The thing that has always amazed me about those who choose to believe in Creationism instead of Evolution and the nutjobs who can look at a disappearing polar ice cap and say Global Warming is fiction, is that it takes very little to dismiss either one. Mostly because anyone who can look at the mountains of evidence that support both the Theory of Evolution and Global Warming and dismiss them outright can only do so out of Faith. They choose to not believe, because if they believed it would contradict their carefully constructed fantasy about the reality of the Universe. The Theory of Evolution contradicts the Creationism of The Bible. And if Man can directly influence and damage the planet, as with Global Warming, that is in defiance of God’s apparent intent. We couldn’t possibly damage the planet because God would never allow us to do so. Argument over.

The most annoying thing about theses people’s tactics is that they trot out a few hand-picked “experts” who loudly disagree with accepted science, a handful of nutjobs who are willing to go on record as lunatics, and then declare that there’s “no consensus”. 99% of scientists may agree that Global Warming is a significant problem facing the Earth, but because that insane 1% claims that the mountains of scientific evidence that supports the reality of Global Warming is bogus, the lunatic fringe insists that “both sides be represented”, as if each side has an equally valid argument.

Look, if your pants are on fire and 99 of the 100 people around you tell you so, isn’t it rather insane to listen to that 1 person who tells you that the flames are all a product of your imagination? Are you going to humor that person when he tells you that both sides of the argument over whether your pants are on fire should be represented to be fair?

Well, according to an article by Leslie Kaufman in the New York Times, there are those who insist that we do just that.

In Kentucky, a bill recently introduced in the Legislature would encourage teachers to discuss “the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories,” including “evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.”

The bill, which has yet to be voted on, is patterned on even more aggressive efforts in other states to fuse such issues. In Louisiana, a law passed in 2008 says the state board of education may assist teachers in promoting “critical thinking” on all of those subjects.

Last year, the Texas Board of Education adopted language requiring that teachers present all sides of the evidence on evolution and global warming.

Oklahoma introduced a bill with similar goals in 2009, although it was not enacted.

The linkage of evolution and global warming is partly a legal strategy: courts have found that singling out evolution for criticism in public schools is a violation of the separation of church and state. By insisting that global warming also be debated, deniers of evolution can argue that they are simply championing academic freedom in general.

Read Full Article @ NY Times >>

An excellent article by Alex Koppelman at Salon.com examines a leaked document that gives us a look into way the RNC thinks of its donors. It’s disturbing that the Republicans are brazenly discussing the tactic of fear as a way to gain political momentum. Like their propaganda dissimination arm, Fox News, they’re not even pretending anymore. And why should they? The “mainstream media” that the Republicans love to deride never calls them on their B.S.

Alex Koppelman says;

It hasn’t been terribly hard to divine the Republicans’ strategy for motivating their base this year – they’ve made it pretty clear, after all. It’s fear. Fear of President Obama, fear of change, fear of some giant socialist revolution, of death panels, of government bureaucrats and liberals and anything else that might pop up. Still, you wouldn’t expect the Republican National Committee to come right out and admit to that.

That’s exactly what RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart did, however, as part of a presentation he gave to donors and fundraisers last month. The presentation, obtained by Politico’s Ben Smith, includes several slides that portray the GOP’s own supporters in a very negative light, giving the impression that the RNC believes its donors are stupid, and that it plans to treat them that way.

One of the slides (three can be seen below; the full presentation is available for download in PDF form here) divides donors into two groups — major donors and smaller ones who are reached through direct marketing efforts. The latter group, the slide says, gives for visceral reasons: “Fear” and “Extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration” are listed. The slide also tags this group with a term usually used in an less-than-flattering sense: “Reactionary.” The major donors don’t fare much better; they give, the slide says, for “Networking Opportunities” and “Access” and they’re “Ego-Driven.”

Read Full Article @ Salon >>

Only in America could people who wrap themselves in the flag and blather on about fighting a war against Terrorism applaud a Terrorist act when it’s committed by one of their own. If you haven’t heard, Joe Stack was a 53-year-old software engineer who crashed his small plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas on Thursday. He left behind a 3,200-word suicide note, in which he said;

“I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.”

Much to the surprise of most Americans, the Right-Wing nutjobs in the Patriot movement have hailed Joe Stack as a hero, instead of justly branding him as a Terrorist (which is what he was). If you need a definition of what a Terrorist is, the following will suffice;

“Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion. At present, there is no internationally agreed definition of terrorism. Common definitions of terrorism refer only to those violent acts which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for an ideological goal, and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants (civilians).”

Anyone who applauds this man’s action is no better than the Muslims they claim to hate who applaud when yet another American is beheaded in Al Queda videos. I would go as far as to state that I have a hard time differentiating between a religious zealot who runs into a market armed with dynamite and blows himself up, and a political zealot like Joe Stack who flies his plane into a building full of people. A Terrorist is a Terrorist. The only semantics here are methods.

Yesterday I thought of the nutjobs in the Far Right Patriot movement as a bunch of misfits who moan and complain, but largely make their dissatisfaction known by voting for Ron Paul. But after Joe Stack flew a plane into an IRS office building in Austin, Texas, and these people applauded, I realized that the Patriot movement is the enemy of my country. Therefore they are my enemy. And if this violence continues, every one of them should be hunted down and sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Let’s keep all of the Terrorists in the same place, shall we?

For more reading on this subject, I recommend;

• Joe Stack Hailed as Hero (ABC News)
• Joseph Stack’s familiar anti-government tune (Washington Post)
• Terrorism in Texas (Huffington Post)

[The ever-reliable Paul Krugman posted an article at the NY Times (excerpted below) about the Republicans' latest efforts to dismantle Medicare. It's always amazed me that many of my elderly relatives who depend on Medicare faithfully vote Republican. To me, that's like a chicken voting for a fox to be protector of the hen-house. - Wicasta]

“Don’t cut Medicare. The reform bills passed by the House and Senate cut Medicare by approximately $500 billion. This is wrong.” So declared Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, in a recent op-ed article written with John Goodman, the president of the National Center for Policy Analysis.

And irony died.

Now, Mr. Gingrich was just repeating the current party line. Furious denunciations of any effort to seek cost savings in Medicare — death panels! — have been central to Republican efforts to demonize health reform. What’s amazing, however, is that they’re getting away with it.

Why is this amazing? It’s not just the fact that Republicans are now posing as staunch defenders of a program they have hated ever since the days when Ronald Reagan warned that Medicare would destroy America’s freedom. Nor is it even the fact that, as House speaker, Mr. Gingrich personally tried to ram through deep cuts in Medicare — and, in 1995, went so far as to shut down the federal government in an attempt to bully Bill Clinton into accepting those cuts.

No, what’s truly mind-boggling is this: Even as Republicans denounce modest proposals to rein in Medicare’s rising costs, they are, themselves, seeking to dismantle the whole program. And the process of dismantling would begin with spending cuts of about $650 billion over the next decade. Math is hard, but I do believe that’s more than the roughly $400 billion (not $500 billion) in Medicare savings projected for the Democratic health bills.

Read Full Article >>>

CNN contributor John Avlon attended the Tea Party’s first convention Friday and Saturday in Nashville, Tennessee, and wrote an excellent article for CNN examining the Tea Party’s likely future. He is the author of “Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America.”

As the National Tea Party Convention concluded this weekend, it’s clear that the Tea Partiers are propelled by two competing claims — a principled commitment to fiscal conservatism and a serious case of Obama Derangement Syndrome.

The first group remains true to the roots of the movement as it emerged almost one year ago amid bailout backlash. They feel like modern Paul Reveres, warning their fellow citizens about the unsustainable nature of our government’s deficit spending and unprecedented debt.

They still have an important civic role to play in our national debate.

The second group reflects the overheated, hyperpartisanship that emerged over the August town halls and the 9/12 march on Washington.

Oddly enough, this group embraced the tactics of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and applied them to the conservative cause, with angry confrontation and street theater protests. They ascribe to Obama every sinister characteristic imaginable — often a secret plot to undermine our constitutional republic and put in a socialist, one-world government in its place.

This is the crowd that carries the signs comparing Obama to Hitler and communists, while proclaiming themselves patriots. Their extremism will ultimately lead the movement to self-destruct unless it is clearly repudiated.

Read Full Article >>

Well, if you’ve ever wondered what the spawn of Right-Wing nutjob Phyllis Schlafly might be up to, here’s your answer. He founded an online “encyclopedia” intended as a right-leaning rebuttal to Wikipedia. You know, because facts seem to have a “Liberal bias” that conflicts with established Conservative ideology.

In a recent interview, Andrew Schlafly said he created Conservapedia to combat “liberal biases on Wikipedia,” an online encyclopedia with more than 11 million registered users and 65 million site visits per month. Conservapedia has 34,259 registered users.

“Wikipedia does not allow conservative truth to be inserted into entries of particular interest to liberals,” said Schlafly in charging that entries on abortion, evolution and global warming are routinely purged.

A spokesman for the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco countered that Wikipedia, founded in 2001, seeks a “neutral point of view” in more than 270 languages and does not permit censorship of differing viewpoints. Which, of course, would conflict with Conservative theology, since the suppression of opposing viewpoints is a standard tactic.

…click here to read more

If you haven’t heard by now, Sarah Palin has joined the Fox News network as a commentator. This is a win/win for anyone who thinks she’s a dangerous ego-maniac. Palin gets a dedicated slot to go on television and whine about anybody who disagrees with her (and make herself look like even more foolish), and Fox News gets to make an even bigger joke out of their slogan, “fair and balanced”. At this point, shouldn’t Fox News be required to register as a political organization? Aren’t they taking point on a possible 2012 presidential bid by Sarah Palin? And doesn’t this make Fox News her campaign headquarters?

ABC News examined Palin’s performance;

The newest employee of Fox News channel made her debut Tuesday night on the network’s flagship show, “The O’Reilly Factor.”

“I’m grinning today, and I’m so appreciative of the opportunity to get to work with you and the team members here at Fox News to provide the fair and the balanced reporting and analysis voters in this country deserve,” Palin told host Bill O’Reilly.

The former GOP vice presidential candidate didn’t waste any time in attacking her detractors, and taking issue with what she said were “lies” about her. She fired back at critics of her performance as Sen. John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential campaign and kept up her ongoing attacks on the Obama administration.

Palin’s critics sniped at her new role as consultant even before her appearance on air.

“Not since Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag has there been a couple so well suited for one another,” Hari Sevugan, the Democratic National Committee’s press secretary.

When O’Reilly asked Palin why, in his view, so many “pinheads” seemed threatened by her, she said, “Obviously, it’s not about me, it’s not about me, personally. They don’t like the message. They don’t like the commonsense conservative solution that I think that I represent and you articulate. They don’t like to hear it.”

Palin may have a strong fan base, as evident by the turnout for the book tour, but three recent polls show more Americans disapprove of her than approve of her, and a vast majority says she’s unqualified to be president.

Read Full Story >>

If corporations are allowed to pour money at will into American elections, the United States will finally have become an outright oligarchy. But that’s what the Republicans have been pushing for all these decades, isn’t it? Democracy was a noble experiment, but shouldn’t the wealthy people really have all the control? Well, the Supreme Court, which has already proven that it favors the rich and powerful, is about to decide which America is going to be – democracy or oligarchy. God help us all.

An excellent article at the L.A. Times by Monica Youn examines the issue;

Voters stand to lose out if the Supreme Court treats political spending by businesses and other big-money players as protected speech.

Corporations are pitching a bizarre product — a radical vision of the 1st Amendment. It would give corporations rather than voters a central role in our electoral process by treating corporate political spending as protected speech. If this vision becomes reality, businesses and other big-money players will spend billions either hyping their preferred candidates or running attack ads against elected officials who don’t support their preferred agenda. Voters will be forced into a couch-potato role, mere viewers of the electoral spectacle bought and paid for by wealthy companies.

Read Complete Article >>

Oath Keepers, the militia/“Patriot” extremist group made up of law enforcement officers, military personnel and veterans, has posted a photo on its site showing (it says) “an active duty Oath Keeper in Mosul, Iraq” wearing two Velcro-attached “tabs” or patches, one saying “Oath Keeper” and the other “Three percent.” The flag patch beneath them is also an insignia of the “Three Percenters,” an informal alliance of hard-line gun owners.

The Oath Keepers figured prominently in a recent special report by the Southern Poverty Law Center on the resurgence of the antigovernment militia movement. The report described the group as “a particularly worrisome example of the Patriot revival.” Oath Keepers is fully on board with all the standard right-wing conspiracy theories, as evidenced by its official list of 10 “Orders We Will Not Obey,” in which it vows to resist any government efforts to “disarm the American people” or turn cities into “giant concentration camps.”

In July, the SPLC also presented Congress with growing evidence that extremists are infiltrating the U.S. military and urged Congress and the military to take steps to ensure that the armed forces are not inadvertently training future domestic terrorists.

Read Full Article >>>

Oath Keepers, the military and police organization that was formed early in 2009 and held its April muster on Lexington Green, may be a particularly worrisome example of the Patriot revival. Members vow to fulfill the oaths to the Constitution that they swore while in the military or law enforcement. “Our oath is to the Constitution, not to the politicians, and we will not obey unconstitutional (and thus illegal) and immoral orders,” the group says. Oath Keepers lists 10 orders its members won’t obey, including two that reference U.S. concentration camps.

That same pugnacious attitude was on display after conservatives attacked an April report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that suggested a resurgence of radical right-wing activity was under way. “We will not fear our government; they will fear us,” one man, who appeared to be on active duty in the Army, said in an angry video sent to the Oath Keepers blog. In another video at the site, a man who said he was a former Army paratrooper in Afghanistan and Iraq described President Obama as “an enemy of the state,” adding, “I would rather die than be a slave to my government.” The Oath Keepers site soon began hawking T-shirts with slogans like “I’m a Right Wing Extremist and Damn Proud of It!”

In April, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes — a Yale Law School graduate and former aide to U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (a Texas Republican and hard-line libertarian) — worried about a coming dictatorship. “We know that if the day should come where a full-blown dictatorship would come, or tyranny … it can only happen if those men, our brothers in arms, go along and comply with unconstitutional, unlawful orders,” Rhodes told conspiracy-minded radio host Alex Jones. “Imagine if we focus on the police and military. Game over for the New World Order.”

He’s not the first to think so. In the 1990s, retired Phoenix cop and conspiracy enthusiast Jack McLamb created an outfit called Police Against the New World Order and produced a 75-page document entitled Operation Vampire Killer 2000: American Police Action Plan for Stopping World Government Rule.

It’s not known how large Oath Keepers is. But there is some evidence beyond the group’s mere existence to suggest that today’s Patriots are again making inroads into law enforcement — the leak of the DHS report, along with those of a couple of similar law enforcement reports, was likely the work of a sworn officer. Rhodes claims to know a federal officer leaked the DHS report, and says Oath Keepers is “hearing from more and more federal officers all the time.”

The group does seem to be on the radar of federal law enforcement officers. In May, a member complained on the group’s website of a visit to his farm by FBI agents who asked him, he said, about training he provides in firearms, survival skills and the like.

One Oath Keeper is longtime militia hero Richard Mack, a former sheriff of a rural Arizona county who collaborated with white supremacist Randy Weaver on a book and who, along with others, won a U.S. Supreme Court decision that weakened the Brady Bill gun control law in the 1990s. “The greatest threat we face today is not terrorists; it is our federal government,” Mack says on his website. “One of the best and easiest solutions is to depend on local officials, especially the sheriff, to stand against federal intervention and federal criminality.” Mack’s views echo those of the Posse Comitatus, which believed that sheriffs are the highest law enforcement authorities in America. “I pray for the day that a sheriff in this country will arrest an IRS agent for trespassing or attempting to victimize citizens in that particular sheriff’s county,” Mack said in a video he made for Oath Keepers.

Source: Southern Poverty Law Center

References

• Oath Keepers