 2,500 level considered ideal, said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for the detainee system. The largest center, Camp Bucca in the south, has at least 5,640 detainees.
• Wikipedia says there are 775 detainees in Gitmo.
• We know that there are secret prisons all over the world but we don't know how many people are held there.

So in 5 minutes of Google searching, we're probably holding over 10,000 people related to our actions in the war on terror. And that doesn't even start to count people being held here, like Jose Padilla, who has be held without trial or access to lawyers and tortured for the last 5 years (he got limited access to lawyers about a year ago I think).

Many of these prisoners are being held by a military force where over a third condone torture, and less than half say they'd report unethical behavior of a team member. And commanding this military force is an administration that has explicitly reserved the right to torture, who brag about their use of "aggressive interrogation techniques," and who have repeatedly apprehended and abused innocent "suspects" on the flimsiest of evidence. Other prisoners are shipped to countries known for their human rights violations to be tortured there.

But he assures me that it is "isn't the case" that we're torturing thousands of people a day. Rest easy! We sure wouldn't want to let the generals and their "somewhat crap" opinions give anyone the idea that America is torturing any more than just a few hundreds of people per day!

His response was to tell me how oversimplified and naive my views are. This is from the guy who says that changing how we treat people won't change what they think of us since they hate us because of their religion. Certainly there is a religious aspect to people's opinions, but flatly rejecting the idea that treating people better would improve their opinion of us is about as "oversimplified" and "naive" as you can possibly be.

He also said I "blindly" accepted the ideas I argued for. I presented evidence and reasoning; he simply asserts his beliefs. Yeah, I'm the blind one.

This inevitably degraded into a personal attacks, which led to everyone discussing what an asshole I am. While I regret my inability to ignore personal attacks and understand that it would often be preferable to ignore them, I'm constantly amazed how effectively one can avoid discussing the substance of an issue by criticizing your opponents' form (even when your side initiated the downslide into that poor form). This doesn't just work well in group emails with your high school friends. It is a pervasive technique that I recently mentioned in the lightning rod part of this entry.

Don't want to debate the war? Attack your critics' poor form! Questioning a war is insulting to the troops!

Here's an excellent example of Fox News trying to use this tactic on Christopher Hitchens, and his impressive ability to thunder away despite of it.

Trakker gets it right

I'm so sick of assholes attributing their own religious ideas onto our founding fathers. Trakker is too:

Opening page on GOP Presidential candidate Duncan Hunter's website:

Only god knows the number of a man's days. Those days are fleeting. Jerry Falwell did not waste a moment of his alloted time. He spent his life laboring for God and country and for the next generation. Like our first President, George Washington, Jerry Falwell made it clear our country could not survive without religion and morality. They were both right. He leaves a long lasting legacy. He will be sorely missed.

When hiring workmen for Mount Vernon, George Washington wrote to his agent, "If they be good workmen, they may be from Asia, Africa, or Europe; they may be Mohammedans, Jews, or Christians of any sect, or they may be Atheists."

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Jerry Falwell said on the 700 Club, "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

Yeah, they both left a legacy, but only one is missed.

Forgive me Trakker for quoting your post in its entirety. Everyone should check out the rest of his blog.

I don't either

Read this. This is a sad world.

The administration has engaged in violations of the Anti-Torture Statute and the War Crimes Act; classified the evidence of these violations; invoked the state secrets privilege to prevent victims from suing for civil damages for their treatment; suspended the writ of habeas corpus; and used their control of the Department of Justice to ensure that these violations are not prosecuted in civilian courts. The military has prosecuted more people, but their track record isn't exactly impressive either. The higher level officials who are ultimately responsible are still in power, or they have retired with medals and generous book deals.

And now it seems that a soldier who turned over a list of prisoner's names to some civil rights lawyers, so that they couldn't be held indefinitely without trial, may go to jail for longer than a number of soldiers and CIA agents who beat prisoners to death. And it's barely even news.

I don't want to live in this kind of country. I don't.

god is not good

so much to say, so little time to say it

Here come a bunch of links with commentary.


My boy Richard Dawkins takes on critics of The God Delusion. The Courtier's Reply that he mentions is here.

---

Here's one about how paternalistic our culture is becoming. I'm not sure that is expressed the right way, but you get the point. In other paternalism news, the Pope recently said this mind-blowing bullshit:

Benedict said Latin American Indians had been "silently longing" to become Christians when Spanish and Portuguese conquerors took over their native lands centuries ago, though many Indians were enslaved and killed.

"In effect, the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture," he said.

---

And speaking of mind-blowing, here is a story about Tom Delay excreting pure authoritarian self-blindness.

---

Here's a story about how the only bias that CBS is concerned about is anti-Bush bias. Pro-Bush bias is quite acceptable. Damn that liberal media.

---

Chuck is a smart man.

---

And to sum it all up:

The situation is now so godawful, so completely coo-coo, and so totally out of control that future historians will shake their heads in amazement trying to figure out why, by the spring of '07, the US politicians and the public haven't demanded the immediate removal of the Bush administration from office and their incarceration in the Hague to stand trial.

We live in very strange times.

Spader!

such is life

Tomorrow morning I'm flying up to Providence to help clear out my Great Aunt Mary's house. Her health has been deteriorating ever since she was hit by a car while walking across the street a couple years ago, and she's going to need to be in an assisted living situation for the rest of her life (she's 89) so we sold her house. Nobody tell her that I'm posting a picture of her in her nightgown. She'd be mortified.

Great Aunt Mary, me, and my sister Megan
Mary's house in Providence, RI
Summer 2005

Her sister, my Great Aunt Agnes died Tuesday night at the age of 96, so there might be a similar trip to New York City soon to clear out the apartment where she's lived by herself since the 1950s up until a few days ago. With whatever NYC's rent control laws are, she was paying like $800/month for a great apartment in a nice Manhattan neighborhood with a view of the Hudson. I imagine her death will be a celebrated occasion for her landlord.

For the family, it was obvious that it was coming soon, and she was at peace with facing the end, so everyone is okay with things. The only sad part is that she wanted to die at home instead of in the hospital, and didn't make it back to her beloved apartment. She had a pretty amazing life, and was very sharp until the end.

It would appear I don't have any good pictures of Agnes on my computer. Here's the best I can do.

Great Aunt Agnes, Aunt Patty, and Wife Kira
Annapolis, MD
Christmas 2006

In other news, this post should partially explain my lack of blogging lately. We've been very busy preparing to put our house on the market. The good news is that today the new carpet was installed. With the freshly painted walls, this place looks pretty good. Now a few minor fix ups and some cleaning and we're ready to sell.

I want to mention this excellent post by PZ, which in no way fits with the rest of this entry. It is his list of 12 objections to religion. All twelve are important, though his last one resonated most strongly with me:

Faith. Faith is the greatest sin of religion. I despise it; I'm particularly appalled that it is so universally regarded as a virtue. Listen, if I ever call someone a "person of faith", you should be aware that I have just insulted them terribly. It's astonishing how easily that sails over people's heads, though.

Faith is this amazing idea that it is a good thing to hold incredible beliefs in the complete absence of evidence to support them; the more outrageous the belief and the weaker the logic behind them, the stronger your faith and the more virtuous your conduct. It short-circuits everything that works in the world and puts ignorance on a pedestal.

Faith is the opposite of science, yet it is also one common element that you will always hear valued in religion. It is the number one most common excuse for holding peculiar superstitious beliefs in spite of the evidence against them, their violations of sense, and their foundation in wishful thinking and rhetorical vapor—it's the one word non-answer to every criticism of religion. Faith. You might as well just say "gullibility" or "ignorance" or "delusion"— it's all the same thing.

Another good point on his list that seems particularly relevant to me right now is this one:

Theft. Atheists know this one on a daily basis: Tornado demolishes home, tearful survivor comes before news cameras and "thanks God" that she was spared. Football player scores goal, drops to knees and praises god for his touchdown. Cancer patient goes into remission, lies in bed surrounded by his expensive, highly trained medical team, calls it a miracle. What religion does is steal human accomplishment and bestows it on a fickle imaginary being. Modern medicine is not a product of religion, it's the highly refined outcome of years of empirical science, yet people still babble about miracles and prayers.

The one thing PZ might have added was that religion tends to steal the deceased's thunder at the memorial service. I don't know what the plans are yet for Agnes' memorial, but she wasn't a religious person and I hope I don't have to sit through a bunch of Catholic crap just because her family is religious. She considered herself an agnostic ("I don't say there's no god. I just say that I don't know, because I don't."), but I would call her an atheist because she lived life without any belief in god. For a woman from her era, coming from her ultraconservative and ultraCatholic family, hers is a pretty impressive position by any name. The worst thing about religious funerals is how they manage to spend so much time talking about god and reciting ancient text passages instead of talking about the person that died. I don't want to be numbed into submission by boring chants and the empty consolation of "God's purpose." Agnes had an interesting life and I hope we take the opportunity to talk about her and not try to force the occasion into a belief system she rejected.

Now that I've morbidly featured her aunts, criticized religion, and linked to my wife's blog with the subtitle "blogging is just masturbating without the mess," I suppose this is as good a time as any to wish my mother a happy Mother's Day! Grandma too! So why not complete this with an awkward picture of both of them?

Grandma (paternal) Joan and Mother Anne
Bel Air, Maryland
Mother's Day 2005

And Happy Mother's day to my wonderful new mother and grandmother, Nanay and Lola!

Kira and Nanay
Calamba, Philippines
11/15/2006

adspar and Lola
Pagsanjan, Philippines
11/13/2006

cool tricks

I just started using Google Reader instead of going to each site on a long list of bookmarks and feeds. Like any other bit of technology, my admitting to using it immediately makes you think I'm either a futuristic computer geek or a woefully behind-the-times idiot. Either way, I like this tool and plan to continue using it.

Google Reader lets me share items of interest, and a cool widget lets me put a few of those in a sidebar to my blog. So now instead of making a new post just to share a few links with thin commentary, I can just share them and anyone who cares can check out the sidebar, the entire list, or even subscribe to the feed.

guess I got carried away

When I said that Denver could beat the Spurs. Oh well. Hopefully the Suns will.

fuck the democrats too, by the way

Republicans actively do terrible things, and the Democrats stand by and watch. Pathetic.


update: Or in some cases they lead the charge. Ugh I don't think I can vote for any of these fucks.

It occurs to me

It occurs to me after reading Glenn Greenwald's piece today that there's an element of evil genius to the far right lunatics running this country that I hadn't previously considered. Glenn writes:

The notion that citizens should refrain from questioning, criticizing or objecting to their country's war is -- aside from being patently undemocratic -- also incomparably destructive, as it eliminates (by design) a crucial mechanism for ending a misguided war: namely, the citizenry's demands that its government cease pursuing a failed or pointless war. Despite how destructive is the notion that war criticisms are illegitimate, that idea is widespread among American political leaders and our most "serious" and respected opinion-making elite.

By loudly shouting that anyone who questions the war is a traitorous terrorist-lover, war supporters have brilliantly (and disgustingly) added an extra layer of protection to their beloved war. Now war opponents have to spend extra time and effort and political capital fighting for the idea that war criticism is acceptable and valid and non-traitorous, instead of directing that energy against the war itself. It is chilling to the core that an idea so absurd could be such an effective lightning rod, but that's our America.

Now that I think of it, there are probably lots of other brilliant lightning rod strategies these creeps are using. I mean, Alberto Gonzales is a human lightning rod. And when it was a front page story that Bush had authorized widespread domestic surveillance in clear violation of federal law, he simply asserted that he has the right to break the law. Rather than discussing how he broke the law, we waste time debating if the President has the right to break the law. And Bush keeps saying that refusing to give him a blank check to fund the war is "not supporting the troops." And so everyone wastes time explaining that they support the troops that they could be using saying how Bush's war is a fucking disaster.

Absurd. Brilliant.

---

It occurs to me that it should be abundantly clear to everyone that Jesus didn't actually ever exist. The gospels are fiction, myths composed to fulfill prophesies of ancient texts. None of it makes sense as a real story.

It occurs to me that the tortured logic and absurdity used to defend Christian mythology is remarkably similar to the tortured logic and absurdity used to defend the far right lunatics running the country. C.S. Lewis wrote:

"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg - or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us."

Which blowhard Christians have condensed into an in-your-face "LIAR, LUNATIC, OR LORD!? WHICH IS IT???!! HUH?? HUH???" There are so many flawed premises there that it stuns an unprepared rational thinker into temporary submission. Kinda like how wanting to bring soldiers home from war is failing to support the troops. Up is down. Black is white. Liar, lunatic, or Lord?

Absurd. Brilliant.

update: It occurs to me that this is the perfect intersection.

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It occurs to me, after reading this outrageous article (courtesy of paulp) about a 66 year old psychologist who has been permanently banned from the US for writing about taking LSD 40 years ago, that it is entirely reasonable for me to be concerned about having publicly written some of the things I've written. Things like... how our far right overlords are insane... or how Jesus never existed.