A man shows up in a rural village with an ax over his shoulder and unable to speak. The ax is clean but from the knees down he is covered in blood. His pants are cut off of him and he sits in the town square in his underwear while the local police send an investigator. Now the moral to this story is that in the time the investigator arrives the corruption of the DNA has a better chance of whipping itself out. That in a nutshell is politics in Washington. Every decision made when considering how to cover a story in Washington by a major news outlet is somehow drenched in the same shit that is being brandished by the candidates themselves.
If anyone interested in political change had a clear understanding of the role that syphilis has played in the role of history they would stop the distribution of penicillin in Washington immediately.
Have you ever noticed that the media does not report on the alcoholism and dementia of candidates until they either kill someone or upset the apple cart and send seeds into the skulls of all the wrong people?
A staffer in presidential politics will always have second thoughts but will betray their own agenda, change their own mind about how they feel just to stay with the campaign and find their own resolutions afterward.
In Washington politics in the last century there was common knowledge of the harmful damage tobacco could do but is was overlooked by those deeply invested in the growing of hemp. These are the same people who drank coca cola containing cocaine in cabinet meetings on those long Washington afternoons.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Friday, September 16, 2005
At The Movies With Johnny Robs
Way back about a thousand years ago in terms of news cycles, in other words, on August 1, I wrote a little piece called "Loving the COTUS." The thrust of it was that the much-debated (and only God knows why) "right to privacy," and the dirt-stupid little notion propounded by the hard-core America-hating Republican Party that the Constitution lacks a right of privacy. Like I said all those aeons ago, suggesting there's no right of privacy in the Constitution is like saying there's no right of water in a snowflake.
We had then, and we have now, cause to be concerned about soon-to-be-Chief Justice Johnny Rob's views on the topic. The confirmation hearings have been little or no help. Between pontificating Republicans and terrified Democrats, the most telling thing we know about J.R. is that he likes "Dr. Zhivago," a really long movie based upon the book by Boris Pasternak that eulogizes the end of a brutal royalist regime in Russia. Oddly enough, J.R.'s favorite movie tells us something about him, and about Republicans in general.
Here's a quote from the movie. General Yevgraf Zhivago says "I told myself it was beneath my dignity for arresting a man for pilfering firewood. But nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man, and the party was right: one man desperate for a bit of fuel is pathetic; five million people desperate for a bit of fuel will destroy a city."
Thanks for turning the lights on for us there, J.R. You won't give us a straight answer about whether you think a woman has a right to control over her own innards, but that's OK. You've told us plenty, pal.
Read that quote again. "Nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man." By God, that's not a quote! That's a plank from the Republican Party Platform!
Need to reassure the religious weirdos that you're still on their side? No matter how degrading, hypocritical or embarassing, by all means, all Congress back into session for Terri Schiavo and talk about the "kutcher of liiiiiffffe." Need to placate the chickenhawks? Even though it's terribly stupid and undignified for a nation that boasts of its love for "peace," start a war with a third world country that costs a hundred million bucks a week and two thousand American mothers' sons. Grover Norquist breathing down your neck about tax cuts? What the hell! Put the kneepads on, do for Grover what Monica did for Bill and take the funding from the budget for shoring up the New Orleans levee system.
"Nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man." "Nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man." "Nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man." It's a littany.
So if the party tells Johhny Robs to put those damned uppity feminazis back in the kitchen where they belong, even if it means that thousands of terrified young women will die trying to roto-rooter their uteruses with a welder's braising rod, we know now that he will do it, for "nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man."
And, irony of ironies, when the Republican Party decides to remind Johnny Robs that "nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man," the party commissariat will do so in the privacy that women will no longer have. And they'll be able to do it because for three long, heart-rending days, America watched as Johnny Robs dodged every question put to him by the United States Senate; as Johnny Robs exercised his own right to privacy under lights, in front of cameras and kept private the one thing he knows better than any other: "nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man."
- Bob Kincaid
We had then, and we have now, cause to be concerned about soon-to-be-Chief Justice Johnny Rob's views on the topic. The confirmation hearings have been little or no help. Between pontificating Republicans and terrified Democrats, the most telling thing we know about J.R. is that he likes "Dr. Zhivago," a really long movie based upon the book by Boris Pasternak that eulogizes the end of a brutal royalist regime in Russia. Oddly enough, J.R.'s favorite movie tells us something about him, and about Republicans in general.
Here's a quote from the movie. General Yevgraf Zhivago says "I told myself it was beneath my dignity for arresting a man for pilfering firewood. But nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man, and the party was right: one man desperate for a bit of fuel is pathetic; five million people desperate for a bit of fuel will destroy a city."
Thanks for turning the lights on for us there, J.R. You won't give us a straight answer about whether you think a woman has a right to control over her own innards, but that's OK. You've told us plenty, pal.
Read that quote again. "Nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man." By God, that's not a quote! That's a plank from the Republican Party Platform!
Need to reassure the religious weirdos that you're still on their side? No matter how degrading, hypocritical or embarassing, by all means, all Congress back into session for Terri Schiavo and talk about the "kutcher of liiiiiffffe." Need to placate the chickenhawks? Even though it's terribly stupid and undignified for a nation that boasts of its love for "peace," start a war with a third world country that costs a hundred million bucks a week and two thousand American mothers' sons. Grover Norquist breathing down your neck about tax cuts? What the hell! Put the kneepads on, do for Grover what Monica did for Bill and take the funding from the budget for shoring up the New Orleans levee system.
"Nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man." "Nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man." "Nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man." It's a littany.
So if the party tells Johhny Robs to put those damned uppity feminazis back in the kitchen where they belong, even if it means that thousands of terrified young women will die trying to roto-rooter their uteruses with a welder's braising rod, we know now that he will do it, for "nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man."
And, irony of ironies, when the Republican Party decides to remind Johnny Robs that "nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man," the party commissariat will do so in the privacy that women will no longer have. And they'll be able to do it because for three long, heart-rending days, America watched as Johnny Robs dodged every question put to him by the United States Senate; as Johnny Robs exercised his own right to privacy under lights, in front of cameras and kept private the one thing he knows better than any other: "nothing ordered by the party is beneath the dignity of any man."
- Bob Kincaid
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
We Are Gathered Here Today
Here is the last will and testament of the United States. Democracy has become theology and soon will become obsolete. The disruptions in the system of government will jail those that seek to find their own way in a deepening morass of bureaucracy will be cordoned off and decimated. A generation forced into attrition for the sins of their elders will inherit an environmental disaster that will eventually undo the planet surface.
To the poor, the United States leaves the right to serve and an obligation to die.
To the middle class comes the burden to pay for the burial of the poor, the promise of what the poor leave behind, and the possibility of an early retirement when the air, due to green house gases eventually becomes too thin to breathe.
This is the last will and testament of the United States.
- Chris Mansel
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Why The Dead Cannot Fill Out The Proper Forms
President Bush said today, “Today, America is confronting another disaster that has caused destruction and loss of life. This time the devastation resulted not from the malice of evil men, but from the fury of water and wind.” There wasn’t a way of getting Bush atop the dome in New Orleans to pose for a picture with the head of FEMA Mr. Brown because Mr. Brown only found out recently that there were people in the dome in trouble. Bush did not get handed a bullhorn to stumble over a blood curdling speech about freedom from storms or, perish the thought, the wrath of God and his storms. On the anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001 Bush used the sympathy tactic of a man who truly does not appear at the scene of hundreds or even thousands of lives on his own country’s soil until cameras are in place, looters are subdued from acquiring food for their families, and the so-called promised relief is just a few miles away.
Not since the gall of Joseph McCarthy has a politician sought to further his legacy with a more shameful act as to hug two African American ladies on camera and to straighten up stiff as a board when his personal photographer is about to snap a picture. After the picture Bush would slump back down and continue consoling the two women until the cameraman was ready fro another photo.
Vice President Dick Cheney got the welcome he deserved by a passerby, a man walking to his house to salvage his few belongings with his wife when the man shouted, “Fuck you Mr. Cheney, fuck you, you asshole.” Coal burning spider veined Cheney made a joke of the man’s distraught words and continued on while the press chuckled along. Who needs embedded status when the press can chuckle along on cue?
Not since the lynching of African Americans in the south has government and law enforcement turned their blind eye and cold shoulder to a dying people of an American city on such a scale. The question is not where does the fault lay, but will anything being done about it? Will it just become a hot topic issue for pundits and future campaigns? Will the receding waters cleanse the sins of the wicked?
As mourners, spectators walk slowly in line of the coffin of Justice Rehnquist a decision was being made not to allow footage of the bodies as they are recovered to be used on the news. Just as the coffins of soldiers returning from Iraq may not be filmed, the dead from the storm Katrina will not be allowed to be filmed either. The coffin of Rehnquist was covered in an American flag; the dead from Katrina are in black body bags tossed in a pile like the dead Americans and Vietnamese from the Vietnam War. The graves registration units of the U.S. Army cannot handle the dead; they are being handled by commercial companies; anything for a no bid contract.
- Chris Mansel
Thursday, September 08, 2005
The BLAME GAME
The BLAME GAME comes in a metallic rust free corduroy lined Astroturf bottom box resembling a casket, and to play the BLAME GAME you need twelve or more Democrats who actually witnessed the non-decision of Republican officials and can prove (not to a reasonable doubt since there is no way in the year 2005 you can take a Republican to court) that the non-decision led to the loss of life of over or at least approaching 10,000 or more of the dark skinned non-conservative voting public.
The cover of the BLAME GAME features dark-skinned non-conservative voting looters feeding their children stolen bread and water meant for white-skinned pro-voting conservative voters. The cost of the BLAME GAME is based on the loss of life and the enrichment of the major Insurance companies, and thereby meaning Halliburton.
- Chris Mansel
The cover of the BLAME GAME features dark-skinned non-conservative voting looters feeding their children stolen bread and water meant for white-skinned pro-voting conservative voters. The cost of the BLAME GAME is based on the loss of life and the enrichment of the major Insurance companies, and thereby meaning Halliburton.
- Chris Mansel
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Play Ball Dick
If it is the worst disaster ever on American soil then what you need to do is go to a baseball game and take it easy. Condi went to broadway and played tennis, and Donald Rumsfeld went to San Diego and took in a game. The citizens that were killed in Hurricane katrina didn't get a seventh inning stretch, nor did they get a private escort to the men's room. They died either in the storm or on the street.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Good For Them
This weekend I have tried to busy myself with work as much as I could possibly stand to get away from my feeling for the victims of Katrina and our governments role in it. I tried to forget for just a little while and I worked in the heat outside doing several things that needed doing and last night I was rewarded with a seizure in a restaurant in which a complete stranger helped my wife and daughter hold me up in my chair so that I would not fall to the floor and hurt myself anymore than I already had. That stranger is the heart of the progressive mentality. My wife told me that he asked if he could help and he did and when it was over he went back to his family and continued eating. He didn’t wait to see from any legislative body if it was ok for him to act, he didn’t walk over to my wife and daughter and explain that help was on the way. He saw a way in which to help and he did so. That spirit is alive in the wake of Katrina and it is being prevented in many ways from being carried out. Like it or not we are now in this country what we have feared most of all, we are a third world nation who has put their trust in a gruesome dictator who would use our national resources and laws to build his own wealth and allow his own citizens to die, strangled with red tape, bound by red tape and raped in a temporary government facility.
Twice now the Bush family has made mention of the fact that the citizens of New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama were poor anyway and that the relief recovery is good for them. This was no Freudian slip. Of course it is good for them, the Bush family which extends to the far reaches of Saudi Arabia, the haven for the 9/11 terrorists, the breeding ground for our nation al disaster called the 2000 and 2004 elections. Them, those four little words explain quite a lot.
- Chris Mansel
Monday, September 05, 2005
Wolf In Bigot's Clothing
Read the caption at the top of the screen...the words of Wolf Blitzer. Born in the south it enrages me to hear this kind of garbage coming from a channel you have to pay to view.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Bush's Gettysburg
A stinging piece by our Chief Analyst Bob Kincaid
In June of 1863, during the Confederate invasion of the North, as Lee’s army moved into Pennsylvania, General J.E.B. Stuart took his cavalry on a long gallivant through the countryside, confiscating goods to support the troops. In so doing, he left Lee “blind,” without intelligence as to the movements of the enemy. This blindness led Lee to eventually decide to fight at Gettysburg, where the Union forces had taken the high ground. Lee was infuriated with the disappearance of Stuart, his “eyes.” When Stuart finally returned with some wagons and provisions in tow, Lee is said to have remarked to J.E.B. Stuart “Sir, they are an impediment to me now.”
So, too, in 2005. We are at the sufferance of a leader who has, just like J.E.B. Stuart, left us blind by sending our National Guard off on an aimless, rambling gallivant to Iraq while real problems confront us at home. And Hurricane Katrina is our Gettysburg.
So would it be any surprise if Americans said to Bush what Lee said to Stuart? “Sir, you are an impediment to us now.” Bush took our first line of defense and squandered it in the filthy, stinking, bloody sands of Iraq. And now, in the hour of need, Bush tells us we must stay the course when our children cry from fear and hunger and might be otherwise helped by the National Guard he’s sent a world away. Damn him. Damn him with everything that amounts to damnation. And a little bit more.
Bush will, of course, in his privileged life, in his wealth, never experience the misery of the poor of N’Orleans. And he’d be well advised not to try to convince us that he even remotely understands their suffering. None can but those who suffer with them shoulder to shoulder. I can’t. You can’t. Bush is both intellectually and emotionally unable to. The last pain he felt was when he busted his punkin-head on the coffee table after that heroic battle with the Pretzel o’ Terror. Before that, the worst pain he felt was the crushing agony of the Sunday morning hangover after the Saturday night whiskey binge.
They say Nero fiddled while Rome burned. If Bush had been there, he’d have been selling matches.
- Bob Kincaid
In June of 1863, during the Confederate invasion of the North, as Lee’s army moved into Pennsylvania, General J.E.B. Stuart took his cavalry on a long gallivant through the countryside, confiscating goods to support the troops. In so doing, he left Lee “blind,” without intelligence as to the movements of the enemy. This blindness led Lee to eventually decide to fight at Gettysburg, where the Union forces had taken the high ground. Lee was infuriated with the disappearance of Stuart, his “eyes.” When Stuart finally returned with some wagons and provisions in tow, Lee is said to have remarked to J.E.B. Stuart “Sir, they are an impediment to me now.”
So, too, in 2005. We are at the sufferance of a leader who has, just like J.E.B. Stuart, left us blind by sending our National Guard off on an aimless, rambling gallivant to Iraq while real problems confront us at home. And Hurricane Katrina is our Gettysburg.
So would it be any surprise if Americans said to Bush what Lee said to Stuart? “Sir, you are an impediment to us now.” Bush took our first line of defense and squandered it in the filthy, stinking, bloody sands of Iraq. And now, in the hour of need, Bush tells us we must stay the course when our children cry from fear and hunger and might be otherwise helped by the National Guard he’s sent a world away. Damn him. Damn him with everything that amounts to damnation. And a little bit more.
Bush will, of course, in his privileged life, in his wealth, never experience the misery of the poor of N’Orleans. And he’d be well advised not to try to convince us that he even remotely understands their suffering. None can but those who suffer with them shoulder to shoulder. I can’t. You can’t. Bush is both intellectually and emotionally unable to. The last pain he felt was when he busted his punkin-head on the coffee table after that heroic battle with the Pretzel o’ Terror. Before that, the worst pain he felt was the crushing agony of the Sunday morning hangover after the Saturday night whiskey binge.
They say Nero fiddled while Rome burned. If Bush had been there, he’d have been selling matches.
- Bob Kincaid
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Death By Ignorance
I see in the Kansas City Star http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/12495725.htm that the Kansas Board of Education, ever-vigilant to protect Kansas school-children from any education that can’t be traced directly from the Bible, may decide to require a parental permission form for children to sit through incredibly teen-age-angst-inducing sex education classes. Angst-inducing, indeed, but potentially life-saving, as well.
Well, it’s the beginning of the new school year here in Wild, Wonderful West Virginia, too. Busy, busy, busy! Lots of forms to fill out. “Student Code of Conduct Contract.” “No Child Left Behind Acknowledgment (With Military Recruiting Cluster).” “Food Sensitivity Form.” “Safe Schools Acknowledgment.” “Bus Schedule.” “Two Hour Delay Policy.”
Like I said, it’s a busy time. Children utterly tragedy-stricken because “I’m not in the same class as my best friend.” The already-churning virulent viral soup that seems to forever flow from every school, leaving some children to spend nine months out of every year with a permanent patina of crusted snot beneath their nostrils, like the vapor trails under George W. Bush’s nose after a wild twenty-something night in Old Matamoros.
Anyway, tucked away somewhere toward the bottom of the stack of forms, my wife found this: “Memorandum Regarding HIV/AIDS Education.” That form simply set forth the seemingly reasonable proposition that children attending public schools, from Grade 6 forward, would be taught about the disease known as HIV/AIDS in science and/or health classes. Just as other diseases and natural processes and really neat science stuff might be discussed. Influenza. Food Poisoning. Hurricanes. Plate tectonics. The groundbreaking discoveries of Gregor Mendel, or Linnaeus, or Kepler or Galileo. The mating dance of the common honey bee. What a bean looks like when it sprouts in a clear plastic cup. “What-will-surely-happen-to-you-Johnny-if-you-try-to-pick-up-a- rattlesnake.” Well, maybe not that last one. This is, after all, Appalachia, and there are places here where full-grown adults LIKE for Johnny to pick up that rattlesnake.
I guess it’s those same people whom we might expect to take advantage of something else mentioned in the memorandum, and the thing the Kansas story reminded me of: the fact that, pursuant to about six dozen separately listed West Virginia Code citations, parents can opt their children out of EVER being educated
Like me when I first read it, you decent, normal people, you liberals, you progressives, you Democrats, probably feel like you just ground your molars into a nasty hunk of gristle in the Thursday night pot roast. Sproing! And your lower mandible sets to vibrating and your ears flinch and you just sit there for a minute, waiting for the bone-jarring shock to pass.
But the shock doesn’t really pass, does it? In this case, you finally just find yourself sitting there: mouth hanging open, drool beginning to run and a mad little lunatic giggle rising from your diaphragm. And it turns into a full-blown guffaw as you realize that state legislatures all over the country, scared STIFF of groups that pass themselves off as being about “fambly valyooooz” have actually offered parents the right to sentence our own children to Death By Ignorance.
“Well, Bob, we can certainly teach our children about that AIDS thingy at home . . . or maybe at church. Pastor Whackbottom’s real good at that kinda thing.”
Really, Red State Mommy, can you? Can you REALLY teach little Johnny that, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, he can get a disease and DIE the very first time he has sex? Do you REALLY think, Religious-right Rita, that you can HANDLE a subject like that? Is that why the teen pregnancy rate in the red states is so much lower than in the blue ones? Oh. Wait a minute. It’s not. It’s significantly higher. Just like divorces and child sex crimes.
So, what, Rita, you couldn’t even tell your daughter how not to get all preggy? Or your son how not to get his little girlfriend that way?
“Well, Bob, we told her not to have sex. We told her Jesus wouldn’t LOVE her anymore if she had sex afore she’s a-married. What else didja want us t’do? By the way, ain’t the babies cute?! Me and my hubby, we uz plannin’ to retire in a few years. Reckon we won’t be doin’ that now! We gotta keep workin’ to support our baby . . . an’ HER babies. I think Wal-Mart’s gotta special this week on some o’ that baby formula they make over in China somewhere.”
Y’see how it goes. Hey, I’m progressive, and we’re not afraid to tackle tough topics with our kids. But the AIDS conversation? That’s a rough row to hoe, even for relatively enlightened human beings, let alone people who actually, really, honestly-and-for-truly believe the world got into the mess it’s in because some nekkid woman had a chat with a gossipy water moccasin.
But that “opt-out” exists. And it shows, for about the bajillionth time, that when it comes to family values, when it comes to being “pro-life,” the religious right is about as useful as a kickstand on a submarine. And it shows that our “pro-life” legislators can always, ALWAYS be trusted to do the WRONG THING when it comes to trying to save lives, can always, ALWAYS be trusted to choose jingos over real help, can always, ALWAYS be trusted to act from electoral fear instead of courageous intellect.
Let’s deal with this problem Head-On. This issue isn’t about HIV. It’s about condoms. And it’s about some weirdos who think condoms are worse than DYING FROM SEX.
Now, the other side, those bizarre little people who care more about microscopic wads of tissue than they do about fully formed human beings being blown to pieces in Iraq, or real, live American children who don’t have enough to eat every day, or, when they do eat, eat the from the endless, sugar- slammed, fat-filled slop trough that IS the American Fast-food Drive-through, they think things like opting their children out of HIV Education have something to do with “religious freedom.” But that position is, of course, a rotting corpse hidden in the pages of a Bible, wrapped in a flag and packaged for the sole purpose of garnering Republican votes. Because it’s fairly well established in this country, in our Constitutional Republic based upon Principles of Representative Democracy (that’s for the hardcore right-wingnuts who always love to scream about how “”Murrikkka ain’t no dee- maw-cursy”), an individual DOES NOT have the right to put loads of other people at risk based upon their own blinding, horse-gagging ignorance and obstinacy. Typhoid Mary, anyone? Ask yourself: would you find it a little extreme if, say, people who believed it was religiously forbidden to eat, say, raw vegetables, demanded that their children be exempted from learning about e-coli and how washing fresh vegetables will keep people from getting sick and maybe even dying? Of course you would! Because even if a few science-hating zealots didn’t like it, they could always remind their children at home or in church not to eat those forbidden fresh vegetables. Instead, we progressives cower in fear of the zealots, and our legislators enact policies that say “Abstinence from fresh vegetable consumption is the ONLY way to prevent e coli.” But there is a far greater good in helping protect the majority of our children from e coli poisoning than in allowing ignorance to foster sickness and death.
Every time these extremists from the Religion Industry sign this exemption form they do just that: foster sickness and death. They put my kids, your kids, all kids at hazard of a hideous, heart-rending death, a death that may not necessarily be absolutely preventable by so-called “abstninence,” but whose spread CAN be checked with something as simple as a condom.
Teaching little Red State Johnny and Janie about HIV and condoms isn’t going to kill them. Not telling about them can. And it can kill the normal peoples’ kids, too. And, being normal, YOU have the personal freedom to be infuriated by that.
- Bob Kincaid
Well, it’s the beginning of the new school year here in Wild, Wonderful West Virginia, too. Busy, busy, busy! Lots of forms to fill out. “Student Code of Conduct Contract.” “No Child Left Behind Acknowledgment (With Military Recruiting Cluster).” “Food Sensitivity Form.” “Safe Schools Acknowledgment.” “Bus Schedule.” “Two Hour Delay Policy.”
Like I said, it’s a busy time. Children utterly tragedy-stricken because “I’m not in the same class as my best friend.” The already-churning virulent viral soup that seems to forever flow from every school, leaving some children to spend nine months out of every year with a permanent patina of crusted snot beneath their nostrils, like the vapor trails under George W. Bush’s nose after a wild twenty-something night in Old Matamoros.
Anyway, tucked away somewhere toward the bottom of the stack of forms, my wife found this: “Memorandum Regarding HIV/AIDS Education.” That form simply set forth the seemingly reasonable proposition that children attending public schools, from Grade 6 forward, would be taught about the disease known as HIV/AIDS in science and/or health classes. Just as other diseases and natural processes and really neat science stuff might be discussed. Influenza. Food Poisoning. Hurricanes. Plate tectonics. The groundbreaking discoveries of Gregor Mendel, or Linnaeus, or Kepler or Galileo. The mating dance of the common honey bee. What a bean looks like when it sprouts in a clear plastic cup. “What-will-surely-happen-to-you-Johnny-if-you-try-to-pick-up-a- rattlesnake.” Well, maybe not that last one. This is, after all, Appalachia, and there are places here where full-grown adults LIKE for Johnny to pick up that rattlesnake.
I guess it’s those same people whom we might expect to take advantage of something else mentioned in the memorandum, and the thing the Kansas story reminded me of: the fact that, pursuant to about six dozen separately listed West Virginia Code citations, parents can opt their children out of EVER being educated
Like me when I first read it, you decent, normal people, you liberals, you progressives, you Democrats, probably feel like you just ground your molars into a nasty hunk of gristle in the Thursday night pot roast. Sproing! And your lower mandible sets to vibrating and your ears flinch and you just sit there for a minute, waiting for the bone-jarring shock to pass.
But the shock doesn’t really pass, does it? In this case, you finally just find yourself sitting there: mouth hanging open, drool beginning to run and a mad little lunatic giggle rising from your diaphragm. And it turns into a full-blown guffaw as you realize that state legislatures all over the country, scared STIFF of groups that pass themselves off as being about “fambly valyooooz” have actually offered parents the right to sentence our own children to Death By Ignorance.
“Well, Bob, we can certainly teach our children about that AIDS thingy at home . . . or maybe at church. Pastor Whackbottom’s real good at that kinda thing.”
Really, Red State Mommy, can you? Can you REALLY teach little Johnny that, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, he can get a disease and DIE the very first time he has sex? Do you REALLY think, Religious-right Rita, that you can HANDLE a subject like that? Is that why the teen pregnancy rate in the red states is so much lower than in the blue ones? Oh. Wait a minute. It’s not. It’s significantly higher. Just like divorces and child sex crimes.
So, what, Rita, you couldn’t even tell your daughter how not to get all preggy? Or your son how not to get his little girlfriend that way?
“Well, Bob, we told her not to have sex. We told her Jesus wouldn’t LOVE her anymore if she had sex afore she’s a-married. What else didja want us t’do? By the way, ain’t the babies cute?! Me and my hubby, we uz plannin’ to retire in a few years. Reckon we won’t be doin’ that now! We gotta keep workin’ to support our baby . . . an’ HER babies. I think Wal-Mart’s gotta special this week on some o’ that baby formula they make over in China somewhere.”
Y’see how it goes. Hey, I’m progressive, and we’re not afraid to tackle tough topics with our kids. But the AIDS conversation? That’s a rough row to hoe, even for relatively enlightened human beings, let alone people who actually, really, honestly-and-for-truly believe the world got into the mess it’s in because some nekkid woman had a chat with a gossipy water moccasin.
But that “opt-out” exists. And it shows, for about the bajillionth time, that when it comes to family values, when it comes to being “pro-life,” the religious right is about as useful as a kickstand on a submarine. And it shows that our “pro-life” legislators can always, ALWAYS be trusted to do the WRONG THING when it comes to trying to save lives, can always, ALWAYS be trusted to choose jingos over real help, can always, ALWAYS be trusted to act from electoral fear instead of courageous intellect.
Let’s deal with this problem Head-On. This issue isn’t about HIV. It’s about condoms. And it’s about some weirdos who think condoms are worse than DYING FROM SEX.
Now, the other side, those bizarre little people who care more about microscopic wads of tissue than they do about fully formed human beings being blown to pieces in Iraq, or real, live American children who don’t have enough to eat every day, or, when they do eat, eat the from the endless, sugar- slammed, fat-filled slop trough that IS the American Fast-food Drive-through, they think things like opting their children out of HIV Education have something to do with “religious freedom.” But that position is, of course, a rotting corpse hidden in the pages of a Bible, wrapped in a flag and packaged for the sole purpose of garnering Republican votes. Because it’s fairly well established in this country, in our Constitutional Republic based upon Principles of Representative Democracy (that’s for the hardcore right-wingnuts who always love to scream about how “”Murrikkka ain’t no dee- maw-cursy”), an individual DOES NOT have the right to put loads of other people at risk based upon their own blinding, horse-gagging ignorance and obstinacy. Typhoid Mary, anyone? Ask yourself: would you find it a little extreme if, say, people who believed it was religiously forbidden to eat, say, raw vegetables, demanded that their children be exempted from learning about e-coli and how washing fresh vegetables will keep people from getting sick and maybe even dying? Of course you would! Because even if a few science-hating zealots didn’t like it, they could always remind their children at home or in church not to eat those forbidden fresh vegetables. Instead, we progressives cower in fear of the zealots, and our legislators enact policies that say “Abstinence from fresh vegetable consumption is the ONLY way to prevent e coli.” But there is a far greater good in helping protect the majority of our children from e coli poisoning than in allowing ignorance to foster sickness and death.
Every time these extremists from the Religion Industry sign this exemption form they do just that: foster sickness and death. They put my kids, your kids, all kids at hazard of a hideous, heart-rending death, a death that may not necessarily be absolutely preventable by so-called “abstninence,” but whose spread CAN be checked with something as simple as a condom.
Teaching little Red State Johnny and Janie about HIV and condoms isn’t going to kill them. Not telling about them can. And it can kill the normal peoples’ kids, too. And, being normal, YOU have the personal freedom to be infuriated by that.
- Bob Kincaid
Monday, August 29, 2005
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Periods of National Disgrace
Remember when words like torture and car bombings would disturb you? Remember when you couldn’t hear words like atrocity without feeling sick? When the world can come together over a disaster just to sell collector’s items and create memorabilia for it, when letters are sent immediately to acquire a copyright on a personal photograph of people jumping to their deaths we have something to worry about. Remember when you used to worry? It’s not that we are numb; I really don’t think that is it exactly. I think the word numb like many other words are thrown around too easily. After all, can you really recall off the top of your head what qualifies as an atrocity, or genocide? I don’t pretend to have the answers, all I know is that it doesn’t seem that enough people take the horrible events in this world seriously enough. How easy is it to read a headline about a child strangled in a public restroom and then walk into one the next time you walk into a mall?
- Chris Mansel
- Chris Mansel
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
‘W’ and the ‘W’ Word
A piece by Matt Osborne whose piece Some Good Intelligence was well received by our readers.
After months of linguistic contortions by his subordinates, our president recently decided to put the ‘W’ back in ‘war.’ “Make no mistake,” he said, glowering and pointing his finger. “WE ARE AT WAR!” (Emphasis his.)
Funny, but I couldn’t tell there was a war on. You have to admit, it’s a bit confusing when your commander-in-chief gives press conferences in a golf shirt…from his Texas ranch…during his five-week vacation.
The ‘news’ is no help. The ‘war’ seems to occupy little time in the news anymore. I have no way to be sure, but I sense that Fox News has spent more time on Michael Jackson this summer than the rest of the world put together.
It’s also hard to take ‘war’ seriously when we have not been asked to contribute a blessed thing to any ‘war effort.’ No scrap-metal drives, no victory gardens, no war bonds – and definitely, no taxes.
In fact, I recently heard Brian Riedl, representing the influential, conservative Heritage Foundation, claim – I am not making this up – that tax cuts enacted in the last five years “make sense in peacetime.”
We have given George Bush wartime powers, but we are paying peacetime taxes.
To be fair, this is not the first time that Bush’s team has had trouble figuring out what to call our current state of affairs. On August 6 of last year, Bush declared that “we actually misnamed the war on terror. It ought to be ‘The Struggle Against Ideological Extremists Who Do Not Believe in Free Societies Who Happen To Use Terror as a Weapon To Try To Shake the Conscience of the Free World.”
What an acronym: ‘T.S.A.I.E.W.D.N.B.I.F.S.W.H.T.U.T.A.W.T.T.T.S.C.F.W.’ I have tried to pronounce this clever invention, but it sounds too much like the common noun for male cow manure.
Normally, such a gaffe would have been repeated eight million times on every news channel, but the sound bite was longer than eight seconds. Our attention spans couldn’t handle it, so Bush got a free pass from the “liberal” media. Newspapers didn’t pick up the story, either, since news editors would have torn up their AP manuals in despair over the headline.
The only people being asked to sacrifice anything are the soldiers. They are too few, have been ordered to do an impossibly big job, and to do it without any of the right equipment. They don’t even have enough armor. Armor would cost money, after all, and where would that come from? Budgets are tight these days.
Congress has decided to spend only $200 billion on shiny new Joint Strike Fighters for the Air Force. True, America would only have to give up twenty-seven of these – less than two squadrons – to replace all 19,000 soft-skinned humvees in Iraq with armored ones. But that would leave the US Air Force with only 2,373 Joint Strike Fighters to defend America. We can’t ask the impossible of our fighter jocks, can we?
Bush just signed the largest transportation bill in history, replete with pork projects for every Republican district. Don Young, Alaska’s sole representative in the House, is bringing home $1,000,000 to build a bridge to an island with fifty inhabitants. Yes, armored humvees would be too expensive in peacetime.
But we’re still at war. Right?
Actually, Bush has been pretty confused about this war-peace thing, too. On June 18, 2002, he said: “I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace.”
Yes, dear reader, this is the source of our confusion: ‘war’ is actually ‘peace.’ In fact, I believe that about sums up the situation. Perhaps this should be the new slogan, replacing ‘Global War on Terror’: WAR IS PEACE. Perhaps we should all learn to say it out loud, right now.
And while we repeat it, there is one small contribution we can make for the ‘war:’ we can surrender our freedom to the Patriot Act. See? Now we’re sacrificing. Don’t worry: you won’t miss freedom. In fact, it was really a form of slavery all along. Repeat after me: FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
And though it may seem a digression, let’s go ahead and honor Our Divinely-Inspired Leader’s wishes by removing evolution from biology textbooks. Along with the Orwellian-titled ‘No Child Left Behind’ law, this will be GOOD for America! Repeat after me: IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
Repeat all of them together:
WAR IS PEACE.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
Don’t stop! Big Brother – er, Our Compassionate Commander – exhorts you not to stop. After all, The Esteemed Conservative told us in his inaugural address that the War on Terror “will be the concentrated work of generations.”
That’s generations, folks. As in, you’re not getting your freedom back. Or your children. Sorry, but that’s the way it is, from now on.
You there! Start chanting!
- Matt Osborne
After months of linguistic contortions by his subordinates, our president recently decided to put the ‘W’ back in ‘war.’ “Make no mistake,” he said, glowering and pointing his finger. “WE ARE AT WAR!” (Emphasis his.)
Funny, but I couldn’t tell there was a war on. You have to admit, it’s a bit confusing when your commander-in-chief gives press conferences in a golf shirt…from his Texas ranch…during his five-week vacation.
The ‘news’ is no help. The ‘war’ seems to occupy little time in the news anymore. I have no way to be sure, but I sense that Fox News has spent more time on Michael Jackson this summer than the rest of the world put together.
It’s also hard to take ‘war’ seriously when we have not been asked to contribute a blessed thing to any ‘war effort.’ No scrap-metal drives, no victory gardens, no war bonds – and definitely, no taxes.
In fact, I recently heard Brian Riedl, representing the influential, conservative Heritage Foundation, claim – I am not making this up – that tax cuts enacted in the last five years “make sense in peacetime.”
We have given George Bush wartime powers, but we are paying peacetime taxes.
To be fair, this is not the first time that Bush’s team has had trouble figuring out what to call our current state of affairs. On August 6 of last year, Bush declared that “we actually misnamed the war on terror. It ought to be ‘The Struggle Against Ideological Extremists Who Do Not Believe in Free Societies Who Happen To Use Terror as a Weapon To Try To Shake the Conscience of the Free World.”
What an acronym: ‘T.S.A.I.E.W.D.N.B.I.F.S.W.H.T.U.T.A.W.T.T.T.S.C.F.W.’ I have tried to pronounce this clever invention, but it sounds too much like the common noun for male cow manure.
Normally, such a gaffe would have been repeated eight million times on every news channel, but the sound bite was longer than eight seconds. Our attention spans couldn’t handle it, so Bush got a free pass from the “liberal” media. Newspapers didn’t pick up the story, either, since news editors would have torn up their AP manuals in despair over the headline.
The only people being asked to sacrifice anything are the soldiers. They are too few, have been ordered to do an impossibly big job, and to do it without any of the right equipment. They don’t even have enough armor. Armor would cost money, after all, and where would that come from? Budgets are tight these days.
Congress has decided to spend only $200 billion on shiny new Joint Strike Fighters for the Air Force. True, America would only have to give up twenty-seven of these – less than two squadrons – to replace all 19,000 soft-skinned humvees in Iraq with armored ones. But that would leave the US Air Force with only 2,373 Joint Strike Fighters to defend America. We can’t ask the impossible of our fighter jocks, can we?
Bush just signed the largest transportation bill in history, replete with pork projects for every Republican district. Don Young, Alaska’s sole representative in the House, is bringing home $1,000,000 to build a bridge to an island with fifty inhabitants. Yes, armored humvees would be too expensive in peacetime.
But we’re still at war. Right?
Actually, Bush has been pretty confused about this war-peace thing, too. On June 18, 2002, he said: “I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace.”
Yes, dear reader, this is the source of our confusion: ‘war’ is actually ‘peace.’ In fact, I believe that about sums up the situation. Perhaps this should be the new slogan, replacing ‘Global War on Terror’: WAR IS PEACE. Perhaps we should all learn to say it out loud, right now.
And while we repeat it, there is one small contribution we can make for the ‘war:’ we can surrender our freedom to the Patriot Act. See? Now we’re sacrificing. Don’t worry: you won’t miss freedom. In fact, it was really a form of slavery all along. Repeat after me: FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
And though it may seem a digression, let’s go ahead and honor Our Divinely-Inspired Leader’s wishes by removing evolution from biology textbooks. Along with the Orwellian-titled ‘No Child Left Behind’ law, this will be GOOD for America! Repeat after me: IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
Repeat all of them together:
WAR IS PEACE.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
Don’t stop! Big Brother – er, Our Compassionate Commander – exhorts you not to stop. After all, The Esteemed Conservative told us in his inaugural address that the War on Terror “will be the concentrated work of generations.”
That’s generations, folks. As in, you’re not getting your freedom back. Or your children. Sorry, but that’s the way it is, from now on.
You there! Start chanting!
- Matt Osborne
The Putrefaction of the Meat on The Bone
“There is a stir of dust from old leaves
Will you trade roses for acorns…”
- Ezra Pound, from Canto 79
The air is thick these days with the regurgitation of lies to the point of a strange dissonance over the country. So much vile trading back and forth you can almost hear the cries and screams of a prison tier echoing from the quiet neighborhoods of suburbia. The tense moments of a car backfiring at a public event will send the hairs on the back of your neck straight up. You turn on the television or radio and you are bombarded with the language of dead citizens back to the Plymouth landing twirling in their graves for stillness. Bile reeks in the ear at a decibel previously unknown to man. Television used to be a respite from the haggard existence of daily life but now you are bombarded not only commercially but also morally and philosophically.
The election of 2000 and the shrieking and fraudulent success of the Right Wing changed this country more than any election in its relatively short history. Not only do the inmates have the keys to the weapons bin they also have the archaic task of carrying out a doctrine of raising the maggots to the living corpse, sometimes at birth. What little freedom this country has anymore will fall, collapse, and crumble at the very hands of the American public. Many of the voters that elected this wall of fascism around them will now criticize the war in Iraq but will unwaveringly support the domestic policy. How do you know you’re insane America? When you cannot see the trees for the forest? No, you are insane when you grovel at the feet of your own demise.
- Chris Mansel
Will you trade roses for acorns…”
- Ezra Pound, from Canto 79
The air is thick these days with the regurgitation of lies to the point of a strange dissonance over the country. So much vile trading back and forth you can almost hear the cries and screams of a prison tier echoing from the quiet neighborhoods of suburbia. The tense moments of a car backfiring at a public event will send the hairs on the back of your neck straight up. You turn on the television or radio and you are bombarded with the language of dead citizens back to the Plymouth landing twirling in their graves for stillness. Bile reeks in the ear at a decibel previously unknown to man. Television used to be a respite from the haggard existence of daily life but now you are bombarded not only commercially but also morally and philosophically.
The election of 2000 and the shrieking and fraudulent success of the Right Wing changed this country more than any election in its relatively short history. Not only do the inmates have the keys to the weapons bin they also have the archaic task of carrying out a doctrine of raising the maggots to the living corpse, sometimes at birth. What little freedom this country has anymore will fall, collapse, and crumble at the very hands of the American public. Many of the voters that elected this wall of fascism around them will now criticize the war in Iraq but will unwaveringly support the domestic policy. How do you know you’re insane America? When you cannot see the trees for the forest? No, you are insane when you grovel at the feet of your own demise.
- Chris Mansel
Monday, August 22, 2005
Attack of the Luddites
A piece by our Chief Analyst Bob Kincaid
Last night, at the end of a very busy day of work on the Head-On Radio Network studios, my wife and I sat down for a few minutes of relaxation and television. At hand was the History Channel’s piece on ancient Roman medicine. It was a fascinating depiction of the work of Galen of Pergamum, including many of his theories for the treatment of sports injuries, not the least of which was his invention of traction in the treatment of broken bones and connective tissue strains.
Also featured on the program was an analysis of an ancient Roman surgical kit found in a burial in Colchester, England. Those instruments, laid side-by-side with modern ones were practically indistinguishable. Scalpels, retractors, hooks, forceps: they were all there.
At some point in the narrative, the voice-over remarked “But all this was lost to the world. Modern science did not discover them so much as they RE-discovered them.”
My pink little ears perked up at that frank admission and I said to my lovely wife “But what they fail to mention is WHY the technology was lost.” As is so often the case, there is as much knowledge in what is un-said as in what is said. It’s like what a music teacher told me many years ago: that there is as much music in the silences between the notes as in the notes themselves.
You know already why the technology was lost. You know already why Europe had to wallow in pain and ignorance and misery for fifteen hundred years.
What brought about the internal decay of the Roman Empire? What dashed all its learning, its scientific advances into the forgotten dust of the ages?
Here’s a hint: what destroyed the immense scientific learning of the peoples of Meso-America and South America? What destroyed those cultures so thoroughly that their science is lost until it is again re-discovered by some happily curious accident?
Christianity.
Christianity turned its back on the scientific advances of the Roman world. Christianity declared as heresy the ceaseless search for the advancement of knowledge. Christianity killed those who would have followed in the footsteps of Galen, or Archimedes. Christianity chose to replace knowledge gained by painstaking observation with superstition ginned up by pseudo-intellectuals debating the number of angels doing the Medieval Boogaloo on the head of a pin. Christianity replaced Galen’s early theories of antiseptics with the belief that bathing was witchcraft. Christianity and its popes and priests, its abbots, its nuns, cardinals and monsignors stood on the necks of those who dared revive the thought of the ancients. Galileo, after all, was sentenced to death by the Church for noting, as had the ancients, that the earth was not at the center of the universe; that, in fact, the earth revolves around the sun and not vice-versa. It is of no consequence that the death sentence was lifted, for the intellectual death sentence was carried out. Galileo’s sentence was commuted to life under house arrest on the condition that he never again argue that the earth was round, or not at the center of God’s creation, or, most importantly, not God’s creation at all.
So we have the Church to thank for fifteen hundred years of abject misery and toxic ignorance. I mention only in passing that the only reason ANY of the learning of the ancients survived was because the Muslims managed to keep some of that learning out of the pyromanic hands of the Church. But never mind. Muslims are backward, car-bombing bigamists, right?
So, apart from the fact that it provided good conversation between a married couple at the end of the day, what value did this line of discussion have?
You know there is one. You probably see it coming like a coked-up Casey Jones pushing the Orange Blossom Special till its rivets pop. And it’s here. And it’s now.
What ultimately occurred to me is that the “re-discovery” of those medical instruments and techniques was only possible with the rise of reason and common sense inquiry and the rejection of religious superstition. There’s a reason the Renaissance was called that. It was truly a re-birth of Western European humanity’s willingness to put reason ahead of religious superstition. And religion fought that intelligent choice tooth-and-toenail, and is fighting still today. And it fights for its very life; for in the realization that, for instance, diseases are caused by bacteria and viruses and not ill humors and demons, lies the ability of mankind to shuck the chains of ignorance and hate and superstition.
Y’see, the same people who destroyed science fifteen hundred years or so ago are at it again. You can read about them here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/national/21evolve.html?incamp=article_popular
That New York Times article details the efforts of something called “The Discovery Institute,” ground zero for the modern assault on science, learning and knowledge. It also unveils the rather shocking list of some of the organizations who make the institute’s very existence possible.
This time, however, instead of using the ham-fisted tactic of screaming “heresy,” the anti-human, anti- science crowd at the Discovery Institute has gotten a little more sophisticated. Now they call their hatred for scientific learning “intelligent design,” and attempt to pass it off as a legitimate scientific inquiry. Of course, “intelligent design,” by its very self-definition cannot be legitimate. It predicates itself on the existence of something that is neither qualifiable nor quantifiable, to-wit: a designer. “Intelligent Design” is a failure in its inception, but that doesn’t stop its proponents from shoving it at our wonderful, curious school children as some sort of received wisdom. It reminds me of the opening moments of “Mean Girls,” where a group of little boys is sitting in flannel shirts and overalls, one of whom proclaims “On the sixth day, Gawd created the Remington bolt-action rifle, so Adam could hunt the dinosaurs . . . and kill the homosexuals.”
You see, by teaching “intelligent design” to our children, we foster the hateful bigotry that says plagues kill millions of people, or other people kill millions of people because it’s “part of the design.” Why try to cure diseases? After all, it’s “part of the design!” Why bother shipping food to far-flung parts of the world? Famine, too, must surely be “part of the design.” Why treat people suffering from malaria? After all, mosquitoes are “part of the design!” Why bother with food safety laws? E coli 1-5-7-H-7 is “part of the design!” By teaching “intelligent design,” to our children, we tell them it’s OK to sit idly by, impotent spectators to a game whose goals are suffering and misery and grotesque, tortured death. “Intelligent design” is a syphilitic whore in a Chanel suit. “Intelligent design” says there’s no sense in trying to make things better. It’s “predestination” and “determinism” all prettied-up for an age that has already rejected them. It’s lipstick on a pig. (My apologies to the pig.)
“Intelligent Design,” with its fake scholarship, fake science and very real bigotry against learning is nothing short of the greatest threat facing the advancement of human understanding. Superstition is not science. Faith is not freedom of inquiry.
Of all the information present in the article cited above, nothing is quite as frightening as the monetary support offered to these sea-monkey scientists by outfits like the Verizon Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. To the tune of MILLIONS, these two institutions have made it more possible for these Luddites to nurture and grow their anti-science bigotry all over our country. Imagine that! Verizon, a company whose very corporate existence is predicated on the reality of the laws of science; whose ability to do what it does depends on the immutable laws of physics; whose ability to MAKE MONEY depends on light particles behaving in particular, scientifically defined ways, unimpeded by angels doing a buck-and-wing on the head of an optic fiber, are FUNDING THE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO DESTROY THEM! Bill and Melinda Gates, whose Microsoft Corporation created the wealth that enabled their foundation, are funding the people who think little demons are sitting in computers plinking away at an abacus; are funding people who think flash- frozen embryos are more important than it is for Stephen Hawking to go on thinking.
These are the threats to our civilization! Not liberals. Not progressives. Not scientists. Not even Muslim extremists with explosive Yugos or 747s. In the halls of the Discovery Institute lie the germinating seeds of the New Dark Ages. And their fruits are ignorance, superstition, pain and misery. And their blossoms perfume the air with the miasma of death.
Last night, at the end of a very busy day of work on the Head-On Radio Network studios, my wife and I sat down for a few minutes of relaxation and television. At hand was the History Channel’s piece on ancient Roman medicine. It was a fascinating depiction of the work of Galen of Pergamum, including many of his theories for the treatment of sports injuries, not the least of which was his invention of traction in the treatment of broken bones and connective tissue strains.
Also featured on the program was an analysis of an ancient Roman surgical kit found in a burial in Colchester, England. Those instruments, laid side-by-side with modern ones were practically indistinguishable. Scalpels, retractors, hooks, forceps: they were all there.
At some point in the narrative, the voice-over remarked “But all this was lost to the world. Modern science did not discover them so much as they RE-discovered them.”
My pink little ears perked up at that frank admission and I said to my lovely wife “But what they fail to mention is WHY the technology was lost.” As is so often the case, there is as much knowledge in what is un-said as in what is said. It’s like what a music teacher told me many years ago: that there is as much music in the silences between the notes as in the notes themselves.
You know already why the technology was lost. You know already why Europe had to wallow in pain and ignorance and misery for fifteen hundred years.
What brought about the internal decay of the Roman Empire? What dashed all its learning, its scientific advances into the forgotten dust of the ages?
Here’s a hint: what destroyed the immense scientific learning of the peoples of Meso-America and South America? What destroyed those cultures so thoroughly that their science is lost until it is again re-discovered by some happily curious accident?
Christianity.
Christianity turned its back on the scientific advances of the Roman world. Christianity declared as heresy the ceaseless search for the advancement of knowledge. Christianity killed those who would have followed in the footsteps of Galen, or Archimedes. Christianity chose to replace knowledge gained by painstaking observation with superstition ginned up by pseudo-intellectuals debating the number of angels doing the Medieval Boogaloo on the head of a pin. Christianity replaced Galen’s early theories of antiseptics with the belief that bathing was witchcraft. Christianity and its popes and priests, its abbots, its nuns, cardinals and monsignors stood on the necks of those who dared revive the thought of the ancients. Galileo, after all, was sentenced to death by the Church for noting, as had the ancients, that the earth was not at the center of the universe; that, in fact, the earth revolves around the sun and not vice-versa. It is of no consequence that the death sentence was lifted, for the intellectual death sentence was carried out. Galileo’s sentence was commuted to life under house arrest on the condition that he never again argue that the earth was round, or not at the center of God’s creation, or, most importantly, not God’s creation at all.
So we have the Church to thank for fifteen hundred years of abject misery and toxic ignorance. I mention only in passing that the only reason ANY of the learning of the ancients survived was because the Muslims managed to keep some of that learning out of the pyromanic hands of the Church. But never mind. Muslims are backward, car-bombing bigamists, right?
So, apart from the fact that it provided good conversation between a married couple at the end of the day, what value did this line of discussion have?
You know there is one. You probably see it coming like a coked-up Casey Jones pushing the Orange Blossom Special till its rivets pop. And it’s here. And it’s now.
What ultimately occurred to me is that the “re-discovery” of those medical instruments and techniques was only possible with the rise of reason and common sense inquiry and the rejection of religious superstition. There’s a reason the Renaissance was called that. It was truly a re-birth of Western European humanity’s willingness to put reason ahead of religious superstition. And religion fought that intelligent choice tooth-and-toenail, and is fighting still today. And it fights for its very life; for in the realization that, for instance, diseases are caused by bacteria and viruses and not ill humors and demons, lies the ability of mankind to shuck the chains of ignorance and hate and superstition.
Y’see, the same people who destroyed science fifteen hundred years or so ago are at it again. You can read about them here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/national/21evolve.html?incamp=article_popular
That New York Times article details the efforts of something called “The Discovery Institute,” ground zero for the modern assault on science, learning and knowledge. It also unveils the rather shocking list of some of the organizations who make the institute’s very existence possible.
This time, however, instead of using the ham-fisted tactic of screaming “heresy,” the anti-human, anti- science crowd at the Discovery Institute has gotten a little more sophisticated. Now they call their hatred for scientific learning “intelligent design,” and attempt to pass it off as a legitimate scientific inquiry. Of course, “intelligent design,” by its very self-definition cannot be legitimate. It predicates itself on the existence of something that is neither qualifiable nor quantifiable, to-wit: a designer. “Intelligent Design” is a failure in its inception, but that doesn’t stop its proponents from shoving it at our wonderful, curious school children as some sort of received wisdom. It reminds me of the opening moments of “Mean Girls,” where a group of little boys is sitting in flannel shirts and overalls, one of whom proclaims “On the sixth day, Gawd created the Remington bolt-action rifle, so Adam could hunt the dinosaurs . . . and kill the homosexuals.”
You see, by teaching “intelligent design” to our children, we foster the hateful bigotry that says plagues kill millions of people, or other people kill millions of people because it’s “part of the design.” Why try to cure diseases? After all, it’s “part of the design!” Why bother shipping food to far-flung parts of the world? Famine, too, must surely be “part of the design.” Why treat people suffering from malaria? After all, mosquitoes are “part of the design!” Why bother with food safety laws? E coli 1-5-7-H-7 is “part of the design!” By teaching “intelligent design,” to our children, we tell them it’s OK to sit idly by, impotent spectators to a game whose goals are suffering and misery and grotesque, tortured death. “Intelligent design” is a syphilitic whore in a Chanel suit. “Intelligent design” says there’s no sense in trying to make things better. It’s “predestination” and “determinism” all prettied-up for an age that has already rejected them. It’s lipstick on a pig. (My apologies to the pig.)
“Intelligent Design,” with its fake scholarship, fake science and very real bigotry against learning is nothing short of the greatest threat facing the advancement of human understanding. Superstition is not science. Faith is not freedom of inquiry.
Of all the information present in the article cited above, nothing is quite as frightening as the monetary support offered to these sea-monkey scientists by outfits like the Verizon Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. To the tune of MILLIONS, these two institutions have made it more possible for these Luddites to nurture and grow their anti-science bigotry all over our country. Imagine that! Verizon, a company whose very corporate existence is predicated on the reality of the laws of science; whose ability to do what it does depends on the immutable laws of physics; whose ability to MAKE MONEY depends on light particles behaving in particular, scientifically defined ways, unimpeded by angels doing a buck-and-wing on the head of an optic fiber, are FUNDING THE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO DESTROY THEM! Bill and Melinda Gates, whose Microsoft Corporation created the wealth that enabled their foundation, are funding the people who think little demons are sitting in computers plinking away at an abacus; are funding people who think flash- frozen embryos are more important than it is for Stephen Hawking to go on thinking.
These are the threats to our civilization! Not liberals. Not progressives. Not scientists. Not even Muslim extremists with explosive Yugos or 747s. In the halls of the Discovery Institute lie the germinating seeds of the New Dark Ages. And their fruits are ignorance, superstition, pain and misery. And their blossoms perfume the air with the miasma of death.
Friday, August 19, 2005
Govt Loses 500,000 Oil Barrels Daily - Akpana
Site of Reference: http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200508180137.html
Daily Champion (Lagos) NEWS
August 18, 2005
Posted to the web
By Tony Ita Etim
Port Harcourt
MORE than 500,000 barrels of crude oil are lost daily to community-related problems in the Niger Delta.
Chairman of House of Representatives sub-committee on Petroleum and Community Affairs, Hon. Daemi Akpana disclosed this during a courtesy call on Governor Peter Odili of Rivers State in Port Harcourt.
The loss Akpana said was a serious problem without immediate solution in sight.
He lamented that the National Assembly was worried about the situation, hence a mandate to the sub-committee to tour states where such community-related disturbances occur frequently.
Akpanan observed that community-related programmes going on now in the area are meeting with little success, adding that the sub-committee is determined to resolve the problems for good of the people and the country.
The committee, Akpana added, had visited Bayelsa, Delta and Akwa Ibom States pointing out that the committee had as its responsibilities, to interact with people of the region and find out the problems they were having with oil companies.
Responding, Governor Odili said the loss of such volume of oil on a daily basis, was a great leak on national economic.
According to him, oil accounts for about 85 per cent of Nigeria's national income and about 90 per cent of the country's foreign exchange earnings, hence it will be madness to allow such loss unattended to.
Some oil producing communities, Odili noted, cannot produce 500,000 barrels per day, yet they are referred to as oil producing, and appealed to the subcommittee to ensure that sacred facts about the situation are utilized in the decision making process.
Odili decried the total dependence on oil and gas, and advocated need to explore other areas to enable the nation's economy boom.
He commended the House for taking the steps and assured of the cooperation of Rivers people in the process.
Daily Champion (Lagos) NEWS
August 18, 2005
Posted to the web
By Tony Ita Etim
Port Harcourt
MORE than 500,000 barrels of crude oil are lost daily to community-related problems in the Niger Delta.
Chairman of House of Representatives sub-committee on Petroleum and Community Affairs, Hon. Daemi Akpana disclosed this during a courtesy call on Governor Peter Odili of Rivers State in Port Harcourt.
The loss Akpana said was a serious problem without immediate solution in sight.
He lamented that the National Assembly was worried about the situation, hence a mandate to the sub-committee to tour states where such community-related disturbances occur frequently.
Akpanan observed that community-related programmes going on now in the area are meeting with little success, adding that the sub-committee is determined to resolve the problems for good of the people and the country.
The committee, Akpana added, had visited Bayelsa, Delta and Akwa Ibom States pointing out that the committee had as its responsibilities, to interact with people of the region and find out the problems they were having with oil companies.
Responding, Governor Odili said the loss of such volume of oil on a daily basis, was a great leak on national economic.
According to him, oil accounts for about 85 per cent of Nigeria's national income and about 90 per cent of the country's foreign exchange earnings, hence it will be madness to allow such loss unattended to.
Some oil producing communities, Odili noted, cannot produce 500,000 barrels per day, yet they are referred to as oil producing, and appealed to the subcommittee to ensure that sacred facts about the situation are utilized in the decision making process.
Odili decried the total dependence on oil and gas, and advocated need to explore other areas to enable the nation's economy boom.
He commended the House for taking the steps and assured of the cooperation of Rivers people in the process.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
The Gaza Strips of Wrath
I wonder if the citizens now being dragged out of the Gaza Strip have ever read John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath. When Tom Joad returns home to find his family has been run off their land they have to venture to California, the supposed land of promise, they have to try and scratch out a living. What these citizens need to remember is once upon a time there were other citizens who were run off their land and loaded into train cars and were taken to camps. In Grapes of Wrath the Joad’s go into several camps but are able to choose where they sleep and are actually allowed to keep their children with them. The citizens that were taken and put into train cars were not so lucky, millions of them died. The ones that survived slowly made their way to Palestine. Once they were there they found another war. It appeared that no one wanted them. No one wanted the Joad’s unless they would work all day for someone else and to earn pennies a day.
Whether or not Steinbeck had a vision of Arab citizens living in a land that is not recognized by anyone and is under the constant threat of those citizens that escaped a war of genocide I do not know.. But as much attention is being paid to the citizens of the Gaza Strip being misplaced no attention is being considered those that once went looking for a home they could call their own.
- Chris Mansel
Whether or not Steinbeck had a vision of Arab citizens living in a land that is not recognized by anyone and is under the constant threat of those citizens that escaped a war of genocide I do not know.. But as much attention is being paid to the citizens of the Gaza Strip being misplaced no attention is being considered those that once went looking for a home they could call their own.
- Chris Mansel
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