There has been so much bleakness and divisiveness on this blog lately that I decided it was time to run something we all can agree on: Mimes. We hate ’em!
It turns out those sick bastards at Lego actually released a mime figure! That, of course, was just asking for trouble.
This blog, at its core, has always been about civil liberties. Historically, I have focused on the threat to those liberties by Christian fundamentalists, because I viewed them as the biggest threat to those liberties. I have included politics since the beginning, although I have tried to de-emphasize it where possible. Coverage of fundamentalism cannot be completely uncoupled from politics, because the fundies and Republicans have merged so completely that it is often impossible to tell one from the other.
I have recently expanded the scope of this blog to the coverage of all civil rights abuses and threats. I still plan to focus on fundies, I’m just no longer excluding other stories.
Since January 20th of 2009, the biggest threat to our civil liberties has been Barack Obama.
I am not going to change the focus of this blog away from the Christian fundamentalist threat. That is where this blog belongs. I’m just not going to ignore the other threats.
So for clarification of that last article, and to more precisely enumerate the reasons for my displeasure, here is an excerpt from an article by Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic:
How would you have reacted in 2008 if any Republican ran promising to do the following?
Codify indefinite detention into law
Draw up a secret kill list of people, including American citizens, to assassinate without due process
Proceed with warrantless spying on American citizens
Prosecute Bush-era whistleblowers for violating state secrets
Reinterpret the War Powers Resolution such that entering a war of choice without a Congressional declaration is permissible
Enter and prosecute such a war
Institutionalize naked scanners and intrusive full body pat-downs in major American airports
Oversee a planned expansion of TSA so that its agents are already beginning to patrol American highways, train stations, and bus depots
Wage an undeclared drone war on numerous Muslim countries that delegates to the CIA the final call about some strikes that put civilians in jeopardy
Invoke the state-secrets privilege to dismiss lawsuits brought by civil-liberties organizations on dubious technicalities rather than litigating them on the merits
Preside over federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries
Attempt to negotiate an extension of American troops in Iraq beyond 2011 (an effort that thankfully failed)
Reauthorize the Patriot Act
Select an economic team mostly made up of former and future financial executives from Wall Street firms that played major roles in the financial crisis.
His civil liberties record is one of the worst in history. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, writing in the Los Angels Times, wrote:
Civil libertarians have long had a dysfunctional relationship with the Democratic Party, which treats them as a captive voting bloc with nowhere else to turn in elections. Not even this history, however, prepared civil libertarians for Obama.… Many were questioning the extreme measures taken by the Bush administration, especially after the disclosure of abuses and illegalities.
…
However, President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them. The earliest, and most startling, move came quickly. Soon after his election, various military and political figures reported that Obama reportedly promised Bush officials in private that no one would be investigated or prosecuted for torture. In his first year, Obama made good on that promise, announcing that no CIA employee would be prosecuted for torture. Later, his administration refused to prosecute any of the Bush officials responsible for ordering or justifying the program and embraced the “just following orders” defense for other officials, the very defense rejected by the United States at the Nuremberg trials after World War II.
…
Obama may have flown by the fail-safe line, especially when it comes to waterboarding. For many civil libertarians, it will be virtually impossible to vote for someone who has flagrantly ignored the Convention Against Torture or its underlying Nuremberg Principles. As Obama and Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. have admitted, waterboarding is clearly torture and has been long defined as such by both international and U.S. courts. It is not only a crime but a war crime. By blocking the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for torture, Obama violated international law and reinforced other countries in refusing investigation of their own alleged war crimes. The administration magnified the damage by blocking efforts of other countries like Spain from investigating our alleged war crimes. In this process, his administration shredded principles on the accountability of government officials and lawyers facilitating war crimes and further destroyed the credibility of the U.S. in objecting to civil liberties abuses abroad.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are war criminals. Obama is an accessory to war crimes.
It isn’t just the non-prosecution of the Bush administration war criminals. More importantly, the problem is also the prevention of the abused to seek redress through the courts. Matthew Payne, at The Paltry Sapien, eloquently writes:
The Obama Administration has closed the court house doors to numerous civil rights suits by those detained, tortured and kidnapped in the name of “national security.” Not to belabor the point, but any country whose national security needs to be protected by illegal detention, torture and kidnapping is not a liberal democracy. It is not even a civilized state—it is a rogue nation in every sense of the word and the Kafka-esqe equivocations of Obama’s Department of Justice grossly misusing judicial pettifogging such as “standing” do little to hide this reality. And the relentless expansion of the surveillance state makes Barack Obama the director of a nightmarish remake of The Lives of Others.
It is the police state that the United States has become that bothers me the most. We were already rapidly heading in that direction. Obama, somehow, managed to accelerate that sprint even more.
Matthew Payne continues:
As bad as Obama has been in prosecuting the Forever War…
He’s referring to the “Global War on Terror™”, not the other Bush wars Obama has continued.
…and its concomitant attack on civil liberties…, he has been a full-on disaster for the protection of civil rights.… The Democratic Party will not rein in the power of their “own” president, and many strong critics of the assault on civil rights have been silenced by either the taint of association of this rights-ignoring administration, or fear to stand up to the bullying of an arrogant and callous President for fear that a bigger bully, in the form of a GOP neo-McCarthyism, awaits in the wings.… Civil libertarians are demonized by the GOP and marginalized by the Democrats; far too many of them chose a vapid “pragmatism” by staying with the political faction that pretends to listen to them, at least around primary season.… Unfortunately in living this lie, that choosing the lesser of two evils is not choosing evil, these liberals have made themselves moral eunuchs.
We helped Iran acquire nuclear technology, strictly for peaceful purposes, you know. Even though:
…a 1974 CIA proliferation assessment stated “If [the Shah] is alive in the mid-1980s… and if other countries [particularly India] have proceeded with weapons development we have no doubt Iran will follow suit.”
Or, to paraphrase FDR, the Shah may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch!
It’s a good thing giving dangerous technology to puppet dictators never backfires.
Rick Santorum, Iowa, and the Republican Nomination
January 5, 2012
Rick Santorum has some very dangerous ideas, but I’m not at all concerned about his strong showing in Iowa. The Republicans have been cycling through all of the non-Romneys. The white Christian Iowa Republicans are so horrified that a Mormon could get their party’s nomination that they’ve been frantically searching for anyone else to vote for. Just about all of the other candidates have each spent a couple of weeks as the front runner, only to be doomed by the fact that the Iowans eventually realize that these other candidates are even more reprehensible than a Mormon!
Maybe it’s time for the Republicans to actually read the Constitution, specifically Article VI, paragraph 3, which states, in part:
…no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
Santorum can attribute his strong showing in Iowa solely to the luck of the calendar. He just happens to be the non-Romney du jour. This near-win will give him a boost that will carry him a few days longer as non-Romney than he would have reached otherwise, but his record, statements, and platform will doom him to the same fate as all the others.
The Republicans—even the batshit insane fundie Republicans—will soon come to their senses and nominate Mitt Romney. Romney is the only Republican candidate who could beat Obama, and it would be a cakewalk. Obama’s record on issues that matter to liberals is so dismal that he will receive few votes from that side. Moderates, of course, will realize that they’re no better off now than four years ago, so those votes are gone. Conservatives will decide that Mormon is better than Muslim. Romney could sleepwalk through the campaign and still pull off a victory.
All of the other Republican candidates are so extreme that if one were nominated, it would force moderates over to Obama, and it will be Obama who cakewalks to victory. Enough Republicans know this that Romney’s nomination is almost assured.
Almost. What a funny word. So fluid and undefined. You can actually sail a supertanker through an “almost”. You could probably squeeze a planet through an “almost”. You see, all Romney has to do to get the nomination is to not do or say anything extremely stupid! The funny thing about American politics, though, is that these self-destructive meltdowns happen with surprising frequency.
So now we sit back and watch for a meltdown. There’s so much carbon in the air these days, we just might see one.
Insert Joke Here
January 4, 2012
Brian just left a comment on my old Rick Santorum article, which was one of the first things ever published on this blog. I’m surprised he found it.
I just wrote a serious article about Rick Santorum’s near-win in Iowa, which I’ll be posting immediately after this. I tried very hard to avoid any double-entendres, intentional or accidental. That’s more difficult than you might think.
Since snickering at fundies is what you guys really want to do when you come to this blog, I’ll swipe a few jokes from Greta Christina. A few days ago, she posted this on her Facebook page:
Not sure which is funnier: the fact that the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote the headline, “Santorum Surges From Behind In Iowa”… or that fact that Rick Santorum re-tweeted it.
And now she has posted an entire article full of Santorum jokes. Most of them are tweets from her and Jen McCreight, as they watched the Iowa Caucus results come in. But my favorites are tweets from others:
@JoeMyGod RT @MSignorile: Tomorrow’s headline: Santorum Surges from Behind in Messy Late Night Three-Way.
@Mowgli3: Santorum gushes forth in the polls after Romney finishes early. @jennifurret
I made the mistake of going by Clown Hall today. That’s when I realized that their name isn’t descriptive enough. It’s not just a site populated by conservative clowns who bumble and stumble with illogic and misfacts. It should be called “Clown Car Hall”, because no matter how fast you shoot them down, another comes spilling out. (For the record, I am not actually advocating shooting conservatives here. Just clowns. Conservatives are human.)
The first thing spilling out of the car when I arrived was a column by Cal Thomas, titled “Death of An Atheist”. It’s an amazing accomplishment. You have to admire the craftsmanship that went into it. It is one of the most concentrated pieces of fundie fail I’ve seen in ages. I hope you have some free time. This will take a while.
[Christopher] Hitchens railed against those who believe in God. While an original writer, and smart, there was nothing original about his unbelief.
It’s true. The non-existence of God has long been established as a virtual certainty.
Such views have been expressed since the dawn of humanity. They have also been answered by some of the wisest people who have ever lived.
Not answered persuasively, but answered!
There is a difference between “smart” and “wise.”
But you can add “ass” to the end of either word to get pretty much identical meanings!
As that Scripture in which Hitchens disbelieved says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” (Proverbs 9:10)
This is a typical fundie debating tactic. They just pull quotes out of their ass the Bible and act like that’s some sort of evidence to support their claim. Here’s a quote for you, Cal:
The end of your teens is the beginning of wisdom teeth.
You can attribute that one to me. I’m sure it proves something. Did I win the debate yet?
I have always found atheists to be interesting people…
…because they just may be the world’s smallest minority group…
Actually, atheists are one of the fastest-growing minorities.
…one that gets smaller still as its members pass on and meet God face to face.
Now Cal has wandered off into the logical brush. Somebody grab a cattle prod and bring him back.
Still, atheists demand physical proof of God’s existence, as if they could bring God down and make Him into their image. What kind of God would that be?
The God of the Old Testament.
He would be their equal and, thus, not God at all.
Wasn’t that what that whole Jesus business was supposed to be about? God made flesh and all that? Then for the next 2000 years, God made into a biscuit.
Evidence, alone, has never moved anyone from unbelief to faith.
By definition, it can’t. If there’s evidence, there is no need for faith.
If proof were enough, all of the unbelieving contemporaries of Jesus (and Moses) would have believed in God because of the miracles they performed.
That suggests that they never performed any miracles. In fact, the evidence that either even existed at all is scant for the former and non-existent for the latter.
Two people presented with exactly the same information can respond in opposite ways. Faith is not based solely on facts. It is a gift from a God who exists.
It’s actually a curse from our evolutionary history. We needed to be able to make correlations based on feeble evidence. Suppose you’re a caveman walking through the forest. You hear the leaves rustle, then a tiger jumps out, yet you somehow survive (perhaps by performing a ritual human sacrifice (i.e., you trip your slow, fat cousin, so he gets eaten and you escape)). The next time you hear the leaves rustle, it’s in your best interest to assume there’s a tiger in the brush, not a squirrel.
It’s probable that religious folks have been worshiping a squirrel for the last 4000 years.
Hitchens wrote a book called “God is Not Great.” It’s a clever title, but how would he have known, since they had not been properly introduced?
They probably had been introduced. People come to my door all the time, trying to introduce me to God.
C.S. Lewis, once an atheist and thus conversant with the subject, wrote after his conversion, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
I hope that isn’t the “proof” that converted C.S. Lewis. If so, he’s even more of an intellectual featherweight than his reputation indicates. If I’m reading it correctly, that’s the old “I see the proof of God everywhere. Just look around!” argument. In other words “Somebody had to create the universe!”
It’s also a good lesson in not believing what appears to be true. The sun doesn’t rise. That’s an illusion caused by the rotation of the Earth. C.S. Lewis was not a flat Earther. He knew that was just a poetic expression. However, for millennia, people did believe that the sun rose and set. No, actually, they “knew” it. They looked around, and they saw it every day. It had to be that way.
Likewise, you can’t look at the existence of the universe and “know” that it had to be created. That is a logical jump that you have no basis for making.
Some people exist, however nervously, believing that this life is all there is. The late singer Peggy Lee put the result of such faith this way: “Is that all there is? If that’s all there is to life, then let’s break out the booze and have a ball, if that’s all there is.”
Although you can’t swill booze and engage in merriment 24/7, it is nonetheless good advice (in moderation). Too many religious people make themselves miserable in this life in order to buy themselves booze and merriment after death. The tragedy is that they are never allowed to enjoy the one life—the one existence in any form—that they will ever have.
Why contribute to charity, or perform other good deeds? Without a source to inspire charity, such acts are sentimental affectations, devoid of meaning and purpose.
What a cold, sterile life Cal Thomas leads. His only motivation for helping others is to acquire brownie points from God. It’s also selfish. Presumably he plans to spend those brownie points to buy his way into heaven.
If survival of the fittest is the rule, let only the fit survive.
The Straw Man argument actually serves two purposes. One is obvious, and one is less obvious. In its obvious use, the person making the argument invents a simplified (and often mischaracterized) version of the opponent’s position and logically dismantles that. It makes him look like the winner of the debate (at least to those who don’t understand the other side’s actual position). (The crocoduck is the most hilarious use of the Straw Man argument of all time.)
The less obvious use of the Straw Man argument is to convince the speaker himself. Cal Thomas is mischaracterizing evolution as being solely about survival of the fittest. That’s an important element, but the forces that drive selection and evolution are more complex. Furthermore, the survival of the human species is driven by more than just biological evolution. No society could endure if it lived by the animalistic “there’s always a bigger fish” rule alone.
But Cal Thomas likes his oversimplified version of evolution. He can comfortably reject that version. That version doesn’t challenge his beliefs about the universe and his place in it.
That was the sentiment of Ebenezer Scrooge before his visitation by those three spirits and his subsequent transformation. Let the poor and starving die, he said, “…and decrease the surplus population.”
It’s not just Ebenezer Scrooge:
Who is to say such a notion is wrong without a standard by which to judge wrong.
Certainly not the Libertarians or the teabaggers. I have no idea what this has to do with Christopher Hitchens’ death, but Cal Thomas brought it up.
To object to God is to create morality from a Gallup Poll. In Gallup We Trust doesn’t have the same authority.
That’s a cute line, but it’s irrelevant. Nobody is objecting to God. We’re only objecting to the behavior of some of the people who believe in him.
To his other point, we do create morality from a Gallup poll. Not an actual Gallup poll, but by the consensus of the governed. That’s how, over the centuries, we have determined that genocide, slavery, and capital punishment are wrong, to name just a few. All three of which, by the way, are approved by God as “moral” and “good”.
Hitchens was a gifted writer, but who gave him the gift?
This is a retread of the C.S. Lewis argument from above. It exists; therefore God made it that way.
Why was he not a gifted actor, surgeon or athlete? Why was he not talentless? Was it an evolutionary accident, which would mean his gift and his life were meaningless and merely a “chasing after the wind”? (See Ecclesiastes) Apparently he thought so.
And this is a retread of the “quote the Bible for proof” argument. Cal is starting to peter out (See Peter).
An atheist will tell you he doesn’t need God in order to be good, or perform good works. Maybe not, but the very notion of “good” must have both a definition and a definer.
Yes. Good is defined by the collective agreement of society. The definition of good has changed throughout history.
We cannot allow good to be defined by God. He is one of the most atrocious monsters in all of literature.
Who is the author of evil?
Based on the evidence provided in that last link, obviously God.
And if God is nonexistent, why do we call it evil?
Good point. We shouldn’t. Evil is a mythological term that has no usefulness in an enlightened society.
Is one person’s evil another person’s good? Does such a view lead to ethics that must inevitably be situational?
Yes. Not all situations are black and white.
(BTW, the essence of that quote predates the movie.)
Scripture warns, “The fool has said in his heart ‘there is no God.’” (Psalm 14:1)
I love that quote. Fundies love to slam it down on the table in triumph, as if to say “Checkmate, bitch!”
Get back to me when you come up with a better argument for that point, will you Cal?
In this season when many celebrate the object of their faith, there is no joy in the death of one who had faith that God does not exist. Hitchens now knows the truth and that can only be the worst possible news for him.
Actually, Hitchens can’t “know” that. He stopped existing a few days ago.
In the extremely unlikely chance that there is something after death, it cannot be the God and heaven described in the Bible. That book is so full of contradictions and inaccuracies that it can’t be an accurate description of the afterlife. That means that it is the fundies who will be in for the rude shock when they depart this mortal coil.
Limp Fundie Arguments
December 13, 2011
Since I have a second oddly-suggestive photograph of Kim Jong-Il, I need to write a second article. Here are some comments I found on a fundie “news” site about the Christmas trees that the South Korean fundies are putting on the border to piss off the North Koreans.
A Christian calling himself A_Proud_Infidel says:
Overseas, the Commies persecute Christianity worse than their ACLU brethren in the USA!
I don’t think the exclamation point means he’s shouting the entire comment. I suspect that’s how he always writes USA.
USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!
Along those same lines, raffaro writes:
SHIT aren’t atheists pigs trying that here in America.Looks like they have alot in common with those Staliist pigs after all !!!!!!!
Camarottajr says:
I guess we have to wait for the “JackAss In Chief,” barack hussein obama to weigh in on this after he finishes his meeting with the mu slimes about tolorance…! My bet is JackAss In Chief barack hussein obama won’t say a word, what say you?
I say he needs to meet with the Christians about tolerance.
Orent asks why we allow North Korea to continue to exist, to which Lilly Maus replies:
“Allowed to continue?”…Did you know they have the bomb??? did you know they don’t have morals ???…Now add bomb + no morals = KABOOM…
I’m not sure what evidence the “no morals” claim is based on. I’m guessing it’s because communists are atheists, so of course they have no morals!
glenp827 writes:
CHRISTMAS TREE is a pagan symbol coopted for the holiday
to which Violet asks:
Is that why makes atheists so angry? We stole their Yule Logs and conifer trees.
Yes. That’s exactly why. It has nothing to do with fundies trying to turn the United States into their own version of North Korea.
Elsewhere on that page, Violet also says:
Guess South Korea is getting a taste of what it is to be an American Christian. We deal with this all the time. Somebody is always yapping about how Christians offend them.
Actually, Christians don’t offend me, and I don’t know very many non-Christians who are offended by them. We’re just offended by their actions.
Somebody named jong (really?) writes:
God bless those that put up the Trees. Throw a bag of rice at North Korea that will shut them up. Or even better put a nativity on the US Consulate and make sure it is well lite(I am sorry I forgot we have a muslim homosexual as President and Sec. of State is also a Marxist little chance of that happening)
Not to mention the fact that we don’t have a US consulate in North Korea.
Doug has a treasure trove of gems for us:
The ungodly will go at any length to stop Christianity at all costs. They’ll even risk a war, if need be. This incident is an example of their insane quest to shut down God in our lives. Outside our borders lays a vast world of hate for Christians. If you are a Jew or Christian, they want to kill you. Bottom-line: The world hates Christians and Jews………
And inside our country, these ungodly’s, have crept in like cockroaches bringing mayhem into our streets. We were once a peaceful nation, and now we’ve become a nation in terror. They want to take God out of the equation. And let political correctness rule the day. You want troubles in this life, leave Christ out of your life, because you will get no blessings from God.
And we’ve become a nation under siege by these ungodly nations. Watch how this Christmas tree issue unfolds in N. Korea, and watch how the media will fold into “political correctness”!
