Katrina 2 Years Later

Its been 2 years since Katrina hit New Orleans. We are still paying the cost of compassionate conservatism.

(Image from Suspect Device via Blue Gal)

Where Are We Getting The Troops?

Sydney Morning Herald:

THE US President, George Bush, has given his strongest indication yet that he intends to continue with plans to increase troop numbers in Iraq after the September 15 report to Congress, when he delivered an upbeat assessment of military progress and a more positive view of the political outlook.

Where are we getting these troops, and why is Bush about to go against the advice of the general he (and breathless Republicans) urged us to wait for?

Will we let this slide?

Will the sight of a Republican standing up to his party and his President urge us all to take a bolder stand?

Bush’s Vendetta

“I want our fellow citizens to consider what would happen if these forces of radicalism and extremism are allowed to drive us out of the Middle East,” Bush told the veterans in Nevada.

(OpEdNews)

He continued:

“I want this country to realize that we stand on the edge of oblivion. I want everyone to remember *why* they need us!”

2008 can’t come soon enough.  Let’s make sure we don’t elect another Sutler.

Beijing to Surfers: BOOOO!

Beijing is planning on using animations to scare web users into compliance with Communist party rules (Yahoo via Slashdot):

The animated police appeared designed to startle Web surfers and remind them that authorities closely monitor Web activity. However, the statement did not say whether there were plans to boost monitoring further.

Big Brother is watching. And Uncle Sam is looking the other way. Unless we’re talking about trade issues. Then you’ve got our attention.

A bit more on the imagery being used.  Did you ever have a teacher who eschewed the red pen in favor of the pencil?  Your paper still was covered in notes and markings.  But didn’t that D look better in a dull gray, rather than in an imperious red?

The Chinese government is exercising an authority that is neither legitimate nor comforting.  In fact it is downright frightening.  You could go to jail and be tortured.  Be blacklisted and tracked.  All for reading and expressing your opinion.  A stern police officer, representative of the thugs who would be sent to bash your skull and drag you in for questioning, would be a constant reminder of the nature of the beast.  Softening the blow, however little, invites victims (in this case Chinese citizens) to play along with the myth that such poisonous domestic monitoring is natural.  Good, even.

By making the cartoon officers so stereotypically “good”, you are sending the message that “Hey, I know you’re following our really nice laws, but please be careful not to make a mistake, ok?”.

Either way, it is a symbol of oppression, and one that will be shoved down citizen’s throats on a daily basis.

There are ways to fight back.  Check out CitizenLab.

Larry Craig Isn’t Gay!

Well he isn’t.  He’s Bi-Curious.  Get it right people.  There’s no problem here (Mike by way of Pam):

“Senator Craig’s situation is exacerbated by the fact that he has a voting record that is counter to the interest of lesbian and gay Americans. All too often, closeted men like Senator Craig use their voting record to hide their truth from the American people. With this news now out in the open, I call upon Senator Craig to reevaluate his votes on issues like the Federal Marriage Amendment, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and the Defense of Marriage Act.

No contradiction whatsoever (Amanda):

[…] look at Craig’s voting history and really soak in that this is a man who votes by the principle of no panty drawer unsniffed, no phone untapped, no surreptitious glances between young lovers (particularly of the same sex) unregulated. He must know at all time what you’re doing not only with your genitals but with your foot taps.

Is the foot-tapping law unjust? Absolutely.

Is it just for Craig to be hoisted by his own petards? Absolutely.

Pffft.  Whatevs.  All I can say is someone is going to look fabulous the next time the Defense of Marriage act comes up.

Hillary Scores a Hit on Gonzales Resignation

In an otherwise bothersome post (how is singing the same song on Gonzales bad?  So you don’t like it when Dems provide a united front?), Don Frederick (LA Times) has a really nice catch:

It said: “The second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is one more reminder that the president must appoint someone to lead the Department of Justice with the leadership and competence necessary to defend the Constitution.”

At first blush, the connection between the catastrophe that afflicted New Orleans and defending the Constitution struck us as puzzling.  But it made more sense in light of speculation that Michael Chertoff, head of the of Department of Homeland Security, could be Bush’s choice to succeed Gonzales.

Both Chertoff and his agency were roundly criticized for the poor federal response to Katrina.  Clinton seems to be sending a clear signal that Bush should think twice about asking the Senate to confirm Chertoff as the next attorney general.

And the Republicans should think twice about letting him get away with another recess appointment.  Sneaking Chertoff in will not go unnoticed, and would speak volumes about the Republican party’s vision for ’08 and beyond.  Meanwhile, tip of the hat to Hillary Clinton.  Starting to build pressure against Chertoff now is a really good move.

Goodbye Gonzales (See You In Court)

Alberto Gonzales has resigned.  While I’m happy to see him leave, the next guy isn’t likely to be Johnny Justice:

For starters, W. will try to put one person forward, the dems will nix them, and W. will appoint in the middle of the next vacation of congress. This person will simply replace gonzales and will ensure that no real investigation occurs until the end of W. time.

Gonzales replaced this guy, after all.  Its not going to get better folks.  Bloggernista some of the reactions from Congress.  This one quote by the delusional McConnell was priceless (Guardian):

“It is my hope that whomever President Bush selects as the next attorney general, he or she is not subjected to the same poisonous partisanship that we’ve sadly grown accustomed to over the past eight months,” McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement.

Poisonous Partisanship.  Bitterly ironic quip, given that is precisely what Gonzeles, Rove and Bush are being investigated for.  And they are still very much under investigation:

“This resignation is not the end of the story. Congress must get to the bottom of this mess and follow the facts where they lead, into the White House,” Reid warned.

Right on!  We’ve got to encourage our Congressional leaders who are actually doing something to keep fighting.  This is about more than just the Attorney General (Guardian, emphasis mine):

Thousands of documents released by the Justice Department show a White House plot, hatched shortly after the 2004 elections, to replace U.S. attorneys. At one point, senior White House officials, including Rove, suggested replacing all 93 prosecutors. In December 2006, eight were ordered to resign.

They considered replacing every federal prosecutor.  I hadn’t realized that before, and seeing it now, its startling to say the least.  Gonzales may be headed out the door, but we need to make sure we hold him and this entire administration accountable for what they have done to our political system.  And we need to make damn sure another Republican doesn’t get into office in 2008.  Otherwise what Bush, Rove and Gonzales attempted, Rudy “Caligula” Guiliani and his own troupe will achieve:  A one party US.

Comcast’s False Advertising

There’s some discussion about the fairness of Comcast’s invisible bandwidth limits. There’s two problems with this. One is the difficulty of complying with an unknown or unmeetable requirement:

This is where the secrecy creates problems, really. Sure, maybe an invisible something or another is better than a low explicit one, but you can’t defend yourself if they’ve got it wrong, because there’s no documentation. They don’t even always tell the subscriber how much the subscriber has downloaded, and it appears that they may even lie about that. They don’t want anyone knowing anything, basically. “Just cut back”.

This is quite literally insane. We are invited into a house for tea, then warned by the frothing host “don’t cross the line!”. When we ask “Which line?”, the host reveals nothing. But step over that line? Baseball bat to the face!

The big problem I have with their invisible limits is that this is a corporation getting away with false advertising. If you advertising “unlimited”, you had better provide unlimited. Comcast does not. And this same company tries to assure us to trust them when it comes to Net Neutrality. Why should we, both as customers and as citizens, believe a word they say?

This is bad for their brand. When it becomes clear that Comcast stands for false advertising, poor customer service, and and a psycho-authoritarian approach to bandwidth, this can’t be good for the company. Supposing more competitors step up to the plate, they will find themselves losing customers.

In the meantime we can support Net Neutrality.

Scent of a Saint

This is silly and awesome and awful all at once, in your face!

Wolfrum at Shakespeare’s old haunt has the low down on holy perfume:

“Practically all religions and Spiritual practices, persons of high Spiritual attainment are known to give off a fragrance, attributed to their Virtue. Christ, many of the Saints, and numerous others with highly developed spirituality, are, historically, known to have given off such a fragrance.”

And there it was. It all came flooding back to me. Virtue. Hollywood. Anal sex. Virtue. Jews. Anal sex. Catholicism. Emasculate. Virtue.

“In other words, we were creating a fragrance to lead people to their own Virtue.”

I shuddered. I had been led to my virtue. I would never be the same, thanks to William D. And Virtue.

The whole post is a quick and delightful read.  Also?  I have to share this:

“Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular … Hollywood likes anal sex,” he said, virtue literally dripping from the corner of his mouth. He sexily dabbed at it with a handkerchief.

Such prose!  Such virtue!

You know what might be even more hilarious?  Rainbow Body facepaint.  Now you too can attain a state of physical mastery!  (Because nothing says spiritual like purchasing and slathering something on your face.)

The Media, Opus, Islam, and Censorship

Some media outlets have censored comics from Berkeley Breathed, and the right wing pajamo-sphere has the typical overreaction:

Update (Bryan): In the story of the two spiked Opus comic strips, we see the creep of dhimmitude over the US media.

Yeah, that probably sounded overly dramatic. Sorry, this stuff makes me a little gloomy — we need Ernie Pyle but we keep getting Robert Fisk.

This is framed as a question of cowardice in the face of over sensitive Muslim sensibilities:

Which gets us back to the big fact of the day: Terrorism works.

It takes a real coward to spike something as innocuous as this.

No.  Capitalism works.  This isn’t a case of kowtowing to radical Islam.  Its an organization that exists for profit putting perceived risk above freedom of speech.  The editors weren’t thinking “Oh God!  9/11, 9/11!  We’ve got to censor this penguin!”.  It was probably more like “Will this get us sued?”.   Fear yes, but of a different sort.

Still something to be opposed.  We just don’t need hysterical claptrap like this:

At least a subsection of the press in the US is self-censoring (again) out of fear of offending Muslims, hoping to prevent another cartoon jihad or at least keep themselves out of the way when another one erupts.

What we should do is try and get some clarification from the Press.  Why are you censoring Opus?

And as Mark Levin might say, and another thing: Doonesbury has been running a series of strips about a terrorist following a US soldier home from Iraq “if we cut and ran” for the past several days. As one character even says, the terrorist is a “profiler’s dream,” which evidently means he looks Arab and says he’s a terrorist and says “death to you” if you annoy him. Start reading the series here and work your way forward.

Differences: Doonesbury is making an obviously anti-war point, and hasn’t caused a stir at all, while Opus isn’t making any particular point (beyond the flippancy of some granola-brained hippies I suppose) but is being spiked in some newspapers. Both have about an equal chance of offending Muslims, I’d say, or even that Doonesbury has a slight edge there.

AllahPundit misses the point.  Opus directly confronts aspects of Islam (and our own societal flaws).  Doonesbury directly confronts the logical inconsistencies inherent in the war supporter’s arguments.  Not quite the same.  At all, really.

Just another excuse to lambast the so called liberal media for its cowardice, when in fact we should all be confronting the corporate media for their censorship.

Adnan Oktar & Turkey vs WordPress Update!

First of all, there is a petition over at MidEastYouth to sign.

Also?  Adnar Oktar responds to teh bloggers (RickB, Ten Percent, emphasis is mine)!

The block is the result of a litigious prick called Adnan Oktar who runs a wonky cult that believes in creationism among its moronic credos. That he has managed to block all of wordpress in Turkey is a shameful blow against free speech in a country that often censors dissent. Adnan Oktar sent out a ludicrous letter which showed as well as rejecting science he also rejects paying good translators, here is what this authoritarian cult nut-job has to say-

There is a lesson which all blog services and internet service providers should take from this judgement. Blog services, especially the ones that give free service, should be careful about the sites that are illegally active through their firms. These services should not remain insensitive to the complaints that they receive and especially to the judgements. It is certain that the services which behave opppositely will meet with the same enforcement that WordPress met.
Blog owners should be careful when they are selecting the service from which they are going to get service. They have to choose a service respectful to law, human rights, justice judgements not a random service. If they do like this, they will provide continuous progress of their publications and also they will force the blog services to behave according to rights and law. Thus, both freedom of intelligence, and personal rights are going to be protected.

Incoherent delusional authoritarian bullshit brother! Basically if you say something this retard doesn’t like he gets everyone shut down and has a hissy fit like a big stupid girl and plays the victim.

What a steaming pile of corrosive rhinoceros offal!  “We had to remove your freedom of speech in order to protect it”.  Sounds like a George Nixon Bush line.  No one is buying:

The serious point is teaching authoritarian censorship fetishist that the minute you try and stifle dissent on the web it becomes a game of whackamole, for every site you silence ten, a hundred, a thousand pop up (and insult you gratuitously).

Indeed.  And in addition to gratuitously insults to a man trying his very best to censor opposition, there is the petition:

Now Mideast Youth meta blog has a petition up here which I urge you to sign before every 70’s throwback religious wankjob starts to feel their oats and sics lawyers on anyone not conforming to their sham delusions.

Let’s grow that petition like we did the Virginia Driving Fee Petition (which jumped to 175,000 +!).  We need to think strategy and rhetorical impact folks, just like he and his lawyers are.  They figure if they can shut off wordpress and chill bloggers into avoiding any blogging service that allows dissent, they can deal a major blow to Adnan Oktar’s critics.  Well I figure that be turning up the political pressure on Turkey and the social pressure on Adnar, we can deal a major blow to “every 70’s throwback religious wankjob” and every other fly infested sack of authoritarian impulses that tries to censor us.

Sign the petition.  Write to your local legislators and your local Turkish embassy.  Free speech is a world-wide issue, and it is central to every form of dissent, and every expression of politics.

Ron Paul’s Religious Bullshit on DADT

Or why Ron Paul won’t take a solid position.  A while back, I observed that Ron’s evolving position on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell seemed promising (and of course his supporters were quick to hail, slow to critique).  I wondered:

If he would simply change the scope, then Ron Paul has only taken an illusory step forward, as he would potentially still be providing cover for homophobic personnel policy within the military.  If he would remove the statement entirely, this would be a remarkable move for the campaign to make.

Well, guess which one it was (via Pam Spaulding, Pandagon)?

Paul is then asked about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Lofton first goes into a fairly lengthy diatribe about how all sinners need to be booted from the military.

LOFTON: We’ll try to stop anyone from getting in the military who is a homosexual, who is an adulterer, who is a fornicator, and then other categories that indicate a character flaw. Why we shouldn’t try to do that?”PAUL: Looking it in protecting the military if they are going to perform the services, and they are imperfect — because we’re all imperfect and we all sin. If a heterosexual or homosexual sins, that to me is the category of dealing with their own soul. Since we cannot have only perfect people going in the military I want to separate the two because I don’t want to know the heterosexual flaws, nor the homosexual flaws and that’s why I got in some trouble with some of the civil libertarians because I don’t have any problem with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Because I don’t think that, for the practicality of running a  military, I’d just as soon not know every serious thing that any heterosexual or homosexual did, and those flaws have to do with all our flaws because each and everyone one of us has those imperfections.

This is ridiculous. Again, heteronormativity blinds Paul to the fact that gays don’t want the repeal of DADT to have sex in the barracks — gays and lesbians simply do not want to hide their orientation. Heterosexuals serving our country are able to speak openly about their lives — a partner back home, for instance, without fearing that they will be kicked out of the military. Heterosexuality, and the culture that surrounds it, is everywhere, presumed and affirmed.

In other words, this isn’t about removing a failed policy.  It is about changing the scope.  No word at all about keeping religion out of the military.  And that is not surprising given Ron Paul’s worrying positions on religion in the US.   So much so that I can comfortably say the man is a right wing religious fundamentalist in libertarian’s clothing.

Let’s take a closer look at his answer to this question:

LOFTON: Do you believe it [homosexuality] is a sin?

PAUL: I have not…I’m not as judgmental about that probably because of my medical background, so I don’t see it in those simplistic terms; I think it’s a complex issue to decide whether it’s sin or other problems with the way people are born. It’s to me too complex to give an answer as simple as that.

In other words, homosexuality is either a sexual deformity or a sin.  Nice.  Do you suppose he would be supportive of pre-natal anti-gay treatments then?

Ron’s position on gays in the military is an excellent indicator.  Both of his moral fiber and his position on gay rights.  Here is a man who is clearly trying his best to have it both ways.  To appear a defender of libertarian ideals, common sense and gay rights, and also a good radical Christian who believes issues of sin(rather than say, crime) have their place in the military.  In one interview he hints that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is bull, and should be changed.  In another, he insists it is about sin, and that sin should be kept hidden.  In other words, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, but for every sin, every flaw (emphasis mine):

Since we cannot have only perfect people going in the military I want to separate the two because I don’t want to know the heterosexual flaws, nor the homosexual flaws and that’s why I got in some trouble with some of the civil libertarians because I don’t have any problem with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

There you are.  Ron Paul’s position on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  In direct competition with his position on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell:

He was kicked out, for no real good reason at all, and I would, I would want to change that, I don’t support that interpretation

Which is it?  Given his other positions on the role of religion in the public sphere, I’m thinking it is his latest position:  Ron Paul doesn’t have a problem with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  He has a problem with straight talk.

Upward Mobility: Mixed Signals From Society

It suddenly hit me. Why everyone is so obsessed with Britney Spears and Kevin Federline. Its because they have zero class! This is highly problematic however. You see, we have this myth of upward mobility that keeps everyone who isn’t rich laboring under the assumption that they too, can transcend their caste. Aside from naked racism and religious pandering, its the primary recruitment vector for Republicans.

But this produces a state of psychological conflict. On the one hand, every good boy (and to a far lesser extent, girl) knows that they can one day become wealthy enough to care about the estate tax if they work super hard. The problem is that they will never, ever, be valued as wealthy people. For a country that once put so much patriotic emphasis on being common folk, we are obsessed with the idea of American royalty.

Thus as we go about our national folklore, making princes of paupers, we leave one very important proviso set in stone: You will never be elite. While the majority of Americans are stuck within a rigid economic caste system, those few who do escape it and move up the financial ladder remain forever caught within the social caste system. The resulting effects on our culture and our politics are toxic.

The essence of democratic thought is that we are all equal as citizens. Right now, people don’t buy that for a second. Right now, we don’t have a democracy.

Kanye West Had it Wrong About Bush

Rather, he had it wrong about Bush’s brain.  Digby wrote this, and you really must read it all:

That picture of Bush looking down on the city from on high in his favorite little air force one costume was a terrible image. But there can be no doubt that what Rove was thinking about in those moments was not whether it would be good for the country or the people of New Orleans for the president to get on the ground immediately. He was thinking about how to turn the situation into a political advantage.

…

But none of that is what Karl Rove was likely to have really been interested in. He was happy to promote free market ideology and ensure that important contributors were cut in on the action, but his holy grail was creating an enduring Republican majority. (And we know he did not have a lot of scruples when it came to doing it.)

Louisiana has been a swing state for some time, in which Democrats were dependent on the black majority in the state’s largest city to win. It was not lost on Rove that all of those poor New Orleans African Americans — and their children — being dispersed throughout the nation could only be good for Republicans. As of now, only about 66% have returned, not enough to keep the state swinging (in more ways than one.) It looks very likely that the state will have a Republican Governor and two Republican Senators in 2008. Experts in the area estimate that the congressional delegation advantage for Republicans will be five to one by 2012. There is little doubt that the Katrina diaspora finally turned the state blood red.

You see, Rove really did care about Black people.  He cared about getting them out of Louisiana.  Katrina wasn’t the Bush administration’s iconic domestic failure.  It was the success of their new southern strategy:

You can’t blame West for thinking he didn’t care. But it was likely far more cynical than that. Rove was busy counting votes that day he and the president flew over the city and he undoubtedly knew that an opportunity presented itself if New Orleans were destroyed. And he knew something else too: that if certain people heard tales of African Americans lawlessly marauding through the streets and saw hours of footage of poor black women with children it would successfully tweak the southern racist lizard brain to solidify those gains.

The Republican party is perfectly willing to pay any cost to win.  Whether that cost is the mounting body count in Iraq, or the continuing suffering of the victims of hurricane Katrina in the US.  Rove isn’t, and never was, a political genius.  He is a man with limitless ambition and no ethical boundaries.  In other words, Karl Rove is the modern Republican party.

Of Christians, Matyrs, and Proof

There is a thought provoking post up over at Johnathan Groover’s place. I ran into it via Finding Truth. A comment over there immediately piqued my interest (emphasis mine):

yep, i think this is one that most skeptics cant really answer. there are many things that people die for. there are people who will even knowingly die for a lie (cultures where “saving face” is important will do so). but they wont go from being cowards one moment to stalwart defenders of the faith the next….UNLESS there was something that changed.

Joy oh joy, a challenge! So I bounded over to have a look (emphasis mine):

Now, I made it clear that Christians are not the only people to be persecuted and die for their faith. Many Muslims have gladly given their lives in the name of “Holy War.” Many Jews were slaugtered simply because of who they were. But I must say, just as Jesus Christ stands in a league of His own in the religious figures throughout world religions, so too the disciples and early Christians who were martyred for sharing the message of Christ stand worlds apart from those who have died for “religious causes.”

Really? There are numerous cases, across a range of faiths, were people were killed for sticking to and preaching their beliefs. Look at the Sufi masters who were killed for proclaiming they were God, or Jews asked to convert to Christianity, who preferred to be brutally murdered instead. Christians are not at all unique in being killed for standing up for their religious beliefs.

Here’s the next interesting piece:

History has shown that eleven of the twelve disciples of Jesus were martyred for their witness of Christ. Let me give a few examples. Matthew the tax collector was beheaded by the sword. Mark was tied up behind horses and literally had his body dragged to pieces for his faith.

…

Now here’s the big problem. These men made a bold claim. They (along with 120, and a larger 500) claimed to see Jesus die and then rise from the dead. On top of that, these men all abandoned Christ in His greatest time of need. They were complete cowards (as I would have been) and feared retaliation. Yet, all of sudden, these men are proclaiming at the cost of their lives, a message of the resurrection of Jesus Christ who is also the Messiah (or savior) of the world. They went from being coward to becoming some of the boldest men in the entire world.

Ok. What’s your source? The primary source is the Bible. In other words, the central claim of this “unanswerable question” for skeptics relies on circular reasoning to make its point. Of course this is a compelling claim to make, that “12 cowardly men” died bravely for something they “saw”. But how do we skeptics know that this is the actual history?

Men will die for a belief. These men died beacuse they saw something…

Those men supposedly died because they believed in what they saw. In other words, they still died for a belief. It may be a justified true belief, but it was a belief nonetheless. And of course this assumes they saw what they claim they did.

And that’s part of the problem. Too much is taken for granted here. Like this:

But I must say, just as Jesus Christ stands in a league of His own in the religious figures throughout world religions

How is he unique? Being killed for his beliefs? Liberating beings from hell? Being the son of God? Suffering for the benefit of mankind? You can find examples of each in the surrounding Pagan religions of the time, in Judaism and Islam, and in Buddhism. That’s just off the top of my head.

The question of why people would die for a belief is a very important one to be asking. As would be looking into the similarities throughout history within the context of religious persecution. But any critical look at history must employ logic. If you start your investigation with your conclusions all neatly in place, you’ll only end up where you began.