Rush Limbaugh: champion of apartheid

How is it that in this day and age there are millions of Americans who worship this miserable, racist excuse of a human being as some kind of hero?

LIMBAUGH: There are two reasons. What color is the skin of the people in Darfur?
CALLER: Uh, yeah.
LIMBAUGH: It's black. And who do the Democrats really need to keep voting for them? If they lose a significant percentage of this voting bloc, they're in trouble.
CALLER: Yes. Yes. The black population.
LIMBAUGH: Right. So you go into Darfur and you go into South Africa, you get rid of the white government there. You put sanctions on them. You stand behind Nelson Mandela -- who was bankrolled by communists for a time, had the support of certain communist leaders. You go to Ethiopia. You do the same thing.

What kind of cynical bigoted asshole thinks that opposing genocide in Darfur or apartheid in South Africa is a Communist ploy and/or a plot to get black people to vote for Democrats?

This is who key members of this administration run to when they want to get some favorable media coverage. This modern day Father Coughlin.

Truth stranger than fiction

Remember that episode of South Park in which the town is thrown into a fit of hysteria because they're afraid an episode of Family Guy will offend Muslims?

At least 25 newspapers decided not to run today's Opus out of fear of offending Muslims.

First they came for our cartoon penguins ...

No profit in patriotism

From "The Great Iraq Swindle" at Rolling Stone

According to the most reliable ­estimates, we have doled out more than $500 billion for the war, as well as $44 billion for the Iraqi reconstruction effort. And what did America's contractors give us for that money? They built big steaming shit piles, set brand-new trucks on fire, drove back and forth across the desert for no reason at all and dumped bags of nails in ditches. For the most part, nobody at home cared, because war on some level is always a waste. But what happened in Iraq went beyond inefficiency, beyond fraud even. This was about the business of government being corrupted by the profit motive to such an extraordinary degree that now we all have to wonder how we will ever be able to depend on the state to do its job in the future. If catastrophic failure is worth billions, where's the incentive to deliver success? There's no profit in patriotism, no cost-plus angle on common decency. Sixty years after America liberated Europe, those are just words, and words don't pay the bills.

Col. Ted Westhusing - a man who futilely tried to put a stop to such corruption -commit suicide because there was no profit in patriotism. The LA Times reported that a military psychologist told them that Westhusing's flaw was that he "struggled with the idea that monetary values could outweigh moral ones in war."

No profit in patriotism. It makes me sick to even think it.

And what makes me even sicker is thinking of all the times this administration and/or its defenders have acted as if anything other than blind allegiance to President Bush will result with the United States of America becoming an Islamofascist state.

Especially when stuff like this is the reality.

Pork and waste. Six years after the fall of the Twin Towers, the devastating blow to the Pentagon, and the inspiring courage of the passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93, anti-terrorism funding is an exercise in pork-barrel spending and high-profile projects of dubious value.

He's mad (and damn well should be, i.m.o.)

Via Crooked Timber, John Cole on the Bush administration and the Malkin-sphere

I am firmly convinced it is only going to get worse from this administration and the nutjobs at the Weekly Standard. That is, unfortunately, a given, as we know how low they will go- as low as they possibly can. The only interesting question for me is how far will the lunatic fringe 28% crowd in the blogosphere go? How outrageous will the rhetoric have to get before the Malkins, the Hewitts, and all the rest of them say “Wait a minute- that crosses the line?”

I am betting they will never find a line they will not cross- this is not about Iraq or domestic politics anymore. This isn’t about the soldiers and it isn’t about the prospect of Democracy in Iraq. This is about being “right” in the face of evil leftists. This is about “winning.” This is not about what these policies and this vile rhetoric are doing to this nation and our standing- this is about saving face and their own personal stake in what they have attached themselves to in the course of achieving “victory.” My guess is Bush and his speechwriters and Kristol and those mutants at the Weekly Standard and other rags feel comfortable saying this stuff because they know that out there in the blogosphere and the world there are ample knuckledraggers willing and happy to cover for them.

Sadly, they are probably right. It doesn’t matter what type of filth you churn out- The Powerline will have your back. Remember- the Democrats are worse.

and

I’m mad. Plain and simple.

I am mad my party has descended into a swirling vortex of madness in which no one is accountable for anything, everyone is a hypocrite, and that no one cares if a policy or position is good or beneficial to the country, but whether or not there is some short term political advantage.

I am mad that the good aspects of the Republican party (respect for individual liberty, the belief in balanced budgets and sensible tax policy, free trade, etc.- you may not agree with those being good aspects, but I thought they were there) have been drowned out and been discredited for the next half century by the ramblings of mad men and religious nuts.

I am mad at myself for not listening to people prior to the war and instead followed this administration and the pigheaded cheerleaders in the press and the blogosphere. I should have known better. Read some of my old posts(pre-2004)- they are truly atrocious and really embarrassing.

I am mad that I defended the indefensible for too long.

I am mad that the Republican party now stands for torture, domestic surveillance, government secrecy, permanent detention, and the imperial presidency.

I am mad that political debate in the Republican party now amounts to little more than calling your opposition traitors and accusing them of treason.

I am mad that for the GOP, admitting a mistake and dealing with it is seen as weak, or cowardly, and that fixing mistakes are less of a priority than winning short-term political victories.

I am mad at a whole host of things, but most of all I am mad at myself. When I look at these folks, the right blogosphere in general, the Hewitts, the Malkins, the Powerline, the NRO, the Weekly Standard in particular, what I see are people who either have not learned a damned thing in the past few years or whose loyalty to a political party is so great that they don’t care.I think a little shrill is warranted, and I think anything less than shrill is not adequate attonement for my past transgressions. These folks need to be stopped. They need to be discredited, the Republican Party needs to be completely and wholly destroyed and built back up from the bottom up.

My only concern regarding the complete destruction of the Republican Party is the chance that the Democrats might become just as arrogant and corrupt as the Republicans are currently. The only thing that assuages these concerns are the historical record of the Democratic Party being the biggest enemy the Democratic party has, and that I have a hard time believing the Democrats can become as bad as the Republicans. They will turn on themselves before it gets to that point.

I know this little rant does not explain the underlying question you were asking, but it might help to explain where I am now politically. I am mad at myself and the GOP, and I think I have every right to be.

and

And don’t get me started on the gay bashing, the cronyism and hideous appointments to the bureaucracy and the fact that these guys blame EVERYTHING on the “liberal media.”

Welcome to the club, Mr. Cole.

Jesus Christ attacks Fox News

Upon hearing:

1. Sean Hannity attempt to use his friend Ted Nugent's joke about killing Democrats with a machine gun as evidence that "liberals" are hypocrites
2. Ann Coulter - author of Slander: Liberal Lies about the American Right - suggest during a guest appearance on Hannity & Colmes that the Clintons murdered Vince Foster and then framed it to look like a suicide
3. Michelle 'my columns appear at VDARE' Malkin while guest hosting the O'Reilly Factor say that New York Times op-ed writer Paul Krugman is "a hate-driven demagogue" and an "open borders extremist."
4. Bill 'Pat Robertson is a "traditional" American' O'Reilly say that Democrats should not legitimize the KKK/Nazi "hate" of Daily Kos

Jesus Christ, son of God and our Savior (according to Hannity, Coulter, Malkin, and O'Reilly) had this to say in response to them:

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

No doubt far left unhinged bombthrower smear merchant moonbat Bush Derangement Sydrome infected Jesus has received some kind of funding from S-P mastermind/international financier George Soros.

Sean Hannity is an unprincipled hypocritical hack

You know, I couldn't care less about what Ted Nugent said (about wanting to kill some prominent Democrats.) I don't take him seriously and think he has a right to be a lunatic and a moron, and even a hypocrite for having previously said that someone who says on the internet that Rush Limbaugh should be shot should be investigated. But everyone who isn't a brain-dead zombie knows that were any "liberal" to say the exact same things about any "conservative" or Republican Sean Hannity would be leading the outrage brigade along with Michelle Malkin and O'Reilly and all the rest while saying how uncivil and unhinged "liberals" are.

Fox News, were it actually a news network, would be embarassed to have such a pathetic minded individual on their pay roll. Yet it is not. In point of fact, this is what it pays Hannity to do.



Sean Hannity is a bigot. The first thing he says to Bob Beckel is "... I see you liberals." That's telling. Hannity doesn't see Bob Beckel, individual. He sees "you liberals".

And as we know, Hannity believes "liberals" are Evil that the United States needs to be delivered from. Which might go a ways towards explaining why he thinks joking about shooting Hillary Clinton with a machine gun is so funny.

Iraq as Vietnam: history repeats

See if this excerpt from The March of Folly doesn't give meaning to the saying that those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

Ignorance was not a factor in the American endeavor in Vietnam pursued through five successive presidencies, although it was to become an excuse. Ignorance of country and culture there may have been, but not ignorance of the contra-indications, even the barriers, to achieving the objectives of American policy. All the conditions and reasons precluding a successful outcome were recognized or foreseen at one time or another during the thirty years of our involvement. American intervention was not a progress sucked step by step into an unsuspected quagmire. At no time were policy-makers unaware of the hazards, obstacles and negative developments. American intelligence was adequate, informed observation flowed steadily from the field to the capital, special investigative missions were repeatedly sent out, independent reportage to balance professional optimism - when that prevailed - was never lacking. The folly consisted not in pursuit of a goal in ignorance of the obstacles but in persistance in the pursuit despite accumulating evidence that the goal was unattainable, and the effect disproportionate to the American interest and eventually damaging to American society, reputation and disposable power in the world.

The question raised is why did the policy-makers close their minds to the evidence and its implications? This is the classic symptom of folly: refusal to draw conclusions from the evidence, addiction to the counter-productive.

President Bush versus reality

Nov. 2002 - An award winning historian writes an op-ed saying that it is unlikely that the United States will be able to do in Iraq what it was able to do in post-war Japan while listing ten key differences between Iraq and Japan.

Aug. 2007 - President Bush cites said historian as evidence that we can build a democracy in Iraq.

Historian responds (via Think Progress).

They [war supporters] keep on doing this. They keep on hitting it and hitting it and hitting it and it’s always more and more implausible, strange and in a fantasy world. They’re desperately groping for a historical analogy, and their uses of history are really perverse. … I have always said as a historian that the use of Japan [in arguing for the likelihood of successfully bringing democracy to Iraq] is a misuse of history.

I'd certainly say this qualifies for the designation wooden-headedness ... the intellectual bankruptcy of our President could not be on fuller display.

The original Kid Nation

The clip ends too soon. What happens next is that Jamie Kennedy asks if any parents are willing to let their kids go on the program at which point several raise their hands.

Edit - Oops. This might make more sense if I link to this article. (h/t ERV)

Children who participated in “Kid Nation,” a CBS reality show that has come under fire over questions of whether it violated child safety and labor laws, were required to do whatever they were told by the show’s producers, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, or risk expulsion from the show, according to a copy of the contract signed by the children and their parents.

...

The 22-page agreement leaves little room for parents to argue that they did not know what their children might encounter. As is standard in such agreements, the parents and the children agreed not to hold the producers and CBS responsible if their children died or were injured, if they received inadequate medical care, or if their housing was unsafe and caused injury.

But while such agreements might be standard for adult participants in a reality show, it also takes on a different tone when the minor and the parent are being held
solely responsible for any “emotional distress, illness, sexually transmitted diseases, H.I.V. and pregnancy” that might occur if the child “chooses to enter into an intimate relationship of any nature with another participant or any other person.”

The March of Bush

In honor of President Bush saying that the Vietnam war teaches us that we must blindly accept his Iraq war decisions and forever I went out and got a copy of The March of Folly by historian Barbara Tuchman, and will be blogging bits of it as I go along in order to help draw out the Iraq-Vietnam comparison for the President.

To get an idea of how easily the Bush administration would fit into the book (and no doubt would be included if the book were written today) take a look at this

Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts. It is epitomized in a historian's statement about Philip II of Spain, the surpassing wooden-head of all sovereigns: "No experience of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence."

Hm, that sounds vaguely familiar.

Bush is fixated on Iraq, according to friends and advisers. One former aide went to see him recently to discuss various matters, only to find Bush turning the conversation back to Iraq again and again. He recognizes that his presidency hinges on whether Iraq can be turned around in 18 months. "Nothing matters except the war," said one person close to Bush. "That's all that matters. The whole thing rides on that."

And yet Bush does not come across like a man lamenting his plight. In public and in private, according to intimates, he exhibits an inexorable upbeat energy that defies the political storms. Even when he convenes philosophical discussions with scholars, he avoids second-guessing his actions. He still acts as if he were master of the universe, even if the rest of Washington no longer sees him that way.

"You don't get any feeling of somebody crouching down in the bunker," said Irwin M. Stelzer, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who was part of one group of scholars who met with Bush. "This is either extraordinary self-confidence or out of touch with reality. I can't tell you which."

Baleful quote of the day

"[T]he Chief Executive will on occasion feel duty bound to assert monarchical notions of prerogative that will permit him to exceed the laws." - 1987 Congressional minority report on the Iran-Contra scandal

Guess who was one of the Congressional champions of this view. Vice President Dick Cheney.

To the Americans who somehow have managed to forget, this nation happens to have been founded as a result of colonial Americans explicitly rejecting the notion of a chief executive exercising his monarchical prerogative to exceed the laws.

Triple H for President

Karl Rove said the following during his appearance on Rush Limbaugh's radio show:

"The people that I see criticizing [President Bush] are the sort of elite, effete snobs who can't hold a candle to this guy [intellectually.]"

Translating that out of movement conservative speak, Rove is saying that Bush critics are "liberals," which is to say, that Bush critics are girly sissy men/borderline homosexuals (see the applause Coulter got when she called John Edwards a "faggot" at CPAC) who are also pseudo intellectuals.

Conservative movement morons who have had their brains rotted out by listening to too much Rush Limbaugh and co. propaganda eat up this kind of stuff. Case in point.

Limbaugh himself calls "liberals" Newcastrati and has a habit of speaking in a lispy, high-pitched effiminate voice whenever he impersonates a "liberal."

Ah, don't you just love it? Fat, pasty,middle-aged self-admitted nerd who couldn't get a girl and who has never played a sport and has never set foot in a gym in his life and dodged the Vietnam draft Karl Rove talking about the "effete" Bush critics with fat, out of shape, draft dodging idiot Rush Limbaugh who thinks carrots are deadlier than cigarettes. I, for one, know when I think of manliness - I think of Limbaugh and Rove and our ex-cheerleader* ivy league educated rich boy draft dodging legacy President.

And then the elite-ness of the critics. Yep, the 70% elite of the country that disapproves of the President.

The buzz in the Rush-Hannity-Drudge axis of the noise machine is that John Edwards looks like too much of a sissy to be President (Rush calls him the "Breck girl.") That if he was our President terrorists would be emboldened to attack us because Edwards doesn't look tough enough.

Of course, in conservative movement world, "toughness" is a function of performance. Its being able to act like you're tough and being willing to send other people to act tough for you. However, its not just the Limbaughs and Roves of the political pundit class that worships this kind "manliness" - witness Chris Mathews drooling over proffesional actor Fred Thompson.

Which is why I think Triple H will make the perfect conservative movement presidential candidate of the United States of America. I mean, just watch the video below. It doesn't get more manly than that! Plus, its acting so its just the kind of imaginary fantasy manliness that seems to be popular. What about his politics?, you ask. Well, he's conservative obviously. I mean, just look at how manly he looks - by definition he must be conservative. Just ask Ann Coulter.

Sure, he might not have have that much experience ... but all you need to do is stack his cabinet with war-mongering ideologues from AEI and PNAC who hate liberal democracy and set-him up with Karl Rove - the greatest political mind to ever live - and you've got the makings of the greatest American President in the history of the universe. And just look at him - there's no way in hell any terrorist attacks would happen on his watch ... the terrorists would be too scared of getting put in a Pedigree (the finishing move you see in the video.) Plus, he's already got his own conservative manly kick ass theme music that would be a perfect replacement to Hail to the Chief.



*Actually, I don't think being a cheerleader in college is an aspersion on anyone's "manliness" but you know good and well that if any Democrat was a former male cheerleader the likes of Rove and Limbaugh would be using that information to characterize said Democrat as an effiminate sissy.

Corrupting democracy

Its tedious to have to say over and over again that the Bush administration has used the American federal government as a spoils system to reward its campaign financers at the expense of American democracy.

With the recent focus on mining disasters we witness another example of that process in action, as highlighted by Mr. Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. As it turns out, Richard Stickler, the former mining executive chosen by President Bush to head the Mining Safety and Health Administration, had a history of running unsafe mines and was rejected twice by the Senate, at which point Bush got him the job via recess appointment.

Take it away, Ed.

So not only do we have a guy with a terrible safety record in mine safety running the government's mine safety program, but he was snuck in to the job after being rejected by the Senate not once but twice. Bush went out of his way to appoint someone clearly unqualified, someone rejected twice by a Republican-controlled Senate, when it would have been easier - and obviously better for the country - to find someone who was qualified to pass the Senate confirmation.

The arrogance of this administration never ceases to amaze me. They really do seem to think that they are omniscient and omnipotent, that there's no possible way they could ever be wrong about anything. Even when faced with his own party's rejection of a nominee who is clearly unqualified for the job, does it even occur to them that perhaps they should change course and find another person for the job? Of course not. They just wait until Congress leaves town and slide them in under the radar. Staggering arrogance.

Hey, it's par for the course.

Impeach him now before he can do anymore damage

I'm with Bruce Fein ... President Bush needs to be impeached. Not only is he lawless ... he's delusional. Those two don't mix well.

The LA Times reports that President Bush believes that Vietnam teaches us that we can't withdraw troops from Iraq. First, consider that the administration has been saying for years now that Iraq isn't Vietnam but is now saying that Iraq IS Vietnam. Then, after that sinks in, consider the insanity of using that comparison to say we should stay in Iraq.

Yes, the withdrawal from Vietnam was painful and difficult. That was the price that had to be paid for our mission failure. We will eventually have to pay a similar price in Iraq, as military historian Martin van Creveld already pointed out about three years ago.

Maybe instead of inviting talk radio hosts who are as disconnected from reality as he is to the White House the President should spend some time with a real student of history like maybe Barbara Tuchman.

For more commentary on our President's craziness, see Joshua Marshall.

Battling not with monsters

At Discover, social psychologist Philip Zimbardo draws parallels between the abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib and the Stanford Prisoner Experiment (also see here) he designed and ran back in '71 and warns us to avoid the situational factors that dehumanize not just "the enemy" but ourselves.

A blog recommendation (with the quote of the day)

I originally found this blog (in another incarnation) from a comment left here in response to a post I wrote about the history of life but had quit reading while I was gone from blogging. I remembered the blog today and did a track back to add it back into my bookmarks and see that the quality of the blogging is still there but the site has been upgraded with a cool new name and a great new quote ... I'm a sucker for that intro format I guess ...

So here it is:

The Infinite Sphere

"Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere." - Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1670)

As you might be able to guess from the quote, it's a nature blog.

TV reminder

Christiane Amanpour's 6 hour documentary - God's Warriors - about political religious extremism begins tonight at 9 PM (ET) on CNN.

Pitfalls of procrastination

I've been meaning for a good while now to write a review of The Assault on Reason by Al Gore. I've actually already got a couple of pages done but haven't gotten around to finalizing it.

Now I see that Michelle Goldberg has already beat me to the punch and used Gore's new book as a jumping off point about the postmodernism/nihilistic relativism of the conservative movement (which I had intended to do myself.)

With the indispensable help of the [Christian Nationalist] movement I'm talking about, the Right has created a climate in which the popular understanding of empirical reality is subject to political pressure, and in which the findings of science are trumped by ideology. The Right likes to rant on about postmodernism and relativism. But really, theirs is the ultimate relativistic movement, claiming that there is no reality, that nothing can be known, and that everything is a function of power.

In her seminal book, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Hannah Arendt writes:

Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lives, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of the man who can fabricate it.

Although I'm certainly not comparing Christian nationalism or the current administration to the Nazis or to Stalin, they do share elements of totalitarian movements in their embryonic stages; the first step in the erosion of a liberal democracy is often this kind of subversion of truth combined with the creation of an alternative reality and an attempt to impose this alternative reality on everyone.

Of course, the movement uses Newspeak to code its assault on reality. It calls its reality revision "politcally incorrect" in an Orwellian effort to depict truth and factuality as matters of p.c. (read: liberal) orthodoxy.

O'Reilly's inverted reality

I've already written at length about the way that Bill O'Reilly inverts reality by projecting onto his enemies the character traits of the extremists that he himself pals around with and transmits the ideas of, so consider this post part of the ongoing appendix that is the hypocrisy of O'Reilly demanding that anyone not legitimize by associating with or appearing at any function of the alleged KKK/Nazi style "hate" of Daily Kos.

In this instance of double standard, it has come to my attention that O'Reilly Factor guest (see here, here, and here) Tony Perkins - head of the James Dobson associated Family Research Council - purchased the mailing list of former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke in 1996 for over 80,000 dollars and in 2001 Perkins addressed the Lousiana chapter of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens.

Because it bothers O'Reilly

"Akshon (Yeah!)" by Killer Mike

I know how much Bill can't stand "vile" rap.

About the brain

At Discover magazine, 10 Unsolved Mysteries Of The Brain

Of all the objects in the universe, the human brain is the most complex: There are as many neurons in the brain as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy. So it is no surprise that, ­despite the glow from recent advances in the science of the brain and mind, we still find ourselves squinting in the dark somewhat. But we are at least beginning to grasp the crucial mysteries of neuroscience and starting to make headway in addressing them. Even partial answers to these 10 questions could restructure our understanding of the roughly three-pound mass of gray and white matter that defines who we are.

Physics had its Newton, quantum mechanic its Einstein, biology its Darwin, and genetics its Crick, Watson, and Franklin but neuroscience has yet to have such a tipping point style revolution. Click the link to check ten of the most pressing question in cognitive science.

Is Melanie Morgan psycho?

You tell me.

"Jon Soltz is acting like a cockroach, frantically scurrying from the spotlight of truth that's shining on him.

Does anyone have a can of bug spray handy?"

That's one quasi call for Jon Soltz's death. For more on his "crime", see this bit from Media Matters.

"Jon Soltz is still a hypocritical cockroach. He needs to be stomped on and neutralized before he and his ilk can silence military support for the mission in Iraq."

And that's two.

Hm. Calling your political opponents cockroaches and asking for them to be stomped out ... now where have I heard that before ...

Oh yeah! I remember.

"You cockroaches must know you are made of flesh. We won't let you kill. We will kill you" - a Hutu Rwandan radio station

Update: I see that I'm not the only one to make the Radio Rwanda comparison. Spocko - the blogger who has been documenting the extremism of Morgan and her KSFO radio pals - noticed the liberals are cockroaches theme of Morgan back in last December. From an audio clip provided by Spocko of a KSFO broadcast

"A cockroach will live nine days without its head before it starves to death"

"That's nothing compared to liberals."

[Everyone yucks it up, Morgan can be heard laughing louder than anyone else.]

Again, this sounds vaguely familiar ...

"We began by saying that a cockroach cannot give birth to a butterfly. It is true. A cockroach gives birth to another cockroach […] The history of Rwanda show us clearly that a Tutsi stays always exactly the same that he has never changed. The malice, the evil are just as we knew them in the history of our country. We are not wrong in saying that a cockroach gives birth to another cockroach." - Hutu newspaper Kangura (March 1993)

Color me not surprised

Walter Williams, the economics professor who alleged that subjects of a study ate 32 ounces of DDT a day for a year and a half and had no negative health consequences (a 1979 World Health Organization study found that a single dose of 1/20 an ounce has toxic effects in humans) will be guest hosting the Rush Limbaugh radio program on August 24. Imagine that.

I also noticed that Williams is the recipient of the John M. Olin Distinguished Professorship grant. For those not aware, the Olin Foundation is one of the chief underwriters of the conservative movement.

Also, Williams has been named as a potential vice presidential candidate by the ultra-ideological libertarian/John Birch Society fan/New World Order conspiracist/Patriot movement sympathist presidential candidate Ron Paul.

Two pounds of DDT a day, will keep the doctor away

Speaking of ideological thinking ...

Yesterday, I hear Rush Limbaugh saying carrots are more deadly than second hand smoke and today I come across this post at Deltoid about a column at Townhall in which the author states that volunteers in a study ate TWO POUNDS of DDT a day for a year and a half and suffered no ill effects.

Those that bear false witness and the false witness that they bear

Via Ed Brayton, here's the most dishonest quote-mining I've ever encountered:

"Religion is the basis and foundation of government" - James Madison

Christian fundamentalist Stephen Mansfield cites that in his new book, which is his contribution to the Dominionist cause of rewriting American history in order to lay the ideological foundations for the replacement of our secular liberal democracy with theocracy.

Mansfield took that "quote" from "Memorial and Remonstrance"; he doctored the following passage to get the above lie.

Because finally, "the equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his Religion according to the dictates of conscience" is held by the same tenure with all his other rights. If we recur to its origin, it is equally the gift of nature; if we weigh its importance, it cannot be less dear to us; if we consider the "Declaration of those rights which pertain to the good people of Virginia, as the basis and foundation of government," it is enumerated with equal solemnity, or rather studied emphasis."

No matter how many times one comes across such dishonesty it still ceases to amaze. Among his other lies (and Chris Rodda - the one who found them in the first place - plans on documenting them further) is that Thomas Jefferson wanted the Bible to be part of the curriculum at the University of Virginia. That is the opposite of the reality ... Jefferson established the University of Virginia as one of (if not the, too lazy to look it up at the moment) first secular colleges in America.

Over at Deborah Lipstadt's blog I remarked in her comments section that

What I find interesting is the commonality in methodology ... the quote-mining, the selective use of facts or figures, the emphasis on minor flaws or corrections as if they constitute major challenges to an overall truth, the fabricated "facts", starting from "The Truth" and then revising reality accordingly etc. - of ideological thinking.

That was in response to this post about David Irving stating that Professor Lipstadt is wanted in the UK because some kind of judgement has been passed against her.

Irving has inverted reality similar to what Manfield did with Jefferson. In reality, Irving had sued Lipstadt for calling him a Holocaust denier and lost that case because he IS a Holocaust denier. There are no judgements against Lipstadt, at all.

What you see in both Irving and Mansfield is reality subjugated to ideology.

Deadly stupid

On today's Rush Limbaugh program he was saying that carrots are more deadly than cigarettes or trans fats. Rush's incoherent ramble about carrots came after he had said that second hand smoke being dangerous is "a hoax like global warming." Someone better run and go tell the CDC.

To borrow (and paraphrase) a phrase from Glenn Greenwald, it's things like this that make me despise, rather than merely dislike, Rush Limbaugh.

Assserting that cigarettes or second smoke or trans fats aren't dangerous is inexecusably stupid. There are millions of people that listen to Rush and call themselves "dittoheads" because they take his bullshit seriously. He is sabotaging their health. It is a grave betrayal of trust and responsibility. They should be furious, but instead they love him for it.

This is Rush continuing his long history of helping to get his audience sick or dead.

"It has not been proven that nicotine is addictive, the same with cigarettes causing emphysema [and other diseases]." - Limbaugh, (4-29-94 radio program)

The father of modern philosophy

From Descartes: The Life and Times of a Genius by A.C. Grayling

Part of the contribution made by Descartes’ Discourse was to restore human reason to a status which allowed it to address questions until then regarded by religious orthodoxy as dangerous. In this respect Descartes is to the modern world what Thales, the so-called “Father of Philosophy,” was to the ancient world. The comparison is an illuminating one. Thales asked questions about the nature and origins of the world, and formulated answers that relied solely on reason and observation, making no ancient scriptures. He assumed that the world is a place that makes sense, and that the human mind is capable of understanding it. His example unleashed a brilliant epoch of free thought in classical antiquity, which gave birth to the Western tradition.

What Thales achieved for the human mind in ancient times, Descartes contributed to achieving for the human mind at the beginning of the modern age. He is therefore sometimes aptly described as the “Father of Modern Philosophy” to mark the comparison. He played a key role in helping to rescue enquiry about sublunary things from the stifling and long-frozen grip of religious authority. He did it not by rejecting that authority, for by his own testimony he was a devout Catholic all his life, but by separating things of heaven from things of earth, so that scientific reason could investigate the latter without anxieties over orthodoxy. This left the things of heaven untouched and unthreatened – so Descartes thought and hoped – by what scientific enquiry discovered.

Brain teaser

"You find yourself sitting next to a stranger on a plane. The following dialogue occurs:

You: 'How many children do you have?'
She: 'Two.'
You:'Is at least one of them a boy?'
She: 'Yes.'

What is the probality that both are boys?"
- Martin Gardner, quoting himself in Weird Water & Fuzzy Logic*

To see the answer, scroll and highlight the hidden text at the bottom of this post (or select highlight all.)

*Gotta love a library book sale. I got a "used" hardcover copy of this for a dollar. I put quotes around used because although the book is wrapped and marked like a library book it's in mint condition and even has that new book smell ... I doubt it was ever checked out.

The intuitive answer is 50%. That's wrong though. Think of it like this:

The woman has two kids ... call them K1 and K2. According to her answers, there are the following possibilities that fit:

K1 - male, K2 - male
K1 -male, K2 - female
K1 - female, K2 male

This means there is a 1 in 3 chance that both are boys - the answer is thus 33%.

Stupid question

"Where are all the atheist hospitals in this country?" - Rep. Bill Salli

There are none, as atheists don't believe in hospitals. It's a well known fact that if it weren't for conservative Christians there wouldn't be any medical care at all in the United States of America.

Salli also apparently thinks our national motto is E pluribus, Christian theocracy.

80s Video of the Day

"True Faith" by New Order

Quote of the day

"America, even if it shifts to the left, will still be a conservative force on the international stage. Mrs Clinton might be portrayed as a communist on talk radio in Kansas, but set her alongside France's Nicolas Sarkozy, Germany's Angela Merkel, Britain's David Cameron or any other supposed European conservative, and on virtually every significant issue Mrs Clinton is the more right-wing. She also mentions God more often than the average European bishop." - The Economist

Not just talk radio in Kansas - talk radio pretty much everywhere in America portrays Hillary Clinton as a communist (or a "fascist socialist" ala Neil Boortz or Mr. "liberal fascism" Jonah Goldberg.) Nevermind the religious right elements that literally believe she's an agent of Satan.

More on 1934

Tim Lambert at his Deltoid blog has more commentary over the nonsense surrounding NASA's revised temperatures for the continental United States.

One thing that I find interesting about this story - from a purely sociologial perspective - is that you can step back and clearly see how the mind of the bullshitter constructs an untruth. Recall that Harry Frankfurt wrote that the bullshitter totally disregards facts and will either pick them out to suit his purposes or will make things up to do the same without ever really caring to know what is true or not.

Now think of that in the context of the revised temperatures. For the planet, 2005 (followed by: 1998, 2002, 2003, and 2004) is the warmest year on record, so how do you make a big deal about the newly modified temperatures which do not change that fact? You seize upon the fact that 1998 went from being the warmest year on record in the states by .01 degrees to be the second warmest by .02 degrees and fail to make a distinction between "warmest year on record" for the planet and "warmest year on record" for the continguous American states while concimitantly failing to mention the trivial difference in temperatures between '98 and '34.

If you go back and look at my original post with the link to the Rush Limbaugh transcript you can see him saying that 1998 is the "warmest year on record" is one of the "central theses" of global warming. Yet, as I've already mentioned, its been known for over a year that 2005 is the hottest temperature on record, but what's more, NASA never hyped the 1998 vs. 1934 difference in the first place, as Lambert explains

Because the 1998 and 1934 numbers were so close, minor adjustments could easily change their ordering. This is what happened with the GISS numbers released this year. In that data set, 1998 was a tiny amount warmer than 1934. This change was not much ballyhooed. Nor was it a little ballyhooed. In fact, it wasn't mentioned by anyone at all. Because it didn't matter. When the data correction made 1998 and 1934 flip back, this change was much-ballyhooed by Steve McIntyre, even though he knew that it didn't matter.

Exactly. The "global warming is a hoax/fraud" crowd seem to have the same bad mental habits that creationists have, including quote-mining, but especially in the tendency to seize at any error or flaw possible as proof that the entire edifice upon which a science rests is faulty. They are quite inable or unwilling to see the forrest for the trees.

Jason Bourne, communist

O'Reilly does movie reviews (of movies he doesn't seem to have actually viewed.)

Can we send them to the Gaede home?

After watching the documentary on the white nationalist pop twins I needed to watch something to counter the vileness of the hate the girls are being brainwashed with. If only it was this easy.

Dictator Robert Mugabe reduces civil liberty, cites U.S. example

An alternative title to this post could have been Worst American President Ever Watch. Here's the link about Mugabe.

Testing the 30 Second Rule

The 30 Second Rule: You can tune into Rush Limbaugh's radio program randomly and if he's not already in the process of lying, he'll be lying within 30 seconds.

As I've said before, I've been testing this rule for almost a year now, and I've yet to see it fail. Yesterday I got in my car and turned the radio to Limbaugh. He was in the process of saying that global warming is a hoax and that one of the "central theses" of the hoax - that 1998 was the hottest year on record - has been refuted by mining executive (gee, what a surprise) Steve McIntyre. Here's the transcript.

If you look at the transcript, the place where I stopped listening was at the first break in said transcript - that's about all the Rush I can stomach at a time. But that was enough for me to assume that it was more typical Rush bullshit, and I felt no need to bother looking into it any further.

So today as I'm doing my blog surfing I see that the usual idiot blogs are in a fury over this story. This time I took an additional couple of minutes and looked into the story enough to see that NASA had indeed revised some of its temperature figures. Yet, I was still certain that the story was being over-hyped, especially since I noticed that the revised temp's were just for the United States and not for the entire planet.

Next I checked around the 'net to see if I could find any commentary from anyone who wasn't a global warming denialist ideologue. I couldn't find any, so I e-mailed science journalist James Hrynyshyn about it.

Here's his response. Yep, the 30 Second Rule remains intact.

Sadly, though, some damage has already been done, as you can tell by the Update to Hrynsyhyn's post. Like Alonzo said, it's depressing that its so easy (and even profitable) to lie to the public.

Update: To really get a visual depiction of just how disingenuous (and/or stupid) the exxagerated outrage over the revised temperatures is, take a look at the graphs in this post at Deltoid.

And the award for Worst Mother Ever goes to ...

April Gaede*

*Note for Michelle Malkin - The award for Worst Mother Ever is to be taken figuratively. The Daily Doubter does not literally mean that April Gaede has objectively been identified as the worst mother in the history of the human race (although we - as in I - do believe she is a horrible, horrible mother). I know that you have difficulty understanding this distinction, e.g.

And unhinged propagandist Keith Olbermann misleads whatever viewers he has and names me the World’s Worst Person of the day (click link for video - .WMV file)…on a day when a Palestianian suicide bomber committed a bloody, brutal act of terrorism against innocent civilians at a Tel Aviv restaurant and Hamas officials rallied behind the carnage.

Yet I'm confident you can make the distinction, as evidenced by you calling the student protesters of the Minute Men at Columbia University "monsters"on The O'Reilly Factor.

Book excerpt of the day

From Robots and Empire, by Isaac Asimov

"... Woman, don't speak of kinship to us. You are no kin of mine. You are of those who persecuted and tried to destroy us when you were strong and who come whining to us when you are weak."

There was a stir in the audience - and by no means a friendly one - but Bistervan held his ground firmly.

Gladia said softly, "Do you remember the evil we did when we were strong?"

Bistervan said, "Don't fear that we will forget. It is in our minds every day."

"Good! Because now you know what to avoid. You have learned that when the strong oppress the weak, that is wrong. Therefore, when the table turns and when you are strong and we are weak, you will not be oppressive."

"Ah, yes. I have heard the argument. When you were strong, you never heard of morality, but now that you are weak, you preach it earnestly."

"In your case, though, when you were weak, you knew all about morality and were appalled by the behavior of the strong - and now that you are strong, you forget morality. Surely, it is better that the immoral learn morality through adversity than the moral forget morality in prosperity."

"We will give what we received," said Bistervan, holding up his clenched fist.

"You should give what you would have liked to receive," said Gladia, holding out her arms, as though embracing. "Since everyone can think of some past injustice to avenge, what you are saying, my friend, is that it is right for the strong to oppress the weak. And when you say that, you justify the Spacers of the past and should therefore have no complaint of the present. What I say is that oppression was wrong when we practiced it in the past and that it will be equally wrong when you practice it in the future. We cannot change the past, unfortunately, but we can still decide on what the future shall be."

"It's time to charge the Democratic Party with treason"

So says the former resident of Michelle Malkin's blogroll Matt Margolis.

Hm ... treason is punishable by death ... I wonder if Margolis believes the entire Democratic Party should get the full punishment of death or some lesser prison sentence for "persecut[ing]" "those who try to protect this country."

Oh, and may as well charge me with treason, too; seeing that I believe that the President frauding the country into war with Iraq and authorizing illegal surveillance of US citizens are impeachable offenses.

It fits, as I discovered from watching Malkin host The O'Reilly Factor that I traffic in hate worse than Michael Savage because I use profanity. At least that was the argument she used on Juan Williams ... yet her brain wasn't able to comprehend the incoherence of her position when Williams pointed out that Dick Cheney has also used profanity yet she doesn't consider him a hate-monger. Here's a tip for Juan Williams: you've got to put it into a slogan for Malkin to understand something. She has difficulty thinking otherwise.

So fuck, I guess I'm a fucking hater because I say fuck and sometimes I might say something like "fuck you, you fucking asshole." That's hate, pure and simple. So says the woman who has said that the Americans who were put into concentration camps on the basis of their ethnicity had it coming.

And to reinforce her assertion that the "nutroots" Daily Kos is a hate site, Malkin had on one of her blog moderators, Rick Moran - a guy that has said that I'm a liar and/or a plagiarist because he finds it inconceivable that there is any adult in the United States who doesn't follow politics enough to know that you shouldn't read Ann Coulter to get more politcally informed and suggests that instead someone should pick up a magazine. Yeah, like maybe the issue of Time magazine I explicitly referenced in the post he was responding to which did a huge white-wach cover story on Ann Coulter depicting her as a significant political figure in America? Also, he thinks that while she's offensive (but not eliminationist), Coulter is intelligent and witty ("has a first class mind" ). Yeah, tell that to the Pope. Or the Bush appointed conservative judge in the Dover decision who she character assasinates in Godless because he shoots a whole in her idiotic "evolution is liberal mythology" nonsense that comprises the bulk of that book. Dave Neiwert responded to that at length.

But I think my favorite part is where Moran puts quotes around the Propaganda Critic website and then treats it (and the concept of 'name-calling') as suspect even though the section I had quoted from the website was itself taken from The Institute for Propaganda Analysis.

Oh yeah, guess who else doesn't know who Ann Coulter is? My mother. So Moran can go fuck himself (sorry, that's my hate talking, if I was more respectable and could engage in civic discourse I'd confine myself to charging my political opponents with a crime punishable by death and revising history to justify my prejudices against Muslims ... guess I've fallen victim to the "Kos-ification of public discourse" - damn those Malkin slogans are catchy!) if he has anything derogatory to say about her ignorance of Coulter.

Have a pleasant day!



Update: Charge Reason magazine with treason, too!

Update 2: I was remiss in that I didn't point out another example in what seems to be the boundless depths of Bill O'Reilly's wrongness. In the course of O'Reilly's campaign against Daily Kos, he has said to one guest who brought up Coulter that she doesn't have anything to do with Republicans and that Daily Kos is different because Democratic presidential candidates are legitimizing the "hate" of Kos by appearing at Yearly Kos. One need only watch the video all the way through to see how wrong O'Reilly is.

Annoying

I'm currently reading (among other things) Robots and Empire by Issac Asimov, which ties together Asimov's Foundation, Empire, and Robots series.

One of the main characters says "my lady" in pretty much every other sentence. I've decided that this is possibly the most obnoxious two word phrase in the English language. Once or twice would have been allright, but the character must say it around a hundred times in the book.

In other news, I should have a review of the most recently released books from Al Gore and Glenn Greenwald done this week.

Who needs liberty?

Following up on the Democratic-controlled Senate, the Democratic-controlled House approved a revision of the FISA law which President Bush has been violating for several years now.

Let's recap: after 9/11, Congress amended FISA to make it easier to go after terrorists. President Bush praised the law and said he now had everything he needed to find terrorists. Meanwhile, he had authorized the NSA to engage in warrantless surveillance in violation of the law which he praised.

And so now in the face of the President's arguably impeachable offense Congress gives this lawless President (and future presidents) more power to spy on its citizens without oversight.

I'll let Glenn Greenwald take over, as I'm too frustrated to write anything else

It is staggering, and truly disgusting, that even in August, 2007 -- almost six years removed from the 9/11 attacks and with the Bush presidency cemented as one of the weakest and most despised in American history -- that George W. Bush can "demand" that the Congress jump and re-write legislation at his will, vesting in him still greater surveillance power, by warning them, based solely on his say-so, that if they fail to comply with his demands, the next Terrorist attack will be their fault. And they jump and scamper and comply.

What could it possibly take to wake up the Democratic party? In 2006, Democrats campaigned against Republicans by accusing them of being rubber-stamps for the President. And yet when the President directs his very old and very tired rhetoric at them about anyone who doesn't do what he wants is endangering the nation they (not all of them) cower and yield more authority to one of the most unpopular presidents in US history who just so happens to probably be the worst United States president in the history of the universe (hyperbolic, but true.)

Senate rewards Presidential law breaking and breech of public trust ...

.. by giving President Bush expanded authority to spy without oversight. He has already lied and broken the law after Congress gave him the previous expanded authority he asked for.

What the hell? It seems that Democrats greatest fear is that Republicans will accuse them of not being Republicans.

Digby has more.

YouTube of the day

This is a compilation of all the times the character Ted and his band have sung on Scrubs. Gotta love Ted and his band.

Breaking news: Pope Benedict confesses to being a liberal atheist

Ann Coulter "argues" in her latest book, Godless, that libaralism is a religion and that evolution is a liberal/atheist creation myth with no scientific evidence supporting it.

Guess who is another "atheist"? That's right, the "liberal" Pope.

From Herald Sun (h/t Pharyngula)

POPE Benedict has said there is substantial scientific proof of the theory of evolution.

The Pope, speaking as he was concluding his holiday in northern Italy, also said the human race must listen to "the voice of the Earth" or risk destroying its very existence.

In a talk with 400 priests, the Pope spoke of the current debate raging in some countries, particularly the US and his native Germany, between creationism and evolution.

“They are presented as alternatives that exclude each other,” the Pope said. “This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favour of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”

But he said evolution did not answer all the questions and could not exclude a role by God.

A clue for the clueless

I rewatched the episode of The O'Reilly Factor in which O'Reilly reiterates that Daily Kos is the same as the KKK or Nazis and in which he and his two guests agree about the need to supress free speech. In addition to Coulter and Soros, O'Reilly cites as reason to believe that Daily Kos is going to end up getting someone murdered David Horowitz and Bill Kristol getting pies thrown at them.

I'm going to throw a name at Bill O'Reilly.

Alan Berg.

Ever heard of him? See, Alan Berg - a liberal Jewish radio shock jock personality - actually was (most likely) killed by a neo-Nazi hate group named The Order. The group took its inspiration from The Turner Diaries by William Pierce.

It just so happens that Pierce was also an inspiration for Timothy McVeigh, who thought by bombing the federal building in Oklahoma City he could spark a violent revolution.

Another inspiration for McVeigh was his belief in New World Order conspiracy. And, gee whiz, guess who happened to be one of the most prominent New World Order conspiracists in the '90s. That's right, Pat Robertson - a fellow whom Bill O'Reilly categorized as a "traditional" American.

Someone might also point out to Bill O'Reilly that some fans of his go-to guest host and regular guest Michelle Malkin sent death threats to students at UC Santa Cruz after Malkin posted their contact information and asked her readers to make sure that the students were "held accountable."

Let's not forget Michelle Malkin fan/domestic terrorist Chad Castagna who sent fake antrax letters to various pundits that he and Michelle believe are "unhinged" "moonbats." Malkin bears no ultimate responsibility for Castagna, nor does she have any direct connection to him or has she said anything that would suggest to her audience that they should send fake (or real) anthrax letters to the "liberals" that she demonizes.

But she does encourage her audience to hate "liberals" and by O'Reilly's own standards he should be more concerned with Malkin than Daily Kos because even if we were to concede that the pie throwing incidents can be linked to the "hate" of Daily Kos, it is still quite a stretch to go from that to murder, while it's ludicrous to suggest that pie throwing is more worrisome than death threats and fake anthrax letters.

I think I'm going to need to get my jaw re-attached

I flipped to The O'Reilly Factor tonight and heard O'Reilly saying that the "hate" of Daily Kos is going to get someone killed/murdered and that he wants some kind of legislation passed that would make it easier for him to sue people who talk bad about him on the internet.

I'm going to rewatch the entire segment when it comes on again at 11, so I'll probably have more to say tomorrow.

In the meanwhile, I might point out that once again, O'Reilly has an inverted grasp of reality. Rush Limbaugh has (or had) a recurring role on the 1/2 Comedy Hour - a propaganda vehicle disguised as "satire" - and is a hero of Sean Hannity and has been on the channel on various occasions, as well as having had members of the White House on his radio program which has 8 million listerners, the last time I checked.

And recently he has called Osama Bin Laden a Democrat and Democrats spokespersons for al Qaeda. He's in the past said that "liberals" are cockroaches and that Democrats are at war with America. And in the mid '90s, before the Oklahoma City bombing took place, Limbaugh was saying things like this:

The second violent American revolution is just about - I got my fingers about a fourth of an inch apart - is just about that far away. Because these people are sick and tired of a bunch of beuracrats in Washington driving into town and telling them what they can and can't do.

But who are we kidding? Reality doesn't matter to O'Reilly. Daily Kos took the lead in calling for Democrats to boycott Fox's debate coverage, thus, Daily Kos has done something that if not dealt with has the potential to damage O'Reilly's Ego defined world view and must be attacked (i.e. to dissipate the cognitive dissonance resulting from the implication that there is something wrong with Fox's news coverage) so as not to disturb the alternate reality O'Reilly has constructed inside his head.

Which is why Daily Kos is a "far left" "hate" site and why O'Reilly now wants legislation passed that would make it easier for him to sue his enemies.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Jane Hall was on the program, too. I guess she just doesn't mind all that much if O'Reilly cuts her mic and tells his audience she's a liar and a propagandist. Seriously, c'mon Hall - where's your sense of self-respect?

Update: My god. O'Reilly really is living in some kind of alternate dimension. I just got done watching the video of O'Reilly interviewing Senator Chris Dodd about the Yearly Kos convention. When Dodd brought up the point about O'Reilly having said he's ok with al Qaeda attacking San Francisco O'Reilly denied having said it and demanded to know where and when he said such a thing. Um, ring a bell, Bill?

And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.

Of course, O'Reilly knows this is what Dodd was talking about because he next said, "you don't know what the hell you're talking about. You got it from Media Matters" at which point O'Reilly becomes unraveled and starts raving like a lunatic.

Its a testament to how dumbfounded I was before that I failed to mention the most bewildering portion of the segment I watched. That being O'Reilly linking the "hate" of Daily Kos (and other websites) to student protesters of the MinuteMen at NYU Columbia Universtity and Ann Coulter and George Soros getting pies thrown at them at speaking appearances.

1. Without even bothering to look into the NYU Columbia incident, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that it probably was the result of some leftist student groups and not with anything said at the Daily Kos. Polarizing groups like the MinuteMen tend to attract protesters that are somewhat extremist themselves.

2. Same deal with Coulter. Her getting a pie thrown at her is obviously the backlash from her own bigotry and hate-mongering. It doesn't require anyone saying anything about Coulter on the internet to get someone to want to throw a pie at her.

3. George Soros????? Are you kidding me? How ... how can any person possibly be this obtuse? Maybe Mr. O'Reilly wants to rethink that example for a while. Can he think of any possible reason why that would not be a good example.

Hint: It has something to do with O'Reilly saying, "They ought to hang this Soros guy."

Update 2: Jesus General writes a letter to Roger Ailes. (h/t Americablog)

Dear Mr. Ailes

I know you're very busy right now promoting Bill O'Reilly's 28 part expose on Daily Kos commenters. It's a damned good series. I bet it earns him another Peabody Award. At least I hope it does. It'll finally shut all those bastards up who wonder a little too loudly why his old Peabody is topped with a little bowler figurine and inscribed with the words "Westbury Girls-A-Go-Go, 1972."

But where do you go from there? I mean once you've faced the kind of all-encompassing evil found in a Kos Diary's comment thread, everything else is a letdown isn't it?

There's more at the link.

Should Einstein be remembered as a great "skeptic"?

Albert Einstein is on CSI's list of Ten Outstanding Skeptics of the Century.

In the May/June issue of Skeptical Inquirer, Todd C. Riniolo and Lee Nisbet point out that Einstein was a selective skeptic when it came to his political beliefs, given that he was an apologist for Stalin's regime. In light of this information, the authors ask if Einstein really belongs on the list.

The ultimate message of the article though, is this

No one is once and for all a skeptic. Skepticism is an ongoing, self-correcting process, not an end to be achieved. It is continually possible to not only backslide but to apply our skepticism inconsistently. We are all selective skeptics. Ironically, calling ourselves skeptics may make us less skeptical in objectively evaluating claims because it may create a false sense of our willingness to subject all of our beliefs to the principles of inquiry. Self-knowledge concerning our limitations is useful in two ways: it encourages intellectual humility and honesty and it keeps the daunting task of not falling prey to our particular certainties forthrightly in view.

...

Simply calling ourselves skeptics is no guarantee that we will objectively apply the methods of skepticism. Self-awareness that we have limitations in expertise combined with built-in biases that hinder our consistent application of skepticism may help to minimize our own selective skepticism. However, if we ignore our own selective skepticism and inconsistently apply the method of skepticism, we run the risk, like Einstein, of deluding ourselves in certain areas like the “true believer” that every skeptic despises.

That should sound familiar.

Rush Limbaugh's "logical" grip on reality

Yesterday, I saw this post from Ed Brayton about an article at WorldNetDaily regarding the Fairness Doctrine in which the author argues that "liberals" don't succeed at talk radio because they are emotional and not logical.

Yep, I know the first thing that comes to mind for me when I think about Rush Limbaugh is how damn logical he is. Like this, for instance.

Update: More "logic" from Rush

[Democrats] have aligned themselves with the enemy. They continue to align themselves with the enemy. They won't admit it, obviously. The enemy kills more soldiers, their spokesmen here in the U.S. are the Democrats. When we kill more of the enemy, the Democrats are silent and they say nothing. But when we have reports of, you know, another IED, or pictures of a car on fire -- then the Democrats assume the role of media PR spokespeople for Al Qaeda.

and

I'll tell you something else. This is absolutely hilarious. "Mr. Bin Laden's group" is how The New York Times refers to Al Qaeda. Why don't they just say, "Osama bin Laden, D-Afghanistan"? "Mr. bin Laden's group"? Osama bin Laden, D-Afghanistan. Democrat, Afghanistan. It's like Congressman William Jefferson, Democrat-Louisiana.

Standing on the shoulders of jerks

“If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” – Isaac Newton

The above quote is widely considered to be one of the greatest quotes about science by one of the greatest scientists in history. What is less known is that it was probably a petty insult given by one of the greatest jerks in the history of science.

It’s a testimony to the sort of person that Newton was that most people don’t even know that the quote was part of a letter written to Robert Hooke, who should be known as one of the most important figures in science (he is, but not so much in pop culture), and who would be were it not for Newton using his influence and authority (after the death of Hooke) to downplay/expunge the role Hooke played in the birth of modern science.

The reason that Newton bore such a grudge against Hooke is that when Newton published his work on optics he failed to acknowledge that he had been influenced heavily by the work Hooke himself had previously done. Hooke, being a man who was extremely considerate of giving others credit where credit was due, was not happy with not being given the recognition he deserved.

When Newton was made aware of Hooke’s objection (by an enemy of Hooke who exaggerated the complaint) he was insulted at the implication that his genius relied in some way on the work of Hooke, whom Newton viewed (as he did with pretty much everyone) as his lesser.

After a four year feud, the Royal Society made arrangements for the two men to publicly reconcile in order to preserve the good reputation of the organization. John Gribbin explains the rest in his excellent history of science The Scientists

Hooke’s letter to Newton seems to bear the genuine stamp of his personality, always ready to argue about science in a friendly way (preferably among a few companions in one of the fashionable coffee houses), but really only interested in the truth:

I judge you have gone farther in that affair [the study of light] than I did … I believe the subject cannot meet with a fitter and more able person to enquire into it than yourself, who are in every way fitted to complete, rectify, and reform what were the sentiments of my younger studies, which I designed to have done somewhat myself, if my other more troublesome employments would have permitted, though I am sufficiently sensible it would have been with abilities inferior to yours. Your design and mine, are, I suppose, both at the same thing, which is the discovery of truth, and I suppose we can both endure to hear objections, so as they come not in a manner of open hostility, and have minds equally inclined to yield to the plainest deductions of reason from experiment.

There speaks a true scientist. Newton’s reply, although it could be interpreted as conciliatory, was totally out of character, and carries a subtext which is worth highlighting. After saying that ‘you defer too much to my ability’ (a remark Newton would never have made to anyone except under duress), he goes on with one of the most famous(and arguably most misunderstood) passages in science, usually interpreted as a humble admission of his own minor place in the history of science:

What Des-Cartes did was a good step. You have added much in several ways, & especially in taking ye colours of think plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.

John Faulkner, of the Lick Observatory in California, has suggested an interpretation of these remarks which flies in the face of the Newton legend, but closely matches Newton’s known character. The reference to Descartes is simply there to put Hooke in his place by suggesting that the priority Hooke claims actually belongs to Descartes. The second sentence patronizingly gives Hooke (the older and more established scientist, remember) a little credit. But the key phrase is the one about ‘standing on the shoulders of Giants’. Note the capital letter. Even granted the vagaries of spelling in the seventeenth-century, why should Newton choose to emphasize the word? Surely, because Hooke was a little man with a twisted back. The message Newton intended to convey is that although he may have borrowed from the Ancients, he has no need to steal ideas from a little man like Hooke, with the added implication that Hooke is a mental pygmy as well as a small man physically. The fact that the source of the expression predates Newton and was picked up by him for his own purposes only reinforces Faulkner’s compelling argument.

After this affair, Newton waited 30 years to publish Opticks until Hooke died, at which point Newton no longer had to worry about Hooke reminding anyone of his own pioneering work in the subject.

Need a quote?

"The key to wisdom is this – constant and frequent questioning ... for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth." - Peter Abelard

After yesterday's post I received an e-mail from Mr. Wilcox, one of the co-authors of the refreshingly humanistic American Extremists*, providing me links to five e-books of quotes he has compiled on various subjects. Here they are:

• Fanatacism, Dogmatism & Ideological Thinking
• Political & Social Psychology & Behavior
• Rationality, Rhetoric, Skepticism and Logic
• Propaganda, Persuasion and Deception
• The Writer's Rights: Selected Quotations on Freedom of Expression, Censorship, Civil Liberties, Due Process and Individual Rights

There are a multitude of great quotes contained in the above compilations (including the one from Abelard.)

*The authors, in writing the book, very much follow Spinoza's maxim (much more so that I have been able to do):

"I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them."