Questioning Fundamentalism June 16, 2005March 2, 2017 But first, in response to yesterday’s link to the interview with George Lowe . . . NOW WAIT A MINUTE: MARGE SIMPSON HAS BIG HAIR Mike Myler: ‘I used to work with an evangelical….he sat alone at lunch because if anyone sat with him, he felt it was his duty to tell you you were going to hell because you didn’t believe in his god…his job was to convert …he would keep at it, would not listen to reason, had no doubts…reminds me of Republican friends when I would argue about Bush adding to deficit…their response: deficits don’t matter, Reagan proved that…’economy does better under Democrats?’…only because of what Republicans did when they were in office earlier…if you tried to pin them down with facts they just stared at you with a glazed look…I don’t know if Republicans are using the evangelicals or vice versa but it worries me…they both have this glassy look in their eyes and big hair.’ ☞ I would vote for Marge Simpson in a heartbeat. It’s Homer, who has no hair, you have to watch out for. And while I appreciate your venting this way – there is a lot to vent about these days – we should also acknowledge (as I’m sure you do) that there are millions of thoughtful, well-intentioned Republicans. When I ask for their money for the DNC, I say: ‘Help us help you get your party back.’ Sometimes they give; generally they don’t. But most of them totally get what I mean . . . and wish they could get their party back. One day perhaps they will. Nola McNeely: ‘I understand your saying that Mr. Lowe’s views are a little nutty. However, I have spent all 59 years of my life in Oklahoma and Texas and was raised Southern Baptist. In the 80’s, I even became enamored of Hal Lindsey and his apocalyptic books as well as Pat Robertson. Thank goodness I came to my senses, took my brain down off the shelf and realized how dangerous these people are. Please don’t entirely dismiss Mr. Lowe’s warnings. These people are in deadly earnest and absolutely convinced of the righteousness of their cause and will not listen to anyone who questions their beliefs. I was in the midst of them and still live in a state that is very much influenced by the evangelical fundamentalists and they are very determined and scary.’ ☞ I didn’t mean that Lowe’s views are nutty, I meant the whole situation – that, 36 years after man walked on the moon, we could be debating evolution and whether our god is bigger than their god – was nutty. All this stuff just makes me very nervous. As I said yesterday, the only thing I know for sure about religion is that it should be separate from government – and that Jesus was the original liberal. And now . . . LISTEN TO THIS Gary Diehl: ‘This is a wonderful heartfelt monolog by Julia Sweeney (formerly of Saturday Night Live). As this is a frames site, there is no direct link. So go here. Then go to the 05 archive at left and select the June 3 ‘Godless America’ episode (Episode 290). Her monolog is in the second half of the show, so you can skip ahead to the 37 minute 30 second mark.’ ☞ But if you can find the time, I thought the first 37½ minutes were worth it, too. WARNING: The interviewer is respectful, but you can tell he has his doubts. As for Julia Sweeney, I found her to be more thought-provoking and funny than mean. But others may be offended, which is not my intention. (If there is no column tomorrow, it’s not just that I’m lazy; it’s to give you time to listen.)
Fascism Watch June 15, 2005March 2, 2017 ‘A few Jews add strength and character to a country, but too many create chaos. And we are getting too many.’ – Charles Lindbergh, April 1939 diary entry, from the historical notes at the end of Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America The thing that struck me about Roth’s novel (Lindbergh beats FDR in 1940 and America goes fascist) is how one thing could just lead to another, plausibly, and in a very short period of time. At no point did I find myself thinking, ‘Oh, Spiderman couldn’t really swing from building to building.’ Or that, in the scenario Roth constructs, Lindbergh couldn’t really have won, or that, as I say, one thing couldn’t have led to another. In real life, America won’t go fascist, because America has a wonderful way of righting herself. But if you’re beginning to sense a blurring of the lines between corporate interests and the state, between church and state, I commend to you this interview with George Lowe. It may strike you as outlandish. I find it all a bit nutty. But I’m not sorry I took the time to read it. (The only thing I know for sure about religion is that it should be separate from government – and that Jesus was the original, quintessential liberal. Think about it.) REMINDER: Second Quarter Estimated Taxes Due Today
Borealis and the Chairman June 13, 2005March 2, 2017 BOREALIS If lottery tickets could issue annual reports, here is what they would look like. For those of us with shares, it is, at the least, an interesting read. (‘Projections are notoriously dangerous, but we would be surprised if we did not have some actual net earnings for [this fiscal year].’) HOWARD DEAN Opinions are mixed. The Republican leadership can’t let go of his wild-eyed calls on the campaign trail: He advocated health care for all rather than massive tax cuts for the already rich. Absurd. He railed against the enormous budget deficits – $700 billion this year (bringing the Reagan-Bush-Bush deficit to nearly $6 trillion of our total $7.8 trillion National Debt). Nutty. He favored the invasion of Afghanistan but recklessly opposed attacking Iraq at the time and in the way we did. Mad! Among Democrats, some have been critical; others are more like John Cory, a Purple Heart / Bronze Star Vietnam vet, who writes: ‘I want someone who will stand up not stand down. I want someone outspoken and outrageous and out there, for me. I want someone on my side, not on my back for more money. I want someone who fights, not folds at the first sign of fake indignation.’ Either way, Howard is not the candidate. So if some of our candidates DO choose to demonstrate their moderate credentials by distancing themselves from him – good cop, bad cop – that’s not entirely unhelpful either. But the truth is, a few intemperate remarks notwithstanding, Howard is exceptionally level-headed and moderate – far more fiscally prudent, for example, than the borrow-and-spend Republicans. Yes, perception is all. But perceptions change. Click here for the latest from yesterday’s Washington Post. In my admitttedly biased view, we have a terrific Chairman.
Exxon Calls the Tune June 10, 2005March 2, 2017 Listen, I know it’s lazy of me to just link you to other people’s stuff and not write insightful pieces that will help you turn your nest egg into a golden goose. But regular readers of this site have known for some time that oil stocks might do well, that real estate is no bargain, and that it’s not the worst time to be concerned about our $700 billion deficit. They also know how much I love Google – and that I lost every penny I put into Google puts – but that some of the other things suggested here over the years have worked out and others, touch wood, still may. I will try to revisit them as appropriate, always with the caveat that (loosely phrased) ‘what the hell do I know?’ (Investments aside, nothing makes me happier than e-mails like the one I got this week from a woman who says that skype, which she read about here, is saving her and her company lots of dough.) (Well, one thing makes me happier: the very occasional e-mail I get from ‘former Republicans’ who write to say I’ve ground them down – that this isn’t their fathers’ Republican party, and that, well, for the most part they’d rather see us go back to path of the 1990’s, which is where the Democrats largely are, and not the 1890’s, which is where the Republican leadership largely is.) (Okay, I’m getting carried away. But you know what I mean. I want the benefits of stem cell research. I ‘believe in’ evolution. I don’t want to live in gated communities guarded by machine guns – which is where we’re headed if the rich just keep getting tax breaks and the millions more fall into poverty each year and lose their health insurance. And, yes, I think it was a tragic mistake to rush to war in Iraq without a plan to win the peace.) But for now, let me just post a couple of your comments and then another ‘link to something I thought might interest you’ – today’s, about the seemingly tight connection between the White House and Exxon. But first . . . OPT OUT OF OPT OUT? Andrew Krieg: ‘I would encourage everyone to read the privacy policy at the site one of your readers suggested yesterday – optoutprescreen.com – before blindly sending personal information online. This link has some good discussion about this site. The fact that the owner of this domain hides its real identity is disturbing. Here is what a domain search turns up.’ MORE ON DU Robert McKinney: ‘Here is an excellent source that can be reliably used to fact check any statement about military matters. And here is its article about depleted uranium.’ Rick: ‘There is NO such thing as ‘non-radioactive’ uranium. when it’s not radioactive anymore, it’s called LEAD. To be precise, DU is mostly U-238, which decays over billions of years through a series of elements including thorium. All radioactive until lead.’ And now . . . THE WHITE HOUSE AND EXXON Click here.
Whew! Uranium and Your Credit Card Junk Mail June 9, 2005March 2, 2017 DEPLETED URANIUM Mark Wilson: ‘Leuren Moret’s allegations in the article you linked to are pretty overblown. Depleted Uranium is, by definition, not very radioactive at all, with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. The shorter the half life, the faster an isotope decays and thus the more radiation it emits. While DU is chemically toxic, I don’t know how you can say it is significantly more so than, say, lead, which is what we would be using to make munitions instead of DU. Kids shouldn’t be playing with either. Here‘s a page with both sides of the issue from the Federation of American Scientists.’ Eric Batson: ‘Read the full article in WikiPedia (which she refers to by the way) … Seems like the consensus (military and government critics both) is nowhere near her position.’ Ken Myers: ‘This article is full of wrong information. There is no evidence that the atomic scientists ever considered using depleted U for the Japanese bombs. Depleted U does not come out of gun barrels on fire, etc. Depleted U is used solely because it is very dense (heavy per unit of volume) because of its high atomic weight. Depleted means non-radioactive for heaven’s sake. This sort of hysterical talk is a reason this country will be late in moving from coal powered electrical generation to nuclear power as France has done (50%). Partly because our Atomic Energy Commission did such a poor job of supervising and inspecting and partly because the average American has a poor scientific background. For all his faults, Admiral Rickover ran a good nuclear program and there has not been one ship-borne nuclear ‘incident.’ Coal and gas however pollute the atmosphere and sometimes blow up. See China’s air (literally). [Signed] – A Rockefeller Republican who voted Democratic for the first time in the last election. My party has been hijacked by wealthy religious zealots who think they have a mission to save the world. In truth, 9-11 is turning us into a more divided and religious extreme country.’ Brad Hurley: ‘I wouldn’t put too much stock in Leuren Moret’s claim that depleted uranium in dust is going to boost world cancer rates. She notes that ‘in April of 2003, the World Health Organization said they expect global cancer rates to increase 50 percent by the year 2020.’ That’s true, but the leading causes of cancer they cite are tobacco and diet. Here‘s the press release from WHO. Moret goes on to say: ‘Infant mortality is going up again all over the world. This is an indicator of the level of radioactive pollution. When the U.S. and Russia signed the partial test ban treaty in 1963, the infant mortality rate started dropping again, which is normal. Now they are going up again. It’s the global pollution with this radiation.’ Well, as any scientist knows correlation doesn’t necessarily indicate causation. When I was a kid, I noticed that all the summer people left our lakeside community at the same time that the geese started heading south. Should I have concluded that the sound of the geese caused the summer people to leave? Or that the noise of the moving vans caused the geese to fly south? There are many factors that contribute to trends in infant mortality. I doubt that Moret has evidence to indicate that uranium dust has anything to do with infant mortality; I think it’s more that she’s trying to scare people into caring about her issue.’ Jeffrey Davis: ‘SPENT uranium is called ‘spent’ for a reason. It’s virtually inert. Yes, there’s some radiation, but there’s some background radiation everywhere.’ Kristine Friend: ‘Unfortunately the article on why cancer rates are rising is true. While one X-Ray has never hurt anyone, the cumulative effects of radiation have caused severe damage and even death to untold people. There is a very good book called “Clear Body, Clear Mind” which has written a good remedy for ridding the body of accumulated radiation. I have done the treatment as advised in the book and I feel about 10 years younger. By the way, the book was written by a religious philosopher called Hubbard, but the treatment (consisting only of vitamins and sauna) can be done with a partner on a self-help basis, using the book as a self-help manual.’ ☞ Hmmm. WINNING YOUR INDEPENDENCE FROM CREDIT CARD OFFERS Kate: ‘There is now a website for the ‘Credit Reporting Industry Opt-Out Prescreen’ service. I got my free credit reports that just became available in my region, and was appalled by the number of ‘soft’ inquiries I had. No wonder my mailbox is always filled with junk I need to shred! The Big Three’s websites all tell you that the soft hits don’t hurt your credit score, and try to convince you that most people like receiving pre-screened offers because it ‘allows them access to a wider variety of credit’ – they definitely don’t want to tell you how to get off the list. But it turns out you can now just go to optoutprescreen.com. I removed myself, my sister, and my parents from the lists in about 10 minutes. Much better than having to write each of the bureaus individually. ‘By the way — Texas won its own independence from Mexico, much like the United States won independence from Britain. Some of the fighters in Texas were from the United States, but you’ll recall that many of the fighters for the colonies were British-born, and others were French and Germans who just wanted to give the British a hard time. Mexico wasn’t all too happy about Texas’ independence, but then there are some Brits who still call for the return of ‘their colonies’.’
Any Enviro Docs Out There? June 8, 2005March 2, 2017 WHY CANCER RATES SEEM TO BE RISING Georgia Wong: ‘I hope this article is untrue.’ ☞ Me, too. Our readers will know.
Done Him Wvong June 7, 2005January 18, 2017 THE ALAMO Last week I linked to the audio of an interview with the author of Confessions of a Hitman. I do love our country, but think we err in assuming that everything we’ve done, do, and will do is something to be proud of. I mentioned, for example, the Alamo, which I think the average school kid thinks of as American heroics in some long-forgotten noble cause. But I suggested that – if memory serves – the cause was our stealing Texas from Mexico, and killing quite a few Mexican soldiers in the process. Randall: ‘Reasonable people can debate whether Texas was stolen or liberated. However, with the benefit of hindsight, it is now clear that the people who reside in Texas are better off under the US government than they would have been under the Mexican government.’ ☞ Perhaps we should liberate the rest of Mexico? Canada? THAT KENNAN QUOTE And as if that first link wasn’t subversive enough, it prompted one of you to recommend why-US.org, whence I took a George Kennan quote. Russil Wvong: ‘Arggggghhhh!!! I don’t think Orwell would have been surprised by this highly selective quotation of George Kennan. From what I can tell, it was stitched together by Noam Chomsky, the American linguist and anarchist, as evidence that US foreign policy since World War II has been driven by greed. But in fact Kennan was arguing that the US ought to leave Asia alone, not that it ought to oppress the rest of the world and steal its resources. (At the time, there was a debate going on about whether the US ought to continue propping up Chiang Kai-Shek; Kennan was opposed.) For a detailed discussion, click here. The irony in Chomsky’s quoting Kennan to criticize US foreign policy is that Kennan himself consistently argued for much greater moderation and restraint in US foreign policy. Indeed, Kennan does so even in the section of PPS/23 which Chomsky is quoting. For a detailed assessment of Kennan’s role in shaping US foreign policy during the early Cold War, see Wilson D. Miscamble’s book George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947-1950, published in 1992.” ☞ Russil knows a great deal more about this than I do – indeed, when I Google “George Kennan” to learn more, the very first item that pops up is this post, by Russil Wvong! – and so it seems I have done George Kennan wrong. But that doesn’t automatically let us off the hook and make us the good guys in every action, overt and covert, we’ve ever taken. Or perhaps, as Stu argues below, I’m wrong. Stu Albertson: “You are seriously off the reservation with the conspiracy mumbo-jumbo that continues to seep into your blog. It does NOTHING to enhance your credibility to view everything through a prism of conspiracy where black is white and good is bad and every major decision or occurrence of the 20th Century is the work of dark nefarious whitemalecapitalist forces. Well, I’ve got news for you, pal, there is another half to your conspiracy and it involves people who follow an ideology responsible for more deaths than any conceivable historic machinery of butchery. It’s called communism. And it’s what overthrew most of those dictators you say we ‘supported.’ Well, the butchers that took over from those dictators ended up killing way many more people. My point is not to lecture you on history, it’s to tell you that when you even nod in the direction of these crazy lefties like the why-us types (with your innocuous comments like ‘interesting’) you lose many people who think you are even-handed.” ☞ I wish I could be as confident as Stu that our foreign policy has been consistently laudable.
And The Best News Of All Is That They Got A Tax Cut! June 6, 2005March 2, 2017 Just in case you missed the lead story on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times, it reads, in part: Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind By David Cay Johnston . . . The people at the top of America’s money pyramid have so prospered in recent years that they have pulled far ahead of the rest of the population . . . . . . Draw a line under the top 0.1 percent of income earners – the top one-thousandth. Above that line are about 145,000 taxpayers, each with at least $1.6 million in income and often much more. The average income for the top 0.1 percent was $3 million in 2002, the latest year for which averages are available. That number is two and a half times the $1.2 million, adjusted for inflation, that group reported in 1980. No other income group rose nearly as fast. The share of the nation’s income earned by those in this uppermost category has more than doubled since 1980, to 7.4 percent in 2002. The share of income earned by the rest of the top 10 percent rose far less, and the share earned by the bottom 90 percent fell. . . . ☞ Faced with this situation, the Republican leadership has made it its top priority to give the hyper-rich tax cuts. They cut the top rate on dividends by 62% . . . from a rate of 39.6% to just 15%. They have the top rate on estates falling from 55% to zero in a few years – and hope to keep it there. Meanwhile, as a nation we fall $2 billion further into debt each day – $700 billion a year (not the $400 billion that the White House claims and the press dutifully repeats) – and become increasingly dependent on the Chinese and Japanese. But at least we got Bin Laden.
Take the Red Pill June 2, 2005January 18, 2017 In response to the Comptroller General’s contention in yesterday‘s post that ‘No republic in the history of the world lasted more than 300 years,’ Jim Dienes writes in to say that ‘the Roman Republic lasted from 509BC to 27BC.’ And Bob Sakowski dates the Venitian Republic from 697-1797 – adding, however, that, even so, ‘[Walker’s] idea of where we are headed will likely come to pass and sooner rather than later, unfortunately.’ ☞ I’m more optimistic. I think we will right ourselves. But course correction doesn’t happen by itself. It takes thought and work. We need to turn our well-founded angst into well-funded action. (Support the DNC!) A LEFT-OF-CENTER BUT INTERESTING SITE We think of ourselves as the best country that ever was – I certainly do. And while we wince at what we did to the Indians (and did again and again and again), that was a long time ago. Likewise, slavery. Remember the Alamo? We remember the heroic part, but how many kids know the context? That we were in the midst of stealing Texas from Mexico? (My history on this is very hazy; if I have it materially wrong, I’ll be thrilled – just let me know.) But that was a long time ago, too. In more recent times, if Friday‘s Confessions of a Hitman audio clip is to be believed at all, our motives have not always been entirely pure either. And it is in taking off on that premise that Rick Stahlhut commends a site called why-US.org. Whence comes – among much else – this snippet: “We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. … Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity….. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives…. We should cease to talk about vague and … unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.” -US State Department Policy Planning Study 23, formerly top secret, by George Kennan (et al), 1948 ‘The problem, as I see it,’ writes Rick, ‘is that our foreign policy, and our society/economy generally, are grounded in a bully-oriented, pragmatic foreign policy style which ‘works’ in state v. state conflicts, but is proving dysfunctional when dealing with ideologically or values-oriented state-less actors such as the ones we’re fighting now.’ ‘The site is obviously coming from a somewhat ‘left’ viewpoint,’ Rick concludes, ‘but I don’t find that particularly important. His facts and reasoning are generally good or at least interesting.’ Left, right or center, the only reason to read a site critical of our country is to make our country even better. But who among us does not want that? If you read why-US.org from the beginning – and if you follow the ‘red pills’ – you will take an interesting journey. To help you find time, I’ll keep tomorrow’s post short or non-existent.