Brain Rage

Something Someone Else Said

2011-01-25T17:00:00.000-08:00

"Lately I have been having issues with the term “Founders” or “Founding Fathers” because it’s pretty nebulous and undefined. There’s Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who signed the Declaration of Independence but had no involvement in the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison did a lot of the heavy lifting in drafting the Constitution but neither signed the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense and worked for the Continental Congress but pretty soon became a persona non grata thanks to his religious views. Patrick Henry gave the famous “Liberty or Death” speech but was also one of the most articulate voices against adopting the Constitution. Which of these are “Founders”? All of them? None?

Even if we accept all of these men as “Founding Fathers” (which I think most would), to say that they disagreed on fundamental political principles is the height of understatement. And an attempt to put together the varying strains of conservative thought under the same “Founders” rubric is overly simplistic and misguided," -Alex Knapp, Outside the Beltway.

I think the Founding Fathers would have agreed with this...

Social Media Outruns Real Life

2011-01-21T05:47:00.000-08:00

The advertisement of the day:

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Your Tax Dollars At Work: Drug Warriors

2011-01-18T16:51:00.000-08:00

Imagine if this was your home these men came to:

That is how quickly lives are lost in the war on drugs. When police invade private homes in search of drugs, anything and everything can go wrong, and even the slightest misunderstanding becomes a matter of life and death. The victim in this case, Todd Blair, brandished a golf club in terror as armed men stormed his home in the night. We'll never know for sure if he realized they were police. But we do know that only a small amount of drugs were found in the raid that took his life.

That drugs and violence often go hand in hand isn't a mystery to many among us – the bloodshed gripping Mexico is old news by now – but this is a very different kind of drug war violence than the infamous turf wars of the cartels. This is a rare glimpse into the unbelievable level of force our own public servants unleash routinely in order to protect us from ourselves. This man was just a drug user. Whether he ever sold drugs is in dispute, but there's no question that he lived and died in poverty, and not from drugs, but from police who gunned him down in his own home.

Warning: you're about to watch a man get shot to death by his own government because he wanted to decide for himself what he could put into his own body:

Your tax dollars funded this man's death, and they pay the salaries of every politician in Washington who votes to continue their tragically unsuccessful War on Drugs against the American public.

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NASA: The Frontier Is Everywhere

2011-01-16T21:17:00.000-08:00

A stirring endorsement of the capacity for good within the human race, our collective drive to seek out the great unknown and the media-challenged governmental agency that will someday take us there:

Would I come off as too big of a nerd if I admitted that I already have the official NASA app on my iPad? Yeah? Well I don't care...

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Merry Christmas

2010-12-25T02:17:00.001-08:00

Amen. I always did identify more with Linus. And as a Christmas bonus, here's why Santa Claus is so kick-ass:

I totally knew that Jesus wasn't the only Christmas icon with magical powers and killer abs. Rock on, Santa.

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TCR: Salvatore Giunta

2010-11-20T02:01:00.000-08:00

I've been reading about and watching this guy all week after he became the first living soldier to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor since the Vietnam Conflict and he's always been the very definition of humility. We need to find some way to clone Giunta whilst imprinting his sense of duty and bravery upon the DNA:

Something Someone Else Said

2010-11-19T02:56:00.001-08:00

"I never cease to be amazed at what a festering bundle of resentments Palin is. Just a few years ago she was the mayor of a tiny town in Alaska, and today she's one of the most famous people in America. Despite her modest talents, there are millions of people who believe, and tell her constantly, that she ought to be the most powerful person on planet Earth. She's made millions of dollars in the last two years, for the easiest of things -- giving some speeches, having ghost-writers pen a couple of books, doing appearances on Fox, letting cameras trail her around while she goes fishing. And yet she can barely open her mouth without going on and on about how terribly victimized she is, and how everyone has done her wrong," -Paul Waldman, The American Prospect.

Posted because apparently my little buddy Donald Douglas of American Clown Shoes has been lamenting the fact that I've been letting the blog lie mostly fallow lately, and if anyone knows about being a professional victim it is most certainly he. Here's to you, Chubs.

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FDA Proposes New Cigarette Warning Labels

2010-11-10T21:56:00.000-08:00

This is a bit much in my opinion:

Federal drug regulators on Wednesday unveiled 36 proposed warning labels for cigarette packages, including one showing a toe tag on a corpse and another in which a mother blows smoke on her baby.

Designed to cover half the surface area of a pack or carton of cigarettes, and a fifth of any advertisements for them, the labels are intended to spur smokers to quit by providing graphic reminders of tobacco’s dangers. The labels are required under a law passed last year that gave the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate, but not ban, tobacco products for the first time.

Public health officials hope that the new labels will re-energize the nation’s antismoking efforts, which have stalled in recent years. About 20.6 percent of the nation’s adults, or 46.6 million people, and about 19.5 percent of high school students, or 3.4 million teenagers, are smokers.

And yes, that's actually one of the proposed images above; you can see more here. Because just giving people the facts about cigarettes isn't enough, the government has decided that it's also necessary to appeal to one's emotions and fear of death and disease in order to control individual behaviour. My conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Clown Shoes accurately intuits my stand on this issue:

I don't know. Maybe some folks are so stupid they actually need these warnings. Besides, what would folks like egghead JBW do without some Nanny Statism to gripe about? Get rid of warning labels and marijuana laws in one fell swoop!! Then everyone would have equal opportunity to death!

Now I'm not a Republican so I don't consider the moniker "egghead" to be the epithet that Don does but I will admit that I do agree with him on this, at least partially: I'm absolutely convinced that some (hell, many) folks are so stupid that they actually need these warnings, there's no maybe about it. Even after several decades of government health reports stating definitively that cigarettes cause cancer and thus death, even after several multi-billion dollar lawsuits against tobacco companies for making false claims about the safety of their products all these years and even though cigarettes have had health warnings on them since the mid sixties people still smoke them! Why do they do this despite all of the warnings and evidence about how dangerous it is? Well, even though I'm an egghead (which is defined as being "elitist" and "out of touch") I understand a truth about myself and my fellow humans that Don does not: human beings have a fundamental need to alter their brain chemistry.

Ever wonder why the War on Drugs has been such an abject failure? Or why people smoke or chew tobacco, drink too much alcohol and eat too much fat, salt and sugar? Of course you don't because you know why people do these things: because it makes them feel good, and no amount of warning labels and government babysitting is going to make them stop doing so. Now this isn't to say that I think cigarettes shouldn't have warnings on their packages. I have no problem with the small amount of government intervention that is required to force companies to provide adequate information to the public about their products but these pictures of diseased lungs and choking children seem to me political correctness run amok.

Now I have no doubt that they'll have the desired effect of convincing a certain number of people not to smoke who weren't deterred by a mere written warning but how far should we as a society be willing to take this? Should the winery that produces my Pinot Noir be forced to place a picture of a hardened liver on every bottle? How about forcing fast food companies to print pictures of a guy having a coronary or having his leg amputated due to diabetes on their cheeseburger wrappers? Or we could even up the ante to things that still hold an element of danger yet don't even alter brain chemistry or directly affect our health, like forcing car companies to place pictures of bloodied corpses on their windshields or forcing the airlines to print pictures of a crashed burning fuselage on every ticket. Hell, we could force companies to put a graphic warning about the worst consequences of every product and activity under the sun on their respective packaging and advertising, then nobody would ever do anything stupid and we'd all be safe from ourselves, right?

Wrong. We could do all of that and more and people would still do stupid things that are dangerous to their health but we've decided as a society that we're OK with that because it's the price of personal freedom in this country. Full disclosure: I don't smoke, in fact I hate cigarettes. One of my great laments is that almost every cute girl I know in California is a smoker but I still defend the rights of smokers to do so because I believe in the principle of individual liberty. Being a hypocrite Don is comfortable letting his government dictate ever more restrictive advertising codes for tobacco and positively draconian anti-drug laws because he doesn't smoke or use illicit drugs, hence he could care less about the individual freedoms of people who do. I would imagine that he's quite all right with the recent San Francisco ban on toys in Happy Meals (gotta protect the kids, you know) and the massive sin tax that California has placed on alcohol and tobacco products (I missed that part last time I was reading the bible), all while he squeals incessantly about big government running wild and Obama ramming his health care reform down our throats.

What this ultimately boils down to is personal responsibility and the philosophy that adults, even stupid adults, should be able to decide for themselves whether or not to engage in behaviour that is dangerous to themselves and their health. Children are obviously different and because their reasoning skills are not yet mature they require additional governmental protection but even then I doubt Don and the rest of his tea partying ilk would want the government telling them how to raise their children in most respects. But telling an adult like him that he can and cannot ingest certain substances and chemicals because in the eyes of the government he's essentially too stupid to decide these things for himself? Well, maybe he needs these warning labels to protect him. Perhaps then despite varying levels of individual stupidity our societal "opportunity to death" might not be equal, but at least we'll all be safe from our own behaviour.

Well what do you know, I wrote this entire post without invoking the phrase "nanny state" even once. You're welcome, Don. Now go do what your government tells you like a good little drone.

My '10 Election Predictions

2010-11-01T22:16:00.000-07:00

Continuing my biennial tradition of making a mockery of the democratic process by treating it as a sporting event to be wagered upon I've made my predictions for tomorrows midterm elections. The Republicans need to gain 39 seats in the House of Representatives to take control of that body and I have no doubt that they will get them. In fact, I'm predicting they'll take 50-60 with no more than 75. They also need to gain 10 seats in the Senate to take control of that body as well but I just don't see that happening. I'm predicting that they'll take 6-8 with a high of 9, leaving Democrats with a slim majority.

Despite delirious prognostications about Democrats getting "crushed" tomorrow I think that this will be a net positive for President Obama, whom regular readers know I like much more than his party as a whole, going into the 2012 elections. These past two years have been rough ones for Americans but I think Obama has done a fairly good job playing the hand he was dealt coming into office, despite pussified Democrats, obstructionist Republicans, Bush's tanking economy, Bush's two unfunded wars and the myriad of other albatrosses hanging from his neck. Now the Republicans will have two years to propose something, anything substantive that will help get America back on its feet and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has already stated the central plank of their bold new strategy:

The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.

That's their plan: politics over governance. No serious proposals to reinvigorate the economy or reduce the debt or deficits, just a party-wide retrenchment and digging in of heels with a constant refrain of tax cuts (which is hardly a serious proposal based on the massive deficits we're dealing with). You see, there are only two ways to reduce government deficits: increase revenues (raising taxes) or reduce spending, and since they wouldn't even consider the possibility of the former if Fort Knox was on fire that leaves the latter. But what have they proposed cutting?

As I've said, nothing substantial or specific, just vague platitudes about reducing spending and eliminating waste. 75% of our federal budget is used to pay for only three things: Social Security, Medicare and military spending; everything else, everything else, makes up the other 25%. Any serious proposal to reduce our deficits and steer us back towards fiscal solvency must address the fact that cuts have to be made in those three areas. And even though cuts to these areas will be hard to make and less than popular with voters, any proposals by either party that do not do this should not be taken seriously. And what has the latest proposed spending cut by the so-called party of fiscal conservatism been? The 1.5% of NPR's funding that they get from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting: about three million dollars. Our national debt is around thirteen and a half trillion dollars, about four million times that.

"So how does losing the House help Obama?", I hear you asking. Well, if the Republicans win the House and are actually serious about reducing deficits and making spending cuts then they will compromise and work with Obama's bipartisan deficit commission to shore up the economy: win for Obama and more importantly, win for Americans (and many of those Americans will be voting in 2012). If however they do what I expect and continue to try to derail everything he proposes whilst simultaneously proposing to repeal health care and financial reforms that are popular with Americans and even possibly shut down the government, I think it will become fairly clear to voters that Republicans are more interested in regaining power than in trying to help the country: win for Obama and more importantly, huge loss for Americans (and many of those Americans will be voting in 2012).

The president inherited a full plate when he came into office and he needed a strong party that controlled both houses of congress to have his back as he tried to institute his ambitious agenda for America. Unfortunately for him and that agenda, he's had to make due with the Democrats, who to their credit and despite all the shit I talk about them have done a lot of things right over the past two years. But they've also done a lot of things wrong and that, combined with a recessed economy, high unemployment and allowing the Republicans to consistently control the narrative in Washington, is why they're going to lose a substantial number of seats in tomorrows midterms.

But those losses come with a silver lining: in the minds of the voters Republicans will finally be forced to own part of the economy Bush left on his desk two years ago and if the only solution they have for the next two years is still merely "NO!" then they should enjoy tomorrows victory while it lasts because they're gonna have a hell of a time running a presidential candidate on that nihilistic platform. Voters will have two choices when they enter their voting booths: one party that irresponsibly spends your tax dollars like hell and another party that irresponsibly spends your tax dollars like hell whilst simultaneously and hypocritically swearing up and down that they do not. The main difference between them at this point is that the first party has an actual adult as their leader. Please make sure you vote tomorrow everyone.

I'm Back

2010-11-01T14:30:00.000-07:00

Read my blog if you want to live... OK, OK, I obviously can't help myself at this point and I'll be honest: I was genuinely touched by the outpouring of support and positive words I received in my ostensible last post. I really did appreciate it and I must admit that blogging can be a fun enterprise as long as one does not put too much pressure on one's self to produce, so here's the deal: this blog will remain up and active but I make no promises about either content or frequency. I might post ten times in a day or just as easily let it lie fallow for weeks at a time; I might rant lengthily about how the Senatorial filibuster has paralyzed that deliberative body or I might just post a video of a cute kitten trying not to fall asleep (note: there will be no videos of cute kittens, as an addendum to my long-standing rule banning lolcats). Basically I'm reprioritizing several things right now and while the blog isn't going to the back of the line it has lost some prominence in my everyday life. So that's it. Thanks again to everyone who reads what I write here. I'm gonna get some lunch now.

TDS: Negative Campaigning

2010-11-01T00:14:00.000-07:00

Case in point:

Brain Fatigue And Rage Deficiency

2010-10-18T04:20:00.000-07:00

My sincerest apologies to anyone and everyone who comes here to read this blog on a regular or even semi-regular basis and a special thank you to those who have emailed me to make sure that I've been OK over the past two weeks. I'd like to tell you that I've left the blog sitting idle because I've been too busy with various wacky adventures and sexy hi jinks but the truth is that I've recently realized that I'm extremely tired, so much so that I don't think that I can go on any longer. Don't worry, I'm not so tired of life yet that I'm going to eat a bullet or anything like that but rather I'm actually bewilderingly and completely tired of American politics.

I watch and read about the various races across the country lately and I struggle to give even a modicum of a fraction of a damn. Every campaign commercial I hear now sounds exactly the same to me: "I'm tired of career politicians and business as usual in politics. Our elected officials have forgotten who they work for. Help me send a message to Washington that we're not going to put up with partisan politics any longer. Together we can change the tone in D.C. and take our country back." Blah, blablabbity blah, blah, blah. You've heard it all before; I've heard it all before and you obviously don't believe it any more than I do. I consider this type of boilerplate populist tripe to be no more than insultingly simplistic rhetorical masturbation for the ignorant masses (and I hold the entirety of modern media and journalism specifically responsible for this phenomenon, but that's neither here nor there at this point).

"But James", I imagine you retorting to your computer screens, "I thought you were a big supporter of President Obama! He's all about change and ending the partisan divide in Washington. Have you given up on that message and his seemingly earnest attempts to make America a better place?" No I have not, but I have realized that political culture in this country is so disturbingly corrupt and hopelessly mired in a system of failure and inaction that I no longer possess the zeal to believe that it can be significantly changed within my lifetime, short of a national tragedy or a similarly significantly-sized event to shake the average asshole out of their chronic complacency. In short: I give up, and I just don't care anymore. I'm sorry but it's the truth.

I finally understand what so many of my friends and acquaintances have been telling me over the past several years about politics, about how it's just not that important to get so worked up over people and events that are largely and almost completely beyond the control of the average American. I get it now. It's all a game (as so much of life and society is but that's a topic for another time) to make you feel like what you have to say about how this country is run makes a difference and actually matters to those in power. Now I can imagine many of you similarly retorting to your computer screens, "But James, one man/woman can make a difference! The people still have the power of the voting booth!" I wish I could still believe that matters, but I just cannot.

That isn't to say that I'm going to stop voting or anything as ludicrous or ignorant as that. Hell, I've already registered and the county's going to try to nail me for jury duty as a result so I might as well flex my citizen rights every two years but I've realized that the amount of energy and stamina it takes to remain emotionally invested in American politics is hardly worth the meager reward, either emotional or electoral. I'm reminded of one of my favorite lines from the movie Blade: Trinity. Blade (who is a vampiric vampire hunter played by Wesley Snipes, for the woefully uninitiated) is in police custody and a government psychologist is questioning him to assess his connection to reality and concurrent level of sanity:

VANCE: What about the President? Do you know who's in the White House at the moment?

BLADE: Some asshole...

Now of course I don't think that Barack Obama is personally an asshole (the movie came out in 2004 so draw your own conclusions as to their nonspecific target...) but it does speak to a larger problem within our society: most people who decide to go into politics are either self-involved assholes or self-important assholes or both. Yes, there are some legitimately good men and women in Washington earnestly trying to make this country a better place but the vast majority of people who eventually gain any significant amount of power there, and thus have the ability to institute any significant amount of change within the system, find themselves so endlessly mired within it that they eventually become everything they ran against, if they even made any attempt to portray themselves as such in the first place. Again, in short (and with all due apologies to Orwell): power corrupts, and I'm finally sick of it.

So, the next obvious and obviously self-involved question here is: does this spell the end of Brain Rage? I would very much like to answer in the negative and say "Hell no! Are you fucking kidding me?!" but the more honest answer is "I just don't know". Continuing on the honesty kick, I have to say that it's been fairly liberating not worrying about what I'm going to write here day to day and it's been even more refreshing not paying much attention to the 24 hour news cycle as if it were my job to do so, despite the nagging voice in the back of my conscience urging me to do just that on a continuous basis. I'd be lying if I said that I don't enjoy writing about current events here but I'd be lying even more if I said that I find the entire enterprise of caring about most of those said events more fulfilling than I do taxing of late.

So again, where does this leave us? And again, I just don't know. I've always been one to follow my intellect over my instincts on most matters because I've realized over the years that my instincts amount to exactly jack shit when compared to my intellect (which definitely says more about my instincts than it does my intellect) and I'm not planning on abandoning that line of reasoning anytime soon but I have been known to change my mind on occasion. Regardless, I plan to spend the vast majority of my time in the immediate future concentrating on real world plans that've been fomenting for some time now outside of the blogging world, i.e. dressing up as a masked crime fighter by night and solving mysteries. So if these are indeed my last words here, many thanks to those who have taken the time to read the meager thoughts I've committed to cyberspace over the past few years and bon chance in your own future endeavours. I'll be around, somewhere.

I remain, as always, James B. Webb. Adieu.

P. S.: I would be remiss here if I didn't take a moment to address my conservative counterpart and constantly comedic foil Donald Douglas of American Power. Don, I've tried to find even an iota of entertainment within your posts or even from one of your sycophantic commenters over the past few weeks as I have in the past but I've woefully come up short on both counts. To say that you're a caricature of your side of the aisle, again as I have many times in the past, is still entirely accurate but unfortunately it's no longer nearly as entertaining. To happily quote one of my fellow nihilistic bloggers: "You're fucking clown shoes". I'll be around two years hence to collect my one hundred dollars when Barack Obama is successfully reelected as our president. Enjoy rhetorically beating off to your big victory this November: it will almost assuredly be short-lived. And good luck with that whole "leftists hate America and are trying to destroy it" schtick. I can think of no more suitable nor entertaining epithet for this blog. Please have someone explain the concepts of humor and irony to you at some point before you shuffle loose this mortal coil. And again, adieu.

[Update: There's no way I'm going out on a down note by addressing Don. Here's something a thousand times more kick-ass: Sgt. Adam Sniffen from the 101st Airborne Division delivering the game ball via parachute before the Michigan vs. MSU game at Michigan Stadium two weeks ago:

Too cool. Adios.]

Something Inspired Someone Else Said

2010-10-05T11:47:00.000-07:00

"Then, knees touching, neck muscles relaxing, brow drying in the cold dry air, we should drink. Certain things were put upon this earth for our enjoyment, and it’s wasteful and wicked to condemn them," -Barbara Holland, "in praise of the happy hour, the darkened bar, and the winding down of the day".

The New Yorker article I took the quote from begins thusly:

A few weeks ago, the headline of an obituary in the Times caught my eye: “Barbara Holland, Defender of Small Vices, Dies at 77.” A “defender of small vices”—what a fine title by which to be remembered, the kind of informal, appointed job that you didn’t know exists but then seems essential once you do.

I never knew Ms. Holland, nor did I even know of her before today, and although we were divided by forty years and a vast swath of the United States I already consider her a kindred spirit. In Endangered Pleasures I think I may have just found the next submission for my book club.

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Political Connotations

2010-10-05T05:45:00.000-07:00

Shankar Vedantam talks about studies of both campaigns from the 2008 presidential election:

The researchers found that when they subliminally flashed the name Obama before [McCain] volunteers—the flashes were so brief that the volunteers did not notice the flash—this unconsciously activated words such as Arab, turban, and mosque in the minds of McCain supporters. Likewise, subliminally flashing the word McCain unconsciously activated words such as senile, dementia, and Alzheimer's in the minds of Obama supporters. The same thing did not happen when volunteers were flashed the name of the candidate they supported. The slur-related words were activated only by unconsciously reminding them about the candidate they opposed.

This is why I always say that "both sides do bad things" and that if anyone says that their side does not that they are inveterate liars. But I also say that "one side is better at saying bad things and making them stick". Ask yourself which is more likely to be true: that John McCain is losing control of his mental faculties because he's growing old or that Barack Obama hates America because he's a secret Muslim?

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Something Someone Else Said

2010-10-02T16:39:00.000-07:00

"In the Western world today, there is a group of people who live in a haze of unreality, and are prone at any moment to break into paranoia, hallucinations, and screaming. If you try to get between them and their addiction, they will become angry and aggressive and lash out. They need our help. I am talking, of course, about the Drug Prohibitionists: the gaggle of politicians, bishops and journalists who still insist that the only way to deal with the very widespread drug use in our societies is for it to be criminalized, where it is untaxed, unregulated, controlled by armed criminal gangs, and horribly adulterated," -Johann Hari, The Huffington Post.

Illogic is indeed powerfully addictive.

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Maher's New Rules: Barry Whitehouse

2010-10-02T05:02:00.000-07:00

Last night Bill Maher laid out why people need to stop their whining and remember everything President Obama has accomplished thus far when they go into the voting booth in November:

Things haven't gone as smoothly as many would have liked but these are tough times and I believe that we're better off with Obama than we would have been without him. I still can't stand the Democratic party but in a two party system with these choices I don't consider it much of a choice at all. I realize that my perspective is somewhat skewed leftward but I still think the majority of honest intelligent Americans would agree with me on this. November will be rough but I don't think it will necessarily be as bad as many are predicting. Of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Amazing Musical Instrument

2010-10-01T14:22:00.000-07:00

An obviously fictional musical instrument favoring process over product:

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RIP, Greg Giraldo

2010-09-30T04:32:00.000-07:00

I can't say he was one of my favorite comedians but I really liked this guy (no homo):

Comedian Greg Giraldo — well-known for his work on such programs as Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil, several Comedy Central roasts, and NBC’s Last Comic Standing — has passed away. Both Comedy Central and NBC confirmed the comedian died Wednesday in a New Brunswick, N.J., hospital, just days after being hospitalized, reportedly for a prescription pill overdose.

He was 44 years old. Giraldo was known as the King of the Roast in regard to the Friar's Club roasts routinely broadcast on Comedy Central. His set at David Hasselhoff's roast a few months back absolutely killed (warning, this is a roast):

[Update: The video has already been taken down. Fucking Viacom. Wait a few days and then try to find it again; you won't be sorry.]

That's Gay: No Homo

2010-09-28T15:25:00.000-07:00

When I was in Vegas a few weeks back I was surprised to learn that none of my buddies were familiar with this particular homophobic term made popular by rap culture. Of course after I told them about it we used it about every five minutes for the rest of the weekend because we're all totally not gay:

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Touchdown Jeebus Wins Fantasy Week 3

2010-09-28T12:12:00.000-07:00

I'm not trying to brag or anything but I totally killed my fantasy football league this week (OK, I'm bragging just a bit), and the Dallas Cowboys finally put one in the win column. This is me smiling.

Many Americans Know Little About Religion

2010-09-28T08:11:00.000-07:00

I'm rarely surprised when I learn that Americans know little about anything but I think that this is somewhat telling:

A new survey of Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major religions, while many respondents could not correctly give the most basic tenets of their own faiths.

Forty-five percent of Roman Catholics who participated in the study didn't know that, according to church teaching, the bread and wine used in Holy Communion is not just a symbol, but becomes the body and blood of Christ.

More than half of Protestants could not identify Martin Luther as the person who inspired the Protestant Reformation. And about four in 10 Jews did not know that Maimonides, one of the greatest rabbis and intellectuals in history, was Jewish.

The survey released Tuesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life aimed to test a broad range of religious knowledge, including understanding of the Bible, core teachings of different faiths and major figures in religious history. The U.S. is one of the most religious countries in the developed world, especially compared to largely secular Western Europe, but faith leaders and educators have long lamented that Americans still know relatively little about religion.

I was not raised religious as a child but rather than leaving me ignorant on the subject I was encouraged to learn more about it and then decide for myself what I believed. I would explain the results of this survey by positing that many of those who are raised so are not similarly encouraged to think for themselves and question authority but are rather told what to believe from an early age when a child's brain is very similar to a sponge as it relates to knowledge and information. They're told what to believe and they do so without thinking any more about the subject.

This line of thought always reminds me of two of my favorite quotes about thinking for one's self. The first is from Homer Simpson:

Kids are great, Apu. You can teach them to hate the things you hate and they practically raise themselves now-a-days, you know, with the internet and all.

And the second is from comedian David Cross:

I don't have kids but I might someday and if I do I think that I'd like to raise them Amish. You know, instill in them those hard working Amish values and beliefs. And I'm sure they'll eventually have some questions: "Father, how come you get to watch television, and we can't? And how come you get to play video games and read with the lights on and we don't get to?" And I'll get down on a knee and gentlely say to them, : "Well, Sweetie, that's because Daddy's not Amish, and you are. You see, that's what you believe. Now hurry off to bed, you have to get up early tomorrow to harvest my breakfast. Ahh, Amish kids..."

Think for yourself and question everything, especially what you've been told and what you think you already know.

Something More Hilarious Someone Else Said

2010-09-27T06:37:00.000-07:00

Now that's funny.

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Something Hilarious Someone Else Said

2010-09-27T06:18:00.000-07:00

Perhaps he should also chow down on a shot gun and complete the analogy? I'm just kidding, I know absolutely nothing about this kid other than that he looks like a lesbian and little girls want to fuck him. I understood Cobain's popularity; this kid's, not so much.

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TDS: Postcards From The Pledge

2010-09-24T15:23:00.000-07:00

So, you don't like the way things are going in America today and despite the fact that many of our current woes originated during the last Republican administration you're still thinking of voting them back into power for some new leadership and fresh ideas. Jon Stewart takes a look at their new Pledge to America and finds a few things that might look a little familiar:

Health Reform Hits Main Street

2010-09-23T14:43:00.000-07:00

If you really want to know what's about to start happening in American health care reform do yourself a favor and watch this nine minute long video. Relax, it's a cartoon:

(via)

The Worthlessness Of Pennies

2010-09-21T13:12:00.000-07:00

I've written before that I think pennies are an anachronism and should be phased out of our society but this guy makes a much more compelling argument:

I had no idea that nickles were also so useless. Societal stupidity like this really annoys me.

(via)

Drunken Safety Dance At The Palms, Las Vegas

2010-09-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

No, not everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. We didn't know this kid but he was quite entertaining:

Home Again, Home Again...

2010-09-21T01:26:00.000-07:00

I flew back in from Vegas late Sunday night and then spent most of Monday nursing one of the most dehydrating hangovers I've ever endured. One of the problems with getting together with my buddies from college is that we always drink and party as if we're still twenty years old, and I certainly felt it this time. On the plus side however I actually broke even at the tables, which is quite a rarity for me as I totally stink at cards (plus the Texas/Texas Tech game was easy money).

I had a couple of revelations as it concerns my blogging on this trip that I'll go more into later but for now I'm just going to get myself some Gatorade. So, what'd I miss while I was gone?

Vegas, Baby!

2010-09-17T05:28:00.001-07:00

That's right: when Sin City calls you have to accept the charges. I'll be back in a few days. Be careful of the Sasquatch traps I've set throughout the blog, they usually only snare idiots but better safe than sorry. I'm out.

American Power And Don Douglas Hearts Juses

2010-09-16T09:02:00.000-07:00

So it seems that my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power has acknowledged his recent Sasquatch FAIL, albeit without giving yours truly the requisite credit for the pwnage:

So "SASQUATCH ISRAEL" is really truly "SASQUATCH IS REAL." And there's even a website for that, on Facebook.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'm dumb.

I stand by what I wrote, either way.

That said, the towering intellects at Sadly No! are all too ready to point out any discrepancies, throwing in a little snide dig at the "Juses" for good measure: "Don Douglas Hearts Juses."

Yes, I do.

But that begs the question: The brilliant leading lights at Sadly No! don't?

Actually, I'm not surprised.

Leftists hate moral clarity. And they hate Israel. We don't need a Sasquatch myth to figure that out. So, a hearty F*** You to the lot of you, assholes.

The boys at Sadly No! fail to link to me as well but they do give the hat tip to bjkeefe, who does in turn credit yours truly. I'm pretty sure however that Don knows who to attribute his newest FAIL to for two reasons: 1) this post is reminiscent of so many others in which he references me in that he's disabled commenting in the mode of an intellectual coward and 2) I left a specific comment on another thread at his site a few days ago that I'm certain he knows was me under the name "Sasquatch Israel", which he of course deleted, again in the mode of an intellectual coward. And how fucked up and myopic is his claim that "hearting Jesus"="moral clarity"?

To answer Don's question which should have been directed at myself however: no, I do not heart Juses no matter how brilliant a leading light I am. I actually think that he was probably a good guy and I like his style (except for the whole naive "turning the other cheek" thing, of course) but I do seriously doubt the veracity of his oft acclaimed magical abilities. My favorite part of this though is that Don stands by what he wrote, i.e. the whole Israel as persecuted mythical Sasquatch meme 'cause Don Douglas ain't ever wrong, even when he's quite obviously wrong. And I don't hate either moral clarity or Israel, although I do think that both have a rabid unthinking fan base consisting partly of simple child-like intellects. I also think that I deserve my very own personal hearty F*** You from the man. Fair's fair, after all.

[Update: Don has posted a follow up in which he ironically takes the boys at Sadly No! to task over grammar and spelling mistakes in an email. Still no mention of yours truly so I left a pithy comment linking to this post and politely asked for my F*** You. It was deleted and commenting was disabled shortly thereafter. I love this guy.]

Masturbate To Christine O'Donnell Day

2010-09-16T00:43:00.000-07:00

If you haven't yet heard, Christine O'Donnell is the newly minted Republican nominee in Delaware's U.S. Senate special election to fill Joe Biden's former seat. She was endorsed by the Tea Party and Sarah Palin and beat out moderate Republican and former governor Mike Castle for the nomination. But this isn't her first foray into public life: Rachel Maddow recently dug up a clip from MTV's decade old series Sex in the '90's (which, coincidentally, is the same decade yours truly started having sex), specifically the episode entitled "The Safest Sex of All":

My favorite part of this is her theory at the end there that if guys masturbate then they will have no use for sexual relations with women. Makes sense: what guy would want to eat filet mignon when he can have Hamburger Helper anytime he wants? OK, it's actually one of the dumbest theories on sex that I've ever heard and is only disproven by both evolution and the vast history of human existence. Have I mentioned before how incredibly stupid I think religion is? Yeah? OK, good. Anyway, this flashback video inspired the following comment from a reader on Dan Savage's sex advice blog at the Stranger:

The time has come for you to use your influence to pick a day between now and the November election, and declare it "Masturbate to Christine O'Donnell Day" in either the state of Delaware or the entire United States of America. If there needs to be a male equivalent, so be it. This needs to happen, and you're the only guy who can do it.
Hiding At The Elusive Fuzz Under Christine's Knockers

The "male equivalent" caveat is because Savage is gay but I intend to pick up the heterosexual slack myself. Absent an officially announced date I hereby pledge that this wanton act will be performed at least once by myself sometime before the general election in November, hopefully with "What If God Was One Of Us" playing softly in the background (but I reserve the right to forego listening to that song if it makes everything seem too weird, which it almost assuredly will). I've already worked out several hot O'Donnell/Palin/Bachmann lesbo cougar scenarios that I won't go into any further here but rest assured, it will be the safest sex of all. I just hope they all still respect me in the morning.

I Burnt A Copy Of The Quran

2010-09-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

That, ladies and gentlemen, is how we do that.

(via)

American Power And Anti-Semitic Hominids

2010-09-13T01:08:00.000-07:00

So my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power was in New York City over the weekend for the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. His main post on the events has a lot of pictures taken from around the city and while it's a little heavy on religion and rantings about "the left's Media-Industrial-Islamist-Complex" it's still rather interesting to check out but it's his follow-up post about "the America-bashing, anti-Israel left" amongst the sign-carrying protesters of the various ideologies present that day that I found particularly entertaining. Amidst his claims about supposedly out-debating some anti-war "leftists" on the street I found this gem of an accusation:

Then turning around, I saw this kid yacking it up for the crowd, obviously having a blast with this ugly Jew-hating sign. And what does that mean, "SASQUATCH ISRAEL"? This is a play on the "legitimacy myth" of Israel's existence. As there's of course a "Sasquatch myth," it's worth noting the implied comparison: that Israel is also an ape-like beast existing only in historical folklore. Absent legitimacy, Israel has "no right to exist." This kid's sign is but one more example of eliminationist anti-Semitism. And look at how overjoyed he is in boasting this hatred. Creepy.

I'm sure you're all just as familiar as I am with this oh-so-common yet extraordinarily awkwardly worded insult comparing the country of Israel to the cryptozoological creature known as Sasquatch in order to advance the agenda of anti-Semitic eliminationism, right? You know, all those political cartoons you've seen in which Israel is portrayed as a large hulking fictional beast crashing through the dense underbrush of the Middle East with the words "SASQUATCH ISRAEL" written across its chest? Wait, you're not? Yeah, neither am I and it's because Don's claim qualifies as the very definition of the phrase "desperately grasping at straws". Here's a picture of said kid:
Now tell me, if you had to make a guess would you say that his sign reads "SASQUATCH ISRAEL" or does it perhaps read "SASQUATCH IS REAL"? One might even guess that there's a very good reason that this kid is seemingly "overjoyed" and "having a blast" whilst holding up his sign:
So he's either just some kid having a laugh (or being somewhat serious, who knows?) about the disputed existence of Sasquatch or else he's an unabashed anti-Semite openly boasting of his ugly Jew-hating agenda, thus confirming Don's paranoid fears about the "nihilist left" (oh, and he can't spell very well either). This is what happens when the modern Republican persecution complex goes looking for anti-Semitism around every corner: it inevitably finds it, even in the face of incredulity at the obviously nonsensical nature of it. And on a personal anthropological note, I haven't seen a case of Sasquatch FAIL this bad since the fake freezer Bigfoot from a few years back. I've always suspected that the Sasquatch had a liberal bias...

9/12 Mindset: Police Detonate Suspicious Pony

2010-09-12T05:10:00.000-07:00

I used to detonate my little sister's My Little Ponies via my G. I. Joe action figures and some strategically placed firecrackers but this is much more impressive:

I would just like to inform my local police department that I've heard and/or seen some suspicious activity coming from the black Lamborghini that's usually parked across two parking spots at my local Starbucks. Have at it, boys.

(via)

September 11

2010-09-11T03:11:00.000-07:00

Nine years later. I'd like to think that we've grown and learned something as a country since then yet I still hear the same stupid shit from the same close-minded people. The idea that understanding and accepting those who are different from us somehow portrays weakness or a lack of resolve on our part is chief amongst them. One idiot calls for the burning of Korans because he doesn't like Muslims, so another idiot answers by calling for the burning of the American flag as retaliation.

I know that as a country we're better and stronger than this and we will continue to be so but it's imperative that we also continue to elevate the dialogue and reclaim this narrative from the guttersnipes and haters amongst us. It's the Islamists and Christianists who want to start a holy war; cooler and more rational heads must prevail. I won't pray for those lost in the attacks on 9/11 but my heart does go out to their families and loved ones. You can read about how I spent that day in 2001 here, and you can view an animation of the proposed memorial here.

Something Someone Else Said

2010-09-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

"There is a growing anti-science streak on the American right that could have tangible societal and political impacts on many fronts — including regulation of environmental and other issues and stem-cell research. Take the surprise ousting last week of Lisa Murkowski, the incumbent Republican senator for Alaska, by political unknown Joe Miller in the Republican primary for the 2 November midterm congressional elections. Miller, who is backed by the conservative ‘Tea Party movement’, called his opponent’s acknowledgement of the reality of global warming “exhibit ‘A’ for why she needs to go”.

The right-wing populism that is flourishing in the current climate of economic insecurity echoes many traditional conservative themes, such as opposition to taxes, regulation and immigration. But the Tea Party and its cheerleaders, who include Limbaugh, Fox News television host Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (who famously decried fruitfly research as a waste of public money), are also tapping an age-old US political impulse — a suspicion of elites and expertise.

Denialism over global warming has become a scientific cause célèbre within the movement. Limbaugh, for instance, who has told his listeners that “science has become a home for displaced socialists and communists”, has called climate-change science “the biggest scam in the history of the world”. The Tea Party’s leanings encompass religious opposition to Darwinian evolution and to stem-cell and embryo research — which Beck has equated with eugenics. The movement is also averse to science-based regulation, which it sees as an excuse for intrusive government. Under the administration of George W. Bush, science in policy had already taken knocks from both neglect and ideology. Yet President Barack Obama’s promise to “restore science to its rightful place” seems to have linked science to liberal politics, making it even more of a target of the right," -editorial in the journal Nature.

There are some things that should exist outside of politics and I believe that science is one of them. Data is data; facts are facts. They're not up for debate and can't be shaped by focus groups. Government should obviously encourage scientific progress but the interpretations of that progress should be left to scientists and experts, not politicians and bureaucrats. It's extremely important that the intellectually dishonest not be allowed to pervert science or hijack the discipline to suit their political agenda. There's already enough superstition and ignorance in the world. America should be better than that.

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Hell Comes To San Bruno

2010-09-10T10:47:00.000-07:00

If you haven't heard yet there was a massive gas pipeline explosion across the bay from me last night:

Four people are confirmed dead in the massive explosion and subsequent fire that rocked San Bruno, the San Mateo County coroner’s office said Friday morning.

San Bruno Fire Department Capt. Charlie Barringer said earlier Friday that six were dead, but the coroner's office has only confirmed four so far...

Barringer was one of three firefighters on Engine 52, the first to respond to the explosion.

“I thought a 747 had landed on us,” he said. “It shook our station right to its foundation.”
Within a minute, he had sounded a four-alarm fire, he said. Soon after, he said, firefighters discovered a gas line had exploded, destroying not only homes but the grid of water mains that supplied the local fire hydrants. His crew had no water to fight the fires.

“We were overwhelmed. We had multiple neighborhoods on fire,” he said.

The news is now confirming at least six people have died with dozens more injured. I play Words with Friends with a college student who lives in San Francisco, about ten minutes from the explosion in San Bruno. He tells me that he saw at least 50 homes destroyed last night and at least twice that many were damaged. I can't imagine what those folks must be going through right now. Stuff like this is so surreal.

The New World Trade Center

2010-09-09T05:37:00.000-07:00

I've lamented the fact that the area around Ground Zero in New York City is still basicly a big ugly hole several times in the past but this animation of what the new towers and memorial will eventually look like makes me feel a lot better about what we're doing there. Let's get this built already:

(via)

Cannabis Cuisine

2010-09-08T11:36:00.000-07:00

Some appetizing fare for folks who might need their appetites stimulated:

Jonesing for some gourmet tri-tip and a solid buzz? Check out Cannabis Catering, a San Francisco-based outfit that specializes in marijuana cuisine. The brainchild of Chef Frederick Nesbitt, a California Culinary Academy-trained chef who has worked as personal chef for Jerry Rice and John Madden, Cannabis Catering offers four and five-course meals laced with ganja.
The idea for Cannabis Catering came to Nesbitt when he learned that his friend's diabetic mother had been diagnosed with cancer. "I would bring back edibles [from the dispensary], but they're so high in high-fructose corn syrup that she was high off sugar rather than being medicated," he says. So Nesbitt began experimenting with his own pot food--starting with mashed potatoes.
Now Nesbitt cooks an array of cannabis-laced delectables. A sample menu might include salad, lobster bisque, whiskey tri-tip with a demi-glazed sauce (containing marijuana tincture or ground-up hashish), and an infused Belgian chocolate fountain.
Each meal contains the equivalent of three to five pot cookies, but Nesbitt says he can customize the food depending on what customers want. "When you're eating a cookie, you're eating as much as you can in one portion. I'm spreading it out through a whole meal," he says. "The last thing I need is people freaking out on me."
The meals costs approximately $100 per person, but Nesbitt won't dish out his goods unless his patrons have proper documentation (read: a medical marijuana card). "I'm trying to just feed people," he says. "This is one little ingredient of what I'm doing."

Insert generic "pot roast" joke here. Now the obvious question: is eating an entire meal that gives one the munchies a good idea? And what if Nesbitt makes Chinese: would it perpetuate an endless cycle of being hungry a few hours later over and over again? I suppose these are moot points as I would never spend $100 on a cannabis laced meal since I've never consumed an edible that didn't have that distinct taste lurking in the background. It's not a particularly bad taste but it's definitely not one I would like to repeatedly encounter throughout a five course meal I've paid good money for.

(via)

2 Minutes Of Parkour

2010-09-08T05:38:00.000-07:00

Because I can't get enough of this stuff:

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American Power And American Taliban

2010-09-07T19:25:00.000-07:00

I'm not planning on reading Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas' new book "American Taliban" for two reasons: 1) it's apparently mostly filled with extreme rhetoric from the political left that's tailored to reinforce and stoke liberal and progressive hatred by pointing out the worst behaviour currently emanating from the political right and I'm already well-versed in that subject, and 2) being well-versed in the worst behaviour currently emanating from the political right I can definitively say that it's nowhere near as bad as that currently emanating from the Taliban and other terrorist organizations. Moulitsas is merely taking advantage of the extremely partisan nature of American politics today by making outlandish claims combined with a controversial title in order to sell as many copies of his book as possible. His rhetoric no more represents the views of the majority on the left than do his claims represent the actions of the majority on the right, and only an extraordinarily bitter partisan hack would think otherwise.

Speaking of extraordinarily bitter partisan hacks, my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power seems to agree with me on this point in his review of the book:

It's not scholarly. In fact, there are no footnotes to document the majority of the outrageous claims offered. What's important to note is Moulitsas' tactic of finding the most out-of-the-mainstream personalities and foisting these off as mainstream conservatives. It's a smear-by-numbers approach that at times pulls in top Republicans like Sarah Palin, etc., adds a couple of the more colorful quotes from said personalities, and voilà! You're got the modern conservative movement 100 percent equivalent to the medieval barbarian Taliban, REAL TERRORISTS who cut off noses of Afghan women and behead apostates from the Islamist creed, and not to mention Americans such as Daniel Pearl. It's absurd, of course.

Of course. The political right in America is not nearly as dangerous or brutal as terrorist groups like the Taliban and making the blanket claim that one half of the political spectrum is so only makes Moulitsas look like a partisan fool. Now some of you are probably asking, "But James, Don has proven himself to be a partisan fool innumerable times in the past: how is it possible that he's suddenly become a rational thinker as it applies to this subject?" And the inevitable answer to that question is: it isn't. Because after unequivocally declaring how absurd Moulitsas is for claiming that the American right is in league with the Taliban and America's other enemies, in the exact same post, he writes the following in response to another blogger's more positive characterization of Moulitsas' book:

No, Digby, American Taliban's whole point is that the American religious right is perfectly indistinguishable from the Taliban of South Asia --- and the "American Taliban" is the bigger threat to the U.S. than global jihad. Folks really need to read this book and quit lying about what is or isn't said there. Digby is right up there with Markos Moulitsas as a crazed leftist demonologist who wants a revolution to topple the traditional bases of American politics, if not the constitutional regime itself. Don't be fooled by these people. THEY ARE ALLIED with the Taliban, al Qaeda, and global jihad to destroy American freedom. It's plain as day. I write about it all the time.

You see, according to Don, definitively declaring that the political right is in league with terrorists and wants to destroy America is completely absurd. Outrageous accusations like that only divide Americans and distract us from the very real threat we face from international terrorism. It should be obvious to any sane individual that it's the political left that's in league with terrorists and wants to destroy America. Duh! All kidding aside, this is what I'm talking about when I say that certain people and their opinions are not to be taken seriously. Now some of you are probably also asking, "But James, if Don isn't to be taken seriously why do you read his blog and post about the things he writes?" Again, two reasons: 1) his fail is just too entertaining, and 2) irony is like a drug to me. And if irony were a drug, Don would sell it by the gram.

Fried Frito Pie Wins At State Fair Of Texas

2010-09-07T16:31:00.000-07:00

This is an inspired idea:

Some compared it to a rookie winning the Super Bowl MVP when three culinary novices swept the Best Taste award at the sixth annual Big Tex Choice Awards yesterday.

The creators of Texas Fried Frito Pie beat out the competition to take the prize at the Texas State Fair, the Dallas Morning News reported.

The team was made up of Michael Thomas, the originator, Richard Roznowski, the motivator and Jeffrey Lovel, the facilitator, all of whom had a hand in creating the Texas Fried Frito Pie -- balls of cheese and chili rolled in corn chips and then battered and deep friend -- and getting it to the fair.

"We're all big time fair-goers. I probably go six or seven times a year, which for a 3 week fair is a lot. We'd been looking for a classic fair food that hadn't been done fried, and Frito pie just made sense," Lovell told Slashfood.

The trio tried many brands of chili, chips and cheese before settling on Texas Chili Company's chili and a "basic" cheese and chip, Lovell said. "We combine and the chili and the cheese and then we surround it in chips and then we freeze it and then we batter it and fry it."

They spent about six months on the recipe, the Morning News reported. "We had to increase our exercise considerably," Roznowski told the paper.

Since moving to California nobody I've met has ever heard of Frito pie, a staple of Texas cuisine, except for one chick who grew up in Arkansas. The Creativity Award was won by deep fried beer, essentially beer inside ravioli shells. I can't say that I particularly relish the thought of hot beer exploding in my mouth but I'm definitely pining for that basket of deliciousness pictured above.

(via, hat tip: Doug"E")

Bolton For President?

2010-09-05T18:26:00.000-07:00

Chris Matthews can hardly contain his laughter at the idea that former Bush administration U.N. ambassador John Bolton might make a run for the presidency in 2012:

Bolton is a far right ideologue so Matthews is right to scoff at the idea that he could have any kind of shot at the presidency but he ignores the elephant... I mean, walrus in the room: Bolton's never gonna live in the White House as long as he keeps sporting that 'stache. Americans haven't elected a president with facial hair in 100 years and I don't see it happening anytime soon. Hell, Jon Stewart couldn't even keep his goatee for more than a couple of weeks and he's not even in politics. It's a sad fact that being too tall, too fat, too bald, too different looking automatically disqualifies anyone from that office. Democracy can be really stupid sometimes.

(via)

Top 10 Lost Technologies

2010-09-05T15:26:00.000-07:00

Evan Andrews puts the list together, starting with Stradivari violins:

One lost technology of the 1700s is the process through which the famed Stradivari violins and other stringed instruments were built. The violins, along with assorted violas, cellos, and guitars, were constructed by the Stradivari family in Italy from roughly 1650-1750. The violins were prized in their day, but they’ve since become world famous for having an unparalleled—and impossible to reproduce—sound quality. Today there are only around 600 of the instruments left, and most are worth several hundred thousand dollars. In fact, the name Stradivari has become so synonymous with quality that it has come to serve as a descriptive term for anything considered to be the best in its field.

How was it Lost?
The technique for building Stradivari instruments was a family secret known only by patriarch Antonio Stradivari and his sons, Omobono and Francesco. Once they died, the process died with them, but this hasn’t stopped some from trying to reproduce it. Researchers have studied everything from fungi in the wood that was used to the unique shaping of the bodies in order to describe the famous resonance achieved by the Stradivarius collection. The leading hypothesis seems to be that the density of the particular wood used accounts for the sound. Still, some dispute the claim that the instruments are special at all. In fact, at least one study concluded that most people don’t even notice a difference in sound quality between a Stradivari violin and a modern counterpart.

You can read the rest of the list here. To my mind the Library of Alexandria was the greatest loss to humanity but the above reminded me of an article I read in my school paper at Texas A&M University in the mid-90's. A professor there had claimed that he had discovered the secret of reproducing the Stradivarius through the use of chemicals. Last year he was finally vindicated:

For centuries, violin makers have tried and failed to reproduce the pristine sound of Stradivarius and Guarneri violins, but after 33 years of work put into the project, a Texas A&M University professor is confident the veil of mystery has now been lifted. Joseph Nagyvary, a professor emeritus of biochemistry, first theorized in 1976 that chemicals used on the instruments – not merely the wood and the construction – are responsible for the distinctive sound of these violins. His controversial theory has now received definitive experimental support through collaboration with Renald Guillemette, director of the electron microprobe laboratory in the Department of Geology and Geophysics, and Clifford Spiegelman, professor of statistics, both Texas A&M faculty members. Their work has been published in the current issue of the scientific journal Public Library of Science ONE (PloSONE).

I can't imagine the satisfaction he must have felt after so many years of being dismissed by experts and colleagues. I guess that shortens Andrews' list to nine.

(via)

Something Someone Else Said

2010-09-03T10:16:00.000-07:00

" I guess I don’t think it’s entirely preposterous for Americans to see themselves as a people. But any conception of the American creed sufficiently general to encompass most widespread American conceptions of individual freedom, equality, tolerance and so on is going to be so general that it will do very little to distinguish American identity from, say, Canadian identity. And that’s clearly not what Glenn Beck or the staff of National Review have in mind when they talk about American values, promote a conception of American identity, or encourage Americans to see themselves as a people. ...

The conservative conception of American identity is so selective and so specific that it tends to suggest to its adherents that many (maybe even most!) Americans aren’t real Americans, or are Americans who betray real American ideals," -Will Wilkenson.

(via)

Something Unserious Someone Else Said

2010-09-02T11:31:00.000-07:00

"This unfortunately is what happens when one challenges the Left. The Left generally lacks the capability and capacity to put forth a well reasoned argument so they are left with name calling, wishing those that disagree with them disease, death or other forms disaster, death threats, and ultimately the attempt to put those threats into action.

It is why you see that the vast majority of violence and attempted, in some cases actual, killing of others. There is always the attempt at "transference" to others because in most cases they want to deny or to try to fool people into believing they are not the perpetrators of the vast majority of these actions. How many people has the Left accused of these actions and then found out the perpetrator is a leftist or leans to the left? For them it becomes a sort of if one throw enough stones at others then nobody will recognize who is really at fault.

The left is true evil and is the Dark side of life. Go to any Leftist site and you see it demonstrated in 90 to 99.9 percent of the comments," -Dennis, one of the regular commenters at my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas' site American Power, as featured in Don's hyperbolicly named post, "The Left is True Evil".

It was recently brought to my attention that I declare an inordinate number of people and organizations unworthy of being taken seriously on this blog. I copped to it, but I also believe that it's usually a justified stance to take and I try never to do so without providing proof; the above is a case in point. Bad grammar aside, I quote Dennis not so much to claim that he and his opinions in particular are not worth taking seriously (although he and they are not) but rather that every other person like him, on the right and the left, who make similarly simplistic blanket statements such as his are not as well.

Yes, of course there are people on the left who say and do terrible things and there are just as many on the right who say and do the same. In fact, it's almost as if saying and doing terrible things is something that people do, regardless of their political affiliations. The way to tell the simplistic unthinking partisans from those one should actually listen to is to watch out for idiocy like this: definitively stating that people from their side of the political aisle are somehow immune from saying and doing those terrible things whilst simultaneously claiming that their adversaries do so almost exclusively.

And not for nothing but what kind of adult talks about "true evil" and "the Dark side" in any setting outside of a discussion about Star Wars and expects to be taken seriously by other adults? Why don't you just tell me that you think the Devil is a real person too so I can officially declare you insane, a child or both? I'm still laughing at people like this but I'd laugh a little harder if I knew they weren't voting this November. Please keep your comments on this post within this blog's accepted evilness range of 90 to 99.9%; all praise the Morning Star.

Newsweek's Newest Cover

2010-09-02T05:26:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Alter chronicles the ever lengthening list of myths, lies and distortions that have been spread thus far about President Obama:

Our maddening times demand that the truth be forthrightly stated at the outset, and not just that the president has nothing in common with the führer beyond the possession of a dog. The outlandish stories about Barack Hussein Obama are simply false: he wasn’t born outside the United States (the tabloid “proof” has been debunked as a crude forgery); he has never been a Muslim (he was raised by an atheist and became a practicing Christian in his 20s); his policies are not “socialist” (he explicitly rejected advice to nationalize the banks and wants the government out of General Motors and Chrysler as quickly as possible); he is not a “warmonger” (he promised in 2008 to withdraw from Iraq and escalate in Afghanistan and has done so); he is neither a coddler of terrorists (he has already ordered the killing of more “high value” Qaeda targets in 18 months than his predecessor did in eight years), nor a coddler of Wall Street (his financial-reform package, while watered down, was the most vigorous since the New Deal), nor an enemy of American business (he and the Chamber of Commerce favor tax credits for small business that were stymied by the GOP to deprive him of a victory). And that’s just the short list of lies.

Most of these should come as no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to national politics for the past few years but it's always telling to see how long the list has gotten. Newsweek's critics are claiming that the cover is merely a publicity stunt to sell more issues and perhaps they're correct on that count but that certainly makes the sentiments expressed in the article no less true or relevant. David Cross, perhaps my favorite comedian, touched on this topic in his newest special Bigger and Blackerer as well as addressing the right's jingoistic hypocrisy when it comes to criticizing America:

(via)

Man Already Knows Everything He Needs To...

2010-09-01T09:33:00.000-07:00

...about Muslims. From the "It's funny because it's true" file:

SALINA, KS—Local man Scott Gentries told reporters Wednesday that his deliberately limited grasp of Islamic history and culture was still more than sufficient to shape his views of the entire Muslim world.

Gentries, 48, said he had absolutely no interest in exposing himself to further knowledge of Islamic civilization or putting his sweeping opinions into a broader context of any kind, and confirmed he was "perfectly happy" to make a handful of emotionally charged words the basis of his mistrust toward all members of the world's second-largest religion.

"I learned all that really matters about the Muslim faith on 9/11," Gentries said in reference to the terrorist attacks on the United States undertaken by 19 of Islam's approximately 1.6 billion practitioners. "What more do I need to know to stigmatize Muslims everywhere as inherently violent radicals?"

"And now they want to build a mosque at Ground Zero," continued Gentries, eliminating any distinction between the 9/11 hijackers and Muslims in general. "No, I won't examine the accuracy of that statement, but yes, I will allow myself to be outraged by it and use it as evidence of these people's universal callousness toward Americans who lost loved ones when the Twin Towers fell."

"Even though I am not one of those people," he added.

"Muslims are bad." Yeah, I know people who "think" like this.

Something Someone Else Said

2010-08-31T15:39:00.000-07:00

"In a rather curious and confused way, some white people are starting almost to think like a minority, even like a persecuted one. What does it take to believe that Christianity is an endangered religion in America or that the name of Jesus is insufficiently spoken or appreciated? Who wakes up believing that there is no appreciation for our veterans and our armed forces and that without a noisy speech from Sarah Palin, their sacrifice would be scorned? It's not unfair to say that such grievances are purely and simply imaginary, which in turn leads one to ask what the real ones can be. The clue, surely, is furnished by the remainder of the speeches, which deny racial feeling so monotonously and vehemently as to draw attention," -Christopher Hitchens, Slate, commenting upon the cultural insecurity of Beck and Palin followers at the prospect of their soon being outnumbered by immigrants and minorities.

Oh, the persecution a conservative white heterosexual Christian must endure in America today. Victims, victims, victims; always the victims.

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127 Hours Trailer

2010-08-31T11:22:00.000-07:00

The amazing story of Aron Ralston, a man of more grit, determination and badassery than you and I will ever possess:

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American Power And Imaginary Numbers

2010-08-30T23:23:00.000-07:00

My conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power breathlessly cuts and pastes the following from FOX News in his recent post "Total Costs of Iraq War Less Than Obama-Democrats' Economic Porkulus Package":

As President Obama prepares to tie a bow on U.S. combat operations in Iraq, Congressional Budget Office numbers show that the total cost of the eight-year war was less than the stimulus bill passed by the Democratic-led Congress in 2009.

According to CBO numbers in its Budget and Economic Outlook published this month, the cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom was $709 billion for military and related activities, including training of Iraqi forces and diplomatic operations.

The projected cost of the stimulus, which passed in February 2009, and is expected to have a shelf life of two years, was $862 billion...
And how's that "stimulus" working out?

Now I've mentioned on several occasions that economics is not my strong suit and that I even find that field of study fairly boring but I do speak English pretty well and I'm no slouch when it comes to basic mathematics so I was able to detect a few flaws in Don's argument here. Ignoring the fact that I automatically take people who use cute little nicknames like "Porkulus" when discussing serious political topics less seriously than those who speak like actual grown ups, the operational word one should really pay attention to in the above article is "projected".

The cost of the Bush administration's war in Iraq is stated flatly and in the past tense, as if the final bill has arrived in the mail and therefore will not increase past the stated $709 billion price tag while the final $862 billion cost of the stimulus is "projected" well into next year. Now this disparity might prompt an honest (or at least curious) person to ask, "Say, is there also a 'projected' final cost for the Iraq war as well?" Interestingly enough, there is:

As of February 2010, around $704 billion has been spent based on estimates of current expenditure rates^[1], which range from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) estimate of $2 billion per week to $12 billion a month, an estimate by economist Joseph Stiglitz.^[2]...
According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report published in October 2007, the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost taxpayers a total of $2.4 trillion dollars by 2017 when counting the huge interest costs because combat is being financed with borrowed money. The CBO estimated that of the $2.4 trillion long-term price tag for the war, about $1.9 trillion of that would be spent on Iraq, or $6,300 per U.S. citizen.^[9]^[10]

Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, has stated the total costs of the Iraq War on the US economy will be three trillion dollars in a moderate scenario, and possibly more in the most recent published study, published in March 2008.^[11] Stiglitz has stated: "The figure we arrive at is more than $3 trillion. Our calculations are based on conservative assumptions...Needless to say, this number represents the cost only to the United States. It does not reflect the enormous cost to the rest of the world, or to Iraq."^[11]

So the projected cost of Bush's war (which he never paid for in any of his budgets because apparently deficits didn't matter back then) is actually conservatively estimated at almost four times that of Obama's stimulus bill, which he passed in order to pull the country out of the economic recession and possible depression he inherited from Bush and company. And it seems that FOX News is having a little trouble with their own research as well. From the AP last week:

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s stimulus measure has created or saved as many as 3.3 million jobs and continues to boost economic growth in the second half of 2010, but it’s come at a higher price tag than originally billed.

Congressional analysts released new figures today estimating that the law enacted in January 2009, when it projected to cost $787 billion over a decade, would cost $814 billion. But that’s still less than the Congressional Budget Office estimated in January, when it said the measure would cost $862 billion.

So FOX's difference was only off by $48 billion or around 6% (maybe their researchers haven't read the news since January) but admittedly the stimulus did go over its projected budget by $27 billion or almost 4%. Now everyone knows that government spending almost always goes over its estimated costs so the 4% run over isn't surprising but noting that the stimulus went over its original projected cost might also prompt an honest (or at least curious) person to ask, "Say, was there also a 'projected' original cost for the Iraq war as well?" Interestingly enough, there was:

WASHINGTON — At the outset of the Iraq war, the Bush administration predicted that it would cost $50 billion to $60 billion to oust Saddam Hussein, restore order and install a new government.

Five years in, the Pentagon tags the cost of the Iraq war at roughly $600 billion and counting. Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and critic of the war, pegs the long-term cost at more than $4 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office and other analysts say that $1 trillion to $2 trillion is more realistic, depending on troop levels and on how long the American occupation continues.

Based on the time periods cited those numbers are from 2 1/2 years ago so they've obviously increased since then but if we use the higher original Bush administration estimate of $60 billion as well as the older CBO estimate of $1.9 trillion (much lower than Stiglitz's own current conservative estimates) the Iraq war will eventually go over its original projected budget by at least 3200%, again estimating extremely conservatively. Not only is this scenario the exact opposite of what Don tried to claim above but it's cost overruns are higher by several orders of magnitude.

Now I don't blame Don for foolishly stating what is an extremely obvious falsehood about the comparisons between the Bush administration's profligate wartime spending and the Obama administration's relatively modest depression averting spending. I actually had to Google complicated phrases like "original cost iraq war", "original cost stimulus", "projected cost iraq war" and "projected cost stimulus" to gain access to all of this esoteric information. And I don't know if you noticed but those phrases contain several words each, some of them are even multi-syllabic! So I guess Don can be forgiven for lazily cutting and pasting a story from the propaganda media wing of the Republican party rather than doing actual minimal research to make sure that what he's posting isn't an outright partisan lie. The man only has one PhD. after all. Hey, it's hard out here for a hack.

Something Someone Else Said

2010-08-30T11:05:00.000-07:00

"Personally I’m not interested in “limited government” as an end in itself, but as a means to greater individual liberty. I’m opposed to government programs that waste taxpayer dollars because higher taxes restrict my freedom. But I’m much more opposed to government programs that use taxpayer dollars to restrict freedom directly. I’m not interested in joining a “limited government” movement that considers the two equivalent. And I’m definitely not interested in being part of a movement that gives torture and preemptive war a free pass under the heading of “national defense” while it focuses instead on fighting the tyranny of SCHIP and unemployment insurance," -Timothy B. Lee, Bottom-Up.

I completely agree with this sentiment. It seems to me that there's a real disconnect between those on the political right who call themselves conservatives and even claim to endorse the philosophy of libertarianism and their simultaneous enthusiastic embrace of the military and security culture of our government. Yes, rising taxes and government waste are problems that I believe we need to address but I hardly find those issues as insidious as our government's relatively recent proclaimed power to tap your phone and read your email without warrants, kick in your front door and ransack your home, lock you away without charging you with a crime or reading you your rights and yes, torturing you to within and even beyond an inch of your life.

I too care about how my tax dollars are spent but I care even more about my personal bodily liberty and civil rights and it appears that those aforementioned "conservatives" are quite happy to cede what I consider to be more than a few personal rights and freedoms in exchange for their nanny state government claiming to protect them from every conceivable danger in the world, even from themselves. To me this world outlook smacks of fear, which would definitely explain the desperate bouts of bravado and jingoism these people so often go through to compenate for it. While on principle I agree with them on several issues of fiscal responsibility their hypocrisy as it pertains to personal liberties unfortunately prevents me from taking them seriously on most other issues.

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This Post Now Has A Title

2010-08-29T18:42:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the lack of posting lately, a lot of things have been piling up. I'm happy to say that my NFL fantasy draft went fairly well this morning (even got a few Dallas Cowboys on my team) and my book club meeting earlier this evening was all fundamentalist Mormonism, sushi and martinis; good times and a great combination. Regular posting will resume tomorrow.

Something Wise Someone Else Said

2010-08-26T11:42:00.000-07:00

"Write drunk, edit sober," -Ernest Hemingway.

I do enjoy writing much more than I do editing. Salut, Papa.

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TDS: The Hurt Talker

2010-08-26T05:47:00.000-07:00

I know I've been posting a lot of Daily Show clips lately but these boys have just been on fire the last couple of weeks. Case in point:

I haven't yet commented upon the Laura Schlessinger fracas for two reasons: 1) I've just been too busy and 2) I begrudgingly respect her for having the balls to actually enunciate the word "nigger" in a discussion about the use of that word. Nothing bugs me more than listening to grown adults saying things like "N-word", "F-word" or "C-word" during a discussion with other adults as if there were a bunch of children within earshot. If there are kids in the room with you then yes, don't use these words in front of them but adults should be able to use epithets in discussions with other adults. As Stewart says, context and intent are far more important than the actual words themselves. How does one have a substantive discussion about the use or misuse of the word "nigger" if one is too cowed by political correctness to utter it even innocuously?

Now, as to Schlessinger's use of the word: did I say "having the balls" earlier? Because what I really meant was "lacking the brains". Yes, adults should be able to say "nigger" in a discussion about the use of that word and its effect on our society but an old white woman claiming that she should have the same leeway in its use as black comedians on HBO is just about the dumbest way to go about having that discussion I can think of. I can't count the number of times I've heard white people say, "Well if black people can say the N-word why can't we?" and my answer is always the same: hundreds of years of culturally institutionalized slavery and racial discrimination, that's why. I don't support slavery reparation policies or anything like that but I am OK with this small double standard as it concerns racial disparity. It's the same reason I can say that one of my little sisters is acting like a bitch but I better not hear you say it: it's a right reserved for my family only. On the 300th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington white people should feel free to check in with the black community at that point to see if it's OK to chant "nigger, nigger, nigger" yet but until then idiots like Schlessinger just need to relax on that count or else they'll find themselves in the same situation she does now. Freedom of speech is a great thing but it does have consequences for which one must take responsibility.

My favorite part about this whole brouhaha however is the fact that Sarah Palin has injected herself into the fray and proven once again that she has absolutely no concept of what constitutes First Amendment freedom of speech rights. Ignoring the hypocrisy of her calling for Emmanuel's resignation for using the word "retarded" discussed above I'm reminded of a post I wrote about Palin and the First Amendment a couple of days before the 2008 presidential election:

She's already proven that she has no idea what the job of the vice-president is, so why should we expect her to understand how the first amendment works?
Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.
"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."
Really? Since Chris Plante is a right-wing talk radio host it's no surprise that he didn't call her on her shit but just in case any of you (besides Palin and Plante) have forgotten:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
So according to Sarah Palin (and yes, I know how loaded a phrase that can be) the media and others exercising their free speech rights to refute and/or criticize what she says is the same thing as the United States government passing laws explicitly outlawing what she says. In other words, Palin's idea of free speech is the right to say anything critical about anybody or anything without anyone else criticizing what you've just said; in point of fact, that's the exact opposite of free speech.

At least she's remained consistent in her constitutional ignorance. I wonder if she's had time between speeches and media appearances to learn what the vice-president does yet? I'll say it again, Republicans: run her, please. Hell, put Schlessinger on the ticket as her VP nominee while you're at it. I can certainly use all the laughs I can get.

Something Someone Else Said II

2010-08-25T18:01:00.000-07:00

"It is hard in this age of endless memorialization to even express this view without sounding callous: but Londoners did not turn their entire city into a "hallowed ground" or a shrine for the dead or a monument to British victimhood. They rebuilt, they went on, they rightly saw that the truest memorial to the dead was to show the Nazis that their city would rise again as if the Nazis had never existed on the face of the earth. I have always felt a deep discomfort similarly with the entire holocaust-memorial and holocaust-study industry. As a Jew, I hate the idea that the defining fact of my people's entire history should be what the fucking Nazis did to us.

There is a great Spanish proverb: olvidar la injuria es la mejor venganza: to forget an insult is the greatest revenge," -Stephen Budiansky, Stephen Budiansky's Liberal Curmudgeon Blog.

Meanwhile, nine years after the attacks on 9/11 we argue and bicker over whether it's respectful to the victims of those attacks to build a religious community center near the big ugly hole in the ground where they were killed. Our priorities are fucked up.

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The Beauty Of Physics, Ctd

2010-08-25T15:57:00.000-07:00

More incredible computer rendering:

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Something Someone Else Said

2010-08-25T04:29:00.000-07:00

"There is almost no downside if you want to make an extreme claim about Barack Obama. You generate outrage from the left but you get attaboys from the conservative base. Is this much different than the rewards that liberals could get for making extreme claims about George W. Bush? I think it is, because the conservative media -- Fox, talk radio, all the way down to forward e-mails -- is a fantastic transmission device whose consumers are ready to believe that the rest of the media is lying to them. There is really no downside for Frank Gaffney when he says that Obama or his nominees are bringing radical Islamic law to America. It gets to the conservative base, which makes it a "controversy," which means that the rest of the media has to cover this Very Important Issue Americans Are Concerned About," -David Weigel, Slate.com.

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TDS: The Parent Company Trap

2010-08-24T19:00:00.000-07:00

So it turns out that FOX News is partially funding the so-called "Ground Zero" mosque. No really, they actually are. And the question now becomes: evil or stupid?

Picture Of The Day

2010-08-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

Simply amazing:

Many artists have used pencils to create works of art – but Dalton Ghetti creates miniature masterpieces on the tips of pencils.

Dalton, who works as a carpenter, has been making his tiny graphite works for about 25 years...

The 49 year old said: “At school I would carve a friend’s name into the wood of a pencil and then give it to them as a present. Later, when I got into sculpture, I would make these huge pieces from things like wood, but decided I wanted to challenge myself by trying to make things as small as possible. I experimented sculpting with different materials, such as chalk, but one day I had an eureka moment and decided to carve into the graphite of a pencil”.

Dalton uses three basic tools to make his incredible creations – a razor blade, sewing needle and sculpting knife. He even refuses to use a magnifying glass and has never sold any of his work, only given it away to friends. He said: “I use the sewing needle to make holes or dig into the graphite. I scratch and create lines and turn the graphite around slowly in my hand”.

You can view more examples of Ghetti's incredible artwork here.

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Friedersdorf Flips The Perspective

2010-08-21T05:22:00.000-07:00

Lamenting his apparent failure to convince fellow conservatives that Imam Rauf of the so-called "Ground Zero" mosque is "with us" in the War on Terror (as in, "you're either with us or you're against us..."), Conor Friedersdorf decides to come at this question from another direction:

Perhaps it'll help my case to offer a flip in perspective. Take a look at an imagined conversation between two radical Islamists in Saudi Arabia who are having their own argument about whether Imam Rauf is with them or against them.
Jihadi 1: Maybe he is on our side. He does seem to sympathize with the Palestinians.

Jihadi 2: No more than lots of American liberals. Being pro-Palestine hardly makes him a soldier of Allah.

J1: He is also building a monument to Islam at Ground Zero.

J2: It's two blocks away. And he has publicly promised that he is going to let Jews in.

J1: Really?

J2: Yes, he even reached out to two rabbis before announcing the project.

J1: Even so, he seems critical of America.

J2: Yes, he is mildly critical once every few years, when he's not busy doing the bidding of their State Department, or helping to train their FBI agents.

J1: He cooperates with their FBI?

J2: He is very friendly with them. And he lets his wife go on television too. Without a burka or even a headscarf.

J1: I heard he attended a Hizb ut-Tahrir conference.

J2: It turns out that story is false. In fact, when radicals from the group confronted him, he defended the United States Constitution!

J1: Andy McCarthy thinks that he is a radical.

J2: You fool. Andy McCarthy also thinks that President Obama is allied with radical Islamists in a grand jihad against America.

J1: Seriously? That bastard Obama just killed an Al Qaeda cousin of mine with one of his drone strikes. At first I thought maybe he's just trying to shore up his domestic political support, but then I realized that his administration is taking pains to keep most of them secret. Still, I hear than the mosque being built will signify the beginning of the United States of Arabia, and that it marks their surrender to us.

J2: That makes no sense. Their voters can't even manage to pass gay marriage bans without them getting struck down and you believe people who say that they're about to submit to sharia law? And how would the construction of a mosque even be a factor in transforming their legal system. I think you're listening to too much of their talk radio.

Insofar as this conversation is unrealistic, it's because every actual radical Islamist would know perfectly well that an imam who works with the FBI, tours on behalf of the State Department, denounces terrorism, defends the US constitution in an Arabic exchange with radicals from Hizb ut-Tahrir, has a good relationship with New York City rabbis, and preaches on behalf of women's rights isn't on their side. In fact, he is exactly the kind of imam that Islamist radicals target and kill when they dare to do these sorts of things in other countries.

Now I'm not saying that Rauf is a saint or that he's never uttered anything controversial but when one takes the time to find out the things he's actually said and done it becomes clear that those who are automatically jumping to the conclusion that his motives are nefarious simply because he's a Muslim are doing so out of either ignorance, bigotry or both. And Friedersdorf's last point is an important one: moderate Muslims like Rauf are exactly who al Qaeda and other radical extremist organizations would like to see us turn against to help facilitate their war on the West. Now I'm also of course not saying that the Republican party is in league with al Qaeda but when your political party's current talking points mirror that organization's stated aims and goals of turning Christianity and Islam against each other, perhaps it's time to reexamine your stance on this particular issue. Sometimes constitutional freedoms and civil rights are more important than people's hurt feelings. Hell, they pretty much always are.

[Update: Jon Stewart connected a few more dots with his highlighter last Thursday:

I too denounced Heston and the NRA for their actions in Colorado several years back and I too was wrong to do so. Just as the NRA was not responsible for the Columbine tragedy, Rauf and his organization were not responsible for the attacks against America on 9/11 and conflating either event with an unrelated group of people is both dishonest and unAmerican. We need to be better than that.]

Father Guido Sarducci's Five Minute University

2010-08-20T00:20:00.000-07:00

My middle little sister just sent this to me. I was actually surprised that she even knew who Father Guido Sarducci is because she's not that old (notice that the audience is straight out of the late seventies-early eighties) but her explanation that she had watched it during a staff development meeting (she's a teacher) made more sense:

This reminded me of one of my favorite exchanges from the movie Reality Bites:

Lelaina: Quick, Vicky, what’s your social security?

Vicky: Ahh... eight five one two five nine three five seven.

Troy: Very impressive.

Vicky: It’s the only thing I really learned in college...

(hat tip: Shannon)

100,000 Hits

2010-08-18T23:30:00.000-07:00

If I can just keep up this pace I should get my first million hits in just under a quarter of a century! Yes, yes, meaningless I know but I suppose bloggers are supposed to keep track of this sort of thing. Thanks as always to everyone who visits Brain Rage; the visitor from Whittier, California has 1 hour to collect their prize.

TDS: Stewart And Cooper Look At Gaping Holes

2010-08-18T16:31:00.000-07:00

OK, forget what I said about Basil Marceaux.com: Republican Representative and all around fruitcake Louie Gohmert should be given as many opportunities to speak in front of a microphone and/or camera as is humanly possible:

What Else Is Near Ground Zero?

2010-08-17T05:02:00.000-07:00

New Yorker Daryl Lang takes some photos of other structures and businesses in his neighborhood, including strip clubs, bars, McDonalds and curbside souvenir hockers, located the same distance from the Ground Zero site as the proposed Muslim community center:

What’s my point? A month ago, I wrote about my support for a group of Muslim New Yorkers—whom I consider my neighbors—and their right to put a religious building on a piece of private property in Lower Manhattan. Since then, the debate over the Park51 community center, inaccurately nicknamed the “Ground Zero Mosque,” has jumped from talk radio to mainstream conversation, and turned nasty in the process. Sarah Palin wrote that, “it would be an intolerable and tragic mistake to allow such a project sponsored by such an individual to go forward on such hallowed ground.”

Look at the photos. This neighborhood is not hallowed. The people who live and work here are not obsessed with 9/11. The blocks around Ground Zero are like every other hard-working neighborhood in New York, where Muslims are just another thread of the city fabric.

At this point the only argument against this project is fear, specifically fear of Muslims, and that’s a bigoted, cowardly and completely indefensible position.

I'm glad that Sarah Palin was able to put aside her disdain for big city liberal elitists long enough to tell them how to run their own town (for their own good, of course). As far as the outrage over the proposed community center located two and a half blocks away from the World Trade Center site being too close I still have three questions that no right-winger can or will answer: 1) How many blocks would then be far enough away to show proper respect for the victims on 9/11? 2) What system or formula did you use to arrive at that number? 3) Why would being even one block closer than the number you chose be so much worse? The reason these questions can't be answered is because this isn't about proximity to Ground Zero or respect for those victims, it's about not liking Muslims and conflating religious tolerance with national weakness to score cheap political points in an election year.

Deleted Scene: Luke Builds His Lightsaber

2010-08-17T02:39:00.000-07:00

This short deleted scene from Return of the Jedi was shown at Star Wars Celebration V in Orlando over the weekend. It's not the best quality but Lucasfilm Ltd. is tearing every copy off the Internets as fast as you can say "copyright infringement" so get it while it's hot. For the fanboys, of course:

The "Ground Zero" Mosque

2010-08-16T08:20:00.001-07:00

This looks about right but hey, fear can win elections.

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Picture Of The Day

2010-08-15T18:29:00.000-07:00

Class, class, class:

At Barack Hussein Obama's taxpayer-funded Ramadan dinner last night, not only did the alleged president give the assembled Muslims the tremendous gift of support for building the Ground Zero mosque, but he also gifted them with the multi-purpose "Presidential Seal Boxcutter" which will soon be available in the Cordoba House gift shop.

This handsome and practical souvenir is an exact replica of the one which Barack Hussein Obama uses to direct the flight destinations of Air Force One!

The pattern from the political right starts to become clear after a while: first insist that President Obama is a secret Muslim for a couple years, then proceed with the current theme of conflating Islam and all Muslims with the radical extremists who attacked us on 9/11. He directs Air Force One with a box cutter: get it? The president's a terrorist! And he approves of and arms other terrorists! Do you think they'd be calling him by his middle name all the time if it was "Holden"? Subtle these guys are not.

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American Power And "Chunky Vomit"

2010-08-15T00:21:00.000-07:00

The next impotent volley from my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power has been duly served and it barely cleared the net this time with "Brain Rage Chunky Vomit":

I guess I hurt JBW's feelings with my last post repudiating the Brain Rage embrace of death-wish drug abuse:

...my favorite part of this post is Don's continued insistence, albeit indirectly this time, that I should somehow embrace him as some type of mentor based on his 13-14 years seniority of me. I hate to disappoint the guy but I've tried this particular song and dance in the patriarchal sense twice in my life and the results were less than stellar both times: my father ignored me until he was on his death bed and my step-father was a serial dick throughout my childhood, so I'm sure I can be excused for not embracing the intellectual arguments of someone who consistently calls me a loser or worse.
Been there. Done that.

It sucks JBW when no father-figures have been there for you. That's called father-hunger. My heart bleeds for you buddy. And of course your pain helps explain why you'd take cocaine over camaraderie. So I'll be blunt: Drugs suck. They're for losers. If you don't want to be a loser. Don't do drugs.

P.S. Sorry to hurt your feelings, but your post truly reminds me of "chunky vomit." And like the flummoxed muscle-bound macho teacher at the clip, you're hightailing it outta there when it comes to sophisticated engagements. Get some help dude.

First, I'd wager that there are few things you or most anyone else could say or do in this world that would legitimately hurt my feelings, Don. I know your old man was a less than stellar role model as well and I sympathize (I also assume it's why you're so quick to be so confrontational; me too on that count, perhaps...) but contrary to your characterization I don't feel any need to fill any void caused by this: I've only gained strength from it. I wasn't lamenting my upbringing so much as it was merely full disclosure for my readers. I think honesty's a good thing and I try to exemplify that as much as I can when I write.

Again, the conflation of cocaine use within a discussion about the merits of cannabis is a desperate straw man deflection but I'm going to let you in on a little secret that the rest of us adults already know: not everyone who uses drugs does so to alleviate pain. Drugs can be quite fun and stimulating when used responsibly (hell, they even cure some diseases) but you and your nanny state ilk would deny that freedom and responsibility to everyone else because you either can't handle it yourselves or simply can't grasp the grown-up concepts I'm delineating here. You don't need your government to prohibit you from using drugs if you don't like them, Don: just don't use them. That's what adults do.

I understand now why you're so afraid that your sons might try drugs someday: merely telling them that "Drugs are bad. You shouldn't do drugs." might work for a while when they're young and naive but at some point (if you've raised them correctly) they'll start to question such a simplistic world view and they'll soon find that your black or white tropes have ill-prepared them for a complex and dynamic world. They're going to realize after looking around outside your little cocoon that not all drugs are the same and that drug use does not necessarily equal drug abuse and then they'll wonder what else you've been lying to them about. You can and should do better than your old man on this count.

On a lighter note, your homosexual vomit fetish video was quite silly and not at all to my liking. In the future I would prefer any posts about myself to include video of strict school marms disciplining naughty young girls to your depictions of teenage boys eating fake vomit for the benefit of their gay gym coach. I'm not judging you for your proclivities and I similarly don't expect you to judge me for mine (although yours are somewhat gross and pretty damn gay). NTTAWWT!

I'm not sure how I'm "hightailing it outta there when it comes to sophisticated engagements" by constantly challenging you to sack up and honestly debate your side of this argument but I'm sure your cognitive dissonance allows you to somehow believe this and think yourself superior as a result. When you're ready to use your big boy voice I've got a swollen cranium full of clever bon mots to lob at whatever emaciated arguments you'd care to put forth in defense of your side of this discussion. The chance to make your brain my brain's bitch is all the help I need, dude.

Florida Tea Party Candidate's Plan For Illegals

2010-08-14T02:19:00.000-07:00

If only most illegal immigrants were also gay Muslims as well, then the political right in this country could really concentrate their vilification and scapegoating on one group of people rather than having to spread it so thin across so many:

It's a good thing there's no unfortunate historical precedent from the 1940's for the government rounding up a minority group and putting them into camps or else this woman might appear a bit callous and ignorant as it concerns her fellow human beings. Oh wait... Of course the federal government only imprisoned 110,000 Japanese during World War II while the current estimates of the number of illegal immigrants currently in country are around 11 million, fully one hundred times that amount. That's a lot of internment camps. If only we had a source of cheap plentiful labor to help us build Ms. Barker's grand vision of detention. Oh wait again...

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American Power And Rhetorical Cowardice

2010-08-12T01:04:00.000-07:00

Regular readers may remember my recent post lamenting my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power's failure, both intellectual and testicular, to even minimally address my arguments in favor of the decriminalization of illicit narcotics, cannabis in particular. I think "loser" and "pile of shit" adequately sum up his entire rebuttal on that count, so I suppose it should come as no surprise that he has once again avoided making any type of intellectual argument in favor of his position in lieu of rhetorical avoidance and tired hyperbole in his post, "Legalizing Cocaine?":

JBW's jonesin' for some kind of debate --- any debate, I guess --- but frankly it seems useless trying to respond to some effete leftist "libertarian" who at most can string together "NANNY STATE", "NANNY STATE", NANNY STATE" until you've had just about enough of that faux intellectualism to last a lifetime. Not only that, JBW's calling for the decriminalization of cocaine, which I can't see how that's going to improve society much. But hey, JBW thinks he knows everything, and apparently that includes all the things I've seen and experienced in my few decades on this Great Green Earth.

That said, just read Sandy Banks' essay at LAT, "The crack epidemic's toxic legacy." Perhaps reducing some of the harsher criminal sentencing guidelines will ease historical racial disparities (putting aside the causes), but Banks isn't going in for full-blown decriminalization, not by a long shot:

[I've decided not to include the rather long LA Times article Don pastes into his post. It mostly consists of anecdotal stories of drug abuse and addiction and the crime and violence that follow from such behaviour and our government's current drug policy. You can read the whole article at this link.]

Be sure to check the Times' skid row series as well.
No doubt Mr. "Libertarian" JBW's down with that kind extreme pain, dislocation, and hopelessness as well.

First of all, when have I advocated for the specific legalization of cocaine during our current back and forth about drug legalization? Not in the post Don links to above in which I call him an intellectual coward, nor in the post before that in which I respond to his whining about factory farming of medical cannabis in Oakland, nor even in the year old post in which I refute Don's specific and personal assertion that cannabis is inherently evil and thus destroys every life it touches. Now it is true that I do advocate for a policy of blanket (or nearly so, obviously depending on certain outside societal factors and conditions) drug legalization in the United States but to bring that particular point up now in the face of several posts specifically advocating for the legalization of cannabis smacks of desperation and avoidance.

Also, (and I don't think I need to explain this point to most people reading this but Don might be as well so here it is) calling assertions about an encroaching nanny state philosophy of government "faux intellectualism" without supporting that supposition with any kind of cogent argumentation is the height of literal irony. True, if one were to view the world through the narrow lens of black or white thinking (such as a five-year-old does, for instance) then I can see how Don might think that legalizing cocaine would be bad for society but one would also have to completely ignore all of the negative consequences of our federal government's current war on drugs and the net effect this has on society as well, which Don is of course all too happy to do.

But my favorite part of this post is Don's continued insistence, albeit indirectly this time, that I should somehow embrace him as some type of mentor based on his 13-14 years seniority of me. I hate to disappoint the guy but I've tried this particular song and dance in the patriarchal sense twice in my life and the results were less than stellar both times: my father ignored me until he was on his death bed and my step-father was a serial dick throughout my childhood, so I'm sure I can be excused for not embracing the intellectual arguments of someone who consistently calls me a loser or worse. Plus, when it comes to the topic at hand I usually adhere to the sage advice of comedian and admitted drug user Doug Stanhope:

There's only two types of people who are against drugs: the people who have never done drugs and the people who really sucked at doing drugs.

Based on what I've seen of Don he himself falls squarely within the former category while his arguments against legalization seem to fall squarely within the latter, which means that to my mind all the things he's supposedly seen and experienced in his few decades on this Great Green Earth amount to exactly jack shit when it comes to this particular issue. I'm sorry but merely stating that "drugs are bad" is hardly an intellectual argument, no matter how many idiots you've known who've abused said drugs and ruined their lives in the process and further saying that I'm "down with that kind extreme pain, dislocation, and hopelessness" is just another straw man argument that ignores the mountain of evidence of extreme pain, dislocation and hopelessness that similarly results from our country's continued failed war on drugs.

One of these policy positions on drug legalization advocates for personal freedom and individual responsibility for one's own actions; the other advocates for an oppressive nanny state government that would deny those same freedoms and responsibilities in favor of laws that intrude upon people's personal lives and punish adults for indulging in sometimes personally destructive behaviour in the guise of protecting them and the rest of society from themselves. Guess which type of world view Don endorses. I'll say it again: intellectual coward, and much more, conservative: my white ass.

Advertisement Of The Day

2010-08-11T11:42:00.000-07:00

This is a symptom of the "nanny state" mentality, on the political left and right, that I'm constantly decrying:

The forthcoming Will Ferrell-Mark Wahlberg flick The Other Guys may yet be riddled with pot shots from film critics. Poor Ferrell and Wahlberg -- on Muni, they can't shoot back.

While the official poster for the film features a maniacal Ferrell and the menacing Wahlberg sailing through the air, guns drawn, the version in Muni stations features Ferrell brandishing a vial of pepper spray and Wahlberg relying upon his bare fists. This is not a coincidence.

"Well, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency does have an advertising policy that states ads should not appear to promote the use of firearms or advocate any violent action," explains spokesman Paul Rose. You can read the stipulations against promoting "the use of firearms" and "imminent lawlessness or violent actions" right here.

Do we as Americans really need the agency in San Francisco that makes the trains and buses run on time deciding for us what exposure we should have to depictions of firearm use and violence? I love living in Northern California and The City's great but it does wear on my nerves at times. Be it instances like this or prohibition of illicit drugs or prostitution or gambling or even unpopular/offensive speech it all amounts to one thing: PC bullshit espoused by those who would tell you how to live your life because they supposedly know better than you what's good for you. Well, they don't (and this movie actually looks like it isn't half bad).

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Picture Of The Day

2010-08-10T05:40:00.000-07:00

An "Impeach Obama" van found on the streets of Chicago. Part of some "grassroots" citizen uprising concerned about communism or Hitler or some such equally horrifying historical happening coupled with a nonconcurrent fear based in total reality, no doubt. Straws are now being grasped at...

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Are You Ready For Some Football?

2010-08-09T07:09:00.001-07:00

OK, it was only the first preseason game and it wasn't even that exciting but it was football! Real live American football, with pads and helmets and shit! It's been a long five months, I don't mind telling you...

Football Player Celebrates By Playing Soccer

2010-08-07T10:25:00.000-07:00

I have a buddy from Croatia who always says, "You call it 'football' but you carry it in your hands the whole time". Maybe this will appease him (even if it's Canadian):

(hat tip: one L bill)

Homemade Caprese

2010-08-06T20:03:00.000-07:00

I've never made one of these myself before but a friend recently gave me some tomatoes from his garden so I decided to give it a shot. Man, so tasty and so easy. I paired it with a rather light Pinot Grigio, they really went well together. This is going to become a regular staple at my house.

Basil Marceaux.com Won't Be Next TN Governor

2010-08-06T00:41:00.000-07:00

The Volunteer state Republican party blew a golden opportunity yesterday when they failed to nominate Basil Marceaux.com as their candidate for governor. Marceaux.com only garnered 0.5% of the primary vote, getting beat by every other candidate including the one guy who withdrew from the race almost two months ago. How does someone with this kind of charisma not win?

You know what I like about this guy? He's real. There aren't many politicians out there these days who promise to murder their constituencies if they break the law; that takes guts no matter how you slice it. I'd like to see Basil Marceaux.com somehow teamed up with Sarah Palin in any way possible, preferably in a mismatched buddy cop flick. "She's a rogue hockey mom with a Twitter account and a devil may care 'yeah sure, you betcha' attitude. He's an incoherent man-child with a rambling website and an affinity for sausages. Together they're: Folksy and Husky." Coming soon to a theatre in my dreams.

TDS: I Give Up - 9/11 Responders Bill

2010-08-05T06:12:00.000-07:00

What he said:

American Power And Intellectual Impotence

2010-08-04T23:19:00.000-07:00

My conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power recently flexed some serious grey matter rebutting my post decrying the criminalization of cannabis and his need to have the government protect him from it in his post "One Big Pile":

That would be Brain Rage's argument for drug decriminalization, although Charles Johnson comes to mind as well:

Yeah, that's it. This guy is a teacher and my taxes pay his salary. The debates in his classroom must be scintillating displays of wordplay, what with calling someone "loser" and saying that their assertions are full of shit being acceptable lines of argument. I'll say it again: intellectual coward.

Something Someone Else Said

2010-08-04T06:42:00.000-07:00

"I think you're on to why the 'Tea Party' was created, i.e. to give conservatives a way to rally with the Republican brand name in ruins, nothing more. They're the Altria of politics," –A commenter at Talking Points Memo.

Well, yeah. Think about it: the Republican party long ago abandoned any pretense of fiscal responsibility, which has always been their cudgel when opposing the "tax and spend" Democrats but George W. Bush put an end to all that. So now you have a vocal "grassroots" movement of Republicans who have stopped calling themselves Republicans yet they agree with the Republican party on pretty much every issue except for fiscal responsibility (which the Republican party has also miraculously rediscovered now that they're out of power and no longer control any government purse strings).

But when asked to give specific examples of ways they would reduce out of control spending by the government both groups still give the same answers: vague anti-government platitudes about reducing waste and bureaucracy and of course tax cuts (which 95% of Americans actually did receive last year but don't tell them that because it clashes with the ever-present anti-Obama narrative which forms the third leg of their ideology). In this sense the Altria metaphor is an apt one because most of what they produce toward that end is pure poison using a process perfected by the Republican party they claim to now reject. This is why I can't take their movement seriously.

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Picture Of The Day

2010-08-03T15:54:00.000-07:00

The cover of Sarah Palin's second and newest book, coming out this November. Now I'm no marketing genius but I think they should have put a big American flag up behind her. I mean, how else are people going to know how totally patriotic she is and stuff? Except for the flag on her sweater, the two flags on her wrist and the word "flag" in the book's subtitle, of course. Do you think she could have chosen a more awkward position for her wrist or what? Can ya see 'em? Can ya see 'em?! Flags! Buy my book, 'cause flags!

Reagan's Son Pimps His Father's Corpse

2010-08-03T12:28:00.000-07:00

The idolization/fetishization of Ronald Reagan by the Republican party has been running rampant for years and now one of his sons (the conservative one, natch) has decided to try sucking even more cash out of his old man's memory by attempting to prey upon the gullibility of the political right:

Conservative talk radio host Michael Reagan, eldest son of former president Ronald Reagan, is selling @Reagan.com e-mail addresses on his website with an appeal to conservatives to stop giving their money to companies he casts as tied to liberalism.

Writes Reagan: "People who believe in true Reagan Conservative Values are unwittingly supporting the Obama, Pelosi and Reid liberal agenda! What do I mean? Well, every time you use your email from companies like Google, AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, Apple and others, you are helping the liberals. These companies are, and will continue, to be huge supporters financially and with technology of those that are hurting our country."

"Is that where you want your money to go? I didn't so I changed things," he continues. "I came up with the very first conservative email service provider. You now can put your name next to the name of the Greatest Conservative of all, my father Ronald Reagan." ...

@Reagan.com e-mail addresses cost $34.95 per year (through tomorrow, after which prices go up). Reagan says those who purchase the e-mail addresses will also get a DVD of his father's famous 1987 "Tear Down This Wall" speech at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

So let me see if I have this straight: for only 35 bucks a year you can buy something that dozens of other companies give away for free and as a bonus you get a DVD that... you can watch online for free. I suppose it makes as much sense as voodoo economics, although I have to admit that it'd be pretty funny to have lancethundercock@Reagan.com on all my business cards. Too bad I support the Obama, Pelosi and Reid liberal agenda, huh? Well, the Obama liberal agenda anyway. I relegate Pelosi and Reid to the same category I do condoms: necessary evils, at best.

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Colbert's WØRD - Ownership Society

2010-08-03T06:07:00.000-07:00

Stephen Colbert laments the expiration of the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy and explains why supply side economics is still important even though it doesn't work:

American Power And Nanny Statism

2010-08-02T11:38:00.000-07:00

So it seems that my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power has once again declared his ~~ignorance~~ opposition to cannabis via California's Proposition 19, a ballot initiative that would legalize individual amounts of cannabis here in the Golden State, in his newest post "Oakland Pot Factory Sham is Shame of a Nation":

After the budget and jobs, drug decriminalization's likely the most important issue on the ballot in November's elections, and Oakland's at the forefront of the fight for sanity. (Note here that I'm always amused at JBW's childish arguments about getting the "nanny state" out of our lives, even more hilarious as he's down with Obama's uber-nanny nationalized socialism in every other area of the economy — but more on that later.) It turns out LAT has a piece on the "Walmartization" of Oakland's "medical" marijuana industry, and get a load out of that picture at the screencap. Looks like a bunch brothas from de 'hood be cruisin' down for some phat sweet-stick smokas, yo!
It's a scam, obviously... Unbelievable, really. But that's what the nihilist left wants in today's America.

Ignoring the fact that Don seemingly lost his own fight for sanity years ago, I'm always similarly amused at his own personal reefer madness when it comes to the issue of adults deciding for themselves what they can and can not put into their own bodies. Recall that I wrote my post "American Power And Hypocrisy" over a year ago as a direct rebuttal to Don's empty declaration at the time that cannabis is somehow inherently evil and he has yet to even attempt to refute me. Instead he prefers to deploy devastating rhetoric like calling people who disagree with him "losers" for doing so. Ouch.

But let's quickly unpack this latest post, shall we? First, the slang: as always it's as embarrassing as it is hilarious. Is it possible that being unhip is a chronic condition? This guy makes Michael Steele look like Jay-Z. Next, the hyperbole: notice that supporting President Obama in certain policy areas automatically means that I'm "down with Obama's uber-nanny nationalized socialism in every other area of the economy", whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. Apparently my desire for every American to have access to affordable health care is a much more oppressive policy position to take than is Don's own desire for every American adult who uses cannabis to be arrested, fined and imprisoned as a result.

That's just where we disagree about the role of government, I guess: I believe that the purpose of the government is to do for the people what they cannot individually do for themselves while Don believes that purpose is to protect people from themselves by punishing private personal behaviour that he finds distasteful. This is also why Don believes that adults should be arrested for frequenting prostitutes, that the government has the right to listen in to our phone conversations and monitor our email and even disappear ~~American citizens~~ ~~terror suspects~~ obvious terrorists who require no legal protections off of American streets and torture them to death overseas, all in the name of protecting the American people from those who would torture us overseas.

You see, neocons fear many dangers in the world today and they have no qualms about ceding a vast swathe of their personal liberties to a powerful government in order to feel all protected and safe in their beds at night. This is how Don can at times claim to be a libertarian out of one side of his mouth whilst simultaneously calling for the imprisonment of consenting adults participating in victimless crimes out of the other. Cannabis legalization in California obviously isn't going to destroy society and we could actually really use the additional tax revenue that it would generate (although from looking at the polls I doubt that Prop. 19 will pass this November but perhaps I'm wrong on that count) but Don can't afford to take that chance. His fear requires governmental nanny statism to protect him and the rest of us from anything and everything that scares him, our own liberties and freedoms be damned. That's the type of "free" society that cowards like Don would create with American power.

[Update: Don answers the above post by not answering at all:

Heh ...

Yo, JBW, 'nuff said:

Yeah, that's what I thought. Intellectual coward.]

Something Familiar Someone Else Said

2010-08-02T05:17:00.000-07:00

"The New York Times front page story today on opposition to the mosque near Ground Zero has the following comments:

--The mosque would be an "unnecessary provocation." (Sarah Palin)

--"It’s not about religion, and is clearly an aggressive act that is offensive.” (Newt Gingrich)

--Abe Foxman said in an interview on Friday that the organization came to the conclusion that the location was offensive to families of victims of Sept. 11.

Are these not the exact same sentiments that were voiced by people who thought that Salman Rushdie should not have published The Satanic Verses, and that Danish newspapers should not have run cartoons featuring The Prophet Muhammad? The idea that people have some sort of right not to be offended is one the many silly and pernicious things about these arguments." -Isaac Chotiner, The New Republic.

"Nobody in this world has a right not to be offended." -yours truly, in defense of my participation in Everybody Draw Mohammed Day earlier this year. And I still stand by it.

The War On Cannabis

2010-07-31T11:56:00.000-07:00

And all of its attendant societal woes:

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Picture Of The Day

2010-07-31T05:46:00.001-07:00

Time magazine's latest cover is causing some controversy in the blogosphere:

Our cover image this week is powerful, shocking and disturbing. It is a portrait of Aisha, a shy 18-year-old Afghan woman who was sentenced by a Taliban commander to have her nose and ears cut off for fleeing her abusive in-laws. Aisha posed for the picture and says she wants the world to see the effect a Taliban resurgence would have on the women of Afghanistan, many of whom have flourished in the past few years. Her picture is accompanied by a powerful story by our own Aryn Baker on how Afghan women have embraced the freedoms that have come from the defeat of the Taliban — and how they fear a Taliban revival.

Now of course this photo is meant to be emotionally manipulative: how could you not feel sorry for this woman? What was done to her was truly reprehensible and horrible and I don't mind admitting that I would be quite happy to see something equally as horrible happen to her attacker in return. This sort of thing happens to women far too often in that part of the world and our troops are doing good work by trying to prevent further violence being perpetrated upon innocents. That said: do you consider this to be a form of exploitation? In their defense of running the cover Time claims that they neither endorse nor oppose the war effort but as I said, it's clearly meant to support an agenda of remaining in Afghanistan and I think this claim of objectivity would seem equally transparent if the cover photo featured the dead mutilated corpse of an American soldier instead.

We've occupied Afghanistan for nearly a decade now. Credible military experts and historians agree almost universally that it will be several more decades before any sort of functional civilized government will be able to run the country and maintain some semblance of peace in the face of Taliban aggression. As I've said before I see only two options for us in this war: either get out now largely on our own terms or else wait until a lack of money, troops and equipment slowly drains us dry before forcing us to leave in defeat. I'm sympathetic to the plight of people like Aisha and I wish the United States could stop all suffering on the planet through shear force of will but that's obviously logistically unrealistic and economically unfeasible.

So, how do we define "victory" in Afghanistan? Should we remain there indefinitely until it is achieved? Should we spend an infinite amount of money to achieve it? What about all of the other countries whose people endure equally appalling levels of suffering and cruelty, should we commit ourselves just as fully to achieving "victory" in those places as well? Should we truly become Team America: World Police? I think the short and inevitable answer is that we simply cannot, and I believe that President Obama was mistaken in doubling our military down on the war in Afghanistan. Just as important as striving to win a war is being able to recognize when that cannot be done, even if doing so leads to an increase in human suffering. That's a hard truth for Americans to accept but we must do so if we wish to avoid bankrupting our nation and retain the ability to help people around the world like the poor girl pictured above.

Stuff Hitting Other Stuff Very Slowly

2010-07-29T18:51:00.000-07:00

A nice analog compliment to the digitally rendered physics fest from Monday:

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Jon Stewart's Goatee

2010-07-29T14:16:00.000-07:00

A lot of people are talking shit but I like it. Now maybe my perceptions are somewhat colored by the fact that I'm such a big fan of The Daily Show or because I myself am also beardily-challenged, hence leaving the goatee as my only outlet for facial hair expression (what I wouldn't give to be able to grow a pair of really kick-ass Wolverine mutton chops...) but I'm siding with Stewart on this one. It gives him a kind of elder statesman of the fake news vibe, plus I thought Wyatt Cenac's "Tony Stark" jab the other day was pure beardist gold.

Brain Rage Endorses Basil Marceaux.com

2010-07-29T09:40:00.000-07:00

This post is to announce that Brain Rage officially endorses Republican Basil Marceaux.com for governor of the great state of Tennessee. This man should be given as many opportunities to speak in front of a microphone and/or camera as is humanly possible:

His website is a journey into another world. A bleak, rambling world. Here's his complete bid for governor (watch the reporters' faces because they know what's coming):

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Foreskin Man!

2010-07-29T02:07:00.000-07:00

Finally, a superhero for the truly complete fanboy. I doubt this one made it to Comic Con last week:

Frustrated by societys failure to protect its most vulnerable citizens, Foreskin Man has taken up the fight agains male genital mutilation.

Aided by the power of his technologically advanced plasma boots, Foreskin Man flies above the city to hunt down criminals who cut tthe genitals of innocent boys.

It is the dawn of a new era. Circumcisers, beware!

Scourge of the diabolical Mohel Decree, faster than a speeding scalpel and aided by his female sidekick Clitty Cat he pulls back the loose skin of society's archaic religious rituals to expose the slightly funky criminal underbelly of male genital mutilation! OK, I made that part up myself. I thought Heroes was getting pretty bad last year but I'd say this is definitive proof that we've finally run out of superhero ideas. Here's his official website. You can read my previous largely undecided take on male circumcision here.

[Update: Welcome to all of my fellow Daily Dish readers! Please feel free to have a look around Brain Rage; and thanks, Andrew.]

Sucker Punch Trailer

2010-07-27T18:30:00.000-07:00

I have no idea what this movie is about but I'm fairly certain that I'm going to end up seeing it:

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Something Someone Else Said

2010-07-27T11:15:00.000-07:00

"Pick something that you pay no attention to. For my dad, I always suggest NASCAR. My dad has read a sports page every day since he was a little kid; he still gets (as do I) a real, honest-to-goodness local newspaper on his front porch every morning. He must have seen the names of NASCAR drivers thousands of times, but odds are he's only stopped to read a story if it had something in the headline that really caught his attention (someone from the Bronx, or Jewish, or both, might do it). If you asked him to name a NASCAR driver he'd probably look at you as if you were nuts...but if you named some of them, he'd probably recognize the names. The idea is that lots and lots of people have about that level of knowledge about most of what happens in politics. It's just background noise. We, the people who write and read political blogs, and watch debates, and pay attention to politics even in the off season --we're the minority." -Jonathan Bernstein, A plain blog about politics.

The analogy of NASCAR drivers is an apt one for me. Even when I got a paper back in the day I always found the sports section extremely boring and rarely read it but because of SportsCenter on ESPN my knowledge level of NASCAR is similar to that of Bernstein's father. I have to say that if the average American's knowledge of politics is indeed comparable to my own ignorance about NASCAR then it's no wonder we wallow in this perpetual cycle of electing corrupt politicians to a bloated inefficient bureaucracy. I mean, George W. Bush actually got reelected after all of the stupid shit he did during his first term in office. If that doesn't indicate that most Americans aren't paying attention to the actions of their elected officials then I don't know what does. It's lines of thought like this that scare me into considering the possibility that Sarah Palin just might be able to win the presidency someday: because lazy, ignorant people vote. Busch/Earnhardt Jr. in 2012!

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The Beauty Of Physics

2010-07-26T05:29:00.000-07:00

Seen through advanced computer rendering:

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Palin's 2012 Presidential Bid In Taiwanese CGI

2010-07-25T06:57:00.000-07:00

Finally, a news organization has captured the essence of Sarah Palin's charisma and the dignity of the American political process:

The good people at NMA News, the Taiwanese news service that made a name for itself with its bizarre computer animated coverage of, among other things, the Al Gore scandal and January’s Late Night Wars, is back with a vengeance, and this time they’ve set their eyes on Sarah Palin’s 2012 prospects.
Well, at least that’s what we assume this video is about from its title, “Is Sarah Palin Gunning for 2012?” In terms of the actual content, it’s mostly Palin pole dancing in a bikini, shooting moose with a machine gun from a helicopter and parachuting herself into a “teabagger rally.” There is also a rendition of “Keeping Up with the Palins” (presumably a Wasilla-based reality TV show) depicting the Palin family smoking illicit substances and yelling at each other, and a dramatization of the suffering of William Shakespeare’s ghost as he watches Palin “refudiate” the Ground Zero mosque.

What, too real?

Something Insightful Someone Else Said

2010-07-24T13:36:00.000-07:00

"There have been three big conservative outrages that have choked the airwaves over the past couple of weeks. #1 was about a bunch of scary black men, the New Black Panther Party. #2 was about a bunch of scary Muslims who want to build a triumphal mosque on the sacred soil of Ground Zero. #3 was about a vindictive black woman who works for the government and screws the white people she deals with. The running theme here is not just a coincidence." -Kevin Drum, Mother Jones.

Serenity Now Trailer

2010-07-24T10:26:00.000-07:00

The comedy was just a cover for the deep-seated pain and anguish lurking just below the surface:

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Capitalism On Crack

2010-07-20T10:45:00.000-07:00

An art project:

Fabian Brunsing’s public art installation “Pay & Sit: The Private Bench” imagines a dystopian tomorrow in which even the most quotidian of conveniences — resting a moment on a park bench — have become soulless objects of enterprise.

Park benches that everyone can sit on for free? That's socialist bullshit, man (at least that's what I've gathered from listening to political discussions lately).

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Killing The "Ground Zero" Mosque

2010-07-20T00:02:00.000-07:00

Unsurprisingly, it seems that my conservative counterpart Donald Douglas of American Power is against the so-called Ground Zero Mosque in New York City. He makes a comparison to the protests over another mosque being built in Temecula, California:

This Temecula case doesn't seem to be anything like the opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque, which is clearly an example of Islamic Jihad's imperial conquest. New York Muslims will literally be praying on a battle zone where bodies are still being recovered.

Now that's clearly an example of hyperbolic paranoia but one of Don's readers and regular commenter Stogie (you might remember him) had a decidedly stronger reaction that I can only describe as wholly un-American:

I've thought about this quite a bit, and I don't think the 1st Amendment should protect Islam. It is not just harmless worship, but a totalitarian ideology that seeks to violently overthrow our Constitution and democracy and replace them with Sharia law. The extensive cultural disruption and non-assimilable nature of Islam in Europe has already been clearly noted. Do we want the same problems over here? I think not.

The Constitution, as someone has said, is not a suicide pact. In the 1950s, when we were being undermined by communists "boring from within," would we have allowed communist training centers throughout America? And if they had called themselves "a religion," would that have made it all okay?

So this guy thinks that the First Amendment, you know, the part of the Constitution that guarantees freedom of both religion and speech, should not apply to whichever religions he personally dislikes and the adherents of those religions should be censored by the government for speech he similarly finds objectionable. Interesting that tea party types who believe that the federal government is actively working to curtail our freedoms under an Obama administration are actually quite comfortable letting that government curtail the freedoms of those Americans they personally disagree with. I seem to remember a similar mindset on the political right in this country when the Bush administration asserted its supposed right to disappear American citizens... I mean "detain evil terrorists" indefinitely in former Soviet black sites to be tortured with neither a trial nor due process. And while Don was quite happy at the time to endorse this government torture of US citizens he is at least showing some modicum of level-headedness as it pertains to our First Amendment:

I'm not personally thrilled about Ground Zero, and I join those in protesting it. Seems a slap in the face to those who died and to the living who are still mourning and recovering the dead. I won't personally go so far as banning Islam in America, however, which is what...Stogie [is] supporting, basically. I'm not sure how we're going to do it, but we've got to find a way to separate jihadi Muslims from those of the faith who reject the Islam's fundamentalist literalism in favor of liberalized version of the religion. (And I'm skeptical that's possible, given my knowledge of Islam as a religion of victory and conquest.)

Although he does unapologetically post this incendiary and misleading anti-Muslim ad that's been making its way around the blogosphere lately:

Little Green Footballs adds some pertinent information that one would assume those supporting this ad are quite and/or willfully ignorant of:

It should be pointed out (again) that the “Ground Zero mosque” these idiots are ranting about is actually a proposed community center with an auditorium, swimming pool, and restaurants, in addition to a mosque. It would be housed in an existing 13-story building that’s two blocks away from Ground Zero and has no view of the area; there are two very big buildings in between the proposed community center and Ground Zero. Here is an embedded Google Map in which you can clearly see that the idea of this being a “Ground Zero mosque” is a ridiculous paranoid fantasy.

Suppose the community center was five blocks away instead of two blocks away.

Would that be OK?

How about if it was in midtown?

Far enough?

Maybe it needs to be in Queens?

If you want a special exception to America’s religious tolerance, where are you going to draw the line?

That last question is the one I would ask of religious and cultural bigots like Stogie, along with a few others: What are these people so scared of that they would undermine our Constitutional protections in so eager and flippant a manner? Why do they imagine American institutions and the American people to be so weak and fragile as to not be able to counter or stand up against any opinions or beliefs that differ from the majority of our citizens? And most importantly, who the fuck are they to decide for the rest of us what the extent of our religious freedoms should be? I obviously don't expect honest answers to these questions but I'd certainly be willing to listen if Stogie wants to refudiate any of these points.

Something Someone Else Said

2010-07-19T00:50:00.000-07:00

"The GOP’s basic problem is that many Republicans equate Christianity, or at least Judeo-Christianity, with Americanism. They do not believe it’s possible to truly uphold American ideals unless you identify with the religious traditions that supposedly underlie those ideals. In a country with a growing Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Mormon and atheist population, that’s a significant source of political bigotry. Is it good that the South Carolina GOP has embraced a South Asian woman? Of course. When that woman can practice whatever religion she wants, without fear that it will wreck her political career, then Republicans will truly deserve to crow." -Peter Beinart, The Daily Beast.

This type of religious intolerance seems to be endemic to the GOP with the Democratic party being more inclusive of various religious beliefs, and certainly not anti-religion as many on the right consistently charge. In fact, that's one thing the two major political parties do seem to agree on: an endorsement of candidates for whom religious belief is a prerequisite. Muslims and Sikhs may find it difficult to win elections in certain parts of this country but atheists are discriminated against almost uniformly on this count. To succeed in American politics it doesn't matter so much which kind of magic you believe in, just so long as you believe in some type of magic. Republicans merely have their favorite.

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