What world do these people live in?

I'm talking about supporters of ID over at Dumbski's blog, UncommonlyDense.

A recent poll showing McCain gaining in the elections is quoted over at UD as saying:

Obama is losing badly among Catholic voters - by double digits now according to the pollster’s findings. The significance is that Roman Catholics make up about 40% of the Pennsylvania vote, slightly less than that in Michigan and are strong percentages in other states of the old rust belt running from Michigan, down through the Great Lakes and up into Ohio.

Their reasoning for why Obama is losing the Catholic vote?


Someone (their site has Pharyngula Watch where they normally attribute authorship) claims that PZ Myers is to blame for his little stunt a few weeks ago:

Paul Myers has not been at all bashful about aligning the flagship website of Science Blogs with Barak Obama and bashing Sarah Palin at the same time. As many of you know Paul went far above and beyond the call of duty recently by publicly desecrating the Catholic Eucharist and thereby making himself the enemy of Catholics everywhere.

So thanks, Paul, for doing such a bang-up job associating Obama supporters and Palin bashers with enemies of the Catholic Church. With friends like you Obama doesn’t need enemies!

PZ Myers's blog is very popular and attracts a lot of readers (including those who hate him and his views), but even his blog -- which has --- hits daily, has that kind of influence on the polls. Sorry, too much preaching to the choir (as it were) to think that he could be changing the course of the election (not to mention that he's not sold on Obama, though he views the Dems as a lesser evil sort of vote in general).

Denyse O'Leary, she of several blog posts cross referenced on several blogs, notes that many IDiots are upset at Ben Stein for criticizing Sarah Palin as the VP nominee for the GOP. As if ID were the only issue.

Delusions of grandeur. You would think they would have learned something after the box office failure of Expelled. Then again, they haven't even learned Biology 101.
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Palin helps Obama, again

While conservatives seem to be pretty happy about the choice of Sarah Palin, some (including me) have noticed that choosing her smacks of desperation and hurts McCain numerous ways -- she nullifies his criticism of Obama's lack of experience since she has little, to name but one example.


A pretty good influx of cash went into McCain's campaign after he nominated her for the vice-presidency (there is plenty of speculation that the GOP is going to drop her pretty soon; not sure that's going to happen), about $10 million worth.

But now the same amount has gone into Obama's coffers. Since her speech. About 24 hours ago as I write this:

Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin is bringing in campaign cash for the Democrats as well as her own party.

Barack Obama, 47, reported raising at least $10 million from more than 130,000 donors today after Palin, the Alaska governor, addressed the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, and criticized the Democratic presidential nominee.

``Sarah Palin's attacks have rallied our supporters in ways we never expected,'' Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said. ``And we fully expect John McCain's attacks tonight to help us make our grassroots organization even stronger.''

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"Judge" Roy Moore on going back to school

Too bad he's not going back to school -- he still needs to learn a few things.

In a new post over at the WorldNutDaily, he writes:

Most of the public school students will return to a world without prayer or the Bible and where God is mentioned in some schools only in the Pledge of Allegiance (for now). For those of us who can remember, however, we know that it has not always been so.

He's wrong about the basic facts: kids can have a Bible in school (and even study from it). Kids can pray too. They just can't pray during class (unless they do so silently; unless teachers develop ESP or the student advertises the fact, I doubt anyone will know, not that it matters) or in a disruptive manner. In other words, if kids want to pray before eating lunch in the cafeteria, they can. If they want to pray in the hallway between classes, they probably can (maybe if they block the hallway or access to a room, they would have to move, but the problem wouldn't be the prayer itself, though some school officials may not know that).

So what is "Judge" Moore upset about? (As far as I can tell, he is not a judge anymore).


Part of it is his childhood:

In 1952, President Harry Truman declared a National Day of Prayer so that annually the people of the United States would turn to God. In 1954, when I was just 7 years old and in the second grade, Congress added the phrase "Under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance so that "the children of our land, in the daily recitation of the Pledge in school, will be daily impressed with a true understanding of our way of life and its origins." By 1955, "In God We Trust" was placed on all our currency and coins because our government wanted to reflect "the spiritual basis of our way of life." By the time I was in the fourth grade, "In God We Trust" had become our National Motto by joint resolution of Congress.

Obviously, things were much different in schools in the 1950s. We began each day with a prayer and a Bible verse or two. Then we stood facing the flag and, with our hand over our heart, pledged our allegiance as "one nation under God." Nobody was ashamed or embarrassed to acknowledge a belief in God – and the ACLU was not lurking near every schoolhouse and courthouse to be offended and file suit at the slightest mention of God.

Because we were taught that we were created in the image of God and that He alone was the judge of our hearts and minds, we had respect for our teachers and they seemed to care about us. Of course, there were student fights, gossip and rivalry, but we never heard of students killing each other or their teachers.

Note that he remembers when "one nation under God" was added to a pledge written by a socialist (!). And when "In God we trust" was adopted.

That's right -- they weren't there before. If there weren't there, then how does that support Moore's contention that associates this "acknowledgment of God" with "hav[ing] respect for our teachers and the[ir] seem[ing] to care about us"? Did teachers suddenly care about students because an acknowledgment of God was added to the pledge? or because "In God we trust" was added to our coins?

And if these acknowledgments weren't present before the 1950s, wouldn't the US have suffered some dreadful consequences -- perhaps losing a war? Against a religious country -- like Mexico or Spain -- just to teach us a lesson. Hard to see then his slippery slope fallacy:

I am very concerned for our future and believe that unless we restore the foundations of faith, family, freedom and law, we will continue to suffer the consequences of turning from God.

If God governs all, then perhaps we're losing not because we're turning away from God (no evidence of this happening, unfortunately), but because we're not a Muslim nation. I wonder...

Anyway, he also has quite an idyllic vision of schools: "we never heard of students killing each other or their teachers." While kids coming to school and shooting several kids or teachers may be a recent phenomenon, Richard Rothstein notes in The Way We Were? that there were violent incidents with students rioting -- in the early 20th century!

My classrooms were always relatively tranquil too. At least no one was shot or physically attacked (well, not with weapons anyway). There were fights. Rumors. Gossip. Girls probably developed eating disorders. Boys got high. Some girls probably got high too. Hmmm. Maybe not very idyllic....

Anyway, Moore is dead wrong when he writes:

No one ever imagined that the courts or our government had any intention of banishing the acknowledgment of God from us

because "the acknowledgment of God" has not been "banished" "from us" or anyone. You are free to do what you want. What is forbidden is the imposition to acknowledge God from anyone in authority.

He wouldn't want to be forced to worship a different God. Why should Baptists be forced to pray Catholic prayers? Or Jews forced to pray Christian prayers? Or Muslims...? Why should non-religious people (even those who believe but don't pray or don't want to pray) be forced to be religious? Is that something in the "Christian" spirit of things?

Or is being Christian forcing your neighbors to be like you?

Especially if you're a hypocrite.
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Obsolete republicans

So says Jack Cafferty.

In a post on CNN, he writes:

Republican Congressman Tom Davis of Virginia said it best: "The Republican brand is in the trash can. If we were dog food, they would take us off the shelf."

It is so bad that more than 10 percent of the Republican members of the United States Senate aren't even bothering to attend their own party's convention. They recognize dog food when they see it.

Could this be "the beginning of the end of the Republican Party as we know it"?

And if so, why?

Some reasons:

It's more than symbolic that when a million Americans are losing their homes to foreclosure, the Republican candidate for president has lost track of his holdings.

That's the same problem the Republican Party has. It has lost track of what it used to stand for: small government, a disciplined fiscal policy, integrity.

In a way, the perfect storm of a rapidly changing population -- old white people aren't going to be in the majority very much longer (and isn't that who most of the Republicans are?) -- has combined with the total abdication of principles, Republican or otherwise, of arguably the worst president in the nation's history

And it almost doesn't matter who the next president is. We are witnessing the beginnings of a sea change in this country.

A wakeup call has sounded for young people who are suddenly interested enough in politics to make a difference. New voter registrations across the country are making a mockery of the old polling models.

Voter turnout in the primaries was staggering. Blacks and Hispanics feel they have a real stake in things -- and as their numbers continue to grow as a percentage of the population, their voice will only get louder. The march of the next generation is underway and the older generation has no choice but to eventually get out of the way.

Could this be a moment of significant change? The US has had a two party system for basically its entire existence (Washington was the only president elected as an independent, though he seemed to agree with the Federalist party). Curiously, many of the founding fathers were opposed to political parties, including Washington and Jefferson themselves (Jefferson supported the Democratic-Republican Party in an effort to counteract the potential influence of the Federalists, whose positions he opposed). The system has been transformed several times, giving us Republicans and Democrats in the 1850s. Reagan swept the country to the right in the 1980s after it was swept to the left in the 1960s. And if it does change, will the Republicans go away? Or will they refashion themselves? How? Their principles of small government and fiscal responsibility generally sound nice, though they haven't been practiced since...........
As I wrote earlier, the federal debt has grown astronomically under Republican administrations. The government may not have grown, but the scope of what the government can do seems to have done so. Its influence in the economy is still large, even if it's not directly involved in it (spending provided to contractors, etc.).

It'll be interesting to see if Cafferty is right. Maybe the US will even wind up with a true left wing party.

Another advantage: if the Republican brand disappears, so do Rush and Ann Coulter.
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Sarah Palin: has McCain given up?

As you should know by now unless you live outside the US or in a cave the Republican presidential candidate (it'll be official in a couple days) has selected the governor of Alaska, a young woman named Sarah Palin, to be his running mate. She's only been governor for about two years is a former beauty pageant contestant and mayor of a small town. She's pretty conservative on their key issues: abortion and, well, abortion.

She's younger than Obama, so it's hard to see how she helps him criticize Obama's lack of experience (though she is only running to be vice president, though if McCain were to win, he would be the oldest elected president in US history, at least the first time; not sure if Reagan was older for his re-election, though I don't think so).


Without going into any issue, I wonder if McCain is giving up. I wonder if he thinks he can really win this election. His choice of vice president makes me think he can't and that he knows it.

The polls have a virtual tie right now. With the Republican convention getting cut short and Gustav getting all the media attention, I'm not sure that the republicans will even get a boost in the polls after the convention has ended (as is normally the case).

She doesn't help lure undecideds (polls seem to indicate this), though that may be McCain's role. Her job may be to shore up the conservative vote, which is not too thrilled about McCain. Of course, I wonder how many of them want a woman one step from the presidency, a concern that could be pretty big given McCain's age. Of course, Thatcher had a pretty good run in the UK so maybe voters won't care.

The overall reaction seems to be negative except among conservatives, so it doesn't look like she helped. We'll see if that's the case.
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Catholic church strives to remain relevant; no speeches for you

This news reports notes that the Wilmington, Delaware, archbishop says

will not permit the Senator even if elected Vice President of the United States of America to speak at Catholic schools.

The Catholic church has tried to remain relevant in recent years, hardening its position on politicians who don't support church positions, most notably on abortion.

The article continues:

When asked for the Bishop's take on Senator Biden and his stand in favor of abortion, Krebs directed LifeSiteNews.com to Bishop Michael Saltarelli's 2004 statement on 'Catholics in Political Life' which, said Krebs, "very plainly states Bishop's position in this matter."

In that document Bishop Saltarelli notes that, in line with the US Bishops Conference policy, "Our Catholic institutions will not honor Catholic politicians who take pro-abortion legislative positions or invite them to speak at our functions or schools."

I'm curious why Catholic bishops and archbishops emphasize the abortion issue as opposed to the death penalty (which the church opposes) or even capitalism (the church nominally opposes this as it derides materialism).

In making these statements against pro-choice candidates, the Catholic leaders unwittingly seek to ally with Republicans who support the sort of unregulated capitalism that has frequently shown the world the worst side of capitalism and materialism, as well as allies Catholics with protestants and Christians -- many of whom hate Catholics (are you Catholic or Christian?, for example). Not all Christians feel this way, of course, but at least two universities associated with evangelical groups do not allow Catholic faculty (Wheaton College in Illinois fired a couple professors for converting to Catholicism and at Liberty University, the late Jerry Falwell's university, faculty reportedly sign a statement accepting that the Pope is the Antichrist).

The position of the church privileges one issue (while a hotly contested one, far from the most important issue in the US) at the expense of its general platform (at least of what they pay lip service to). Furthermore, their position of allying Catholics with a large and motivated group that despises them -- one that opposes many tenets of what the Catholic faith is supposed to represent.

I suspect that one of their main motivations is to remain relevant in the lives of individuals who live in an increasingly secular world. It's probably a losing battle -- especially in light of what happened in Europe, where church attendance is practically non-existent and where even Catholic Spain has legalized marriage for gays and lesbians --, especially should Catholics have to coexist with those who despise them and realize that they were simply pawns in the bid of the so-called Moral Majority to establish a theocracy in the US.

In light of this, a few lines from the Dead Kennedys' song "Moral Majority":

Circus tent con-men and Southern belle bunnies
Milk your emotions and then they steal your money
It's the new dark ages with the fascists toting bibles
Cheap nostalgia for the Salem Witch Trials

Stodgy ayatollahs in their double-knit ties
Burn lots of books so they can feed you their lies
Masturbating with a flag and bible
God must be dead if you're alive

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Criticism of Planned Parenthood Videos

The Worldnutdaily has an article with a misleading headline: "Planned Parenthood promotes casual sex to kids on website." The article is misleading for two reasons: 1) the article says nothing to substantiate the claim made by the headline and 2) their claim is wrong.

The videos on the Planned Parenthood website include (this description is from the wnd article):

A review of the promotional videos created by Planned Parenthood show the following scenarios:

* A girl who appears only from the waist up appears to drop her slacks to the floor, then asks a second girl, a third girl, and a boy, "Do you see anything down there?" The counselor advises her to get a test for STDs.

* Two girls, a guy and the counselor talk about what HPV means. The teens' guess is a reference to a sex organ.

* A white youth appears only from the waist up, then a black youth suddenly stands up in front of him, and the white youth says, "I didn't spew."

* A girl says, "I like me. I like spending time with me. It's not like I can get me pregnant or give me diseases."

* The theme song gives the message, "Whatever you call it, you've got to know how to take care of it."

The videos (click here or above on Planned Parenthood to see them) feature several young people -- girls in pink t-shirts, boys in white t-shirts, and an adult adviser -- talking about sexual health issues, talking about sex, or maybe having sex. In most videos, the kids are either talking about an issue of sexual health or are having sex and then are interrupted by the adviser who provides information.

One video singled out for criticism is this one, "I didn't spew." One boy is performing oral sex on another while the adviser walks by. He sees what's going on and asks the kid received the blow job, "where's your prophylactic?" The kid thinks he doesn't need one because "I didn't spew." The adviser contradicts this mistaken view, pointing out that any sexual contact -- even oral sex, even without an orgasm -- can lead to the transmission of STDs. The video does not promote oral sex; it shows it happening (apparently it's on the rise with teenagers, though it may be the media talking about it more) and points out that it is not safe sex.

This website also criticizes the videos, first noting below its headline

WARNING: This item contains shocking and graphic content funded by your tax dollars.

They complain:

On its new website, TakeCareDownThere.org, the group posts a series of videos so revolting that members of my staff were visibly shaken

and conclude

This site is nothing more than an online playground for the prurient. The screen promises “the ins and outs about the ins and outs,” but the material is highly inappropriate for adults, let alone young children.

There are no graphic images, no nudity, not even the presentation of primary or secondary sexual organs -- just kids in t-shirts and an adult adviser in a shirt, tie, and cardigan sweater talking about sex and sexually-related issues.

To find the videos "so revolting that members of my staff were visibly shaken," I have to ask, is your staff made up of total prudes? I'm appalled that people find it offensive to point out that oral sex is not safe sex or that HPV is an STD (one video features precisely that topic).

I wonder how these people dealt with the news about Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Anyway, the wnd article has a couple other off-the-wall complaints that have nothing to do with the videos.

First,

The Texas-based pro-life group Life Dynamics previously conducted an extensive undercover project in which an adult volunteer posing as a 13-year-old called every Planned Parenthood clinic in the U.S., saying she was pregnant by a 22-year-old boyfriend. Almost without exception, the clinics advised her to obtain an abortion without her parents' knowledge and told her how to protect her boyfriend, who would be guilty in any state of statutory rape.

This claim has nothing to do with the videos. It seems a legitimate criticism of the organization, but I tend to agree with their attempts to secure an abortion for this person without parental notification and withholding information about her boyfriend.

The second claim is ridiculous:

Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger supported eugenics through birth control to cull people she considered unfit from the population. In 1921, she said eugenics is "the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems."

What the found did and supported has no logical connection with what Planned Parenthood does today. If there is a connection, it needs to be supported by evidence -- evidence that is not provided here (not a surprise).

I noted at the beginning that their claim was wrong: studies indicate that abstinence only programs fail on a number of levels. Open discussion of sex does not promote sex according to studies of comprehensive sexual education programs -- it promotes safe sex.
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The most trusted newsman in the US?

Is this the picture of the most trusted man in America?


The New York Times seems to think so.


The article states:

Though this spot is the program’s mocking sendup of itself and the news media’s mania for self-promotion, it inadvertently gets at one very real truth: the emergence of “The Daily Show” as a genuine cultural and political force. When Americans were asked in a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press to name the journalist they most admired, Mr. Stewart, the fake news anchor, came in at No. 4, tied with the real news anchors Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw of NBC, Dan Rather of CBS and Anderson Cooper of CNN. And a study this year from the center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism concluded that “ ‘The Daily Show’ is clearly impacting American dialogue” and “getting people to think critically about the public square.”

“The Daily Show” resonates not only because it is wickedly funny but also because its keen sense of the absurd is perfectly attuned to an era in which cognitive dissonance has become a national epidemic. Indeed, Mr. Stewart’s frequent exclamation “Are you insane?!” seems a fitting refrain for a post-M*A*S*H, post-“Catch-22” reality, where the surreal and outrageous have become commonplace — an era kicked off by the wacko 2000 election standoff in Florida, rocked by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and haunted by the fallout of a costly war waged on the premise of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.

Following 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, the show focused more closely not just on politics, but also on the machinery of policy making and the White House’s efforts to manage the news media. Mr. Stewart’s comedic gifts — his high-frequency radar for hypocrisy, his talent for excavating ur-narratives from mountains of information, his ability, in Ms. Corn’s words, “to name things that don’t seem to have a name” — proved to be perfect tools for explicating and parsing the foibles of an administration known for its secrecy, ideological certainty and impatience with dissenting viewpoints.

Over time, the show’s deconstructions grew increasingly sophisticated. Its fascination with language, for instance, evolved from chuckles over the president’s verbal gaffes (“Is our children learning?” “Subliminable”) to ferocious exposés of the administration’s Orwellian manipulations: from its efforts to redefine the meaning of the word “torture” to its talk about troop withdrawals from Iraq based on “time horizons” (a strategy, Mr. Stewart noted, “named after something that no matter how long you head towards it, you never quite reach it”).

But I think the main reason why the show resonates is the following:

For all its eviscerations of the administration, “The Daily Show” is animated not by partisanship but by a deep mistrust of all ideology. A sane voice in a noisy red-blue echo chamber, Mr. Stewart displays an impatience with the platitudes of both the right and the left and a disdain for commentators who, as he made clear in a famous 2004 appearance on CNN’s “Crossfire,” parrot party-line talking points and engage in knee-jerk shouting matches.

The end of history (or end of politics, as you prefer) means the end of ideology (at least so has it Fukuyama). Capitalism winning the Cold War not only discredits communism, it means that we all agree on the best way to achieve economic progress and prosperity. The distrust the show exhibits toward political ideologies (like there's a big difference between the dems and republicans* -- more on this below) resonates with viewers situated at the end of history who have no ideology (if we see the world the same way, then is it an ideology? -- after all, ideology was once defined as false consciousness with respect to one's reality).

Also, the show hardly proposes a solution -- an easy way to stay out of trouble. It makes fun of the powers that be (correctly, in most if not all cases, as far as I've seen) without its own agenda (something that could be made fun of or criticized).

Anyone see the movie Man of the Year with Robin Williams as an anchor of a similar news show who wins an election due to a failure in the electronic voting machines? The movie directors already knew what the Times finally decided to print -- a few years ago. The movie cited statistics about the trustworthiness of comedic anchors like Jon Stewart as well as ratings, though I don't know if they were based on any facts or not. Ahhh -- art is still important, even if it's low art.

* Supposedly Republicans stand for small government and are supposed to be fiscal conservatives. Remember the talk about paying down the national debt? We talked about it 8 to 10 years ago at the end of the Clinton presidency (when we weren't talking about Monicagate, that is) and I remember a discussion of whether we should pay it all off or keep some of it -- we don't have those conversations anymore because we're again in deficit spending and the national debt is growing (warning: inflation may be coming back too, and not just because gas prices have shot up, leading to increasing food prices (also in part because of the misguided decision to use corn for fuel... higher costs of corn, leading to higher meat prices since the animals we eat eat corn...)). When Reagan become president in 1981, the national debt had just reached $1 trillion (that's a thousand billion, or a million million (a billion) for visitors from abroad). Now it's over $5 trillion almost thirty years later. The presidents: 8 years of Reagan, 4 years of George HW Bush, 8 years to Clinton, and now 8 years of George W Bush. That's 20 years of republican presidents, during which time the debt has soared, and 8 years of a democrat, during which time the budget was balanced and the debt began to contract.

Let's not forget that the government has expanded during the W years as we're spying on emails and phone calls (authorized or not; it also happened under Clinton from what I understand; not a good development in any case) as we respond to 9/11.

So let's see: we have increased spending and non-involvement of the government except if you're doing drugs or want to have an abortion or if the government has reason to think you support the terrorists. And doesn't Bush say, 'you're either with us or you hate America.' Postideological politics indeed. Let's see if McCain breaks from that for the sake of the republicans.


And here is the rest of it. Read more!

Are cultures opinions?

Nirvana's song "Territorial Pissings" off their Nevermind CD contains the line, "When I was an alien, cultures weren't opinions." The album was released in 1991. Of course, history ended in 1989 (or sooner) with the formal collapse of the Soviet Union and, most importantly, its supporting ideology. Nirvana's song (maybe I'm giving Curt too much credit; I hope not, though), or at least that line, aptly describes one view of politics of the post-Berlin Wall world.


Francis Fukuyama popularized the notion of the "end of history" with his far too famous book, The End of History and the Last Man (1992), though an earlier essay, "The End of History?" was published in 1989. As Walter Benn Michaels notes (see his The Shape of the Signifier about Fukuyama's point, the end of history is the end of ideological conflict. This isn't the end of all conflict -- just ideologically based conflict (this is an important distinction). Whereas capitalists and communists disagreed over the best way to organize a society (or a society's economy), it was an ideological disagreement. For this reason, people could switch sides since it was a matter of ideology. Hence there can be American communists and Soviet capitalists (even if the former had to be largely invented).

What has happened since then -- after the end of history (a political scientist who studies Latin America calls it the end of politics) -- is the nature of disagreement has changed. Now cultures opinions and one's political views now define a person or a region: the US is now divided into red and blue states. Ann Coulter's book How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must is another example (well, except that I haven't read it -- and won't). Liberals and conservatives are different kinds of people (note to self, maybe this explains the resistance to gay marriage) and apparently need to be segregated, just like races in the old days in the South.

The reason why I write this today is that Obama recently stated:

One of the things that we have to change in this country is the idea that people can't disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism. I have never suggested that Sen. McCain picks his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition. I have not suggested it because I believe that he genuinely wants to serve America's national interest. Now, it's time for him to acknowledge that I want to do the same.

Bush has certainly done what Obama is against: if you are against Gitmo then you're against America. It's standard nationalist bullshit (I'm not sorry for calling it what it is), but is especially indicative of the posthistorical world we live in (Michaels introduced the term to me; I'm not sure to what extent Fukuyama used posthistorical to describe the current state of affairs) in which all politics are identity politics.

All of those kinds of attacks -- you don't love America if... -- are inherently posthistorical (even if they took place before history ended, I would argue). Most importantly, while there may be some good things about posthistoricism -- there are benefits to multiculturalism, for example -- it has led to the end of politics. And my this, we mean the end of interest in real issues.

One simple solution? Pay attention to the real issue. It doesn't have to be governed by a guiding wide-reaching ideology. I'm not sure I like Obama more than I dislike McCain, but I do like this statement here.
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Taser happy cop charged with murder in rural Louisiana

CNN reports that Scott Nugent, a police officer who apparently tasered a man nine times, has been indicted on murder and criminal malfeasance. The man who was tasered appears to have died before the final shocks from the taser were administered. Considering the man was handcuffed before being tasered the first time, it's hard to see how even one shock was appropriate -- much less eight additional shocks.


The case is from central Louisiana, from a small town called Winnfield, pop. 15000 or so. The police officer is white and the victim was black. The victim, Baron "Scooter" Pikes, was 21 years old and worked at a sawmill (or more likely, the saw mill in town) and ran from the police. He was wanted for cocaine possession. This is where the case becomes a bit bizarre: he told the police he had asthma and had used PCP and crack cocaine. No medical history of asthma was found and no traces of any drugs were found in his system. Perhaps the most bizarre -- and best -- thing is that the cop was indicted. He was fired, though I believe that the officer has appealed his dismissal. I do not know if his appeal has been heard or when any appeal will take place if it hasn't already.
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Humorless Christians?

Apparently Christians have a sense of humor. It's just not highly evolved. Stuart Shephard of Focus on the Family's political branch, Focus Action, posted a video July 30 asking people to pray for rain at the time of Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. His video garnered numerous hits (over 20,000 page views -- that's 20,000 more than this blog has) and was briefly pulled from youtube and was removed from its site after a few days.


But besides being derided by non-evangelicals, not even everyone at Focus on the Family thought it was appropriate (at least ten Focus members complained about it) and it was removed from their website. What they're saying?

Minnery said the video was taken down because several Focus members complained that prayer shouldn't be used to bring harm on someone else.

"We are not about confusing people about prayer," Minnery said.

But the video is pretty humorless, although it has a light tone. Shephard claims it's hyperbole and it certainly does have that quality. It might be easier to distinguish it as humor though if all their positions were not hyperbolic.
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The Gospel According to the Boss

This story covers Jeffrey Symynkywicz, a preacher at a Universalist Unitarian church, and his new book, The Gospel According to Bruce Springsteen: Rock and Redemption from Asbury Park to Magic. Springsteen has long been noted for religious elements in his music -- songs about suffering, redemption, pregnant Marys, and other girls claiming "immaculate concpetion" abound.

The book includes a list of "Bruce's Ten Suggestions for Spiritual Living":

To avoid copyright issues, I'll just include the summary. You may get the list with some additional commentary at the link above.

1. The world has gone awry.

2. There is a power within the souls of men and women to transcend the world and to achieve real victories in spite of the world.

3. The world is as it is.

4. Life without connections is empty and dangerous.

5. Our stories symbolize something deeper.

6. Life is embodied.

7. It's all about change.

8. There is no guarantee of success.

9. Hope is resilient.

10. There is always something more. If Bruce is luminous in his work — shining a light of perception on the horizontal dimension of this earthly life — so he is numinous as well — casting this life we lead in the brilliance of an almost mystic glow; shedding the radiance of discernment on that vertical beam which crashes through the linear plane of existence and points it toward that which is higher, deeper, somehow transcendent.

I had read Springsteen in more existential terms, guided in large part by Deena Weinstein's take in an essay called Serious Rock that addressed Springsteen, Pink Floyd, and Rush, though many of the observations therein apply here.

Considering the first point here, it is certainly fitting that Springsteen wrote an album in light of the terrorist attacks (The Rising) which also includes the "hope is resilient" theme that Symynkywicz notes. One of the clearest examples of these two points is his Nebraska song, "Reason to Believe." The song closes the bleak album (does my use of this term give away my age?), though it is certainly not the only "ray of light" on it (see also "Open All Night" with the urge to get "back to where my baby lives"). But "Reason to Believe" is about the need to have some sort of hope even when there doesn't seem to be any.

The first verse deals with "a man standin' over a dead dog lyin' by the highway in a ditch" who the narrator sees. After describing what he sees, he muses, "Struck me kind of funny seem kinda funny sir to me / Still at the end of every hard day people find some reason to believe." Of course here, the man looking at the dead dog (perhaps there's some symbolism in my dyslexic typing, leading me to frequently type 'god' instead of the correct 'dog') is poking it, hoping that "that dog'd get up and run." The dog doesn't, of course, but the desire is there.

Two other verses deal with failed relationships -- a husband leaves his adoring young wife and in the final verse, a groom waits for his bride to show up, wondering if the wedding is going to happen. The other verse is about baptism and death -- different ends of life. In the final verse, the "Groom stands alone and watches the river rush on so effortlessly," the river symbolizing (of course) the inevitable passage of time and events and the inability of the groom to harness the passing of events to his plans. But the song concludes with the search for a "reason to believe."

This "reason to believe" is also a way of finding the "power within the souls of men and women [that can] transcend the world and to achieve real victories in spite of the world." Suffering occurs with the loss of someone beloved, even if it's "just" a dog (or even a stray). Actually, this one song contains the ten "suggestions for spiritual living" that Symynkywicz describes.

Marcus Griel called Nebraska the quietest punk album made (though punk fans would tend to disagree; no way could Springsteen be punk by their standards). His concerns about the emptiness of modern life certainly agreed with them and he didn't take a stance against materialism (not a prerequisite for punks) per se (though he certainly lashed out against unfeeling corporate goons in songs like "Seeds" and "Born in the U.S.A.") while emphasizing the point of view of common people who had been dislodged or at least suffered in socio-economic terms.

What I find especially interesting is that different artists coincided in a message like this at about the same time -- The Police have the song "Invisible Sun" that, stripped of its specificity about Northern Ireland, is exactly the same thing -- the "reason to believe" that Springsteen's character is an "invisible sun" inside each of us. Springsteen was largely apolitical or even anti-political on his early albums -- that changes on Nebraska (1982) and continues with "Born in the USA" and "My Hometown" on the following album (you know the one). Pink Floyd also became directly political with The Final Cut (1983) and the Police's Synchronicity the same year (1983) also became their most political statement, with the aforementioned "Invisible Sun" and also the critique of modern live in "Synchronicity II" as well as "Walking in your Footsteps" (though the nuclear war paranoia was found on their first album with "Born in the 50s"). Likewise, Springsteen and Pink Floyd had already spelled out their view of the human condition on their earlier albums (see Weinstein's essay). Even as Springsteen and Pink Floyd embodied the 70s in different ways (one they had in common: punks hated both bands -- and many others), they also sensed that something had gone disastrously long as the 1980s band -- and that was something they shared with the punks and the Police (and let's not forget that the Police emerged in the punk climate of the late 1970s as a band that quickly embraced that more mainstream "new wave" label).


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it's the economy stupid remix 2008

The phrase was popularized by Clinton's campaign back in 1992. The most recent Democrat to take the White House (though some speculate that both Gore and Kerry were robbed), it seems that the economy is up to its tricks again.

A Reuters piece by Alister Bull notes the studies of economists who use economic conditions to predict the winner of the presidential election.

Three separate studies showed the Democratic presidential hopeful winning between 52 and 55 percent of the popular vote on November 4, based on current gloomy economic estimates.

Any further darkening in the economic outlook -- many analysts think things will get worse between now and November -- would reinforce that election outcome.

These methods have been successful -- when applied (even retroactively) they "correctly predicted the winner of almost all post-war U.S. presidential elections."

I would like to know for which elections the model failed. Vietnam era? Kennedy? Daddy Bush? Gore? Bush? either time? Was there a pressing matter that shaped the outcome? Could Iraq or Obama's ethnic/racial heritage be that issue this time?
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Where do ya draw the line?

Besides being a great Dead Kennedy's song on their swansong -- Bedtime for Democracy, Jello Biafra perhaps best states his political dilemma. "Anarchy sounds good to me / then someone asks 'who'd fix the sewers?'/ 'would the rednecks just play king / of the neighborhood?'" Of course, true anarchy would have a response for both of these problems: the sewers would either be maintained by those who were willing to self-organize to do it (especially in the anarcho-socialist direction) or sewers wouldn't exist, and it's a false problem.

The second point is perhaps more distressing to the anarchist project. Or maybe not. But it certainly reveals part of the anarchist impulse: its primitivism. B. Traven, a noted anarchist of mysterious origins (either Chicago of Swedish parents or the illegitimate child of a Polish countess seem to be the favored hypotheses), situates the arrival of government in his aptly named novel Government as something that subverted their Eden. If anarchy privileges small communities, the technological advances of the past two hundred years or so would not have happened. Unfortunately, many advances have come about due to international competition and wars. That doesn't mean, of course, that we're better off. Of course, we couldn't have this discussion in this medium without those advances. Maybe we'd be better off living a different life in a radically different society, but all that is merely hypothetical in any case.

Maybe Jello Biafra, a professed anarachist I believe, should have known better than to ask questions that seem to be voiced by someone less familiar with anarchy -- someone who associates anarchy simply with chaos rather than radical self government. Maybe he was having doubts about anarchy or was merely beginning to express his anarchist tendencies. Of course, the voice in the song doesn't have to be him and may be someone else, asking the more important question of 'where do you draw the line?' Where do we decide that someone should intervene in a situation -- be it a squabble between a couple kids at school, a couple having a fight (or just not getting along), some thugs getting together and running amok, some armed groups in a country fighting over their place in the government there. When should someone intervene and when should someone stay out of the situation and allow the participants to resolve their differences -- in whatever way they can or want to?

After numerous school shooting incidents it is clear that something has to be done about bullying. After witnessing the terror in Rwanda or ex-Yugoslavia or the Taliban in Afghanistan it is clear that someone should intervene. Dictatorships in all of Latin America (Somoza, Pinochet, et al) should not have lasted even half of how long they did, but geopolitical interests governed those and other situations. We know that abused women (and men) stay in relationships that are dangerous for numerous bad reasons. It is easy to say that individuals should stand up to bullies and should even be taught how (but how do you make sure that the bullies don't learn these techniques; how can you make sure that you aren't going to 'create' bullies in the process?), but that doesn't mean that those methods are going to work. Many dictators have been overthrown -- Somoza, Porfirio Díaz, and Bautista being just a few examples -- through popular insurrection (directly or indirectly). Others simply died and the death allowed for a transition to democracy, as was the case in Spain. Others faced humiliating defeats and disappeared -- Argentina after the brief war over the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas). Other forged a gradual transition like Pinochet.

My main concern with an anarchic project is not the question about the sewers or even the rednecks. It's its primitivist component that disheartens me. The technological advances have enriched us in many ways, although they certainly have been bad for the earth and for those who live on it (witness the high percentage of individuals in advanced societies that have a bonafide psychological disorder -- about 25% for the US and almost as high in other places). Should we sacrifice our ability to move around this planet, to experience very different things, lest we create a climate that will force us to make radical changes in our lifestyle? As Jello put it, "I'm not telling you I'm asking you."
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