Human Voices

The plain sense of things

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 20:45:00 +0000

After the leaves have fallen, we return
To a plain sense of things. It is as if
We had come to an end of the imagination,
Inanimate in an inert savoir.

-Wallace Stevens-
___________________________

Remember when Obama was "the most liberal Senator" in the whole, wide world and we were supposed to tremble at the thought of his limitless liberalness making Capitalism illegal while the Government Printing office was strained to its limit printing little red books? Wasn't long ago.

Now what seems like a majority of those who voted for him are asking what things would be like if he really were a liberal. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi -- they don't seem much like the little red " far left liberal" devils we were warned about. In fact, with a health care bill that seems to have been written by the Health Care corporations and the anti-abortion Religious Right, some are asking if this isn't indeed a country for old men; the same old men whose exclusive country club it's been all along.

No, it's not like the crazy bastards we had for the last 8 years are back and in fact I think we'd have been far worse off had the Republicans won the White House once again, but still. It's like we had come to an end of the imagination -- a fantastic effort has failed, a repetition in a repetitiousness of men and lies.

Republicans for rape

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:41:00 +0000

I'd say they had some explaining to do, but perhaps it isn't necessary. There's enough in the fact that 30 Republican Senators thought that legalized gang rape was preferable to "government interference" and punishing it is an offense against the sanctity of the employment contract, particularly those of government contractors owned by prominent Republicans.

30 Republican Senators voted against Senator Al Franken's "anti-rape" amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act. We have no way of explaining, other than to assume these Senators owe more to KBR than to their constituents or to their sense of morality, because they won't tell us why.

I don't think we need an explanation. I think we can assume that if we allow employees of KBR, for instance, to sue their employers if they are raped on the job, by company employees in company facilities. it might cost the owners of Senators too much money.

Fortunately a majority of us voted for Democrats last year - not that they're all saintly Senators either - but at least they weren't ready to support the validity of employment contracts wherein a 19 year old like Jamie Leigh Jones can inadvertently sign away her body for the recreational use of criminals. Perhaps some of them just have daughters, but in any event, a somewhat watered down version of the amendment was passed and signed into law by President Obama in what will surely be explained, like everything he does, as an act of Kenyan Marxist Fascism worthy of Pol Pot and Adolph Hitler.

The 30 Republicans who want to kidnap and rape your daughters is a group with many familiar names. We've all heard them tell us all about morality and family values and our Christian heritage. If you're a Republican, perhaps that won't puzzle you. If you have, however, some basic respect for morality and law and any kind of human values, you'll want to look at the list and remember when it comes time for that grand reconquista in 2010 they're pretending is a sure thing.

Tweet Tweet

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:20:00 +0000

In the winter, Florida sees countless twittering things with small brains, perching on power lines and trees, circling overhead and grazing my lawn looking for lizards and bugs. Of course, even a hundred years ago there were so many they would darken the sky, but we've hunted some to extinction, rendered many species endangered by draining the everglades to grow sugar and by poisoning the waters with pesticides, fertilizers, oil and heavy metals. All over the world, nature as we once knew it is in retreat, from the rain forests of the Amazon to the melting tundra and retreating glaciers. Even the birds know it and we all know who's to blame. It's not the birds.

Well, not all of us. Sarah Palin insults the intelligence of most twittering things by claiming that man can't influence or change "nature's ways" and is arrogant to think so. Yes, that's OK, speechlessness is a normal reaction to such idiocy. What can you call it but idiocy and what can you call it but arrogance to assert that the magical powers of God will steadily restore the countless square miles of ocean bottom scraped bare by drag nets, restore the countless miles of coral bleached by growing acidity and reanimate the countless species disappearing at an accelerating rate? And what is arrogance, after all, but making grand statements about nature without any knowledge whatever having to do with atmospheric and oceanographic sciences, geology, physics, chemistry or in fact, any damned thing but talking in tongues and burning witches?

"arrogant&naive2say man overpwers nature" tweets the idiot Palin.

The painful irony of course, is not that man is part of nature and man is changing the world in many, many obvious and quantifiable ways. It's not just that we've disassembled the building blocks of matter, decoded the blueprints for life, unravelled the history of the universe -- the irony is that it may be arrogant to say that we can ever overpower stupidity, cupidity, stone age superstition and the crackpot politics that eats away at America like a cancer.

Jesus laughed

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:38:00 +0000

"How dangerous it is in sensible things to use metaphorical expressions unto the people, and what absurd conceits they will swallow in their literals."

-Thomas Browne - Pseudoxia Epidemica-

Making sense out of someone else's religion is a bit like looking at a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don't all fit and some are taped in place or hidden under others. Take the Mary and Joseph story. We're supposed to believe that since Joseph was too old to have sex with his obscenely young bride Mary, her pregnancy was a bit of a surprise - until of course she told him that God, in the form of a bird, did the deed. The subsequent pregnancies resulting in brothers and sisters might have been harder to explain, unless the bird left some blue pills for the old man -- or unless we ignore old Occam: "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem" which means don't make shit up just so people won't laugh at your bogus story.

That of course would have Jesus' brother Jacob the true heir to the throne of David, making him the Messiah; because after all, Joseph, from whose family the title was inherited, wasn't his real father. OK, so we don't ask and we just tape that piece in place and ignore what is underneath.

Anyway, one can choose to treat the alleged divinity of Jesus as a metaphor, which makes sense, or literally, which makes absolutely none. If you're of the latter persuasion, which didn't approach universality for many centuries into the Christian Era, (if it ever really did) the flimsiness of your construction is likely to make you touchy and humorless if not aggressively pugnacious. Imagine the fundamentalist's reaction to a poster showing A young Joseph in bed with a frustrated looking Mary and titled "Poor Joseph, God was a hard act to follow."

The Church that put up the billboard in Aukland, New Zealand simply wished to point out the absurd conceit of swallowing this literal fundamentalist interpretation. Archdeacon Glynn Cardy of The St Matthew-in-the-City Anglican church said he wanted to inspire people to talk about the Christmas story: to challenge a fundamentalist interpretation that's obviously pasted together from pieces torn from other religions, rather than swallowing the cocktail.

"What we're trying to do is to get people to think more about what Christmas is all about. Is it about a spiritual male God sending down sperm so a child would be born, or is it about the power of love in our midst as seen in Jesus?"

Predictably, it wasn't well received by those who demand that everyone else swallow the same mind numbing potion and within hours an irate man was trying to paint over the image. Local Catholic spokesmen were up in arms and a "conservative" group called Family First was calling the whole thing irresponsible. It's nice to know that "conservatives" despise religious freedom in New Zealand as much as they do here. I mean it's one thing to be able to speak out against secular authority, but suggesting that God's own sacred chicken doesn't make half breed, wholly God children with young girls who somehow remain virginal throughout multiple pregnancies and births! What fools these mortals be!

If only I could claim such protection against people who disagree with me.

Let only one flower bloom

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:59:00 +0000

According to the Foxspeak dictionary, a school of thought is defined as a scheme, usually by Roger Ailes or Rupert Murdoch that they wish to attribute to a broad segment of the public. People say, or Some people are saying are alternate disguises for propaganda. If there really is a school of thought that believes cutting the minimum wage will be good for workers, I would like to see its accreditation and I suspect it's a school where employers such as McDonalds and Wal-Mart are heavily represented.

"One school of thought says lowering the minimum wage will actually create more jobs,"

pronounced anchortwit Juliet Huddy from the Fox News Podium in an attempt to give credit to the idea if not to the school of one promoting it.

As Raw Story describes in detail, Fox reduces the entire concept of a minimum wage to "social justice" which sounds sufficiently close to Socialism that they deemed it unnecessary to point out any contrary ideas, no matter how credible. Blind slogans and doctrines being so much easier to sell than truth in all its complexity -- or justice for that matter.

At one point I was foolish enough to think that the failure of doctrine driven economic, social and military policies would be an embarrassment to Fox and its friends, but it seems now that with America down and out, the opportunity to kick us while we're down is irresistible. It seems that their dream of building a new, invincible corporate oligarchy from the ruins of our country, is the only school of thought that isn't a strategic fraud.

Considering the Source

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:52:00 +0000

As you may have noticed, I'm ambivalent about global warming and reluctant to argue for or against it. Whether or not it's an ongoing process subject to random variations lasting a decade or a century or many, many centuries; whether burning fossil fuels and deforestation are a major factor in any trend or whether or not much can be done about it are moot questions once one realizes that the human race won't do any more about its behavior and its environment than yeast fermenting in a vat will do to prevent the alcohol it excretes from poisoning it. We won't do a damned thing until we have massive famine and drought and huge uncontrollable migrations and bloody wars to stop it. Even then we will not spend any money on change because there will be " a war on" and we won't allow ourselves to afford it.

If, in 200 years, we're all baking and the tundra is a rain forest and Kansas covered with sand dunes, the "conservatives" will find or invent some scapegoat, invoke some hoax or alternative explanation. On the other hand, if things haven't changed much, change, like Armageddon will still be a dire threat, just around the corner, lurking in new technology and demanding that we go back to riding horses, living in the dark and taking cold showers once a week.

Face it, not only are we thoroughly irrational, self centered and dishonest apes who love our opinions above all else; not only are we not very smart, but we simply can't deal with the immensity of time and the transience of our species. We've all got to go sometime and we all will -- and if you're one of those people who likes to talk about our planet as a living entity that needs to be saved, perhaps the sooner, the better.

I have too much respect for science to indulge in the certainties and partisan bravado both sides have barricaded themselves behind. Nobody is completely right and all projections become blurry as they are extrapolated or trimmed to fit the opinion and it's all very obvious that the certainties seem to swarm most heavily around those with no background whatever in atmospheric or Earth sciences. Why this should be such a political dispute, I do not know. I remember well the Geological dispute between Static isostasy and plate tectonics but I doubt it ever came up on the Senate floor or that Joe the anything had any awareness much less a militantly expressed opinion -- even though it was heavily disputed and careers began and ended over it. It was settled, in the end, by irrefutable data, not by politics or by gyrating TV pundits bellowing like blue-assed baboons about conspiracies.

My inner suspicion is that the apparent lack of facts, the apparent contradictions and the apparent conspiracies appear sharpest through the glass called "I don't want it to be true" but I know full well that cataclysmic predictions have had a very, very poor record of accuracy.

While other popular disputes can be better understood by looking at the demographics; the viral etiology of AIDS, for instance. The origin of species through natural selection, the great age of the Earth: these things after all are threatening to some religious certainties. Climate change may be more independent and may even fit into apocalyptic molds. I'd venture to speculate however, that those who become most irate at the suggestion that the post industrial revolution climate has been altered by that human factor are those who fear government itself -- and that those who feel an imminent threat and want something done right now are those whose fear of industry and the political power of industry feeds an opposite attraction to government action.

None of us can really handle the truth, nor do we want to. What we do instead is to vilify, to deny, to attack. Is Christopher Monckton, one of the loudest UK naysayers indulging in neurotic denialism or are his opinions driven by rigorous scientific investigation? Does the fact that he also thinks we should round up all HIV positive people and imprison them for life argue for his intellligence? Does his comparison of those who find evidence of man-made climate change to Nazis really inspire confidence in his objectivity? Then again do the kids carrying signs and painting themselves green really have any background making their opinions worth listening to -- or do they just believe what is fun to believe, what people of their social class believe and is useful for picking up girls of like opinions?

One thing that I'm pretty certain of and the evidence supports, is that environmental change drives biological evolution. It also drives cultural evolution and technological evolution. If anything now alive has massive potential for opportunism, for adaptability, for evolution, it's us -- some of us.

The climate is going to change over time -- a very big change. Something will fall on us from space, vulcanism will come and go, the Earth's magnetic field absolutely will fail and then slowly reverse with potentially dire but unknown consequences, a gamma ray pulse may blow away the ionosphere, the continental ice sheets will eat up most of North America and Europe once again. None of these things depend on our politics and prejudices or prayers. Our adaptability and survival however does depend on abandoning the ape-like tribalism, the ape-like confidence in things we have no business being confident in and the ape-like resort to chest thumping, shit flinging and hooting that are more likely to accompany the end of the world than any whimper.

All I want for Christmas is a silver bullet

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:44:00 +0000

Christmas in these new dark ages is like a full moon to werewolves and lunatics and the USA is the new Transylvania. You can almost hear them howling at night. In the dark, ruined castle of the House of Representatives, the latest time wasting assault on truth, the Constitution, freedom of religion and the Founding Fathers is H. RES. 951, a resolution drafted by 19 house Republicans stating:

Whereas Christmas is a national holiday celebrated on December 25; and
Whereas the Framers intended that the First Amendment of the Constitution, in prohibiting the establishment of religion, would not prohibit any mention of religion or reference to God in civic dialog: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

(1) recognizes the importance of the symbols and traditions of Christmas;

(2) strongly disapproves of attempts to ban references to Christmas; and

(3) expresses support for the use of these symbols and traditions by those who celebrate Christmas.

The framers have been framed once again, it seems. Of course there is no prohibition against "mentioning" religion, but there sure as Madison is one against promoting one religion over another and establishing support for any belief or ceremony or symbol is as prohibited as Jefferson could make it -- the ignorant passion of the lawless Republican denialists notwithstanding.

No I'm not going into the open hostility the Constitution writers had toward organized religion and it's influence on Government, or the largely fraudulent claims that "liberals" hate Christmas and Christians and want to take away your Christmas tree. You either already know or you're one of the hairy palmed lycanthropoids too demented to listen. For my part however, any party that harbors such Visigoths (yes they were Christian) is illegitimate to the core, an enemy of religious freedom and unworthy to participate in government on any level.

Is it humorous that the only real effort to stamp out Christmas and its various and ever changing "traditions" was by the "pilgrim fathers" we just finished pretending were the founders of American democracy. It would almost be laughable if these worms weren't eating the heart out of liberty by trying to restore exactly the sort of government we fought a revolution to rid ourselves of.

We've got 15 more days of raging Republicans who are going to make up stories about stores not having Christmas trees, towns banning lights or private business owners not having the right to call Christmas a holiday -- or private citizens not having the right to celebrate it or not celebrate it when and how they please. We have at least two more weeks of support for tyranny and attacks on our freedom of speech, press and religion. It's more than just some Scrooge, more than just some Grinch stealing everyone's good time, it's the ancient evil of religious authority stealing our birthright and for me, the holiday I used to love is hardly worth it any more.

Life is not a Rolex - a Rolex is not alive

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:01:00 +0000

"Comprehensible to the intelligent, to the world at large, needing interpretation"

-Pindar-
___________________________

Ah, Pastor Rick Warren -- not quite smart enough to realize that his arguments have long since been steamrollered by better minds or just smart enough to realize that enough people are ignorant of it for him to make a living by peddling delusion? That is the question.

Put Rick on the list of people deeply disturbed by a sign on a bus saying belief in invisible magic spirits isn't necessary if you want to be good to your fellow humans. In fact he's been in terror of disbelief for a long time, resorting often to such idiocies as the idea that Atheists must be wrong because they're angry, that Atheists are responsible for most of the worlds wars and atrocities including being responsible for the Spanish Inquisition. I have to admit, even I didn't expect that.

No, it's ridiculous not to believe in magic and the supernatural and forces and places for which there is no evidence other than the failure to understand nature. You see, if Pastor Warren is walking down a mountain and finds a rock - that could be accidental, but if he finds a Rolex, it's "design."

Again, it's easily comprehensible to the rare intelligent American that Rolex's do not occur in nature,nor are they alive and self reproducing, but things, like living cells and viruses can indeed result from natural processes which is liberally illustrated by evidence and that Warren is trotting out this mawkish and moronic argument only because, as I said, there are enough congenitally and willfully stupid people out there to be blind to his festival of fatuous fallacies. It's not an argument at all really, it's just a bad analogy and an attempt to shift the burden of proof as Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker illustrates with greater patience and a good deal more skill than I have.

Warren doesn't have enough faith to be an atheist, he says in an attempt to make science and evidence and logic and knowledge a false equivalent of ignorance and the will to believe. Again, if you're intelligent, nobody has to explain it to you any more than I would have to explain why, contrary to his ~~lies~~ belief, same sex marriage is not just like pedophilia and neither Tomas de Torquemada nor the Holy Office at the Vatican were atheists.

But almost everybody believes in the supernatural he says, bringing the ad populum fallacy up to bat. "The actual number of secularists in the world is actually quite small outside of Europe and Manhattan," he continues, adding an appeal to people who find an educated populace threatening. The place for Secular Humanists is North Korea, whines Warren. It's called "poisoning the well" for anyone interested and yes, it's in any book of popular fallacies. That he doesn't tell us that the place for blind faith in religious authority is in the Taliban, isn't surprising, but it is telling.

Of course if the future of the world is not secularism but as he reminds us: pluralism, a certainty that certainly lacks support as we see beliefs declining as education ( and intelligence) increases, it's hard to understand that we should accept a multiplicity of religions but not Secular Humanism. What then does Humanism lack that theistic religion has? Authority. It's rather hard to base a tyranny or any system of arbitrary authority on it and that, dear reader, is what Rick Warren is all about and that's why he's afraid and that's why he has to make fun of your freedom.

A day in the life of Ivan Cornysovitch

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:16:00 +0000

I guess Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is trying to cornhole us again. I imagine that he woke up early one morning and realized there was another absurd, extreme, preposterous, shameful, ridiculous and grotesque simile he hadn't used yet to vilify any health care reform that doesn't appeal to the corporate overlords he serves. We've already heard about 'death panels' and how extending the program that Cornyn benefits from to the rest of us, is just like Pot's Killing fields and Hitler's death camps. Somehow he'd overlooked Stalin's Gulag Archipelago and it's important we hear about it right away.

You see, the problem is that the Democrats aren't accepting "input" from the Republicans although it's pretty clear that the only "input" he or they have offered is to drop the damn subject. Still it's hard to understand why Tex himself isn't trying to escape from that death camp of Federal Employee insurance that just might kill him at any time now.

Just a baby

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 17:41:00 +0000

Why is Fox News so damned afraid of secular Humanism? They're not of course; they're afraid of failing ratings and growing irrelevance, so they tell me once again and right on schedule that I'm at war with my favorite holiday because I'm not at war with my freedom -- and yours. If you think that virtue is its own reward or that doing the right thing by others whether or not you're rewarded for it is by definition the right thing: in fact, if you believe in freedom of thought, perhaps you're at war with Christmas too.

Last year, the American Humanist Association ran an ad asking "Why believe in a God?" They did it again this year with No God ...No Problem signs on city buses and the point of the slogan Be Good for Goodness Sake although certainly not out of line with most religious teachings, can according to the slimy logic of Bill O'Reilly, not only be a direct slander against God, but worse; an attack on the poor, helpless, little baby Jesus.

"How do you sell Atheism by running down a baby"

asks lyin' Bill so glibly that he can hope that the right people won't notice that being a good person, having compassionate and kindly humanist values, isn't likely to run down anyone's baby.

Blindingly blond and botoxed Margaret Hoover and Gretchen Carlson grinned in frightening fashion during last Thursday's "Culture Warriors" episode although the 85 year old O'Reilly couldn't seem to remember which was who. Perhaps the beauty pageant grins were as sewn on as they looked or perhaps the grotesque lengths Fox has gone to demonstrate the dangers of freedom simply amused them, but Grinning Gretchen opined that

"This is a direct and deliberate smear against Christianity. Do you think they would do this ad in July?"

Well, St. Swithyn's day seems hardly worth the effort and after all, December is in some vague and fact-free fashion "the most sacred month" Easter notwithstanding. There's little of ritually sacred nature in July that needs to be forced down the throats of heretics, while December contains other holidays of other religions and the birthdays, of Horus, Mithra, Constantine's favorite Sol Invictus and other Jesus predecessors -- but never mind. She managed to sneak in the proposition that not being Christian, not loudly professing faith that Jesus was born coincidentally on the same day as the Roman and Persian gods he replaced and not in April as their Gospels state, is an attack on our established State Religion.

"Do you think they would do it against Allah on Ramadan? I don't think so! No."

said Lyin' Bill in turn and nicely adding the subliminal hint that the growing secularism of the Western world is actually to be laid at the feet of our Islamic President.

"Why does the American Humanist Society want us to be 'good for goodness sake'? Why do they loathe the baby Jesus? He's just a baby."

What a marvelous way to heap fallacy upon fiction upon fraud and turn it into a call to battle. Is it really offensive to anyone's religion to recommend that in doing good unto others, one should not do it for reasons of prestige or self elevation - or that being a good person without doing it from fear of a vengeful son of a god is not really good?

Allowing people to believe or doubt or disbelieve anything they like can only be offensive to a religion that seeks only to convert and control and not to improve mankind. That's just the kind of religion and perhaps the kind of politics O'Reilly and his attendant familiars would be advocating if they really were advocating anything rather than fabricating reasons for rage in those whose mental capabilities don't extend to debunking a train of logic leading from "we don't have to believe in your god to be good" to "Why do they loathe the baby Jesus? He's just a baby."

The real questions of course are about why the two-bit Torquemada clones at Fox News loathe people who aren't fundamentalist Christian Conservatives, why lying and bearing false witness in the service of a myth is not loathsome while freedom of thought is an offense to the "baby Jesus."

'Tis the season

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:15:00 +0000

Yes, they're still pushing the "Obama is a Muslim" thing and one of the reasons must be that a central theme of the last presidential contest was that he was not only "the most liberal senator in American History," but a Marxist, a concept that is getting harder and harder to pin on our rather deliberate, frustratingly centrist and sometimes rather too conservative president. After all, an absurd claim is harder to counter and outrageous fabrications draw followings in inverse proportion to evidentiary support.

Legalizing 'Drugs' or prostitution are out of the question as a spur to the economy said President Obama to a student in Allentown Pennsylvania yesterday. Regardless of his reasons for the statement, it's not the opinion of a "far left socialist radical" trying to make us just like European Socialists. Better to rave about conspiracies to pass a Kenyan off as a native born American because the evidence is, that Obama is at best a centrist on social issues like allowing gays to serve in the military and no more of a Marxist than anyone at Goldman Sachs.

If only the knuckle draggers behind the Muslim libel wouldn't try to give evidence for it! The idiot mayor of some two-bit suburb of Memphis is blogging that the President's speech on Tuesday announcing 30,000 extra troops to fight Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan deliberately was scheduled to pre-empt that night's broadcast of A Charlie Brown Christmas , with its "Christian message" because as a Muslim, he hates our holiday "traditions." After all, Jesus himself watched the program as a child, didn't he? That's not of course, even contorted logic, it's bullshit. I would love to ask Mayor Russell Wiseman if Franklin Roosevelt was a closet Shinto supporter for choosing the Christmas season to ask Congress to declare war on Japan.

"Ok, so, this is total crap, we sit the kids down to watch 'The Charlie Brown Christmas Special' and our muslim president is there, what a load.....try to convince me that wasn't done on purpose. Ask the man if he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and he will give you a 10 minute disertation (sic) about it....w...hen the answer should simply be 'yes'...."

said the ironically named Wiseman. Sorry, Russ, the answer is none of your damned business and none of the Government's business as concerns what any of us think about God, Christmas, Charlie Brown, the Son of God or the Son of Sam. The question is whether we consider you as a traitor for giving aid and comfort to the Taliban by calling Obama one of them, or for misrepresenting the Constitution and advocating that we replace it with your infantile and ignorant beliefs.

If this is Conservative thought in America then all our asylums are filled with Republicans.

Social tolerance and immigration

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:28:00 +0000

It's an ethical dilemma that I don't find easy to solve. Are the Swiss wrong to forbid the building of mosques? Are Londoners only being racist or xenophobic in opposing the Abby Mills Mosque or are they legitimately protecting themselves from the strife, turmoil, noise and sometimes the violence said to be growing in formerly calm, ecumenical and liberal countries? Is the curtailment of religious freedom justified in some cases? Yes, in the US, we have to fight for the idea that the free exercise of Christianity does not convey the right to push non-Christians around, but just how far do our own laws concerning religious freedom extend and how far should we let them extend?

Like many people, I'm uneasy when a Swiss party leader calls for the banning of Muslim and Jewish cemeteries and we all know the horrible history of sectarian strife in Europe such measures evoke. Yet I see how the Liberal Netherlands has to deal with what appears to many of them as a growing population opposed to the secular, liberal and highly permissive culture they are so proud of and I can sympathize. By sympathising however, with people whose hard won freedom is put in jeopardy by a growing sub-culture, am I able to disassociate myself from groups who want to close the American borders to anyone who might not look Anglo Saxon or be Protestant? How much of the Dutch, Swiss and American fear of a large Muslim presence is real and how much is misguided? When is ethnic cleansing not ethnic cleansing? Most importantly, can we even discuss these things over the snarling of the trolls?

Some like it hot

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:39:00 +0000

Others not.

So have the figures that show a tight linkage between human lifestyles and changes in climate and atmosphere been tuned up for purposes of "clarity?" sure looks like it. Is this going to legitimize other hypotheses? Could be -- and if one cares about science, should be. It's certainly not the first time that academic politics went to war with science and if the reality turns out to differ from the current consensus in one way or another, I certainly won't be surprised. Science is supposed to follow the data while opinion usually follows authority which follows the money.

Don't be downhearted, unplugging your cell phone charger or even driving a Prius wasn't going to change anything anyway, much less "save the planet" and I suspect you're only "going green" because it's a new way to buy into hipness.

While I do believe that science is the best possible route to truth, I don't automatically believe in the intrinsic honesty of those who practice it. If global warming does not have human activity as the predominant factor, that doesn't mean the people who lobby for the oil companies are honest and face it, they're spending huge amounts to influence scientific opinion as well as public opinion to support doing absolutely nothing that might cost them anything. Perhaps the Industrial Revolution / global warming link is true and perhaps the decrease in solar activity since the late 1950's has masked or counteracted it. The Maunder minimum does correlate strongly to a long period of solar quiesence after all. There's evidence for several schools of thought, but I just don't know and so I'm not going to be like the trolls, many of whom have jumped on a competing bandwagon hoping to ride it to where the Wizard will give them a brain and resort to mockery -- nor am I going to be a counter-troll and fling dung on anyone with other data that might be ignored at present. After all, this "climategate" thing may prove to mean nothing in the long run.

I am however, going to mention that even if we have caused atmospheric CO2 to rise and average temperatures to follow, particularly at the high latitudes, the Earth's climate is too complex and dynamic a system not to call into question simplistic long term predictions. What if the obvious warming at the polls does precipitate a sudden and catastrophic drop in temperatures as some have been arguing rather than the boiling hell of the planet Venus as others like to predict? Evidence grows that this is what happened with the Younger Dryas freeze some 12,800 years ago. Global warming could lead to global cooling and no fooling. This planet has been in a relatively long period of climate stability and change is always coming -- don't count on any change making you happy.

Odds are that I won't live long enough to see any of the hypothetical scenarios play out and I'm certainly not going to sell my coastal home or put it up on stilts. Who knows but that my Great Grandchildren won't desperately be dogsledding down here to Florida 50 years from now anyway and some future Palin won't be crossing the frozen Rio Grande heading for refuge in Mexico.

Does any possibility make alternative energy a bad idea? I don't think so. We are going to run out of things to burn eventually and the little bit of oil we might get out of the Gulf or in any Alaskan wildlife reserve won't matter one way or another - indeed arctic oil may be covered under miles of ice if that scenario proves real. We're always going to need more energy if we're to remain a civilized species -- or become a civilized species, that is.

God hates freedom of religion

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:42:00 +0000

He hates yours anyway, you heretic.

I don't know if the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, but the road to Heaven is once again being resurfaced with fresh slime. The Family Research Council, which purports to be a Christian organization having something to do with families, is really a lie factory with the objective of fomenting a civil war pitting fundamentalists against our religiously neutral constitution. They've now launched yet another campaign against the rest of us, claiming that the President plans to "silence Christianity" and "Impose homosexuality." It's the kind of thing that requires dementia, stupidity and ignorance to believe but in 21st century America, the very air stinks of it.

I really don't wonder that such people are obsessed to the point of mania about homosexuality or that for them, the purpose of what they call Christianity is to bring about a fundamentalist state that will enforce their sexual and social taboos. It's not so much that people hiding behind a false name are at war with secular democracy or at war with religious freedom or at war with private consensual sex, these are people at war with their own wet dreams.

"It's hard to make this stuff up" says Stephen Webster at Raw Story. Not for them it isn't. Their four-page letter, available here howls, shrieks and lies like the Devil himself about Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would guarantee gay, lesbian and transgendered Americans the right to work just like other Americans without fear of reprisal by the employers due solely to their sexual orientation or appearance. No, it does not force churches and their businesses and their schools to hire anyone they don't want to but FRC lies and says it does. No, limiting the free exercise of religion does not extend to giving any group the right to force their practices on anyone, but they say it does. The FRC has been lying about a lot of things for a long time and the rest of us have let them do it no matter how many people have to suffer. America gets weak and spineless every time some one crosses two sticks and pretends to speak for God.

The Christian kings of Uganda

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:30:00 +0000

It's not healthy to be Gay in Uganda, even with Idi Amin Dada gone. In fact it's a life sentence if their right-wing government gets hold of you, but that's not enough to please President Yoweri Museveni who has proposed a bill making it a capital crime to be homosexual and that assigns a three year sentence to anyone who knows but does not report the "crime." Speaking up for gay rights would bring a seven year jail term.

Don't feel too proud that we're a bit more liberal here, some of the backers of this hideous legislation are Americans; politicians who identify Christianity with conquest and total domination of society. You may have heard of them as "The Family" and this secretive, powerful and wealthy group isn't confining its efforts to make life miserable to the United States.

If author Jeff Sharlett is correct, the Christian Right group that's been in the news recently is giving financial support to this Hitleresque policy, if indeed, they didn't actually draft it.

"[The] legislator that introduced the bill, a guy named David Bahati, is a member of The Family," he said. "He appears to be a core member of The Family. He works, he organizes their Ugandan National Prayer Breakfast and oversees a African sort of student leadership program designed to create future leaders for Africa, into which The Family has poured millions of dollars working through a very convoluted chain of linkages passing the money over to Uganda"

said Sharlett to Terry Gross at NPR. Is it any wonder to you that I cringe when I hear the word Christian? Is it any wonder that I snicker at the idea that Islam is the biggest danger to peace and justice and liberty?

Kick a Jew Day

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:13:00 +0000

I hesitate to make more of this than it really is. Middle School students aren't deep thinkers, if they're thinkers at all and if some idiot kid in a Naples, Florida school thought "Kick a Jew Day" would be a blast, it doesn't necessarily mean that they've even heard of anti-Semitism or that their parents are Aryan Nation followers. The misbegotten event wherein Jewish kids were subject to being kicked last week was a "funny" take-off on "Kick a Ginger Day," which in turn derived from the supremely idiotic "South Park," the show that features a talking turd as part of the cast.

I think it may be a bit much at this point, to tie it to some sinister neo-Nazi or other anti-Semitic group. Still, some boys and girls were kicked and at that age, when peer approval is everything, the humiliation can be expected to matter a lot in their lives.

Although Fox News did comment on the kicking of red heads, I haven't seen any mention of the Naples story so far and so it's not fair and balanced to comment on what they might use the story for. I'm sure that there are people who will haul out the old PC straw man and grumble about Jews looking for pity and I'm more sure that some Jewish parents will overreact and call for more than the one-day suspension handed out to 10 pre-teens. For my part, I think the Jewish kids have learned a valuable lesson about living in a self-styled Christian Nation: Kick Back!

I had some idle thoughts about printing up some T-shirts and sending them over to Naples, but it's been done.

Palining around with Terrorists

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:44:00 +0000

"I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead"

said Miss Maverick to Barbara Walters, thinking as she does in lock step with the PsychoChristian Book of Revelation terrorist Church. At least this time she's speaking in almost understandable English rather than in tongues.

Like many euphemism addicts, she seems as well to avoid the use or the word Jew as though it were a socially offensive term, which it is not, but neither is it surprising that she has problems with Judaism, seeing Jews as anything but pawns or with the notion of a government that derives from the will of the governed.

I have to ask myself how we get a Maverick, a renegade or anything but a victim of another sort of politico-religious correctness in Sarah Palin. I have to ask myself how many Americans really want our foreign policy derived from John of Patmos or even Billy "The Jews are ruining the country" Graham, currently suffering from Alzheimer's, who she recently visited to get some guidance about what the Bible commands our country to do in Iraq, Iran and Israel.

I actually get a lot of amusement out of this breathless 2000 year "any minute now" wait, although horrors like Jonestown do put a damper on it. But face it, Palin is a rogue only in the sense of being an unprincipled, deceitful, and unreliable person; a scoundrel or rascal. She hasn't separated herself from the herd of regimented thinking, she's embraced myth as truth, defined a demented dogma as independent thinking and yearns for absolute theocratic rule as much as any medieval Pope -- and lower taxes for the rich who are more favored by God, of course. Most and worst of all, she is part of and is informed by a cult anticipating the greatest act of terrorism since Noah's Flood.

Sorry Sarah, Jesus has been here and gone. I'm not interested in your ambition to promote a war in the Middle East, I think Israel should stop building settlements in occupied land and that people should live in peace. I'm not converting to your hare-brained death cult and I'll be damned if I'm going to let you throw away two centuries of secular democracy. I'm not "flocking" to Israel and if there is some damned god who wants a war there, he'll have to start it himself.

Dana Perino and Junkyard Wars

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:08:00 +0000

So Dana Perino still isn't bowing out of her mission to defame the President who employs her. It's too breathlessly important to talk down America who pays her salary; pays her excellent medical and dental plan that she would deny us, to bother to be consistent with what she just finished saying or with objective reality. Why should she, after all? She's preaching to her own demented and dishonest choir, none of whom is any smarter or more honest than she is.

A few days ago, it was wrong for President Obama to play golf because "there's a war on." Yesterday it was just fine to call him to task for not calling a shooting "terrorism" even though "there's a war on." Criticizing the President in time of "war" is only treason when the President is of their tribe, you know and it's never treason when Fox does it. Anything goes, you see, when you're blond and perky. Anything -- even forgetting that the 9/11 attacks were not only on George W. Bush's watch, but that George W. Bush wasn't actually watching and had effectively shot down those who were. But hey, that was history and history is a junkyard from which you take parts and assemble your own truth.

"We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during president Bush's term,"

Perino said to Sean 'Insanity' Hannity on Fox last night. The old Fox with the botox face didn't even flinch. She went on to politicize the shootings at Fort Hood by accusing Barack Obama of "politicizing" the shootings at Fort Hood by not calling the act of an American officer "terrorism" in advance of any evidence to back that up other than the man's religion.

So why is it so important, other than for reasons of creating a religious war, to label the Fort Hood murders terrorism? So that she can pretend Bush was a protector and Obama is not. She needs a "terrorist" attack to create a false equivalence and never mind the lack of equivalence. In her little mind, your little mind will accept that the billions of dollars of destruction and the 3000 or so lives is equivalent to an American officer going wacko and shooting up his fellow soldiers and therefore Barack Obama is a failure.

What's in a name? Everything, it seems. The difference between death by friendly fire and terrorism is all in the politics of the beholder, whether or not the fire is friendly. If someone "fragged" his commanding officer, it's not terrorism and if Pat Tillman was shot by his own men, that's not terrorism either. Charles Manson isn't a terrorist, even though his mission was to strike terror into the hearts of white people and start a war. David Berkowitz wasn't a terrorist although he terrorized New York -- and why? A political football is not a football until someone kicks it and the Grand Old Fox has no interest in doing so unless it serves their need of supporting Republicans and toppling Democrats.

I've seen famous comedians booed off the stage for making mild jokes about George Bush, I've had death threats for saying Reagan had serious flaws. Where is the outrage now? Where is the response to such amateurish, clumsy and wildly dishonest propaganda coming, like foul breath, out of the mouths of Fox?

Rogue numbers

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:23:00 +0000

Would it really surprise anyone these days to see Fox News using stock footage from the Oklahoma land rush to show how many people "spontaneously" show up at a Fox planned and organized rally? It certainly doesn't surprise me when they fail to check out stories that appear on web sites or refuse to apologize when caught inventing stories like some city in Michigan "banning" Christmas. They know we're gullible and they know that if feels good to believe, it will be believed.

Still I'm ever amazed at their confidence in our gullibility and unquestioning belief. How many Fox friends looked at this and bothered to do the arithmetic? How many just saw it and thought " hey, that Sarah's gonna be our next President!"

Amazing.

Fox in the hen house

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:50:00 +0000

What the hell Barack Obama was thinking when he appointed Dana Perino to anything at all, I don't know. Raw Story says, with a bit of mockery, that she's staying true to her convictions but although that sort of thing is so often described as virtue, I have to remember that never changing one's mind and never changing the subject is the mark of the fanatic -- to put it politely. What was he thinking when he appointed a hostile and professional anti-regulatory, anti-government propagandist to the Broadcasting Board of Governors? She may cackle like a biddy, but she's a Fox in the hen house for sure.

I haven't heard the hortatory "there's a war on" trope for a while now, but here she is again on Fox News trying to use it to generate that same community spirit we had 65 years ago when there really was a war on that had something to do with national security and not another illegitimate, unnecessary and degenerating quagmire having little to do with anything but the ego of a president who never won anything fairly in his life. I have to wonder if the obscenely perky Ms. Perino actually knows enough about WW II to make a valid comparison.

You'll remember of course that last year as white house deputy press secretary, it came out that she'd never heard of the Cuban missile crisis, but with the arrogance only someone with the strength of conviction of the ignorant can have, she's chastising her boss by saying he shouldn't play golf "when there's a war on." and when unemployment is up - like it was under St. Reagan the infallible. He shouldn't keep the generals waiting she says, not remembering that if Kennedy hadn't keep his generals waiting, Florida might still be radioactive.

Funny stuff anyway, coming from a mouth that used so recently to tell us not to criticize the president when there's a war on. Disgusting stuff when that particular president set and still holds the US record for number of vacation days taken, morning runs, weeks accumulating into months of brush cutting and evenings passing out on the couch -- war or no war. Was Obama hoping to plant an ally of some sort in the Fox den? Sorry, you can feed it like a dog, but a Fox is a Fox.

"In fact, I think President Obama has already played golf more than President Bush did in eight years. I don't begrudge him for playing golf but you have to understand when you have the B roll of the video that shows the president playing golf while there is a 10.2% unemployment rate, while his senators are basically having to twist arms in order to get this party line vote, while KSM is headed to New York City for trials, while we have the Gitmo detainees possibly coming to Illinois — they have to understand that people could look at that and say, 'Oh, and by the way General McChrystal has been waiting 86 days for a decision about Afghanistan."

She twittered to Steve Doocy of Fox and Friends infamy. This, from someone who told us that global warming would be good because fewer people would get colds and who doesn't remember how unemployment went from just over 6% to as high as it is now under St. Reagan the faultless.

No, it was OK for Bush to bicycle, jog, cut brush and pass out in front of the TV while hundreds of thousands died and millions were made homeless, It wasn't golf, that elitist game. It was OK for Ronald to sleep all afternoon when unemployment was 10.5% and there was "a war on" in Granada but Obama should not have a break, or get a break either -- because he's Obama.

For someone who clearly remembers the way the warhawks went after Dwight Eisenhower for dithering and playing golf instead of addressing the missile gap that never really was, it's amusing and infuriating at the same time, since his greatest strength, in my opinion, was his resistance to being rushed or bullied by the Generals. It's also amusing to remember that Lyndon Johnson played golf when a far bigger and deadlier war was "on" and you didn't hear much about it from the support-any war-Republicans.

All and all, she's just another yipping Fox Friend, with the annoying self confidence of those born yesterday. She belongs with Fox and along with Malkin and Coulter and giggling Glenn, not working for a government she hates.

What the hell was he thinking?

The bow that shook the world

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:24:00 +0000

Actually it shook very little outside the Fox's den other than the behinds of the Wingnut Obama haters when President Obama did the traditional Japanese equivalent of the European handshake with the Emperor of Japan. Inside the borrow however, it was immediately dubbed the Bow-Gate in the tired old idiom of "let's get 'em back for what they did to Nixon."

Yes, we've all seen pictures of Don Rumsfeld bowing and shaking hands with Saddam Hussein, and we've seen too many pictures of George Bush lovingly caressing the Saudi Royals and all but making out with Prince Bandar -- not to speak of the Andrea Merkel supergaffe. What we haven't seen, except on blogs like The Reaction, is Richard Nixon bowing to Mao Zedong as though he were the Emperor of China.

Fox Folk may have short and selective memories, but the Internet remembers. To give him due credit, Nixon's little bow opened up an era of detente, increased cooperation and a liberalization of human rights in China. The internet remembers.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:17:00 +0000

And he said unto them that stood by, Take away from him the pound, and give it unto him that hath the ten pounds.

-Luke 19:24-

Once upon a time there were people who would lend you money at high rates of interest. We called them loan sharks and we put them in jail if we could catch them. We had usury laws to protect the public from being forced into ruinous transactions. We were just inches away from Marxism.

Then came the deregulators who told us that it was toxic government interference and was depriving us of our "freedoms" to apply the same laws to that class of supercitizens known as corporations and so now we are free to borrow at rates Don Corleone wished he could have charged. Sure, some states jumped in and capped payday loans and the government "protected" the military from being charged more than 36%, but of course that's an outrageous assault on our "freedoms" and sure enough, the lobbyists came out of the woodwork and bought themselves a House subcommittee which went to work legitimizing loans with a 391% APR. For many in the payday loan business, that's not enough.

H.R. 1214 introduced earlier this year by Congressman Rep. Luis "dances with jackals" Gutiérrez [D-IL4] is still in committee. Yes, Luis is a Democrat, let's give credit where it's due and Luis, who rose from poor Hispanic roots in Chicago promising to help others like him is now the champion of legalized juice loans and the big banks that screw the little guy in a big way.

The congressman got into trouble last year for getting a $200,000.00 loan from a contractor for whom he had intervened with the zoning board, but I'm sure he isn't paying 391%. A competing bill from Congressman Joe Baca would prevent States from capping rates at all and would allow much larger add-on fees and charges, but the really great feature would allow you to roll over the loan indefinitely, racking up that 400% or so until you're forced to commit suicide.

Meanwhile, for the rest of us who aren't desperate enough with trying to pay medical bills and mortgages we can't afford, the Credit companies are out to protect our freedom too. Faced with having to warn us they're tightening the screws in the near future, they're tightening them now without warning. I got a letter yesterday from my friendly MasterCard folk ( I won't mention the name but it rhymes with Citibank) informing me that since I've been such a good customer for 25 years and always paid the full balance on time, they would raise my interest rates to over 20%. Well to tell the truth there was a time or two when I got the un-postmarked bill on or after the due date although the last two times they tried that I'd switched to e-bills and had documentary proof that they sent the bill too late to be paid on time. They refunded the charges which would have amounted to nearly 100%, but I never got an apology for their attempt at petty larceny and I don't expect a letter of appreciation for my part ( and yours) in bailing them out when they choked on their own greed.

Yes, I know, when the Republicans justify their crimes by insisting the Democrats aren't pure at heart either, they don't avoid the guilt, but they're not always lying.

The unbearable madness of America

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:03:00 +0000

Rush Limbaugh may get his wish and what used to be a viable, if flawed democracy may just disappear into the kind of thing that used to go on in Michael Vick's back yard. Barking, snarling bared tooth and bloody clawed madness is everywhere, in the wild, outraged e-mail I got last night showing Barack Obama "refusing" to salute the flag on Veteran's day, to a new attempt to propagandize small children into supporting mad-dog mentality and bigoted mockery against liberal political figures, Jews, and gays. Even Geraldo Rivera, of all people, is calling Fox and Gretchen Carlson "preposterous and irresponsible" for insisting that trial by jury is dangerous. That may be the first time I've caught him in an understatement.

It doesn't help any more to refer the hoax spreaders to Snopes.com or FactCheck.org, since there are ten thousand web sites telling us that these sites and the facts they cite are wildly biased against the Gospel of Obamahate and never mind the unimpeachable sources they reference. Fox news? The voice of God, of course and we never question it. I don't think we have any chance to survive it.

It's chic to disparage American products. We can't make cars Americans say, but in China? They'd really rather have a Buick and the US is seen as an innovative technological leader with a competitive advantage over the rest of the world. We have the best health care we insist although our nation's capitol has a higher infant mortality rate than Sri Lanka. Socialism and terrorism are our biggest fears yet acetaminophen alone kills many times more people in a year than have ever died in all the terrorist attacks on our country while the healthiest, happiest, most prosperous, free countries offering the most opportunity for advancement are described as Socialist, third world hell-holes by people who can't find Denmark on a map.

The nativists are restless, the bigots are howling like banshees, the Christianists are speaking in tongues while we roll our eyes and babble about birth certificates, our Muslim president and Sarah the Rogue Palin who wants to lead us into a future although she insists the end is coming any day and traffic accidents are the result of witchcraft. Millions of my countrymen are as out of touch with reason and objectivity as anyone languishing in a padded cell ever was and I'm without hope. There is a tide of hate and madness in the lives of men and countries and I'm beginning to think we're surfing it straight to hell.

Ugly American

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:36:00 +0000

Have we become a nation of skateboard and spray can street brats who live just to piss off the adults and piss on everything we can just for the fun of it; laughing with idiot glee while impressing our idiot friends?

Maybe not all of us, but certainly the Tea Baggers and the third of us who think Sarah Palin would make an outstanding president and most assuredly the idiot CNN reporter who thought she could get noticed by wearing a T-shirt with the president of the US dressed as Mao Zedong in a Red Army uniform -- not at some idiotic Republican rally, not in a high school parking lot, but in the streets of Shanghai and while Barak Obama was making a historic visit to convince the world's largest country we're rational and dependable and trustworthy.

That's right - look at me folks, I'm an American and I'm an offensive and ignorant twit! One wonders at what feelings such a spectacle elicits to the Chinese. Mao, after all and after all the horrors, is still a hero of the "anti-Japanese War" and the man who ended much of the horror of Chinese history, albeit by instituting his own horror. Still, his picture looks down at Tian an men from the gates of the forbidden city.

Is this statement meant to say: "look, our leader is just like your great founding father, which might be an insult? Perhaps it means "look, your leader was a monster and so is ours" which would be a very confusing concept since drawing any parallels or valid comparisons between these two men is the stuff of foil hatted and straight jacketed ravers -- or unscrupulous reactionary propagandists. What must it seem like when a representative of the country that has everything China wants mocks the system that gave it to them by comparing it to the dark days of starvation and violent oppression?

Who knows, but if we hark back only a handful of months to when criticizing the US or it's leaders while abroad was considered treason - at least when non-Republicans did it, it would be confusing to anyone. No Chinese thinks Obama has anything to do with Communism, much less with the dictatorship of the Party or the Gang of Four or the Cultural Revolution.

Emily Chang, a Chinese based CNN reporter was hassled by Shanghai police who had put a ban on such display in order to avoid offending America. That an American news network would make an effort to openly flaunt it rather than some anti-American local must have seemed as strange as it seems to me, but perhaps no stranger than the tokens and tags of the domestic brat culture with its graffiti, self mutilation and 'attitude.'

Nice job Emily. Thanks for reminding the world that we're as sophomoric and scatter-brained as we ever were and the world can feel safe with us, our massive nuclear arsenal, our worshipful militarism, our xenophobia and the joy we feel in our disrespect for everything and everyone.

God is great - Bill O'Reilly? Not so much.

noreply@blogger.com (Capt. Fogg) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:03:00 +0000

Blurry words and fuzzy logic are the tools of the deceiver. Take the word "terrorist." We're still trying to fit it into the Procrustean bed, or should we call it the Republican Bunk? In fact we can no longer distinguish between terror, the emotion or terrorism; the acts designed to produce terror. We're always arguing about who is a criminal and who is a terrorist but, always willing to help us find our balance, Fox news and Sean O'Reilly are on the job.

In order to keep the terror, angst and anger flowing and the ratings high, it's important to keep the supply of terrorists visible and to keep them ethnic -- and here comes Sean Hannity to tell us that what makes a terrorist a terrorist is that he praises God before he terrorizes. It's not all that simple though, he has to do that in Arabic otherwise every foxhole would be full of terrorists of many faiths.

It's simple enough however to say that because Major Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly said Allahu Akhbar before shooting up Fort Hood. On the other hand, attacks from the bombing of Guernica to the Rape of Nanjing to the shocking and awing of Baghdad are not. Simple haters like simple rules for hating. They like simple things that can be used to create convenient groups: tropes like "political correctness" of which O'Reilly accused The Washington Post's Sally Quinn Wednesday night. It's much easier to condemn a group fabricated for the purpose than to address her reluctance to call the man a "Muslim Terrorist."

"You have a hard time saying the words 'Muslim terrorist. I don't know why."

I do know why. If the only difference between Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh, David, Son of Sam, Berkowitz and Major Hasan is religion, it becomes awfully hard to launch the Fox Crusade against Muslims alone. So one hates along with Bill, or one is politically correct which means unwilling to hate along with Bill. One jumps to convenient conclusions with him or one refuses in that politically correct way, thus defining PC as smart and honest and responsible for people more logically adept than the Fox Fools.

One must be a hater of Muslims or a terrorist supporter and without that assertion O'Reilly melts on the floor like the Wicked Witch. A nice binary, Good V. Evil choice to replace the kind of reasoning stupid people hate and fear and are incapable of: the kind of choice Lyin' Bill peddles like crack in the high school parking lot.