“Mugsy’s Rap Sheet”

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As you well know by now, the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Tim Russert, died quite suddenly of a heart attack on Friday the 13th. two days before Father’s Day. To say the news came as a total shock would be quite the understatement. No noticeable outward signs of any chronic health problem to prepare us, and his own father still alive at age 89, for the MtP host to suddenly drop dead of a heart attack while at work at age 58 caught everyone by surprise, and I’m not ashamed to admit getting a little choked up listening to the numerous broadcasts memorializing him. Amazing since I really wasn’t that big a fan. Oh sure, I watched him ritualistically every Sunday morning for over a decade, but I deplored the way he rarely asked follow-up questions or often let obvious lies go unchallenged. I attend The Church of Sunday Morning News Talkshows, every week, praying at the altar of NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week, squeezing in some of CBS’s Face the Nation… opposite MtP… when the subject turned dull, and even woke early to watch Fox News Sunday (seeing how the Right spins things and ignores subjects they’d rather not deal with is a sight to behold). Politics is to me what sports are to athletes. The Primaries are my playoffs and Election Night my Super Bowl. The sudden death (no pun intended) of Russert in the middle of “the playoffs” would be like Jim McKay dying in the middle of The Triple Crown (what? he did? yikes!) A bad month for newscasters.

But this weeks column isn’t about Russert. My father is a Conservative. Listens to Rush Limbaugh every day, collects guns, has a permit to carry a concealed weapon, and voted for George Bush twice (and though he hates the man now, will probably still vote for McCain). When I asked him if he heard about Tim Russert, he simply shrugged and didn’t understand what the big deal was. My sister, with little care for politics or political matters, is recently divorced from an alcoholic redneck Republican (that still defends George Bush), and being seeped in that culture for a decade, my sister is a “passive-Republican”. She repeats the GOP Party line, forwards attack emails smearing Barack Obama with innuendo… racial and otherwise… about how he is a secret Muslim, and the huge crowds he draws are reminiscent of Hitler… you know the drill… but doesn’t vote (not that I’m aware). She had to take in a border last April to cover her rising expenses, with a new house, rising energy bills, and rising food costs, but doesn’t connect any of it to the people she supports running Washington. She’s an Evangelical, and supports the warmonger because the Democrat wants to kill babies.

During the 1980 Presidential election, two-time loser making his third run at the Presidency, California Governor and former Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan posed the quintessential question that every election now boils down to:

“Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”

  While I’ve always thought that was a great line, I never truly understood its significance until now. Republicans don’t like detail. Keep it simple. Just boil it down to the most basic principle possible: “We’re good, they’re evil.” “We’ll cut your taxes, they’ll raise your taxes” and “We believe in God, they want to let gays perform abortions on Flag Day.” Republicans don’t want to hear about “policy” or “why we need to do X because of Y”, they want something as simple as they are that can fit in a Greeting Card. Like a caveman, “Taxes bad! He cut taxes while HE raise taxes! Me vote for guy #1.” If caveman had his way, the tax rate would be zero. Then when his streets fall apart, his bridges collapse, and the police or fire department don’t come when he calls, he blames the Democrats because they’ll go into “detail” on why you need to give “them” more money, allowing Republicans to swoop in and tell them exactly what they want to hear… “You can have low taxes AND 5-star quality government services. We’ll just add it to The Debt.” “Deficits don’t really matter, right?” Don’t bother trying to explain to a Conservative just why deficits matter. You might as well be Charlie Brown’s school teacher, for all they hear is: “whut whaa, wha whaa-whaa, whaaa”.

Over the weekend, I saw the first half of a mediocre 2007 movie entitled “Idiocracy“. The premise of the movie was something we’ve all been noticing in recent years: society seems to be getting dumber and dumber. The opening three minutes of Idiocracy sums up the plot nicely: basically, intelligent responsible adults plan their pregnancies and have only as many children as they can support, while unintelligent, irresponsible morans have eight and nine kids without regard for the circumstances. As per the movie’s premise, quickly, the number of children born into poor dumb families outpaces the number of children born to intelligent responsible parents, resulting in the dumbing down of the global population. A dead-average military slacker (played by Luke Wilson) is made part of an experiment in cryogenics (freezing) and finds himself 500 years in a the future, now the most intelligent man on the planet, in a country populated by morons.

The path of least resistence is to be spoon-fed what to think. Learning about the issues takes work. Understanding them requires still more. Republicans know this, so they live & die by the “sound bite”. Everything is boiled down to three monosyllabic grunts: “Guns, God & Gays”. Think about all the times you’ve heard Conservatives rant about “elitist” “Latte sipping” Democrats. They complain about “Liberal colleges” that “convert” students into dreaded “Liberals“. And this works because Conservatives that “don’t like detail” probably didn’t go to college either and resent those who do. Growing up in a Conservative family, I considered myself a Republican, though if you had asked me, I probably disagreed with them on most every issue (the power of branding). College didn’t “convert me” into a Liberal, becoming educated and paying attention did.

Barack Obama will win the November election, but it will have less to do with people understanding his policies or agreeing with him on the issues than it has to do with people that ask themselves Reagan’s famous question:

“Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”

That’s a concept even Republicans can understand.

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- Mugsy

Yesterday I received my “stimulus check” from the Federal Government. Having a low Social Security number and Direct Deposit, I was among the first to receive my check from the government. My first purchase: a full tank of gas.

Since I work from home, I’ve been noticeably absent from my blog as of late, shirking my blogging duties as I concentrate on other projects. This has kept me home quite a bit over the past few weeks. And because I work from home, this saves me a lot of driving and a lot of money on gas. But “money” and I don’t see a lot of each other, forcing me to economize whenever and wherever possible. That means stretching out a tank of gas for as long as I possibly can with fewer unnecessary trips. The last time I filled up my gas tank, a mere 6 weeks ago, I was upset that the price of gas had shot up overnight an extra ten cents a gallon to $2.69. Had I of bought gas the day before, I would of saved a couple of bucks.

Because of my meager income, I try to put off buying gas for as long as I possibly can, hoping that at some point, prices may dip a few cents some week. But I always fill up. I can’t understand people who “only buy a few gallons” or “fill up when they hit just half a tank” hoping against hope that the price of gas will come down before the next fill up. This is just stupid in my eyes because 99 out of 100 times, the price of gas goes up, not down. And if you buy gas more often that you need to, you are ensuring that you always buy gas at the highest current price. While $2.69 seemed like highway robbery at the time, I was awfully glad I filled up at the time when the price of Regular Unleaded hit a national average of $3.51 a gallon 9 days ago:  

…and another nine more cents just six days later:  

Did you know the gas pump “dings” when you hit the $50 mark? I didn’t until yesterday.

As I’m filling up at the pump, the same thought wouldn’t leave my mind: “They might as well of just cut these checks straight to the oil companies because that’s exactly where they are all going.” The irony is that it is the high price of fuel that has caused the current economic crisis, and the bulk of the “stimulus” funds will be eaten up by increased costs due to high fuel prices.

I have a Conservative friend (by Texas law, I must have at least two) that I’ve known since high school. Back in 2004 (I believe), I was angry that gas prices had breached $2/gal. He responded with his usual Conservative “pro-corporate” indignance: “You Liberals all think: gas prices are high (ergo) the oil companies must be making a killing.” His thinking was obviously that the high price of oil was hurting the oil companies too, cutting into their profit margins. I responded that the last time I checked, it didn’t cost them any more to pump the oil out of the ground just because oil prices go up.” It wasn’t a week later before the news reported for the first time that Exxon had record profits that quarter, so high that they had surpassed G.E. as the richest corporation on the planet. I’ve never let him forget it, and now every time they announces record profits in the oil industry, I throw it back in his face (as any good friend would) as an example of how Conservatives can be so sure of themselves and get extremely indignant over things they “believe to be true” when the facts and evidence are often 180^o opposite.

More and more often, I find myself thinking about the Summer of 2000, Clinton’s final year in office. As Texas Governor George W. Bush and his VP-nominee were talking the economy into a recession at nearly every campaign stop (”The economy isn’t as good as they say.” he kept repeating over and over until it became a self-fulfilling prophecy), long-haul truckers across the country were threatening to go on strike when the price of diesel rose 20cents in just four months to the unbearable price of $1.49/gal. In June of 2000, the governor was telling everyone that if he were President, he’d tell OPEC to “open up the spigot” to increase the oil supply and bring gas prices down from the unbearable price of $1.46/gal, up $0.29 from $1.17/gal the year before.

My earliest memory of gas prices was in 1979 when President Jimmy Carter tried to switch an unwilling country over to the “Metric System” and gas stations were required to list the price of fuel in liters instead of gallons. I remember the commotion when gas prices fell from $0.79/gal to $0.21/ltr literally over night. Seeing that low number still sticks in my memory to this day. As Carter correctly pointed out, continuing to use the old “standard” system while the rest of the world went metric was costing the U.S. economy billions every year, mostly from having to produce things likes nuts & bolts in two different formats, one for us and one for the rest of the world. Different labeling, different pricing, and just adding to the cost of doing business overseas. Interestingly enough, the only remnant of Carter’s metric push: the 2-liter soda bottle. Before that, I remember buying Coke in giant 32oz glass Coke bottles. For some odd reason, no one ever complained about only being able to buy soda by the liter… but gasoline, never!

In 1996, just prior to Bill Clinton’s re-election, gas prices briefly fell to just $0.99/gal locally, down from the normal price of about $1.10. Think about that. From Carter to Clinton, 1979 to 1996, in 17 years, the price of gasoline had risen a mere $0.30 (with fluctuations in between, maybe as much as $0.50 at any one point.) When George Bush became President in 2001, the price of Regular Unleaded gasoline was $1.43/gal (up apx 30cents in four years). A mere three months later, with two Texas oilmen now in office, the “National Average” price of gasoline “soared” $0.19 cents to $1.62/gal. This was BEFORE 9/11, so you Bush apologists, don’t waste my time with your stale “9/11 changed everything” defense, and AFTER Governor George Bush said “as President” he’d tell OPEC to “open the spigot” in order to to bring down gas prices from the lofty high of $1.49/gal.

In the 7 years since George Bush became President, the price of gasoline has risen 252% from a “National Average” of $1.43/gal in April of 2001 to $3.60 today. And only NOW as the price of diesel broke the $4/gal threshold, have truckers threatened to go on strike in protest of high fuel prices.

I have no answers, only questions. Why is it when a Democrat is in office, a 30cent rise in fuel prices is worth striking over; a stock market that grew from just under 340% (3,500 points to 11,723 at the start of the 2000 Presidential campaign) was derided with “the economy isn’t as good as they say it is” and helps get a Republican elected President, but a 252% rise in fuel prices in seven years, a stock market that has risen barely 21% in seven years, despite not one but two recessions, and a home mortgage market in meltdown, a Republican candidate for President can describe the economy as “strong” and still be considered a serious candidate for President?

If you have the answer, you are wiser than I.

(Postscript: “Crooks & Liars” started a great thread yesterday reminding everyone how the price of gasoline magically fell $0.80 just in time for the 2006 election.)

(ThinkProgress: RNC Celebrates Windfall For Oil Companies.)

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- Mugsy

The founder of Neo-Conservatism, William F. Buckley, passed away today. The TV news opined about Buckley as being “The Founder of Modern Conservatism” as well as his magazine “The National Review“, which Ronald Reagan once called “his favorite magazine”.

If you don’t recognize William F Buckley, you would almost assuredly recognize his distinctive way of talking. Not an insult, Buckley’s speech always reminded me of a rich English billionaire that just jumped out of the swimming pool with his nose full of water: “Hfaw, faw, wah-ha-fah.” If you were to accuse someone of “putting on aires” for the way they talked, they’d sound like Buckley.

But in all the Conservative nostalgia served up this day, the media was reluctant to report that Buckley renounced the Grand Experiment that was Iraq in a 2006 column in his own magazine, The National Review.

The Associated Press dedicated a grand total of two sentences to Buckley’s denouncement of the war in Iraq, which is better than NBC News (video on the page) did, omitting any mention whatsoever of his recent criticisms of Iraq and Neo-Conservatism in general. It is because Buckley was SO Conservative that he often found himself on the outs with the modern Neo-Conservatives in and around the current White House. One thing modern Conservatives DID inherit from Buckley, a vapid disdain for all things “Liberal” and occasionally allowing his racist/sexist/misogynistic attitudes to leak out unchecked.

So, while Conservatives genuflect tonight over the passing of the man that gave us the modern Conservative movement, I think it is only proper that we go back and revisit Buckley’s 2006 criticism of the folly that was Iraq:

It Didn’t Work [...] Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. [...] The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elucidates on the complaint against Americans. It is not only that the invaders are American, it is that they are “Zionists.” It would not be surprising to learn from an anonymously cited American soldier that he can understand why Saddam Hussein was needed to keep the Sunnis and the Shiites from each others’ throats. A problem for American policymakers — for President Bush, ultimately — is to cope with the postulates and decide how to proceed. One of these postulates, from the beginning, was that the Iraqi people, whatever their tribal differences, would suspend internal divisions in order to get on with life in a political structure that guaranteed them religious freedom. The accompanying postulate was that the invading American army would succeed in training Iraqi soldiers and policymkers to cope with insurgents bent on violence. This last did not happen. And the administration has, now, to cope with failure. [...] Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here because to make the kind of concession that is strategically appropriate requires a mitigation of policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown pronouncements. His challenge is to persuade himself that he can submit to a historical reality without forswearing basic commitments in foreign policy. He will certainly face the current development as military leaders are expected to do: They are called upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but to insist on the survival of strategic policies. Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat. [...]

(Emphasis mine, pointing out Buckley’s recognition of Bush’s inability to acknowledge his own failures.)

But Buckley’s criticism of the Neo-Cons in Washington did not end with Iraq, nor can any Neo-Conservative say, “Yeah, but that was before the Surge!”

Here is Buckley less than a year ago (April, 2007) on the subject of a dying GOP:

The Waning of the GOP The political problem of the Bush administration is grave, possibly beyond the point of rescue. The opinion polls are savagely decisive on the Iraq question. About 60 percent of Americans wish the war ended — wish at least a timetable for orderly withdrawal. What is going on in Congress is in the nature of accompaniment. The vote in Congress is simply another salient in the war against war in Iraq. Republican forces, with a couple of exceptions, held fast against the Democrats’ attempt to force Bush out of Iraq even if it required fiddling with the Constitution. President Bush will of course veto the bill, but its impact is critically important in the consolidation of public opinion. It can now accurately be said that the legislature, which writes the people’s laws, opposes the war. [...] When the Romans were challenged by Christianity, Rome fell. The generation of Christians moved by their faith overwhelmed the regimented reserves of the Roman state. It was four years ago that Mr. Cheney first observed that there was a real fear that each fallen terrorist leads to the materialization of another terrorist. What can a “surge,” of the kind we are now relying upon, do to cope with endemic disease? The parallel even comes to mind of the eventual collapse of Prohibition, because there wasn’t any way the government could neutralize the appetite for alcohol, or the resourcefulness of the freeman in acquiring it. [...]

(I encourage you to read the full article.)

So on this day when Neo-Conservatives morn the man whose movement gave us Ronald Reagan, let us not forget that even this Conservative monarch could see the devastation the Bush Doctrine was having on his brand of Conservativism.

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What, on God’s green Earth, happened to the planets’ collective IQ these past few years? Why does my brain suddenly feel like it needs a shower every time I turn on the TV or read some ignorant comment online?

It bears noting, the (s)election of a PROUD neophyte like George W. Bush for President wasn’t the beginning, merely its most notorious manifestation of stupidity’s new found cache. I remember stupid people doing stupid things when I was a kid, but never do I remember a world so barking mad as the one we live in now. And most of it can be chalked up to “willful ignorance”.

A wonderful example of “Is our children learning?” sped across the Internets at the speed of stupid two weeks ago when a helpless Miss Teen South Carolina desperately tried to bluff her way through a question:

But not to be overlooked is the statistic noted in the very question she could not answer: the fact that fully ONE-FIFTH of American teenagers can’t find the U.S. on a map! Good grief! Haven’t these kids ever watched a weather report on TV with that big honking map of the U.S. appearing on screen 11 times a day? What are we teaching our kids in school when they don’t even recognize the country they live in on a map?

A great example of what’s gnawing at me popped up on YouTube the other day:

Guest host Sherri Shepherd on ABC’s “The View” isn’t all that sure about evolution, and (I suppose) it should come as no surprise that she wasn’t 100% convinced the world is round either. Barbara Walters correctly pointed out that four of the Republican candidates for President likewise admitted that they did not believe in evolution. The late great comedian Bill Hicks had a great routine regarding evangelical evolution deniers as part of his 1993 stand up routine (warning, explicit language):

(Click to play - 5megs, 5:44)

The Ancient Mayans, whose every moment on Earth was dictated by the stars in the heavens, made a rather remarkable observation more than 5,000 years ago:

They noticed that during a Lunar Eclipse… when the Earth passed between the Sun and the moon… the shadow of the Earth on the moon was curved, thus PROVING that the Earth was ROUND. Think about that. 4,500 years before Columbus ever set sail in 1492 rejecting warnings that he’d “sail off the edge of the Earth”, or Magellan sailing around the world in 1519 to prove the world was indeed round, before Galileo was imprisoned by the Inquisition for suggesting the Earth revolved around the Sun and not the other way around, the Mayans had already proved THOUSANDS OF YEARS EARLIER by simple observation that the world was round. Evidence of their understanding of the Earth and its movement through the heavens is evident in the design of their pyramids:

Mayan pyramid with 91 steps on each side plus one on top (91*4+1 = 365)

Every day, when the Sun is at its highest point in the sky (iirc) the temples’ shadow falls on a different step, thus marking the days of the year. Every time the shadow fell on a different side of the pyramid, they knew the seasons had changed. Pretty ingenious for a civilization that existed three to seven thousand years before Galileo built the first telescope.

Saturday morning’s modern-day Dr. Wizard… “Bill Nye: The Science Guy”… infuriated a group of Evangelicals when he noted the fact that the moon “merely reflects the light of the Sun, it does not give off any light of its own.” But according to the Book of Genesis “The Sun is our light for the day, and the Moon is our light for the night.” According to one online account, several people in the audience were “visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence.” A few walked out, and one woman yelled, “We believe in God!” Apparently, these walking testaments to “willful ignorance” have never seen a lunar eclipse either. Granted, they don’t happen every day, but is it that difficult to figure out that if the moon emitted its own light, there would be no such thing as an “eclipse” of ANY kind… lunar OR solar? When the Earths’ shadow crossed the moon, it would still be a bright light in the night sky if it gave off its own light. It doesn’t. Once again, this isn’t rocket science folks. All you gotta do is look up. Is that too much to ask?

I wish I could say it was just us “dumb Americans under Bush” that seem to be de-evolving into drooling imbeciles, and that once he was out of office, America’s love affair with stupidity would melt away… but I can’t. Apparently, our new found stupidity as a species isn’t restricted to just the United States:

From the French version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”

The question: “What object orbits the Earth? a) The Moon, b) The Sun, c) Mars, d) Venus”.

Bad: Poor befuddled Frenchman doesn’t know the Moon, not the Sun, revolves around the Earth. Worse: 58% of the studio audience doesn’t know either.

5,000 years after the Mayans, a significant portion of people… arguably a MAJORITY even… still don’t know that the Earth revolves around the Sun? Are you kidding me?

The fact some people still don’t believe in evolution amazes me, but it’s not difficult to understand when you hear how unquestioning and gullible Creationists are. A favorite example I like to cite is that of famed creationist Ray Comfort, and what he believes is unshakable evidence of Creationism in the banana. He talks about how the simple banana “fits perfectly in your hand”, has “a non-slip surface for easy gripping”, and a “pull tab” mechanism for easy opening… all evidence of “intelligent design”. Excuse me Mr. Comfort, but don’t MONKEY’S eat bananas? Did God design the banana to fit perfectly in a monkey’s hand? (of course, wild undomesticated bananas bear little resemblance to the long skinny yellow seedless fruit we’re familiar with.)

Are we really becoming THIS stupid?

Flash forward to today. Being “dumb” is respectable, even praiseworthy, whereas intelligent people are “elitist intellectual snobs” that take pleasure in making others look dumb. But just HOW could anyone suddenly not be sure whether or not the world is round or where the U.S. is located on a map?

It is this same “willful ignorance” that allows Global Warming deniers to function. I’ve mentioned before here in “Mugsy’s Rap Sheet” about a scene in the documentary, “Jesus Camp” where a mother that is home schooling her children ridicules the concept of Global Warming to her young son. Any religious basis for her denial of the problem is never given in the film (one can only presume it is because the Republican Party opposes Global Warming, and most Evangelicals identify themselves as Republican.) They ridicule the science with absolutely no religious basis for doing so. But the Republican Party has a very NON-religious reason to deny Global Warming… big business opposes it. Evangelicals… who by their very nature don’t ask questions… are the unwitting tools of Big Business.

BTW, FWIW, IMHO, yes. OTOH, AFAIK, maybe not.

If you understand the above line, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with “texting”… sending text messages over your cell phone. Due to the cumbersome means of input on cell phones (and being charged per letter), an abbreviated “shortcut” language has become a common and acceptable form of writing for tens of thousands of young people… young people that are quickly losing the ability to write and speak properly. And as George Orwell pointed out in his famous novel “1984“, he who controls language controls thought. Limiting a person’s vocabulary limits a person’s ability to express themselves. It’s frightening to think of all those kids out there whose sole experience with writing is an alphabet soup of nonsensical abbreviations. But IDK, my BFF thinks everyone should MYOB.

As I’ve noted before, I maintain a collection of political videos on YouTube which frequently draw the ire of young Republican kids ranging from their late teens to late twenties. The only President of their adult lives has been George Bush. He is their lone role-model for how a U.S. President should act, and what level of respect one should have for “other people”, “opposing positions”, and just the Constitution in general. The lack of writing skills among these kids is as uniformly atrocious as they are vicious. It’s a bit worrisome to think an entire generation of Brownshirts may infect our politics for decades to come thanks to one despicable Administration.

Some examples of some of the comments I have received:

“Bush has put a nues on everyones ass.”

“God bless you, President Bush. Because of you my family and I have internet access and we can sleep at night, without having to post a sentry. Ignore these detractors for they know not what they do.” (age 42)

“if i wanted to see such a bunch crap id eat at kfc for a week.”

“…our troops and sailors are there in the middle east now kicking some towel head ass.”

“Why” are people suddenly increasingly stupid, and what… if anything… can be done about it? My theory is that most industrialized nations have found it to their benefit to dumb-down society. Uninformed people are more reactionary. Those who think less, question less. The Government does all that it can to keep its citizens terrified, then they tell them, “If you just give me this power” or “if you just give up this one right”, I’ll keep you safe from those nasty, nasty terrorists I just finished using to scare you. If you pause to think about it and don’t give them what they want, “you’re unpatriotic” and “helping the terrorists”.

And what works so successfully in one country is copied in others. People stop questioning. They ignore facts, distrust the evidence of their own eyes; everything they’ve ever been taught is suddenly suspect and not to be trusted, and blind fear creates a generation of kids growing up angry, confused, uninformed and unwilling to ask questions for fear of appearing “weak” or becoming an “elitist”.

Our next President needs to be someone that makes learning “cool” again and makes “asking questions” a sign of strength not weakness.

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After a week of responding to defenders of “Scooter” Libby attacking Democrats for OUR hypocrisy, followed by Right-wingers on the TV trashing Michael Moore’s new movie “SiCKO”, accusing him of “fudging the facts” using fudged facts of their own, then responding to a few racist email chain letters, I had had about enough! You correct them with facts supported by links, and they ignore you, only to come back days, weeks or even months later repeating the same tired long debunked allegations. Then came the straw to break the camels’ back:

As I’ve noted on here before, I maintain a video news archive on YouTube. President Bush still enjoys a 29% approval rating, and I felt like I heard from all of them this week, posting frantic responses to videos they don’t like. (It is becoming apparent that as they see their little world slipping away, they are in a panic.)

Without exception, their responses are always full of falsehoods, long-debunked “facts” and an obscure sense of logic that attacks Bill Clinton for “crimes” he supposedly committed while excusing/dismissing/denying every crime to come out of the Bush Administration.

My own exasperation piqued after having to debate the virtues of “peace” over “war” and “truth” over “lies” to a Baptist Minister from Texas. To him, Bush could do no wrong, Clinton could do no right, and the only reason Democrats hate Bush is “sour grapes” over the 2000 election. A tiny sampling of our two-day exchange:

> I’m not like you. I would vote for a Democrat. I would vote for Lieberman in a heartbeat. “Liberman” is your idea of “voting for a Democrat”? Please, he’s to the right of most Republicans (I’m sure Zell Miller had your vote too!) > Bush went off the same intelligence the Dems had. The > reporter asked John Kerry “Can Sadaam be dealt with > without using force, John Kerry, “I DON’T SEE HOW!” > Clinton bombed him for crying out loud, he had three > terrorist training camps, what more do you people want, > did you want Sadaam to set off a bomb here before you > would confront him? If you believe Congress gets the same intel as the President, you’re not dealing in reality. Perhaps you are familiar with the “Presidential Daily Briefing”… most notably, the one on August 6, 2001? When Congress wants to know something, it must form Committees” that the President can then bar from revealing what they know to the rest of Congress. That was the case in both the 2003 NIE and the NSA Domestic Wiretapping scandal. Please provide a date and link for Kerry’s quote about Saddam, because you have YET to provide ANY support (despite repeated requests) for ANY comments you claim support your position. Yes, Clinton bombed him. But HE DIDN’T INVADE. And after the bombing turned up nothing but an Advil factory, any talk of taking military action against Saddam ended…

Then you turn on the news, and we hear the Director of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff telling us that we may be attacked this Summer. But when asked if he has any information to support this, he says No, it’s just “a gut feeling”. This guys job isn’t to “fear monger” for his bosses Bush & Cheney in order to steer the political debate over Iraq/Iran.

Bush’s own former Surgeon General, Richard Carmona, along with Reagan’s SG C.Everett Coop and Clinton’s SG David Sacher all testified before Congress that the Bush Administrations’ meddling in science policy is the worst they’ve ever seen, blasting him and his anti-science administration before a joint session of Congress. His comments were so scathing, it is highly recommended viewing for all.

On the NBC Nightly News, Mid-East reporter Richard Engle gave a stunning report this week showing the children of Iraqi refugees living in Syria, some that appear to be as young as six, have been forced into prostitution to help support their families, fleeing the violence in Iraq. I’ve about had it.

There’s a special place in Hell for the people that helped cause all this.

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Today I received another one of those email chain letters forwarded by an “apolitical” friend that probably isn’t aware that the “popular wisdom” she is promoting is “latent racism” in disguise. An excerpt of that letter (available in full here) with my response follows:

Newspapers simply won’t publish letters to the editor which they either deem politically incorrect (read below) or which does not agree with the philosophy they’re pushing on the public. This woman wrote a great letter to the editor that should have been published; but, with your help it will get published via cyberspace! (…) Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like Mr. Lujan why today’s American is not willing to accept this new kind of immigrant any longer. (…) And here we are in 2006 with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights and privileges. Only they want to achieve it by playing with a different set of rules, one that includes the entitlement card and a guarantee of being faithful to their mother country. I’m sorry, that’s not what being an American is all about. I believe that the immigrants who landed on Ellis Island in the early 1900’s deserve better than that…   The problem with this example is that in the late 19th to early 20th century (~1880 to ~1920), the U.S. opened it’s borders to attract more people to move to America to bolster its burgeoning Industrialization that had just seen the creation of the telephone, the automobile, the electrification of our cities and the airplane industry. Increasing the size of the U.S. workforce so dramatically at that time helped America’s development enormously in the wake of World War I (called “The Great War” at that time, before we had sense enough to start numbering them) and prepared us for the “World War II” that we didn’t know was coming. By contrast, the United States has grown increasingly isolationist, closing its borders and alienating itself from the outside world. Mexico, the country from which we receive the greatest number of immigrants (both legal and not) has a population of nearly 108 million people, yet the United States issues only 50,000 permanent visas (apx .04% of the population) annually. And due to the cost and excessive restrictions placed on those visas, only the wealthiest and well-connected Mexican citizens are able to obtain them. Most Mexican citizens looking for work in America are far too poor to acquire these visa through regular channels, so they are left with no other option than to risk their lives by sneaking across 50 miles of desert with only as much water and personal belongings as they can carry, then hope they aren’t shot, die of thirst/heatstroke, or bitten by one of the many rattlesnakes or scorpions littering the badlands between Mexico and the U.S.. In other instances, guides called “coyotes”… typically drug smugglers… promise to smuggle them into the country for a price, only to be left to die locked in the back of an 18-wheeler baking in the hot Texas sun. Because we’ve made entering our country so difficult with borders in near lockdown, those who sneak across, come to stay… permanently. And because they know they probably will not be able to sneak back in if they go back home, often bring their entire families with them or else would likely never see them again. There is something sinfully wrong with blaming illegal immigrants for a problem we ourselves created. Unlike Ellis Island at the turn of the century where we welcomed millions of immigrants into our country… immigrants that assembled Model-T’s on Ford’s assembly line, patrolled our streets as policemen and built the skyscrapers of The Empire State… whom we allowed to travel back to their homelands without fear of not being able to re-enter the country, we’ve now become more isolationist than ever before. Between being terrorized on a near daily basis by our own government, to fear of the possibility of terrorists entering our country, to plain old ‘mericun racism that dislikes anyone that doesn’t speak English, the United States has rolled up the welcome mat and rescinded Lady Liberty’s pledge: “Give us your tired, your hungry, your huddled masses yearning to breath free“. History has shown what happens to countries that isolate themselves from the outside world: China, once the inventor of gun powder, rocket propulsion and from whom Marco Polo introduced “spaghetti” to Italy after visiting in 1275, built The Great Wall of China (in mid 1300’s), cut itself off from the outside world, and quickly became one of the poorest and technologically under-developed nations on the planet until reopening its doors and allowing the outside world back in during the latter half of the 20th century. Ditto for the Soviet Union behind “the iron curtain” and East Germany behind The Berlin Wall. All of these nations fell into economic, scientific and cultural decay after cutting themselves off from the outside world. While nations like the U.S., with its open borders and welcoming of immigrants grew from “a minor agricultural state” of mostly farmers to one of the great global super-powers in a span of just 50 years. But today we seem to be following in the path of early China, Russia and East Germany. The solution to our immigration problem with Mexico may not be *tighter* borders, but in fact *freer* ones. Increased security and tighter identification to protect us from “evil-doers” (as President Bush likes to call them) installed at a handful of freely crossable border “checkpoints”. By making the border easier to cross but only at select points would allow us to control the flow of exactly who enters our country and why. (right now, we have no idea who/where these people are that are sneaking in illegally.) And the ability to cross back and forth without fear of not being allowed to return gives immigrants less reason to stay permanently or bring their entire families with them. Coyote’s… the inhuman traffickers that prey on human misery… would be put out of business. Companies that believe they can abuse their immigrant workers because they know they have no legal recourse, would likewise be forced to behave responsibly. But instead, we have a bunch of bureaucrats and closet racists that play on our darkest fears in hopes of turning what was once the freest, most scientifically and culturally advanced nation on the planet, and turn us into an East German gulag, locked behind an Iron Curtain, where science is frowned upon and “economic development” means raising the price of oil.

Every illegal immigrant does not have to be made a U.S. citizen with this solution. For those illegal immigrants already working/living in this country that aren’t about to “commute” to/from Mexico every day and wish to stay in the U.S., they can be assigned “work permits” that only need be renewed every year in order to stay and work in this country. Thus rendering moot the “rewarding criminals” argument that rallies Conservatives on this issue.

Wanna spread an opinion about immigration and the future of our nation? Please forward THIS story. Not the xenophobic one.

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(First, I am aware that there are plenty of other more important Breaking News stories out there right now: the Valerie Plame hearing last Friday, Alberto Gone-zales and the White House purge of 8 Federal Prosecutors… including THIS dramatic tidbit Monday, but these topics appear to be well covered elsewhere. Repeating them here would only be redundant.)  
For most Democrats, it has been painfully apparent that religion has been hijacked by those with an ulterior agenda. Last month, I saw the 2006 documentary “Jesus Camp” and was struck by several scenes in the movie that I’ve considered writing about for a while now. I was reminded of this again over the weekend when I finally got the chance to see the controversial 1999 comedy “Dogma“. This excellent movie, which had the Christian community in an uproar back when it came out, is EXTREMELY blasphemous in making its point about the corruption and thoughtlessness of religion in America today. But once you look past the language and blasphemy, it is actually a very “spiritual” movie with a message. While directed by Kevin “Silent Bob” Smith and staring a plethora of soon-to-be Hollywood heavyweights, including Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Chris Rock, the movie was of a surprisingly high caliber.

In any case, these movies got me thinking (more than usual) about recent religious hypocrisy.

Consider the fact that, while President Bush and the majority of the Republican Party is “pro-life” and controlled both the White House AND Congress, as well as the opportunity to appoint… not just one… but TWO new justices to the Supreme Court with admitted pro-life biases, they never even tried to overturn “Roe V. Wade”. And while the Clinton Administration was “pro-choice”, the economic boom they brought lifted so many people out of poverty that the number of abortions actually DECREASED in the late ’90’s, whereas the economic disaster of the Bush Administration, coupled with their refusal to allow schools to discuss anything other than “abstinence-only sex education” actually resulted in an INCREASE in the number of abortions in this country (52,000 more under Bush in his first four years than Clinton after eight). It has become increasingly obvious that the G.O.P. isn’t serious about wanting to overturn Roe v. Wade (and lose their lead fund-raising tool), and that, while Clinton was “pro-choice”, if your goal is to actually reduce the number of abortions in this country, logic only dictates that your agenda is best served by a President whose policies actually advance that result and has no stake in the outcome. Yet, the Religious Right still supports President Bush and the G.O.P. for what they claim to be.

On the subjects of poverty, caring for the sick, caring for the planet, and denouncing war, high-profile leaders of the Religious Right… Falwell, Robertson, et al… it has become clear that they are more interested in supporting the agenda of the Republican Party. While Falwell compares Hillary Clinton to Satan and blames the Gays for 9/11, Reverend Robertson calls for the assassination of a world leader when he’s not calling Progressive judges “a greater threat to our security than a few terrorists flying planes into buildings”. I’ve pondered many explanations for this… why would anyone support a group ripe with sexual predators, greedy businessmen, corrupt politicians, and war mongers… when the Bible spoke out so clearly in opposition to all these things?

In the movie “Jesus Camp“, one Evangelical mother explained that she preferred to home-school her kids (75% of all home-schooled children come from Evangelical families) and allowed the cameras to sit in briefly while teaching her young son. During the lesson, the mother demeaned the concept of “global warming” to her young son:

“Scientists say that the Earth’s temperature may rise as much as 6/10th of a degree by the year 2050… doesn’t sound like much of a problem, does it?”

Ignoring the obvious, that her numbers are dead wrong, and her clear lack of understanding over the seriousness of what even such a small change could have on the environment, I couldn’t help but wonder what in her religious beliefs justified criticizing “Global Warming”? I can understand her not wanting her kids to learn about sex in a classroom or from other students, or being taught “evolution” in science class, but what biblical justification could she possibly have for demeaning “global warming”?

Short answer: she has none. She simply does so because Republicans reject it, and she’s a Republican.

Recently, Evangelical leader Jerry Falwell denounced “global warming” as a means of tricking people into focusing more on “the creation” rather than “the Creator”. He then cited two Bible passage in such a way to support his position: “Psalm 24:1 - The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;”, and “Genesis 8:22 - “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” In the case of the first passage, I read nothing to suggest God would not want us to care for his creation, and in passage two, the words “as long as the Earth endures” sticks out like a sore thumb. Why would God put a “qualifier” on how long the Earth may last if it were not a given that it will be around forever, as Fallwell appears to suggest? Couldn’t GOD assure us the Earth would never end? It seems clear that these religious leaders will even go as far as pervert the very scriptures they claim to live by in order to support the Republican agenda. And their congregation follows along, blindly and unquestionably, because they are taught never to question what you are taught, because “faith” means never questioning the Lord’s Will (conflating “questioning the Lord” with questioning the interpretation and motives behind those telling them what to believe.)

This got me thinking about all the Bible Passages that contradict what these Evangelical leaders are using to manipulate their followers into supporting the Neo-Conservative agenda (a brief rundown):

Genesis 6:13 - So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. Psalm 46:8-9 - “Come and see the works of the LORD, the desolations he has brought on the earth. (9) He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire. Isaiah 2:4 - “He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” Deuteronomy 16:19 - “Do not pervert justice or show partiality. Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous.” Kings 20:18 - He said, “If they have come out for peace, take them alive; if they have come out for war, take them alive.” Matthew 5:7 - “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.” Matthew 5:9 - “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” Psalm 104:14 - He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate— bringing forth food from the earth: Ezekiel 36:34 - The desolate land will be cultivated instead of lying desolate in the sight of all who pass through it. [Thinking of 9/11 here:] Revelation:13:3-5 - “One of the heads of The Beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was astonished and followed the beast. (4) Men worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can make war against him?” (5) The Beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise his authority for forty-two months.” [The war in Iraq was in its 42nd full month when Democrats won control of Congress in November. How's that for creepy?] Psalm 140:1 - “Deliver me, O LORD, from the evil man: preserve me from the violent man;”

Now, if you were a Muslim living in the Middle East, how might you interpret this passage:

Deuteronomy 28:49 - The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand,

Sounds like a quote Evangelical leaders might use to justify Bush’s war in the Middle East, right? But notice that comma at the end. The next passages read:

Deuteronomy 28:50-51 - a fierce-looking nation without respect for the old or pity for the young. (51) They will devour the young of your livestock and the crops of your land until you are destroyed.

It is clear the invaders in that passage… sent by God… are the bad guys.

Now, Evangelical detractors might want to point out that “anyone can cite Bible passages to support their own agenda.”

No kidding? You don’t say!