Republicans on Larry Craig

The Republican reaction to the Larry Craig fiasco has been interesting, and somewhat telling. For the most part they are bringing out all the political argumentative fallacies to evade the issues at hand. First up, there is Linda Chavez' article where she brings out the old saw that a democrat in the same situation wouldn't have been treated the same way by the media. The problem is, as with most articles like this, the complete lack of any evidence to support her position. Her article is chock full of "I can't imagine" and "I suspect", which means all she is doing is supporting her speculation with more speculation. Too typical, and unpersuasive.

Michael Reagan doesn't pussyfoot around, going right for the Clinton gambit in his first paragraph, before launching into a muddled analysis questioning why people think Craig is a hypocrite. One would think it'd be obvious.

Then we get Kevin McCullough’s ignorant bizarre theories on homosexuality, and how somehow Craig is right, even though McCullough doesn't refer to any rightness in his article.

And of course anyone watching Hardball with Chris Matthews last night got to see Tom Delay dance madly to avoid saying anything bad about Craig, and of course, talking about the sins and peccadillos of Bill Clinton and other Democrats.

The pattern is obvious: avoid the real issues, and play the "who's a bigger hypocrite game". Blame the media, blame the gay activists, blame the Democrats, and of course, as every Republican with no real logical case to make does, talk about Bill Clinton, you know, that guy that hasn't been in the White House since before 9/11. Do everything except talking about the actual issue and leveling criticisms of Craig's ridiculous behavior. So much for the party of family values and personal responsibility.

Kudos to Debra Saunders who gets it right with a hard hitting commentary, and finishing with asking Craig to resign. That's the way intellectually honest people deal with such issues, not by pretending that you are exonerated if you can only claim the other party does bad things too. Politics is not a football game, where your side wins as long as you are less bad than the other side. If our politicians are immoral hypocritical scoundrels as Larry Craig appears to be, we all lose.

The Blue Man Group Planet Earth Routine

Take a look at the most entertaining environmental video I've ever seen.

Update on the Anti-Gambling Bill WTO Dispute

At Dispatches, Ed has a good summary of the latest round in the battle between the US government and the WTO over the recent anti-gambling bill. Here is a Ed's summary:

"Antigua, which is home to several online gambling companies, filed a WTO complaint against the US and won. The US appealed and Antigua won again. Now the US is refusing to comply with the ruling, despite the fact that we complain when any other country doesn't comply with WTO rules. And this has led to something of a standoff."

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I also submit that for the most part, people in the world don't hate us because of our wealth and our freedom. People hate us because we so often act like we can do whatever we damned well please.

David Limbaugh's Alternate Reality: The Securalists are coming!

David Limbaugh wrote a recent column accusing critics of Christianity and the Religious Right of being hypocrites. Amazingly, Limbaugh seems to be one of these people whose perception of the world is so biased by his religiousity that he can actually believes Christians suffer oppression in a nation where they hold all the political positions of power:

”It's no longer surprising that those screaming most loudly against Christianity and its influence on public policy in America often employ the same tactics and represent the same dangers they falsely attribute to Christians. Christians have far more to fear from the secular thought police than the other way around. “

It is telling that people like Limbaugh naturally assume nefarious motives on the part of his opponents. The idea that those of us critical of religion are so for the simple reason that we see it as 1) Baseless and 2) Often destructive, is not even considered. Despite Limbaugh’s claim to defend absolute truth, he is at heart a relativist, into which so many of the pious morph when “the truth” stops favoring them. He is correct. They are a social nuisance. They also seem blinkered to basic similarities between themselves and the Islamic culture they so revile. Believe me guys, from this atheist’s point of view, you are both basically loony. Sure the Muslims are loonier than the Christians, but they also have balls, so to me it’s a wash. Limbaugh would ignore all this with statements like this:

”The secularists' criticism goes beyond decrying the Christian Rights alleged hostility to church-state separation. They claim strong religious belief leads to oppression, tyranny and violence.

First, notice the dishonest demonization of his opponents, as if it is made up entirely of atheists. Fact is many who resist the cultural changes Limbaugh would enact are Christians, such as Barry Lynn, pastor and president of Americans for Separation of Church and State. But why bother with reality when one can pretend the battle is only against the godless? And yes sir, when one rules from an arbitrary book or prophet demanded to be taken on faith, oppression, tyranny and violence are inevitable. Whether it is faith in the God of Muhammad, Stalin and THE STATE, or Pol Pot’s Anka, the result is the same grisly tale. This is because there is no way to rectify differences in faith. There is no rhyme or reason, one either believes or one does not. You believe god came down to earth, died for man’s sins, and rose after 3 days, and, if you follow the theology consistently, that those who disagree will spend eternity in hellfire. Muslims believe you cannot make a picture of Mohammad, and to do so carries the penalty of death. There is no way to reconcile the two.

Once you give up civilized methods of dispute resolution: science, logic, chance, or arbitration, all that remains is violence, to gain power, oppression to maintain it, and tyranny as a result. It is not only historical, it is inevitable. Has it really passed Limbaugh’s notice that we have been at war, off and on, with the most religious nations in the world, for six decades at least?
From here Limbaugh completely jumps the shark, attempting to make the case that Christians clinging to an absolute truth based on faith is something we shouldn’t worry about, but the gods forbid if scientists take their evidence-supported provisional truths seriously.

”They even suggest the mere defense of absolute truth is dangerous…If anyone is guilty of wanting to foreclose debate and impose their values on others, it is these hyperventilating secularists.

They are the ones who have decreed there's a consensus on global warming and attempted to stigmatize dissenters as paid mouthpieces for ‘evil’ energy companies. With their absence of self-reflection it must never occur to them that in their professed monopoly on ‘science,’ they squarely violate the fundamentals of the scientific method by forbidding debate and insulating their theories from scientific scrutiny.”

Here again we see the problems with the religious mindset. Limbaugh can’t see the difference between evidence-based science and religious proclamations. All are mere decrees. The earth orbits the sun, Jesus was the Son of God, and the speed of light is constant are all equivalencies to Limbaugh. The fact is there is a large scientific consensus on global warming (which, as with all science, could change in the face of contrary data). Limbaugh may argue they are wrong, but to argue the consensus doesn’t exist, but has merely been decreed, is simply Limbaugh putting his fingers in his ears and shouting “La La La I can’t hear you!”, just as he does with the existence of his religious opponents.

Likewise, this “monopoly on science” exists only in Limbaugh’s head. Also, as I have asked before, what is it with conservatives and their obsession with scare quotes? There’s no reason to have quotes around “science” above. It’s just a way of attempting to poison the well when you don’t have the intellectual goods. Just imply the science isn’t really science, you don’t have to actually, you know, support your claims or anything.

Ditto with the claim the denialists are forbidden from the debate. They had their day in the debate, and in many ways they still do. They aren’t forbidden to compete, they are simply competing and losing. The mainstream anthropocentric global warming theory isn’t insulted from the denialists’ competing theories. It simply is of much higher quality, ie, it explains the data in a superior way, on the rare occasions where the denialists proffer an alternate theory at all.

For a man who respects absolute truth disconnected from evidence, Limbaugh sure has a hard time understanding provisional truths based on evidence. It should be easy, but to him, all disagreements are merely matters of opinion. You know why? Because that is the case with religious arguments, and that’s the only kind he understands. Speaking of which, he of course falls for that religion masquerading as a science, Intelligent Design:

”They malign intelligent design proponents for daring to subject their dogma -- and distortions -- to the rigorous re-examination scientific methodology requires.”

This is a statement that brands the speaker as either ignorant of the subject, or a bald faced liar. Intelligent Design proponents have been invited, nay begged, to enter into scientific debate. “Show us your evidence!” they are asked. “Publish in the peer reviewed literature!” they are begged. They are maligned because they refuse these invitations, refuse to engage the scientific community on scientific grounds, instead ignoring the many substantive criticisms they have received, and choosing instead to conduct a PR campaign aimed at selling popular books, altering academic standards at the secondary level, and misrepresenting science and scientists at every turn. One of their most common forms of lying, taking scientific quotes out of context and presenting them as meaning the opposite of what they actually mean, actually has its own name: quote mining. Michael Behe’s irreducible complexity and Bill Dembski’s explanatory filter have been taken apart by scientists, with nary a substantive comment, or adjustment in the theories, coming from the IDers. The dogma dodging scientific scrutiny is that of the IDers, and if Limbaugh truly does not understand this, he is revealing poor editorial judgement opining on a subject on which he is so ignorant.

Limbaugh’s next gaffe is another one common to the Religious Right: the idea that being prevented from imposing their values on everyone else equates to values being imposed on them.

”The secular left condemns traditionalists for ‘legislating morality’ and invading our bedrooms. Their quasi-religious fervor apparently blinds them to their efforts to wield governmental power to impose their own values, whether on homosexual marriage, abortion, wealth redistribution or socialized medicine. “

So to reason as Limbaugh does, allowing people to marry who they choose imposes values on him, the same as telling them they may only marry those approved by Limbaugh. This is simplistic for-us-or-against-us nonsense, and applies equally well to laws allowing abortion. One could be forgiven after reading Limbaugh’s screeds for concluding that he thinks someone is going to try to force him to marry a man and have an abortion. Now that would be someone else imposing their values on Limbaugh.

The important thing to remember here is the problem is not battling values per se. Limbaugh is correct to note that socialized medicine and progressive taxation are based on values. But what makes the values he tries to impose on others a problem is that they are based solely on religious values, and we are supposed to have religious freedoms in this country. We have a constitutional amendment that addresses that issue, and it doesn’t favor Limbaugh’s view. In our private lives, we can make our decisions based on any values we like. The values behind our laws, however, are supposed to be based on secular purposes. Limbaugh wants none of that, and further exhibits his biased view of our culture:

”Alas, none of this should surprise Christians, who surely understand we are reaping the ravaging effects of a secularist, atheistic worldview that has finally become dominant in our postmodern culture and has claimed absolute truth as its casualty. “

Oh that his claims that the secular worldview dominates were true. Alas, we still live in a country where to be president, one must declare one’s piety, where religious organizations get favored status in the law, and science textbooks have their biology sections watered down, not because of any scientific controversy, but simply because they offend the sensibilities of fundamentalist Christians.

As far as absolute truth goes, it deserves to be a casualty of any advanced society. It is an embarrassment to our society that such a view still lingers on, despite the vastly superior option of provisional scientific truth which has proven itself time and time again. Doubt, not faith, is what has fueled man’s rise from the dark ages. You remember the dark ages right? It was the time when views like Limbaugh’s were allowed run rampant, unfettered by silly nits like constitutional limitations. I’d much prefer continued reaping of the progress we have made since then, but I guess I’m just a silly securalist.

Why Keep Score? The Psychology of Winning

Its amazing what you learn at the ball field, especially when the players you are watching are 8. Passing ambulances call for an unstated time out for rubbernecking. Outs are more exciting than runs, and for good reason: there are fewer of them. And of course there is the concern by some parents that their children are going to be traumatized for life if they strike out, or lose a game. I have even heard of some leagues that do not keep score, in order to keep the children focused on the important part of the game, which is having fun. These people miss the fundamental point and purpose of sports, and in doing so they strip it of its value.

Think of the lessons you want children to learn from playing sports: teamwork, strategy, adapting to difficulties, dealing with failure, dealing with success, sacrificing individual glory for team success, hard work, discipline, and the value of practice.

Now look what happens to these lessons when score is removed. With no score there can be no winning and losing, which means no success. No learning how to lose with pride, or to win with class. What difficulties are there to adapt to if there is no losing? How can one sacrifice for team success when there is no success?

If you are expecting a Lombardi-esque speech about the importance of winning, you are going to be disappointed. The point of games is not the winning or losing. It is the journey, not the destination, that matters. Just like much of the benefit reaped from the moon landing was in what we learned/invented on the way (Velcro, microwaves, etc.), rather than what we got once we were there, the benefit in sports comes from one learns and goes through in the attempt to win.

In a way, sports competition prepares us, in a fairly risk-free environment with artificial goals, for those conflicts in real life with life and death goals. A scoreboard is just a measuring stick of how the children are doing. So they get upset if they do poorly. So what? That will teach them to learn the above lessons better, and after all, it really is just a game. Better to have a child learn the lessons of teamwork in a sport where the only harm is a bruised ego, than to learn it later in life in an emergency like a fire where lives are at stake.

Think about war games, everything from chess to computer simulations. They are exercises to improve performance. Without scores, and the agenda to achieve good ones, the exercise would fail to have value. And of course, the real potential for damage is removed so the soldiers using them don’t die learning lessons that would result in death on the real battlefield. Likewise with sports. Children learn lessons with little cost. They only learn the lessons with a game, and you only have a game with a score. With a score you have soccer. Without it, you just have people kicking a ball around.

To take another example, I once had the host of a friendly neighborhood poker game inquire as to the seriousness of my play. He could not understand why I would care if I won or lost in a penny ante game where one’s winnings on a good night would be less than anyone’s hourly wage at the table. I told him that attempting to win was the whole point, whether we are playing for $1,000 or matchsticks. There is where the challenges in strategy and psychology rise. Without that, we are merely sitting around a table taking turns winning little lotteries.

So let your kids play sports, and have them play, within the rules, and with good sportsmanship, to win. No child ever died of grief from taking a beating at a sport. Losing, failing to get what one desires, even sometimes after a ton of hard work and sacrifice, is a part of life. Best they learn that lesson while they are young, where they have little to lose. Let them learn, as this cocky 11 year old did, that no matter how good you are at a game, your team can still get beaten 77-0 if your teammates are not up to snuff. We can’t expect them to handle meaningful successes and failures as adults if they can’t handle meaningless successes and failures of childhood games.

Bill Sali: Out of Context?

Republican Bill Sali got into a bit of hot water recently defending those that disrupted a Hindu prayer opening congress. He has responded to his critics, and attempted to explain his very bigoted remarks (more on those later), but it was less than convincing. Sali claims “Christian beliefs have been essential to our country's well-being”, as have many others before him. I wonder, what could be these beliefs be? Do unto others? That’s a universal value, found in cultures across the globe, Christian and non-Christian alike. That can be no more called a Christian belief any more than wearing pants can be called a Christian fashion statement. Ditto for the notion that laws against murder and theft are based on Christian beliefs. Every culture on the planet has such laws. For a belief to validate Sali’s claim, it would need to be some unique, defining Christian belief.

But have the trinity, Jesus’ resurrection, or resting on Sundays, been essential to our country’s well being? This appears clearly false, judging from the comparative well-being of nations that haven’t valued these things. There are, however, aspects of our system that I would grant wholeheartedly have been essential to our country’s well-being, such as the principles of democracy, a fair trial, private property, political checks and balances, judgement by one’s peers, individual rights, and capitalism, among others. None of these is in the slightest bit derivative of the Christian religion, and some appear to be directly contrary to it. Jesus was not a capitalist, nor was he enamoured with the idea of ownership of worldly things. Jesus said “judge not”, not “judge your peers”.

So this claim that America owes much to Christian beliefs, repeated like a mantra as if it were self-evident, is utter nonsense. I say with a straight sober face, and with not a trace of humor, that the people of Iran have far more to thank Christian beliefs for, than the average American does. Laws according to God, reverence for the holy book as a given in life, ignoring science when it treads on religious dogma, declaring all those that disagree as evil, these are the values of American society derived from Christian beliefs. Not a pretty sight, is it? It would be even uglier if the theocrats like Bill Sali, who have taken over the Republican party, got their way.

Sali claims his statements were taken out of context, but what context validates this:

"We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Those are changes -- and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers..."

His attempts to explain reek of Archie Bunker:

"Others may argue just as strenuously that their particular religion - be it Hinduism or Buddhism, Islam or Vodooism - makes this country great, and they are free to do so. I won't agree with that assessment, but I will defend their right to practice their faith and share their opinion publicly. Freedom of speech and freedom of religion are pillars of our constitutional government."

Right Bill, and your choice of Voodoo as a comparison to those religions that disagree with yours was chosen out of love and an effort to find a good example of the other side. It is also comforting that the rights of those of us who don’t agree with your religious views will be defended by you, so long as we don’t run for congress. The founding fathers must be rolling over in their graves to be so misrepresented.

Bill Sali, like every American, has the right to hold whatever religious views he likes. He can think God’s providence has protected America if he likes. He can think the Hindu prayer was a load of meaningless gobbledygook…I know I do. Just remember that in your role of congressman in the US government, the Constitution of the United States, not the Bible, takes precedence. Give to Caeser what is Caeser’s.

Can Miss Teen South Carolina find the U.S. on the Globe?

Miss Teen South Carolina was asked why she thinks 1/5 of Americans can't find their country on a world map. You would think she'd have a better idea, because from the sound of her answer, it appears she is one of them. Who said beauty pageants are all about beauty?