Others have taken shameless advantage of an international stereotype ofunassuming, polite competence. National Film Board grants and experience at theCBCallow Canadians to build resumes that make American networks and film companies think we are exceptionally well-qualified to inform and entertain Americans.
This is true, of course; it's one of the many blessings of literacy.
We do that so easily because so many assume a funny or interesting Canadian could not actually be Canadian. This has allowed people likeLorne GreenandWilliam Shatnerto penetrate to the very core of American Culture - Television dramas and lifestyle marketing.
Yes, People of the United States - it's already too late. The subversion is complete. Soon we shall rise up, place our toques upon our heads and gently clear our throats so that you may become aware of who's civilization this actually is.
Did you REALLY think Obama was a secret Indonesian Muslim Jehadi? Really? Think about it!
He's well-spoken, with an amazing command of English and a clear ability to engage in parliamentary debate. But more tellingly, he's polite, courteous and intelligent. His sincerity is credible. He's stunningly, conspicuously - normal.He sounds just like any OTHER Canadian politician.
These very same politicians are cleverly using our public mediato foster the next generation of centrist, sane, competent and intellectually literate leaders. Ostensibly for Canada, of course - but as World Net Daily has insisted, it's really not that difficult to forge a birth certificate.
Not that we'd do that1.
One might think ourFrancophone Leaderswould be the normalcy that disproves the supposition, but that's simply a question of tactical focus. They have to appear comparatively sane by French standards, as opposed to being seen that way by Americans. There is still a lingering French presence in North America, still ready to subvert our cuisine and viciously taunt us from theirIsland Fastness.
This is why France is Canada's OTHER target for civilization-by-subversion
although the preemptive Jerry Lewis infiltration by the United States has significantly impacted our plans to supplant mayonnaise-laden pomme frites with Poutine - as God clearly intended! And to be sure, there have been missteps;Celine Dion is sometimes regarded as the Dieppe of Canadian Cultural Imperialism. That's what you get when you go for a twofer.
But yet, sooner or later, our conspicuous sanity will prevail and "Peace, Order and Good Entertainment" will be the law of the land. And by God,goodbeer for all!
The ACLU is trying to pressure US AG Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor.
Last night, George Washington University constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley delivered some refreshing straight-talk on the Rachel Maddow Show. Noting that conducting a criminal investigation into the authorization of torture and abuse of detainees by Bush administration officials is not only about values but is about enforcing the law, the good professor called for the appointment of a special prosecutor — just like we did
I wonder aloud what Canada might do, in light of Spanish and British investigations into the matter. Apparently, little enough.
I cannot begin to stress, though, the problems caused for all members of the global community - and particularly for the United States - caused by such willful and flagrant refusal to adhere to the most basic standards of the rule of law. Should this stand, it will inevitably lead to a far more general perception that laws are merely for the "little people."
When such viewpoints become particularly flagrant, the "little people" have been known to renegotiate the social contract. Not always for the better - but certainly for the worse in regard to the elites of the previous era.
Having lost my linkrolls in the changeover, I've determined that this time, I'm going to do this thing properly. Right now I'm putting everything I want on my site into Google Feed Reader, sorting and assessing it. Then I'll put it into various widgets when I've got it more or less where I want it.
So, this would be the time to tell me if you want to be on my list. I'm particularly short of rational conservative perspectives and I have not even yet begun to look for canadian political blogs. A few pointers might help. :)
I'm finally getting around to fixing my template. I may lose some stuff along the way, please bear with me, and please let me know if it's something you miss - like, say, your link.
West coast culture has some strange aspects, and Vancouver can be as strange as San Francisco with it's own twist of weird on top, as the CBC's telling of an obvious tale shows.
During a series of visits by police in uniform in 2008, Jarvie says officers witnessed sex acts, an overwhelming unpleasant pungent odour, puddles of body fluids and excrement, and even patrons smoking.
It's not the open prostitution, the casual sex, the piles of excrement or the "body fluids." No. It's the smoking! That's a serious matter!
Our dear CBC, always on the forefront of the matters critical to the evolution of our culture and consciousness. We adore you, even when you are silly.
Greg Gutfield, is host of Fox's "Red-Eye," an allegedly funny show. He's managed to get a lot of attention for his show by pissing off Canada. As a nation. On an official level. That takes some world-class offensiveness, folks. From CTV news:
In an interview with CTV Newsnet earlier on Monday, [Defense Minister Peter] MacKay expressed his anger over the comments and demanded an apology.
"It's crass, it's insensitive, it's in fact disgusting given the timing where Canada is just receiving back four fallen heroes here at CFB Trenton," MacKay said.
On Friday, Master Cpl. Scott Vernelli, 28, Cpl. Tyler Crooks, 24, Trooper Jack Bouthillier, 20, and Trooper Corey Joseph Hayes, 22, were killed in two separate IED blasts that injured another five soldiers.
The deaths bring the total number of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan to 116.
MacKay said the Canadian government will be demanding an apology from the panel and from Fox.
The matter started with a segment that was perhaps born out of ennui regarding "Octomom" jokes or possibly a visible lack of persons with developmentally disabilities. It seized upon the fact that Canadian forces have been materially over-extended in their Afghanistan mission.
"Once their Afghan mission winds down sometime in 2011, certain members of the Canadian military are looking to take a much-deserved break. And by certain members I mean all of them," Gutfeld said.
"Meaning, the Canadian military wants to take a breather to do some yoga, paint landscapes, run on the beach in gorgeous white Capri pants."
It must be said that an apology was made. But there are apologies and there are "apologies." Greg's was of the latter sort.
Gutfeld issued an apology Monday afternoon saying, "I realize that my words may have been misunderstood. It was not my intent to disrespect the brave men, women and families of the Canadian military, and for that I apologize."
I have two questions. The first, is "How exactly could anyone possibly misunderstand your intent?"
The second is more fundamental. "How could you have ever thought that was funny?" I fail to see what's humorous about mocking soldiers for having fought hard and needing a rest, much less anyone on the single most bellicose American network suggesting that invading Canada - that "ridiculous nation" - would be a good idea.
In the four-minute segment, Gutfeld asked the other three members of his panel: "Isn't this the perfect time to invade this ridiculous country? They have no army!"
Panelist Doug Benson, a comedian, replied: "I didn't even know they were in the war. I thought that's where you go when you don't want to fight. Go chill in Canada."
Doug, I suggest you cancel any Canadian engagements for the foreseeable future. Unless you really want to try and be funny with a front row filled with uniformed veterans of Afganistan, Cyprus, Korea and WWII. I'd enjoy watching that. Your genitailia might vary.
But while the insults of a fool say more about the fool than those they are trying to offend, those words say a great deal more about those who would put such a fool on the air. Greg Gutfield could be suffering from some sort of untreated personality disorder - a sort of moral Tourette's syndrome. Perhaps he does not really know that there is a line that is labeled "funny ends here." Fox COULD be seen as exploiting a man with an unfortunate disablity for whatever ratings it brings.
When the comedy fails and feelings are hurt to the point that you make yourself and your employer object of intense diplomatic disgust, it is at best clueless to respond with a legalistic variant of "what, can't you take a joke?"
"I realize that my words may have been misunderstood. It was not my intent to disrespect the brave men, women and families of the Canadian military, and for that I apologize."
Greg, I'm sorry that you are incapable of understanding how you fucked up and embarrassed your network and your nation. You should pray someone cares enough about you to explain to you, personally and in small words, exactly where you crossed the line.
But frankly, I doubt that Fox gives a scintilla of a damn. Not when there are "male enhancement supplements" and 900 number chatline subscriptions to sell and you serve that sad, pathetic demographic so very well.
Un-American : Columbia Journalism Review: "In the weeks following the election, the debate over the issue of media bias, and of whether the press was overly kind to Barack Obama, has continued to swirl. Much less attention has been paid to another, more troubling aspect of the coverage, and that’s the relentless and malevolent campaign that the right-wing media waged against the Democratic candidate. Few people who did not regularly tune in to the vast, churning combine of bellowing radio hosts, yapping bloggers, obnoxious Web sites, malicious columnists, and the slashingly partisan Fox News have any idea of just how vile and venomous were the attacks leveled at Obama. Day after day, week after week, these outlets worked determinedly to discredit and degrade Obama, accusing him of being a Muslim, a Marxist, a radical, a revolutionary, a socialist, a communist, a thug, a mobster, a racist, an agent of voter fraud, a black-power advocate, a madrasah graduate, an anti-Semite, an enemy of Israel, an associate of terrorists—even the Antichrist. Supplemented by a flood of viral e-mails, slanderous robocalls, and Internet-based smear campaigns, these media outlets worked to stoke firestorms of manufactured rage against Obama and the Democrats in what was perhaps the most concerted campaign of vilification ever directed at an American politician."
I leave the refutations of stupidity to others, for the most part. I simply hit the next key or change the channel when hatred and stupidity engage in my presence. My freedom to stop listening is as fundamental as the right to free speech.
However, it is worth thinking on the stupefaction of media and vox populi for just a few moments; who benefits from this shitstorm of stupidity and pays the Pundocracy Of Poo.
They are all Terribly Serious and Rather Well Paid, unlike the other side of the blogosphere, who oft make do with ramen noodles and hot dog casseroles. Why is that?
Well, I think Glenn Greenwald (one of our proud exceptions) may have an answer. It goes to Quo Bono. The hatemongers manage to take up huge amounts of bandwidth and energy away from dealing with real issues of critical importance that sane people really SHOULD be pissed off about. Incandescently so. To stave off that fate, Rush is worth every dollar he gets - from a certain point of view.
These endless lectures from sober, rational pundits about the relative quantitative insignificance of the AIG bonuses are condescending straw men. Nobody thinks that $165 million in bonuses for the people who destroyed AIG is what has caused the financial crisis. Nobody thinks that recouping those bonuses or having prevented them in the first place would solve or even mitigate systemic collapse. The amounts are miniscule in the context of the broader economic issues. Everyone is aware of that; nobody needs to have that pointed out. As Armando astutely observed, the attempt now to dismiss the anger over the AIG bonuses as the by-product of simple-minded ignorance and/or ideological rigidity (class warfare! crass populism!) is quite similar to how anti-war arguments were stigmatized before the attack on Iraq : ignore the screeching pacifists and let the sober Experts make the decisions, for they know best.
The AIG scandal is significant and has resonated so powerfully because it is a microscope that enables the public to see what and who has wreaked the destruction that threatens their security and future and, most important of all, to realize that these practices haven't ended and the perpetrators haven't been punished. The opposite is true: those who caused the crisis continue to exert control over what happens and continue to have huge amounts of public money transferred in order to enrich them.
Eliot Spitzer is absolutely rightthat, even at AIG, there are far larger scandals than the bonuses, such as the undiscounted compensation of AIG's counter-parties such as Goldman Sachs (and just by the way: it is indescribably symbolic that Spitzer has been punished and disgraced for his acts of consensual adult sex while the targets of his prescient Wall St. investigations, who basically destroyed the world economy, remain protected and empowered). But the bonus scandal is illustrative of why the crisis happened, who caused it to happen, and the ongoing political dominance of the perpetrators. It is, as Robert Reich put it, "a nightmarish metaphor for the Obama Administration's problems administering the bailout of Wall Street."
The financial crisis has merely unmasked the corruption and rot in our establishment institutions that are staggering in magnitude and reach. Just as the Iraq War was not the by-product of wrongdoing by a few stray bad political and media actors but instead was reflective of our broken institutions generally, the financial crisis is a fundamental indictment on the way the country functions and of its ruling class. What would be unhealthy is if there weren't substantial amounts of public rage in the face of these revelations.
It's politically impossible for the Obama administration to force any substantial revision of the way things are without the impetus of public outrage - whatever they may secretly wish to do or avoid doing. This is the sort of situation in which the reforms that are currently possible are clearly insufficient. It is not a time for "politics as usual," for in fact, the system has been so suborned and the dialogue so cheapened that nothing less that visceral fear will improve matters.
So, it's time to fan those flames in the right direction. And remember, folks; the average US citizen will muddle through. The people who have most to fear are those who built their success on lies, fear, manipulation, greed and violence.
It's time to get down to it, Chicago Style. If they fling crap, intended to discredit someone or some good idea, fling back ten sharp facts that proves the poo-flinger is a lying scumbag in the pay of even worse people.
If they try to start a sex scandal regarding a liberal - investigate ten conservatives and publish the results. And I'm not meaning that "The DNCC should do this."
I say unto you, the DNCC is the LAST group likely to do this. Ok, maybe the second last.
No, YOU should do this. It's amazing what electronic research tools - your computer and telephone - can reveal. Particularly if you collaborate via social media.
There is no fatter target in all the world than a known and famous liar, for they lie about everything. And once the lies start to unravel, well, it becomes quite the public entertainment, the perfect yarn to braid a line sturdy enough to hang a target out to dry.
Don't bother with rush, though. Look at where the money comes from. Don't go after Fox's spokesmuffins - go after the executives. Don't go after the people the people paid to lie, go after those who pay for lies.
Same principle for politicians. For instance - Jim Gibbons, Nevada Governor. I'm sure it would be fun to look into who sponsored this useful idiot. In Nevada, there are only two guesses - Mining and Gambling.
Oh, and by the by, it's not like it's an even playing field. In many ways, our financial overlords have a significant home court disadvantage. Here's a chunk from "The idiots who rule America."
Andrew Lahde, the Santa Monica, Calif., hedge fund manager who made an 870 percent gain last year by betting on the subprime mortgage collapse, has abruptly shut down his fund, citing the risk of trading with faltering banks. In his farewell letter to his investors he excoriated the elites who run our investment houses, banks and government.
“The low-hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking,” he said of our oligarchic class. “These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.”
“On the issue of the U.S. Government, I would like to make a modest proposal,” he went on. “First, I point out the obvious flaws, whereby legislation was repeatedly brought forth to Congress over the past eight years, which would have [reined] in the predatory lending practices of now mostly defunct institutions. These institutions regularly filled the coffers of both parties in return for voting down all of this legislation designed to protect the common citizen. This is an outrage, yet no one seems to know or care about it. Since Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith passed, I would argue that there has been a dearth of worthy philosophers in this country, at least ones focused on improving government.”
There are two important things to realize that are revealed in that last, insightful citation. First, the very wealthy are not smarter than the general run by any stretch of the imagination. Nor are they wiser. Worst of all, they are blinded by their circumstances, their exclusive circles, their exclusionary behaviors. If All The People That Matter believe the same things, surely those things must be true, no?
No. And if you wish an historical reference to where that sort of willful ignorance can lead, well, stuty a bit about the beginnings of the French Revolution, or the Bolshevik Revolution or, indeed, consider the genesis of the United States itself.
In each case, various oligarchs used the machenery of government to squeeze citizens until there was nothing left to gain - and nothing much at all for those being squeezed to lose. This is the sort of situation we are facing now in the US in particular. Further, if such a large economic domino is to fall - we all fall with it. So each of us need to look at our own leaders and decide what pressure may be brought to compel them to stick their heads out of the window, to gauge the mood of the mob.
John Ralston Saul, quoted in the truthdig article cited above, says something about what I believe to be the core issue that we are not actually seeing, nor discussing.
“I’ve talked to several Supreme Court justices, several times in several countries,” Saul told me, “and I say, look, in your rulings, can you differentiate easily in cases between the social contract and the commercial contract, and to which the answer is, we can no longer differentiate. And that lies at the heart of the problem. You don’t have the concept of the other, and of obligation of the individual leading to individualism. You can’t have that if the whole legal system has slipped over the last, really, 50 years, increasingly, to a confusion between the social contract and the commercial contract. Because they are two completely different things. The social contract is about the public good, responsible individualism, imagining the other. The commercial contract is a commercial contract. They’re not supposed to be confused. They don’t actually fit together. The commercial contract only works properly when the social contract works in a democracy.”
Saul has a bleak vision as to what will happen if this is not dealt with, if government is not separated from commerce - and, as I often emphasise myself, religion. Collapse or revolt, and with little hope of replacing it with something sensible and workable - unless we become the solution ourselves. Saul points out that the current crop of people in government simply do not have the perspective, background or capablity to see the problem.
So, here's the solution. You. Get involved. Take the civil service exam. Become a sentator's aide and adviser - whether they like it or not.
You know, the word "Party" has an obvious connotation; hanging out with people you would actually want to hang out with, possibly with some subset of "fun" involved. I would not mind running into Meghan at a party. She's witty and looks like she'd know what fun was. Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter - well, they are the the antithesis of fun. Each in their own way are the sort of people that are notorious for cornering the innocent and helpless and making inappropriate political advances.
Republicans having fun!
I'm not one to belong to any political party; I'm not at all interested in politics as a social endeavor, I don't think of it as something that is inherently fun or interesting. But between the win-at-any-cost mentality, the clear evidence that principles within the party are honored mostly within the breach. The current party darlings could make a Lawrence Welk Tribute Evening With Faux Elvis seem classy and original, as Meghan McCain observes.
I am sure most extreme conservatives and extreme liberals would find me a confusing, walking contradiction. But I assure you, there are many people out there just like me who represent a new, younger generation of Republicans. It took me almost two years of campaigning across this country and hanging out, on a daily basis, with some of the most famous and most intelligent Republicans to fall in love with the Republican Party. If it took that much time and exposure for me to join the party, how can GOP leaders possibly expect to reach young supporters by staying the course they have been on these past eight years? Where has our extreme thinking gotten us? President Bush will go down as one the least popular presidents in history. I constantly hear stories about Republicans who previously worked for President Bush and my father feeling ostracized, unable to get jobs in D.C. right now.
On Monday night Ann Coulter and Bill Maher kicked off a weeklong debate tour. Maybe they will prove me wrong, but this seems more like a traveling circus than a serious debate about the ideological differences between these individuals. I hope viewers understand Ann Coulter is not the woman we Republicans need representing us right now. The GOP is at a crossroads. I love the Republican Party, but if it turns out I am somehow not conservative enough to please its leaders, it makes me wonder—am I then not worthy of even being a member?
You have it backward, Meghan. What have they done lately to be worthy of you? A party circling the drain - and they are - is in no position to be excluding anyone, and certainly not anyone with significant name recognition and name appeal. That's just stupid. Stupid people don't throw good parties - or make good policies.
You know, there is a party name with a fine old tradition in North America. It's not being used right now, and I bet Joe Clark would know where the old letterhead was stored. It's called The Progressive Conservative Party. I think there might be room for a Center-Right party of that sort in the US now.
This has been getting a bunch of attention: New Progressive America Twenty Years of Demographic, Geographic, and Attitudinal Changes Across the Country Herald a New Progressive Majority
"Obama’s 53 percent of the popular vote is the largest share of the popular vote received by any presidential candidate in 20 years. The last candidate to register that level of support was conservative George H.W. Bush, who won by an identical 53 percent-to-46 percent margin. So, separated by 20 years, we have two elections that are practically mirror images of one another, but with conservatives on the winning end of the first and progressives on the winning end of the second.
What happened? How did conservatives do so well in one election but progressives so well in the other? The answer: In those intervening 20 years, a new progressive America has emerged with a new demography, a new geography, and a new agenda."
Thursday, November 23, 2006 The Populist Libertarian
But the return to Populism this is not seemingly the result of an ongoing political debate among the members of the electorate; this is much more a dawning realization that there has been theft and chicanery at the highest levels. It is a wholesale disgust with corruption over a span of years that leaves neither party - or indeed any person associated with Washington in general - wholly free of taint. Add to this the outrage of the heartlands, who thought that in sending a wave of republican freshmen into congress in `94, they would be changing things for the better.
Instead, they were presented with the results of corruption and indifference to the needs and fates of ordinary folks that passes all understanding.
So a return to populist politics is both inevitable and refreshing - even though it is a fickle wind from a dangerous quarter. That is why I join with my liberal and progressive friends and allies in pointing out that whatever size and shape government is, an ethical and Constitutional government in these Americas (and yes, I mean all of them) is concerned with the well-being and prosperity of The People - as a whole.
I'm not doing this to point out my prescience, or my potential value on the pundit circuit. This isn't to flog my brand; rather, it's to point out that my gut check on the New American Progress article is that they are almost correct. They are seeing this as political phenomenon. I see it, rather, as a function of the medium.
I'm not one to dig into things in depth. I shamelessly rely upon others for that. My niche relies having a familiarity with a wide variety of many things, rather than a deep understanding of a few, because that allows me to realize that certain interpretations - such as the one put forward in "New Progressive America" - suffer from the inadvertent framing of the author. I've read it, it's written as honestly as any position piece of it's sort could ever be expected to be - but it presumes that this shift in viewpoint is a shift toward more progressive values. I did a blog search and found this to be the general consensus, but I already knew of one other outlier, The Dark Wraith, who's reaction to the political quiz put out earlier by Center For American Progress is a wonderful example of High Snort.
How progressive are you? Take the quiz and find out not only how progressive you are, but also how annoyed you get when complex matters of your relationship to society, your sentiments about politics, and your philosophical underpinnings get packaged into a 40-question instrument that reduces you to a series of knee-jerk Right-Left talking points, buzz words, and over-simplifications.
Who knows? By the end you might be so annoyed that, whether or not you get labeled a progressive, you can tell for yourself that you are old, impatient, and downright curmudgeonly.
Just like me.
I should note that I took the quiz and scored as "Highly Progressive," with over 300 points. That doesn't mean I am a "progressive," it means that the term is almost meaningless, if constructed innocently. Personally, I think it's intended to create the impression that there is a direct correspondance between not being an idiot and being a political progressive.
Why not be content with "a high degree of correspondence?"
There are many policy positions that I take a hard line for reasons that diverge significantly from the common herd, and therefore, my position on those issues is not at all predictive of my views in general.
Take the death penalty. I oppose it, utterly, in practice. In theory, IF it could be applied impartially and only in cases where guilt was not merely "beyond a reasonable doubt," but certain to an absolute standard, I'd have no objection. However, that is not the case, and mistakes are far too common, nor do I see any persuasive evidence to suggest that the death penalty causes a deterrant effect. So, since it's both expensive and often corruptible of our political process - I oppose it. 25 to life without possiblity of parole achieves the same thing, at lower expense. Or as I often say, when asked why I oppose it - "I'm not that merciful."
My readings suggest that we should not be thinking of this in terms of traditional politics. I think that sort of framing is as dead as the MSM it has always depended on. I see this as a reaction against biased and inaccurate media, against information managers who's agenda is to tell us what we should think, and have gotten so lazy that they have long ceased to bother to make a respectable case as to why we should vote for any particular party.
The report actually contains the data that points me to that interpetation:
"The Millennial Generation—those born between1978 and 2000—gave Obama a stunning 66 percent-to-32 percent margin in 2008. This generation is adding 4.5 million adults to the voting pool every year. Or consider professionals, who are now the most progressive occupational group and increase that support with every election. Fast-growth segments among women like singles and the college-educated favor progressives over conservatives by large margins. And even as progressives improve their performance among the traditional faithful, the growth of religious diversity—especially rapid increases among the unaffiliated—favors progressives. By the election of 2016, it is likely that the United States will no longer be a majority white Christian nation."
True enough; the question is why. And with two generations now having grown up with rich "pull" media that empowers them to seek out the information and entertainment they enjoy and find useful, rather than the passive acceptance more typical of earlier generations, we may be seeing something that is perhaps not all that obvious to traditional politicians and other marketers.
Did Obama win because he was more popular - or did he become popular because his understanding of reality and the situations we face had a greater correspondence to wired voters than others. I would bet that the latter is a large factor - and it doesn't seem to be a factor that the "movement leaders" seem to be considering, even now.
Properly, I should have created a really impressive looking "Master's Degree" certificate as the proper header - perhaps with an abstract background executed in crayon and finger-paint - but there are depths to which I cannot descend even in jest.
To me, it's an insult to even have to consider this matter, much less have to stoop to mocking it. And yet, here it is, a steaming pile of stupid, communicated in an incredulous tweet.
- Texans, please don't let this flat-earth BS happen - bill proposed to grant Master's in Creationism. http://tinyurl.com/c25qsh
Twittering about twittery of this sort has been a House Blend Special since before twitter existed. :)
Oh. My. God. The inmates are running the asylum in the Lone Star State legislature:
State Rep. Leo Berman (R-Tyler) proposed House Bill 2800 when he learned that The Institute for Creation Research (ICR), a private institution that specializes in the education and research of biblical creationism, was not able to receive a certificate of authority from Texas' Higher Education Coordinating Board to grant Master of Science degrees.
Berman's bill would allow private, non-profit educational institutions to be exempt from the board's authority.
"If you don't take any federal funds, if you don't take any state funds, you can do a lot more than some business that does take state funding or federal funding," Berman says. "Why should you be regulated if you don't take any state or federal funding?" HB 2800 does not specifically name ICR; it would allow any institution that meets its criteria to be exempt from the board's authority. But Berman says ICR was the inspiration for the bill because he feels creationism is as scientific as evolution and should be granted equal weight in the educational community.
"I don't believe I came from a salamander that crawled out of a swamp millions of years ago," Berman told FOXNews.com. "I do believe in creationism. I do believe there are gaps in evolution.
I've linked first to the House Blend because there, the discussion is of fairly high caliber while the source Pam cites, Oliver Willis - well, there it is being treated with the respect it properly deserves.
Now, speaking as a Theist who does believe that there is a Prime Cause - I cannot bear the stupidity that is creationism. I don't think that if there is a Creator, that we would be created with critical facilities in order to not apply them and I cannot begin to tell you how utterly farcical Creationism and ID is.
Any proper scientific theory, indeed, even a respectable theological hypothesis must first, last and always deal honestly with facts in evidence. Even theology has standards of evidence and, as a discipline, puts a high value upon critical review.
When you try and simply dismiss facts that incontrovertibly exist (whatever you may make of them) while making naked assertions, such as the claim in ID that each species was created as it is, just as it is now, with the expectation that they should be taken as seriously as, say, transitional fossils in the geological record, the proper response is not to "consider the evidence." An assertion is not evidantary. A rationalization of scripture is not even an hypothesis, much less a theory.
If the goatherd's creation myth differs from the geological record, if it's proposed timeline does not match the data gathered by cosmology and paleontology, if it's modern expression is contradicted by experiment - then the goatherd's story loses. The goatherd's Rabbi would have told you, had you a time machine and could have asked. Who the hell do you think developed and founded the whole search for The Meaning Of It All? Who sharpened and codified the tools of the intellect? Who developed the idea that this sort of thing was worth writing down and discussing? These are the people who's efforts and thoughts created and defined the scientific method itself!
The abomination that is ID, Creationism, and more boldly, the bankrupt and ignorant theology that is what has become known in general as "American Conservative Protestantism," from it's thin white skin to it's bitter core of intolerance is founded upon a denial of the whole root, branch, tree and fruit of the genuine spiritual explorations of the last ten thousand years. It is a most damnable counterfeit, and their first response to anyone resembling Jesus would be to waterboard him to find the rest of his terrorist sleeper cell.
The absolutely proper response is to treat it as an impertinent fraud upon the public. And that's how it is treated by people smart enough to tell shit from shinola.
Moreover, let us take this further; the sheer, mind boggling contempt for intellectual rigor and critical thought will absolutely ensure that nobody associated with "creation theory," anyone foolish and deluded enough to invest a scintilla of their life-path into this onanistic cargo-cult mockery will, by definition, never approach any understating of creation or Creator worth having - any more than the associated social understandings and political imperatives have contributed in the slightest measure to a nation worth living in.
I say this while being personally convinced that the Universe is pervaded with intelligence, that there is, for want of a more precise concept, a God/Essence; one who is ultimately knowable and that we must certainly be intended to make the effort. We have, after all, been given the tools. And at the very least, if you believe in intentional Creation, must not the tools imply the task?
Don't bitch about what that hearty shovel digs up. There it is. Cope.
Truth is truth and facts are facts; the understandings of primitive goat-herders cannot be assumed to be superior to our own, if we are achieve progress toward knowing what is yet unknown, embracing the unknowable implications of such discoveries that may present themselves.
And that, of course, is the problem. When you achieve a a greater understanding, one often has to come to terms that one's previous worldview was limited, childish, possibly even a tad delusional.
Well, faced with such a fate - and such a potential loss of revenue and influence over the willful fools that prefer comforting lies to uncomfortable truths, lies will be produced. Evident lies, lies that are an insult to fine, professional liars of all ages.
The utter, batshit, false-to-fact, hysterical assault on reason and critical thought that Creationists have mounted underlines this. Treating them with respect traduces the very concept of "respectable."
A judge has ruled that Asperger’s syndrome cannot be used by the defense in the case of a man accused or murdering a woman after he lured her to his home in Savage in October 2007.
Three blogs carried this story, each revealing their owners particular viewpoints. In his small circulation blog, Harold Doherty said:
In recent days and weeks two severely autistic young men have been implicated in homicides. In one case, a young man with autism has been implicated in the death of his mother who publicly professed her deep love for her son and the joy that he brought to her….Neurodiversity ideologues are unlikely to change. Their views are entrenched and tied to their own public careers as professional “autistics” or “enlightened” autism parents. The truth is that they discourage society from addressing the harsher realities of autism by effective therapy, treatment or cure. They help keep members of the public from understanding the full nature of autism, particularly as it affects the most severely autistic. Theirs is a movement whose aim is to keep everyone from facing autism reality. Theirs is a movement which wants society to keep our heads in the sand and ignore autism reality.
And on their advert covered anti vaccination site, Age of Autism said:
How many stories of violent deaths allegedly at the hands of autistic teen males will we have to read before the world either A) embraces treatment for autism as a medical ailment or B) paints all autistic males as dangerous killers and locks them away a la 1955?
So you can see that Harold uses these deaths to say how silly neurodiversity is and AoA use them to say that treatment for autism is the only valid option before society is overrun with autistic killers.
Of course, the biases are clear - but irrespective of interpretive bias, are there any facts to go on? That would be a rhetorical question, folks. I AM citing Leftbrain|Rightbrain, noted for it's tiny, barely noticeable perseverance bias toward sources with an high factual content. So what does Kev find, going to the literature? Precious little, but what there is contradicts doom and gloom as a prognosis.
I found it quite difficult to get ahold of papers about autism and death attributed to an autistic person. But the few that I did get access to point to quite a different direction than the overly bleak and purposefully twisted futures foreseen by Harold Doherty and AoA.
In this study, the authors looked at rates of criminality amongst those with a Pervasive Developmental Disability (subgrouped to ‘childhood autism’, atypical autism and AS) . In the childhood autism group (which corresponds to severe/kanners/etc) 0.9% had a conviction as adults. In the control group, the rate was 18.9%. For atypical autism the conviction rate was 8.1%. The control group was 14.7%. For AS, the rate was 18.4% and the control group was 19.6%.
So, in each subgroup of PDD the authors looked at, the rate of criminal conviction was lower than controls. For the type of autism that Doherty and AoA are talking about less than 1% had a conviction compared to 18.9%. I think its clear that if this paper is accurate then we’re hardly going to be overrun with autistic killers.
In a side note, I've long observed that the real issue with these groups is that they are generally composed of authoritarian social conservatives who cannot easily cope with a child who's wetware biases them against reflexive conformity and who has a substantive deficit in making sense of emotional demands for reassurance or submission cloaked in only superficially sensible communications. I've often had interactions with such parents and frankly, I've lost patience to such a degree with that mindset that I no longer bother at all - and I find it entirely likely that "loss of language" is far more a coping strategy than a "disease process."
Seriously, I'm entirely familiar with the astounding phenomenon of being argued with over sensory issues. "You don't really feel that way" is an utterly disrespectful response to a child for whom sunlight is painful. The issue is addressed with sunglasses, not a lecture. But such sensory processing issues are often seen first and tragically, sometimes last and always as "willful disobedience," or "insufficient submission."
That's my experiential bias, at any rate, and somewhat beside the point. There's no reason to be concerned that a few exceptions prove any sort of rule, indeed, less so that in regard to "normal" adolescents.
H/t Pam Spaulding, whom I adore for her delightfully tactical irreverence.
Andy at Eleventh Avenue South reports that the local anti-gay organization rounded up a group of religious zealots who fear catastrophic end times will result if gay and lesbian couples are able to marry in Minnesota.
The Minnesota Family Council says it will introduce an amendment banning same-sex marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships in Minnesota in the next few days. The group announced the new amendment push at a press conference with fundamentalist religious leaders on Tuesday.
Those leaders put forward a multi-faith diatribe against gay and lesbian relationships stating that should gays marry, the world would end.
"If everyone is a gay, this world will cease to exist in 10 years," said Ikram ul-Huq, the imam and religious director of the Muslim Community Center of Bloomington.
"Homosexual unions are forbidden and cannot be licensed with the term marriage," said Rabbi Moshe Feller, Shliach of the Rebbe to the Upper Midwest, a Chabad-Lubavitch sect of Hasidic Judaism.
"We see this as a pivotal issue to life, not just for our nation but the life we have known for 3,000 years," said Tom Parrish, administrative pastor of Hope Lutheran Church. Parrish represents Hope Lutheran Church, whose senior pastor, Tom Brock, raised some eyebrows in 2003 when he insisted the 9/11 attacks were God's wake up call.
"That's a lifestyle that God says is sinful," Brock said of homosexuality in 2003.
The reason their collective panties are in a bunch is that there a bill has been introduced (by Sen. John Marty and Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis), in both the Senate and House that if passed would make Minnesota's marriage laws gender neutral. According to the AP, it's unlikely the legislation will make it out of committee.
The ridiculous part here is that a religion, properly speaking, teaches you how to live a better life. If, in order to achieve that, it must force other people to conform so that adherents can be unaware of workable counter-examples, it's not a religion - it's a sort of boutique government, a theocracy with neither sufficient power to produce good outcomes or the moral advantage needed to be genuinely persuasive.
That objection comes even before we address the merit of the proposition to be imposed from any more abstract angle, ethical, moral or scriptural.
Oh, and since all these fine religious leaders are using arguments from authority right out of the gate - you have every reason to be quite skeptical as to the merit of all moral and scriptural arguments. The utilitarian ones, I believe, are well disposed of already.
I'm perfectly capable of saying this while being a person with a strong preference against having sex with men. I'll go a step further - I'm an androphobe. I don't even want male friends. It takes me bad places in my head, places that I cannot help going when men are around, having to do with social dominance issues.
But, you see, this is MY issue. It colors MY relationships. It defines what sort of relationships will work for me and what ones cannot work, regardless of the quality of people involved. And it really doesn't matter whether I "should" be able to have this relationship or "shouldn't" be able to have that one. It makes far, FAR more sense to concentrate on the positive - a solid relationship built on the things that make me feel good and happy and make it possible to make someone else feel good about being in a relationship with me.
Having done that, and having that relationship prove it's mutual value every day in the face of being nothing like what people would assume, based as it is on mutual social needs and unfortunate experiences that to understand would require explanations of the TMI variety, it's perhaps somewhat simpler for me to see the unstated and deliberately unaccounted costs of forcing all human relationships into a few approved molds. It also tends to reveal to me the degree to which arguments against homosexual relationships are driven by outright phobic irrationality.
Now, phobic overreactions do not make those natural variations in affinity disappear. The irrational reaction forces them underground, where their manifestations will become unconscious or perverted to various degrees, which are then taken to be proof of inherent, rather than circumstantial depravity. To the degree homosexual unions are "sinful," (a mistake, in the Hebrew), it would be in large part due to the social and psychological costs imposed from outside and the difficulty, for most people, of living outside of cultural sanctions that guide and advantage most of us in our daily lives.
I could easily argue that the common, scriptural arguments against homosexuality and legal recognition of homosexual couples are at best tenuous, but that is to miss the more important point. Many religions do impose arbitrary restrictions upon the behavior of their adherents, and there is, arguable merit to making such voluntary sacrifices, if one can.
But whatever merit such voluntary sacrifice may have vanishes if they are imposed by fiat upon all, when an argued moral good becomes mere conformity imposed by law. Such moralisms inevitably and predictably lead to immoral actions in their imposition and outcomes, and inevitably also lead to a numbing of the moral and ethical sensibility of their advocates, for in order to argue the benefits of imposing them, they have to dissociate themselves from any responsibility for negative outcomes caused by their willful and unjust desire to interfere in the moral agency of others.
Violence is done - and not merely to those the religion decides to attack. Not even most significantly in this particular case, for regardless of the precise arrangement of laws, the recognition of committed homosexual marriage is a fact. That is to say, anyone who cares to investigate knows that it's as possible for homosexual couples to maintain a committed and stable relationship as it is for heterosexual couples - even in the significant absence of religious sanction and support.
A religion that finds itself in argument with both reality and the obvious human rights issues of deserves to be questioned in regards to it's actual substantive support OF human rights. It seems to me to be exceptionally questionable that one can support human rights in general while advocating particular exemptions.
And indeed, these moral absurdities long ago led me to question the reason and rationale of their justification, which in turn led me to study the foundations of the arguments for myself. And, as I've stated, I found the arguments to be, at best, questionable. When I raised that question - well, you may well imagine the answers I got.
Dismissive and disrespectful responses to questions of significant and personal moral uncertainty are not proper for any person claiming moral authority. Their authority must be founded in a clear mastery of the moral and ethical universe. They must be conversant with the full range of human nature, nor should their council tend toward the violent and abusive, for one can get that for free, simply by posing the same question to any randomly selected, culturally isolated ignoramus.
In other words - the arguments given by the "moral authorities" cited above are persuasive that they do not have any genuine, authoritative understanding of the moral and ethical dimensions of the foundation of their principles or the unsanitary and unsavory outcomes of their imposition over the last few hundred years.
You'd be better advised to read what text scriptures you like for your own benefit and come to your own conclusions than rely upon the advice of such fools as these. (allow me to commend unto your study the writings of St. Julian of Norwich.)
However, it's fair to state that these are exceptional fools, speaking to an issue that seems to provoke exceptional foolishness. There are fools in every profession. It's wise to cultivate the skills that make discernment between wisdom and foolishness possible, for all wise men are fools in spots.
Values Clarification and Update: The American Family Association has come out against a UN declaration condemning countries that put homosexuals to death, on the grounds that such a condemnation might cause a slippery slope toward tolerance.
Robert Wood, Acting Spokesman for the UN issued the following statement today:
The United States supports the UN Statement on “Human Rights, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity,” and is pleased to join the other 66 UN member states who have declared their support of this Statement that condemns human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity wherever they occur.
The United States is an outspoken defender of human rights and critic of human rights abuses around the world. As such, we join with the other supporters of this Statement and we will continue to remind countries of the importance of respecting the human rights of all people in all appropriate international fora.
And the anti-gay religious organization AFA responded with the following:
The Obama administration and other proponents of a United Nations statement that calls for the decriminalization of homosexuality claim it merely targets the seven countries that put homosexuals to death. But one pro-family activist [that would be the AFA] warns the document elevates homosexual behavior to skin color and religious belief.
Yes, it's so very offensive to Christianity that one equate killing someone for their skin color or religion be compared to, say, beating a gay to death and claiming the right to celebrate it.
"Christians" like this bode fair to putting Hell into receivership, due to unfair competition.
Did you see John Stewart's interview of Jim Cramer? If you didn't, here's the links for the United States and Canada.
Reactions to the digg threads on this and other, far more important issues reveal a tremendous disturbance in the zeitgeist, one that I've been feeling for some time, warning about for some time and which contributed significantly to my wife and I deciding to relocate to Canada, where sanity has largely prevailed.
Really, it should not be up to John Stewart to do the ethics policing for the MSM and the financial community. That's bad enough. But Stewart literally pulled out a smoking gun proving that Cramer was guilty of stock manipulation, that his fortune and reputation is on barely firmer ground than Bernie Madoff's - and the wingnuts come out in force, either to defend it as somehow 'unfair,' or, to celebrate it because, since Cramer votes democrat, it's somehow all about "Democrats eating their own."
That's not just stupid. It's Schedule 1, pharmaceutical grade, undiluted, clear quill bugfuck! And yet, the Powers That Wish To Remain continue to beat the drums of fratricidal stupidity.
The wisdom - or at least the rational aspect to my paranoia - is sharply underlined by Glenn Beck's assertion that "political correctness" is such an offensive thing that it is a perfectly reasonable thing to expect good old boys to pop off with semiautomatic fire.
BECK: But as I’m listening to him. I’m thinking about the American people that feel disenfranchised right now. That feel like nobody’s hearing their voice. The government isn’t hearing their voice. Even if you call, they don’t listen to you on both sides. If you’re a conservative, you’re called a racist. You want to starve children.
O’REILLY: Sure.
BECK: Yada yada yada. And every time they do speak out, they’re shut down by political correctness. How do you not have those people turn into that guy?
To O'Rielly's credit, he tries to reel Beck in, but Beck won't take the hint. O'Rielly has to be the voice of reason. Something of a novel sensation, I'm sure.
O’REILLY: Well, look, nobody, even if they’re frustrated, is going to hurt another human being unless they’re mentally ill. I think.
BECK: I think pushed to the wall, you don’t think people get pushed to the wall?
O’REILLY: Nah, I don’t believe in this snap thing. I think that that kind of violence is inside you and it’s a personality disorder. But I do understand the frustration of people. But it’s called fighting the good fight. That’s what it’s called, fighting the good fight. You stand up for your belief system, you tell people what you believe, you take the slings and arrows — both you do, I do, we have to take it. But you fight. You fight for your country. You fight for your family. You fight for your dignity. And that’s it. And you don’t hurt other people in the process. You just fight the good fight.
Holy crap on a cracker - how the hell did that make it to air? Beck, of course, has every personal right to have any personal peckerwood idea he likes. He can even set up his own Internet "samizdat" site to promulgate his increasingly batshit wisdom. However, he's being paid to promote this point of view. We must assume that Rupert Murdoch - and the full weight of his fortune - is behind this culture war. And furthermore, we must presume that he's capable of seeing the logical outcome of beating the war drums in this way.
War. Quite literal warfare, if something is not done. Or at least, he's perfectly willing to encourage a great deal of civil unrest in order to achieve his political goals.
He is a Muslim and a tool for the Saudis. I know people who do business in Africa at a high level and the execs and govt people in Africa all have he is a Muslim. The Saudi money bought him the election.
Yes he is an enemy of the state. A traitor within the white house. Feeding agitprop to the world to justify a continued jihad against the US. And this from the Commander in Chief.
Traitors. I want justice, and now I want revenge against these traitors. There was no rational reason to release these documents. Obama and the dems must completely fail.... for America to survive.
He will let 25 million capitalists be killed.. That is the plan per Ayers..
I might add, he is willing to sacrifice all Americans on the global altar. He must be stopped. Impeach him now for sedition.
It must be said and said repeatedly: It is obvious to anyone who is paying attention: They are doing this INTENTIONALLY. They are INTENTIONALLY destroying our nation. With Malice and Forethought.
On a more serious note, I think that these moves by the illegal 0bamunist regime are specifically intended to provoke a radical response from conservatives, and I would say they are hoping to precisely trigger one or more maniacs (and we've got some at our end of the political spectrum, there's no denying that) into doing something violent which would then provide justification for invoking all of those executive orders which are on the shelf, ready for use, martial law is declared, and all the rest of that noise.
And let's face it: all the speculation about 0bama being the actual Antichrist will either be confirmed or denied if someone gets off a lucky shot at the SOB.
I'm not just calling bullshit, I'm calling batshit!
It's become increasingly clear that very powerful elements in our shared culture - in particular, the media - are perfectly willing to sponsor and pay for speech that is clearly intended to encourage the racist, ant-intellectual, authoritarian, neo-Luddite social conservatives; the pretend Christians that think that being told to mind their own business is an assault on their faith.
But it's not really a left/right divide at all. The divide is between the extraordinarily powerful in alliance with the unbelievably stupid against everybody else in the whole damn world.
This is easily seen on discussion threads, where the divide on every hot button issue is not so much between Liberals and Conservatives as it is between people trying to discuss real issues with an eye to doing something useful and dangerously stupid, verbally violent people in absolute denial of reality, people who are so easily led and comprehensively deluded that they think, variously, that Rush IS the genuine voice of the Republican party, that the mortgage crisis is all the fault of black people who somehow knowingly chose to take bad loans and that it's unfair to pick on MSNBC for knowingly and obviously choosing to avoid asking any awkward questions of people like Bernie Madoff.
I don't need to cite Glenn Grenwald to underline, at this moment in history, why that's a supremely bad idea - but I feel merciless. So Go Read It. Go Read It Now.
In a sense, the media were victims of their own professionalism. Because there was little criticism of the war from prominent Democrats and foreign policy analysts, journalistic rules meant we shouldn't create a debate on our own. And because major news organizations knew the war was coming, we spent a lot of energy in the last three months before the war preparing to cover it.
It's fine to praise Jon Stewart for the great interview he conducted and to mock and scoff at Jim Cramer and CNBC. That's absolutely warranted. But just as was true for Judy Miller (and her still-celebrated cohort, Michael Gordon), Jim Cramer isn't an aberration. What he did and the excuses he offered are ones that are embraced as gospel to this day by most of our establishment press corps, and to know that this is true, just look at what they do and say about their roles. But at least Cramer wants to appear to be contrite for the complicit role he played in disseminating incredibly destructive and false claims from the politically powerful. That stands in stark contrast to David Gregory, Charlie Gibson, Brian Williams, David Ignatius and most of their friends, who continue to be defiantly and pompously proud of the exact same role they play.
Professional propagandists - at best. Certainly not journalists. Journalists check facts. They may not comfort the afflicted, but they surely do afflict the comfortable. And that IS the job.
Now, the really sad thing about people stupid enough to descend into wingnuttery, with it's climate change denial, anti-choice/pro-slaughter stance and it's increasingly shrill and mindless defense of drug prohibition in the face of the very literal carnage it causes is that they honestly think they really do know better than everyone else. Furthermore, since they know themselves to be right, and therefore deserving to be an authority, they think it perfectly reasonable to react violently to anyone or anything they see as being "enemies."
And yet, they are not very intelligent. They are - quite obviously - easily manipulated, both by those who wish to use them against political foes and by those smart enough to see that letting that great tidal wave of stupid free is not a stroke of political brilliance. I sincerely pray that what I consider to be obvious sedition and outright hate speech against those trying to deal sanely with complex social issues will result in some serious, personal consequences. [Source cited is reported to be an FBI agent and combat vet]
The number of threats to Obama as an individual, not the office, since election day is unprecedented. The Secret Service typically handles this stuff exclusively, but has had to look elsewhere for help.
The FBI monitors and investigates all the white supremacist groups and websites and the guy I know in NY told me that Obama's election has turned into the best recruiting tool they have ever used. Membership is up for the first time in I don't know how long, and new hate websites are emerging every week. Some of the websites actually call for Obama's assassination in their title!
There are limits to free speech. And in the end, those limits are defined when speech leads to violence - and the violent discover that the 2nd amendment is not just for social conservatives, nor just for US citizens. It speaks to the inherent, inalienable, human right to defend one's self, one's family and one's chosen fellows from oppression. While most people toward the left of center see that right best exercised by delegation should not be taken as "cowardliness", much less blind adherence to some particular ideology.
There's a quite remarkable lack of conspicuous ideological rehetoric to the left of wingnuttia; the situations that focus our immediate attention are technical, economic and scientific; while implementation of solutions surely do have political implications, there is certainly no rational argument against the necessity for short and medium term government involvement in directing funds, attention and information toward possible solutions, even by those who would be ideally opposed to such a thing under normal circumstances. SANE people do not argue about how a house should be heated while it's still on fire, much less complain that the fire chief is not qualifed because he's black, or liberal, or "too tall."
There is a conspicuous lessening of patience for those who see all this "firefighting" as being the fault of some "fascist-liberal commie conspiracy" to take away their right to try and derail the administration's attempt to govern.
It would be unwise to discount the level of impatience out there, regarding such foolishness. But then, that's the problem.
Aside: Speaking for all Canadian fans of the Daily Show, I wish Comedy Central and The Comedy Network would grow the hell up. I can embed the Canadian video - but I bet that's just as annoying for US readers as a US linked embed would be for me. Can't you sort out an automatic redirect, or maybe just, you know, design a common page that detects my origin based on my browser settings?
I don't usually think in social terms. I'm on the autistic spectrum, I do not like crowds, I have few friends and honestly prefer it that way. But every once in a while, it occurs to me that I'm rather unusual in that regard, that social networking is important - and that the networks you use sharply influence what we are capable of accomplishing - for good or ill.
Churches have been becoming less and less likely to achieve good things because real christians - those who define themselves in terms of the words in red attributed to Christ - have become more and more marginalized by Dominionist and Prosperity Gospel ... oh, not to put too fine a point on it, heresies.
I belong to no church, myself, and while I try to live according to those words in red, don't feel the need to assume, much less assert the divinity of Christ in order to think them important. Heck, if he didn't feel the need to make an inarguable, definitive statement, one way or the other, perhaps that was the point. Read the words. The words are the point. Said by anyone else, they would mean just the same thing.
I feel that if you need divine authority for something to be believable, then your God-given facility of reason and critical thinking has been sinfully neglected! I've read those red words a fair bit, and they are pretty plain words speaking to obvious truths, couched in words accessible to plain folks. It takes a lot of theology to get in the way of them, so I prefer to abstain from that particular vice.
But as I said, I don't network much and I can afford to be an iconoclastic freethinker. I don't need to put up with folks who disagree with me, or differ about things I consider essential.
But others do, and the more they do differ, the less likely they are to notice to what degree the context they are in gets in the way of doing things in a classically Christian way. I'm not speaking from a "moral high ground" but rather from a varient perspective enforced upon me by my brain's odd wiring. If I could fit in, I would be just as strongly affected by groupthink. Actually, looking back on life, it would be more strongly - I've never perfected boundary skills to the extent that most have.
So I offer ideas, thoughts and tools - like the bumpersticker above - to benefit the likeminded faithful. Now, while I'd prefer you paid my markup - it's about the idea. Ask me nice, tell me what you are about and I'm likely to donate my work to you.
When Hammerskins pinup star "Joe the Plumber" complains that the black leader of the RNC is trying to redefine conservatism, he may actually believe he's saying something sensible about Conservatism - but almost nobody else does, regardless of their politics or racial bias. The cognitive dissonance is so damn loud that it drowns everything out.
Exactly. And whatever principles people say they have, you can figure out the ones they actually use by the way they go about doing things. Since Joe's whole gig revolves around being a shamelessly opportunistic phony, and since we have seen what the policies he's pimping lead to, there's really only one conclusion to make; to the extent you find yourself in agreement, it's time to rethink the principles you thought you had.
You know, kinda like the banks. When you dilute your principles in order to maximize interest, bad things happen.
Best Comment: You know change is coming when you are agreeing with Pat Buchanan.There are two ways to end the war: Milton's way and Mao's way. Mao's communists killed users and suppliers alike as social parasites. Milton Friedman's way is to call off the war. Americans are never going to adopt the Maoist solution. For the users of drugs are all too often classmates, colleagues, friends, family, and event three U.S. presidents.
Yes, folks - you can think of The War On Drugs as lives and money going up in smoke - lives and money that could be doing something useful. That's one hell of a stupidity tax.
There are a great many reasons to object to current drug laws, both from an inherent, civil libertarian point of view and for their unintended consequences. Some of these objections are ideological and conjectural - but there is nothing more concrete than the increased risk of being caught in gangland crossfire, and the reality that legalization will take that kind of player out of the game.
If prohibition is causing violence, countries that are less strict in enforcing the law should see less violence, while those that take a harder law should see more. Changes in law enforcement over time should be correlated with violence as well.
And that's just what Miron and two colleagues found in a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Examining data spanning countries and decades, Miron and his colleagues found things like arrest rates, capital punishment and gun laws didn't explain the numbers. But "the hypothesis that drug prohibition generates violence," they concluded, "is generally consistent with the long time-series and cross-country facts."
Miron's conclusion is sobering: If governments respond to gang violence with tougher laws and crackdowns, they will ultimately produce more violence.
Among western nations, none has fought the drug trade harder than the United States. And none has a murder rate close to that of the U.S. Miron thinks that's not a coincidence. "I have one set of estimates that maybe 50 per cent of homicides in the U.S. are due to the prohibition of drugs."
The best way to make a significant and lasting reduction in gang violence, Miron contends, is to remove drugs from the black market. They can be strictly regulated using any of a hundred different policy models. But they must be legalized.
Of course, the police scoff at this. Legalization wouldn't hurt organized crime, they say. Gangsters would just move on to some other lucrative enterprise.
But this assumes there are lucrative enterprises available to organized crime that gangsters are not now exploiting -- in defiance of economic theory and common sense.
It's also contrary to historical experience. "We definitely see crime fall when we make things legal," Miron says. "
Now, add into the mix all the economic benefits that we abandon due to the most direct consequences of drug policy - the loss of an entire, green, sustainable and very important agricultural sector, in favor of petroleum based alternatives. There are very few crops out there that have as many uses per plant. Canada's relatively sane approach to exploring hemp production for fiber, oils and other uses promises to grow into a huge new economic sector in a relatively short period. It's fairly obvious that there is significant potential for an entire range of pharmaceutical applications.
Combine the dramatic cost savings with the potential and proven economic benefits and it's easy to see how we can afford to deal rationally with the people who's drug abuse IS a problem for them and those around them. And perhaps we can then also talk rationally about what drug abuse is, why it happens, and what makes the most sense, generally and individually.
One of the most critical undiscussed topics in that range is why people think using is better than not using. Usually this relates to either an inherent mental health issue - and making crazy illegal is obviously silly - or to social stresses that we might well be able to do something about if we were to speak openly about it.
One more reason to loudly ignore people who predict the immenent collapse of Society As They Wish It Was if we "permit" people to use the drugs they will use in any case. Because, well, that is the problem. Not pot. Not even heroin. It's busybodies and bad social policy. We can afford neither in our rapidly changing world.
Recently, government-sponsored agencies like NIH have moved toward open access of scientific findings. That is, the results are published where anyone can see them, and in fact (for the NIH) after 12 months the papers must be publicly accessible. This is, in my opinion (and that of a lot of others, including a pile of Nobel laureates) a good thing. Astronomers, for example, almost always post their papers on Astro-ph, a place where journal-accepted papers can be accessed before they are published.
John Conyers (D-MI) apparently has a problem with this. He is pushing a bill through Congress that will literally ban the open access of these papers, forcing scientists to only publish in journals. This may not sound like a big deal, but journals are very expensive. They can cost a fortune: The Astrophysical Journal costs over $2000/year, and they charge scientists to publish in them! So this bill would force scientists to spend money to publish, and force you to spend money to read them.
Why would Conyers do this? Interestingly, if you look at the bill sponsors, you find that they received twice as much money on average in donations from journal publishers than Congresscritters who don’t sponsor the bill — though to be fair, the total amount is not large. Still, Conyers got 4 times as much.
Interesting.
This amounts to a huge "science tax." It also forces everyone through editorial choke points. I'm all for peer-reviewed science - but not at all for a journal getting to decide whether or not an idea deserves peer review. Considering how often science, business and government become entangled, it is to be assumed that editors will have inherent conflicts of interest - aside from purely disciplinary biasas - that put the question to objectivity.
Therefore, a rich variety of alternate means of discussion is vital to a vibrant and productive scientific community, particularly in areas where political interference is not just possible, but probable.
Frankly, I see no particular way in which traditional journal publication is inherently superior to simply dumping an article onto the web for open examination - and the reaction there will certainly refine anything worth refining.
Let us also remember that science is not the exclusive province of the purely academic community. Anyone willing to do the work to accepted standards and present results so that they may be reviewed and replicated should be able to do so. After all, the costs of internet publication are negligible - as opposed to traditional journals - which are anything but. Indeed, the costs of the literature is one of the most significant barriers to participation in any given field, limiting it to the wealthy or those with access to a good academic library.
There is a great deal of science that is not being done because there is no money to do it- and some evident reluctance to allow anything done outside of accepted circles to be granted any attention.
I concur with the author that this is a damn stupid idea - and one that will impose obvious disincentives to people wishing to do serious science in the United States.
