cognitive dissident

Marcus has a post entitled “Gaining Acceptance for Atheism” over at Washington Syndrome that makes a good point about the blogosphere’s potential to impact the public’s negative opinion of atheists:

Ten years ago, I'm not sure there was anywhere that your average Christian American was exposed to openly atheistic viewpoints. These days, I'm constantly amazed how many prominent bloggers profess their atheism on a daily basis. On the list, with the help of The Raving Atheist: Daily Kos, Washington Monthly, The Volokh Conspiracy (Jim Lindgren), Pharyngula, Daily Pundit, onegoodmove, Matthew Yglesias, Vodkapundit, and of course many others, including me. Notably, many of these have substantial conservative readership.

Of course, the average American still may not tune in to these atheist blogs, but a lot of people do. A lot more than used to face proud, open, secularism a few years ago. And since most of the hostility toward atheists, in my view, is based in the fact that so few people feel they know any, this could well start to have a dramatic effect. [emphasis added]

(Thanks to Escapee from the Meme Machine for the tip.)

Posted by cognitivedissident at 9:39 AM | Permalink

David Horton’s piece at HuffPo comparing religion to a plague is, I suspect, exactly the sort of opinion that will fuel paranoid Christianist fantasies of persecution at their “War on Christians” conference. The fact that Horton’s opinion doesn’t cause the loss of their jobs, declare their marriages void, take away their children, or throw them to the lions doesn’t matter to the Christianists, though; what really fuels their ire is not the powerlessness of those who dissent, it’s the fact that dissent is allowed to exist at all.

That totalitarian impluse is what they have in common with Islamists, and one of the reasons that their demand for control of our nation must be resisted. They only want freedom of speech and freedom of religion for themselves and those who believe and act exactly as they do, which is to say that they don’t truly want freedom at all. They want total control, and they must not get it.

Paul Waldman comments on the “War on Christians” conference, highlighting the Christianist mentality:

That conservative blame-America-first crowd is really getting out of hand.

This is one big difference between the right and the left. Both sides have their nutballs. But on the left, the nutballs are ignored. The nutballs on the right are treated by some of the highest elected officials in the land as though they are reasonable people who deserve to be pandered to.

update (1:58 PM):

Bill Press concludes his piece on the conference over at HuffPo this way:

There's no war on Christians. Just the paranoia of a small band of right-wing Christians with a crucifixion complex. They're not happy unless they believe someone is nailing them to the cross. [emphasis added]

I’ll be using the phrase “crucifixion complex” in the future, and I hope Press doesn’t expect royalties.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 12:33 PM | Permalink

The Palm Beach Post has some new information on Ann Coulter’s legal troubles:

Palm Beach County's elections supervisor has given the right wing's unofficial mouthpiece 30 days to explain why she voted in the wrong precinct. In a registered letter scheduled to be sent to her this week, Coulter is asked to "clarify certain information as to her legal residence," elections boss Arthur Anderson said.

"We want to give her a chance," Anderson said. "She needs to tell us where she really lives." Or else? He could refer the case to State Attorney Barry Krischer for criminal charges, Anderson said.

The only bad news in the article is that Coulter has a new book scheduled to be released in June.

(Thanks to Crooks & Liars for the tip.)

Posted by cognitivedissident at 9:13 AM | Permalink

Editor & Publisher mentions the latest Gallup survey of party identification:

In a (perhaps) historic shift, more Americans now consider themselves Democrats than Republicans, the Gallup organization revealed today.

Republicans had gained the upper hand in recent years, but 33% of Americans, in the latest Gallup poll, now call themselves Democrats, with those favoring the GOP one point behind. But Gallup says this widens a bit more "once the leanings of Independents are taken into account."

Independents now make up 34% of the population. When asked if they lean in a certain direction, their answers pushed the Democrat numbers to 49% with Republicans at 42%. One year ago, the parties were dead even at 46% each.

The full Gallup analysis is quite encouraging.

(Thanks to John at AmericaBlog for the tip.)

update (3/30 at 9:05AM):

Chris Bowers at MyDD says that these results are not quite as newsworthy as they seem:

… no matter how many people they poll (roughly 8,000 every three months), Gallup has consistently measured the country about 5% more in favor of Republicans than the other three major pollsters who conduct huge, national studies of partisan self-identification. Rather than trumpeting a historical shift that was only historic because their data from 2004 and 2005 disagreed with everyone else's, maybe Gallup should develop some sort of explanation as to why their random sampling methodology consistently turns up more Republicans than every other major public, political polling firm in the country.

All four firms, Harris, NAES, Pew and Gallup, are polling enormous sample sizes with minuscule margins for error, and yet somehow Gallup has consistently been the pro-Republican outlier. In fact, Gallup outlies so heavily from these other firms that margin of error in the different samples cannot by itself be the answer. What is the answer? Why is Gallup finding so many more self-identifying Republicans relative to self-identifying Democrats than other polling firms? [emphasis added]

Posted by cognitivedissident at 3:19 PM | Permalink

Tom Krattenmaker’s “A War on Christians? No.” at Yahoo News is a good rebuttal to the persecution complexes of those behind the “War on Christians” conference that began yesterday in Washington. Krattenmaker notes that “the rhetoric of persecution from Scarborough and his fellows rings false. A war on Christians?” and continues:

It sounds more like an exaggerated scare tactic aimed at grabbing attention, rallying the troops and sowing deeper division between the opposing sides in the ongoing debate over the proper role of religion in the public square.

Worse, it trivializes the true persecution of Christians in the early history of the church and the real abuse unleashed on Christians today in some corners of the world. Christians in America are hardly being thrown to the lions.

[…]

So, for our domestic debates, let's find a more appropriate, more sober vocabulary. Many words might describe what's going on between conservative Christians and their political opponents today. "War"? That's not one of them.

(Thanks to Lya Kahlo at Escapee from the Meme Machine for the tip. She noted, in a perfectly apt description of Christianist paranoia, that “Whenever Goliath pretends to be David, it's pathetic and tragically funny.”)

Posted by cognitivedissident at 9:55 AM | Permalink

The consistently sensible and inclusive United Church if Christ has had another ad rejected by the mainstream (corporate conservative) media. Check out this site to see the ad, and to read the message from Rev. Bob Chase, the UCC’s Director of Communication. Chase asks:

Why do James Dobson, Franklin Graham, Al Moehler, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell warrant seemingly endless coverage when ministries of the United Church of Christ, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, among others, rarely receive a single mention?

That’s a good question; does anyone have an answer?

(Thanks to pastordan at Street Prophets for the tip.)

Posted by cognitivedissident at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Eugene Volokh’s article on “Parent-Child Speech and Child Custody Speech Restrictions” (564KB PDF) talks about court-enforced prejudice against irreligious non-custodial parents.

Sullivan’s summary is to the point:

Of course, this is an outrageous attack on religious liberty. Imagine if Christian parents were denied custody because of their faith. O'Reilly would have weeks of programming. But atheists? Naah. When Christianists declare that they are fighting for religious freedom, bring this issue up. It will determine whether they are in good faith, so to speak, or not. [emphasis added]

(Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the tip.)

Posted by cognitivedissident at 4:33 PM | Permalink

Here’s another complete post, this time from Think Progress:

Schiavo decision, one year later. A large majority of Americans still oppose the right-wing campaign over Terri Schiavo. Fully 64 percent say her husband’s decision to remove her feeding tube was the right one, including 70 percent of moderates, 53 percent of conservatives, and 61 percent of evangelicals.

The data, alas, are in a password-protected area at the National Journal website.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 3:53 PM | Permalink

I rarely repost entire pieces from other writers, but I will make an exception for Andrew Sullivan’s “The Big Government Spending Party” today. It’s just too good:

Finally, Americans have grasped the fact that the Republicans have abandoned their role as the fiscally responsible party. In the new Time poll, we find the answer to the question: Which party would do a better job of managing government spending? Democrats get 46 percent; Republicans 31 percent. Yes, the GOP will as usual talk about "big-spending Dems" and "big government Dems." But this rhetoric may have made sense in the 1980s and early 1990s. We now have clear evidence that if you want bigger, more corrupt and more debt-laden government, you should vote Republican. Republican profligacy should be punished the only way they understand. Depending, of course, on your local representative or senator, your impulse as a fiscal conservative this fall must be to vote Democrat. They may not be much better; but they couldn't imaginably be worse; and punishing the GOP for betraying a fundamental principle is the only way they'll rediscover its importance. [emphasis added]

I have but one correction to make to Sullivan’s observations: “fiscal conservatism” as practiced by this administration is not synonymous with fiscal responsibility. If anything, the realities demoted by those phrases are diametrically opposed.

Sullivan’s larger point, that conservative rhetoric is mired in a decades-old conception—or misconception—of liberalism, needs to be understood by everyone who still defends Bushism against the bogeymen of “big-government liberalism.” Focusing on such a tendentious construct while ignoring the very real threat of unchecked conservatism is a very frightening type of ideological blindness, and one that will continue to do great harm until it is corrected.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 3:06 PM | Permalink

Damon Linker reviews the latest book from Richard John Neuhaus, Catholic Matters: Confusion, Controversy, and the Splendor of Truth in TNR. Linker describes Neuhaus's brand of Catholicism as “supremely a religion of credulity,” and observes that:

He claims that he can know that the Church's authority is worthy of his obedience in the same way that a bride can "know" that her "bridegroom will be faithful." Though Neuhaus does not employ the term, what he is describing is merely another leap of faith, a melodramatic form of cosmic confidence that derives its psychological strength from its aversion to philosophical thinking.

The key to making this foundational leap of faith a successful one (especially for a skeptical intellectual) is the exorcism of doubt.

[…]

Yet Neuhaus would have us believe that his own anti-liberal and anti-modern views are perfectly compatible with--no, synonymous with--the principles underlying modern American democracy.

We have considerable reason to doubt this. Take the crucially important issue of authority. Setting aside the question of whether an authoritarian outlook is harmful in religion, and there is a considerable religious and philosophical literature on the subject, an authoritarian outlook can certainly be destructive in politics. A nation in which such an outlook is explicitly encouraged and esteemed will be tempted to support political leaders who promise to shield us from the inherent complexity and difficulty of truth itself. This temptation is especially dangerous in liberal democratic nations, which depend on citizens informing themselves about exceedingly complicated issues, making use of alternative sources of information, doubting the assertions of public authorities, and thrashing out an inevitably tentative truth in open-ended argument and debate. This is the unavoidable price of citizenship in a free society. It is our citizenly duty to be suspicious, and to cultivate suspicion, of any and all who would rescue us from the rigors of our own freedom. [emphasis added]

Linker has a book this book due out in September called The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege. I look forward to it.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 6:35 PM | Permalink

This two-part interview (“Cold Warrior in a Strange Land” and “Whatever Happened to Congress?”) with author Chalmers Johnson is a good read. He talks about the Cold War, imperialism, military Keynesianism, federal budgetary hijinks, and mentions Nemesis, the upcoming finale to his Blowback trilogy.

(Thanks to Eric Alterman for the tip.)

Posted by cognitivedissident at 1:11 PM | Permalink

Controversy swirls around the Washington Post’s hiring of RedState blogger Ben Domenech—a plagiarist in addition to being a bigot, not that I’d expect anything more from an editor for Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt—to balance their nonexistent left-wing blogger. Joe Conason has good summary in his “A Portrait of the Blogger as a Young Plagiarist” at Salon.

As all this attention is being paid to Box Turtle Ben (so called due to his speech written for Senator Cornyn comparing same-sex marriage to the “union of man and box turtle”) while one of the Post’s sensible voices is crying out in the wilderness. Bill Arkin writes in his “Early Warning” column about an exchange he had with a Marine Corps Brigadier General during a talk on information warfare:

General: 'Mr. Arkin, do you consider yourself a journalist or an American.'

I took a drink of water as my blood boiled.

Me: 'Well General, because I am an American, I cherish the fact that I can call you a f***ing idiot for asking the question.'

All hell broke loose: The general lodged a complaint up the chain of command to get me punished and my sponsors were reprimanded.

It was tough for the General to be faced with an inflammatory and insubordinate response that he could do nothing about. Too bad he learned nothing (happily for America, he has since retired).

I was punished as much as the military could punish me. I wasn't disappeared nor thrown in jail. In the America I cherish, I just was dropped from the speaker's list. And even then, it was only for awhile, until the dust settled, and then intellectuals and brave souls in the military who dare to stand up to the conformity machine agitated to get me invited back, knowing that if they were going to ponder the media and information warfare, they'd better listen… [emphasis added]

Of course, the mere act of publicly disagreeing with a general is enough to have Arkin branded a “liberal” by some, especially those who confuse dissent with treason, and conflate patriotism with blind sheep-like obedience. The rest of us recognize and celebrate the patriotism of people like Bill Arkin, who recognize that the right to speak freely means little if no one actually speaks.

(Thanks to John at AmericaBlog for the tip.)

update (3:12 PM):
Domenech was hired, according to WaPo executive editor Jim Brady, because "we were completely unrepresented by a social conservative voice." Does Brady not realize that his newspaper regularly publishes George Will and Charles Krauthammer?

update 2 (3:25 PM):
Box Turtle Ben has resigned, as Jim Brady recounts here. How will the Post ever find another conservative blogger of his caliber?

Posted by cognitivedissident at 11:17 AM | Permalink

Bill Moyers’ “A Time for Heresy” at TomPaine.com is from a speech he gave last week when establishing a religious freedom scholarship at Wake Forest Divinity School. His tale of the Tom DeLay/Jack Abramoff/Ralph Reed brand of corruption in Washington is summed up simply: “American democracy is threatened by perversions of money, power, and religion.” Moyers continues:

For a quarter of a century now a ferocious campaign has been conducted to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual, cultural, and religious frameworks that sustained America’s social contract. The corporate, political, and religious right converged in a movement that for a long time only they understood because they are its advocates, its architects, and its beneficiaries.

Their economic strategy was to cut workforces and wages, scour the globe for even cheaper labor, and relieve investors of any responsibility for the cost of society. On the weekend before President Bush’s second inauguration, The New York Times described how his first round of tax cuts had already brought our tax code closer to a system under which income on wealth would not be taxed at all and public expenditures would be raised exclusively from salaries and wages.

Their political strategy was to neutralize the independent media, create their own propaganda machine with a partisan press, and flood their coffers with rivers of money from those who stand to benefit from the transfer of public resources to elite control. Along the way they would burden the nation with structural deficits that will last until our children’s children are ready to retire, systematically stripping government of its capacity, over time, to do little more than wage war and reward privilege.

Their religious strategy was to fuse ideology and theology into a worldview freed of the impurities of compromise, claim for America the status of God’s favored among nations (and therefore beyond political critique or challenge), and demonize their opponents as ungodly and immoral. [emphasis added]

[…]

This is the heresy of our time – to wrestle with the gods who guard the boundaries of this great nation’s promise, and to confront the medicine men in the woods, twirling their bullroarers to keep us in fear and trembling. For the greatest heretic of all is Jesus of Nazareth, who drove the money changers from the temple in Jerusalem as we must now drive the money changers from the temples of democracy. [emphasis added]

No one can deliver a speech quite the way Bill Moyers can. People of the religious left—as well as the rest of us—need to put him alongside Michael Lerner and Jim Wallis as examples of a religious-based morality that doesn’t surrender its principles to money and power. Moyers’ sentiments, coupled with rising frustration with the scandals of GOP Washington, can help turn the tide in November.

(Thanks to Peter at The Daou Report for the tip.)

Posted by cognitivedissident at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As we near the second anniversary of Massachusetts’ extension of marriage equality, here’s a San Francisco Chronicle article on increasing support for LGBT civil rights. The latest Pew poll shows that more Americans are in favor of equality in the areas of marriage, adoption, and military service.

The Chronicle lays out the good news:

Opposition to same-sex marriage dropped sharply across the country during the past two years… […] The poll also showed increased support for allowing same-sex couples to adopt children, and substantial backing for the rights of gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military.

and the bad news:

Any shift toward support for same-sex marriage has yet to show up at the polls, however, Since 2004, voters in 13 states have passed constitutional bans on same-sex marriage. At least seven states will vote on similar measures in November.

Progress is sometimes impeded by reactionaries, but it continues nonetheless.

(Thanks to Patrick at TomPaine.com for the tip.)

Posted by cognitivedissident at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Andrew Sullivan has a depressing piece on the Pew study showing the prevalence of American support for torture. One part that both he and I found interesting is that we secular American are less supportive or torture than Catholics and Protestants:

If you combine those Christians who think torture is either never or only rarely acceptable, you have 42 percent of Catholics and 49 percent of white Protestants. The comparable statistic of those who are decribed as "secular," which I presume means agnostic or atheist, is 57 percent opposition. In other words, if you are an American Christian, you are more likely to support torture than if you are an atheist or agnostic. Christians for torture: it's a new constituency. Another part of the Bush legacy. [emphasis added]

All this time, I thought that we were the immoral ones, but the data (excerpted by the National Catholic Reporter) show otherwise.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 4:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jonah Goldberg whines—is there a more appropriate word?—about the whiny conservatives study. Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon corrects him:

Interesting that Jonah thinks that being a bully and a whiner are somehow opposed to each other. That says a lot more about his state of mind than reality–all grown-up, he’s still confusing real strength with bullying, which is a pretend strength that involves finding someone weaker than yourself and beating up on them. It’s been my experience that being a bully and being a whiner are strongly correlated personality traits…

Posted by cognitivedissident at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I expected some kind of response to this letter about science and religion; someone obligingly penned—and the newspaper printed—this disastrously pathetic attempt at rebuttal:

To date earth, it's best to research both sides of debate

The author of a recent letter purports to debunk the Christian view of the world as a fable.

The writer bases his views on supposed scientific fact. Perhaps he should actually research his subject matter rather than simply repeating someone else's either biased or uninformed opinion.

For instance, if one asks a scientist how he determines the age of a fossil the answer is by the layer of rock in which it is found. Then if you ask how he determines the age of the rock, the reply is by the type of fossils found in it.

Um, what is wrong with this picture? How about a fossilized tree extending through many layers of rock? This must be the Methuselah of all trees!

If each rock layer were formed over eons of time the tree would have had to live thousands and thousands of years to have accomplished this feat!

[name redacted out of pity]

The fundamental issue here is that THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC DEBATE! Against the expert consensus of the scientific community, there is only a collection of fables written by goat herders and fishermen. If any side in this debate is “biased or uninformed opinion,” it is that of biblical literalism.

To begin with the writer’s points, such as they are: the circularity alleged in the rock-and-fossil example is simply inaccurate. There are several dating methods (including morphological evidence and radiometric dating) that are mutually confirmatory. None of the results of any scientific analysis leads to the conclusion that the earth is only 6,000 years old, as a literal interpretation of biblical chronology. Some may consider the “fossils were planted by Satan to deceive us” belief to be a competing “side of the debate,” but it is a side unsupported by anything except conjecture.

I will spend a few sentences on the “Methuselah tree”—as much a fantasy as the 969-year-old biblical Methuselah—because it illustrates the vacuity of the attempts to create a controversy where none exists. (Explaining the basics in elementary language is important, because that is apparently where the writer’s education ended.) As a tree grows, it puts down roots in the soil below; it cannot be older than the soil, or it would have grown while miraculously suspended in mid-air as the soil was deposited around its roots. The process of fossilization, if it occurs, takes places after the tree has died and its growth has ceased. Any soil layers found above such a tree were, by logical extension, laid down post-mortem. The strata and their contents remain in chronological order, as common sense will show.

With examples like this, I no longer wonder at our nation’s poor educational standing compared to the rest of the world. Far too many people are obviously unacquainted with any books other than the bible.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 6:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Rolling Stone has a fine article by Jeff Sharlet on Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas. He is the Right’s new darling, as Sharlet details:

Pat Robertson has tapped the "outstanding senator from Kansas" as his man for president. David Barton, the Christian right's all-but-official presidential historian, calls Brownback "uncompromising" -- the highest praise in a movement that considers intransigence next to godliness. And James Dobson, the movement's strongest chieftain, can find no fault in Brownback. "He has fulfilled every expectation," Dobson says.

The “Constitution Restoration Act” —more accurately a “First Amendment Evisceration Act”—which Brownback co-sponsored, would remove the judicial check on legislative activism:

If passed, it will strip the Supreme Court of the ability to even hear cases in which citizens protest faith-based abuses of power. Say the mayor of your town decides to declare Jesus lord and fire anyone who refuses to do so; or the principal of your local high school decides to read a fundamentalist prayer over the PA every morning; or the president declares the United States a Christian nation. Under the Constitution Restoration Act, that'll all be just fine.

The rest of the profile is also excellent, and Sharlet should be proud; he gets deeper into Brownback’s scripturally based politcal opinions than anyone else I’ve seen to date. We would be better off as a nation with more in-depth articles like these, and far fewer soundbite-driven hit pieces.

(Thanks to Tristero at Hullabaloo for the tip.)

Posted by cognitivedissident at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Al Gore is quoted in this story (AP, courtesy of the Washington Post) as saying:

"I'm not planning to be a candidate again. I haven't reached a stage in my life where I'm willing to say I will never consider something like this," he said. "But I'm not saying that to be coy; I'm just saying that to be honest _ that I haven't reached that point."

I imagine that many people are somewhat disappointed with his reluctance, particularly in light of the latest American Prospect cover story. Does anyone (except the Bushevik dead-enders) doubt that we would be far better off as a nation had the Supreme Court selected Gore in December 2000?

Posted by cognitivedissident at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jennifer Nix talks about the nascent progressive publishing movement on Glenn Greenwald’s blog:

A number of us have been saying that we need some kind of concerted, politically-connected and -driven effort to effectively usher progressive and other good ideas--in the form of books--onto bestseller lists and via special sales and distribution, if we are going to have a chance of competing with the right-wing message machine.

[…]

I urge you to realize the importance of supporting other important books, too. Like American Theocracy, Crashing the Gate and Hostile Takeover. The better progressive-minded books do in the marketplace, the further these ideas will spread. Right-wingers realized a long time ago the importance of controlling and beefing up sales of their books, so they reach bestselling numbers and dominate news coverage. We cannot stand by and let corporate- and right-wing media continue to control the debate.

[…]

If the media won't cover our ideas intelligently, we must create our own successful vehicles to generate discussion.

Her examples of what can be done with progressive books in the marketplace of ideas—such as it is—are spot on. For as much as I utilize my local university library, it’s equally important for us to patronize booksellers. Since small progressive publishers can’t pay to have their books stocked up front in the big chain bookstores, we need to do what we can to raise their public profile. If they don’t stock it, demand that they do. A few requests at each outlet can make a huge difference.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 8:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

…it’s the whining, of course!

The Toronto Star article on a recent social-science study begins this way:

Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.

At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals.

[…]

In a society that values self-confidence and out-goingness, it's a mostly flattering picture for liberals. It also runs contrary to the American stereotype of wimpy liberals and strong conservatives. [emphasis added]

Although this was a small study, it does track well with the GOP’s stance as the “aggrieved majority” in so many instances: conservative whites whining about racism, conservative males crying about sexism, conservative Christians claiming persecution, conservative media personalities decrying “liberal media bias,” et cetera.

I’ll post details on the study when I find them.

(Thanks to Lya Kahlo at Escapee from the Meme Machine for the tip.)

update (3/21 at 2:51PM):
DemocraticUnderground has a funny take on this study, titled “Signs that your youngster might be a conservative.” It’s good stuff, especially these lines:

Shoots close friend in the face with Super Soaker. Graciously accepts apology from close friend, who is "deeply sorry for all the bad stuff that has happened this week."

Obsessed with wee-wee of a certain classmate from Arkansas.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 1:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In a post about Bruce Bartlett’s Imposter, Andrew Sullivan analyzes the Christianist/GOP nexus:

The key element that binds Christianism with Bush Republicanism is fealty to patriarchal leadership. That's the institutional structure of the churches that are now the Republican base; and it's only natural that the fundamentalist psyche, which is rooted in obedience and reverence for the inerrant pastor, should be transferred to the presidency. That's why I think Bush's ratings won't go much below 25 percent; because 25 percent is about the proportion of the electorate that is fundamentalist and supports Bush for religious rather than political reasons. They are immune to empirical argument, because their thought-structure is not empirical; it is dogmatic. If the facts overwhelm them, they will simply argue that the "liberal media" is lying. Bruce poignantly thinks the GOP is still the secular, empirical, skeptical party it once was. It's not: it's a fundamentalist church with some huge bribes for business interests on the side, leveraged by massive debts. So all criticism is disloyalty; and disloyalty is heresy. The facts don't matter. Obey the pastor. Or be damned. [emphasis added]

We’ve seen what happens when ideology trumps facts, and it’s not pretty.

Posted by cognitivedissident at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Existentialist Cowboy has a post about the great HL Mencken, perhaps our nation’s greatest satirist since Mark Twain. EC notes that “Iconoclasts are always misunderstood; truth telling has become un-patriotic. Were he alive and writing today, Mencken would be assailed for telling the truth.”

Thomas Frank is perhaps the closest thing we have to a Mencken today, but he's not nearly prolific enough.

(Thanks to Mike at Crooks and Liars for the tip.)

Posted by cognitivedissident at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Radical Russ has updated maps of Bush’s approval ratings. It’s worth a look, if for no other reason than to see clearly that even Jesusland isn’t as red as it once was:

(Thanks to God Is for Suckers! for the tip. The reference to Dubya as “Pretzeldunce Chimpy McFlightsuit” alone is worth reading the post.)

Posted by cognitivedissident at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Paul Waldman (Senior Fellow at MediaMatters) has a few comments about bias in the media, from the CBS News “Public Eye” column. Perhaps his best line is this one, where he discusses fact-based criticism rather than mere accusation of bias:

Go to our web site and look through the thousands of items we’ve produced in the last two years, and you’ll find the factual errors, misleading statements, and sins of omission we’ve documented. What you won’t find is relentless accusations that reporters, commentators, or news outlets are “biased.” When we do an item on something that appeared in the news media, it’s because we can demonstrate that it was false or misleading, not because we just don’t like it. [emphasis added]

That is precisely the problem with to much commentary on the media: too many imprecations and too few demonstrations. Don’t just tell me your opinion; back it up with some facts. Later in the piece, Waldman separates his organization from the right-wing AIMs and MRCs who continue to allege “liberal bias” in the media:

There may be no more profound difference between the left and the right on media issues than this: progressives believe in journalism. We don’t want news outlets to be shills for Democrats. We believe reporters have to be critical, aggressive, and unyielding in holding the powerful accountable and finding the truth, no matter who is in charge. Because without a courageous, independent press corps, democracy itself is impossible.

But in recent years the right wing has undertaken an assault not only on what they perceive as coverage unfavorable to their cause, but on the very idea of objective news. Conservatives have become the true post-modernists, arguing that any news presentation that reflects badly on Republicans must have a “liberal bias” – that there are no facts, only their (right) opinion and everyone else’s (wrong) opinion. [emphasis added]

(Thanks to Atrios for the tip.)

Posted by cognitivedissident at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Josh Marshall takes on Peggy Noonan’s latest insipid invective. The money quote is in his conclusion:

Noonan actually tries to argue that President Bush has been a big spender on social programs and that this is somehow tied to his 'compassionate conservatism.' But that claptrap won't survive first contact with the budget numbers. President Bush has trashed the country's finances with three things -- big tax cuts, big defense hikes and whatever pork is necessary to win the next election.

Mr. Bush's mammoth deficit spending isn't some weird sort of ideological inversion. It's a character problem -- like spending money you don't have always is. And it's one Noonan and her ideological fellow-travellers are utterly on the line for.

Noonan’s attempt to blame Bush’s wastefulness on “liberal” tendencies is completely false, as liberalism is not synonymous with out-of-control spending: conservatism is. (Note that yesterday’s Senate vote to increase the debt limit was unanimously opposed by Democrats.) Bush’s wastefulness is the very archetype of contemporary conservatism, with all its concomitant excesses.

She speaks in the aggrieved tone of an ideological purist that “conservatism is hostile, for reasons ranging from the abstract and philosophical to the concrete and practical, to high spending and high taxing,” blinding herself that Washington is full of conservatives that are hostile to high taxes but fully in favor of high spending. That is the disastrous legacy of the Bush era.

Conservative cries that this isn’t their brand of conservatism deserve to be ignored—or ridiculed—because this corruption and incompetence is what they voted into office. It’s too late for buyer’s remorse: too late for them, too late for us, and too late for our kids—and their kids. As the saying goes, “When you’re in a hole, stop digging.” Censure would be a good first step.

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Scott Shields at MyDD shows why the new Rasmussen poll on censure should be disregarded: their polling question is bogus. Here is what they asked:

Senator Russ Feingold has introduced a measure to censure, or publicly reprimand, President Bush for authorizing the NSA wiretapping program. Should President Bush be censured for authorizing the NSA wiretapping program?

Rasmussen didn’t bother to mention that Bush’s “authorization” of the warrantless wiretap program is—to put it most charitably—of questionable legality. It’s no wonder that, without that information, the results would differ from those of previous polls. Shields notes that:

Rasmussen is a Republican firm that regularly asks slanted questions and produces pro-Republican results through a questionable poll weighting method (I believe all national results are weighted based on the 2004 exit polls), and yet even they couldn't find a majority opposed to Feingold's censure resolution. [emphasis added]

That sounds like a description of one of Rupert Murdoch’s outfits.

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Donald Wildmon, founder of the AFA, has a vested interest in lying about the LGBT community; without demonization as a source of his fear-based fundraising, much of his own income would evaporate. One of his favorite tactics is to portray non-straight Americans as economic elitists, creating envy and jealousy among those who don’t know better, despite reliable surveys that show no wide disparity between people of different sexual orientations.

Wildmon claims that “the average homosexual makes four times more than I do,” but MediaMatters shows that, once again, the facts aren’t on his side. (Are they ever?) Wildmon was paid over $97,000 by the AFA in 2004, not including over $13,000 in benefits. If he were correct in his comparison, that would put the income of the “average homosexual” at nearly $400,000 per year.

On what planet does Wildmon live?

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Harry Reid has the quote of the day about GOP profligacy in Washington, in reference to this New York Times article on the debt ceiling’s increase to nearly $9 trillion:

"Any objective analysis of our country's fiscal history would have to conclude this administration and this rubberstamping Republican Congress are the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of our country," Mr. Reid said. "In fact, no other president or Congress even comes close."

This is the fourth time that the GOP has been unable to restrain its pork-barrel profligacy since Bush entered the White House. Will anyone remember this fiscally disastrous conservatism in November, or will they once again be distracted by gay-baiting and 2006’s version of the Swift Boat Liars?

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Thanks to Glenn Greenwald for pointing out that most Americans support censuring Bush, as proposed by Russ Feingold. I suspect that the numbers would be even better if the media (you know, the one that’s supposedly liberal) were actually covering the censure movement accurately. Greenwald notes that the current plurality support exists:

with just one person -- Russ Feingold -- advocating it, and Democrats running away from it. Think of what those numbers will be if Democrats stand united, with some Republicans, and forcefully explain why we cannot allow the President to break the law with impunity.

update (2:53PM):
Chris Bowers writes at MyDD that the “SCLM [So-Called Liberal Media, Eric Alterman’s best phrase] probably won't even touch” this poll, because it shows that they’ve been off-base in their coverage to date. Bowers also notes the dearth of Google News hits for this poll, and then comments:

Let's see how many news outlets are willing to actually report on facts and scientific surveys of public opinion on this story, and how many are just willing to write stories filled with "truthiness" and anecdotes.

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Joe at AmericaBlog writes about the GOP in Missouri working against access to birth control.
The details are at Fired Up Missouri!:

Yesterday, during debate on HB1010, the budget for the Departments of Health and Mental Health, House Republicans voted to ban county health clinics from providing family planning services.

[…]

The amendment, offered by Rep. Susan Phillips (R-Kansas City) removed "voluntary choice of contraception, including natural family planning" as one of the permissible services that county health clinics could provide with state funding.

I mentioned in reference to the South Dakota abortion ban that the GOP would soon be trying to turn back the clock on other reproductive rights; sometimes it’s not comforting to be correct.

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According to the summary of the latest Pew poll:

The single word most frequently associated with George W. Bush today is "incompetent," and close behind are two other increasingly mentioned descriptors: "idiot" and "liar."

“Arrogant,” “ass,” “stupid,” “jerk,” and “selfish” round out the increasingly negative results, and “trustworthy” has been replaced with “untrustworthy.” Words like “excellent,” “determined,” “great,” and “honorable” have disappeared from the top of the list.

That’s not completely fair, though: Bush is still a determined man.

(Thanks to Atrios for the tip.)

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George Clooney apparently did not intend this as his first post; the words are his, but were compiled from interviews and ghostwritten by someone at HuffPo into a blog entry. As Clooney remarked to the LA Times “The Envelope:”

I stand by my statements but I did not write this blog. With my permission Miss Huffington compiled it from interviews with Larry King and The Guardian. What she most certainly did not get my permission to do is to combine only my answers in a blog that misleads the reader into thinking that I wrote this piece. These are not my writings - they are answers to questions and there is a huge difference."

Arianna’s take on the situation is here.

[editor's note: fixed a typo.]

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I know it’s not a surprise, but Bush is trying to dodge the GOP’s culpability for the “rocky start” of their Medicare drug plan. Here’s a passage from David Sanger’s New York Times article :

In an echo of speeches conceding errors in the responses to Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq reconstruction, and in which he insisted that the problems were being resolved, Mr. Bush told a group of pharmacists and Medicare participants here that he had expected that the program would have a rocky start.

"Any time Washington passes a new law, sometimes the transition period can be interesting," the president said. [emphasis added]

Memo to Dubya: “Washington” didn’t write the bill, pass the bill, or sign it into law. The GOP wrote it, the GOP voted for it, and YOU signed it into law. Whatever is wrong with it is YOUR FAULT, because YOUR PARTY controlled the process and YOUR PARTY determined the outcome. Its failure isn’t another “Washington” failure, it is another GOP failure.

Demanding personal responsibility from others and accepting responsibility for one’s own actions are two very different concepts, especially in (GOP) Washington. If the GOP wants to continue controlling Washington, they must atone for their failures.

(Thanks to John at AmericaBlog for the tip.)

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Anonymous Liberal discusses the mythical “liberal media” in his “A Game Without Referees” post, as part of a lamentation about “the sorry state of modern political reporting.” He denounces the rise of he-said-she-said reporting and its

almost religious adherence to a reporting style in which accuracy is routinely sacrificed in the name of "balance," and neutrality is valued above even truth. The Karl Roves and Scott McClellans of the world can count on almost any talking point, no matter how ludicrous, being presented to the public in a dueling narrative format--free from any independent editorial judgment. And the beauty of this strategy for conservatives is that it is self-reinforcing: the more conservatives yell "liberal bias," the more rigid the balanced format becomes.

Now, don't get me wrong; balance and neutrality are important to political reporting, particularly in a two party system like our own. But they should always be subordinate to truth. When either side says something that is demonstrably false, journalists have an obligation to point this out and not simply leave their readers to sort through the mess on their own. The only way people are going to know which side is telling the truth is if reporters take this obligation more seriously. A demonstrably false statement should not simply be repeated without comment or balanced only by a partisan source. If journalists are uncomfortable calling a lie a lie, they should at least find neutral or non-partisan sources who are willing to do so. Citing only partisan sources all too often creates the impression that there is serious disagreement when, in reality, the facts are quite clear. [emphasis added]

It’s more important than ever for reporters to do actual journalistic work, and not simply transcribe the verbal effluvia emanating from Washington. Is critical thinking still taught in j-school, or is there really so little difference between the White House press corps and a room full of stenographers?

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"Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."

So said law professor Jamie Raskin, during debate in Maryland over a proposed anti-marriage amendment. Raskin was responding to this question from GOP Senator Nancy Jacobs: “My Bible says that marriage shall occur only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?" I wonder if Jacobs had a reply for Raskin, or if she was stunned into silence at being publicly corrected.

The plainly correct observation that politicians swear to uphold the Constitution and not the bible should become a staple of every church/state discussion from this point forward. It’s that good—and that succinct—a statement of principle that it should be mentioned whenever appropriate as a prod to thought.

Raskin’s full statement is on his website. Here are some gems:

Because America is for all its citizens regardless of religion and because so many churches have so many different belief systems, we are governed here not by religious law but by secular law. The rules of civil marriage--the license that the State grants you to marry--must be determined with respect to the federal and state Constitutions, not particular religious claims, no matter how fervently held.

[…]

Our Constitution should not be an historical record of our prejudices and follies but, as much as possible, a covenant reflecting our devotion to expanding liberty and equality for all of our citizens. [emphasis added]

I’d like to see Raskin succeed in his run for the Senate; we need more people like him to displace people like Jacobs who are currently in office.

(Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the tip.)

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Atrios’ post “On Religion and Politics” has this paragraph amidst his defense of Democrats against spurious accusations of irreligion:

Secularism has essentially no representation in our media or politics. I'm sure there are secular politicians and media types, but few discuss it. No one gets on tv or writes newspaper columns or in any way participates in our contemporary mainstream political discourse and praises secularism or atheism or anything similar, and certainly not in a way which denigrates religious beliefs generally. Advocates for the separation of church and state are not advocating secularism, aside from government secularism, they're simply trying to defend freedom of religion. [emphasis added]

Unfortunately, he’s correct. For all the bluster (and fear-based fundraising) from the Right about a massive secular humanist conspiracy, there is no such thing. (In that respect, it’s quite similar to their myth of a “mainstream liberal media.”) The non-religious minority in this country is almost completely without a public voice, at a time when one is desperately needed.

I’ve written before about the nascent movement for atheists to “out” themselves, and about how we could profitably follow in the footsteps of the LGBT movement’s successes over the past few decades. More of us need to be up-front about our non-status-quo beliefs (should I say “non-beliefs”?), or the false perceptions will not change through contact with reality. The mainstream perception of freethinkers/humanists/atheists/agnostics/pagans (we are in serious need of an acronym!) is defined by religious people, to their benefit but at the expense of accuracy. Every day that passes where their misunderstandings (and sometimes outright lies) about us (that we are all immoral or amoral, relativists, nihilists, hedonists, solipsists, etc.) are allowed to stand uncorrected is a step backward for our public representation.

Speak up!

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My local paper printer this letter yesterday:

Cartoon showed ignorance of science and Christianity

I am appalled at your political cartoon on March 7. It shows your complete ignorance of mainstream Christian views. If you would open your eyes and ears, you would find that science and Christianity are coming more into agreement the more science understands what happened in the long history of this planet.

If I were one of those radical Muslims, I presume I’d be up there throwing stones and fireballs at your facilities. Since I am obviously not, I will try to help you understand Christianity better and pray that God’s Holy Spirit will work in you in that regard also.

[name redacted, emphasis added]

Since I refuse to cede discussions in the public square those who represent the lowest common educational denominator, I was compelled to correct the writer's primary error. Here is my response:

Christianity and science do not agree

One of Sunday’s letters to the editor stated that “science and Christianity are coming more into agreement,” but the evidence does not support that opinion.

For example, a majority of Americans believe that the creation fables from the book of Genesis are literally true. This belief requires such inanities as a universe and an earth only six thousand years (miscalculations of 12 billion and 5 billion years, respectively), humans who co-existed with dinosaurs (an error of a mere 65 million years), and our descent from a single pair of humans (also incorrect, according to genetics). The rest of the Bible, from Noah’s Ark onward, contains many more tales that vary from highly implausible to outright impossible.

A literal interpretation of biblical mythology is irreconcilable with current scientific understanding of our world and ourselves, from biology and geology to cosmology and elementary physics. “Coming more into agreement” with science would require that religion discard its unsupportable ideologies of literalism and inerrancy as being both erroneous and harmful. The fact that many Christians recognize the validity of science does not mean that science and religion agree; it means that Christians recognize the necessity of living in the real world and are forced by reality to eschew some aspects of their religion’s dogma.

Lest my comments seem too negative, I would like to commend the vast majority of Christians—even most fundamentalists—for leaving their bloody fanaticism in the past. Without the civilizing influence of secular ideas such as representative democracy and the separation of church and state, though, our political discourse would be as fraught with violence as that of the Middle East.

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It’s not a surprise to anyone, but George Clooney has owned up to being a liberal over at HuffPo, saying “I am a liberal. And I make no apologies for it. Hell, I'm proud of it.” He defends the word “liberal” as best he can, and he also forcefully supports a questioning attitude toward government:

This is an incredibly polarized time (wonder how that happened?). But I find that, more and more, people are trying to find things we can agree on. And, for me, one of the things we absolutely need to agree on is the idea that we're all allowed to question authority. We have to agree that it's not unpatriotic to hold our leaders accountable and to speak out.