Birthday Books

I had a great birthday, spending it with friends and family and adding some titles to my book collection that I had been meaning to get for awhile:

The wife got me The Green Book, a good guide with practical ways of not putting a huge wide-ass footprint on the planet.

With some birthday money, I bought books by two prominent atheists that I did not have books by previously:

Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris

The Portable Atheist by Christopher Hitchens

E & J got me I Am America (and so can you!) by Stephen Colbert. It's hilarious. I love the section on atheists:

Atheists
These No-goodnik no Godniks are growing in numbers and power in America. It makes me wonder how a God could exsist Who'd allow people to piss me off so much.

Luckily, a recent survey published in American Sociological Review revealed that atheists are the least trusted group in America - less trusted, even, than homosexuals. It makes sense - at least we trust the homosexuals with our hair.

But here's the biggest head-scratcher of all: Not only are atheists destroying our country, they're completely deluding themselves. There's simply no way to prove that there is no God. If I didn't hate them so much, I'd feel bad for these folks. Imagine going through life completely duped into thinking that there's no invisible, omniscient higher power guiding every action on Earth. It's just so arbitrary! Can't they see?

What's worse is that atheists blindly follow whatever scientists tell them to, no matter how unbelievably fantastical it sounds to rational ears. Yeah, earthquakes are caused by the shifting of giant unseen plates buried deep beneath the ground. There's no way it could be God jiggling the globe because people in California commit sodomy. No, that would be too simple!

Atheists enrage me precisely because they impute everything that happens to the semi-random workings of the natural world. They refuse to take responisbility for their actions! If their dog dies, it's because the decay of its cells caused by the aging process was "meant to be." They'll never stand up and say, "I deserved this as punishment for mixing my meats and cheeses." Makes me angry just thinking about it!

Agnostics

Atheists without balls.

Atheists and the Big Secular Agenda
People of faith like you and me are under attack. Especially people like me.

Atheists are the driving force behind what I call Big Secularism.

Card-carrying members of BS have snaked their way into every branch of our federal government, except for the judicial and executive. Did you know that in the House of Representatives and the Senate, there are as many as one self-described atheist currently serving? Democrat Representative Pete Stark of California's 13th district, to name just one. Just think of it - how are any pro-faith initiatives going to make it into law when Congress is held hostage by the anti-God caucus of Stark, his self, and him?

BS is gathering storm - a growing movement of lefty Lord-loathers intent on driving religion out of the public square, no matter how much time I spend hanging tinsel.

Ramblings

Damn, I need to blog more often. Got my taxes done, so I should have a bit more time to do so.

We went to the Diamondbacks home opener Monday (we won) and had a good time. For some pics, click the image.


This Sunday, I'll be making my on-air debut with the local progressive talk radio station, KPHX 1480. As seems to be the case with me, I was just a bit lucky and just happened to get the opportunity to do some work for the right set of people. A year or two ago, I'd made an local acquaintance on democraticunderground.com and had done some computer work for this person. She was happy with my work and mentioned me to some of her friends. Well, some of her friends just happened to be a couple of the Sunday morning hosts on KPHX. This week, I did some gratis work for them, they mentioned me on their show and invited me to come on air this Sunday. Hopefully I won't sound like a complete moron. They post the podcasts of the show by the next day here. I'll give you a heads-up this weekend to let you know if it will be worth a listen.

Also this Sunday, my son has his first classes at church for communion. As I don't exactly know what that entails and with you all knowing my opinion on religion, this subject should make for some blogger fodder for me over the next few weeks.

Movie Reviews

I've got a couple decent movies to review this week. Nothing earth-shattering and life-changing, but entertaining and not completely without a message.

The first of these is 21. Let's begin by not overanalyzing this film or making it into some high-brow idealistic one - which it is not trying to be. Once you do that, you can take it for what it is - a well-made and entertaining caper movie with attractive and likable young actors and a couple of great elder statesmen actors, Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne.

21 is the story of Ben Campbell, played well by British actor Jim Sturgess (of Across the Universe and The Other Boleyn Girl). Campbell, along with several other MIT students, comprises a group of card-counting 21 players who travel to Las Vegas and win millions of dollars. The group is ran by one of their professors, who is played by Spacey, in typical Kevin Spacey-mode - cocky, sarcastic and over-the-top. Their nemesis is Vegas security officer Cole Williams, played capably by Fishburne. Campbell reluctantly joins the group, so as to make enough money to put him through graduate school.

The movie is fairly predictable but the MTV-style cinematography serves the subject matter well. The game of blackjack is not as visually compelling or dramatic as poker, so the music and flashy camera work helps to add tension.

The other student film roles are filled by stereotypical ethnic roles and the love interest is played by Kate Bosworth. I've yet to see her do any compelling acting in any of her roles, but her lack of ability doesn't detract enough to hurt the film.

The plot is not completely vacuous and everyone ultimately gets what they deserve, so don't fear that it's just an empty gambling movie where there are no consequences for questionable and immoral decisions.

I'm a sucker for Vegas and gambling films both light (Ocean's 11) and heavy (Leaving Las Vegas), so this one was right up my alley. Grade: B-


The second film, Horton Hears a Who, probably wouldn't have been my first choice for a film to see, but we had just went out to eat for my birthday today and we were looking for a family friendly film to see. Our son obviously voted for this one. And we were pleasantly surprised.

Horton Hears a Who, for those who don't already know, is from a Dr. Seuss story. This is easily the best screen adaptation of his books (Cat in the Hat and How The Grinch Stole Christmas were the others). There is a lot of great voice talent - Jim Carrey as Horton and Steve Carell, Carol Burnett, Seth Rogan, Isla Fischer, etc. in various other roles.

The main thing that raises this film above the other adaptations is it's visual look (animated as opposed to live action) and the quality of that animation. Also, it does a lot less wink-wink, nudge-nudge type self-referential humor that movies like Shrek are guilty of.

I won't get too into the story, as I imagine a lot of people have already read most Dr. Seuss stories. Basically, Horton the elephant hears a cry from a small person on a speck of dust. The story follows him trying to save the creatures that live on this speck of dust and to make others believe him. The moral of the story is summed up by Horton's motto, "After all, a person is a person, no matter how small." I've heard reviews that have tried to link the morality of the story to the immigration issue and I can definitely see that. But I also took out of the story parallels to fear mongering by politicians. But the movie doesn't beat you over the head with any of those themes. But they are there if you look for them. Grade: C+

Pre-crime

From the latest issue of Mother Jones magazine:

When Attorney General Alberto Gonzales held a press conference in the summer of 2006 announcing the arrests of seven young men for plotting to bomb Chicago's Sears Tower, he sounded defensive, his voice lingering a beat on each thing the men allegedly did. "Individuals here in America made plans to hurt Americans," he claimed. "They did request materials; they did request equipment; they did request funding." Gonzales admitted that the American and Haitian-born men posed "no immediate threat." But, he warned, "homegrown terrorists may prove to be as dangerous as groups like Al Qaeda. Our philosophy here is that we try to identify plots in the earliest stages possible, because we don't know what we don't know about a terrorism plot."

... juror Delorise Thompkins told the Miami Herald. "You're going to find someone always afraid of terrorist groups, but then when you see the evidence, there's not a lot there—no plans, no papers, no pictures, no nothing connecting them to Osama bin Laden." The jury's ambivalence is understandable. The plots were little more than talk encouraged by informants; the central evidence in the case—the taped oath—was a staged fbi production. But then, whether the men were a threat or the plot real doesn't matter when it comes to the charge of material support.

... There's a reason material support has become such a popular charge, a reason it's central to many of the government's most questionable cases: The laws are a prosecutor's dream. They don't require evidence of a plot or even of a desire to help terrorists. They give the government a shot at convictions traditional criminal laws could never provide. "The administration adopted the preventive paradigm, i.e. 'We've got to stop people before they've done something wrong,'" says David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who's the author of several books about the effect of anti-terror laws on the justice system. "There's tremendous pressure to expand grounds of criminal activity, to prosecute people who might represent a threat. The material-support provisions have been the principal vehicle for pushing that envelope."

The question is whether that approach has made us any safer. "The government does not understand how terrorist groups operate," says Michael German, a former counterterrorism agent at the fbi and now counsel for the aclu. "When I was undercover, there were plenty of people who may have been sympathetic to a group but were very clear they didn't want to break the law or get involved in violence. And we didn't go after them." Blurring that distinction by opening the door for prosecutions of people who do little more than express sympathies for a group, argues German, "that's where the material-support provisions go off the rails. The terrorist's goal is to convince everybody he identifies as his community that they are being oppressed. And when the government's response tends to create injustice, the government's fulfilling that prophecy."

... Think of the laws as "aiding and abetting"—only on steroids. It has always been illegal to support criminal activity. If a man drives a getaway car for bank robbers, then he can be charged for the robbery, too. Prosecutors have simply had to show that there was an intent to further the crime and some meaningful connection between the help and the crime itself.

What the material-support laws did was roll back those requirements. A taxi driver hired for a short drive by a Hezbollah politician—a driver who had no intention of engaging in terrorist activity—would, so long as he knew the politician was with Hezbollah, be guilty of providing material support. That's because the laws that define "material support" contain a long list of often nebulous activities, such as providing "property, tangible or intangible" or "service," and are applied whether or not those activities truly helped advance the cause of a terrorist group, and regardless of the suspect's intentions. The laws make little distinction between the taxi driver and, say, an arms merchant who sells detonators to Hezbollah. The Patriot Act extended the concept further, making it illegal to attempt or conspire to provide material support. Before, prosecutors had to prove you gave support. Now they just have to show you wanted to ...

"The Constitution is, among other things, a counterterrorism strategy," says Michael German, the former fbi agent. "What the framers recognized is that you don't create the perception of repression if you allow people legitimate means for fostering change. The material-support laws criminalize conduct that in and of itself isn't typically criminal, isn't illegal." When you have cases based on such sweeping laws, argues German, "you're ostensibly hurting terrorist organizations, when in fact you're helping them. You're giving people more of a reason to become militant."

Fittingly, but coincidentally, I had re-watched Minority Report this week, a movie that takes the concept of predicting and preventing crime to another level. The whole concept of punishing people for what they think is just a bit too 1984ish, with the government in the role of the Thought Police.


Where is the line drawn? It's not difficult to see this being taken to a level where any seditious thoughts are punishable. And what is sedition? The founding fathers of our country were certainly seditious. As the above article states, "What the framers recognized is that you don't create the perception of repression if you allow people legitimate means for fostering change." These loosely drawn laws and the way we enforce them are criminalizing thoughts and gutting our own Constitution.

The system of government that used to be a beacon for the rest of the world is now using the tools of totalitarian regimes. It's not hard to see why we are not respected any more. It's hard to respect a country that tortures, that spies on its own people, and ignores it's own laws.

"We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instance of death we cannot permit any deviation . . . we make the brain perfect before we blow it out." -- 1984 by George Orwell

The God That Failed

Mother: We didn't know sick daughter was terminally ill

Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers
and The Associated Press

WESTON -- The mother of an 11-year-old girl who died of untreated diabetes said Wednesday that she did not know her daughter was terminally ill as she prayed for her to get better.

The parents of Madeline Kara Neumann called 911 three minutes after police and EMS crews already had been sent to their home by the girl's aunt, who lives in California.

Neumann died Sunday from an undiagnosed form of diabetes. The family told police they chose to pray for her to get better, rather than seek medical assistance.

Neumann's mother, Leilani Neumann, told The Associated Press Wednesday she never expected her daughter, whom she called Kara, to die. The family believes in the Bible, which says healing comes from God, but they are not crazy, religious people and have nothing against doctors, she said.

The aunt from California told a Marathon County sheriff's dispatcher Sunday afternoon that the girl was thought to be at home in a coma. She advised the dispatcher in a recorded phone call that the family was religious and refused to take the girl to the hospital, despite the aunt's urging them to do so for at least three days.

When the dispatcher asked if an ambulance should be sent to the Neumanns' town of Weston home, the aunt replied, "Yes. She's refusing. She's going to fight it," in reference to the girl's mother.

A few minutes later, at 2:38 p.m., a male caller from the home told a sheriff's dispatcher that a child there was not breathing, according to the 911 call, a copy of which was obtained by a Gannett Wisconsin newspaper. The dispatcher informed the caller that an ambulance already was on its way.

He then attempted to instruct the family how to perform CPR. Family members sounded panicky, and cries and screaming could be heard in the background.

Officers met with the Neumann family Wednesday, and Everest Metro Police Chief Dan Vergin said he hopes to complete the investigation late this week or early next week.

Child protective services interviewed Kara Neumann's three older siblings Wednesday night to determine whether it was safe to return them to the home, Vergin told CNN's Nancy Grace.

The Marathon County district attorney's office is working with police to determine whether criminal charges should be filed. Vergin said officers still are trying to determine a timeline of Neumann's decline during her final days.

Marathon County Medical Examiner John Larson said Kara Neumann was quite ill Friday and Saturday and became gravely ill Sunday, the day she died.

"I think this young girl was sick for some time; she just progressed into a situation where she needed medical attention and did not get it," Larson said. "At some point, they should have recognized she was very, seriously ill."

The family does not belong to an organized religion or faith, Leilani Neumann said.

She said the family is not worried about the police investigation into her daughter's death because "our lives are in God's hands. We know we did not do anything criminal. We know we did the best for our daughter we knew how to do."

For a little more on the case, see this video. I'm reluctant to reference this video because it's from Nancy Grace's show. I hate Nancy because her trumped-up indignation has less to do with actual compassion for the victim and more to do with her ego and her sense of theatrics. I think she might be the only person that might cause me to feel sorry for a serial killer.

When does "freedom of religion" go too far? I believe when it endangers someone else's life or health. Obviously, Christianity is not the only religion whose tenets infringe upon innocents, but it's the pertinent one here. So, just because I'm not listing all the others doesn't mean I don't hold them just as accountable. One could argue that indoctrinating your children to creationist beliefs is cruel and unusual punishment, but we'll leave that subject for another day. I grant that it's probably correct to allow parents to use their best judgement when educating their kids. After all, recovering from an inferior education is a lot easier than recovering from an unnecessary death.

Though the family in question do not say they adhere to a specific religion, their beliefs are certainly similar to those of Christian Science. After reading some of the rights afforded people merely in the name of religion, I get the distinct impression that we are just a country of backwoods country bumfucks. Case in point - from Wikipedia:

Christian Scientists have been controversial for their failure to provide conventional health care for children (Asser and Swan, 1998). In the United States, the constitutional guarantee of protection of religious practice from intrusion by government has been used by Christian Scientists and other religious groups to seek exemption from legislative or regulatory requirements regarding child abuse and neglect, including medical neglect in more than three quarters of the states. There are now statutes in 44 states which contain a provision stating that a child is not to be deemed abused or neglected merely because he or she is receiving treatment by spiritual means, through prayer according to the tenets of a recognized religion. Although these exemptions take different forms and interpretations in different state jurisdictions, the overall effect has been to limit the ability of the state to prosecute parents for suspected or alleged abuse or medical neglect of children when such occurrences may be the result of religious practice. Severe (even fatal) physical discipline, failure to seek medical care, or refusal of a proven efficacious treatment of a critically ill child may be protected from prosecution because of the religious exemption clauses now found in a majority of state codes. (However, most of these cases do not involve Christian Scientists.)

The band Metallica, whose lead singer James Hetfield was raised as a Christian Scientist, wrote this song after Hefields's mother died of cancer because of not seeking treatment:

The God that Failed by Metallica

Pride you took
Pride you feel
Pride that you felt when you'd kneel
Not the word
Not the love
Not what you thought from above

It feeds (it feeds)
It grows (it grows)
It clouds all that you will know
Deceit
Deceive
Decide just what you believe

I see faith in your eyes
Never you hear the discouraging lies
I hear faith in your cries
Broken is the promise, betrayal
The healing hand held back by the deepened nail
Follow the god that failed

Find your peace
Find your say
Find the smooth road on your way
Trust you gave
A child to save
Left you cold and him in grave ...

In our laws, we are actually protecting people who neglect their children because of their religious beliefs. Do you think that people who claimed that aliens told them not to seek treatment for their sick children would get the same protections? Of course not. A system of laws that should be based on reason is being influenced by superstition. And yet we are viewed as a model democracy. Perhaps it's not a God that failed but rather a government based on superstition that failed.

Good Sci-Fi ... Bad Sci-Fi

I've always said that the beauty of sci-fi movies is that even the bad ones are interesting to watch. That's because even the bad ones are trying to say something. The new incarnation of Battlestar Galactica has obvious parallels to our current world politics. Star Wars explores the common mythology of religions. 2001: A Space Odyssey explores evolution and technology. And so on.

But forget what I said. There ARE bad sc-fi movies that are just bad and don't try to say anything. I just saw one yesterday - Jumper. I was optimistic that I would like it despite the scathing reviews I'd heard. After all, Doug Liman was directing. He had directed a couple of really good movies - The Bourne Identity and Swingers. Samual Jackson and Diane Lane, Oscar nominated actors, are in it. It seemed to look mildly cool in the previews.

From IMDb:

"A genetic anomaly allows a young man to teleport himself anywhere. He discovers this gift has existed for centuries and finds himself in a war that has been raging for thousands of years between "Jumpers" and those who have sworn to kill them."

Between the previews and that blurb, you have the entire movie. Jumper gets no deeper than that. The movie doesn't really delve into why they can "jump" or why others are trying to kill them. It's like a Highlander rip-off. There is nothing likable or redeeming about the protagonist David Rice, played lamely by Hadyn Christensen. I keep hearing that Hadyn is really a good actor despite the contrary evidence of his movies (Star Wars). If he doesn't start proving it soon, no one's going to be around to care.

The characteristic that I had spoke of relating to bad sci-fi movies that made them palatable was some kind of message. Jumper is not a metaphor for anything. There is no morality play. There is no hidden meaning. It's just fluff with pretty young people in it. Grade: D

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I've talked about bad sci-fi, let's talk about good. One of the most important science fiction authors or our time and one of the four most important sci-fi authors of my youth, Arthur C. Clarke, passed away this week (Frank Herbert, Robert A. Heinlein and Larry Niven being the other three). He wrote the previously mentioned 2001: A Space Odyssey, numerous other books, and was a highly respected scientist and futurist whose writings are often cited as influencing the development of the modern communications satellite. Farewell, Arthur.

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Also of note, and not unfamiliar in sci-fi circles (Fifth Element, Harry Potter, Batman Begins), today is my favorite actor's 50th birthday. Happy Birthday Gary Oldman. Check out my blog entry of a few years ago for recommended films by him: dbackdad's favorite actors: part one -- gary oldman

We Can't Even Shop Right

The Fall of the American Consumer
by Barbara Ehrenreich
How much lower can consumer spending go? The malls are like mausoleums, retail clerks are getting laid off and AOL recently featured on its welcome page the story of a man so cheap that he recycles his dental floss–hanging it from a nail in his garage until it dries out.

It could go a lot lower of course. This guy could start saving the little morsels he flosses out and boil them up to augment the children’s breakfast gruel. Already, as the recession or whatever it is closes in, people have stopped buying homes and cars and cut way back on restaurant meals. They don’t have the money; they don’t have the credit; and increasingly they’re finding that no one wants their money anyway. NPR reported on February 28 that more and more Manhattan stores are accepting Euros and at least one has gone Euros-only.

The Sharper Image has declared bankruptcy and is closing ninety-six US stores. (To think I missed my chance to buy those headphones that treat you to forest sounds while massaging your temples!) Victoria’s Secret is so desperate that it’s adding fabric to its undergarments. Starbucks had no sooner taken time off to teach its baristas how to make coffee than it started laying them off.

While Americans search for interview outfits in consignment stores and switch from Whole Foods to Wal-Mart for sustenance, the world watches tremulously. The Australian Courier-Mail, for example, warns of an economic “pandemic” if Americans cut back any further, since we are responsible for $9 trillion a year in spending, compared to a puny $1 trillion for the one billion-strong Chinese. Yes, we have been the world’s designated shoppers, and, if we fall down on the job, we take the global economy with us.

“Shop till you drop,” was our motto, by which we didn’t mean to say we were more compassion-worthy than a woman fainting at her work station in some Honduran sweatshop. It was just our proper role in the scheme of things. Some people make stuff; other people have to buy it. And when we gave up making stuff, starting in the 1980s, we were left with the unique role of buying. Remember Bush telling us, shortly after 9/11, to get out there and shop? It may have seemed ludicrous at the time, but what he meant was get back to work.

We took pride in our role in the global economy. No doubt it takes some skill to make things, but what about all the craft that goes into buying them–finding a convenient parking space at the mall, navigating our way through department stores laid out for maximum consumer confusion, determining which of our credit cards still has a smidgeon of credit in it? Not everyone could do this, especially not people whose only experience was stitching, assembling, wiring and packaging the stuff that we bought.

But if we thought we were special, they thought we were marks. They could make anything, and we would dutifully buy it. I once found, in a party store, a baseball cap with a plastic turd affixed to its top and the words “shit head” on the visor. The label said “made in the Philippines” and the makers must have been convulsed as they made it. If those dumb Yanks will buy this…

There’s talk already of emergency measures, like making Christmas a weekly holiday, although this would require a level of deforestation that could leave Cheney with no quail to hunt.

More likely, there’ll be a move to outsource shopping, just as we’ve already outsourced manufacturing, customer service, X-ray reading and R&D. But to whom? The Indians are clever enough, but right now they only account for $600 million in consumer spending a year. And could they really be trusted to put a flat screen TV in every child’s room, distinguish Guess jeans from a knock-off and replace their kitchen counters on an annual basis?

And what happens to us, the world’s erstwhile shoppers? The President recently observed, in one of his more sentient moments, that unemployment is “painful.” But if a pink slip hurts, what about a letter from Citicard announcing that you’ve been laid off as a shopper? Will we fill our vacant hours twisting recycled dental floss onto spools or will we decide that, if we can’t shop, we’re going to have to shoplift?

Because we’ve shopped till we dropped alright, face down on the floor.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. We don't make the best cars. All our favorite actors are foreign. And now ... we can't even shop right! lol.

Well, this a mantle that I'd be proud of us losing. It might actually indicate that we are finally figuring out that an economy is not ran on encouraging people to buy stuff they don't need. The businesses that will survive are the ones that make things well, make them affordable and that make things that people need regardless of the economy. It's all about sustainability. Just because you can fool some poor sap into buying that 70 inch plasma TV that he doesn't need and can't afford, doesn't mean that you should. You'll say that the market will sort it out. A perfect market may. But not one inhabited with a bunch of morons like ours. Our market has producers whose only criteria is how much they can make and consumers whose only criteria is how much debt they can get into to keep up with the Jones's. There has to be a concept of common good. But, WAIT!, you will say. You might even quote Ayn Rand to me:

"America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to "the common good", but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes." -- Ayn Rand

I'd probably agree with the free market types who say you can't legislate "common good". But at the same time, you can't have a government who actively encourages the exact opposite of common good. That's not a free market either. We're not living in some Ayn Rand fantasy world. How exactly is the market "correcting" anything when CEO's of companies that hemorrhage money are given $20 million golden parachutes? "Productive genius of free men", my ass.

"Win or lose, we go shopping after the election." -- Imelda Marcos

Contrast

Friday afternoon, when I should be working, I'm at a spring training ball game with the kid. Weather's gorgeous, if just a bit breezy. Portobello mushroom sandwich and a beer to top it off.


Today, Sunday, when I should be relaxing, I'm at a recently relocated client in Prescott (100 miles from home), but who paid me for the travel time and everything. Weather is freaky. It snowed a good deal of the way there, the entire time we were in Prescott, and half the way home. The last 15 miles going into Prescott, I'm following a snow truck putting sand on the road and we're crawling along at 20 mph. It's not slick, mind you - it's not really cold enough for that. But Arizona people are unaccustomed to inclement weather and go a little overboard with precautions.


As bad as it was there, Flagstaff (just another hour away) got hit even harder and had whiteout conditions and tragically bad results. And to think, my biggest decision this morning was whether I was going to wear shorts or jeans (jeans thankfully won out). Looks like my time might have been better spent actually turning on the Weather Channel.

Usury

Christians Heart Payday Lenders by Stephanie Mencimer

The Christian Right has used the Bible to bolster many a political issue, from abortion to stem cell research. Strangely enough, however, they seem to have missed one of the biggies: the Bible's many injunctions against usury, or predatory lending to poor people. The Bible is far more explicit in its disapproval of usury than, say, gay marriage. (The book of Ezekiel compares usurious lending to extortion and murder for hire, in fact, and threatens major hellfire for those who practice it.) Yet in parts of the country where the Christian Right wields the most political power, usurious payday lending has flourished more than anywhere else in the U.S., according to a new study by Christopher Peterson and Steven Graves.

Today's payday lenders charge around 450 percent interest on short-term loans, rates ten times higher than the federal definition of criminal loan sharking and nearly double what the Mob charged in its heyday. Peterson's home state of heavily Mormon Utah ranked high on the list of havens for payday lenders. The state claims more payday lending outlets than McDonalds, Burger Kings, Subway sandwich chains, and 7-11s combined, and has failed to pass even modest restrictions on allowable interest rates that exceed 500 percent a year, among the highest in the nation. (One reason may be that the chairman of the Salt Lake City Republican Party, former State Senator James Evans, himself owns several payday-lending outfits.)

Peterson and Graves decline to speculate as to why devout Christians and Mormons who wield considerable political clout continue to tolerate practices that are so clearly at odds with Biblical teachings. They simply attempted to point out the correlation, writing that sadly, "Those states that have most ardently held to their pious Christian traditions have tended to become more infested with the progeny of money changers once expelled by Christ from the Hebrew temple."

Funny how we use the bible to justify our prejudices (gays) or end times foreign policy but conveniently forget the part about usury. Religious people (including our President) have used religious imagery (Crusade) and have advanced a war that by it's very existence is violating at least four of the Ten Commandments (coveting anything of your neighbors'[oil], killing, stealing, working on the Sabbath). Makes one question whether a lot of people's piety is really about God.

"If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury." -- the Bible

Political Song of the Day

My Political Song of the Day is usually anti-war, environmental or otherwise left-leaning. But I was flipping channels in the car the other day and came upon a country station and heard a song so innane, so misinformed and so perfectly representative of the attitude of a large percentage of Americans that I had to share it with you:

Have You Forgotten? by Darryl Worley

I hear people saying we don't need this war
But, I say there's some things worth fighting for
What about our freedom and this piece of ground
We didn't get to keep 'em by backing down
They say we don't realize the mess we're getting in
Before you start your preaching let me ask you this my friend

Have you forgotten how it felt that day?
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell
And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout bin Laden
Have you forgotten?

They took all the footage off my T.V.
Said it's too disturbing for you and me
It'll just breed anger that's what the experts say
If it was up to me I'd show it everyday
Some say this country's just out looking for a fight
Well, after 9/11 man I'd have to say that's right

Have you forgotten how it felt that day?
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside going thru a living hell
And we vowed to get the one’s behind bin Laden
Have you forgotten?

I've been there with the soldiers
Who've gone away to war
And you can bet that they remember
Just what they're fighting for

Have you forgotten all the people killed?
Yeah, some went down like heroes in that Pennsylvania field
Have you forgotten about our Pentagon?
All the loved ones that we lost and those left to carry on
Don't you tell me not to worry about bin Laden
Have you forgotten?

Have you forgotten?
Have you forgotten?

Have you forgotten ... indeed. Darryl Worley, have your forgotten that 9/11 has nothing to do with Iraq? Have you forgotten that it was George W that forgot about Bin Laden and started a new war, not us? Have you forgotten that meat-headed bravado like your stupid song is why most of the world hates us?

The fact that someone wrote a song like this isn't that big a deal. It's that a vast majority of the NASCAR, bible-belt, pick-up truck, NRA set eats this stuff up as truth that bothers me.

Testify

As I was picking weeds in the front yard the other day, a couple of nattily dressed people approached me and asked if I'd like to attend a meeting to talk about Jesus. I politely declined, not wanting to offend or to start a huge religious discussion. But the man wouldn't leave it at that and felt compelled to say, "So, you're not a Christian?" in a condescending tone. At that point, the gloves were off, and I lit into him a little bit, saying that my beliefs should not be of his concern. Seeing my consternation, he backed off and apologized for implying anything. It was obvious he wasn't going to get anywhere with me and he bid me good day. Perhaps, I overreacted. But I think not. Should each of us feel compelled to force our beliefs on others or compel others to do the same? Is talking about Jesus or testifying without being asked to do so considering forcing?

That got me thinking of the religious concept of "testifying"? To me, it seems eerily similar to one of the 12 steps (which in and of itself is already religious-based). The one about apologizing to those we have hurt. Could religion just be some 2,000 year old perversion of pop psychology? By going around and "spreading the word", are people hoping to heal themselves and others like you would in AA? I posed the same question to my wife ... a Christian, mind you. She's heard my rants before and wasn't offended. She countered that testifying is more about just letting people know that Jesus is there for them if they need him. So I said, "So, it's like advertising." -- "Act now and as an added bonus you will get this lovely afterlife!". Testifying is just Dr. Phil mixed with ginsu knifes. I think she failed to see the humor. Oh well.

In religion, testimony generally involves an inward belief or outward profession of faith or of personal religious experience.

Christians in general use the term "testify" or "to give your testimony" to mean "the story of how you became a Christian" (or less commonly it may refer to a specific event in a Christian's life in which God has done something deemed particularly worth sharing). Christians often give their testimony at their own baptism or at evangelistic events, where non-Christians are able to hear what God has done in their lives ... (from Wikipedia)

I'm not trying to be profane or step on anyone's toes. I respect people to have what religious beliefs they choose. But that's part of my point in saying something - It's OK to have your own views, but your compulsion to share them is infringing on other people's views. One could argue that by discussing my religious views on a blog, I'm doing the same. But people come to my blog by choice. I wasn't making a choice to be preached to by merely being in my own front yard.

You may say that testifying is a tenet of your religion and you have to do it. That's not my problem. Any religion that considers it a requirement to spread itself out by proselytizing is not a religion ... it's a virus. A great idea should be self-evident. People aren't just waiting around for someone to come and "save" them.

And you stare at me
In your jesus christ pose
Arms held out
Like you've been carrying a load
And you swear to me
You don't want to be my slave
But you're staring at me
Like I need to be saved ...

Jesus Christ Pose by Soundgarden

Pete Seeger

If you get the chance, check out a great show on PBS, American Masters Pete Seeger: The Power of Song. It was a well put-together program following his whole life and career with many appearances by artists influenced by him including: Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, the Byrds, Peter Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, etc. Seeger is, perhaps, our country's most important folk music artist and he truly is the father of the modern politicaly active musician. There is a very obvious progression from the likes of Seeger and Woody Guthrie to Dylan and Baez to Springsteen to Rage Against the Machine and Pearl Jam.

Springsteen honored the influence Seeger had on him in an album and tour.

Read some excerpted lyrics from a couple of songs by Seeger about the Vietnam war and tell me they don't have relevance today:

Waist Deep In The Big Muddy
by Pete Seeger 1963, planned for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967 but CBS objected to the blacklisted Seeger making obvious references to the "big fool" in the White House, finally sung by Seeger on the Comedy Hour in 1968 as the finale in a medley of anti-war songs

It was back in nineteen forty-two,
I was a member of a good platoon.
We were on maneuvers in-a Loozianna,
One night by the light of the moon.
The captain told us to ford a river,
That's how it all begun.
We were -- knee deep in the Big Muddy,
But the big fool said to push on.

The Sergeant said, "Sir, are you sure,
This is the best way back to the base?"
"Sergeant, go on! I forded this river
'Bout a mile above this place.
It'll be a little soggy but just keep slogging.
We'll soon be on dry ground."
We were -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.

The Sergeant said, "Sir, with all this equipment
No man will be able to swim."
"Sergeant, don't be a Nervous Nellie,"
The Captain said to him.
"All we need is a little determination;
Men, follow me, I'll lead on."
We were -- neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.

All at once, the moon clouded over,
We heard a gurgling cry.
A few seconds later, the captain's helmet
Was all that floated by.
The Sergeant said, "Turn around men!
I'm in charge from now on."
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the captain dead and gone.

We stripped and dived and found his body
Stuck in the old quicksand.
I guess he didn't know that the water was deeper
Than the place he'd once before been.
Another stream had joined the Big Muddy
'Bout a half mile from where we'd gone.
We were lucky to escape from the Big Muddy
When the big fool said to push on.

Well, I'm not going to point any moral;
I'll leave that for yourself
Maybe you're still walking, you're still talking
You'd like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers
That old feeling comes on;
We're -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on ...

"We were -- neck deep in the Big Muddy ... And the big fool said to push on." -- We certainly are neck deep in Iraq. The "big fool" then was LBJ. Take your pick today. Certainly Bush and McCain fit the role.

Bring 'Em Home

If you love your Uncle Sam,
Support our boys in Vietnam ...
Bring them home, bring them home.

It'll make our generals sad, I know ...
They want to tangle with the foe ...
They want to test their weaponry ...
But here is their big fallacy ...

I may be right, I may be wrong ...
But I got a right to sing this song ...

There's one thing I must confess ...
I'm not really a pacifist ...
If an army invaded this land of mine ...
You'd find me out on the firing line ...

Show those generals their fallacy ...
They don't have the right weaponry ...
For defense you need common sense ...
They don't have the right armaments ...
The world needs teachers, books and schools ...
And learning a few universal rules ...

So if you love your Uncle Sam,
Bring them home, bring them home.
Support our boys in Vietnam,
Bring them home, bring them home.

This song is an answer to those who try to frame patriotism as being blind jingoistic support of an unjustified war.

from Wikipedia: On August 18, 1955, Seeger was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) where he refused to name personal and political associations stating it would violate his First Amendment rights... "I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this."

It's obvious that the government censors us, but we seem to do a pretty good job of censoring ourselves. Seeger was blacklisted for two decades for refusing to kiss the ass of McCarthyites. He cited the First Amendment, the freedom of association, instead of hiding behind the Fifth Amendment like a lot of others did.

As dangerous as the world we live in is, it seems that the things that people and governments are most afraid of are words and ideas. Pete Seeger showed that songs can be a lot more powerful than guns.


You may think we've came a long way since the day of the blacklists, but modern artists like Springsteen, the Dixie Chicks, Rage Against the Machine, etc. still catch heat for their political views. TV networks, radio stations, newspapers feel more obligation to their corporate bosses and Washington connections than they do to the truth.

It's refreshing when you find artists who truly don't sell-out. Seeger never did. He could have made it easier on himself. He could have went commercial and made a lot of money. You don't find many artists ... or people for that matter ... now days that don't compromise their ideals for that house in the 'burbs, that new car, that vacation home. Our souls shouldn't be for sale.

"Songs won’t save the planet, but neither will books or speeches. Songs are sneaky things; they can slip across borders." -- Pete Seeger

William F. Buckley Jr.

Weird week. Two annoying conservatives expired (Mecham and Buckley). While sympathetic to their families, it's not necessarily a time to sugercoat their influence.

William F. Buckley Jr. as a Progressive Role Model by Matt Zeitlin

William F. Buckley Jr, who died today, was mostly known for founding and editing National Review and being a leading conservative intellectual, journalist and thinker for more than 5 decades. But before founding National Review, he wrote God and Man at Yale. He was in many ways the original conservative critic of the academy. God and Man was a polemic against the liberal atheism, or at least agnoisticism, among Yale faculty. Buckley anticipated those right wing critics who today think that college campuses are much too liberal, except he was doing it 50 years ago.

But more importantly, Buckley should be a model to all of us young writers looking to influence the political scene. Buckley wrote God and Man when he was 25, and founded the most influential political magazine of the last half-century when he was 29. And even though he was a conservatives’ conservative, he still appreciated youthful vigor and energy in his movement that he did some much to shape. He was an enthusiastic Goldwater supporter and helped found Young Americans for Freedom in 1960 so as to channel youthful energy into movement conservatism. In modern liberal blog terms, he was some freaky combination of Matt Yglesias, Markos Moulistas and Rick Perlstein – except conservative.

There's a whole lot anyone can learn from Buckley the man - he was kind, urbane, sensitive, intelligent and an amazing stylist. But we liberals and progressives rightly are repulsed by his politics. But there's also Buckley the institution builder. And he was greatly responsible for turning conservatism into the institutional force it is. And he was able to do it by providing ideological coherence and also by energizing and deploying young people to be proud, excited conservatives. But he also viewed conservatism as distinct from the Republican party and was ready to abandon the party when he thought it wasn't conservative enough. He should be the model for what we self-styled progressives are doing today - building a set of institutions to make progressivism a lasting force in American politics. And while many of us are supporters of the Democratic party, we recognize that our movement has to be more than a partisan one. In short, we need to be like Buckley to reverse the gains him and his movement have chalked up in the last 50 years.

I wouldn't quite go as far as Zeitlin to compliment Buckley. Buckley wasn't quite as kind as he makes out. Bill was even known to have lit into Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky pretty good on occasion. But Zeitlin does show some of the areas where Buckley can give us a lesson:

- the need to build permanent institutions and publications that further the progressive movement

- the need to remember that erudition and activism are not the sole territory of the left

- the need to not necessarily tie your idealogy to a certain political party

- the need to be a good writer and intelligent advocate for your cause

The passing of Buckley reminds me of the importance of not only reading people you agree with but also those you disagree with. I've read books by Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Coulter, Hannity, Buchanan, Ralph Reed, Goldwater, etc. ... and Buckley. Besides being amazed that the first four I listed were even capable of reading, let alone writing a book, it gives one a sense of what you are up against. A little Sun Tzu-ish, I grant you ("Know thy self, know thy enemy"). But smart.

And lastly, it's comforting to know that not all effete Ivy League snobs are liberals.

By the Time I Get to Arizona

It might be tactless to speak ill of the recently deceased, but I couldn't just let the passing of former Arizona Governor Evan Mecham yesterday go by without comment.

After all, Mecham is another in a long line of corrupt and pathetic Republican governors in Arizona. Two of the last three GOP governors here have had to be forcibly removed from office (Fife Symington being the other).

Mecham had a lot to be proud of:

"As governor, Mecham was plagued by controversy and became the first U.S. governor to simultaneously face removal from office through impeachment, a scheduled recall election, and a felony indictment ...

While governor, Mecham became known for statements and actions that were widely perceived as insensitive to minorities. Among these actions were the cancellation of the state's Martin Luther King Day, attributing high divorce rates to working women, and his defense of the word "pickaninny." In reaction to these events, a boycott of Arizona was organized, damaging the state's tourism industry by the cancellation of multiple conventions." (from Evan Mecham on wikipedia)

At least he got a song written about him:

Public Enemy - By the Time I Get to Arizona

I'm countin' down to the day deservin'
Fittin' for a king
I'm waitin' for the time when I can
Get to Arizona
'Cause my money's spent on
The goddamn rent
Neither party is mine not the
Jackass or the elephant
20.000 nig niggy nigas in the corner
Of the cell block but they come
From California
Population none in the desert and sun
Wit' a gun cracker
Runnin' things under his thumb
Starin' hard at the postcards
Isn't it odd and unique?
Seein' people smile wild in the heat
120 degree
'Cause I wanna be free
What's a smilin' fact
When the whole state's racist
Why want a holiday F--k it 'cause I wanna
So what if I celebrate it standin' on a corner
I ain't drinkin' no 40
I B thinkin' time wit' a nine
Until we get some land
Call me the trigger man
Looki lookin' for the governor
Huh he ain't lovin' ya
But here to trouble ya
He's rubbin' ya wrong
Get the point come along
An he can get to the joint
I urinated on the state
While I was kickin' this song
Yeah, he appear to be fair
The cracker over there
He try to keep it yesteryear
The good ol' days
The same ol' ways
That kept us dyin'
Yes, you me myself and I'ndeed
What he need is a nosebleed
Read between the lines
Then you see the lie
Politically planned
But understand that's all she wrote
When we see the real side
That hide behind the vote
They can't understand why he the man
I'm singin' 'bout a king
They don't like it
When I decide to mike it
Wait I'm waitin' for the date
For the man who demands respect
'Cause he was great c'mon
I'm on the one mission
To get a politician
To honor or he's a gonner
By the time I get to Arizona
I got 25 days to do it
If a wall in the sky
Just watch me go thru it
'Cause I gotta do what I gotta do
PE number one
Gets the job done
When it's done and over
Was because I drove'er
Thru all the static
Not stick but automatic
That's the way it is
He gotta get his
Talin' MLK
Gonna find a way
Make the state pay
Lookin' for the day
Hard as it seems
This ain't no damn dream
Gotta know what I mean
It's team against team
Catch the light beam
So I pray
I pray everyday
I do and praise jah the maker
Lookin' for culture
I got but not here
From jah maker
Pushin' and shakin' the structure
Bringin' down the babylon
Hearin' the sucker
That make it hard for the brown
The hard Boulova
I need now
More than ever now
Who's sittin' on my freedah'
Opressor people beater
Piece of the pick
We picked a piece
Of land that we deservin' now
Reparation a piece of the nation
And damn he got the nerve
Another niga they say and classify
We want too much
My peep plus the whole nine is mine
Don't think I even double dutch
Here's a brother my attitude hit 'em
Hang 'em high
Blowin' up the 90s started tickin' 86
When the blind get a mind
Better start and earn while we sing it
Now
There will be the day we know those down and who will go

Tropic Thunder

I had an interesting experience Tuesday night. The last time Michelle and I went to a movie, a couple of theater personnel came in handing out passes for a free movie. The free movie was an advanced screening for the Ben Stiller directed film, Tropic Thunder. I'd always wanted to be part of a test audience but had not idea how you got into these things. Now, I knew.

So stoked to be part of a test screening, I feared that I might lose my objectivity. Would my brush with fame cloud my vision? I needn't have worried. Tropic Thunder is a turd ... albeit an ambitious one. We were asked to fill out surveys before and after and our every guffaw was dutifully noted by studio types. A bit about the movie:

Ben Stiller says "Tropic Thunder" is a "a comedy about five actors who go on location and find themselves relying on their boot camp experiences when they get stuck in a real war-like situation." Black will play Jeff "Fats" Portnoy, an overweight gross-out comedian, who's forced to kick his drug addiction while filming on location in the jungle. Downey Jr. will play Kirk Lazarus, the greatest actor of his generation and a four-time Oscar winner ... and Stiller plays Speedman.

The movie-within-a-movie turned real premise has been done before (and better) but in a different setting, Galaxy Quest.

This was first experience with an advanced screening. This was actually the first audience viewing of this movie anywhere. Lucky us. At this rate, we'll be the last.

It's trying to be too much. Is it a comedy? Is it a satire? Is it a spoof? Is it an action movie? Is it a drama? It has no idea what it wants to be. It makes fun of movies like Apocalypse Now, Rambo and Platoon and in the same breath celebrates them with vulgar language, violence and gore. All that it manages to do is show why those movies are better than Tropic Thunder. There are as many F-bombs in this movie as any Judd Apatow movie (40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up). But there the similarity ends. Apatow is good at the laughs and heart coming organically out of a natural scene. Every attempt at a laugh or profanity in Tropic Thunder seems forced.

The movie also mocks the insecurities and foibles of Hollywood actors (which is not a bad idea for a premise) ... but then those very same actors are in the movie - Tom Cruise, Matthew McConaughey, etc. Is that supposed to be ironic? If it was a better made movie, that would seem clever. But instead, it seems like Stiller is trying to have it both ways. There's a point past which you can't go and still claim any kind of artistic high ground. For example, clips of a movie made by Stiller's character seek to show how he chose to play a mentally handicapped person so he'd be nominated for an Oscar (like Forrest Gump or I am Sam). That would certainly be a valid criticism of a lot of real actors. But then Tropic Thunder milks those same scenes for laughs.

Or another instance is Downey's character who is acting in the movie within a movie in blackface. Wow. That sure was hilarious for C. Thomas Howell in Soul Man ... not. Somehow I can't see Spike Lee being happy about this role.

Again, I understand the point that Stiller is trying to make - that a lot of actors go through ridiculous physical transformations just so that they will be viewed favorably come Oscar time. But I really feel that this film goes too far and celebrates those actual things that it is trying to mock.

There are a lot of cameos in the movie (Nolte, Jon Voight,etc.), most notably Cruise - bald, hairy and in a fat-suit. And played way over-the-top. Think of his master-of-the-muffin character in Magnolia if the guy was 20 years older and had let himself go a bit. It's funny for a minute or two but then you start to get the feeling that this character is really just a part of Cruise's real personality.

Stiller's brand of humor just seems to be dated and tied to the era from which he was first popular - the early 90's. He's obviously got a lot of high-profile friends, but even they can't save this.

I know this movie will probably be edited and tightened up and tweaked before release (Aug 11 last I heard), but I don't think there is anything that they could do that would make me change my view of it. I'm not saying there are not laughs. I think Downey and Black are pretty funny a lot of the time. Just not enough. The movie has already had it's share of troubles - Owen Wilson was originally slated for the McConaughey role. And the movie has been bumped from it's original July release date.

I'm sure I'm violating some kind of protocol reviewing a movie that hasn't came out. But I'll forget about this film if I don't commit my thoughts to digital paper now. As far as I can tell, my review is the first review of this movie anywhere. Though, you will certainly find plenty of self-congratulatory blurbs like this from dubious sources (MTV):

With a cast including Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black, and Matthew McConaughey (subbing in for Owen Wilson), it certainly has the pedigree to become a thunderous success. And if a rumored cameo comes together, the film could just cruise to classic status.

"... It’s about a bunch of movies stars, and a rapper/actor, who get cast in this Vietnam War movie and get sent over to Vietnam to make this film," grinned box-office heavyweight Ben Stiller, who directs and stars in the flick.

"Thunderous success", "classic status" ... yeaahhhhhh. Not a whole lot of objectivity there for a film the writer had not even seen. I noticed a couple of commenters on IMDb's page that had saw the same screening as I did ... and loved the movie. Obviously they went drinking before seeing the movie.

If you go see Tropic Thunder in August and hate it, you can't say that I didn't warn you.

Charles Barkley

You gotta love Chuck. He might say some dumb things sometimes, but he's always brutally honest. The contrast between Barkley and a wet noodle like Wolf Blitzer is painfully obvious here:


I absolutely detest people like Wolf Blitzer. In their futile attempts to look impartial and play it safe, they manage to stand for absolutely nothing.

Barkley, however, as a prominent black man living in a largely conservative state, is not afraid to say he's for gay marriage and is pro-choice. Good for you Charles.

Going Green - Update

I haven't updated you lately on our attempts to reduce our ecological footprint, but it's been going well. We've always watched the electricity we used - setting the thermostat lower in winter, higher in summer; having high-efficiency appliances, using CFL's, etc. - so it was a big surprise when we received our year-end electrical usage statement for '07:


For 11 out of 12 months, we had reduced usage from the year before despite the fact that we were already well below the average usage for a house of our size going in. It goes to show you that if you think you are already conserving enough, there is always more room for improvement.

We're in month 3 of having just one car and we are settling into a groove with it. It has us seriously debating whether we need to replace the 2nd car at all. Our fuel costs have went down by about $50 a month, and our car insurance costs by the same amount. And there's been no harmful effect on either of our jobs, or Alex's school. But it's still up in the air. We'll probably give it about another month and will decide for good what we'll do.

Just around the house, our use of cloth napkins and the purchase of bulk, concentrated and good for the environment products has progressed to the point that when we set out our garbage and recycle bins for pick-up each week, the garbage is about a fifth full and the recycle bin is overflowing. Two of our favorite products -- Mrs. Meyer's Dish Soap and Shaklee Get Clean Fresh Laundry.

Alex's fragile little mind has been so warped by our treehugger ways that he is quick to call us on any of our missteps and encourage us back on to the path. It would have been ironic if we had spawned a miniature Republican (a la Family Ties and a different Alex), but it looks like we are safe.

Next up is probably exterior solar screens before the heat of summer. Hopefully, we'll reduce our costs even more in the next year.

Doing what's right doesn't have to be expensive. It can and should be the opposite. Those people that waste and pollute and proudly drive around their huge SUV's because they think it makes them look "American" and "free" will go the way of the dinosaur. They don't want to be perceived as weak or environmental or European. But society will eventually weed out their kind of stupidity.

The Police - Walking In Your Footsteps

Fifty million years ago
You walked upon the planet so,
Lord of all that you could see
Just a little bit like me,

Walking in your footsteps ...

Hey Mr. Dinosaur
You really couldn't ask for more.
You were God's favorite creature,
But you didn't have a future,

Walking in your footsteps ...

Hey there mighty brontosaurus
Don't you have a message for us.
You thought your rule would always last
There were no lessons in your past.
You were built three stories high
They say you would not hurt a fly
If we explode the atom bomb,
Would they say that we were dumb.

Walking in your footsteps ...

Fifty million years ago
They walked upon the planet so
They live in a museum
It's the only place you'll see 'em.

Walking in your footsteps

They say the meek shall inherit the earth....

Scalia -- Worst Person in the World

With a complimentary nod to one of my heroes, Keith Olbermann, I give you my nomination for Worst Person in the World, Antonin Scalia. (ed. note -- after completing my blog entry, I noticed that Keith actually did choose Scalia as his worst person in the world today. Great minds think alike.)

In a recent interview with the BBC, Scalia gives us the specious ticking time bomb argument. This is a classic straw man argument. He's setting up an unrealistic situation that would never happen just so that he can justify torture. And he knows this. It's a high school rhetorical device that will convince a moron -- by moron, I mean any conservative that actually buys this bull. His words:

"Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to find out where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited under the Constitution? Because smacking someone in the face would violate the 8th amendment in a prison context. You can’t go around smacking people about.

Is it obvious that what can’t be done for punishment can’t be done to exact information that is crucial to this society? It’s not at all an easy question, to tell you the truth.

... Seems to me you have to say, as unlikely as that is, it would be absurd to say that you can’t stick something under the fingernails, smack them in the face. It would be absurd to say that."

I'll tell you what my definition of torture is -- having to listen to people who try to use this tired argument. Stop watching 24 and wake up to the real world.


It's odd that the right seems to rail against "judicial activism" by liberal judges, yet Scalia is the very definintion of judicial activism. His rulings are driven by his idealogy, not the constitution as he purports. If he was just some regular joe or some pundit that had these crazy ideas, I wouldn't care much. But he's on the frickin' Supreme Court!! Scalia and Clarence Thomas are right of Attila the Hun. And Roberts and Alito are barely better. This court was stacked by Republican presidents and will curse this country for the next 20 years. yay.

"The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers." -- Carl Jung

Child of Watergate

Now, I'm reluctant to discuss directly who some of my clients are. I don't think it's really because of some lofty or noble client privilege garbage - I'm a frickin' computer tech after all, not a doctor or lawyer - but rather I feel that my clients didn't necessarily sign on for me using their lives as blogger fodder when they hired me.

But I write what I know. I'm not afraid to jeopardize my trained-monkey nerd status in the interest of a story. I'd gladly sacrifice the former for the latter. A new client this week had an interesting enough background that I felt I had to write about it.

Upon reading the invoice that I had written up for her, my client commented that she was surprised that I had spelled her last name correctly. She said that I must be German. I replied in the affirmative and left it at that, thinking it was some ancestral intuition that guided me. There was a familiarity in her name that was eluding me, but I couldn't quite place it.

After I got home, I googled her name and found the following article and it became obvious to me why I knew the name:

Watergate Kids

Anne is another honest-to-goodness child of Watergate, the daughter of _____, who had the bad luck of taking a job as Nixon's attorney general five days before the bungled Watergate break-in. ... the younger _______ (she's practiced corporate law in Phoenix for years) was deeply affected by Watergate. She was in college at the time, old enough to really see her father suffer, even though he was never charged with a crime.

... To this day, people still hear her name and ask about her relationship to Watergate. She doesn't like it, but it's a part of life. She's 46, happily married and involved in local Republican politics, although she says she'd never run for office. Years ago, someone asked her to consider it, and she did, but ultimately decided against it.

"I felt that I had already sacrificed enough of my personal life and I didn't want to take any chances that I would sacrifice any more."

You can read the article if you want to know her name. I'd rather not have her do a google vanity search for her name and end up here, so I'm not going to name her in my post.

Watergate was a formative experience for me. Not when it actually happened, mind you, as I was only 4 or 5 years. But later in high school when I discovered All the President's Men (I actually remember arguing with my government teacher about the identity of Deep Throat). This was my introduction into the world of politics and journalism. The curtain was pulled back and a world was revealed to me that showed that not all those who go into public service do so for the noblest of reasons - which I had been naive enough before to not fully realize. It was probably because I didn't really think about politics up till that point. My parents weren't really the type to discuss world affairs at the dinner table and small-town Iowa was not exactly the hotbed of political activism. the President's Men led to me purchasing just about every book written about Watergate and devouring them. Like a lot of people who read these books and saw the movie of the same name, it made investigative journalism into a sexy profession and I'm sure it encouraged a lot of young people to pursue those careers. I had certainly entertained the idea at the time. Sadly, journalists have fallen from the lofty perch, perhaps through no fault of their own, because of the pressures of corporate America. But that's a subject for a different time.


So, while I consider myself a "child of Watergate" for the feelings and thoughts that it provoked in me, my client is literally a child of Watergate. Just one of those odd convergences that happen from time to time in my life. In hindsight, I'm glad that I didn't recall at the time why I knew how to spell her name. I can see it now -- me, in all my liberal political glory, blurting out something like, "I knew how to spell your name because it's exactly like that loser Attorney General under Nixon." That would have been awkward. But it certainly wouldn't have been the first time I'd put my foot in my mouth.

Atheists on MySpace

Personally, I don't use MySpace and think it is the refuge of teenage skidmarks and twentyish people who are trying to be teenage skidmarks. Most of the posters are morons that don't know anything about computers and infect their sites with spyware and in turn infect all of their moron friends. Whatever. It keeps me in business.

Maybe I'm being snobby. Maybe the same criticisms could be lobbed at blogger.com.

But as a social networking site, I understand MySpace's scope and usefullness. And to limit who can participate seems wrong and against the whole concept:

It isn't easy being godless online.

For the third time in three years, what may be the largest group of organized atheists in the world is struggling to stay on MySpace, said a Cleveland State University assistant professor who founded the site for nonbelievers.

MySpace deleted the 35,000-member "Atheist and Agnostic Group" on Jan. 1, a little more than a month after hackers broke in and renamed the group's site "Jesus Is Love," Bryan Pesta said Wednesday.

MySpace has ignored repeated requests to restore the group's site, including an online petition with more than 500 signatures, said Pesta, who was the group's moderator.

"These actions send a clear message to the 30 million godless people in America that we are not welcome on MySpace," Pesta said.

A MySpace spokeswoman did not return calls seeking comment.

Pesta started the group in 2004 as a social networking site "specifically for godless people." Atheists are more likely to be geographically spread out, and the online group provided a sense of community, he said.

"We're regular people, just like Christians, Muslims and Jews," he said. "We like to network."

The site grew by about 10,000 people a year to just under 35,000 members by the end of 2007, Pesta said.

But it was never without controversy. Two years ago, Pesta said, MySpace deleted the group after an organized campaign from Christians opposing the site. MySpace restored it and promised it would be protected, Pesta said.

Last Thanksgiving, hackers broke into the group's site, deleting material and renaming it "Jesus Is Love." MySpace restored the site three weeks later but then shut it down this year, Pesta said.

The group was an important resource for nonbelievers, supporters said.

Hollis Geary, a group member from Lyndhurst, said she appreciated having a site where nonbelievers could meet and bounce ideas off each other amid the freedom and anonymity of the Web.

"We're a pretty quiet minority," she said. "There's just a lot of people that are atheist, agnostic or curious" who don't come out publicly.

Hackers for God ... that's admittedly pretty funny. But I digress. I don't know if there is anything insidious or if there is some great conspiracy to keep atheists off of MySpace. But it is worth noting who owns MySpace - News Corp and Rupert Murdoch. That's not exactly "fair and balanced".

Dr. Strangelove

To all those who think a McCain presidency would be a good thing:



McCain's the general, but he's also the Slim Pickens character, the gung-ho military type that doesn't know quit. Being a hero in a long line of military heroes is an admirable thing. But it has also imbued him with a sense that war is always justified, that all sacrifices are worth it, and that America always needs to be in a war.

Do yourself a favor and watch the best political satire ever, Dr. Strangelove, by the best director ever (IMHO).

Edwards

I don't like talking too much about who I intend(ed) to vote for in the Super Tuesday primary in Arizona. It doesn't really matter what I think about a candidate. It matters what you think when you are choosing. And if we get beholden too much to one candidate, we have a tendency to see all the faults in the other candidates and none in our own. And that's not an objective way to decide who'll be your president.

Since the candidate I was leaning toward just dropped out, I figure it's safe to talk about him a bit. Marc Cooper on the Huffington Post sums up my feelings pretty good:

John Edwards exits the presidential race having done the right thing -- the right thing in having run the way he did and the right thing in leaving when he does.

The Democratic race has been, for better or for worse, a two candidate race since New Hampshire primarily because the voters so deemed it. As we go into Tsunami Tuesday, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are locked in a death struggle to redefine the past and the future, respectively, of American politics and the debilitated Edwards would enter the fray only as unpredictable wild card -- if not a spoiler.

His decision to exit comes, therefore, at the precise moment that demands absolute clarity among Democratic voters. The stakes are stark and so must be the choices. Kudos to Edwards for getting out of the way as that moment arrives.

Kudos also to Jon Edwards for the worthy campaign he ran and for the positive effect it had on all the other campaigns. We can speculate all we want -- and really to no end -- how and why the multi-millionaire one-time moderate Southern Democrat somehow transformed himself into a firebrand populist. But examining motivation in politics is usually a pretty worthless exercise.

More importantly, Edwards' boldly stated and sharply argued positions helped drive and shape the entire Democratic presidential race, exercising a significant gravitational pull on all of the campaigns. It was crucial that for a solid year Edwards was up there unabashedly apologizing for his vote to authorize the war in Iraq, that he was the first -- and very early -- to put forward a comprehensive health care program, that from the presidential stump he raised the profile and celebrated the role of organized labor, that he fearlessly and more relentlessly than any other major presidential candidate in recent history denounced the corporate stranglehold on both our economic and political life. Most importantly, Edwards showed no hesitation in highlighting the otherwise unspeakable in American politics -- the forgotten poor.

The positions taken by Edwards forced all of the candidates to at least recognize these issues and better address them and for that he deserves a special place in the history of the already remarkable Campaign 08.

As to what effect his exit will have is anybody's guess -- at least until next Tuesday. The Conventional Wisdom is that Edwards staying in would have siphoned off white voters from Clinton and would have helped Obama -- that dropping out now indirectly aids Hilary.

This could be the case, but frankly I doubt it. The pollsters have gotten much of this contest wrong and this perhaps is one more stumble. I have no numbers, no surveys no stats to prove my hunch. I only have my experience as a reporter attending myriad Edwards rallies and events starting back more than a year again. And all I can say is that I don't have the impression that these voters somehow belong to Clinton as a second choice. The message of promise change, of a change-over of a historic transition in American politics as now embodied in Obama resonates much deeper among them then the conventional frame of the Clinton campaign.

Nor do I believe that there is much goodwill inside the Edwards campaign to give any support to Clinton. As I write this, I hear Edwards' top rural advisor, Dave "Mudcat" Saunders saying on MSNBC: "I will do everything in my power so he doesn't endorse Hillary Clinton."

John Edwards leave the race in the same noble posture with which he entered it thirteen months ago.

I was an Edwards guy. As a CNN commentator indecorously mentioned, he was the adult in the race. That's a bit harsh, but Edwards did bring some civility. But with him gone, I believe we still have two candidates that would both bring America to a better place.

So, where does that leave me? I'm not the Hillary-hater that an alarming amount of Dem bloggers seem to be. The virtriole aimed at her by those in her own party is approaching Bush level. It's actually funny to me that the apparent leading Democrat is not supported by the Democratic establishment and the apparent leading Republican (McCain) is not supported by his establishment either. Maybe that's a good thing. The days of king-making by the outgoing administrations may be over.

That being said, pollsters and pundits that think the majority of Edwards voters have Hillary as their 2nd choice are also off the mark. Those that have supported Edwards are generally looking for some kind of change. And Hillary doesn't exactly represent that. It's sad, but I'm sure most of the pollsters think what they do because they are assuming racist tendencies for southern democrats. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm a little more optimistic about most democrats. Iowa is nothing but church-going, whitebread America (I should know) and they voted for Obama.

I've pretty much made my decision for Tuesday and I won't bore you with it. But if you vote on Tuesday, objectively look at the candidates (Dem or Repub) regardless of who you have been supporting before and then make your decision.