The art of guilt-relief

From the April 22 New York Times: “To people who take the threat of global warming personally, driving a car that spews heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere can be a guilt trip.

“But to help atone for that environmental sin, some drivers are turning to groups on the Internet that offer pain-free ways to assuage their guilt while promoting clean energy.

“It involves buying something known as a carbon offset: a relatively inexpensive way to stimulate the production of clean electricity. Just go to one of several carbon-offset Web sites, calculate the amount of carbon dioxide produced when you drive, fly or otherwise burn fossil fuels, and then buy an offset that pays for an equivalent amount of clean energy.”

Sounds strangely familiar. Hasn’t just about every religion had some similar way to use money to assuage guilt over being sinful?

Who belongs in jail?

Here’s a quote from Bill Bennett speaking on Fox News about a reporter who won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the NSA’s secret phone tapping of Americans: "How do we know it damaged us? Well, it revealed the existence of the surveillance program - so people are going to stop making calls - since they are now aware of this - they're going to adjust their behavior - Are they punished, are they in shame, are they embarrassed, are they arrested? No, they win Pulitzer prizes - they win Pulitzer prizes - I don't think what they did was worthy of an award - I think what they did was worthy of jail, and I think this investigation needs to go forward..."

Mr. Bennett, how conveniently you ignore the fact that it was the President of the United States who ordered the illegal wiretaps the reporter reported on. And it is the President who has arrogantly boasted about it and has as much as said he will do it again any time he sees fit.

It is the President who is the lawbreaker here.

When is enough enough?

There is a new children’s book on the market whose title uses the word “liberal” as if it were a synonym for bogeyman.

My question is: What if the title of this book instead had named a specific ethnic or religious group --- or perhaps had used one of the more uncomplimentary code words for these groups --- in its title? Would we then recognize it for the hate mongering it is? Would we then denounce it for its cynical effort to poison children’s innocence? Would we then be outraged by its un-American and un-Christian hypocrisy?

Two items

Item one: From the Chicago Tribune earlier this week reporting on the just completed Cook County primary: “Claiming that scores of votes from last month's Cook County primary still haven't been accurately counted, a group of Republicans and losing candidates called for several unprecedented fixes Thursday, ranging from an audit of ballots to an entirely new election.

"(Maureen Murphy, vice chair of the county GOP) said she met with about 200 suburban election judges who detailed a litany of problems from the March 21 primary, (including) touch-screen voting machine that ‘blew up like an M80’ and had to be unplugged; machines showing votes that hadn't been cast; and machines not working at all. In one meeting she asked about 125 judges how many of them were confident that every vote at their polling place had been counted, and no hands went up, she said.”

Gee, Republicans think that those unreliable electronic voting machines did them dirt. Never forget that every sword cuts both ways.

Item two: From the Washington Post reporting on a remark by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia “to a student in Switzerland who asked last month about the Supreme Court's ruling for George Bush during the 2000 election. ‘Oh, God. Get over it,’ he said.”

So, to you Republicans who think that those unreliable electronic voting machines did you dirt, I’d suggest, “Oh, God. Get over it.”

Our low-life leaders

Well, it seems yet another of our holier-than-thou Republican leaders has yet again resorted to trash-talk to dismiss someone they don’t agree with.

First it was Vice-President Dick Cheney who told a United States Senator on the floor of the U.S. Senate to “go f**k yourself.”

Then it seems that President George Bush thought it was quite appropriate to respond to a reporter’s shouted question that he didn’t like by flipping him the bird.

Now, according to an article in the Washington Post, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Scalia responded to a reporter from the Boston Herald who asked “a question about criticism of his conservative religious beliefs by putting his fingertips under his chin and flipping them dismissively outward. ‘That's Sicilian,’ the high court's first Italian-American explained…”

What he didn't explain for anyone not familiar with Italian non-verbal communication is that that particular gesture means “f**k you!”

So, how do you feel now those of you who were duped into voting for these low-lifes based on their self-styled moral values? Is this the example you want your kids to emulate? Or perhaps I should ask, WWJD?

Then BE a Christian, not a bigot

“The Rev. Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical, frames the movement as the civil rights struggle of the 21st century. ‘Christians,’ he said, ‘are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian.’” This is a quote from a Los Angeles Times article in which Rev. Scarborough is justifying a lawsuit by a 22-year old Georgia Institute of Technology student who wants to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment because it supposedly infringes on her religious freedom of speech.

Rev. Scarborough, the Jesus I grew up with talked a lot about love and tolerance and understanding and acceptance. And I don’t recall any exceptions to his teachings.

The slave owners of the 19th century used Biblical verses to justify that African-Americans were not human beings; the anti-suffragette folks used Biblical justifications to try to keep women from receiving the vote. I have absolutely no problem, Rev. Scarborough, if you want to BE a real Christian. But I do have problem when you try to twist both Christian doctrine and the U.S. Constitution in an effort to find a legal basis for your bigotry and intolerance.

A nuclear strike at Iran is a very bad idea

U.S. Rep. John Murtha, at a town hall meeting yesterday in Queens, New York, confirmed that Congress has been asked to consider the possibility of strategic, surgical strikes in Iran with nuclear weapons, according to a report on the Democratic Underground website. His perspective was that it wasn't a realistic strategy, because surgical strikes are never as accurate as we would like them to be, and we don't have the necessary troops to have a full-scale military presence in Iran, and we are already facing a huge deficit and that Iran would be a much more expensive target than Iraq. However, the report suggested, the fact that it was brought to Congress at all may be an indication the Bush administration is trying to test the idea to see where public sentiment is at.

Well, for what it’s worth, here’s one person’s “public sentiment.” [ As an aside, it is very difficult to not slip into a Mike Malloy-like total flipout that this insanity is even being given serious consideration, but I will try to approach this from a reasonable viewpoint… ]

Using any nukes against Iran is a very, very bad idea for the following reasons:

- First, Iran does not represent an imminent threat. No one, including Bush, is saying Iran is an imminent threat. So why are we even talking about such a draconian measure as a nuclear strike?

- Second, even if Bush was alleging that Iran was an imminent threat, after the lies and deceit over the justification for the war in Iraq, I would think the American people and particularly the U.S. Congress would demand clear, incontrovertible and overwhelming evidence that Iran was about to develop a nuclear weapon.

- Third, even if there were this clear, incontrovertible and overwhelming evidence that Iran was close to creating a nuclear bomb, using small, so-called surgical nuclear weapons would probably not take care of the problem anyway, because many of the alleged facilities are buried deeper underground than these small weapons could effectively reach.

- Fourth, using a nuclear weapon against Iran would not make us safer, in fact, it would make us infinitely less secure. Using a nuclear weapon against Iran would so inflame Islamic fundamentalists (terrorists, if you prefer) that they would receive hundreds of thousands of new recruits who would willingly walk into American shopping malls carrying suicide bombs. Using a nuclear weapon on Iran would be the best thing George Bush could for the terrorists!

Since this trial balloon has supposedly been floated in Congress, as an American I am urging Congress to send a clear message to the President to abandon this ill-considered and reckless plan.

Fool me once (Part Three)

Seymour Hersh’s article in the New Yorker seems to confirm my worst fears, that a beleaguered and messianic George Bush is trying to save his presidency by invading Iran. And will once again, just as he did in Iraq, hoke-up any evidence needed to justify his desperate plan.

We allowed you to fool us once, Mr. President, but not again…

Be careful what you wish for II

A couple of days ago I commented on the irony of the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) sudden interest in --- and apparent fear of --- the power of the Internet they in fact helped create. The context of my comment was reported proposals within the DOD to try to seize control of the Internet in the name of national security.

I have some really bad news for the folks at DOD: IT’S TOO LATE!

You actually got what you wished for 30+ years ago, a hubless communications system that has now taken on a life of its own, and that is, indeed, uncontrollable. You wanted it designed so that it would be uncontrollable by our enemies (at the time the Russians), but I guess it never occurred to you that that sword cuts both ways (that you might not be able to control it either).

There is a telling historic precedent --- not that anyone in the Bush administration is noted for learning from the past experience (but that’s a different discussion) --- that you might want to investigate.

In the mid-1400s, a guy named Guttenberg did some tinkering with then existing, albeit primitive, printing processes. When he designed a practical system for moveable type and developed improvements to the inks and presses of the day, all he thought he was doing was making incremental improvements to current technologies. He had no idea he was setting in motion forces that would result in the end of the Feudal system and lead to revolutionary concepts like mass education and democracy.

Similarly, in the late 1960s all the early developers ---inventors, if you prefer --- of the Internet thought they were doing was figuring out a way for the then primitive computers to talk to each other. They had some vague notions --- dreams, if you prefer --- about exchanging information in a manner that we would today recognize as e-mail. But they had no idea they were setting in motion forces that would empower individuals on a global basis and that would change how we socialize and how we do business.

In the half century following Guttenberg, presses sprang up all over Europe, certainly producing their share of religious books, but interestingly the bulk of the books published then weren’t appreciably different than those published today, they were “how to” books. During this time the Catholic Church approved the publication of Bibles in native languages --- previously Bibles were only published Latin -- believing it would help promulgate the faith by making it accessible to more people. By some two decades later were German Bibles and Italian Bibles and Dutch Bibles and others in the hands of the masses.

But the Law of Unintended Consequences came into play and the church discovered that Bibles published in native languages was assisting in nationalistic feelings in those countries, in other words, it was helping diminish the power of Rome. So the church decided to rescind its blessing for native language Bibles. But, the inevitability of change had been set in motion --- it was too late!

The DOD of today won’t be any more successful in putting the genie back in the bottle than the Catholic Church of five centuries ago was.

The “War On Christians?”

Let’s see…

Some major retailers --- businesses competing in the marketplace --- recognize the reality of an increasingly diverse population and decide to call them Holiday Sales instead of Christmas Sales. And this is the sign of a “War on Christians?”

Some public schools, also recognizing the same diversity among their students, decide to curtail traditional Christian hymns in their seasonal choir programs. And this is the sign of a “War on Christians?”

Some Liberals --- for example, like me --- looking to the Constitution written by our revered Founding Fathers try to reasonably argue that having “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is not a good idea. And this is a sign of a “War on Christians?”

Yet, for 10-plus years the Christian / Right Coalition’s leading spokespersons --- Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hanity, Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, to name just a few --- have been waging war on anyone to their left, filling the airwaves with invective and hate and disinformation. All liberals should at least be deported to Afghanistan, or better yet, shot… There is no such thing as a good Democrat… Katrina --- or anything else bad (take your pick) --- was God's punishment against Liberals / Feminists / Pro-Choicers / Democrats (again, take your pick)...

Job 4:8 says “…those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it.”

Perhaps you are now reaping what you have sown.

Be careful what you wish for

Here are some excerpts from an online article:

“This is the age of information warfare…a report, entitled The Information Operations Roadmap, commissioned and approved by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and seen by the Sunday Herald, (suggests) new developments in America’s approach to warfare (including):

“…the Pentagon says it will wage war against the internet in order to dominate the realm of communications, prevent digital attacks on the US and its allies, and to have the upper hand when launching cyber-attacks against enemies.”

There are so many ironies here that it is hard to know where to start…

The most obvious irony is that it was this same U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) in the 1960s that provided the initial “seed money” that ultimately lead to the Internet of today that they now suddenly seem so frightened of.

The next interesting irony is that one of the reasons the DOD funded that early research was that they were interested in the new concept of a “distributed communications network.” Passing by all the technical mumbo-jumbo, what this meant was that one of the goals of that early research was to create a communications network that was invulnerable to attack.

At the time, of course, they were thinking of a nuclear attack by the Russians. The idea was to create a communications that had no central core, say like a telephone system’s exchange or a TV station’s broadcast equipment. You can “knockout” a telephone system by sabotaging the exchange or a broadcast station by taking out the antenna.

On the other hand, a “distributed network” has numerous sources of information --- think millions here! --- that all have multiple cross-connections and redundant inter-connections. The system was specifically designed so that if one information source or two sources or even three sources were knocked out, the system would simply bypass the knocked out sections and still be completely functional. In other words, the system was supposed to be self-repairing.

So DOD, be careful what you wish for, because you in fact got it! And now you seem to be all in a dither about how to cope with it…

Bush: Al-Qaeda’s best friend II

I am bewildered when folks rally behind George Bush and the Republicans because they somehow see him as tough on terrorism. I am bewildered because it seems to me that Bush is doing al-Qaeda’s work for them.

The only real weapon terrorists have is fear:

- So every time Bush beats the drums of 9/11 to rally support for his policies, he is doing exactly what al-Qaeda wants, instilling more fear that a terrorist might be lurking around the next corner, thus magnifying their numbers and their ability to make us afraid.

- Every time he usurps a right we American have enjoyed for 200+ years --- like the PATRIOT Act --- he is doing al-Qaeda’s work for them by forcing us to change our lifestyle.

- Every time there is a public announcement that such and such “is on a heightened state of alert” and that we should be on the lookout “for suspicious persons and suspicious behavior,” especially “unattended packages,” we are helping al-Qaeda keep us in fear.

If I were an al-Qaeda recruiter, I’d be gloating to new recruits about how much we have frightened the Americans, that now we’ve got them looking over each other shoulders for fear that someone might be doing something threatening.

George Bush: Al- Qaeda’s best friend

I am utterly mystified by the supposed lock-hold George Bush and the Republicans have on the so-called national security issue; that the one place where Bush seems to be invulnerable is that he is tough on fighting terrorism.

I am mystified because it seems to me the exact opposite is the case, that George Bush is in fact the best friend al-Qaeda has. Why?

He invaded --- and make no mistake about it, that is how it is perceived --- a Muslim country (Iraq). It makes no difference that that Muslim country was more secular than religious, it was Muslim nonetheless. And, of course, he seems to be making noises about invading yet another Muslim country (Iran), only this time it's a fundamentalist Islamic nation. Is it such a surprise that this is perceived as American imperialism? Which then bring us to…

Bush likes to boast that he is being instructed to do what he’s doing by God, which, of course, is clearly understood to be a Christian God. So, is it any surprise that our actions may not only be perceived as American imperialism, but as Christian imperialism, in other words, a Crusade against Islam a millennium later?

So, let’s see if I’ve got this straight. We feel under attack by Muslim extremists who we call terrorists. On the other hand, they feel under attack by Christian fundamentalists who they call imperialists. Naturally, we’re right because we know God is on our side. But of course, they have no doubt about their rightness because they know that God is on their side. So each side recruits members under the banner of patriotism and self-preservation from the hated enemy. And the Death Dance continues…

We are not safer because George Bush is President. We are less safe, because George Bush is the best recruiting tool al-Qaeda has.