People tell me that I'm Paranoid...

Well, I admit I'm getting pretty nervous, boy...

Here's a post by Uggabugga on why.

I've been reading some Sinclair Lewis over the break, and what was happening in the twenties in America and what is happening in America now -- it's alarmingly similiar.

If you haven't read Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, you ought to.

Meanwhile, have a look at UggaBugga's post.

http://uggabugga.blogspot.com/2005/01/fascist-number-of-webloggers-have.html#comments

Heh

From Tbogg: ( http://tbogg.blogspot.com/)

"As far as Sullivan's claim of "extreme left" homophobia, I think this may be based on Sullivan's own interaction with the extreme left. Perhaps they weren't clear enough for him. They don't dislike him because he's gay. They dislike him because he's...Andrew Sullivan. "

Trying not to Panic

Bad enough that the government is selling creationist books in the state parks, but now we're opening a Museum of Creation:

The new multi-million-dollar Museum of Creation, which will open this spring in Kentucky, will, however, be aimed not at film buffs, but at the growing ranks of fundamentalist Christians in the United States.

It aims to promote the view that man was created in his present shape by God, as the Bible states, rather than by a Darwinian process of evolution, as scientists insist.

The centrepiece of the museum is a series of huge model dinosaurs, built by the former head of design at Universal Studios, which are portrayed as existing alongside man, contrary to received scientific opinion that they lived millions of years apart.

Other exhibits include images of Adam and Eve, a model of Noah's Ark and a planetarium demonstrating how God made the Earth in six days.

(http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/02/weden02.xml&pos=portal_puff3)

It's also going to have exhibits supporting the idea that diseases, famines, and disasters are not random events but are caused by our sinful behavior. Particularly, apparently, there's a charming on on AIDS being caused by faggots.

Nothing about whether there will be an exhibit on tsunamis being caused by Jesus to glorify his name. (See below.)

(Via Hullabaloo http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/)

Ai and my God

I know I shouldn't be shocked, but I am.

Over here on the Conservative Christian blog, they're arguing that God sent the tsunami to glorify himself.

(http://christianconservative.blogspot.com/)

(You're going to have to scroll down a bit to find the post -- it's lengthy, though, with a chart of all the disasters God has visited upon mankind, meant to prove, as Rush is attempting to prove with his "more people die in traffic every day!" analogies, that this is no biggie.)

Yep. God sent the tsunami, killed all those people -- some of them just infidels, of course, but some of them Christians, and lots of them children and babies, let's not forget -- to glorify his name.

[...T]he purposes of God in trials are different in every circumstance, but the common thread holding them together is Gods original purpose to glorify himself and humiliate humanity, even the proudest among us....


And, from the comments to the posting came this charming comment from someone calling himself or herself Rand:

Sadly, watching the news last night, they interviewed a survivor of the tsanamis,
and while giving her account, she took the Lord's name in vain.
So much for humbling herself before the Almighty.
Man! we're bad...


One guy, Steve, does make the point that God might be glorified in the actions of those helping those in need, but that he doesn't believe there is any glory in the destruction; the rest of the Conservative Christians have, so far, ignored him, however.

Because what would Jesus do, according to these folks?

Well, that's pretty plain, isn't it?

Not feed the hungry.

Not turn the other cheek.

Not tell the sinner to go and sin no more.

Not love his enemy.

Nope. He'd smite that bitch who took his name in vain. He'd slaughter the innocent. He'd send the earthquake and boil the babies alive and blast them all to hell where they could burn for all eternity.

And giggle while he did it.

I am so glad not to be a Conservative Christian this morning.

Those Right Wing Folks

You've got your morals and you've got your morals.

Here's a blue-state Hollywood type responding to the tragedy: Sandra Bullock, who has donated a million dollars -- that's right, a million dollars -- to the Red Cross to "help relief efforts in countries affected by the deadly earthquake and tsunamis in southern Asia and eastern Africa."

Bullock also donated a million to the victims after 9/11, BTW.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=492&u=/ap/20050104/ap_en_ce/people_sandra_bullock_6&printer=1

And here's a fine Red State Voter, giggling about how she doesn't care a bit about those dead Muslims, they're all terrorists anyway, aren't they? They're not getting any of her nickels!

This is from Rush's show:

"CALLER: (Giggle) Well, I was pretty upset and even getting madder the more coverage I watched, and I was thinking, 'Why am I not feeling so charitable, and I'm seeing all these bodies,' and then I see this picture on the Internet that was sent to me, and it was them carrying a body along in Sri Lanka, it said Galle, G-a-l-l-e, Sri Lanka and they had a crowd of people watching and this guy in the middle is standing there looking at the body wearing an Osama bin Laden T-shirt.

RUSH: I saw that picture.

CALLER: And I thought, it just validated the way I felt and I thought these are the same people that were the cheerleaders on 9/11, and we're going to go rebuild their world for them.

RUSH: Yeah.

I mean, it's not like any little white Christian children are dead, right? Just some brown people. And brown people are all terrorists, right? I mean, one right there on TV was wearing a teeshirt that had a terrorist's picture on it. So they all deserve what they got. Right?

I love that Red State morality.

(Via Hullabaloo (http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/), which has more of the transcript from Rush, as well as a link to Rush's own site. It's charming.)

Where your tax dollars go

This is extremely cool:

http://www.deviantart.com/view/9410862/

And educational.

Go have a look. Take your time. Print it and save it and refer back to it whenever Rush or Miss Ann or Bill or whoever starts ranting about the NEA or the CDC or some other waste of tax dollars.

Look at where the tax dollars really are bleeding away.

(Via Infinite Stitch http://stitch.blogs.com/the_infinite_stitch/, who got it from http://www.metafilter.com/)

The Power of Prayer

Via Atrios (http://atrios.blogspot.com/)

Prayer works miracles, you know – that’s been scientifically proven!

Here’s what your Fundie neighbor down the street is talking about when he tells you so:

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/living/health/10553703.htm?1c

It involves a blind study in which prayer groups prayed for Korean women who were undergoing fertility treatments.

The Korean women didn’t know they were being prayed for. The people doing the praying – so the study claimed – didn’t know the Korean women in question: they just had pictures of them. The women being prayed for got pregnant at a significantly higher rate than those not prayed for, yap yap yap, the control group got pregnant at the regular rate, this proves the power of prayer, and so forth.

Trouble is, the guy who set up these prayer groups? The only one who knows who was in these prayer groups and how often they prayed and if these prayer groups even actually existed?

Here’s the guy:

The third man is Capitola researcher Daniel P. Wirth. Federal court papers say he is a Santa Clara University law school graduate who is also known as John Wayne Truelove, Rudy Wirth and Rudolph Wirth. He was sentenced in November to five years in prison for embezzling more than $2 million from communications giant Adelphia. Now he is en route to a federal prison camp in Atwater, where he will be known as inmate No. 99442-111.
Wirth was the person entrusted with setting up the study's prayer groups. No one knows if he actually did, and Wirth did not respond to a Mercury News request for an interview.

``There is no reason to think that Mr. Wirth would have been motivated not to organize prayer groups when such groups are his area of interest,'' Cha wrote in his letter to the journal.

But others aren't so sure.

When Wirth was studying for his master's degree in parapsychology at John F. Kennedy University in Contra Costa County, his professor Jerry Solfvin was so impressed with him that he asked him to join his research team. Wirth went on to publish several studies on ``complementary healing therapies,'' including therapeutic touch and untraditional prayer.
But Solfvin, now an adjunct associate professor at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, said he had his doubts about the truthfulness of some of Wirth's earliest research long before the ``Miracle Study'' was ever released.

The other two researchers affiliated with the study have taken their names off it – don’t want to be associated with it anymore.

The journal that published the results is still standing stoutly by the article though.

Here’s why:

Journal of Reproductive Medicine editor Dr. Lawrence Devoe defended the publication of the study in an e-mail to the Mercury News.

``The journal specifically states in each issue that `the opinions and statements in this journal are those of the authors and are not attributable to the sponsor, publisher, editor or editorial board of the Journal of Reproductive Medicine,' '' he wrote.

``I do not know Mr. Wirth and am not prepared to comment on his problems,'' Devoe said. And, he added, ``There are no plans to retract the study at this time.''

So many questions remain about the research, its methodology and its authors that some experts say the study carries very little credence. Such uncertainty, they say, is bad for both the public and the scientific process.

``People desperately wanted this to be true,'' Flamm said. ``Wouldn't it be wonderful if it were?''

Yes, that’s right. To hell with reality. To hell with facts. Let’s just start inventing the truth, shall we?

After all, it worked for Bush.

So much less destructive than blow jobs.

The Rich Get Richer

The rich get richer ---

And it’s no accident.

Nor is it because they’re fitter, in case you were wondering, or because they work harder, or because they deserve it, or anything like that.

It’s because they have rigged the game.

You’re not going to get told that, of course, because guess who owns the media? (Hint: it ain’t poor guys.) But it’s so.

During the short boom of the late 1990s, conservative analysts asserted that, yes, the gap between rich and poor was growing, but that incomes for the poor were still increasing over previous levels. Today most economists, regardless of their political persuasion, agree that the data over the last 25 to 30 years is unequivocal. The top 5% is capturing an increasingly greater portion of the pie while the bottom 95% is clearly losing ground, and the highly touted American middle class is fast disappearing.

According to economic journalist, David Cay Johnston, author of “Perfectly Legal,” this trend is not the result of some naturally occurring, social Darwinist “survival of the fittest.” It is the product of legislative policies carefully crafted and lobbied for by corporations and the super-rich over the past 25 years.

New tax shelters in the 1980s shifted the tax burden off capital and onto labor. As tax shelters rose, the amount of federal revenue coming from corporations fell (from 35% during the Eisenhower years to 10% in 2002). During the deregulation wave of the ‘80s and the ‘90s, members of Congress passed legislation (often without reading it) that deregulated much of the financial industry. These laws took away, for example, the powerful incentives for accountants to behave with integrity or for companies to put away a reasonable amount in pension plans for their employees—resulting in the well-publicized (too late) scandals involving Enron, Global Crossing, and others.

(http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/1.html)

We’re supposed to be the country where anything is possible – work hard and you get ahead. Go to school and get your degree and you can make a good living for your family.

Everyone who’s honest knows that’s not so anymore.

Hard work doesn’t result in a good living.

A degree doesn’t always get a good job.

A good job won’t make enough money to support a family – it takes two good jobs, and even then you and your family will be barely scraping by, and you just better hope no one gets sick, because one bout of serious illness or a bad traffic accident will be enough to wipe you out. (And yes, I’m speaking from experience here.)

Housing costs are increasing. Fuel costs are increasing. The job market continues to be weak – and most jobs continue to be bad ones, ones that will keep their owners poor and desperate.

People can’t afford to have kids – or if they have kids, they can’t afford to raise them, or educate them.

And educate them for what? There are only so many nursing home aide jobs out there, folks.

Where do you think this is going to end?

Brooks & a Comment

Everyone is jumping on David Brooks' inane little column -- the one where he wishes wistfully that we all just believed in that wrathful Old Testament God the way we used to, the one who smote those sinners, so that this mess with the Tsunami and all those little dead kids and so on would make sense (cause we know how God loves to kill babies along with their sinful parents, which Brooks is right, the OT God does indeed love to kill infants, go have a look at the OT sometimes, right and left God is smiting those sinful babies).

I forget which blog I read it on, but this is an example of the Asshat God fallacy.

As in:

"If God acts that way, he's an Asshat.

"If he's an Asshat, he's not God.

Therefore, no God could act that way.

Therefore, that sort of God doesn't exist."

Anyway, to get back to my point, on Brad Delong's Blog (http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000091.html), a commentor has an excellent point:

The commentor has the Blog-name Rtoes: here's the comment:

The following is a letter from Richard Dawkins to The Guardian newspaper:

"The Bishop of Lincoln (Letters, December 29) asks to be preserved from religious people who try to explain the tsunami disaster. As well he might. Religious explanations for such tragedies range from loopy (it's payback for original sin) through vicious (disasters are sent to try our faith) to violent (after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, heretics were hanged for provoking God's wrath). But I'd rather be preserved from religious people who give up on trying to explain, yet remain religious.

In the same batch of letters, Dan Rickman says "science provides an explanation of the mechanism of the tsunami but it cannot say why this occurred any more than religion can". There, in one sentence, we have the religious mind displayed before us in all its absurdity. In what sense of the word "why", does plate tectonics not provide the answer?

Not only does science know why the tsunami happened, it can give precious hours of warning. If a small fraction of the tax breaks handed out to churches, mosques and synagogues had been diverted into an early warning system, tens of thousands of people, now dead, would have been moved to safety.

Let's get up off our knees, stop cringing before bogeymen and virtual fathers, face reality, and help science to do something constructive about human suffering."

Summary: if there is no God, then there is no evil. It is just you and me, so let's do something positive about the situation.

Posted by: Rtoes at January 2, 2005 10:27 AM

This hits exactly my problem with most religions. They make their adherents other-directed. Rather than focusing on this here world, this here plane of existence, Far Right Christians, Mahayana Buddhists, heavy duty Catholics, all of them focus on some mythical place called "Heaven," some other-world. They're worrying all the time about that place: getting to that place, what life will be like in that place, fixing up their soul for that place. (Or, in the case of most Christians, escaping the "other place," as they call it in Fort Smith.)

Well, all this focus on the next world ignores this world. In fact, Southern Christianity counsels folk to ignore this world. Works won't save you, after all. This world is a trap. The poor you will always have with you. And so on.

It's this world we live in. It's this world that needs mending. It's here that people suffer, that children are hungry, and need to be taught. It's here where things can be done.

Maybe there is some sort of afterlife -- who knows?

We know we have a life here. We know this world and the people in it need us.

Stop dumping resources and time and energy into some fantasy of heaven and start putting them into mending this world -- what might happen then?

I'm just saying.

Morning in the Bushverse

DED space (http://dedspace.blogspot.com/2005/01/women-of-america-wake-hell-up.html#comments) has a posting that chronicles some of the more appalling things that have been happening to women in this country lately -- go on over there and look.

And, of course, we're getting hardly an eye-blink out of anyone over any of this.

Here's a little thought-exercise I'd like all y'all who think what's happening to these women is no big deal to try: substitute, for woman, your own favorite group (say, for instance, Christian, or Republican, or white male) and ask yourself how you would feel if some member of that group were being deprived of his rights in this way.

Say a Christian were being forced to wear something he objected to (perhaps a cute little pair of hot pants?) in order to keep his job of 20 years.

Would it matter then?

Say a white male were being forced to stay married to a woman who beat him up and abused him in other ways, because a judge said the kid he had came first -- even though it wasn't her kid, and she didn't want it -- would that matter?

Ai

All right. I'm not usually one for sharing the hate, but --

This is from Uggabugga, the comment section, someone sharing a post from Little Green Footballs.

If you don't know about LGF, they're a Far-Right (rabidly Far-Right) Blog, and their commentors are so rabid they need shots, certainly, but Good God, this one --

Here's the comment:

It's about the tsunami:

I just want to share this post from Little Green Footballs. Regular 'piglet' (1000+ posts) asks:#3 piglet 12/26/2004 07:02PM PST Am I the only one wondering how many muslim women drowned in these waters because they were wearing islamic dress and were weighed down by their clothes?
By Anonymous, at 12/29/2004 12:37:18 PM

http://uggabugga.blogspot.com/2004/12/color-of-love-we-were-surprised-to-see.html#comments

This was posted on the *day* of the quake itself.

Education Turns Folks Liberal

Here's a report from the trenches -- oh, okay, from a Starbucks -- a Christian listening to two other Christians, one warning the other about getting too much education, because too much education might turn him into a liberal.

And you know what?

It might.

Oddly enough, reading lots of books, learning to think critically, judge sources rationally, and being exposed to cultures other than one's own, as well as being forced to learn to write well, will indeed often lead one to turn liberal.

Wonder why that would be?

http://smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=19277&mode=nested&order=0

More News from Bush World

It’s amazing that this is even an issue – but of course it is. In the Bushverse, of course it is.

The U.S. Department of Justice has spent three years, and who wants to think how much of your money, designing a “141-page protocol” which tells hospitals how to treat rape victims. Early drafts included a bit about advising the victims about emergency contraception; the final draft does not.

Why? Well, because birth control is murder, of course.

And that rape victim? She does not have the right to murder that rapist’s baby.

Emergency contraception is controversial because, like stem cells and cloning, it has become tangled in the politics of abortion. The method usually works by keeping an egg from being released or being fertilized. However, it may sometimes prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus - equated with murder by some conservative groups and the Catholic Church (which opposes all forms of contraception).

"I think it's very smart not to put that in the guidelines," said Dr. George Isajiw of Lansdowne, a board member of Physicians for Life, a Philadelphia antiabortion group. By giving emergency contraception, he said, "you're giving a dangerous drug that's not doing any good, or else you're causing an abortion. As a moral principle, a woman has the right to defend herself against an aggressor. But she doesn't have the right to kill the baby."

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/10536368.htm

Seriously, folks. I’m not making this up. This is the planet Bushco has us living on.

How do you like it so far?

(My emphasis added.)

(Via Atrios: http://atrios.blogspot.com/)

Twisted

All right -- am I wrong, or is something off here?

This man has a "ceremony" with his 12 year old daughter in which he makes her promise to remain a virgin until she marries, saying he's going to be the special man in her life until she finds a a man to replace him --

All right, okay, the ideas behind all this might be okay. Maybe. A father should support his daughter. He ought to tell his daughter she's beautiful and special.

But a father having a "virginity ceremony" with his 12 year old daughter strikes me as slight creeped out.

http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/entertainment/20382004.htm

I might add, obsessively patriarchial and a bit of a control-freak -- but I won't.

And notice the end of the story -- this guy sees his daughter as a "gift" for another man. She's nothing but property to him.

Good heavens.

Merry Christmas, Sucker

We gotta cut back somewhere, right?

I mean, everyone knows that.

So where do you think it should be? From the pockets of Bush’s rich buddies? Or the pockets of poor college students?

That’s a no-brainer.

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“According to an analysis by the American Council on Education, about 1.3 million students and their families will see their eligibility for federal financial aid drop next year, when the formula change takes effect, because the new formula will show them to have more money available for college than before. The families of some of the 90,000 students disqualified from Pell Grants could also appear to be rich enough under the change, according to the council, that they will be ineligible for state and institutional aid as well.”

When was this announced? Right before Christmas – when the American college student wasn’t on campus, when Americans weren’t paying attention.

"It's not unusual for federal agencies to release unpleasant news when people aren't paying attention," said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education.

(snip)

This will probably not lead too many students to drop out," said Mr. Hartle. "But it will cause these students to work more hours, borrow more money, or reduce their course loads."

More worrisome, said Brian K. Fitzgerald, staff director of the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, is that these same students could find that they are no longer eligible for other types of aid as well. The committee advises Congress on student-aid issues.

"The real concern here," he said, "is that the change will have a significant trickle-down effect because many states and colleges use the federal formula when awarding need-based aid."

According to the ACE's analysis, the 90,000 students will be concentrated in 21 states, including Massachusetts, New York, South Carolina, and Virginia. Students in two states -- Connecticut and New Jersey -- will actually see their grants increase.

A U.S. senator from one of those states had choice words for the formula change. "I am outraged that the Bush administration is going forward with these punitive cuts in Pell Grants," said Sen. Jon S. Corzine, the New Jersey Democrat who led an effort in the Senate to block the department from making the formula change.

"For these students who are simply working to get ahead," said Mr. Corzine, "this is a scene from 'The Grinch who stole my education.'"


http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/free/2004/12/2004122201n.htm


I’m thinking back – to a certain debate – and a certain President – who claimed people should get an education if they wanted to recover from losing their jobs.

I’m thinking about a country where economy is still struggling. I’m looking at my students, already working lousy jobs and fighting to stay in school, because they believe the story people like the President fed them.

These are students who are already working so many hours, trying to stay afloat, that they frequently don’t have time to study, or get to class. They’re already in debt up to their ears from student loans, and often owe on credit cards too – not for plasma TV sets, either, or trips to the islands, but for food and basic health care.

I think about that, and then I think about stories like this:

http://stitch.blogs.com/the_infinite_stitch/2004/12/the_haves_are_h.html#comments


And this:


http://stitch.blogs.com/the_infinite_stitch/2004/12/what_a_waste.html#comments

And this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/28/business/28bonus.html?adxnnl=1&oref=login&adxnnlx=1104332716-FNJig3o7Eap12hIYv/MWyA


And you know, I understand this is a capitalist society.

Rich folk have a right to do what they want with their own money.

Tax cuts are perfectly legitimate.

They aren’t GIVING money to rich people. That money BELONGS to rich people, don’t you UNDERSTAND that? Those rich people EARNED that money. If they want to spend it on cloning their cats, or $8,000 mink ponchos, well, hell, that's their God-given American right, ain't it?

Yap yap yap.

But damn it. Come on. How far is this going to go?