It is ironic as hell that a party that has a goal of shrinking the government and a party that extols the virtues of the private sector as being a more powerful force than government should denigrate the role of community organizers. If the Republicans weren’t hypocrites they would hold up Obama as the exact kind of community leader that drives their small, local government agenda. Instead Sarah Palin mocked Obama as having some country club sort of a career, free from all responsibility.

Here one such community organizer responds.

Look — I think the experience argument is perfectly legitimate for everyone on the Presidential tickets. McCain spent the last 26 years not being a chief executive. Same with Biden. That doesn’t disqualify them in the slightest. Obama has a great resume. Sarah Palin has an impressive resume. Let’s grill them on their record and how it supports their ambitions.

As a side note, the bulk of Palin’s “executive experience” was managing a city with an annual budget around $10 million. To an order of magnitude I manage a budget that big at the company I own. Obama is managing a budget now, for his campaign, that spends more than that in a month. I think being a mayor is good experience and it looks just fine on her resume. But it’s not some trump card.

1. Executive experience is required to be President!
But McCain doesn’t have any!
Neither does Obama!
Neither does Biden!
But Palin does, 18 whole months of it!

2. Foreign policy experience is required to be President!
Obama doesn’t have any!
Neither does Palin!
Both McCain and Biden do!

3. Washington insiders are bad.
McCain is a Washington insider!
So is Biden!
But Palin isn’t!
Neither is Obama!
But see #2! The only way to get foreign policy experience is to be a Washington insider!

4. The liberals are being mean to Palin!
CNN is being mean to Palin!
Palin is being mean to Obama!
Giuliani is being mean to Obama!

5. Obama is an elitist!
An Ivy League education is bad!
Community organizers are lame!
McCain is so rich he doesn’t know how many houses he has!

Let the hypocrisy reign!

(That is an embed from CNN, we’ll see if it works.)

It’s funny (but painful) to see CNN actually ask and demand answers to hard questions. The McCain campaign has no answer as to why they have a different standard for Sarah Palin than they do for Barak Obama when it comes to the necessary foreign policy experience to be President.

I’m on Sarah Palin’s side on this one. If she is smart, educated and well-informed I believe she can be the President of the United States. Now I’d like John McCain and all you Republicans to say the same of Barak Obama. Then we can set aside this experience argument once and for all.

As you know by now, Obama officially has the nomination of the pro-death Democratic Party. Money is flowing into his campaign from the radical homosexuals, God-haters, and baby-killers all over the country.

Yes, we on the Left love death. We want to spread death as far and wide as possible. That’s why we support war in Iraq! (Oh wait, we don’t.) That’s also why we support capital punishment! (Oh wait, we don’t.) That’s also why we want to put commercial interests over the environment, in hopes of creating a global climate crisis! (Oh wait, we don’t.)

If these idiots really believed in a culture of life it would be a philosophy that extended further than abortion. That don’t have a culture of life, they have a culture of theocracy, where their religious views are the law of the land.

I respect that some people truly believe abortion is murder. That doesn’t excuse this inane rhetoric at all. Troy Newman, President, Operation Rescue — are you an idiot.

I wonder — didn’t Sarah Palin talk to her daughter about safe sex? Did she talk to her about birth control? Apparently the abstinence approach didn’t work? That’s odd.

Note: I’m not picking on her daughter. I did many stupid things at that age, too. I do wonder if Sarah Palin’s views on birth control put her daughter at risk of sexually transmitted disease. I also wonder whether her very public pro-life “family values” will force her daughter into a teen marriage for political reasons.

Holy incompetent police state, Batman, the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota has completely lost its fucking mind.

Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was unlawfully arrested in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota at approximately 5 p.m. local time. Police violently manhandled Goodman, yanking her arm, as they arrested her. Video of her arrest can be seen here.

Perhaps you’ll recall Amy Goodman is a journalist and a fucking nun. She’s a fucking nun who was inquiring why her producers were arrested when she herself was arrested.

Democracy Now! is calling on all journalists and concerned citizens to call the office of Mayor Chris Coleman and the Ramsey County Jail and demand the immediate release of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar. These calls can be directed to: Chris Rider from Mayor Coleman’s office at 651-266-8535 and the Ramsey County Jail at 651-266-9350 (press extension 0).

I’ll be calling Mayor Coleman to ask him what the hell is going on in his city. He is either completely full of shit or completely impotent in these situations.

PZ points out this little gaff.

Sarah Palin is asked:

Will you support the right of parents to opt out their children from curricula, books, classes, or surveys, which parents consider privacy-invading or offensive to their religion or conscience? Why or why not?

To which she replies:

Yes. Parents should have the ultimate control over what their children are taught.

Later she is asked:

Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?

To which she replies:

Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.

First of all, the founding fathers had nothing to do with the pledge. “The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy (1855-1931), a Baptist minister, a Christian Socialist…”

Second, it did not contain the words “under God” until the 1950’s. It was added because “The Knights of Columbus in New York City felt that the pledge was incomplete without any reference to a deity…”

The quoted text is from Wikipedia.

So Sarah Palin has a strong opinion on something she apparently knows nothing about.

PZ also notes the irony in the answers to these two questions. Parents should decide, unless it is about the Pledge, in which case she’ll fight them!

MinnPost points out that the single-issue Christian wackos love Palin.

It looks to me like she is another Michele Bachman — perhaps slightly smarter but just as much of a party-line Right Wing ideologue.

McCain’s nomination of Palin as his VP is very interesting. First of all, the Republicans don’t know what to think. They were not very happy about it at first, but they must have gotten their marching orders because they are coming around.

Republicans are weird, though. Take, for example, this quote:

Palin brings traditional political strengths—such as gun enthusiasm and a pro-life record—to the ticket.

Gun enthusiasm is a political strength? The Righties don’t seem to realize how unimportant guns and abortion are in the real world. When it comes to issues facing America today a) they are on the wrong side of both those issues and b) they are not anywhere near the top of what people are worried about.

Except, of course, for single-issue voters who care only about those two issues. Luckily, they are a shrinking minority.

But back to Palin, it surprises me that McCain took away his main advantage over Obama, which is this inexperience argument. How can McCain hammer on Obama for inexperience when he would put a small-town mayor second in line to the Presidency? It’s true that Obama can’t very well attack Palin on the inexperience issue (even though he is much more experienced than she using normal measures of experience). But McCain just took away one of his major advantages in the debate.

It also seems like a token female gender play, trying to woo Clinton supporters. I am happy to see a woman in the race and I think we should all judge her independent of her gender. But it seems like a completely political decision, as opposed to a policy decision. This could hurt McCain as well.

I don’t think people vote for, or against, the VP, so it may not make tons of difference. But I personally don’t see McCain in a stronger position after this decision.

The Minnesota Independent has a fairly damning summary of Sarah Palin. The worst part is she seems to favor teaching creationism along side evolution:

The volatile issue of teaching creation science in public schools popped up in the Alaska governor’s race this week when Republican Sarah Palin said she thinks creationism should be taught alongside evolution in the state’s public classrooms.

Palin was answering a question from the moderator near the conclusion of Wednesday night’s televised debate on KAKM Channel 7 when she said, ‘Teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it’s so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both.’

She later clarified to say “…she would not push the state Board of Education to add such creation-based alternatives to the state’s required curriculum.”

She’s pro-life, pro-drilling-in-ANWR and she “invokes God in every decision she makes”.

I’m glad McCain chose a woman and I’m not going to condemn her myself until I learn more. But so far it does not look good.

I think this is a great ticket. Obama got where he is because he is smart and well-spoken. Biden is where he is because he rose to prominence in the Senate. I’ve heard people joke about how this should be the Biden-Obama ticket. That would be fine too.

When I think about what the most important criteria is, for me, when it comes to choosing a presidential candidate, it’s intelligence and honesty. I want to know the person is really smart and has really good judgement and will be honest with the American people. I will forgive almost any failure if I think this is true. It’s why I think Jimmy Carter was a great president, for example. I will accept failure if it is honest failure. I think Clinton was a great president for the same reasons: he as really smart and he wasn’t afraid to be honest with us. I still recall a debate where he answered a question by a doctor and he said “I’m gonna raise your taxes.” He did not try to hide that and his honesty was refreshing. (As an aside, Slick Willy was not necessarily honest in all regards and I do not give him a free pass for that, per se.) I even liked John McCain in those times that he was boldly honest. I’m seeing less and less of that McCain.

So Obama, to me, has the two most important qualities. He’s really smart and he’s not just blowing smoke up our asses. We’ll have a good-faith problem solver at the helm. That alone is a major, huge, gigantic, colossal, phenomenally large difference compared to Bush. In the intelligence/honesty department I think McCain is also an improvement over Bush. He is nowhere near as smart as Obama, though, plus he’s old, which slows down the processor a bit. He’s also been caught famously lying, like in regards to the rebel flag issue. He came clean, which I respected, but he lied about it in the first place.

Biden is really a great man. He is a liability politically because of his long voting record and the fact that he is an East Coast Liberal. We’ll be hearing all sorts of horror stories about what Biden has voted for (and against). But he is a solid guy with a solid reputation in the Senate and I love that he is boldly outspoken.

So Obama is better than McCain and way, way better than Bush and Biden is way, way better than Cheney. We have a chance to significantly upgrade our executive branch. President 2.0. Let’s do it!

Murder is the unlawful killing of a person. Fertilized eggs are not people. Thus abortion is not murder. Q.E.D.

I don’t understand at all why people believe so strongly that abortion is murder. At conception we are talking about a single celled organism. How can such a thing have civil rights? I think religion leads people to this weird view: they think God must stuff a soul in there at the moment of conception.

Let me be clear: I hold human life to be “sacred”, in a secular sense. I think personhood is the very pinnacle of our civil rights. I think we should guard human life very carefully and make certain people are not unlawfully denied the right to life, from which all other rights follow.

That is why I can’t understand people who feel so strongly for human life that they use it as their sole criterion when electing a President and yet they ignore Darfur and Iraq, not to mention good ol’ poverty, which have taken the lives of millions of people.

If you think human life is sacred, why the fuck are you so willing to kill people?

From an interesting article at People for the American Way (via The Minnesota Independent)

“Barack Obama’s choice of Joe Biden sends a clear message, true Christians need not apply in the Democratic Party,” said Dr. Gary Cass, Chairman and CEO of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission. “Instead of picking a true Christian, Obama, a fake evangelical, has selected Biden, a fake Catholic.”

The CADC proclaims its mission is to “advance religious liberty for Christians by protecting Christians from defamation, discrimination, and bigotry from any and all sources,” but that apparently doesn’t apply to those it considers “fake” Christians such as Obama and Biden. It might seem odd that an organization founded to protect Christians from defamation would among the most frequently and vocally defaming Obama’s faith, but only if you don’t understand that Cass’s mission is reserved solely for those he deems “true Christians” who have proven their faith via “actions and [holding] the beliefs personified by all of us who proclaim the name of Jesus Christ as Savior: the need to be re-born in Christ and the affirmation of historic Christianity, having a demonstrable and proven record of support for traditional Christian morality.”

It’s hilarious that an organization with the words “Christian Anti-Defamation” in their name would defame the Christian faith of Obama and Biden.

I’m an atheist but I’ve read the New Testament several times, back when I was a Catholic, and these “true Christians” seem to me like the people who Jesus would rightly reject as hypocrites.

Beware of people who tell you what God wants. They are always delusional or liars.

Lord knows WTF the problem is with supporters of Hillary Clinton. Your candidate dropped out of the race! Obama was never disrespectful to Clinton. Get over yourselves.

“Touchy, touchy, feely, feely,” said Rick Stafford, a superdelegate and a leader of Clinton’s Minnesota campaign, of the purpose of the late-night meeting. “People need to express their feelings one more time.”…Still, hundreds of Clinton supporters want to voice their support one more time for their candidate, and there are emotionally compelling events that will almost ensure she’ll get substantial first-ballot support

Via MinnPost.

I do. I care because the rat-bastard Republicans are trying to make Obama look like an elitist. McCain could buy Obama 100 times over. McCain doesn’t know how many houses he has! If the rat-bastard Republicans want to stop this utter inane nonsense about how Obama is an elitist, we can just let this issue drop. Otherwise McCain should expect a lot of questions about his extreme fucking wealth.

Republicans are the fucking kings of double-standards. They gave Kerry shit for being out of touch with common people because of his wealth. But does that apply to McCain? Of course not!

Iraq is a mess. If things improve and Iraqis get their country under control and implement peaceful, representative, secular government no one will be happier than me. I have never had the goal of watching Bush and his administration fail. Even if Iraq does improve and stabilize, it will not in any way excuse Bush of the major mistakes and the major unnecessary loss of life in Iraq.

What’s funny, though, is that Bush sent the bull in the China shop and now people are hard as hell on Obama, as if he should alone have all the answers and make all the right predictions about Iraq. It’s obvious to everyone, McCain included, I think, that it is time to get out of Iraq. Obama has suggested a policy of a reasoned withdrawal. This is a view that many, many people share. I believe the Iraqis themselves are suggesting it. Said the Obama camp:

“It is hard to understand how Sen. McCain can at once proclaim his support for the sovereign government of Iraq, and then stubbornly defy their expressed support for a timeline to remove our combat brigades from their country,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

If Obama is elected President he will be inheriting Bush’s mess and it may not go 100% smoothly. Given how unsmoothly it has gone so far, and how tolerant the Right has been with it, I’m sure they will be very supportive and tolerant of Obama’s efforts.

Yeah right.

Coleman is running the same ad over and over with some angry old lady Democrat saying that Franken is a bad, bad man because he said off color things in his career as a comedian.

I have no respect for Coleman. But, c’mon, man, is that the best you’ve got? There is not a single mention of an issue nor a single mention of a quality or position of Coleman in the ad. It’s just a half-ass hatchet job of Franken based on something we all know — he was a comedy writer and satirist. Then Coleman says “I approve this message” at the end. What a hack.

The Franken ad I see playing over and over talks about things Franken has done and never mentions Coleman. In fact, he has a Republican from Texas endorsing him.

Franken will be 100 times the Senator that Coleman has been. I think we actually have an opportunity to have a Wellstone-like Senator in Franken and I support him completely.

From PZ Myers, of course:

Natural selection is such a clear, simple idea that biologists around the world were wacking themselves in the forehead when they read [Darwin's] book, saying, “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that!” He laid out the facts as everybody already knew them, with simple and irrefutible logic leading to an undeniable conclusion. The members of a species exhibit heritable variability; they don’t all look alike. Not all individuals are equally successful at reproducing or surviving, and it is those variants that are best able to live under existing conditions that will leave the most offspring, meaning that the average composition of the next generation will change. Because the forms least able to thrive will not thrive, the population as a whole will slowly drift in the direction of optimality.

The emphasis is mine. Natural selection really is a brilliant and somewhat obvious theory.

Here’s the deal — almost every thinking person thinks the Westboro Baptist Church is completely full of shit. They are evil, intolerant little fucks who put words into God’s mouth and act as if they have the complete and utter backing of the most supreme being in the universe, even as they spread hate and intolerance throughout the nation.

The problem is — they are no different from any other religious sect. ALL OF THEM make assumptions about what God wants and what God likes and doesn’t like. I don’t believe that any of you know what God wants. I don’t believe that any of you have some direct line of communication to God and I don’t believe that an ancient, tortured text like the Bible includes the true word of God in any way, shape or form.

So religion is arbitrary. It’s made up.

Now if you take as your initial premise that there is a God and that he did create and does interact with us pitiful humans, things get complicated. If you pull this initial premise out of your ass, it changes how you think about this stuff. You are assuming there is truth and you need to find those things which support it. You pick and choose from the Bible and make your own cafeteria-style faith based on your intuitions. It’s still just as arbitrary as the Westboro Baptist Church.

People accuse atheists of being moral relativists, but really it is religious people who invent a confused and contradictory morality out of thin air. This is why we have extremist Islam, fag-hating Christians and cults like the Mormons who have sex with minors and systematically abuse women.

Yes, many religious people are good people and many religious organization do good things in the world. But it’s all based on a house of cards and a fictional God and we are right to reject it.

Obama: “Hi, I’m a Mac”. McCain: “Hi, I’m a PC.”

There are some similarities between these politicians and the Mac/PC war. People who favor PCs really don’t like how much people who like Macs like their Macs. I’ll never quite understand this. Now the same thing seems to be happening in the presidential race. McCain and the Right are trying to paint the enthusiasm that people have for Obama as a bad thing. Like he is a flash-in-the-pan celebrity like Paris Hilton. I guess they think they can get people to turn their back on Obama if they try to spin his popularity as a cult of personality. You know, like Hitler.

I’ve been confused by this whole thing. Bush’s approval rating is lower than Nixon’s was. It’s currently at 25%. He has disappointed so many people on the Right and apparently roughly half of them disapprove of his overall job performance. The Republicans controlled all three branches of government and yet the economy is in trouble, the wars drag on, oil prices are triple what they were — this list really does go on and on.

Given that, you would think that some major changes are needed. Obama’s popularity is related to this thirst for change. Here is a young, bright man who has led an accomplished life and run a great campaign. His views differ from Bush on virtually everything. He has the support of many smart, experienced people.

So…

A. What the fuck is wrong with being popular? Isn’t that how people win elections?

B. Why can’t people who disapprove of Bush consider voting for Obama? Clearly McCain is much closer to Bush on virtually every issue. If you don’t approve of Bush why would you support someone who has such similar views?

I hope that Obama gets more popular. I want the US to have a wildly popular president like Finland does. I want him to do such a great job that people who still have those W stickers on their car can’t help but to admit that Obama is a great president.

Listen up Republicans — we went with your man for the last 8 years and his performance has been, at best, debatable. 3/4 Americans disapprove of his job performance. Do you really think 4 years of a Democratic president is going to deeply harm America? Do you think you can trust us for 1 goddamn term and see what happens?

I know that Republicans are not evil and yet they constantly act like they are. The latest example is this off-shore drilling nonsense. If you think the solution to $4 gasoline is off-shore drilling you are an idiot. The Republicans want to increase off-shore drilling to make it seem like they are doing something. They think this will cool off the speculation that is going on.

It’s completely retarded. I am not at all opposed to America making the most of our natural resources. There is certainly new drilling which makes sense to do. But this placebo band-aid that the Republicans are pushing for is completely wrong-headed.

First of all, demand for oil is rising and supply is nearing its peak. The speculators are right! The price of oil, in the long term, is going nowhere but up. Little band-ads like releasing oil from the strategic oil reserve or increasing off-shore drilling will not change that or even meaningfully postpone it.

Second, we have a real opportunity for leadership. Leaders get people to understand difficult issues. They keep people’s feet on the ground. Life is not a fairy tale. There are ugly realities. One major ugly reality is the fact that we have an unsustainable appetite for oil. This takes our eye off the ball, the very important ball, which is that we can invent and innovate ourselves out of this problem! There is no shortage of energy on Earth. What there is a shortage of are leaders willing to push us, kicking and screaming if necessary, to the energy opportunities of tomorrow.

Congress has a bill to grant tax incentives for companies that invest in solar and wind power. The Republicans stopped it, as I noted in a previous post, because they objected to “delaying a tax break for multinational companies and preventing hedge fund managers from deferring some overseas profits.”

The Republicans are crying like little babies because Pelosi wouldn’t bring the off-shore drilling to a vote and at the same time they undermine solar and wind energy to protect the richest of the rich in this country?

How can anyone support this viewpoint?

The Democrats are just as lame at these games as the Republicans but at least their agenda is based on the viable and necessary goal of true energy independence. The Republicans are still fixated on oil and low taxes for the richest of the rich. It’s an antiquated agenda that makes no sense.

Here is my public FriendFeed.

From Political Radar:

“What Senator McCain neglected to mention was that during those thirty years, he was in Washington for twenty-six of them. And in all that time, he did little to reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” Obama said. “So when Senator McCain talks about the failure of politicians in Washington to do anything about our energy crisis, it’s important to remember that he’s been a part of that failure.”

Lest anyone think I am blind to Obama’s failings, I think it is lame that he softening on the strategic oil reserve and off-shore drilling. Neither of those are solutions to our problems.

Rep. Michele Bachmann is just not very smart. She’s also an evil See You Next Tuesday but this post is about the former, her utter lack of intelligence.

The Minnesota Independent is reporting that Bachmann slams Democrats for not passing a bill for a tax credit for solar and wind energy. The funny part — she voted against it! The other funny part, such a bill did pass!

Please, Stillwater, MN, get rid of this embarrassing, retarded and evil woman and elect someone sensible to represent you.

It occurs to me that getting elected and being a great leader are two different things. Both these candidates right now, McCain and Obama, are in the process of trying to get elected. They can’t lead if they don’t get elected. The electorate is fickle and hard to predict. Many are uninformed on issues and do more of a “gut check” to make their decision. Others are party ideologues and others still are people with complex values that span the candidates and parties.

Bush, in my opinion, did the classic bait-and-switch, pretending to be a compassionate conservative while he was really very much a divider and not a uniter. I think a lot of people that voted for Bush regret it. At the same time, Gore and Kerry were so over-handled and wishy-washy that they did not give us a good alternatives.

With this race, it seems to me that Obama is tacking to the center and McCain is tacking to the right, both doing so in order to get the most broad base of support as possible. With Obama, he has the left locked up but needs the center to be successful. McCain does pretty well with the center but has alienated the far right.

On the one hand, I really believe the best way to get elected is to be utterly honest and true to your convictions and damn the consequences. I suspect that every political advisor on both sides disagrees with me. Thus we have this complicated and depressing “moving target” of positions, where the candidates try to reconcile their convictions with the reactions of the voters.

I personally wish someone would shake Obama and say “be utterly honest and true to your convictions and damn the consequences” but there is a very good chance he would not get elected if he did. Thus everything is more nuanced. I also wish McCain would hold true to those areas where he disagrees with the far right wing of the Republican party. We need a rational approach to immigration, not a black and white approach. Torture should be so off the table it never comes up at all. Campaign finance is a cluster fuck that hurts America badly. McCain was right on these issues and I suspect he will be a party-line Right Winger on them by the end.

So people will accuse them both of flip-flopping and pandering. I’ll just say it is your fault. We could punish people for trying to get elected but these tactics work and that’s why they do them and the electorate is to blame.

H.R. 6615: To provide for the transport of the enemy combatants detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to Washington, D.C., where the United States Supreme Court will be able to more effectively micromanage the detainees by holding them on the Supreme Court grounds, and for other purposes.

I love how these guys adore the Supreme Court when they agree with them and demonize them when they don’t. Doesn’t it suck when the Supreme Court micromanages your torture and indefinite incarceration without due process agenda?

It reminds me of the hatred that some people have for the ACLU. Raise your hand if you are anti-civil liberties! Who the fuck is anti-civil liberties? Just the people who want to decide who gets civil liberties and who doesn’t. They go by the name “Republicans“.

Apple is the latest company to release a product without having enough supply to meet demand. If this is a marketing tactic it is the dumbest goddamn marketing tactic I have ever heard of. You still can’t buy a Wii, for example, from amazon.com. WTF, guys, do you know anything at all about business? Now Apple can’t keep the new iPhone 3G in the stores. Did you not know the launch date was coming up? Whose job was it to make sure you could actually sell the goddamn phones? Fire that person.

In the past when Apple had popular product launches you could walk in the store on Day 1 and buy it. Now Apple has joined the ranks of companies so stupid they let supply limit their sales rather than demand. There is a phrase for this: bad planning.

Here’s the problem: people on the right have a caricature view of Obama and people on the left have a caricature view of McCain. If your only info on Obama comes from Powerline and your info on McCain comes from the Huffington Post, you are not getting good information.

Neither of these men are perfect. They are politicians and they are trying to get elected. Both of them, unfortunately, will say or do whatever it takes to get elected. This is nothing new. You’ll recall that George W. Bush presented himself as a compassionate conservative in the first election. He was nothing of the sort. He lied his way into office. Now it looks like either Obama or McCain will try to lie their way into office as well.

It doesn’t make me happy, the utter balls-less-ness of our presidential campaigns. Both candidates are wooing the center and it makes them look like “empty suited pander machines”.

But this is the bed we must lie in. Earlier I asked for a nice clean election. Clearly that is not going to happen. Still, I’d like us all to abandon these caricature views of the candidates. I get pissed off when people dismiss Obama and I get pissed off when people try to paint McCain with a broad brush. Neither of these men are as bad as the other side says they are or as good as their side says they are.

The truth is these are both accomplished men and they will both make great presidents. If you find yourself dismissing either of them you are not getting very good information.

There is no way I’m going to vote for McCain. I’ve watched him too long and I understand his positions too well to support him. I think comparing him to Bush is completely fair and voters who vote for him should be clear on their similarities. But I’m not going to resort to lame, shallow name-calling tactics and neither should you.

This is awesome:

The Great Desecration

Nothing must be held sacred. Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your lord, you are not disciples of any charismatic prophet. You are all human beings who must make your way through your life by thinking and learning, and you have the job of advancing humanities’ knowledge by winnowing out the errors of past generations and finding deeper understanding of reality. You will not find wisdom in rituals and sacraments and dogma

Just want to chime in on the PZ Myers vs. Catholics thing.

It is not rational to expect people to hold sacred what you hold sacred. As PZ said in a recent post on the controversy: “Your personal sense of the sacred in a piece of bread dough is absurd to me and imposes on me no sense of obligation.”

Most of the criticism towards PZ is that he was disrespectful and rude. I think these people forget that he was reacting to a story where Catholics were threatening bodily harm to a person over a cracker. Being rude is a petty and completely forgivable crime in light of the vast hypocrisy and irrationality of threatening to kill someone over your religious beliefs.

Said Myers in his original post: “That’s right. Crazy Christian fanatics right here in our own country have been threatening to kill a young man over a cracker. This is insane. These people are demented fuckwits.”

Myers was not saying that all Catholics are demented fuckwits he was saying Catholics who send death threats to someone over this are demented fuckwits and he is obviously right. I don’t think he would have gone out of his way to talk of desecrating the sacred items of Catholics if he wasn’t reacting to the completely wacko nutjobs who don’t see the sad irony in threatening to kill someone over Jesus.

So Catholics, relax. Your crazy superstitions are safe. Keep on keeping on. Let Jesus handle this one rather than complete dipshits like Bill Donohue.

Here is the synopsis:

1. Two writers from Jezebel go on a comedy show hosted by Lizz Winstead, a co-creator (or something) of the Daily Show.
2. The show turns out pretty lame and uncomfortable and not that funny.
3. Lizz Winstead proceeds to lambast the Jezebel writers (and cross posts it on the Huffington Post), accusing them of being drunks, idiots and bad role models. The commenters hog pile on.
4. One of the writers, “Slut Machine” aka Tracie Egan, links to a video of Lizz Winstead acting like a complete bitch.

It’s all fascinating and hilarious, IMHO.

Here is my quick analysis:

1. It’s unfair to invite people on a comedy show and then grill them and expect them to be role models for 15-year old girls. I say all sorts of stupid things when I’m trying to be funny.

2. They said some things that sound pretty stupid unless you think they are funny, which I kinda do. Like she said “I don’t get raped because I live in Williamsburg, and all the guys there are pussies.” and “And I know it’s an irresponsible thing to say, but it’s (pulling out) The Most Fun Way Not To Get Pregnant”. That’s hilarious. Unless you think rape can never be funny and jokes about unsafe sex are deeply harmful to young people in light of the current AIDS epidemic.

3. With that said, I’m sure Lizz Winstead is a smart and well-meaning person but instead of writing this off as bad humor she interpreted it as some major failure in these young women and I think it was unfair.

IMPEACHMENT!

Let’s ask 2 questions:

1. In retrospect, was it a good idea to invade Iraq?
2. Given that we are in Iraq, what is the best course of action?

My answers: 1) Of course not. It represents a complete failure of foreign policy. This is universally agreed upon with the exception of the ultra-wacko-wing of the Right wing. 2) We should transition to an international non-US-led peace-keeping and reconstruction effort and we should completely withdraw troops from Iraq except to the extent that we participate in that effort.

What would McCain say? What would Obama say? What do you say?

‘Cause the thing is — the answers to these questions basically tell you the foreign policy philosophy of the respondent. If you don’t question our actions in Iraq given what we know today, you are a hardcore imperialist hawk. Given what we know today it did not warrant unilateral US military action in Iraq, no question about it. We could have kept playing the diplomacy game just like we do with North Korea and Iran. Only people who want to control the Middle East for strategic control of the oil think Iraq was a good idea.

For #2, given #1, can we admit a mistake? Can America be humble? Can we do the right thing after a mistake?

As for the war on terror, it is separate from the war in Iraq. The sects in Iraq will have to come to some equilibrium. Everyone wants to start putting things back together. The terrorists, to the extent they are there at all, will be demotivated by peace and prosperity. The US military is impeding, not aiding, the transition to self rule. That “the surge is working”, if it is, is proof of this. Peace is proportional to the number of troops on the ground in that way of thinking. It’s untenable. Peace has to be proportional to less troops on the ground if we are to be successful.

McCain is Bush on Iraq. I know he would try his best to solve it his way. We would all hope that President McCain would be a greater leader and inspire greater leadership from his cabinet. But his policy is still basically the same as Bush’s. How can anyone be convinced that the Bush doctrine in Iraq is credible!

No matter how much you disagree with my answers, Bush’s answers are the problem and McCain basically agrees with Bush on Iraq. QED, McCain cannot be trusted with the presidency.

From MinnPost:

Just 23 percent of Americans live in rural areas, and their roads carry less than half of the nation’s traffic. Yet they account for more than half of the nation’s vehicular deaths, according to a report issued this year by the U.S. Dept. of Transportation. In 2006, for example, 55 percent of all motor vehicle fatalities occurred in rural crashes.
…
One reason is that more rural residents shun seat belts, according to the national report. Last year 84 percent of American in urban areas said they buckle up compared to 78 percent in rural areas. A University of Minnesota study reported in December found that pickup truck drivers were the least likely in the state to use the belts.

Your Deep Thought for the 4th of July — the notion that Saddam Hussein was such a clear and present danger to the US that we needed to spend 3 trillion dollar and sacrifice 5000 soldiers to dispose him is insane. We should not be in Iraq. McCain, nice guy that he is, will continue this insane agenda.

Happiness is a process. I used to say that happiness only occurs in retrospect. That’s probably true for a lot of people. It doesn’t have to be, though. A lot of the whole “be here now” concept is just a matter of realizing how wonderful your life is, with all its warts and struggles. You’re a miracle — with feet that walk, eyes that see and a brain that thinks. You are a survivor. A raging success.

Happiness is the craft of enjoying yourself, forgiving yourself and bettering yourself, a little every day.

I have to admit, I don’t like Teresa Nielsen Hayden. She has always struck me as a condescending know-it-all, even here on my own blog.

Then there is this shit storm and this utter bullshit of a post explaining what happened:

Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her.

So they deleted unpublished all references to Violet Blue on their site.

On the one hand, they say they don’t want to lend her credibility and on the other they say, innocently, that all sites delete content for various reason, as if they were just doing some regular maintenance.

You can’t have it both ways: did you unpublish because of this credibility thing or did you unpublish because of regular maintenance? Says Hayden: I’m almost impressed by the pretentious meanings people have been reading into “unpublish.”

Speaking of pretentious, do you think unpublish is actually different than delete in any tangible way to visitors on the web? Of course not. So quit this word parsing nonsense please and get your story straight.

I do agree that Boing Boing can do whatever the hell they want. But this looks like a lover’s spat gone public and it makes Boing Boing look like idiots. Their response makes them look even worse.

Just say “she pissed us off so we deleted every mention of her out of spite”. Then we’ll say, OK, fine, you little babies. Instead they pretend they are so above the fray and so mature and get this wordsmith to spin it for them like, what’s the big deal about regular maintenance?

The big deal is it’s fucking lame to unpublish posts about someone for any reason. Yes, you are free to do it, it’s still lame. The reaction you are getting from this, Boing Boing, is because you did something lame. Just admit it.

Via UTI, this is really funny: Ask Calvin’s Dad

I blog when I’m mad a lot because being mad is a very inspiring feeling. I don’t mean that I like being mad, I don’t. I don’t like it at all. But when I am mad I am motivated to change things.

I’m not a violent person and I abhor violence. It represents so many failures. Violence is never the best thing except when it is the only thing.

This poor woman was raped by a gang of men. I don’t want to rehabilitate those men. I don’t want to make up for their unfortunate upbringing, their shitty parents, their fucked up role models. I don’t give a rat’s ass that these men, some would say, are victims. There is not a single atom of sympathy in me anywhere for these men. I want them killed. I want them beaten up with baseball bats or raped to death in prison. I want the remainder of their lives to be a living hell of regret at the horror they unleashed on this woman. I want them to whimper and cry like little babies as they suffer and suffer in humiliation and pain. I want their lives over except in those ways they can be made worse than death.

This is why wars start. In the olden days of tribal warfare, a gang of men would go over to this house and kill every male in a 6 block radius. You are either for us or against us and if you do this shit or harbor people that do this shit, we are taking you out. Then those people would get mad and come back and kill people over here, and so on.

Note I do not know the race of any of the parties involved. I’m not talking about race wars I’m talking about tribal wars. Those two have often been strongly correlated in the past. It’s not really the case any more today. In this case the tribes are peaceful law abiding people on one side and gangsters and criminals on the other. That’s why our jails are full of gangsters and criminals. Unfortunately our streets are too.

In the end, like it or not, laws are enforced, literally and philosophically, with violence.

Isn’t it amazing? During the 1st round of the election in Zimbabwe Tsvangirai won a slim majority of votes. In the runoff he got only 10% of the vote. I guess a lot of people changed their minds?

Shouldn’t someone kill Mugabe?

Dear homophobes — fuck you. Dear GLBT folks, bless you! Be yourself and damn the consequences.

From cectic.com (via UTI):

Uproar over prayer service for gays grows

The archdiocese is now dictating to people who they can and cannot pray for.

WWJD? Seriously, what the fuck would Jesus do? He would be at this prayer service.

As an ex-Catholic atheist, I see St. Joan of Arc Church as one of the few good Catholic churches left in the world.

We have 2 good presidential candidates in Barack Obama and John McCain. I like John McCain more than I ever liked Bush and I like Barack Obama better than either Al Gore or John Kerry. These are two good candidates and two good men.

Now it’s inevitable that the extremists in either party will sling mud and pull all sorts of dirty tricks. All they need to do is hide behind empty shell companies and buy advertising. Given the current laws we have, we can’t stop these assholes from playing dirty. Thus we must do our best to ignore it. The candidates on both sides should denounce it emphatically and ask people who are supporting them to not do it.

The fair game, in my opinion, is 2 issues:

1. What qualities does the candidate have as a person and a leader.
2. What are his positions on the issues.

Those are the only two valid discussions we should have.

Now to the issue of guilt by association — it’s a gray one, in a sense, because whom you choose to associate with does lend insight into #1 above. On the other hand, we should never take some other person’s views as a proxy for the candidate’s views. The candidates can speak for themselves! So if some advisor to Obama is a racist, for example, we cannot infer something about Obama’s views from this. If McCain has a supporter who is an ardent theocrat, we can’t assume that McCain shares that view.

If McCain, though, goes to Bob Jones University (or Obama goes to, say, The Sierra Club) and proclaims what a great institution it is, then he is inviting assumptions.

Above all I’m praying to God (and that from an atheist) that the candidates themselves take the moral high ground. Both campaigns will be looking for every advantage, but being above the pissing match should be an advantage. Let’s pick the candidate who stays on the issues, has intelligent views on the issues and who avoids the slash and burn bullshit of “Swift Boat” politics.

The folks at Effect Measure have a great post on the war on science and they make a very tangible point:

The attack on the science has two components. The first is the most obvious: to use what appear to be scientific arguments to cast doubt on what the scientific community deems valid arguments about climate change. But the second may be the most important: to do it in a way that casts aspersions on all kinds of scientific argument. The attackers don’t care if they are accused of political or economic bias in making their own scientific arguments because one of their objectives is to establish a covert narrative that says science is always biased and tainted by political corruption. The aim is to destroy the moral authority of science, not its factual basis. They then erect a new standard based on economic promise and the virtues of “progress” and modernity.

I’ve said before that scientists tend to be liberals. It’s just a fact, just like big business guys tend to be conservatives. I don’t think either side needs to apologize for this. But the Right Wing hates this because science does hold a special place in our debates. You can’t argue about issues like climate change, embryonic stem cell research or natural selection without involving science and the fact that all the scientists are on the Left makes it seem, to some, that “science” is just a political tactic to win debates. The above quoted paragraph makes quite clear how the Right Wing has chosen to fight this: just claim that all science is biased!

I interviewed a particle physicist lately (which I will soon post over at Slacker Astronomy) and he said, and I quote, “I don’t believe anything.”. He has trained himself as a scientist to not believe things — he either knows or he doesn’t know and “knowing” involves a file cabinet full of data and research. He has purged himself of belief because it is a liability as a scientist.

So, I’m sorry, you sad little Righties. Science is not a tactic and when your beliefs are in opposition with science your beliefs needs to be modified.

This sucks. Tim Russert was one of the best guys out there.

I called the doctor today because my infant son was exposed to chicken pox. The person on the phone, after verifying my identify thoroughly (which I appreciate) proceeded to tell me that someone else had already called the doctor on behalf of my son but she could not tell me who it was.

So…the hospital can’t tell me, the father of my son, who called the hospital about my son? That is fucking insane.

It’s probably related to all you divorced people who hate your ex. If this was a rational world, not only would they be able to tell me who is calling the hospital on behalf of my son, they would fucking call me and tell me about it. Apparently being the legal parent and guardian of my son doesn’t give me the privilege of knowing who is getting medical care for my son? Again, that is fucking insane.

I realize that MNDot and DOT’s around the country are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. We hate road construction but we also hate under-maintained or under-capacity roads. The pain is impossible to avoid.

But I think that people in charge of these projects vastly underestimate the amount of economic potential that they waste because the time that people waste in traffic jams is not on their budget. There is no one at the table looking after the interest of commuters. Especially in these times of high fuel costs, it is irresponsible and negligent to assume that there is no cost associated with inconveniencing drivers. There are very, very high costs — lost productivity, wasted fuel and increased air pollution, not to mention the human cost in terms of stress and reduction of family time.

These people are pissed off about it and they should be. MNDot has made tons of shitty decisions in the wake of the 35W bridge collapse. They completely ignore the impact on drivers of these shitty decisions and we should throw the bums out.

It just cracks me up that on the Internet engineers get woken up by pagers if there is congestion or outages. On the roadways, it is just expected that the system totally breaks down several times per day. It’s unsafe, it reduces the quality of life, it wastes energy and we have to prioritize modernization of our urban roadways. But our governor is too much of an ideological chicken shit to raise the money to get it done.

This is entertaining in so many ways.

Playboy Scouts YouTube For Playmates

Here, listen to this in the background while you read this: Play Music

It occurs to me that people go through 3 stages in their life:

1. Having no money.
2. Having negative amounts of money.
3. Having positive amounts of money.

That’s how it went for me, anyway. I had no money during high school and college. I had debt after college. Then I had a little money for a while during my Prince years and then I went into debt again when I started my first business. After I sold that business it was the first time I had the opportunity to think about saving money.

I’m not cheap and I’m not particularly frugal but at the same time, I have very modest tastes. Luxury and exclusivity are abhorrent concepts to me. The things I want, for the most part, money can’t buy.

Still…all of us get old someday and we’d all like to retire to a comfortable life of some sort. It’s foolish not to take care of business. I’m actually quite jealous of academics who get tenure and can look forward to a paycheck until the day they die. That’s not the life I lead. The only way I get to a comfortable retirement is to put it away now.

The song I linked above (which you aren’t listening to) I wrote a long time ago when I had more money than time. When you are in that situation, it does not seem worth it. I will not become one of those people who put money before my kids or my family or my own interests and desires (and maybe even a vice or two). Money is a utility. It’s has no value in and of itself. I’m going to take care of business but I’m not going to whore my life out for money.

That’s actually why I’m so proud of my business, Clockwork. We put a lot of value on quality of life and we have a lot of fun as a result.

I want to make a nice living and earn a nice retirement but I want to do it honorably.

The Liberal Debutante posted Why Atheists Annoy Me. I’m sure she is a very nice, smart person but I find that article completely annoying because it repeats all the same, lame criticisms that atheists are constantly barraged with by theists. It gets even worse in the comments.

It’s annoying because the other side of this little debate is full of ridiculously self-righteous people who believe they are going to heaven and we are going to hell. They, in their weird little minds, literally have God on their side. If you take as your initial premise that your actions are sanctioned by God and those on the other side are damned by God, we are not going to have a real conversation. Thus, we don’t. Atheists do a great job of talking to other atheists and theists do a great job of talking to other theists. We virtually never really talk to each other. (I’ll point out as an exception my excellent interview with Ernan McMullin.)

So, to quickly run down her list, lectures are not annoying, conferences are not annoying, Dawkins is not annoying, intelligence should not even be on that list, atheists are probably the most open minded people on earth, to a degree that is shocking to many theists, atheists are positive and spirituality is a feeling that is always better explained with non-supernatural explanations.

Dear Katie, if your life is a monoculture of atheism, yes, you should be annoyed. If it’s not, please go back and delete this post! It’s the equivalent of writing a post called “Why Women Annoy Me”. Some women are annoying. Some men are annoying. Some theists are annoying. Some atheists are annoying. The list goes on and nothing good comes from it.

Micadelic said:

What I am pointing out also goes to why you Obama cultists are so clueless. You all do not understand America, or the American electorate. You elitists long for this country to be something that (hopefully) it will never be. You don’t understand the majority of “gun-loving, bitter, religious, stupid people” that must be won over in order to be elected to lead them. You just do not get it. You all are so smart you’re stupid. You live in these bubbles where your views are continually reinforced, so much so you start to believe they are mainstream.

The problem with this point, Micadelic, is that it is really 50/50 in this country, as we saw in the last couple of elections. I agree, there are many people who disagree with me. There are also many, many people who agree with me.

I am wondering about the word “elitist”. I think your average gun-loving, pro-life, fag-hating redneck is wrong about a lot of things. That is not to say they are bad people, they are not, and I know and love many a gun-loving, pro-life, fag-hating redneck. But I argue with them and I argue based on thinking. I admit it! I base my arguments on thinking. I try to gather facts and information and think about all sides of an issue. Then I try to use my best judgment, based on balancing my principles with what I think is practical and achievable.

Let’s use guns as an example, the data is in and the US has more guns deaths, by far, than any other westernized country. The US also has the most gun proliferation in the westernized world. Prior to discussing what our policy should be, you have to be an idiot if you don’t see causation between the vast proliferation of guns in the US and the vastly higher incidents of gun deaths.

I’m not anti-gun. I have no desire to deprive rednecks of their guns. But the streets of Minneapolis are very different from the farms of northern Minnesota. Cops are in grave danger every day due to the proliferation of guns. Do you think we can take that into account when we debate gun policy? Am I an “elitist” because I think that, yes, god dammit, we have to be able to debate gun policy?

The 50% of the people you are supporting in the above paragraph think that gun policy should be off the table. They hated the Brady Bill and they’ve worked to thwart any effort to debate gun policy. They are wrong and I’m not going to pander to them to get their vote.

If you think gun policy should be off the table, that doctors should be thrown in jail for performing abortions and that gay people should be denied spousal rights and benefits, you’re wrong. I can’t care if you have a majority or not, you’re wrong. A majority of people were in favor of slavery, too. Populism can be just as bad, or worse, than elitism.

I think smart, educated and well-informed people should run this country. I think ignorant, uneducated and uninformed people should not. Do you disagree? One could argue that “smart, educated and well-informed” constitutes an elite. If so, I’m an elitist.

It’s sad to see that U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum has trouble with context switches. Yes, 8 years ago Al Franken wrote an off-color piece for Playboy. She said:

“As a woman, mother, a former teacher and an elected official, I find this material completely unacceptable,” McCollum told the Star Tribune.

I bet you don’t subscribe to Playboy then, huh? Good! That’s how the marketplace of ideas works. If you don’t want to read things like people joking about pornography, you are not required to read it.

Franken’s office responded:

“Al understands, and the people of Minnesota understand, the difference between what a satirist does and what a senator does,” Franken campaign spokesman Andy Barr told the Associated Press. “It’s unfortunate that she’s trying to create divisions in our party rather than working with other DFLers (Minnesota Democrats) to take on the special-interest senator.”

Listen up, Democrats: you’ll recall we had a governor in this state named Jesse Ventura. You floated up a limp whale of a candidate against him and you lost. The people of Minnesota are real people and we don’t mind that our elected officials are real people. Al Franken is a huge liability if you think like the people who lost against Jesse Ventura. He’s a huge asset if you think that honesty, humor and non-career politicians are a good thing. Franken will trounce Coleman unless you guys keep on this puritan bullshit. Al Franken has spent most of his life being a comedian. There are all sorts of off-color remarks in his past. We don’t care.

People keep trying to bring up Obama’s “inexperience”. I have two objections to this. 1) He is a very accomplished person professionally and 2) Why is it, all of a sudden, that people think the only ones capable of being President are career politicians? Who else has direct foreign policy experience except people in government? Are we non-politicians so stupid and so ill-informed that we could never be considered for President?

No, of course not. Obama has a law degree from Harvard and he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was professor and a lawyer before serving in both the state senate and the US Senate. He has more government experience that probably 99.99% of the people in the country.

By contrast, Ronald Reagan was the governor of California for 2 terms. That is the sum total of his political experience. Note that this includes no foreign policy experience. Oh I guess I should mention he was the president of the Screen Actors Guild.

Obama is more experienced and more educated than Reagan was and much better prepared to be President.

Obama is not perfect. I disagree with some of his positions. But STFU with this bullshit that he is incapable of doing the job. He is completely capable and he represents a welcome change from the 8 years of incompetence we just endured.

I was looking at my stats and saw this gem in the search terms “women easy to fuck age”.

Here is my new revelation: we’re doing this wrong. What we are doing is expecting a rational compromise to come out of political warfare. We are expecting the compromise to occur on the global level — lots of righties, lots of lefties and hopefully something gets done somewhere in the middle.

That’s wrong. What we need to do is be prepared to compromise ourselves, internally, in terms of how we elect our leaders. This is exemplified easiest as “single issue politics”. There is not a more irrational strategy than single issue politics. We must accommodate multi-issue politics in our decisions and we have to be immune to the constant pressure by single-issue institutions to do otherwise.

There are conservative values I agree with. Many conservatives share some of my liberals values. This is not binary. We need to elect sensible, thinking people who really want to solve problems. That is more important than electing people who punch the same answer as you on the scorecard.

For example: Hey, Righties, could you live with someone who raised taxes on you if they delivered a robust economy? Hey, Lefties, could you live with fewer social programs if they delivered you situation where fewer people needed it? Can we worry a little more about the strategies and less about the tactics?

Some of the goals are a good standard of living, a robust economy, peaceful relationships with the world, minimal government interference in our lives and a just and equitable society. Can we agree on that? If so, can we be ready to compromise on the tactics and methods to achieve these things?

The compromise doesn’t happen “out there”. It happens in you and in me and it happens when we look at the big picture. We need better leaders. We have the power to select better leaders. We have to stop electing ideologues and start electing problem solvers. You’re the only one who can do that.

I recently added I guess what you would call a sex blog to my Google Reader. I’m as obsessed with sex as most men but I haven’t spent much time reading sex writing or sex blogs. This one has been pretty entertaining, though. It’s called Reverse Cowgirl by writer Susannah Breslin and a friend sent me the link because of a great interview with a Flickr photographer I like — Merkley???.

It’s NSFW most of the time and she talks about the sex industry in a very frank way. She is one of the porn-friendly feminists out there. As someone who thinks people looking at naked people is about the most natural thing in the world, it is kind of refreshing to read.

I would probably write about sex if I wasn’t so paranoid about my readers who are professional colleagues or family members…

I really can’t add much to this article at the Minnesota Monitor: Rightwing blogs decry Obama’s meeting with imam Bush kissed except to try to point attention to it.

I have a challenge for conservatives and middle of the road Republicans — give Obama a chance. Just give the man a chance. John “Bush 3.0″ McCain represents nothing more than a minor tweaking to Bush’s policies on Iraq and the economy. When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. I know the far right could never vote for Obama but many of you that voted for Bush and were disappointed owe it to yourselves to listen to Obama and give him a chance to earn your support. I don’t agree with Obama on every issue. It’s not required that you agree with a candidate on every issue. Separate the person from the political party and give each candidate a fair shot at your support.

I respect John McCain. I really hope he doesn’t give me reason to withdraw that respect during this campaign. I agree with McCain to some extent on several issues, I respectfully disagree on some issues and I think he is dead wrong on some issues. I will listen to him during this campaign and I hope he surprises me. The Dept. of Opinion Manipulation in the Republican party is going to try to make him say all sorts of stuff*. I hope he doesn’t say it.

* I was dismayed that McCain went to the NRA with same old tired and incorrect bullshit about how Democrats want to take your guns away. I think Obama should go talk to the NRA and say “how long are you gonna let Republicans buy your vote by uttering the one sentence they know you want them to say? It’s fucking naive to think that any single issue is more important than the management of the United States of America as a whole. Your interests are much broader and more vital than the single issue of gun legislation. No one is trying to take away the guns of law-abiding citizens. Relax and let’s move on to the important stuff.”

This is entertaining:

It’s a key point and it is good that Matthews pushed it: appeasement does not mean “talking to”. It means giving up something in hopes of avoiding a conflict. Neville Chamberlain tried to appease Hitler by signing the Munich Agreement, conceding part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler.

John F. Kennedy said “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” I agree with him. I think Bush is a dumbshit.

Cairnarvon started it.

lolife [10:15pm] % history | awk ‘{print $3}’ | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head
73 ls
53 svn
38 cd
35 ssh
28 lepton
21 sudo
19 vi
17 ping
13 exit
12 pwd

I use tcsh so my command is a bit different than his.

Stung by criticism that his Monday letter explaining a veto of legislation to ban a fire retardant and a known toxin in children’s toys was “riddled with inaccuracies,” Gov. Tim Pawlenty yesterday acknowledged factual misstatements and apologized.

But he still stands behind his veto:

And so, the governor altered his reasons for vetoing the bill which, he said Tuesday, was because “many studies regarding the impact of DECA do not support a ban.”

Meanwhile, in reality:

Dahl said the “overwhelming conclusion” of independent, peer-reviewed studies is that DECA is a “dangerous neurotoxin.” She produced a long list of abstracts for scientific papers documenting known hazards of DECA, and another list of studies on another toxin, phthalate (pronounced fail-ate), that would be phased out in the vetoed bill.

Dahl said that both DECA and phthalate do not bond to the products in which they’re used, meaning that the chemicals are released as children chew on playthings or as products heat up.

Forty-one nations, including the European Union and Mexico, have banned phthalate; the giant retailer Toys R Us and toymaker Mattel have vowed to be phthalate-free by the end of the year.

The flame-retardant DECA — a “developmental neurotoxin” similar to PCBs, which were banned in Minnesota in the 1970s — is used in textiles, mattresses, and electronics. Heat causes DECA to be released, exposing firefighters to elevated chemical risk as they respond to fires.

Children are affected as heat from laptops and TV sets release DECA into dust that then circulates around the home and into carpeting.

Hmmm, I wonder whose pocket the Gov. is in on this one?

(via MinnPost)

Government should leave us alone. That is the cry of libertarians and Republicans. Government should leave us alone. It’s one of those statements that, in my mind, is almost meaningless because all of us, libertarians and Republicans included, see the need for government. The political conflict that we have is because people see the need for government in different areas and at different times.

It’s Republicans, of course, that piss me off the most. They try to spin liberals as wanting a nanny-state where the government does everything for everybody, forcing legislation and regulation down our throats. Yet they are so quick to call upon government intervention where they want it. People shouldn’t be allowed to be gay married! Abortions should be illegal! We need half of our budget to go to the military! People shouldn’t be allowed to grow pot! Hell, if you drive your car into an affluent Republican neighborhood you can’t even park on the street without a permit. They love government, but only when it directly benefits themselves. With Republicans it is a politics of convenience — “I’m a socialist when it is your stuff and a capitalist when it’s my stuff”. Thus, Republicans, when they use the “government should leave us alone” argument, are complete hypocrites.

Libertarians, on the other hand, think that government has one role — protect personal property. They think the only good laws are laws that protect personal property. All other laws are just government interference in our lives.

I think libertarians are not hypocrites but they are much too willing to allow the tyranny of the majority and much too unwilling to use government cooperatively for the common good. Libertarians seem to think that, if you get sick from mishandled food at a restaurant, you should not patronize that restaurant anymore. If you don’t want to work in a dangerous mine or a smoke-filled bar, don’t apply for the job. If you can’t afford health care, too bad so sad.

While I am certainly more sympathetic to the libertarian viewpoint than the Republican viewpoint, I think it’s impractical and wasteful to not band together for the common good, it guts our economical potential and it abandons our humanitarian ideals.

My favorite Paul Wellstone quote is “We all do better when we all do better.” Our greatest economic potential is moving people out of poverty. We should do this for humanitarian reasons alone, but the economic reasons cause the initiative to pay for itself! Welfare programs that get people on a track towards economic independence are fiscally conservative. The health care “crisis” is another example where, if we increase the size of the risk pool and use our dollars more wisely, everyone benefits. A pure free-market approach to health care leaves behind the poor and costs us much more money in the end. Free markets cannot be trusted to do the right thing in the long term for the population as a whole. Free markets benefit those who are savvy and have means. They brutalize the poor.

Thus, we should abandon empty platitudes like “government should leave us alone”. In the best case its naive and in the worst its hypocritical bullshit. I agree entirely with the notion that we must be wise about what we choose to do with government. Government is the wrong tool for many, many jobs. But, on the whole, government is a force for equality, opportunity, fairness and justice. The anti-government rhetoric of libertarians and Republicans is just plain wrong and, in the latter case, is just a shallow attempt to deceive people with a campaign slogan.

Yet another Republican hypocrite: Vito Fossella drives drunk, has a long-term affair and fathers a child by his mistress. Yet he is so full of “family values” that he shuns his own sister because she is gay.

So apparently he can’t love his own sister because of his religious beliefs but he can fuck around on his wife for years and drive drunk. I guess I missed that part of the Bible.

I don’t care, necessarily, that people are imperfect. I do care when they are lying, hypocrites who act as if they hold the moral high ground politically.

Let’s see, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) fucks call girls, Rep. Vito Fossella (R-N.Y.) cheats on his wife and drives drunk. At least Elliot Spitzer (the only D in this post) had the decency to resign.

After having recently interviewed Ernan McMullin I found this page on writings by Christian scientists. These are the lot that Myers and Dawkins tend to not talk about because they make sense. I still tend to think their theology is silly but at least it doesn’t conflict with scientific principles.

I found this quote interesting from Is Evolution Atheistic? by Dr Denis Alexander:

Evolution itself is not atheistic. A robust Christian theism readily encompasses evolution as an expression of God’s creative actions. But, sadly, there are prominent scientists, like the Harvard sociobiologist E.O.Wilson, who left their earlier Christian experience to become atheists because they faced hostility to evolution. Arguably, attacks by well-meaning Christians on evolution promote rather than counteract atheism.

It makes two great points: 1) Evolution does not at all deny the existence of God; and 2) Ignorant attacks on evolution by well-meaning Christians actually undermines their aims.

Behold, my blog is now on WordPress. Note that this is not the final design, it’s just a temporary design while Kyle finishes up the new design. You will see some weird things happen, perhaps, from time to time as we try out the new design.

If you are a frequent visitor I would highly encourage you to register. Then I can approve you so you can comment without moderation. I’m going to try to set the perms as liberally as I can without being bombarded with spam.

The old version of lolife.com/blog is here for a little while in case I screwed anything up.

PZ points out a lovely article from the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) called Evolution’s Evangelists.

It’s all pretty funny but the last line really cracks me up: “No matter where the evidence leads.“. They are implying that Dawkins, Scott and Myers, have made up their minds regardless of where the evidence might lead as if to imply that their viewpoint is unscientific.

I have a theory for you — the moon is made out of cotton candy. Now you are going to claim that we’ve been to the moon and we brought samples of the moon home with us. Or you are going to say that we can measure the density of the moon through various methods. You’ll bring up all sorts of “science” reasons why my theory is wrong. But face it — your mind is made up. You are not willing to consider that the moon is made out of cotton candy? What is wrong with you? You are some freakish zealot.

Intelligent Design (ID) has about the same amount of evidence supporting it as does my theory that the moon is made out of cotton candy. You will be expelled from science school if you believe that the moon is made out of cotton candy. There are no credible papers in scientific journals discussing the theory that the moon is made out of cotton candy.

Thus, this whole Evolution vs. Intelligent Design debate would be on entirely different footing if there actually was a theory of Intelligent Design. There isn’t one. There never has been one. The religious people hope they’ll find one someday and that’s great. No one has any problem with people pursuing their own scientific research. It’s not the fault of Dawkins, Scott or Myers that ID has no support in evidence. Poking “holes” in the theory of natural selection is not a theory.

Fer fuck’s sake, they named their institute “The Institute for Creation Science” and then they have the gall to accuse scientists of ignoring evidence? These guys predetermined the outcome of their research when the chose their name. They are complete frauds.

Two little rants here.

First — I think commercial television is completely untenable. You have to be a hopeless loser to sit and watch the staggering volume of commercials that these companies force down our throats. I turned on CNN yesterday at 12:47pm. There were THREE commercial breaks between 12:47 and 12:58. They would literally do one segment and then go back to commercials. It’s clear that CNN is in the commercial distribution business, not the news business. The only way I can watch CNN is to get 30 minutes behind on my DVR so I can forward through the commercials. Let’s be clear: this is network’s and advertisers’ fault, not viewers. I would sit through commercials if they were less frequent, less long and more informative or entertaining. These 5 minute commercial breaks every few minutes is insane and I don’t feel bad in the slightest that my DVR allows me to circumvent it.

Second — I’m going to pick on Showtime again. I have been waiting a year to be able to legally download season 3 of Weeds. iTunes still doesn’t have it. I downloaded a Showtime plugin for Windows Media Center and I can buy Season 1 and Season 2 but not Season 3. They are advertising Season 4 and nowhere do they ever mention Season 3. It’s like it doesn’t exist.

I can tell what is going on — some agreement was made that every other available channel was going to be exploited before they would sell it online. I can almost see the 65 year old grey haired white male who made this decision. ARE YOU ON FUCKING DRUGS? The fucking world voted and the medium that we turn to for music, movies and TV shows is the Internet. The fact that I can give Amazon $30 for season 3 of Weeds but I can’t give Showtime or Apple $30 is insane. Please, can someone fire the 65 year old grey haired white male who doesn’t understand the world in 2008?

Finally, since I’m on a roll, it boggles my mind the number of news web sites that put pre-roll ads in front of their online videos. These video players are invariably wrapped in all sorts of marketing and advertising. What moron thinks that they have to poison every conceivable piece of content with advertising? You already have me at your site and you are jamming as much advertising as you can at me. Can I just watch the damn video please?

Big media companies are idiots who are FAIL and their lunch is going to be eaten if they don’t get their shit together.

Yes, Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot. Al Franken nailed that one on the head.

It’s sad and pathetic that retarded Republicans like Rush Limbaugh would interfere with the democratic process. Do you believe in democracy or not, Rush, you dumbshit?

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