The Watering Hole, Tuesday September 30, 2014: Environmental News and Food Politics

Study calculates that water on Earth is actually older than our Sun!

The heathens who conduct science in this country strike another blow against the ‘earth is 8000 years old theory. It turns out that the water here on earth may be from interplanetary sources older than our sun (which itself is a bit older than 8000 years old).

Read on…

National monument expanding

Looks like Obama muffed another one. Large portions of Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument increased in size by a factor of six.

Obama’s fault.

 

Born free… again

 

I just knew that this study would come out of Oregon (OSU to be precise)

If Hops aid cognitive function in mice, maybe beer will do it in humans

Pass, pass pass that bottle of beer.

The Watering Hole, Monday, September 29th, 2014: Intelligent Life…Please?

Although I’ve only been back online since the beginning of the weekend (my home computer crashed early last week, and access from the office was hit-or-miss, too), my search for intelligent life in American politics found little. So for today’s post I’m turning to the infinite wonder and majesty of “space, the final frontier”, in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, there could be a civilization out there that isn’t aiming to destroy itself through its own arrogant stupidity.

The following are just a few of the more recent Hubble Deep-Space images from a photo gallery that I found at space.com:

“All-sky-view of Magellanic Stream”

“A Selection of Hubble’s planetary nebulae”

“…two galaxies interacting. NGC 2936, once a standard spiral galaxy, and NGC 2937, a smaller elliptical, bear a striking resemblance to a penguin guarding its egg.”

This is our daily open thread – feel free to discuss intelligence, life, whatever you want.

Sunday Roast: Until we could

Poem by Richard Blanco

I knew it then, in that room where we found for the first time our eyes, and everything— even the din and smoke of the city around us— disappeared, leaving us alone as if we stood the last two in the world left capable of love, or as if two mirrors face-to-face with no end to the light our eyes could bend into infinity.

I knew since I knew you—but we couldn’t…

I caught the sunlight pining through the shears, traveling millions of dark miles simply to graze your skin as I did that first dawn I studied you sleeping beside me: Yes, I counted your eyelashes, read your dreams like butterflies flitting underneath your eyelids, ready to flutter into the room. Yes, I praised you like a majestic creature my god forgot to create, till that morning of you suddenly tamed in my arms, first for me to see, name you mine. Yes to the rise and fall of your body breathing, your every exhale a breath I took in as my own wanting to keep even the air between us as one.

Yes to all of you. Yes I knew, but still we couldn’t…

I taught you how to dance Salsa by looking into my Caribbean eyes, you learned to speak in my tongue, while teaching me how to catch a snowflake in my palms and love the grey clouds of your grey hometown. Our years began collecting in glossy photos time-lining our lives across shelves and walls glancing back at us: Us embracing in some sunset, more captivated by each other than the sky brushed plum and rose. Us claiming some mountain that didn’t matter as much our climbing it, together. Us leaning against columns of ruins as ancient as our love was new, or leaning into our dreams at a table flickering candlelight in our full-mooned eyes.

I knew me as much as us, and yet we couldn’t….

Though I forgave your blue eyes turning green each time you lied, but kept believing you, though we learned to say good morning after long nights of silence in the same bed, though every door slam taught me to hold on by letting us go, and saying you’re right became as true as saying I’m right, till there was nothing a long walk couldn’t resolve: holding hands and hope under the street lights lustering like a string of pearls guiding us home, or a stroll along the beach with our dog, the sea washed out by our smiles, our laughter roaring louder than the waves, though we understood our love was the same as our parents, though we dared to tell them so, and they understood.

Though we knew, we couldn’t—no one could.

When the fiery kick lines and fires were set for us by our founding mother-fathers at Stonewall, we first spoke defiance. When we paraded glitter, leather, and rainbows made human, our word became pride down every city street, saying: Just let us be. But that wasn’t enough. Parades became rallies—bold words on signs and mouths until a man claimed freedom as another word for marriage and he said: Let us in, we said: love is love, proclaimed it into all eyes that would listen at every door that would open, until noes and maybes turned into yeses, town by town, city by city, state by state, understanding us and the woman who dared say enough until the gravel struck into law what we always knew:

Love is the right to say: I do and I do and I do…

and I do want us to see every tulip we’ve planted come up spring after spring, a hundred more years of dinners cooked over a shared glass of wine, and a thousand more movies in bed. I do until our eyes become voices speaking without speaking, until like a cloud meshed into a cloud, there’s no more you, me—our names useless. I do want you to be the last face I see—your breath my last breath,

I do, I do and will and will for those who still can’t vow it yet, but know love’s exact reason as much as they know how a sail keeps the wind without breaking, or how roots dig a way into the earth, or how the stars open their eyes to the night, or how a vine becomes one with the wall it loves, or how, when I hold you, you are rain in my hands.

Stunning.

If I’d loved like this, I wouldn’t have done my part in the destruction of the “sanctity of marriage.”  Although, I guess it’s okay to inflict all manner of destruction on the institution of marriage, as long as you’re in a marriage with someone of the opposite sex — which is really idiotic, if you think about it.

This is our daily open thread — Marriage equality now!

The Watering Hole, Saturday, September 27, 2014: F-R-C! See the Real Kooks!

Well, it’s that time of year again. Time for self-identified Conservative Christians (an oxymoron, since Jesus could never have been mistaken for a conservative) to gather together and show the world all the hate in their hearts. Yes, it’s the Family Research Council’s 2014 Values Voters Summit, where the elite will never meet, nor the smart start to take part (according to one of their featured speakers). [Courtesy of the good people at Right Wing Watch. A project of People For the American Way dedicated to monitoring and exposing the activities of the right-wing movement.]

But it’s also the place, for reasons that defy conventional logic, where Republicans who one day hope to be the legal occupant of the White House (or a self-serving Member of Congress) feel they must go to solidify their conservative credentials, which is really ironic since there are precious few true conservative values expressed there. Oh, sure, there’s all the gay-bashing Islamophobia one could ever hope to see, but that isn’t true Conservatism. It might be considered Christian Conservatism, but as I said before, that’s an oxymoron. If there’s one thing about Christianity that this Atheist knows for certain, it’s the Golden Rule: Treat other people the way you would like them to treat you. (It also happens to be my own personal guiding principle in life. I just don’t need a fear of going to Hell – which not everyone believes in, including Jews – to make me follow it.) And while I have personal doubts about whether or not the Biblical character known as Jesus actually existed, I’m pretty sure the person described in that book (or in most versions of it) would not say the kinds of things they say at the Values Voters Summit.

For example, there was Bishop E.W. Jackson (the “E.W.” stands for “Everybody’s Wingnut”), who falsely claimed that the Bible defines marriage as being between one man and one woman. Actually, if you read it carefully, that’s not what it says. There’s plenty of polygamy going on in the Bible, including with that of the first King of Israel, David (probably not his real name.) So it is factually incorrect, an important point if you wish to express a valid opinion, to say that marriage “has always been defined” as being between one man and one woman. You don’t even have to go to the Bible for proof. The people living here before the Europeans showed up and screwed everything up had a very different view of marriage. For one thing, it didn’t involve God. For another, it didn’t involve monogamy.

Then there was former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee dropping the huckaboom on the attendees by telling them that the reason Mitt Romney lost in 2012 was because Conservative Christians stayed home. The only problem is that opinion is not supported by the facts. Even Ralph Reed’s organization had polling data that showed exactly the opposite. And they were the only ones who noticed. But why let pesky things like facts get in the way of a good talking point. Or a talking point, anyway.

Then there was former half-Governor Sarah Palin, the woman who tried to be one grumpy old man’s heartbeat away from the presidency. (Do you know who she is?) Palin tried to make the point that…that, well…you know, it’s hard to figure out what point she was trying to make. She seemed more concerned with throwing out standard right-wing insults (Alinsky!) than she was with making a coherent statement. And, like so much of the right wing media, she had to get her digs in on what has become known in conservative circlejerks as the “latte salute.” And like so much of the right wing media’s trash-talking, this was a non-scandal (along with all the other non-scandals Palin rattled off.) There is no requirement that the President do anything in return when a military person salutes him. In fact, presidents didn’t even bother returning salutes until Ronald Reagan started doing it back in the early eighties, and that’s probably because he forgot he wasn’t in the 1st Motion Picture unit anymore. Seriously, it is not as big a deal as they are making it out to be, but that’s because they’ve got nothing, not even the values they claim to have.

Which brings me to one simple question about the “Values Voters Summit”: Whose values? You see, when it comes to defining morality (which, I’m sure the attendees at the summit didn’t know, Ronald Reagan said you can’t legislate), conservatives add more things to the definition than liberals, and give them equal weight! According to Dr. Jonathan Haidt’s studies,

…morality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way. When Republicans say that Democrats “just don’t get it,” this is the “it” to which they refer.

Liberals tend to value fairness and equal justice much higher than conservatives, who value all those things listed as equally important. This would explain why Conservative Christians think only Christians should have First Amendment protections, or that only Christians have morals that matter. This is just self-referential opinion, confirmed by other Conservative Christian sources. It’s also a bunch of hypocrisy, since there is nothing “sanctified or noble” about gathering together and bashing the morality of more than half the country.

This is our daily open thread. Feel free to talk about the loonies at the VVS, or anything else you wish to discuss.

The Watering Hole: September 26, 2014 — Various

This gallery contains 10 photos.

Photos by Zooey Click on a photo to get a slideshow.  It’s Friday, what do you want from me?  😉 This is our daily open thread — TGIF!

The Watering Hole, Thursday, September 25, 2014: 47% and Growing

The 47% comment made by Romney is true and it’s bigger now, according to Republican Cresent Hardy, a candidate for Nevada’s 4th Congressional District.

The 47% comment, if you recall, alleged that 47% paid no federal income taxes. In other words 47% made so little money their income wasn’t taxed. They are the working poor, the senior citizens. And, according to Hardy, their numbers are growing.

If true, it is not surprising. The benefits of the Obama Recovery have gone disproportionatly to the wealthy class. We can blame Obama, but he has been restricted by an obstructionist Republican minority in the Senate that has prevented measures from being passed that would benefit the working poor. Bankers got bonuses even while families faced foreclosure.

In this author’s opinion, the plight of the working poor will get worse, as more and more wealth is concentrated into the hands of the idle rich and deposited in overseas accounts. More and more of the middle class will slowly slide into the ranks of the working poor, and the 47% will continue to grow, not through any fault of their own, not through any desire to freeload on the system, but from the continued economic policies of the oligarchy that runs this country from behind the scenes.

OPEN THREAD

The Watering Hole: Tuesday September 23, 2014 Environmental News and Food Politics

So the climate march was big, almost 400,000 in New York. Will it change anything? Did 500,000 marchers stop the Iraq war from going forward? Well the UN Secretary marched in this one, but I’m afraid climate change will be addressed locally for the next who knows how many years. Nothing will change in Washington. We need  Democratic presidents to continue to be elected until the Supreme Court can be changed, so that gerrymandering can be legally ceased, and this the balance of power (one person = one vote) can be restored. Right now Republicans hold a hugely unfair advantage in many rust belt and mid Atlantic states because of the way districts are drawn at the state rep level and the congressional level. I weep when I think of how long it will take for our political apartheid (marginalizing Democratic majorities) to be rectified. This will be a 50-100 year war, I am afraid. The stakes are high. The powerful never relinquish willingly.

 

 

The Watering Hole, Monday, September 22nd, 2014: ‘Fair and Unbalanced’

On the Friday before last (September 12th), we watched the Bill Maher two-venue HBO special live from Washington, DC.

Former Governor Haley Barbour (whom Jerry Seinfeld later referred to as “Boss Hogg”) thrice repeated a line to which no one responded with what I thought was the obvious answer. Although it’s not in any transcript that I’ve found, you can find it here.

Barbour’s line: “The President’s got to LEAD.”

My response: The President cannot lead people who have sworn not to follow.

It’s as simple as that, no one can be a leader without people following him/her. While some Democrats may hesitate to follow President Obama’s lead on some matters, the entire Republican membership has made it their sole mission to thwart the President’s leadership and to hinder any possible accomplishments that would reflect well on the President. Former Governor Barbour also trotted out this canard about Saint Ronnie:

“Reagan, when he was president, every time he passed something, he had to go meet with the House Democrats to get their votes. He compromised on everything. President Obama doesn’t even talk to the Republicans.”

Well, when the Republicans started off the first Obama Administration with a meeting to discuss how to obstruct everything and make the new President a “one-term President”, and when Republicans invited to the White House decline the invitation en masse, who can blame Obama for not wanting to talk to the Republicans?

What the internets picked up on was Bill’s statement about Fox News, and that Jerry Seinfeld “pushes back”.

Here’s the only part of the transcript that I found, on Real Clear Politics (which may have a video clip):

BILL MAHER: “I find that it’s not the state you’re in it’s whether you’re from a city or in the rural part of America. I’ve been to two cities in Alabama this year. I’ve been to Birmingham and Mobile. They look like everywhere else. They have a Pottery Barn and Thai food. And we’re talking about the polarization in Washington. I wonder, people always talk about Washington, the politicians can’t get along, I think maybe it’s that the people are polarized and the politicians just reflect that and I feel ————————–like the reason the people are polarized is Fox News. I think of all the things that changed in America, Fox News changed the most. It used to be the John Birch Society came to your door once a year. Now they’re in your TV in your living room everyday and we don’t even know how to talk to each other. It’s like we have a language barrier. because what they’re hearing on Fox News — it’s the same people. It’s like what? Saul Alinsky? We don’t know who that is…”

FMR. GOV. HALEY BARBOUR: In fairness, Fox News doesn’t have a monopoly on television taking sides.

JERRY SEINFELD: Yeah, that’s true.

BARBOUR: Take tonight, for instance. Bill Maher is a big personality in American politics.

MAHER: Well, thank you.

BARBOUR: We have those two moderates on the TV show — Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann**. Let’s see, you have these four Republican congressmen you’re trying to decide which one to assassinate.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

SEINFELD: I think that you’d have a better argument that each side just talks to its side, listens to its side.

MAHER: Right.

SEINFELD: That’s polarizing. To blame it all on Fox News doesn’t seem completely fair.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Couldn’t you argue there are people out there who are fed up with everything that happens in this city and aren’t voting, aren’t involved. That’s the silent majority of middle, moderate, thoughtful people, who just want thoughtful people —

BILL MAHER: With all due respect, the opposite of fox news is not really me. It’s MSNBC, which doesn’t get near the ratings of Fox News because I think there is something in the conservative brain that wants to be hearing the same thing over and over and doing the same thing — thing over and over. Liberals like different. Always a new restaurant. Conservatives are like no, I go to the diner and I get the number five every day.

HALEY BARBOUR: Those of us, including y’all who grew up in the time where we had three networks and two big newspapers and they all had the same message, same way. Fox News was the first thing to come along that gave a conservative point of view and as you say, there are big networks that are very, very left and I think there’s a huge market in the middle of the United States. I think people want a common sense, straight talk problem solving. They want to get things done. Your point is the media has become as polarized is —

JERRY SEINFELD: That’s not as entertaining as hysteria.

**Keith Olbermann is back to sports and has been for some time now, and, while Michael Moore is a Liberal who makes documentary films about current events, he does not have a 24/7/365 pulpit reaching millions of viewers, whether they like it or not. And, as Americans Against the Tea Party puts it:

“But what these “false balance” denialists fail to take into account is that Fox News wields disproportionate influence, and that the station is far from “fair and balanced.”

Breitbart TV, of course, has their own take on the Maher/Seinfeld issue: the title of their article is “Seinfeld Defends Fox News Against Maher Attack”. Unfortunately – very unfortunately, as I’ll discuss further along – the Breitbart link was one of the few that came up when I binged ‘video of Haley Barbour on Bill Maher.’ Until last evening, sources that promised the video had had to take it down. Here’s how Breitbart’s Pam Key interpreted the discussion:

“Friday night’s live broadcast from Washington D.C. of the season premier[sic] of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” featured a take down of the hosts’ attack on Fox News from comedian Jerry Seinfeld and Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) that had even rival MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell recoiling at Maher’s insistence that Fox News was responsible for the polarization of America.” [I’d say that Jerry was more, well, gently chiding, and could in no way be described as a “take down.” And, though I’d have to watch the video again, I don’t think that “recoiling” is an accurate description of Mitchell’s reaction.]

Maher began by discussing the real polarization being between rural and urban America but then not realizing the contraction[?] of blaming regional differences of a country on a cable news network created in 1996, he began to insist Fox News has created a “language barrier.”

Barbour countered by saying Fox News didn’t create the polarization — it was a response to it. Because Barbour explained there used to be a monopoly of three networks with liberal views that had “the same message, the same way. Fox News was the first thing to come along that gave a conservative point of view.”

Jerry Seinfeld jumped in saying “each side just talks to its side,” so it’s silly [to]single out Fox News, adding “to blame it all on Fox news doesn’t seem completely fair.”

I think that the Breitbart writers exaggerated a tad by calling Seinfeld’s statements “defend[ing] Fox News, and that Barbour’s and Andrea Mitchell’s protestations were a “take down” of Bill Maher.

However, the worst on the Breitbart site were the comments. I must call out one in particular, which featured a quote from Bill Maher stating that he’s more afraid of (climate-change-caused) ice melting than he is of ISIS. When I first looked at the quote, I didn’t realize what the commenter had superimposed it over a photo. To spare you all from having to actually view it, let me describe it: someone had taken one of the still photos of one of the journalists beheaded by ISIS, and had photoshopped Bill Maher’s head in place of what had apparently been the victim’s head, held in the dead man’s hands.

I have it saved, even though I never want to see it again. But if I EVER hear again the bullshit that liberal commenters are just as bad as conservative commenters, I’m dragging that piece of excrement out as the ultimate evidence.

This is our daily open thread.  Please feel free to discuss anything you wish.

Sunday Roast: Seems legit

Sorry this is so late, I thought this was legit and went in for the cuddles.  Interesting…  😉

This is our daily open thread — What’s your excuse?

The Watering Hole, Saturday, September 20, 2014: It’s Not Just The NFL’s Problem, It’s Everyone’s

Yesterday, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell stood before a room full of reporters and crapped all over women, children, and victims of domestic violence. I’m sure he didn’t think he was, but that was the upshot of his remarks. [Note: I was going to link to a transcript of his remarks, but the link I had was a stream of consciousness thing with no clear distinctions about who was saying what. I’m sure a more useful one will emerge if, like me, you don’t want to watch the video.]

When asked to explain how the reports that his office had the second video with his comments that it hadn’t, Goodell’s replay was, in essence, “We hired Robert Mueller, who is very well respected, to find out the answer to that.” That’s not an answer.

dan graziano, espn. yes, dan. the a.P. Report about the video being sent to your office cites a voicemail and someone confirmed receipt of it. With that in mind, how do you explain that amid the league’s denial they had the video? dan, that is exactly why as i mentioned in my statement, we hired robert mueller, the longest serving director of the fbi to make sure that individual, robert mueller and his staff, they go through and find out as many facts as they possibly can. And report. It is independent. All that information will be something that director mueller will be dealing with.

See what I mean? Let me try to make that look more readable.

Dan Graziano: Dan Graziano, ESPN.
Roger Goodell: Yes, Dan.
DG: The A.P. Report about the video being sent to your office cites a voicemail and someone confirmed receipt of it. With that in mind, how do you explain that amid the league’s denial they had the video?
RG: Dan, that is exactly why, as I mentioned in my statement, we hired Robert Mueller, the longest serving director of the FBI to make sure that individual, Robert Mueller and his staff, they go through and find out as many facts as they possibly can. And report. It is independent. All that information will be something that Director Mueller will be dealing with.

So you asked to see the video, so they sent it to you, and you never watched it because you claim you never knew you had it? The Baltimore Ravens knew about it, according to the New York Daily News. And when they sat down with you, Mr. and Mrs. Ray Rice, and some lawyers, they assumed that you had seen the second video, which shows the actual beating Rice gave his then-fiancee. (The first video, for those not familiar with all the details, showed Rice dragging Miss Palmer’s unconscious body out of the elevator. The second, released after Goodell announced the two-game suspension – the crime happened in April – showed what happened inside the elevator.) But you claim you hadn’t, and went ahead with their recommendation of a two-game suspension. There were calls for your head then, Goodell, and the calls only got louder when the second video was made public, and people realized an NFL player could get in worse trouble for smoking weed than for beating up a woman.

Then we learned that Minnesota Vikings player Adrian Peterson beat his four-year-old son with a switch, leaving wounds severe enough to have the star running back indicted for negligent or reckless injury of a child. An order of protection has been sought against Peterson. Peterson says (and friends confirm) that he was beaten in a similar manner when he was growing up, and he believed it worked. He has said he is seeking professional help to learn how wrong that was to believe. Too bad Sean Hannity never sought professional help after he was beaten by his father, in part because he says he deserved it. He was incredulous that his panel said they thought Hannity’s father should have been arrested by today’s standards saying, “I was not mentally bruised because my father hit me with a belt.” Actually, Sean, there’s a lot of people, not just Liberals, but professional types, who would strongly disagree with that statement. Unless you’re just saying that your mental bruising (which clearly happened at some point, and likely explains much of your conservatism) was not due solely to the beatings you got from your father.

If there is any good that can come from all these stories, it’s in raising the awareness that we need to talk more about domestic violence, and about violence against women everywhere around the world. We need to educate people that just because something has been going on for years doesn’t mean it should be accepted by society, or that it ever should have been. Do you remember when Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN) rose on the floor of the House and told his own personal stories of the abuse he and his family suffered at the hands of their father, sometimes publicly? He told those stories to encourage his colleagues to support the creation of a National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Did you know that was more than twenty years ago? What have we learned since? Other than that it still happens? Adrian Peterson was eight years old when Dan Burton told the world about how his father would beat him for having to use the bathroom at night, then beat him for not being able to with his father standing over him. Did Peterson’s father hear about the media coverage of the shocking stories of Life in rural Indiana? Would it have stopped him from raising a son who would do the same thing to his own children, and to others people’s, if he did hear it? We may never know. What we do know is that Peterson has a problem with raising children, and someone’s going to have to tell him how to do it. And we also know Sean Hannity grew up to be a bully.

This is our daily open thread. You know what to do.

The Watering Hole: Friday September 19, 2014 – Music Night

British blast from the past.

Breaking Gnus: Republicans file suit to rescind Declaration of Independence

Hot on the heels of the defeat of the pro-independence movement in Scotland, Republicans filed suit in the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to rescind the Declaration of Independence.

The suit, filed in the Roberts’ Court as an original jurisdiction case under Article III Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution seeks to reunify the United States with Great Britian. Should it succeed, the Constitution will be found null and void, thus removing Obama from the White House.

Early reaction in the UK is mixed, with some welcoming back their former colonies and others expressing reservations. A man on the street interview summed it up, “Well, yes, I think we should let the Americans rejoin the U.K. but, what will happen if Parliament taxes their tea again?”

The Watering Hole; Friday September 19 2014; The Devil’s in the Details

Courtesy of Emily Dickinson:

Crumbling is not an instant’s Act
A fundamental pause
Dilapidation’s processes
Are organized Decays.

‘Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul
A Cuticle of Dust
A Borer in the Axis
An Elemental Rust —

Ruin is formal — Devil’s work
Consecutive and slow —
Fail in an instant, no man did
Slipping — is Crash’s law.

Impressive how she defined so much of today’s America, and she did it more than 150 years ago. How did she know how old Clootie’s minions would be behaving here in 2014? I mean hey, I KNOW that ignorance is pervasive across the ages, but Dilapidation’s processes / Are organized Decays ? Emily Dickinson actually sensed the eventual arrival of, say, one Newt Gingrich? Sure seems like it!

Newt Gingrich: Immigrants Could Bring Ebola Across The Border

Those brown-skinned devils could come into the United States carrying Ebola! Where they might get it or just how they might carry it — plastic bag? Jar? — he didn’t mention. Still, since Crumbling is not an instant’s Act I guess we’ll all have to wait and see, yet again, the vast extant of Newt.

On the other hand, when Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul / A Cuticle of Dust  there’s the US Court of Appeals three-judge panel who just recently

Ordered WI Voter ID Law Reinstated For This Election

Anything to counter all that voter fraud out there. You know, like when black people vote for Democrats and NOT for old Clootie’s disciples, etc. etc. Unless or until, that is, some little tidbit is discovered that just might NOT work in Republican favor, such as when state law places, because of recent electoral history, the name of the Democratic governor candidate AHEAD on the ballot of the current incumbent Republican, Scott Walker! A cobweb on the Soul / A Cuticle of Dust / A Borer in the Axis! The Devil at work for sure for sure!

Republican legislative leaders filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking changes to the newly redesigned ballot for the November election, claiming the one drafted by the nonpartisan elections agency unfairly benefits Democrats […]

The ballot design is unfair because Democratic candidates are listed first under the name of the office being sought and Republican candidates are separated by a line, the lawsuit said.

Democrats are listed first, per state law, based on results in the 2012 election where President Barack Obama won Wisconsin. Republican candidates were listed first in 2012 because Gov. Scott Walker won election in 2010.

Meanwhile, an appeal is likely to turn the decision away from the three judge panel and hand it to the full, 10-member U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in an attempt to reverse the decision. Time will tell. Meanwhile, both Clootie and Scott Walker undoubtedly sit in pools of sweat as they wait.

Fortunately, though, that Devil’s work / Consecutive and slow can allow at least a temporary respite, a momentary pause in Clootie’s relentless agenda. That much I myself KNOW to be true. ‘Twas just this morning, in fact, when my bicycle’s odometer turned over to Clootie’s magic number:

I stopped, took a look around; no sign of Clootie anywhere. Just the early morning fresh air, the glassy-smooth lake reflecting the trees, the mountains and sky. No Newt; no Wisconsin GOoPers; no hints of Dilapidation’s processes, no organized Decays, no Cobweb on the Soul,  not even A Cuticle of Dust to disturb the moment; nothing more than the peace and quiet, that bliss of solitude that only nature, in this otherwise devilish world, dares allow. All was well and remained well — at least for, according to my odometer’s calculation, another 1.26 miles (that’s 6,666 ft. – do the math) when psssssss — flat tire. Clootie had driven a thorn into it at some point when I wasn’t looking, so there I was, parked alongside the road retrieving tools, patch kit, and pump.

Could have been worse, though. A LOT worse. Suppose Newt was there? Or Scott Walker? A Koch brother?

I’ll take Clootie, a thorn, and a flat tire ANYTIME!

OK, enough silliness. OPEN THREAD begins here. 😉

The Watering Hole; Thursday September 18 2014; MORE WAR MORE WAR MORE WAR YAY YAY YAY!!

OH NOES!! WE’LL ALL BE DEAD!!!

Senator Lindsay Graham: ‘We All Get Killed Back Here At Home’ If Obama Doesn’t Send Combat Troops Back Into Iraq

Fortunately, there’s a solution (if only that worthless Obama dude would get off his duff and DO SOMETHING!):

Bill O’Reilly Wants President Obama And Congress To Declare War Against Islamic Terrorists

So, here we go. Everybody’s after us. First there’re all those illegal children from Central America, and don’t forget those Dream Act bums along with the other ten million or more illegals that are here on welfare and Medicaid and Social Security, milking the Amurkan Cow instead of working for a living. And now we got Muslims sneaking across the Texican Border leaving behind their Qurans and prayer rugs, on their way to git us all!

Texas Sheriff Claims ‘Quran Books’ Found At Mexican Border May Mean ISIS Infiltration

LOOK! UP IN THE SKY! IT’S A BIRD! IT’S A PLANE! NO, IT’S AN ISIS!!

I’ve been trying to remember when it was that I first heard about those new kids on the block — ISIS, ISIL, however those goofy letters them Muslims use is translated into Amurkan. When was it? Was it last month? Last week, maybe? And all of a sudden we’re gonna “all get killed back here at home” by those Muslim terroristas that’re sneakin’ across the border (probably into that new Organ Mountains National Monument that Obama set up jes’ fer them terrist bums to hide their A-bomb in!) all-the-while all our gummint libtards do is sit around shriekin’ about some dead kid in Missouri!

And so it goes. Dreams of more war; DEMANDS for more war. Why?? Cuz there’s money in it! Need an enemy? We got ’em. EVERYWHERE!! So let’s Declare WAR!!

What could go wrong?

Actually (and pardon the interrupt, but) I have a better idea. If there’s to be a war, why not engage our REAL enemy? It’s not like it’s one that popped up ‘over there’ last week or month. Nope, it’s one that’s been around for a good long time now, one that’s gotten ever more refined as the decades have passed.

Wait. Decades? Really?

Yep. On April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan, U.S. Vice President Henry Wallace described America’s domestic enemies in an article published in the New York Times on April 9, 1944. In Wallace’s own words,

“They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”

Sound at all familiar? Here’s a more detailed description, one that was written by political scientist Dr. Lawrence W. Britt and published in the July 2004 Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2, available online here. Britt details the traits of that which is steadily proving itself to be Constitutional America’s most dangerous and determined enemy, listed here in brief summary:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
4. Supremacy of the Military
5. Rampant Sexism
6. Controlled Mass Media
7. Obsession with National Security
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
9. Corporate Power is Protected
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
14. Fraudulent Elections

ISIS / ISIL??

Nah. It’s much closer to home. We seem to know “it” as the G.O.P and/or its Tea Party offshoot, together defining what I’ve come to call the American Fascist Movement, the AFM.

Curiously enough, I finally (and for the first time ever, far as I can recall) can say that I find myself in at least partial agreement with both Lindsay Graham AND Bill O’Reilly. The danger to our Republic truly IS here Here At Home, and it’s high time that We the People find the means to Declare War Against our enemy — before we are, each and all, forced to kneel before our would-be corporate and religious masters. And we all know who they are.

OPEN THREAD

The Watering Whole: Wednesday, September 17, 2014: In Tennessee, anything goes.

It’s the law in Tennessee: Public Schools must provide a forum for religious speech.

Now, while it has long been the law that the government cannot support one religion over another, or religion over non-religion, there have been some exceptions. “In God we Trust” “One Nation, Under God”

But Tennessee is leading the charge when it comes to freedom of religion in public schools. Students at all kinds of school events can now give religious speeches. BUT there must be a disclaimer that said students’ speech is not the stated position of the school.

And said student’s speech is not limited to school events. Kids can now freely express their religous beliefs in the hallways between classes and said ‘voluntary speech’ cannot be quelched by school officials. So if a student’s religion says gays are an abomination and should be eradicated from the planet, the student is free to say so. Presumably, this freedom of speech extends to Wiccan’s casting a spell on their comrades who say all witches should be burned at the stake.

But that’s not all. There’s more. “Students may express their written beliefs about religion in homework, artwork, and other written and oral assignments free from discrimination based on the religious content of the student’s submissions. … Students may not be penalized or rewarded based on the religous content of the student’s work.”

Having spent the better part of the summer analyzing 7th grade texts in Social Studies and Life Sciences published by Bob Jones University Press, I do believe that for conservative christian students raised according to the biblical interpretation of history and science, life just got a whole lot easier in Tennessee. God’s Providence and Adam’s Sin explains just about everything one needs to know about history and science.

Andn we wonder why our kids don’t outscore the rest of the world when it comes to public education outcomes.

OPEN
OR
OPINE

THREAD

The Watering Hole: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 – Environmental News and Food Politics

Traditional utilities may go broke sooner rather than later…

…as is happening now in Germany

“A reckoning is at hand, and nowhere is that clearer than in Germany. Even as the country sets records nearly every month for renewable power production, the changes have devastated its utility companies, whose profits from power generation have collapsed.”

 

Economics will drive the change. What, the wind is free? The sun is free? OK so I build with wind turbines and solar panels rather than coal or gas fired turbines with the same amount of investment? You mean my fuel is really, really free? Where do I sign?

The Watering Hole: Sept 15, 2014 — Devil’s Churn

Photo by Zooey

Okay folks, this is your late, late, super late, open thread.  🙂

I took this photo on a trip to the Oregon coast in 2008, and I’m standing above the top of Devil’s Churn.  It’s pretty damn awesome!

This is our daily open thread — let the abuse flow.

 

Sunday Roast: Northern Lights

Stepping away from the horrors of the news and the state of our society…

The Northern Lights put on a good show for parts of the U.S. (and presumably other countries), after a powerful solar flare last Wednesday.

I have seen the lights once in my life, and was so startled at what I was seeing, I didn’t actually comprehend the sight, and didn’t appreciate it properly.  Afterall, I lived in the panhandle of Idaho at the time, but no one in the area could remember seeing the lights that far south.  Derp.

Seeing the lights again is definitely on my Bucket List!

This is our daily open thread — Have any of you seen this weekend’s light show?

The Watering Hole, Saturday, September 13, 2014: This Week in Conservative Christian Crazy Talk

In a recent blog post filled with straw men and false equivalencies, Francis Cardinal George (not his name at birth) made the common Conservative Christian mistake of equating laws that require to you to let people who don’t practice your faith to do things of which your faith disapproves with you not being allowed to freely practice your religion. The two have nothing to do with each other. After starting out with a story that seemed to treat religious belief as historical fact, George went on to claim that the government had tried to take on the role of religion.

There was always a quasi-religious element in the public creed of the country. It lived off the myth of human progress, which had little place for dependence on divine providence. It tended to exploit the religiosity of the ordinary people by using religious language to co-opt them into the purposes of the ruling class. Forms of anti-Catholicism were part of its social DNA. It had encouraged its citizens to think of themselves as the creators of world history and the managers of nature, so that no source of truth outside of themselves needed to be consulted to check their collective purposes and desires. But it had never explicitly taken upon itself the mantle of a religion and officially told its citizens what they must personally think or what “values” they must personalize in order to deserve to be part of the country. Until recent years.

Actually that’s not correct. The laws we pass are supposed to reflect the mores of our Society. (Note, I did say “supposed to.” Clearly we never agreed to let corporations who make billions of dollars in profits pay no federal taxes to the government who made their success possible.) When a government passes laws that say things like “You can’t kill anyone except in self-defense,” or “You can’t take things that don’t belong to you,” we are saying what values you should have. And that’s the way it’s always been. Just because a law is passed that permits people to do things your religion wouldn’t permit you to do does not mean we are making your religion illegal. Nor does it mean we are forcing you to do anything other than live and let live. I often hear religious conservatives complain when the government decides you have permission to do something, that the government is requiring you to do that something. And that’s completely and totally wrong. And it shows in their misguided belief that because the government is letting you worship whichever god you choose to worship, that you must choose a god to worship. They seem to forget that ti also means we are free to NOT worship any god, if we so choose. This is because they have the erroneous belief that in order to have a moral center, you must have a belief in God. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am an atheist, but that doesn’t mean I lack a moral code by which to live. My personal motto (and i didn’t invent it) is to treat other people the way I would want them to treat me. (Sound familiar?) I don’t need some trumped up fear of hell fire and damnation to know that this is the right thing to do.

But George’s real problem seems to be about sex, and why should that surprise anyone? After all, a man who took a vow of celibacy for his own personal religious reasons (one of which includes belonging to an organization with a history of covering up sexual child abuse by a small percentage of its members) is the perfect person to be standing in judgment of the sex lives of others.

In recent years, society has brought social and legislative approval to all types of sexual relationships that used to be considered “sinful.” Since the biblical vision of what it means to be human tells us that not every friendship or love can be expressed in sexual relations, the church’s teaching on these issues is now evidence of intolerance for what the civil law upholds and even imposes. What was once a request to live and let live has now become a demand for approval. The “ruling class,” those who shape public opinion in politics, in education, in communications, in entertainment, is using the civil law to impose its own form of morality on everyone. We are told that, even in marriage itself, there is no difference between men and women, although nature and our very bodies clearly evidence that men and women are not interchangeable at will in forming a family. Nevertheless, those who do not conform to the official religion, we are warned, place their citizenship in danger.

I call straw man! It is not true that legislative approval has been brought “to all types of sexual relationships.” Only one, and that’s same-sex marriage. Just because ignorant buffoons have equated homosexuality with bestiality and pedophilia does not mean he has a valid point. Those people have no idea what they’re talking about, and their viewpoints should not be treated as perfectly valid. Of course they have the right to hold those views, and the rest of us have the right to hold people with those views in contempt. And, FTR, we tried the “live and let live” approach to the rights of the LGBT community and it didn’t work out so great for them. It was mainly in the “let live” part where Society failed, and as a result we decided to tell people what values to personalize, in this case, the value being to “Love one another.” Being gay is not a choice, so it’s not true that gay people are willfully being immoral by being gay. The whole “Hate the sin, love the sinner” attitude doesn’t work if you believe gay people are just doing it on purpose because they lack morals and, therefore, shouldn’t have the same rights as everyone else. Because you’re still hating the sinner.

He goes on to lament that when a recent SCOTUS ruling went “against the State religion” (again, a false premise, which makes the rest of his argument meaningless), it brought on a crisis of belief for many Catholics, apparently because the Huffington Post raised “concerns about the compatibility between being a Catholic and being a good citizen.” (I tried to find the specific article that said this, but he only gave a date and not a title.) Actually I can answer that one. In the United States of America, an officially secular nation, your responsibility is to be a good citizen before being a good Catholic. If you want to live some place where being a good Catholic is your first duty, then move to The Vatican. I hear they’re big on Catholicism there. But the First Amendment not only allows you the freedom to practice the religion of your choice, it also disallows the government from interfering with that right so long as your religious exercise does not interfere with the religious freedom of others. That’s the part Conservative Christians don’t seem to get, especially the ones who call for our laws being based on the Bible. You see, there are many, many different versions of the Bible, and they are not all translated the same way. Nor are they interpreted the same way. So my first question to anyone who thinks our laws should be based on “the Bible,” is “Which Bible?” The second question would be, “Why that one and no other?” And, of course, my third and fourth questions would be, “Why would a secular nation want to do something that?” and “How is that any different than deciding to base our laws on the Q’uran?”

[NOTE: This post, like many of the ones I post at The Zoo, will be cross-posted at my blog, but I’ll have more to say over there. Feel free to drop on by It should be finished by later this afternoon.]

This is our daily open thread. Feel free to discuss Conservative Christians, Catholicism in a secular society, mental illness in an overly religious society, or anything else you wish to discuss.

The Watering Hole; Friday September 12 2014; Carson v. Dawkins

Yesterday I posted here a link to statements by Dr. Ben Carson in which he pointed out that evolution is a myth because “God Can Create Anything At Any Point In Time.” Carson is a former neurosurgeon who has emerged today as a Wingnuttistanian Republican, a potential presidential candidate. Carson’s religious philosophy represents the dream of the religious right because of his pronouncements that it is human arrogance which allows some to believe that they are so smart that if they can’t explain how God did something, then it didn’t happen, which of course means that they’re God. You don’t need a God if you consider yourself capable of explaining everything. Carson also states unequivocally that when it comes to the earth’s age, “no one has the knowledge.“ He further maintains that “carbon dating and all of these things really don’t mean anything to a God who has the ability to create anything at any point in time.” It’s also Carson’s thesis that the “complexity of the human brain” essentially disproves evolutionary theory because when “Somebody says that came from a slime pit full of promiscuous biochemicals? I don’t think so.”

“Promiscuous biochemicals”? Really?

Such grossly unscientific views are, these days, not at all uncommon, particularly amongst those who belong to — who essentially have come to define — the religious right in the United States. As a political movement, they are also all too often left unchallenged when on full display in public forum, a reality many of their opponents have long felt to be an unfortunate trend given that virtually all religion-based theses of origin are so easily dismissed by scientific fact. In that vein, I present herein a series of quotes on the matter by one Richard Dawkins, the well known English ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and writer. These are quotes that I somehow managed to collect/accumulate over the last decade or two, and though I didn’t record specific dates or source attributions, they are, each and all, Dawkins’ verbal refutations of such nonsensical mythology as spoken by Ben Carson (and many many others), as cited above.

Richard Dawkins:

“People brought up to believe in faith and private revelation cannot be persuaded by evidence to change their minds. No wonder religious zealots throughout history have resorted to torture and execution, to crusades and jihads, to holy wars and purges and pogroms, to the Inquisition and the burning of witches.”

“For a long time it seemed clear to just about everybody that the beauty and elegance of the world seemed to be prima facie evidence for a divine creator. But the philosopher David Hume already realized three centuries ago that this was a bad argument. It leads to an infinite regression. You can’t statistically explain improbable things like living creatures by saying that they must have been designed because you’re still left to explain the designer, who must be, if anything, an even more statistically improbable and elegant thing. Design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything. It can only be a proximate explanation. A plane or a car is explained by a designer but that’s because the designer himself, the engineer, is explained by natural selection.”

“There is just no evidence for the existence of God. Evolution by natural selection is a process that works up from simple beginnings, and simple beginnings are easy to explain. The engineer or any other living thing is difficult to explain but it is explicable by evolution by natural selection. So the relevance of evolutionary biology to atheism is that evolutionary biology gives us the only known mechanism whereby the illusion of design, or apparent design, could ever come into the universe anywhere.”

“A delusion is something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence. Religion is scarcely distinguishable from childhood delusions like the “imaginary friend” and the bogeyman under the bed. Unfortunately, the God delusion possesses adults, and not just a minority of unfortunates in an asylum. The word ‘delusion’ also carries negative connotations, and religion has plenty of those.”

“The beauty of Darwinian evolution is that it explains the very improbable, by gradual degrees. It starts from primeval simplicity (relatively easy to understand), and works up, by plausibly small steps, to complex entities whose genesis, by any non-gradual process, would be too improbable for serious contemplation. Design is a real alternative, but only if the designer is himself the product of an escalatory process such as evolution by natural selection, either on this planet or elsewhere. There may be alien life forms so advanced that we would worship them as gods. But they too must ultimately be explained by gradual escalation. Gods that exist ‘ab initio’ are ruled out by the Argument from Improbability, even more surely than are spontaneously erupting eyes or elbow joints.”

“Most scientists use the term God in the way that Einstein did, as an expression of reverence for the deep mysteries of the universe, a sentiment I share.” 

“Within 50 million years, it’s highly unlikely humans will still be around and it is sad to think of the loss of all that knowledge and music.”

“‘Religious’ physicists usually turn out to be so only in the Einsteinian sense: they are atheists of a poetic disposition. So am I. But, given the widespread yearning for that great misunderstanding, deliberately to confuse Einsteinian pantheism with supernatural religion is an act of intellectual high treason.

“The first cause cannot have been an intelligence – let alone an intelligence that answers prayers and enjoys being worshipped. Intelligent, creative, complex, statistically improbable things come late into the universe, as the product of evolution or some other process of gradual escalation from simple beginnings. They come late into the universe and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it.”

“Even before Darwin’s time, the illogicality was glaring: how could it ever have been a good idea to postulate, in explanation for the existence of improbable things, a designer who would have to be even more improbable? The entire argument is a logical non-starter, as David Hume realized before Darwin was born.”

“Natural selection is so stunningly powerful and elegant, it not only explains the whole of life, it raises our consciousness and boosts our confidence in science’s future ability to explain everything else. Natural selection is not just an alternative to chance. It is the only ultimate alternative ever suggested. … Natural selection is an anti-chance process, which gradually builds up complexity, step by tiny step.”

“[E]volution is a predictive science. If you pick any hitherto unstudied species and subject it to minute scrutiny, any evolutionist will confidently predict that each individual will be observed to do everything in its power, in the particular way of the species – plant, herbivore, carnivore, nectivore or whatever it is – to survive and propagate the DNA that rides inside it.”

“We explain our existence by a combination of the anthropic principle and Darwin’s principle of natural selection. That combination provides a complete and deeply satisfying explanation for everything that we see and know. Not only is the god hypothesis unnecessary. It is spectacularly unparsimonious. Not only do we need no God to explain the universe and life. God stands out in the universe as the most glaring of all superfluous sore thumbs. We cannot, of course, disprove God, just as we can’t disprove Thor, fairies, leprechauns and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But, like those other fantasies that we can’t disprove, we can say that God is very very improbable.”

Not much else I can add save for perhaps a single word:

Amen.

OPEN THREAD

 

The Watering Hole; Thursday September 11 2014; TEH STUPID – Today’s Entries

It’s not hard to tell that this year’s election “event” is getting closer and closer; seems like every two years when elections are scheduled in November, right after Labor Day the rise in the level of stupidity increases dramatically. It’s almost scary, in fact. Here are four quickies in which the highlighted link pretty much says it all.

1.  Ben Carson: Evolution A Myth Because ‘God Can Create Anything At Any Point In Time’

He [Carson] claimed that “no one has the knowledge” of the age of the earth “based on the Bible,” adding that “carbon dating and all of these things really don’t mean anything to a God who has the ability to create anything at any point in time.”

Carson pointed to the “complexity of the human brain” as proof that evolution is a myth: “Somebody says that came from a slime pit full of promiscuous biochemicals? I don’t think so.”

2.  David Limbaugh, brother of Rush the Blowhard, assumes the Religious-Right is always right because he’s studied the Bible for a long time. He’s got another Jesus is the Gospel book to prove it.

Rush Limbaugh isn’t the only hateful, wingnut liar in his family. His brother, author David Limbaugh, makes his money by ginning up hysteria about that damned Barack Obama. The younger brother of the Big Fat Idiot is promoting a book which seeks to legitimize Christianity called, Jesus on Trial: A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of the Gospel. The good Christians on the couch, especially Hasselbeck in her pure white dress, were gobbling up his hypothesis that Jesus could stand trial and “win” based on the “evidence” in the incredibly human drama known as the Bible.

Limbaugh obviously has an agenda, just like his brother. He seeks to label the Black President and his godless liberal followers as the reason for all our problems. He claims the Ryan tax cuts for the rich plan is really god’s idea, and the (Atheist Muslim) President is demonizing rich people. . . .

3.  Last Thursday’s Watering Hole Post was titled The AFM vs. WTP, and it discussed Mitch McConnell’s appearance and speech last June at a Koch Bros. more-or-less ‘secret’ get-together in California. It seems that this week, Harry Reid has been pressuring McConnell to recant some of the idiocy he spewed to the Koch bro clan. Mitch, of course, didn’t . . . wouldn’t . . . well, you know. See the link for details, if you dare!

Harry Reid called on Mitch McConnell to repudiate offensive statements made at a recent Koch retreat. A reporter asked McConnell if he would do so directly, and he refused to answer.

4.  And finally, here in Colorado the GOoPer, running for governor, Bob Beauprez, has revealed that not only is he every bit as stupid as Cliven Bundy, he also “thinks” (is that a word?) like him. What’s worrisome is that Beauprez currently trails Democratic incumbent governor John Hickenlooper by only a small amount in recent polls. That’s not surprising, I suppose, given that Hickenlooper signed both a gun background-check and magazine size-limiting bill along with the Marijuana legalization bill, both of which are anathema to the unenlightened Wingnuttistanian faction of the Colorado electorate. We can only hope that their numbers remain insufficient to elect each and all the Bagger idiots on the ballot. 

Colorado Gubernatorial Candidate Promises To Seize And Sell America’s National Parks, Forests And Public Lands

In the first debate of the Colorado gubernatorial race last Friday, Republican nominee Bob Beauprez went on the record supporting the seizure of Colorado’s national parks, forests and public lands by the state government, saying “this is fight we have to wage.” 

. . . Beauprez, who is challenging incumbent Governor John Hickenlooper (D), claimed that all public land in the state was “supposed to be Colorado’s” and that “if this were private land and the federal government was a tenant, we would cancel their lease.” [ . . . ]

. . . Beauprez is one of several candidates supporting such proposals this election season. . . . [T]here are a number of right-wing politicians across the country who have been advancing proposals to transfer of control of public lands to states, or to sell them off to the highest bidder for drilling, mining and logging.

So there you have it, four partial sums of about five minutes worth of “research.” I was originally going to set this up as a voting contest to choose the most stupid of the four listed. But, sigh, having gone over each of them another time or two I’ve decided to take the Spiro Agnew approach and simply declare the process Nolo Contendre — for probably obvious reasons.

OPEN THREAD

 

 

 

 

The Watering Hole: Wednesday, September 10, 2014: To be, or not to be…

To be, or not to be– that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die- to sleep-
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die- to sleep.
To sleep- perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub!
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death-
The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns- puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
(Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1)

I believe that if we live long enough, sooner or later we will come face to face with Hamlet’s question, “To be, or not to be” a choice, a precipice, which, once stepped off, cannot be undone. Some do choose to cross that line, to go to that “undiscover’d country”. We’re left behind, unwilling or unable to follow; we are suicide survivors. We have survived the death of someone close to us – a death we cannot totally understand, because is seems so senseless. Yet it was a choice, perhaps the ultimate leap of faith in the acceptance of a loving God.

We cry out in silent anguish. If only….if only….if only. A thousand ‘if onlys’ for every star in the heavens.

Today is the World Suicide Prevention Day. It is a day where we, the survivors of suicide, have been invited to light a candle at 8:00 p.m. local time, to remember a lost loved one, and for the survivors of suicide.

I will be lighting a candle for my late brother:

DAVE

“Your brother died today.”
The sky is blue.
The sun is shining.

“Your brother died today.”
The lie is through.
The runner’s hiding.

“Your brother died today.”
I’m crying too.
The gunner’s riding.

“Your brother died today.”
My brother too.
My brother too.

(this poem was written the day I got the call.)

And, from a different perspective:

Through doors now closed to mortal thought
Th’ eternal flame flicker’d low.
What hellish deeds thy hands hath wrought
And shadows in thy soul doth grow.

What anguish rent thy tortured breast,
Through the darkened halls of the kingdom,
Past chambers where the dying rest,
And portals of forgotten home?

From whence came the desperation
That drove thee on towards madness,
To end at last in consecration;
One final hope of gladness?

The course that cannot be undone:
Rest in peace, my little one.

As for me:

I have traveled the other side of the looking-glass,
Down the rabbit’s hole,
Past the March-hare’s madness,
And drank from the Devil’s bowl.

Below the depths of Wonderland,
The lonely darkness calls,
And beckons my soul to dwell therein,
In labyrinthical halls.

I long to return to the darkness,
The Never-Never Land of night;
To leave behind the looking-glass,
Forever banished from its sight.

But the chess game moves ever onward,
And I, a lowly pawn,
Have slain the Black Knight with a double-edged sword,
And condemned myself to the dawn.

OPEN THREAD

 

 

The Wateing Hole: Tuesday September 9, 2014 – Envionmental News and Food Politics

1. Is this money well spent?

The grass is greener…

A better idea might be to replace the lawn with wildlife friendly native plants, or a vegetable plot. Here in Eugene, you’ll see many font yards tuned in to productive organic gardens.

 

2. If you can handle the English spellings and can convert from Euros to dollars, here is a compelling article.

The case for smaller, healthier dairy herds

Got milk to throw away?

 

 

The Watering Hole, Monday, September 8th, 2014: Huh?

I guess I’m a glutton for punishment, but over the weekend I was looking at the TP thread about Dick Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson’s recent appearance (apparently as a religious/foreign policy expert?) on Sean Hannity’s RWNJ lovefest, er, ‘news program.’ Robertson was asked about the situation with ISIS, or, more correctly, ISIL. (The full transcript, if you can stomach it, is here.) Here’s the pertinent excerpt of Robertson’s response:

“In this case, you either have to convert them which I think would be next to impossible. I’m not giving up on them but I’m just saying either convert them or kill them, one or the other…I think converting them, maybe has that time come and gone… [I’d] much rather have a bible study with all of them and show them the error of their ways and point them to Jesus Christ…however if it’s a gun fight and that’s what they’re looking for, me personally I am prepared for either one.”

At the TP thread, after reading way too many comments (including this gem: “The next attack in U.S. the only people that will Truly stand against them are Christians”)   expressing the idea that ISIL is coming to a neighborhood near you soon – or they’re already here – and we’ll all be beheaded in our beds, so as a good christian nation we should just kill them all, this started:

Dennis Terry ·
“If the liberals had these murderous animals coming into their house, they would do just as Phil suggested, and so would I. We ARE our brother’s keeper, and we should stand in the gap for the innocent and protect them from the murderous bullies that vow to dominate the world. We should get rid of them while the numbers are still on the lower end of the spectrum.”

Me ·
“”If the liberals had these murderous animals coming into their house”

All of you hate-filled “christian” fearmongers keep using this type of argument. Do you believe what some of the R politicians are saying, that ISIL warriors are coming through our southern border disguised as refugee children? Get a grip, and realize that some of the warhawk macho ‘we’ve got the TRUE god so let’s kill all of those fanatics who are killing for THEIR “true god.”

I have no more fear of an ISIL hit squad invading my house than I do of your god striking me dead for not believing in him. I’ll sleep peacefully tonight while you all wet your beds.”

Dennis Terry ·
“Jane E. Schneider First of all, I will not be wetting my bed at night, I am NOT losing sleep over them or liberals, nor am I a “hate filled” Christian. Who the heck died and gave YOU the right to look down your self righteous nose at us when you know nothing about us? I might possibly be the best friend that you ever had. Why are you so angry? I am my brother’s keeper and I want ISIS stopped at any cost to protect the innocent people over there. Is that hating? I think that it is loving the innocent and being forced to destroy evil. I don’t WANT anyone to die, but with these animalistic beings, the only choice we have to stop them is by killing them, just like we did Hitler, or any other murderous personification of evil. If they would live and let live, we could all live together in peace, but these radicals will NOT do that- they have a WELL KNOWN agenda of world domination, so you must know very little about them. Do you NOT think that these people going around cutting people’s heads off and raping the women and cutting off the children’s heads and putting them on poles….do you NOT think that they are acting like cold blooded animals? Do you NOT believe in evil? Do these people NOT fit your definition of evil? Why are you so venomous toward Christians instead of ISIS? Doesn’t that strike you a bit odd? It does me. And YES, if you had a murderer or a rapist come into your house at night, you would either WISH that you had a gun to protect yourself, your children or other loved ones, OR you would call someone with a gun (police), and hope that they made it there in time. If not, you would be a fool…….but wait a minute…..you don’t believe in God, so, according to the Bible, you ARE a fool from the get-go, for a fool hath said in his heart that there is no God. You can sit there and marinade in your hatred for Christians and all other things spiritual instead of directing your anger toward the REAL evil, you have that right., but you are foolish for doing that.

Me ·
Dennis Terry, I went to Catholic school for 13 years, was raised by very devout parents who actually exemplified Christ’s teachings better than the majority of “Christian” leaders and “Christian” pundits on TV. The very idea of killing anyone for their religious beliefs is abhorrent and a complete contradiction to everything Christ said. That was how I was brought up.

Today’s U.S. religious leaders are a whole ‘nother kettle of fish, and nothing that they are preaching these days has anything to do with actual morality and ethical behavior. And just because they no longer do their conquering crusades with swords or torture devices does not mean that they’re any less dangerous than any other religious fanatics. They have lost their own spirituality, their own morals, their own souls, for power and money and domination of others. The only real difference between U.S. religious fanatics and Middle-Eastern religious fanatics is their methods – both of which I reject.

If you and the other “Christian” commenters here think that your religious views are being attacked, too bad, we “godless liberals” have been under deliberate coordinated attack since at least the ’50s, when “In God We Trust” was added to our currency to distinguish the supposedly-god-fearing U.S. nation from those “godless commies.” So we’re pretty sick of it, because we DO have morals, and family values, and we work hard and pay taxes, and we’re patriotic, too.

[Please keep in mind that it’s 2:00am here in NY, so I’m tired and jumping around a bit, since you decided to ask me “20 questions”, not all of which I’m going to bother to respond to as they have nothing to do with the topic of the thread.]

I do believe in evil, but not in the satan/biblical way; I believe that some humans either lack or have a particular DNA section that makes them sociopaths. Obviously, people such as those in ISIL take that to a higher level, and I am not defending them in the least. I’m just sick and tired of the hypocrisy of so-called Christians who use their religion as a shield and a weapon, and cannot see that the more they advocate for violence, the less Christ-like they become. Not to mention the danger that they put the U.S. in, loudly calling for their own version of jihad, which does not go unnoticed around the world. But that aspect never seems to bother the growing number of xenophobic and insular U.S. citizens.

I don’t hate all Christians; like Ghandi said, “I like your Christ, but I don’t like your Christians.” If someone who claims to be Christian acts like the Christ that I learned about, I’m just fine with that, I applaud them. Just because I believe that most organized religions are a menace and hinder human progress, doesn’t mean that the particular set of moral values ascribed to Christ is dangerous, it’s the exact opposite. But these days I guess Christ isn’t described as the “Prince of Peace” anymore, right?

You can sit their with your own shield and weapon of your “Christianity” telling me that I’m the high and mighty one looking down my nose at you, but you’re the one marinating in your own assholier-than-thou [HT Zooey] stew telling me that I’m the fool “from the get-go” for not believing in your god and your holy book. You mind your own soul, and I’ll mind mine, thankyouverymuch. Goodnight.”

~ later, not as a reply ~

Dennis Terry ·
Look, I was minding my own business and from out of nowhere, you started attacking me and my God and Christianity, and making very goofy accusations which you had NO clue about. And THEN, you made the stupid statement of “’we’ve got the TRUE god so let’s kill all of those fanatics who are killing for THEIR “true god.” “ What? Where did that come from? It has NOTHING to do with Who I follow or what god THEY follow- ISIS needs to be stopped, NOT because they are Muslim, but because they are vile, evil , murderous thugs, so why did you say something that bizarre to start with, and why did you attack me instead of them? I haven’t murdered anyone or cut off anyone’s head!

Then you said, “And just because they no longer do their conquering crusades with swords or torture devices does not mean that they’re any less dangerous than any other religious fanatics.” Again, a stupid statement- Protestants never engaged in the Crusades, that was strictly a CATHOLIC doings, and what dangers do Christians have in store? Post the 10 Commandments in our schools to teach them moral values to protect society and to keep them from a life of crime? Or teach abstinence instead of having babies out of wedlock? Or lead some prison inmates to the Lord so that they stop their lives of crime, and become law abiding citizens? Or give Hope to the Hopeless? OMGosh! Call the National Guard! What happened to you to make you so angry about religion, Christianity in particular?

Then you said- “So we’re pretty sick of it (being attacked), because we DO have morals, and family values, and we work hard and pay taxes, and we’re patriotic, too.” But you are an atheist, so why do you have morals? Aren’t you a biological accident from some primordial slime? Aren’t morals God’s values? They aren’t biological in nature. The Bible talks about people like you, having a FORM of Godliness, but denying the Power thereof. This is going to sound mean, but I don’t intend for it to. I am GLAD that you had some wonderful parents that taught you morals, and that you are honoring them for that, but you need to get your priorities straight about what you are going to believe. If you are an atheist, act like an atheist and give up EVERYTHING pertaining to God, including morals and values.

Why are you liberal atheists “under attack”? Because a small, handful of atheists go out of their way to take Prayer and Bible out of school and our sporting events and our graduation ceremonies and are trying to remove ALL aspects of Christianity from society, even though the VAST MAJORITY do NOT want them removed. We KNOW that Christianity teaches those same morals that you are so proud of having, taught to you BY CHRISTIAN parents, and we know that THAT is WHERE your parents got them from to teach to you in the first place! Can’t you see the hypocrisy there? You have morals and values, that YOU ARE PROUD OF, TAUGHT TO YOU BY CHRISTIAN parents, yet you want to prevent other people from being taught those same vales and morals that you seem to hold so dear! The Bible, once again talks about atheists who in the Last Days will call GOOD-EVIL, and will call EVIL-GOOD.

You say that you believe in Evil, but NOT in a Biblical way, but evil “IS” a moral judgment FROM God. From an atheistic, evolutionary point of view, we are animals, and animals do whatever they do, there is NO right or wrong, good or evil- THOSE ARE moral judgments, straight from a Moral God. The atheistic, evolutionary view is, Survival of the fittest, kill or be killed- THESE are natural events and actions WITHOUT God, without Morals. THAT is why atheistic regimes and dictators murder multiple-millions of their people, their subjects, to make examples out of them to keep the rest in line to maintain their death grip on their selfish, atheistic power.

And then you sink to your atheistic true colors by calling me, “assholier-than-thou “ comment. I would NEVER say that to you, and I believe that your atheism is overshadowing your “moral” upbringing.

I don’t understand the double mindedness, and double standards of atheism, or why you work so hard to fight against something that you claim to NOT believe in. There are people who believe in unicorns- I DON’T believe in unicorns or UFO’s so why in the world would I waste my time fighting them for their beliefs? Something to consider- WHAT IF, the Bible “IS” TRUE, and where the Bible says, If God is NOT your Father, then you are of your father, Satan, what if- your hatred toward Christianity and all things pertaining to God is actually a SPIRITUAL matter, and you atheists are pawns, being used by Satan and not realizing it? That’s something to consider.”

Adm Andrew J. Walker ·
“Good arguments my friend. An atheist wouldn’t actually have the time to debate a religious article because they would see it as a waste of time (a total rejection of all forms of theology or anyone who practices them.) It sounds like this guy is looking for justification for deviating from what he was taught growing up by attacking others. The goal is to see if his arguments stand, so that he can feel better about his decision to reject what he or she learned at an early age.

So basically the comments on the message board are his or her way of dealing with repressed feelings of anxiety about the afterlife. Better not to let someone drag you into a circular debate that at its root isn’t actually about religion, or the lack-there-of, at all.

What I am really saying is that there are some mommy/daddy issues here.”

Dennis Terry ·
“Adm Andrew J. Walker I believe that is very perceptive of you. But atheists do this all the time, and the person I was talking to, there is a double mindedness that she is proud of, yet hates and wants to destroy, all at the same time, so something else is brewing underneath the surface it seems. I truly believe that it is spiritual warfare, and these people, as I said, are being used as pawns, and have no idea of what is REALLY going on. She said things about the Catholic church which I wonder is the root of her hatred, and if so, I can understand it, as the CC has ALWAYS had many, multiple conflicts with the Bible, and a history of unBiblical, unhealthy, spiritual issues. Thanks for the comment my friend!”

Becky Marsland-Hill ·
“Wow, that is spot on Dennis……I am sorry someone attacked you. But those are truly words of wisdom you replied back”

Dennis Terry ·
“Becky Marsland-Hill Thanks Becky. I’m not saying that I am perfect or that I am wise in anyway, but I “DO” know God and He wants us to take a stand against evil and to help others in need. God Himself waged wars against evil doers to protect the world, and His people. He also had a lot to say about those who would reject Him and His incredible sacrifice to purchase our Salvation. This person was spewing hatred toward the Christianity for the Crusades, and that was bogus. It was NOT Christianity- it was the leadership of the CATHOLIC church, of which she, herself was raised! The leadership of the CC was NOT acting as agents of Christianity- they were engaged in unGodly activities such as murdering Christians, and burning the Christians and anyone else who DARED to disagree with them at the stake. They went around in the Crusades and other areas DOING EXACTLY OPPOSITE OF WHAT JESUS TAUGHT! They were doing exactly what atheists have always done- silence those who disagree with you, however you have to do it, and isn’t smart enough to see that she is hating Christianity for what the atheists were doing, under the guise OF RELIGION! Anyway, I feel so sorry for people like her and wish her well”

Wow – just wow.  As badmoodman commented on this last week, “Irony facepalms itself, then throws up its hands in unconditional surrender.”  Perfect, bmm.
This is our daily open thread, please talk about anything you want to.  I’ll just be over here banging my head against the wall.

Sunday Roast: Full Circle?

Stephen Fry discusses the power of language in our seeming quest to destroy “the other.”

I had a facebook “friend” who would respond to some of my posts in the most vile manner, and I asked her why she was being so vicious and aggressive.  She said she just didn’t think Liberals were moral people, so she didn’t really care about their [my] feelings.  WOW.

Like he says, once you dehumanize someone else, it’s possible to do just about anything to them — and it’s absolutely true.

This is our daily open thread — Be careful out there, people.