Adoration Of An Asshole

Isn’t this some kind of violation of the first and second commandments? (If you’re Catholic or Lutheran, then just the first commandment applies here.)

The Military System's Virtues

From Holder's reasonable decision by Jim Comey and Jack Goldsmith:

…Holder's critics do not help their case by understating the criminal justice system's capacities, overstating the military system's virtues and bumper-stickering a reasonable decision.

There are many things that I do not understand about the far-right wing. Here is one. Why do they see the Republican Party as well as the United States military as infallible? Why is the Democratic Party constantly wrong in their eyes? These things seem like statistical impossibilities to me.

From what I understand, the logic (or illogic) of the right wingers is that the government is bad, can’t be trusted, screws everything up, and takes all their money in the form of taxes.

Here is what I don’t understand. The military is part of the government. From the perspective of the right, why is the military always good, why can they always be trusted, why do they never screw up, and why does the enormous amount of tax dollars given to the military never seem to bother the right? Why does the right have faith in military courts, but not civilian courts?

Monster Raving Loonies

From Not So Funny After All by William Rivers Pitt:

The problem, however, is that people like Palin stopped being funny a while ago. The prominence they enjoy in our political discourse is so far out of whack with their abilities and intentions that it vastly exaggerates their influence over a variety of very serious matters that affect each and every one of us. The British have the Monster Raving Loony Party, who are a joke and exert no real influence, and we have the Republican Party, filled with monster raving loonies who exert a tremendous amount of influence because the news media thinks we are a nation of people who like to look at car accidents on the highway, which, by and large, we are. We've been well-trained by 20 years of shock television to mistake clowns and jesters for serious people, and because of that mistake, these people's deranged opinions and deformed ideas get taken seriously.

Actually, the biggest wreck on the highway is the news media, and not all of us want to look at it. Some of us are sick and tired of it, fed up, bored too, and mostly just plain pissed off. Something is very wrong when someone like Sarah Palin is given such a large stage to be an idiot, and then is taken seriously by so many.

Misguided?

From Atheist billboards are misguided by Jan Ainsworth:

In their latest poster campaign, Ariane Sherine and members of the British Humanist Association appear to have decided that it is a Very Bad Thing that parents might try and bring up their children within a religious or philosophical framework of their choosing. They suggest it is wholly unacceptable that anyone might suggest that their own child might belong to a particular religion.

While I know I risk offending the loyal and noble readers of Cif here, I genuinely can't believe that people actually donated good money to spend on billboard advertising that proposes such a misguided and patronising argument.

It is telling that Sherine resorts to quoting Richard Dawkins when she needs to find someone to explain the rationale for the campaign: "Children are routinely labelled with the religion of their parents", Dawkins suggests. By who, exactly? And if the answer is by their parents, who are the BHA to tell them to stop?

It is surely central to the role of a parent, whether committed to a religious faith or not, to want to pass on to their child the things they value most, the beliefs and world view that shape how they live. It is also consistent with that role to want to have those beliefs and world view acknowledged and affirmed as part of their children's education.

Read the rest here.

Why does this seem to bother Jan Ainsworth so much? Her spurious arguments and reasoning can simply be reversed and used to support Ariane Sherine and to denigrate herself. Of course this would be as useless and as pointless as what Ainsworth is trying to do. Yes, people should have freedom of religion. People also should have freedom of speech. If Sherine wants to spend money to express herself, then who is Jan Ainsworth to tell her to stop? All of this seems so pointless.

Speaking from personal experience, what matters the most to me about this issue is that people can end up getting hurt. If the child makes the choice to turn to another religion, or to atheism, there is immense potential for things to get very ugly.

The indoctrination of a child into a religion puts the child who doesn’t believe in their parent’s religion in a terrible position. The child must choose between what he/she sees as the truth, and his or her parents. Were his parents lying to him, or simply misguided? This is not an easy thing to deal with. The more that the religion defines who the parents are, the harder it is for the non-believing child.

This also puts the parents in a terrible position. If they truly believe, then their child will suffer for being a nonbeliever. Look out below, my kid’s going to hell.

I realize that some parents may be able to respect the wishes of their child to not believe as they do. However, simply by definition, their religion will not allow them to see their child as whole anymore. God will not accept him anymore. If they truly believe, then how can they accept him anymore? To me, this is absolutely monstrous. I find all of this to be very hard to put into words adequately, so I hope that some sense of what I mean is coming through.

Religious people claim to be compassionate. To me, they never seem to be very compassionate when this issue is brought up.

Oh, and it’s even worse if the child is gay or has had an abortion.

Before I go, here is one final quibble. Why the hell does Ainsworth write: “It is telling that Sherine resorts to quoting Richard Dawkins when she needs to find someone to explain…” Why is this “telling?” Could someone tell me? The only reason I can think of for Ainsworth to write this is because it comes off as some kind of insult directed towards Ariane Sherine. Poor woman, she can’t think for herself, she has to quote Dawkins. Yet, it’s not an insult to say that she quoted Dawkins, is it? I hate it when people do this kind of thing. It serves no useful purpose. Is it telling when Ainsworth quotes from the Bible? (I assume that she does, frequently.)

Horse Mackerels

It sounds like a cuss phrase, but it’s just the name of a fish.

From What's in a name? More than you might think by Kylie MacLellan:

A London-based translation firm is offering parents-to-be the chance to check the meaning of prospective baby names in other languages to avoid inadvertently causing their offspring future embarrassment.

Celebrity couple Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes might have thought twice about naming their daughter Suri if they'd known that it means "pickpocket" in Japanese, "turned sour" in French, and "horse mackerels" in Italian, suggest Today Translations.

Why Does This Not Surprise Me?

A George W. Bush fundraiser is now embroiled in an alleged $1 billion scam

Wonder if Bernie Madoff contributed money to the Republicans as well? Turns out, he liked Democrats. Go figure.

I'm With Bing On This One

Except I don’t find Sarah Palin to be attractive. I’m not very attracted to people who scare me. I’m not very attracted to ignorance. I’m not very attracted to people who are out of their freakin’ minds.

From Please, God, let Sarah Palin’s book tour be over! by Stanley Bing:

I know there are many, many people who want to see Sarah Palin. Even Oprah did and gave her a nice, friendly launch for her platform, too. It’s just that I’m not one of the people who does. She’s a very attractive person, no question about it. But she scares me. Perhaps “scares” is not the right word. Whenever I see her I get a stabbing feeling that the world is not of my making.

By the way, wouldn’t it be more honest of the book promotion machine to have the person who actually wrote the book be the one promoting it?

Also, I might be more willing to give the believing in God thing more of a chance if he would only stop his childish need to constantly barrage us with plagues of locusts.

A Question

"How is it that it will take 'decades' for history to judge the Bush administration yet we know already that the Obama administration is a failure?"

Oh No, Not THAT Guy!

Picture yourself at a party, a social gathering of people you know well and some whom you don’t know very well. Picture that guy that you make every effort to avoid. You move out of the room that he’s in because you don’t want to be trapped by him, because you can’t stand him. He’s loud, pompous, boisterous, arrogant, opinionated, never listens to what you say, and never, ever shuts up. Isn’t that guy Rush Limbaugh?

Moral Grounds

“No one cares whether you want your tax dollars spent on pointless wars, but abortion is another story entirely.”

Aesop Or Jim Cramer?

Troy Adkins thinks that Aesop wins the race. His choice for the best book on investing is The Tortoise and the Hare:

Given the simplicity of the famous fable "The Tortoise and the Hare," it may seem out of the ordinary to recommend it to people as a guideline for their retirement-planning decisions. However, the moral overtone provides meaningful insight in terms of helping people plan for their retirement by keeping them grounded in proper virtues that will likely lead to successful investing over time. Unfortunately, the simple principle of this story seems to have been largely forgotten, as evidenced by the fact that many people do not prepare adequately for retirement, and they tend to make very foolish mistakes while investing.



"The Tortoise and the Hare" is a story that is based on a race between a rabbit and a turtle, and the story explains why a turtle ends up winning a race that should have been won by a hare. The simple moral of this fable is that a slow and steady pace will win a given race. The essence of the story has pertinent meaning to the retirement planning process, because it stresses the need for people to start saving at a young age, and to follow a systematic and methodical approach to building their retirement nest egg over time, rather than getting greedy.

Good advice. Take that, Jim Cramer!

Bizarro World

David Brooks on Sarah Palin: “She's a joke. I just can't take her seriously.”

Mark Shields on Barack Barack Obama: “And I think it makes me nostalgic for those days when we had a manly man in the White House who could say, “Let’s kick some tail and ask questions afterwards” you know? That’s what we really need instead of any reflection.”

Of course if you watch the video of Shields it is obvious that he is being sarcastic. No one at ThinkProgress (and other sites as well) seems to have picked up on that, however. By jove, DougJ has got it after all.

The world, for one short moment, is not so bizarre after all.

I’m still going to retreat to my fortress of solitude, however.

UPDATE: ThinkProgress has seen the light and updated their original post. It’s a little disappointing that Mark Shields had to tell them that he was being sarcastic, though. Come on ThinkProgress, I expect better from you.

James Taranto Needs To Take A Remedial Reading Class

Is James Taranto incredibly stupid, or does he just think that his readers are?

From How Code Pink Supports the Troops (A "peace" group appeals to the authority of a mass murderer) by James Taranto:

"We support our troops when they shoot their officers," read a banner held aloft by some "antiwar" protesters back in the spring of 2003. Well, jejune anarchists have as much right to free speech as the rest of us, and anyway, surely they were just being provocative. They don't really believe that, do they?

Don't be so sure. On Veterans Day, six days after the Fort Hood massacre, a group that styles itself Code Pink: Women for Peace issued a statement urging President Obama not to send more troops to Afghanistan. It began as follows:

This Veterans Day, our hearts ache for the soldiers and their families affected by the recent shootings at Ft. Hood. Our hearts also ache for the soldiers and their families who continue to be affected by war in Iraq and Afghanistan on a daily basis. Now more than ever, CODEPINK is committed to helping to heal the hearts of those touched by war, and doing whatever we can to bring our troops home.

(Hat tip: BigGovernment.com.)

It's bad enough to draw a moral equivalence between professional soldiers, who volunteer to risk their lives in defense of their country, and murder victims. But it gets much worse:

Our soldiers clearly need more care; the last thing they need is to be put into more harm's way. Even US military officers think so--Matthew Hoh resigned from the Foreign Service in protest of the lack of clear mission and achievable results in Afghanistan, and of course the Ft. Hood shooter was a Major who did not wish to be deployed to Afghanistan.

We have read a lot about the background of the alleged killer, Nidal Hasan, and we don't know of any basis on which to think he agreed with Code Pink's stated position that "our soldiers clearly need more care." In any case, mowing them down in cold blood would seem an odd way to give voice to such a view. Yet the Code Pink ladies are eager to have us believe that the killer is a kindred spirit. They think that imputing their opinions to him strengthens their case via an appeal to authority: "Even US military officers think so."

This isn't precisely the same as the banner we cited atop this item. But Code Pink's motto could be: "Our officers support Code Pink when they shoot their troops."

How low can you go? How slimy must you be to write something as vile and dishonest as this? To say that this is misleading is an understatement.

First of all, Code Pink is not a “peace” group, it is a peace group. They are not pretending, they are real.

What the hell does “appeals to the authority of a mass murderer” even mean? Even though I don’t know what it means, I am certain that Code Pink has never made such an appeal, even though James Taranto tells me that they have.

Trying to connect what was on a banner from 2003 specifically to Code Pink and to what Code Pink wrote on November 11, 2009, is quite a stretch, don’t you think? Just a tad bit deceitful, no? It doesn’t seem to bother James Taranto, but it bothers the hell out of me.

Code Pink never draws a moral equivalence between professional soldiers and murder victims. Just because James Taranto says that they do does not make it so.

Nowhere does the writing of Code Pink state that they view murderers as kindred spirits.

I’m with Code Pink, our soldiers need more care. Is James Taranto trying to say that they do not?

Nowhere does Code Pink claim the motto "Our officers support Code Pink when they shoot their troops."

Here is the original and unabridged writing by Code Pink that James Taranto so crudely distorts for his own evil and twisted machinations.

James Taranto is full of shit.

More Headline Fun

Paris Hilton's vacant? Billboard industry seeks new ways to fill empty space

Headline Fun

For some reason this headline brings the word oxymoronic to mind:

GM reports $1.2B loss, says it shows progress

UPDATE: Now they have changed the headline to: GM says improved quarter shows signs of stability. Oh well.

Quote Of Note - Barbara Ehrenreich

“ What is this fixation on growth anyway? As a general rule of biological survival, any creature or entity that depends on perpetual growth is well worth avoiding, lest you be eaten alive. As Bill McKibben argues in his book Deep Economy, the "cult of growth" has led to global warming, ghastly levels of pollution, and diminishing resources. Tumors grow, at least until they kill their hosts; economies ought to be sustainable.” Barbara Ehrenreich

Say What?

Once again I’m stealing from the current Say What? at the Doonesbury site (where do they find these things?):

"We're a capitalistic society. I go into business, I don't make it, I go bankrupt. They're not going to bail me out. I've been on welfare and food stamps. Did anyone help me? No."
-- actor Craig T. Nelson

Can actors think for themselves without writers?

I’m a hard-core liberal leftist. I’ve never been on welfare and/or food stamps. I’m going to assume that Craig T. Nelson is a conservative. What does all of this say about left/right stereotypes?

Can A Dick Be An Ass All At The Same Time?

Why hasn’t Dick Cheney been investigated for crimes against humanity? At the very least, why hasn’t Dick Cheney been shamed into oblivion?

From the current Say What? at the Doonesbury site:

"You know, Dick Clarke. Dick Clarke, who was the head of the counterterrorism program in the run-up to 9/11. He obviously missed it."
-- Dick Cheney, on Richard Clarke

"Bin Ladin Public Profile May Presage Attack" (5/3/01)

"Bin Ladin's Networks' Plans Advancing" (5/26/01)

"Bin Ladin Attacks May Be Imminent" (6/23/01)

"Bin Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats" (6/25/01)

"Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile Attacks" (6/30/01)

"Planning for Bin Ladin Attacks Continues, Despite Delays" (7/02/01)

-- subject lines of Richard Clarke emails to Bush Administration prior to 9/11/01

Quote Of Note - Howard Zinn

“Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.” - Howard Zinn

Divided We Fall

From American Aparthood by Glenn W. Smith:

The Right believes humankind is sorted naturally upon a ladder. The Left believes we walk together upon a bridge.

For the Right, freedom means the recognition of a natural, hierarchical order. By "democracy" the Right means a system that makes sure the "poor and despised" do not usurp the power of those above them on the ladder. The Right says it does not seek to "eat up the poor," though the enforced euthanasia of our health care system puts the lie to that claim.

The Right's worldview is not just an ad hoc, cynical justification of selfishness. It is a meaningful, if destructive, worldview, a worldview that produces aparthood as a reasoned solution to the unpredictable dangers of our lives together in a hostile universe.

As we run up against the resource limits that betray the pacifying illusion of movement up their ladder of life, the Right is panicking.

Human sociality is full of ladders and bridges. The theoretical genius of American democracy lies in this recognition. The Right shares the Framers' skepticism of the masses, but rejects the Framers' much more alarmed skepticism of unchecked authority. The Framers understood that human nature was not an unchanging thing, that humans could not be fixed to permanent, isolated places on a ladder the powerful lower from above.