Kiss Hank's Ass.

Obama: "Doubt Causes Faith!"

Obama spoke at the Notre Dame commencement yesterday, and despite predictions from some "pro-lifers," was not struck by lightning. By most accounts he gave an excellent speech. I'll leave the abortion topic for others to deconstruct, but I want to touch on another topic he covered.

"In this world of competing claims about what is right and what is true, have confidence in the values with which you’ve been raised and educated. Be unafraid to speak your mind when those values are at stake. Hold firm to your faith and allow it to guide you on your journey. Stand as a lighthouse.

But remember too that the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It is the belief in things not seen. It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us, and those of us who believe must trust that His wisdom is greater than our own.

This doubt should not push us away from our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, and cause us to be wary of self-righteousness. It should compel us to remain open, and curious, and eager to continue the moral and spiritual debate that began for so many of you within the walls of Notre Dame. And within our vast democracy, this doubt should remind us to persuade through reason, through an appeal whenever we can to universal rather than parochial principles, and most of all through an abiding example of good works, charity, kindness, and service that moves hearts and minds."

ARRRRRGHHHHH! This is so frustrating. Here is one of the most intelligent people on earth, in front of a crowd of future leaders, taking a few minutes to encourage belief in things that can't be observed or proven! Is this responsible behavior?

Does this work in any realm other than religion. If I'm lucky enough to one day give a commencement address, is it acceptable for me to spend time talking about holding true to belief in resquartervantites? After all, there is no proof for the existence of resquartervantites, you can't see them, they don't actually communicate with you, but if you just close your eyes, click your heels three times, and believe hard enough they can help you to do all kinds of good things. Forget acceptable, would it even be responsible?

Come on Mr. President, doubt shouldn't push us away from faith?! People doubt because there is no evidence supporting claims of faith. I certainly hope you don't use this kind of logic in making foreign policy decisions.

"I kind of doubt that the Iranians have done away with that nuclear weapons program. But you know what, doubt really shouldn't interfere with my faith that they have. No further action required."

I hope he doesn't actually believe this hoooey, and it's all just a show for the believer electorate. While I'm not normally comforted by politicians lying, that scenario just seems more palatable than the idea that the leader of the most powerful country on earth believes in an imaginary sky friend.

Meet The New Boss...

I don't like to just reprint material from other blogs, but earlier this week Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic posted something I want to talk about. Here's what he said:

"On the totally surreal front, my aspiration is to live in a country where the president actually explains that no-one can or ever will win an imperial war in Afghanistan, that we cannot possibly leave Iraq in the next eight years without a bloodbath, that Iran cannot be prevented from getting a nuclear bomb in the foreseeable future, that an energy policy without nuclear power cannot do anything to stop global warming, and that Israel has lots of nukes, and will never, ever withdraw from the West Bank."

While I'm not sure I agree with him on the nuclear power question (literally - I just don't know enough about the technology), I share his sentiment about the lack of candor coming from our government.

This week Obama announced that he will reinstitute military tribunals for terror suspects, lifting the 120 day hold he had put on the practice when he took office. Apparently he intends to make some "improvements" over how these proceedings had been run, but they will not provide the protections of a court trial.

The President again failed to do all he could to expose torturers, when he "delayed" release of photos showing mistreatment of detainees in American custody. At this point it's unclear if he will ever authorize release. The release of these photos surely would have fueled cries for prosecutions.

As Sullivan pointed out this week, it's reached the point that this adminstration is essentially owning the crimes of the prior administration. For someone who ran on a platform of "Change, Change and More Change," this feels an awful lot like as case of "meet the new boss same as the old boss."

More war. More secrecy.

When do we get the "Change We can Believe In?"

Swine Flu Again!

OK - I know you are getting sick of hearing about the swine flu, but having stumbled across these I had to share. Apparently we had a swine flu scare in the 70's (I have no memory of it) and it generated some hilarious PSA's.





Please note many of us lived through the 70's!

Out Break!

I figured I'd be dead from swine flu by now, so I didn't plan any posts for this week. Now I have to come up with stuff on the fly.

Kid Charlemagne

This feels like the right tune to start this week:

Vader Comes Back

Looks like Vice President Vader is at it again. Dick Cheney crawled out of his undisclosed location one more time today. This time to agree with the apparent leader of the New Republican Party - Rush Limbaugh.

Talking about former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and agreeing with Rush, Cheney gave us this:

"My take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn't know he was still a Republican."

Clearly Tricky Dick II is upset about Powell's endorsement of Obama, but even to an outsider like me it seems ballsy to question Powell's party loyalty. After all, Powell was the guy who lied (or at least turned a blind eye to the truth) to the UN in support of the Cheney/Bush folly in Iraq. That's pretty loyal.

Powell put his reputation on the line to support his administration and party, why would Cheney challenge his conservative credentials now? I don't much care for the former Secretary of State, but anybody who has read anything about him knows that he is a conservative. Granted, more moderate than many, but a long way from the left side of the aisle. (To some of us that's a bad thing of course.)

Democratic loyalist should be ecstatic about Dick's recent forays in to the media. To Dems in Washington, Cheney was the gift that kept on giving. A surly, unlikable guy with a dismal approval rating and a knack for making bad decisions. He was the perfect punching bag - he was the perfect opponent. Sheer dislike for the former VP could tip any political debate toward the left.

Seems to me that if Dick Cheney has any kind of party loyalty at all, he would follow his former boss' lead and go clear brush away from the cameras.

Or maybe he could get a gig as a Walmart greeter:

Apologies...

...for the complete lack of posts this week. It's been a loooong and very busy week so blogging was put on the back burner. I hope to get back to it in earnest this weekend.

In the meantime I offer a compilation of the schlocky music I grew up with, and for some reason still love.



Many thanks to those still checking in here.

More Creationism Schtick.

Ricky Gervais shares his take on creationism.

Blackadder Stands Trial

Here's some fun from the classic BBC series Blackadder.

Fans of House might recognize counsel for the defense.



I hate to sound like an old man, but they just don't make TV shows as good as they use to.

Run For The Hills - Swine Flu Is Near!

The media has latched on to a new scare phenomenon: swine flu! If you watch cable news these days, you may be left with the impression that we are headed for a bubonic plague like run of this disease. Alas, examination of swine flu statistics kind of debunks that.

So far we know that 154 people have died in Mexico from swine flu. The World Health Organization reports that about 1,600 Mexicans have been infected. In the United States there have been 64 total cases, and no deaths. Throughout the rest of the world - a mere smattering of cases - most of them not yet confirmed.

While those 154 cases in Mexico are tragic for family and friends of the deceased, they hardly require full blown panic. More than 100 Million people live in Mexico. A very very small percentage of the population has been infected.

In the US, the over the top scare aspect of this is even worse. We are talking about 64 cases in a country of more than 300 million. How is this even news worthy?

To put this in perspective, according to the Center for Disease Control, regular old influenza and pneumonia combined cause about 63,000 deaths per year in the US. Somehow the media doesn't start off every flu season though with a massive scare campaign designed to get ratings and terrify anyone getting the sniffles.

We certainly should be vigilant about monitoring disease and working to prevent it, but I can't help but think that in no time at all Swine Flu will have gone the way of SARS, Bird Flu and Mad Cow Disease. They were good for ratings, controllable, and not quite the threat they were made out to be.

Storm

I came across this Tim Minchin gem a few weeks ago on another site. Thus far I've resisted the urge to repost it here, but my resistance has worn down.

Enjoy.



(Via)

Torture 101

As this week progressed, and more information leaked about Americans waterboarding terror suspects, my mind drifted back to a Christopher Hitchens article I read last summer. Hitchens, as part of an effort to honestly report on torture, asked the American military to waterboard him. Then he wrote about it.

His retelling is chilling, and leaves little doubt that the technique is just drowning a victim to make him fear for his life. It's amazing how quickly Hitchens himself used a preset signal to get out of the situation, although he did go back for seconds. Read the piece, which is linked above, it's worth your time.

Part of his article included a retelling of a conversation Hitchens had with Malcolm Nance, a counter-terrorism and terrorism intelligence consultant for the U.S. government’s Special Operations, Homeland Security and Intelligence agencies. Nance has more than 20 years experience fighting terrorism. He's hardly a peacenik lefty.

Per Hitchens, here's what Nance had to say about waterboarding:

"1. Waterboarding is a deliberate torture technique and has been prosecuted as such by our judicial arm when perpetrated by others.

2. If we allow it and justify it, we cannot complain if it is employed in the future by other regimes on captive U.S. citizens. It is a method of putting American prisoners in harm’s way.

3. It may be a means of extracting information, but it is also a means of extracting junk information. . . To put it briefly, even the C.I.A. sources for the Washington Post story on waterboarding conceded that the information they got out of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was “not all of it reliable.” Just put a pencil line under that last phrase, or commit it to memory.

4. It opens a door that cannot be closed. Once you have posed the notorious “ticking bomb” question, and once you assume that you are in the right, what will you not do? Waterboarding not getting results fast enough? The terrorist’s clock still ticking? Well, then, bring on the thumbscrews and the pincers and the electrodes and the rack."

Mr. Holder: Can we please get down to prosecuting the people who authorized and used this technique?

266 Times!

266! According to recently released CIA memos, that's how many times CIA operatives waterboarded two Al Qaeda suspects over the course of two months. Abu Zubaydah 83 times in August of 2002. Khalid Sheik Mohammed 183 times in March of 2003.

Let's be clear about something at the outset, these are bad guys. Mohammed is the admitted mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. I have no love for them - indeed what I feel is much closer to hate - but those emotions do not justify torture. As I've said before, we are suppose to be better than that. We are suppose to be an example of freedom and respect for human rights. We are not suppose to torture.

“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead

Let's recap a little.

John McCain, a man who knows something about torture, says waterboarding is torture. (Although he does disagree with releasing the torture memos.)



Very high ranking Bush officials admit to authorizing the waterboarding of Mohammed.



When can we get down to prosecuting these people?

At least President Obama opened the door to torture prosecutions this week when he said Attorney General Holder is free to investigate people who authorized torture.

Let's hope this AG has more independence from the White House than the last one. Let's also hope he does what's right instead of what's politically expedient.

Back In Black

Lewis Black shares his thoughts on creationism in that special sensitive way only he can.

A Nation Divided - Can It Stand?

Governor Rick Perry of Texas got in some hot water this week for at least implying that Texas could secede from the union. He thinks the federal government should do more to honor states' rights. At at "Tea Party" event on Wednesday he said this:

"There's a lot of different scenarios. We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot."

It does at least imply that the United States could be not so united in the not so distant future. Perry took a beating for this in the media, but on some level I understand where he is coming from. I don't think the problem is federal intrusion on states' rights, but we are a country deeply divided along political and geographic lines. I wonder whether we can continue to operate as a single entity.

After Bush was elected the second time I looked at the electoral map, the polling data and the issues that seemed to decide the election, and I seriously asked myself if I could live in the country that data represented. At the time, the doctored map of North America shown above made it's way around the Internet. It showed the continent basically divided in half - north and south. The northern half was labeled "United States of Canada," and the southern half was labeled "Jesusland." I remember thinking through my anger: "That seems about right."

I suspect that Perry and others in the south are feeling the same about the new administration in Washington. They see their core beliefs threatened, and it makes them angry. How long can we go on like this? Presidential elections are basically a dead heat. A small number of undecideds decide the outcome. About half the country is always unhappy - often very unhappy - with the country's leadership. We really are a nation divided.

I would never - ever - want to see the US go through another civil war, and if that's where Perry was going with his comments he should take heavy criticism. I do wonder how long we can continue under our current model though.

Will it survive our differences, or should we consider an amicable divorce?

If You Really Loved Me

Tim Minchin has a crystal clear understanding of exactly what real love looks like.

If you don't think this is funny, there's something wrong with you. Seek help immediately.

Three Shots

Here is an incredible story.

High sea piracy off the African coast didn't play out so well for a few pirates this week. After stupidly abandoning a hijacked American ship for a small life boat, four pirates ran out of fuel and became sitting ducks for American forces. Unfortunately, the pirates brought along the ship's captain as insurance, and were left with a stand off.

Fearing for the captain's life, President Obama gave authority to use deadly force if the Navy saw "imminent danger." After one of the pirates had given himself up to American military to get medical treatment, one of the remaining pirates raised his AK47 to the back of the captured captain. Three Navy Seal snipers on a nearby ship were given orders to kill the remaining pirates.

I'm no marksman - in fact I've fired a gun exactly once in my life - but these strike me as an extraordinarily difficult shots. These Seals were on a boat, bobbing in the ocean, trying to hit three targets 75 feet away on another boat bobbing on the ocean, while trying to avoid hitting the captain. All three made head shots and killed the pirates. The captain was unscathed.

I can't imagine the ice water you need running through your veins to do a job like that. You can argue about whether they are always used the way they should be - in this case it seems there's little doubt they were - but the American military has some remarkable people serving in it.

One question: Could we get these three Seals within 75 feet of Bin Laden? I'd prefer the surgical precision of these guys over the "smartest" bomb we have.

More Easter Happiness!!

Besides Cadbury Eggs, Peeps are the best part of Easter. Here's a new and different look at the world of Peeps. (Not one for the kids)

Happy Easter!